by Ashley Love
“You good?” Kyle asks when Lex hasn’t said anything for a minute.
“Yeah. Just…just be careful, alright?”
“She hasn’t said anything?”
He’d almost forgotten that part of the deal.
“Nah, I haven’t seen her since last week. She…she told me about Seth, man,” he says quietly, pulling his feet from where they're propped up and tucking them under the desk again, resting his weight on his elbows against the desk. He doesn’t mean to change the subject, but it’s the first thing that comes to him.
“Yeah. Shit’s fucked up, right?”
“The guys trippin' out?”
“Trying not to. Business is business, right? Gotta keep your nose to the ground.”
Lex winces at the words that he feels used to be his mantra, and something weird shakes him when he realizes that he doesn’t really give a shit about business right now, even at Kyle’s mention of it. It just makes him uneasy.
“He didn’t really take too much shit, did he?”
“Yeah. Bad shit, just knocked right the fuck out, didn’t wake up. Bruce was there, he’s pretty fucked up still.”
Lex sighs, shaking his head, letting it fall into his palm. “Shit, man. You don’t think it was on purpose?”
“Who knows, Lex. You can’t tell with that shit. It’s a loaded gun. We sell ‘em for fun, man.”
“I’m sorry,” Lex says quietly after a moment. “You hear me? I’m sorry about all this shit, man.”
“It’s not your fault. He was the fucking idiot.”
Lex laughs at the absurdity of it. Of course it’s his fault. He led all of them here. “You really believe that?”
“Fuck yeah I do. You’re a good guy, Lex. And it’s good that you’re there. I mean, you’re gonna get better…and you and Leala, you can get the fuck outta town or whatever and start over. Get married, have some kids.” Lex can hear the smug grin on Kyle’s face and it makes him laugh. “You’re getting another chance, man. Most of us guys don’t get that. You’re gonna be alright.”
“We’ll see,” he says, his tone still saying that he doesn’t believe it.
“I’m serious,” Kyle says, sternly. “Quit feeling sorry for yourself. I’m doing this for you, Lex…but I followed you in, and I’m gonna follow you out, too. I’m not gonna be the next one in the ground, you hear me? I want my second chance, too.”
Kyle was sixteen when they met. Lex gave him a forty of malt liquor as a congratualtions when he graduated high school. And he’s been running drugs for him for almost six years now. He’s been following him, just like he said. Just a 22-year-old kid, with no one else to look up to. He needs this, too. He deserves it.
The worst is that he still wants to be here. Lex never forced him, never conned him into doing anything. Sure when they were younger he used Kyle’s age to his advantage, making him think that he would be cool if he did stupid shit like run Lex’s errands, but he never used him. They were boys; brothers, Lex sees now. Kyle wants to follow him, good or bad, unconditional…
“And who knows, maybe this time next year we’ll be doing our own thing, you know? We’ll both be living the life,” he says distantly, as if he’s imagining it, and in the silence waiting for Kyle to continue, Lex tries to imagine it too. He wants to imagine things like that now. “And we’ll like…meet up for holidays and shit. Like family.”
Family.
He realizes in that moment that these people he’s surrounded by aren’t the only ones who give a shit. People have been giving a shit since the beginning, those certain people, the people who have kept him around, who haven’t given up on him. He’s been giving up on himself. And he’s been leaving them all behind, just like Damon said.
“Yeah,” he finally says quietly into the receiver, a small smile tugging at his mouth because he thinks he really means it, and it feels good. “Yeah, maybe we will.”
15
It’s an unfamiliar feeling—the wetness running back across his temples, dripping into his ears—but it’s not an unwelcomed one, Lex thinks as he lies on his back, staring at the ceiling tiles of his room. He’s been alone since he hung up the phone and it hit him slowly as he’d sat there staring dumbly at his hand still on the receiver, holding on as it hung on the phone hook. He’d then stood unsteadily and walked to his room. The tightness in his chest started then, it crept up from his stomach. Not a gut-wrenching wave emotion, but a slow burn, which he appreciates now. It’s easier this way.
He sniffles and wipes at his eyes as the tears are more persistent now, making his nose run and his lips tremble, pulling coughs from deep in his chest on occasion, but he doesn’t fight it, something about the experience feeling good, feeling right and real, more real than anything’s felt in a long time. It’s not a pity cry, a cry of fear or anger or desperation, a cry for himself. It’s a cry for someone else, for everyone else, and him wishing and wondering what if he’d done it all differently.
The door opens suddenly and he scrambles up off the bed, wiping at his face. “Hey man, can’t you fucking knock?” his voice trembles.
