Hadley
I hear the front door to his apartment slam, and my hands shake. I’ve never had the kind of reaction I have to Trick, to anyone else. It’s like a current flowing through both of our bodies, an electrical jolt that would make my heart start beating again if it stopped. Nervousness courses through my body, and I try to examine why I’m nervous.
Because he’s going to be honest with me.
Because I’m going to be honest with him.
I haven’t opened myself up to a person in a long time. The last person I opened up to tried to use anything I ever told him to hurt me in the divorce proceedings. My brain knows that’s the kind of man my ex was, but the irrational part cautions me against opening up to anyone else ever again. Even though it’s lonely, it’s easier that way; no one to hurt you in the long run.
But in the last year, I’ve started to feel the loneliness. Not all day, and not even every day, but it’s there, in the back of my mind. It’s there when I want to watch a non-kid movie when I want to have a drink after Riley goes to bed. I have to do it by myself and I want someone to share those moments with. Is that person Patrick Tennyson? I don’t know, really I don’t, but I’d be stupid not to at least give it a chance. We get along, he likes my daughter, and my daughter likes him.
Would it be so bad?
The voice inside my head tells me it would probably be so good, and then when we inevitably don’t work out, all of us will be devastated. I tell that voice to shut the fuck up. I’m due for something amazing happening in my life. If my horoscope this morning was to be believed, I have to keep an eye out for it, I have to be open to it, for it to happen.
So here I am, opening myself up to this guy who a few weeks ago had no idea I or my daughter existed. If what he says doesn’t send me running, I tell myself we’ll go slow, we’ll ease into whatever kind of relationship we’re going to have. I’ll make sure I do things for the right reasons this time. Hell, I’ll just make sure I do things right.
But part of me thinks Patrick Tennyson could teach me to be so wrong and that would be so good. I shove the yearning down. Afterwards I’ll decide, but for now, I’m all in. I’ll listen with an objective ear, and I’ll think before I speak. Just like I hope he does with me.
I brush my hair before I exit the bathroom. His cat sits on the back of the couch, eyeing me, judging me.
“Oh stop,” I hiss at him. “You don’t know how hard this is.”
He lazily licks his paw, turns his head, and then diverts his eyes from me. Something tells me Alfred gives absolutely no fucks.
“Thanks for all your support,” I throw over my shoulder as I go for the front door of the apartment. He meows before he hops off the couch and makes for the kitchen counter, bathing in the last of the sunlight of the day.
To have the life of a cat.
I take my time as I descend the steps into the back yard. I know what happens in the next few hours will change the direction of whatever it is Trick and I have built. It perhaps changes the relationship he’s cultivated with Riley, and maybe it changes Trick’s life, too. Maybe if he gets rid of whatever it is he’s carrying, he can move on and be the kind of man he wants to be.
He’s got a fire blazing in the pit. It’s cold, getting colder every night, so I’m thankful for the warmth. It also gives a muted illumination to the area we’ll be sitting in. It’s always easier to be honest when the person you’re speaking to can’t really see your face. A cigarette dangles between his lips, and I see a couple of Coronas sitting out, two chairs sit next to one another.
“Before we start, I have to tell you about something that happened today. Some guy by the name of G showed up? He was kind of an asshole, and he wants his starter back?” I’m not sure what went on between the two of them, but I feel like I need to tell him. If we’re going to be honest with one another, I should tell him about what happened.
“Did he hurt you?” Trick’s voice is harsh.
“Tried to hurt my feelings by saying you might be his dad,” I shrug. It hadn’t bothered me, I truly believed what I’d told the kid.
“Shit,” Trick runs a hand through his hair. “That kid has been looking for a dad his whole life. His mom is nothing like you, she’s struggled since he was born. He’s of age now, and he sees the quick money you can get on the streets. He’s gonna get mixed up in some shit he can’t get out of. I’ll have a talk with him.”
