Our Crazy Little Thing Called Love

by Liz K. Lorde

  Two long years I spent with him in squalor, getting food from the trash and stealing electricity whenever we were able. Squatting from place to place whenever the work ran out.

  Torment, utter torment. That was the best way to describe it. Pure and heartless torture of the self. The kind that you remind yourself of between every thought; no task or socialization would be complete without it – without in some roundabout way going back to old scabs. “Please, Dad…” I begged, trying to wrest the bottle of vodka from his clutch. “You know I love you, you know that mom loved—“

  “No,” he spat, pulling away from me and trying to escape further into the couch. The couch was his island, his private space in which he could permanently reside when he wasn’t working two days out of seven. “Don’t say it,” he begged, closing his eyes. “Don’t say it.” His boss, Randal, would often leave messages on the home phone threatening to fire him – because even though he kept things low key when it came to drinking at work… well.

  Some days were just worse than others for him. Some days were worse for me, too. Except nobody was around to care about that. His hair was long since receding and what was left of it was done in a raggedy mess. Every time that I reached for his bottle and tried to pull it away from him, it was like my hand wasn’t able to squeeze – like I had no muscles anymore. His shirt was white and stained with tears, booze, junk food and god knows what else.

  Just like I remembered it.

  It broke every fiber of my heart to see him again, and I wished so hard to make the cameo of pain vanish in the black smoke that surrounded me.

  “It’s my fault she’s gone,” he cried, “it’s my fault.” This was his phrase. His broken gospel.

  I never did tell him that it was my fault, not his. “You’re not to blame,” I said like I was reading a script, I’d said the words so many times in those brief few years we spent together.

  Something hard jabbed at my chest and my eyes shot open, revealing a fuzzy world of confusion. Still, I was immediately thankful for those visions to be gone from me – my plate was full enough without the past butting it’s head into my current affairs.

  Leo… I felt a tight ball of energy form in my chest, and I just knew.

  It had to be him.

  “Get up!” Fiona hissed in a stern whisper. She shoved at me with the butt of her rifle again, much to my ribs displeasure. Of course if my body could talk, that wouldn’t be the first thing it would complain about.

  The soreness ‘down there’ reminded me of him, reminded me of the way that he filled me.

  A voice called out from outside, the morning sun peeking through the curtained windows; somehow ironic, because no matter what kind of day today was going to be, and I felt strongly it would be bad, the sun would come and shine all the same. No clouds, no somber rain to foreshadow any despair.

  Just the shining sun, taunting at me with its warm dance of light.

  My heart dropped like a stone when I truly registered who it was outside: “Open this door!” Leonardo yelled, a loud thump resonating through Fiona’s house; I presume that he kicked the door just then to punctuate how he was feeling about the whole situation. “If she’s in there, she’s in danger.”

  Fiona gave me those ‘I told you so’ eyes, and motioned with her chin for me to get up before stepping away from me and to the door, her slick looking rifle at the ready. “You hit my door and I’ll put a bullet in you for every knick,” she called out in a deadly tone.

  I jerked up from the couch, adrenaline pounding through my every system. He got here frightfully fast; he had to have known about Fiona, surely.

  Maybe that’s what I wanted in a sick, twisted kind of way.

  To be chased. Walking passed the living room table, I moved closer to the door, but kept some distance between it and myself.

  “Best have enough bullets,” Leo replied, kicking the door another few times in quick succession – the door rattling and buckling with each strike.

  Thankfully that door was nothing to fuck with.

  Fiona’s face tightened in annoyance, “Kick it,” she challenged, “kick it one more time. One more fucking time and I’ll rip your jaw right off.” Jesus I’d never seen her get so riled. “See how much pussy you can get in a make-shift hospital in Tijuana!”

  There was this feeling in my chest that I couldn’t ignore. Some finger of warmth that pressed against me and it urged me onward; I moved over to Fiona’s side and put a hand on her – we shared a look and she eventually stepped aside. I unlatched the twin iron deadbolts, which were ornately decorated as Ouroboros snakes, and a satisfying metallic click rang out.

