by Ashley Love
"Do you know why I pulled you over, son?"
"We've been over this, Starke, I'm not your fucking son. And no, I have no idea why in the fuck you pulled me over."
"Lex," I sigh.
"Look, kid. I'd watch that mouth if I was you," another voice cuts me off and a second cop materializes in the window, his nametag reading Robert Ordin. Lex chuckles a bit, eyeing him.
"Well, you're not me, are you?" he replies dryly, and I groan inwardly. If he was gonna pick any night to pull some dumb shit, of course tonight would be it.
"Your license plate light is out, Taylor. I could write you a ticket for that, you know," Officer Starke says flatly and Lex sighs.
"Yeah, I guess you could. What, you fucks haven't made quota this month yet, huh? Way to serve and protect, asshole, pulling me over for a burnt-out lightbulb. I'm sure the grannies next door to the crackhouse over on West Vernon will sleep easier tonight now that you caught me."
"Have you been drinking tonight, kid?" Officer Ordin interjects harshly and Lex chuckles again.
"Why drink and drive when you can smoke and fly?" he replies coolly.
"Lex, seriously," I start again.
"You wanna step outta the car for me?" Starke asks and Lex scoffs at him.
"Do I want to? No," he answers matter-of-factly, killing the engine of the truck as Ordin narrows his eyes at him.
"Step out of the vehicle, sir."
Lex pulls the keys from the ignition and shoves them in his pockets, muttering under his breath, "Just fucking great." Ordin shines his flashlight in my face and nods to me, a silent signal beckoning me from the truck as well. I swear to fucking God if he gets me into trouble...
"Anything in your pockets?" Starke asks when Lex's feet hit the pavement and Lex pushes the truck door closed.
"Wallet," he answers shortly and I cross in front of his truck, interested but making sure not to step too close.
"Wanna empty 'em out for me?"
"Nope," he quips, but does so anyway, reaching into both of his back pockets, plucking out his wallet from one and nothing from the other, opening his empty hand to illustrate this. He reaches into his front pockets and I see him swallow hard and hesitate and my eyes widen a little. Surely not...
"Oh shit," I whisper under my breath as he turns out his front pockets and I see it. I watch it hit the pavement next to his foot, rolled tight and burned halfway down, and he hangs his head immediately, knowing he's fucked.
"Search the truck," Starke commands in a stern voice and action erupts around me. Ordin moves quickly to the passenger's door of Lex's truck and jerks it open. Starke fists the back of Lex's T-shirt, walking him slowly toward the front of the vehicle.
"Lex, you've got to be fucking kidding me!" I shout and start to step closer to him, but Starke sticks out a long arm in a warning gesture for me to stay back.
"I'm sorry, Leala," Lex mutters under his breath, head still hung and my mouth hangs open to match it.
"Put your hands on the hood of the vehicle, sir. Ma'am, could you step over here please?" Starke barks out orders, shining his flashlight toward the sidewalk in front of the store and I move toward it without question, but I turn back to Lex.
"I don't believe this shit. I can't even believe you'd have that shit on you!" I shout at him as I step up onto the curb and he splays his hands wide on the pearl-colored hood of his truck.
"I said I was fucking sorry!" His eyes cut over to me and I shake my head.
"Have a seat on the sidewalk please. Have you been drinking?" Starke asks and I shake my head.
"No." My eyes flit over to Ordin searching the driver's side of Lex's truck now, and Starke flashes the beam of light into my face, commanding my attention.
"Are you under the influence of any drugs?"
I fight the urge to laugh at his question as I shield my eyes from the light until it pulls away to the pavement with the flick of his wrist.
"She just got out of rehab!" Lex growls over his shoulder but Starke's eyes don't leave mine.
"That's not what I asked."
"No, I'm not." I sigh, my posture slumping, and he nods quickly.
"Hey...look what I found!" Ordin shouts from Lex's truck and a chill rushes over my body when I see him holding Lex's handgun out for Starke to see.