“He seemed like his bark was a lot louder than his bite.” I mean what I say, I’ve seen crappy people, and he looked like a kid playing at being a bad ass adult. Nothing at all like the real thing.
“It is,” Trick agreed. “He’d be a good kid if someone would just take a chance on him. I’ll see what I can do.”
I have no doubt he will.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I level him with a glance. “You good?” I ask, letting the sleeves of the hoodie he’s given me engulf my hands. Another protective gesture, a way of shielding a piece of myself from his inquisitive gaze.
“Good as I’ll ever be.”
He grabs one of the beers, taking the metal top off with his bare hands. Putting the glass to his lips, he takes a healthy drink, draining almost half of it before he sits it down and opens mine. He hands it to me, motioning for me to take a drink.
“Go ahead, Hadley, fortify yourself, because you’re gonna need it. When I tell you my past, you’re gonna question what the fuck you’ve been doing with me.”
“The only thing I’ve been doing is getting to know you,” I whisper, reaching out to take his hand in mine.
At the last second, he moves his fingers, so I can’t grasp them. Running a hand over his face, he blows out a breath. “I wish that’s all I’ve been doin’ with you.” I’m confused and I want to ask him what he means, but I know it’s not the time. He’s quickly losing patience with the whole thing if the way he’s blowing out breaths indicates anything.
“I’m ready to listen if you’re ready to talk,” I tell him as I take a small drink from my bottle. I want to remember this, gauge his reaction, and be completely in control of myself when I hear what he has to tell me. I don’t want anything to be misconstrued, or taken the wrong way.
“You know I wish I’d had a mom like you,” he smiles sadly at me, a hint of a twinkle in his eyes. “One that put me first, the way you do Riley. Who cared if I had food, who cared if I had a roof over my head, but more than anything, who cared about who the fuck she brought around her child. That’s one of the reasons I said yes to being paired with Riley,” he shrugs, lifting a brow. “They told me you questioned it and wanted to pretty much know my credentials.”
I laugh. “It wasn’t completely like that, but I wanted to know if what you’d been arrested for, this vandalism thing, was something I needed to be worried about. The only thing Rebecca told me was you’re a changed man and she’d trust her own children with you. That was enough for me, because I’ve grown to know her in the past year. She’s been working with us a while, trying to get Riley matched with someone.”
“You’re gonna question if either one of you have the good sense God gave you,” he licks his lips and rubs his hands over his thighs. “My mom wasn’t like you. She wasn’t a drug addict or anything like that, didn’t abuse me in the traditional sense, and if anyone looked in from the outside, we would have seemed like a normal family. Poor as fuck, but for the most part, normal. My mom, was addicted to being taken care of,” he gets up, rolling his head on his shoulders.
“You can go as slow as you want,” I remind him. It hurts me to hear his painful memories, and they’re obviously painful, because he looks like if he could rip his skin off, he would.
“She went from one man to another, looking for the one that would make her happy, the one that would make all her dreams come true. You know in the beginning, they all had money, because they wanted to impress her. My mom was pretty; I look a lot like her.”
“You’re definitely pretty,” I break the tension, laughing softly. “T
hat was one of the first things Rebecca told me about you – how gorgeous you are.”
He blushes, and I love it, because it brings him down to my level. He has a seat again, and I can tell he’s more comfortable. “Anyway, when the money would run out, we’d move onto the next man. Sometimes though, it took us a while to find someone who would be willing to take us as a package deal. When that would happen, Mom would get some shit waitressing job and money would be beyond tight. When I was a teenager, I hit a huge growth spurt, shot up like a weed, and since we couldn’t afford new clothes, I wore jeans that didn’t fit. They were way too short for me, shirts that didn’t completely cover my stomach, jackets that had no hope of coming to my wrists. I got real sick of being made fun of, and it only took me kicking a few asses for people to leave me the hell alone. I was big. I could pack on muscle without much work, and working out meant I didn’t have to be in the shit trailer we lived in back then,” he takes a deep breath.