  Opening the door, a pissed off Connifer and a furious Leonardo graced my vision before immediately stepping inside. There was another man, too, who followed in behind them. Meich or something to that effect was his name, I thought. The one with the bald head and the dragon tattoos.

  Leonardo went right up to Fiona’s face as he passed her.

  She didn’t back down an inch, and the two silently continued their showdown.

  Before closing the door, I noticed a black SUV down the street with nobody in it and I pondered momentarily if it was just the three of them. Putting the locks back on I turned as Connifer flashed his black pistol at his hip to Fiona.

  “Is that supposed to threaten me?” She asked, all the while Leonardo couldn’t seem to keep his eyes off of me – now that he’d had his short pissing contest with Fee.

  Connifer made a mocking threat of a gesture, “You got balls on you for a granny.”

  Leo made slow, measured strides toward me and my whole world fell still. How my body could respond so infatuated to my kidnapper was beyond me. Why did it have to be this way? Why couldn’t things just be simple – how was it even possible to feel such dual emotions. Love, hate. No, not love.

  It couldn’t ever be love.

  “You ran,” he said one part solemn, one part furious. I could see in his eyes just how much he was burning inside; he was straightened out and towering over me like he was going to hit a wall, and I thought for a moment that I should be scared. Yet, somehow, I knew that he wouldn’t hurt me. “Why?” He asked, but it was a demand.

  I’d hurt him. Foolishly, selfishly and stupidly, I’d hurt him.

  “I don’t know,” I told him, but I was sure he would sniff out the lie. I knew, at least partially, as to why I did it – I was afraid. Deathly, mortally afraid. The second his lips touched mine last night I knew that something changed inside of me; all I wanted to do was put distance between what I felt, to escape from any and all future pains.

  Hiding was all I’d ever known. Escaping. Into books, into songs… into anything that I could fly away with.

  And I was sorry. Sorry that I left the way that I did.

  Leo stepped closer to me, and Connifer said behind him that there wasn’t time for this – but it only barely registered to my ears. He was wearing a black button-up and his muscles looked like they were ready to rip the seams of his clothes at any given moment. “Stop bullshitting me,” he said, wincing and looking to his shoulder where Con had stitched him. “You pulled a fast one on Con and I woke up and you weren’t there. I told you I’d get you out of this mess—“

  “You were the one who put me here in the first place!” I snapped back, I may have been an unhappy mess but it’s not like I appreciated having my life at risk.

  “And I’m going to be the one that gets you out of it – I promise you that.”

  Fiona snickered derisively at that, “Bold words from a brave fool.”

  Leonardo didn’t turn his head to face her, but instead showed his teeth and let out a frustrated and low sort of growl. “Tabby cat,” he started, closing his eyes and letting the lines of his face soften. He opened his eyes, “I fucked up by doing this to you, and I – well, I don’t normally do this—“

  Connifer seemed to feel the need to add: “Never does.”

  “I’m sorry,” Leonardo said and it struck m
e as if it were lightning. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to accept his apology just this second, but I could tell that he meant it.

  I could tell that he really did have, at least, some kind of feelings for me – that he did have a heart. He moved then, to put his hands on my hips – leaving blossoming warmth where those great and many-skilled fingers touched. I wanted to lose myself to those hands again; for cease of a better way of putting it… I realized in that moment just how badly I wanted to feel him, to see him.

  “Look,” I said, trying to swallow my own pride. “I’m sorry too, for leaving the way I did – without telling you at least. I trust… and I should have trusted, that you would have let me go.” There was more to it of course, but I felt too embarrassed and unimportant enough to touch up on the fact that, yeah, I was afraid of the feelings that he made me feel.

  “I’m not leaving you behind, Tabby cat. If you want me to stay and bleed for you, hell, you know I’ll do it.”

  Connifer moved over towards the windows on either side of the door and pushed the curtains aside, he peered out the window and turned his head over towards me and Leo. “That’s all very touching,” he assured, “but we need to roll.”