"Alright Taylor, you got a permit for that?"
"You know I fucking don't," Lex mutters lowly, shaking his head. Starke leans in close to his ear with a sinister smirk.
"Then your ass is mine," he growls and I see Lex grimace. "We're taking him in. You find anything else in the truck?"
"What?!" I exclaim. Taking him in? To jail?!
"No, it's clean," Ordin replies coolly, but I'm frantic.
"It's not even loaded!" I stand up from my place on the curb and I see Ordin eye me concernedly, stepping closer to me, probably to make sure I don't do anything fucking stupid.
"Yes it is, Leala," Lex snaps, head still hung, and I swallow hard, the color draining from my face.
"It's concealed, ma'am...without a permit. Afraid there's nothing we can do," Ordin explains, and I shake my head. No, no this can't be happening. They can't take him.
"Lex!" I shout.
"Go back to the house, Leala. Take the truck." His voice is calm as Starke pats him down. How can he be so fucking calm?
"Lex, what the fuck am I supposed to do!?" I feel the tears coming. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.
"I'll call you, okay? Just calm down. I'm sorry. I'm fucking sorry, Leala."
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will..."
Everything else after that is all jumbled together. I remember it turned into something from a movie, where the scene goes black and white and everything is in slow motion. People are talking and their mouths are moving but I can't hear anything. I stand still, frozen, while everyone else moves around me at an agonizingly slow pace: Lex's features pursed in anger as the cop jerks him upright from the truck hood, the gun dropping into a plastic bag, the clicking of the handcuffs.
"Let's go."
I come back to myself, still frozen, stunned as I watch the cop put a hand on Lex's head and tuck him into the backseat of the car.
This is really happening...
Concealed handgun without a fucking permit. Jail. Arrested. Felony charges. I can just feel it. He's going to fucking jail. This is it.
He gives me a long look out the back window, blinking twice before he hangs his head because I'm just staring at him blankly, and I want him to look at me again so I can give him a sign, some sort of sign that we'll take care of things and it'll be okay, but I don't know if it will be. He's going to jail. This could be it.
This could be the end.
11
Dread...that fucking dread in my stomach. I should've known. I should've known some fucked up shit like this would happen tonight, but there's only one thing settling in my gut right now, and it's not dread.
Panic.
I'm in a panic when I finally get back to Lex's, my hands shaking so hard I don't even see how I drove here. I can't even see straight. I feel like I'm in a hall of fucking mirrors. This is like a bad trip. It's like a nightmare.
He's going to jail.
I'm so fucking stupid. I saw this coming. I've been seeing it coming forever. I knew this was his fate. I can't believe I was so blinded the other night. I'm a fucking moron, so blinded by all those silly things, all the little things, when I was totally ignoring the big fucking picture which is that he's a fucking reckless drug addict who has already fucked my life in a huge way and almost did it again tonight. What if they would've taken me in with him? How would my parents like to get a collect call at 2 AM a week after I get out of rehab? I should beat my own fucking ass.
I need to call someone. I feel like I should maybe
call Kyle or one of the boys, but I know it wouldn't take two seconds for all of those motherfuckers to be up in arms about this shit and storming the police station trying to get Lex out. But I need to tell someone. I get like this when I'm whigged out about shit; I need to talk for some reason. Even if it's just to sort out what I already know in my head. I need to say the words. And I need to say them to someone who will listen, someone who I want to understand me. So I pick up the phone and dial.
"Hello?" The voice that was once such a comfort answers and I feel a tug in my heart because I want that again, that comfort in her. I want a real relationship with her. We're adults now, it isn't about who's the favorite and making a competition out of our daily existence. I'm going to need her for the rest of my life, that's just the way it is. I'm okay with that. I want that now.
"Hey," I say back quietly. My voice shakes, a result of the tremble in my stomach, and it quakes deep, seeping out to my fingers and toes, making my hands shake and my knees shake. For a moment I close my eyes and I'm on the floor in the bathroom, shaking, clinging to my life, clinging to Lex and trying to let go, trying to let go of the drugs and it's always a battle with me, what to cling to and what to just let go of. I start to sweat. Just let go.