“You don’t have to go on,” I can tell this is hard for him, his speech is clipped and tight, not at all like the rolling, loose words that normally fall from his lips.
“No, I do,” he reaches for my hand. “If I want to be invited into your life, I owe this to you.”
When he takes my hand, I love the way the callouses rub against the roughness of my own palm. Fitting together like two pieces of a puzzle. I connect our fingers, entwining them, doing my best to hold him when I feel like he needs it.
“Fast forward a few years. I’m twenty-two, almost twenty-three, and I’m a hothead. I’m used to getting my way because I’ve been plowing through anyone who’s told me ‘no’ for years. I’m trying to build up my business – that’s when I first started my shop – and I’m trying to be everybody’s buddy. Some people fucked me over back then, and I’m not gonna lie, I beat the shit out of them to prove a point. I go over to my mom’s one afternoon. She’s got a new dude, one that’s got more money than the rest of them had, and he’s also got a mouthy son.”
He stops for a few minutes and I can see he’s traveled back in time, he’s in the memory. Using my other hand, I run it along his jaw, giving him the human touch he seems to have been missing for most of his life.
“That day, I took a friend of mine over there. A young kid who was kinda like me. Big, but didn’t know where to put his strength, clothes didn’t fit, all that shit. The son gets in my friend’s face, making fun of him about wearing high-water pants and wearing a crop top shirt. My friend was embarrassed, and I kept telling the son to stop, it wasn’t cool. You know my friend’s family didn’t have the money to clothe him, but they’d done the best with what they had. The son wasn’t getting a rise out of my friend, so he started pushing my friend. That’s all he wanted, was a rise.”
I have a really bad feeling of how this is going to end, but I want him to finish the story. I want him to tell me in his own words what happened.
“I put a hand up to stop it, to tell the son to get the fuck out, and he clocks me, talking shit the entire time. In the blink of an eye, I’m back in that fucking high school where people are making fun of me, asking if I’m gay since I like to show my ass off, because my pants are so tight. Every single ridiculing remark came back to me in that instant, and I hit him and I kept hitting him. It didn’t feel good, but I couldn’t stop. It was like every single emotion I’d ever had of hatred, of embarrassment and never feeling good enough, erupted in that one moment. By the time my friend pulled me off of him, he was unconscious.”
“Did you kill him?” I ask quietly, afraid of the answer.
“No,” he shakes his head. “But I fucked him up, badly. After all was said and done, I was charged and did a stint for three years in prison, and then two years in a rehab situation where I learned to control my anger. I knew right from wrong, no matter what my emotional scars were,” he sniffs slightly. “I never should have done what I did. I never should have used my fists when I could have walked away.”
I’m sniffing too, because I hear the real regret in his voice, the pain his decision caused him.
“I’ve not spoken to my mom since they hauled me away in cuffs. I have no idea what became of the dude, his son, or my friend. None of them have seen me since the night the altercation happened.”
“Not even in court?” I run my hand along his back.
“They didn’t come,” he admits. “And I took my punishment like a man. It was the least I could do.”
He breathes heavily, clearing his throat. “I guess my question for you, Hadley, is does this change how you think of me? Does this change the way you look at me?”
I have to be honest with him.
“I truly believe people can change, because I’ve changed. I know what someone’s capable of, but maybe you should tell me about the other charge. The reason you’re in the program right now.” I need to know he hasn’t gone out and beaten someone else almost to death.
18
Trick
I’m so fucking raw after I’ve explained to her what originally got me in trouble, but I know I owe her the rest. “It’s nothing like what happened the first time,” I run a hand under my nose. I can blame the cold on my nose running, but truthfully I get emotional when I talk about what I did. Nobody can ever punish me as much as I’ve punished myself.
“Thank God,” she whispers, as she squeezes my hand.