  Leo didn’t look to him, he just locked eyes with me and pulled me in a little closer. I submitted with ease, without even thinking. I wanted to feel the heat from his body, and I desperately needed to place my head against his chest – but I restrained myself, somehow. “I need to hear you say it,” Leonardo said.

  “Say what?” I asked, a stone falling from my throat to my stomach.

  “That you want my help, that you can forgive me. Not today, not tomorrow. But some day. I’m not like him Tabitha. I can let you go.”

  “Can you?” I asked.

  Leo’s jaw clenched in a display of pure, raw sexiness. “I didn’t say I’d be happy about it.” His eyes searched mine with absolute determination. Determination that told me he’d only come to heel if I meant for him to leave with all my soul.

  Staring up at his emerald eyes, I could feel myself trembling ever so slightly with the ecstatic mixture of fear and excitement and a lifelong yearning that I never knew I had. It was a whirlwind to try and process it all in such a short time. I said the only thing that I felt in my heart: “Yes, I could forgive you,” I said it quietly, but I said it true. I melted into his chest and he wrapped his arms around me, hugging me so tight that one would think I’d been lost for a lifetime.

  The truth of it, is that I had been.

  Fiona cleared her throat and kept her weapon at the ready, “I’m going to go ahead and assume that your partner here,” she pointed with her head towards Connifer, “isn’t just telling you to speed things along so he can go and groom that sewer rat he calls a beard.”

  We squeezed each other one last time before breaking apart, and I could see that Connifer was visibly fuming that Fee’d insulted his, perhaps overly groomed beard.

  Leo slung an arm around my hip and held me close to his side, turning to face Fee. “Someone’s looking for her. Don’t worry grandma, I can handle this shit from here.”

  I made sure to jab Leo’s side with my elbow, and he promptly flinched, looking to me with a confused face. That was not how I would have him talk to aunt Fiona. “She’s not my grandmother, and her name is Fiona.”

  Fiona smiled at me while Connifer rolled his eyes and Leonardo sighed before saying: “Sorry, left my manners at the bedside where I was dragged in the middle of the night.” He looked to Connifer then, and I couldn’t help but let out a private giggle.

  The other man, Meich, stayed furthest at the rear of our group with his arms crossed over his chest. He hadn’t said a word the entire time, but I guess he did look like the sort of type that wouldn’t get to gabbing.

  Before Leonardo had any more time to explain things to Fee, Connifer announced out of the blue, “Shit.”

  Everyone’s attention turned to Connifer.

  He stared out the window and repeated louder, “Shit.” He craned his head back to face us, looking specifically at Leo. Connifer promptly drew his weapon, “It’s the Amigos.”

  “The Amigos?” I asked dumbfounded. He couldn’t possibly mean…

  Leonardo produced what looked like a miniature or micro Uzi hidden inside of his suit and made long, quick strides to the window to go and see for himself. I’d seen the carnage that those three unleash, and if they were coming our way, there wasn’t a gun or rifle that could save us. Fiona made her way to the opposite window and looked outside.

  I didn’t have the nerve to go up and butt in.

  “Killaine…” Leonardo said low enough that I could barely hear him. “We need to get the hell out of here,” Leo twisted his head and I could see the look of a brave man losing his color, “we’ll be dead in the next ten minutes if we don’t.”

  Connifer couldn’t unglue himself from looking out the window and his voice went sotto, “Our boys are out there.”

  Fiona gasped. “It’s them alright,” she said behind cold dread. “Who’s the one in the suit?”

  “My brother,” Leo responded, the hand which held his gun shook with either excitement or fear, but probably both. “I can’t leave them out there,” he said to himself.

  Connifer added: “If they’re smart they’ll get the fuck out and try and pick us up around the back.”

  Leonardo shook his head, “They’re getting out too. God dammit!” He brought the butt of his gun to the window pane and smashed it in; glass shattered and the sound of it punched the air, shards spilling inside and shooting outward as he cleared out more and more of it.