"Leala...it's two in the morning." The thickness of her voice denotes the deep sleep she was probably in, but I need her. I need her.
"I need to talk."
"Whats wrong?"
I hesitate for a moment. "Something bad happened..."
Her voice clears instantly and I would imagine that if she were laying down in bed she'd sat up at this point, in that concerned manner that people sit up, that urgent action. "Oh my God, are you okay? Please tell me you're okay..."
"I'm okay...but..."
"TELL ME!" she shrieks impatiently and I cower a bit as if she were actually in the room. She does in fact have the shorter temper of the two of us.
"Lex got arrested." I say it flat out, and it's silent for a moment...and another moment.
"What?" A single word, but it's laced with disappointment and disgust, so much so that I feel that empty feeling in my gut and a tightness in my chest as if she'd just lectured me brutally, lashing out with the venomous tongue of a viper, her single word lodging poison in my heart. I can barely speak.
"He got arrested, Aimee, and I don't know what to do. I'm at his house and I need to get money to get him out and they took him to jail..." I trail off. Tears build and that quiver starts in my voice and I'm pathetic, my head knows it and her voice tells me again, it tells me in a hundred ways, but my heart is lost and torn and broken and in a million pieces and I don't have the strength to put it back together, not by myself.
"You better not be calling me for money, Leala...not for this...not for him..."
"No," I assure her quickly. "No, he has money, I just have to get it. That's why I'm as his house, I just—"
"Why are you calling me about this? You know I'm gonna say let the motherfucker rot in there. What are you thinking? What were you doing with him, Leala?"
I had in fact made a not-so-silent agreement with Aimee that I wouldn't see Lex anymore, I had all but promised it. Fuck, I had made an agreement with myself that I wouldn't see him anymore. But we see how well that turned out.
I lean against the wall. My voice becomes tighter, nerves twitching in my gut and I'm trying to rationalize this to her but I know she doesn't want my excuses. "We just...we went to dinner. We were just talking—"
"And they just took him to jail? For nothing? Do you think I'm stupid? Are you fucking stupid?" Her voice raises to a shrill pitch and she's screaming now, tears streaming down my face as I take her verbal strikes. It builds, the rage and overwhelming sense to just snap, to just break, it's swallowing me, pulling me down and I slide down against the wall until I feel my bottom touch the floor. "We talked about this! Why do you keep doing shit that you know is wrong! Why!? Why?! Why?!"
I finally break. "Because I LOVE him!!!" I throw my head back and it thumps against the wall and I don't even recognize my voice when it tears from my throat, leaving it raw and I choke out a sob, guttural and deep as a result of the pain. I cry for a few moments, silent tears wetting my face and dripping onto my shirt, only my occasional coughs letting her know that I'm still on the line and it's silent on her end. Silent.
"I'm hanging up the phone," she says flatly.
I sob again, my voice weak, my throat barely able to support it. "Why the fuck else do you think I would've done this for so long?"
And it's true. No other human being would do all of the years and years of moronic shit that I've done if there wasn't love involved. Because as a whole we are pretty selfish creatures, but when love is involved...
Well, we do a lot of stupid shit for something or someone we love.
"He does not love you. What he's doing to you...this isn't love, Leala. Please tell me you can see that." Her voice is calm now, which let's me know she's done. She's done with me, she's done with this argument, she's decided. It's like when someone decides to end their life...they go from shambles to very calm and resolved...they're done. They've decided. But this isn't suicide for Aimee. She's not killing herself, she's killing me.
I'm dead to her. Dead until I get rid of Lex. Dead until I can get my life together, and I don't blame her. Well, part of me doesn't blame her. Part of me wishes she'd stop being such a colossal bitch and take a moment to be my sister and try and understand me. But I suppose it's rather hard to do that when you feel you've exhausted all of your options and come up against a brick wall time and time again.