“I run, every other day, it helps me keep my moods stable. If I’m pissed, sad, lonely, whatever, I either hop on the bike or run, but running helps more. This asshole down the street who runs the junkyard got a dog a few months ago. The prettiest little fawn Pitbull I’ve ever seen in my life. He had her tied up, and was feeding her raw meat, and all the shit dickheads seem to think they’re supposed to do with junkyard dogs,” he turns to face me. “I swear, every time I would run by her, she’d look up at me with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. It was like she was begging me to get her out of the shitty situation she was in. One day, I had enough, I went back to the shop, got some wire cutters and broke her out.”
“You got arrested for stealing a dog?” She looks like she’s trying not to laugh, and it’s nice after the heavy discussion we’ve just had.
“The fence he had was some expensive galvanized bullshit and cost more than most foreign cars. Because of the price, I was hit with felony trespassing, which violated my probation. And when I went to take the dog, he threw shit at me, I threw shit at him, we shared some words, and I may have picked him up by his shirt and slammed him into a brick wall. Seriously though, who mistreats an animal like that? I know it’s not an excuse, but it’s a hot button issue for me. Which is why I’m here now.”
“Wow,” she lifts her beer, draining the whole bottle.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” I don’t want her to make a snap decision, I don’t want her to have heard about the old, angry Patrick, and think I haven’t changed. I have, and I feel like I’m proving it every time I’m allowed to hang out with Riley. More than anything, the way the little girl trusts me is the best feeling in the world.
“Please don’t make a quick decision about me,” I beg her. The desperation in my voice is embarrassing, but it’s the rawest I’ve ever been.
“I believe people can change, Trick. I’ve changed, and I try not to take people on their pasts. Since I met you, you’ve been nothing but gracious and polite. I have a hard time believing you’re the type of man that could beat someone as badly as you did.”
“That Trick grew up, matured, and realized life isn’t promised. It wasn’t easy. When I went to prison, I was still angry, so fucking angry. I wondered why in the hell my mom had never given me the tools to one day be a productive member of society, why I felt like I had to use people all the time – because that’s what she did. I learned pretty early on, in my stint, my story wasn’t the worst on my block and I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t had mom of the year material. I also learned really quickly that if I wanted to be different, I had to change me; no one was going
to do it for me. So when they offered me the additional time in an anger rehabilitation center, I took it. To be honest, I was scared to come out on my own, what if someone pissed me off again? How was I going to react? I couldn’t go through being locked up again.”
“You’re a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for.”
“Don’t,” I yank my hand away from hers. “Don’t act like I should be applauded because I made a grown-up decision.”
“I’m not,” she curls into her chair, pulling her feet up so she can wrap her arms around her knees. “I’m telling you, I know it wasn’t easy, yet you still managed to do it. Fuck, it took me years to be able to make a grown-up decision and get my ass out of my situation. And for me to get out of it? I still had to have it thrown in my face what an asshole my husband was.”
“So is this where you tell me your story, say goodbye, and head on home. I never see you and Riley again and I’m left with Alfred the cat?”
“Riley’s decided the cat’s name is Tux, since he looks like he’s wearing a tuxedo. She thinks it’s cooler than Alfred.”
“She’s got me there,” I reach out, tipping her chin up with my fingers. “Now answer my question.”
“I’m going to tell you my story, because that’s what we agreed on, but I’m not saying goodbye and heading home. I think tonight, I’m gonna stay here, and you’re gonna show me exactly how much you’ve changed. I’m open to giving you a chance, Trick, if you’re open to giving me one. Life isn’t black and white. There are a ton of gray areas, and if I judged everyone based on their pasts, I’d not be teaching my daughter the right thing, now would I?”
Can’t fucking argue with that logic. “I’m ready to listen when you’re ready to talk,” I repeat the words she spoke to me earlier.
“At least I know you pay attention to what I say,” she offers me a smile. Grasping the hood of the sweatshirt she’s wearing, she pulls it up over her head.
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