  Fiona straightened out her back, and somehow I knew right then and there, no matter what, there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to leave her home – she wasn’t going to back down from this fight. Maybe it was the official retirement, some bad ass genes in her genetic code, or what. But she wasn’t going to run.

  Not even if it killed her.

  Gunfire erupted from outside as though Zeus had cast down his fiery, thunderous bolts.

  Heat instantly crawled all over my skin and a disgusting adrenaline shot from my chest to my limbs. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. No gun, I didn’t have a gun – how the hell was I going to be expected to fight back? Could I fight back?

  I’d never shot anyone before.

  I’d never been shot at before.

  Connifer cursed, Fiona did the same and broke out her window in a similar fashion to Leo. In the brief seconds of madness, I tried to contemplate on what best to do in a situation like this – fuck me if I hadn’t ever been in one before, but there wasn’t a point in complaining about it now.

  Leonardo popped off a couple of rounds from his micro Uzi, “Get back inside you fools!” I knew that he was talking to his men outside, but instinctively I made retreating steps. I bumped into the living room table and turned my head back out of habit. The thick vase on the table hadn’t even budged.

  Fiona unloaded a good eight to twelve rounds in burst fire, not saying a word but seemingly holding to her a deadly calm.

  Tranquil fury.

  More gunfire as Leo tried to tell his men outside what to do, but there was something else going on. Something not quite right. Someone moved.

  Connifer?

  No. The other one. Meich.

  It was quick and sudden. There wasn’t a flash of light from the gleam of his knife, no, I barely even had the time to register what was happening.

  The blade sank right into Connifer’s back.

  My heart jumped up into my throat and I wanted to scream, but instead I twisted and threw my hands out to grab the heavy vase.

  Connifer barely made a sound, and god was that not one of the more disturbing parts – he made no noise as the blade twisted in his back. Whatever noise he did make at least, it was easily dampened by the sound of gunfire. I could tell from looking at him that it was a pained, choked gurgle that he was trying to make. But nothing came. Nobody else noticed, they were too distracted with the
fight outside.

  I moved in trying to close the short distance between us, lugging the vase as a weapon with me.

  Connifer twisted as the red seeped out of him, staining his dark purple coat and dripping to the floor in thick drops. His face was contorted in unimaginable pain, his teeth grit and his eyes filled with the fury of hades himself. There was a question in his eyes, too. Why? It was clear to me that he couldn’t come to grips with the terrifying and strange reality; this was betrayal, and chaos was the only thing that ruled now.

  I could tell that Connifer wanted to unleash hell, but with the knife in his back and Meich’s hand still on its handle, the odds were not in his favor. Even still, Connifer tried to mouth a word as he sent one hand to tango with the blade in his back, and another straight for Meich’s neck.

  Fiona continued to lay down suppressing fire as I passed her, and Leonardo did the same as I passed him in another second of time.

  Pure and unbridled rage bellowed up from me as I closed the last distance between me and the two men. One final, powerful stride I made, and I brought the vase back through the air, winding up to smash it over the man’s head. With one mighty swing and a ferocious grunt, I smashed the vase over Meich’s head. In that instant, it exploded. The sound of it filled the air, and as gunfire continued around me – the yells of people inside and outside were not lost on me.

  Meich stumbled off of Connifer and ran directly into the wall.

  Connifer and I met eyes briefly.

  Leonardo heard something, maybe the sound of the vase against Meich and promptly yelled: “What the fuck?!” He looked between the three of in a quick attempt to try and piece together what happened.

  “He stabbed—“ I pointed to Meich, but right as Connifer fell to the ground with a pained look on his face, Meich bull rushed towards Leo.

  Leonardo’s gun went off as Meich tackled him to the floor – a spray of bullets flying through the air. Some went into the ceiling while a few others managed to puncture the wall, sending bits of drywall and wallpaper airborne wherever they touched. The two came together on the floor and a half dozen more bullets went undoubtedly into the kitchen.