What's that saying...you can't help someone who doesn't seem to wanna help themselves? Sometimes I wish I had that strength like her, but I can't let things go. She can just drop me like it's nothing and while it seems harsh, it's the one thing that I've been unable to do which has probably led me up to this point in my life. Just let go.
I'm sobbing all this while, still that pathetic sobbing, listening to her tell me he doesn't love me, confirming my worst fears, but she's wrong. Something in me screams she's wrong. "You don't know anything about him. I love him, I can't just leave him, you have to understand—"
"I'm not doing this with you," she cuts me off dryly. Dry. Dry and done.
"Aimee...please..."
"Leala, you have to get away from him. If you don't you get sucked right back in and I can't lose you again...I can't." Her voice gets tight again, and I can hear the struggle, hear her fighting down her emotions, and part of me knows she's just letting me go for the time being so she doesn't turn into a crazy person trying to help me get my life in order. I wonder to myself why in the fuck I can't do that. Wouldn't my life just be a fucking cakewalk right now?
I shout, more hurt than angry at this point, and my tears are beginning to subside. "I'm not sucked back in!"
But I don't think I ever pulled myself out in the first place.
12
I think everyone has one, if not more, of those moments where you realize that your personal reality is just a smidgen of the vastness that is the big nasty world out there. Your problems become minuscule, your worries…just a little blip on the radar.
For Lex, this moment was his entrance to Men’s Central Jail.
At about 3 a.m., after having the contents of his pockets confiscated, being fingerprinted, enduring an embarrassing strip search (and even more to his mortification having his ass cheeks pulled apart to make sure he wasn’t hiding anything), taking what LAPD thought to be his long overdue mugshot photo, and removing his belt and shoelaces, Lex took a twenty minute nap in his blue County Jail jumpsuit on the cold, hard, dirty floor while he waited for his paperwork to be processed. He was at the L.A. Inmate Reception Center, a temporary holding facility for men and women who are waiting to be discharged to local jails, and he felt the nudge of a steel-toed boot pulling him from sleep before he was finally put into an astoundingly overcrowded holding cell.
Standing beh
ind the steel bars with dozens of men, some waiting to be released, some waiting for bed assignments, he resorts to keeping his eyes down to the floor, for the first time in many years showing submissiveness when he meets gazes with a few others in the cell. His glance is unwelcome.
“What the fuck you lookin' at?!” is the most common response.
He feels something bump against his shoulder and notices the presence of another man who has come to stand next to him against the wall. Lex’s eyes shift over discreetly and he studies the tattoos covering the majority of the man’s brown skin. A bold-print JUAN is spelled out vertically up the length of his forearm along with a scripted 310 across the back of his hand. Other indistinguishable and faded tattoos blanket his skin, and when Lex chances a look up into the man’s eyes he see even more ink inscriptions emblazoned on the cold face staring into his own.
“What?” Juan asks flatly, and Lex just shakes his head and looks to the floor again quickly, a cold chill running over him.
“Look at white boy with his tats and shit, thinkin' he’s all hard. Are you a badass, white boy?” a voice calls from across the room. A few men laugh and Lex doesn’t look up.
“Nah, he’s shakin' in his fuckin' boots. Look at him,” a second man replies casually, nudging the first in the arm, his voice laced with a Hispanic accent. “Hey faggot, you scared?” he asks across the room, raising his voice. “Hey! I’m talkin to you, motherfucker!”
“What the fuck did you call me?” Lex finally asks, raising his head, his voice thin and gruff in his throat and he tries to sustain it as he eyes the pair of men across the cell.
The first man chuckles, the white of his teeth glowing in contrast against the darkness of his skin as he smirks, eyes trained on Lex. “He called you a faggot, little white boy. Pretty white boy gon’ make a lot of new friends up in this bitch…friends lookin' to put their dicks in that pretty little white boy ass—”
“Fuck you, I’m no queer,” Lex snarls, his eyes hard.