Mike freezes, blinking twice before realizing what he just saw as Lex hurries to the bathroom. “Uh, yeah, maybe if this wasn’t my room. You okay?” he asks over the running faucet.
Lex kicks the door shut in response. He’s not ashamed, he tells himself as he dips his face into his palms full of cool water, and sure Alan has been coaching him through not hiding how he feels and the like, but its baby steps. He resigns to this and dries his face, opening the door again.
Mike is trying not to stare at him.
“Let me guess, you see me crying like a little bitch and now you wanna talk?” Lex says, sparing them ten awkward minutes of Mike trying to find a way to bring it up.
“If it’ll help, yeah.”
“Well it won’t.”
He moves toward the door, still feeling the tremble in the back of his throat, the tightness of his chest not as relieved as he would like. He’s still on edge, and he wants to get the rest of this episode over with in private before he tries to deal with it logically. Baby steps.
But Mike grabs him by the arm suddenly, seeming intent on not letting this happen.
“Sit down.”
Lex stops moving but doesn’t look at him, eyes focused on the door, jaw set. “I told you I don’t wanna talk.”
But as Mike studies Lex carefully, the way he doesn’t fight him, the sadness in his eyes, something tells him that he’s not entirely decided on leaving, so Mike pulls him back while he can, because he knows he can. For once, Lex is leaving but not gone.
“I didn’t ask you. I fuckin’ told you. Sit down,” he says.
It’s quiet but firm, and Lex, more than anything, is tired of fighting. Tired of fighting everything, and everyone. He wants to, the urge is still there, but he just can’t anymore. All of his defenses have been stripped and he feels just as lost as when he came, wheels spinning ineffectively and getting him nowhere.
He takes two steps back and sits on the edge of the bed.
“You think you’re tough shit, don’t you?” Mike chuckles as he takes a seat on his own bed, across from Lex. “Got boys lined up under your thumb…you’re the big shot?”
“What do you know about it?” Lex says quietly, staring at the floor, watching the lines of the linoleum tiles and how they intersect and fit.
“You know what a real man is, Alex?” Mike asks suddenly, dodging the question, and Lex doesn’t think on it much in that moment but he’s sure Mike is going somewhere with this so he lets him continue without interrupting. “A real man isn’t how many lines you can do…how much shit you can take before you hit the floor…how many pussy assholes bow at your feet…”
Lex chuckles, unamused at this but it weighs heavy on him, his own existence disassembled right before him by someone who knows better, someone who’s been there.
“Being a real man…its being able to love so
mebody, something. Being vulnerable. Taking care of yourself and the people who love you…the people who you love. You’ll get more respect for that than any of that other shit. I have more respect for you for what I just saw than I do for you flipping your fucking lid all over this place, throwing your little fucking tantrums.”
“Fuck you, man. I don’t need this shit,” Lex mutters, getting up to bolt again, and Mike is there in an instant.
“Where the fuck you think you’re going?”
“You don’t know me!” Lex shouts, turning abruptly to yell in his face, eyes red and angry and filling with tears again. “You don’t know what I’ve been through! I’m not gonna sit here and take shit from some has-been junkie pushing 50, alright?”
“I’m thirty-fucking-seven.” Mike says calmly and Lex’s brow smooths from where it was drawn crossly. “Yeah, and you better wise up 'cause you’re looking at your own reflection if you don’t give all this shit up. Now are you gonna sit your ass down or does this have to get ugly? 'Cause you ain’t stepping out of this room 'til I tell you how some shit is.”
He wants to run. Against his better judgment he wants to tell this guy to fuck off and that he doesn’t know shit, and march out of the room, left to his own judgments. But it’s hard when he knows everything that Mike’s said so far is true, even painfully so.
“I saw you got yourself a little clone. He know you? He know who his brother is?”
Lex sighs. “Can we get on with this without the fucking interrogation?”
“I’m just telling you you ain’t gonna make it running no one-man show,” he says over Lex, shutting him up. “And at the end of the day I don’t care how many knuckleheads line up to kiss your ass, calling themselves your boys, your family's all you got. When it’s all said and done…that’s all you got that really belongs to you, you get that?”
Lex moves back to the bed, not feeling steady on his feet anymore, and Mike stands over him for a moment, making sure he doesn’t try to leave again, though somehow he knows he won’t.
“I see you fighting this. And that’s not gonna get you anywhere, man. You always say you’re trying and all this other shit…but you’re not. The only thing you’re trying is you’re still trying to do the shit your way…and I think doing things your way is what got you in this mess of trouble.” He waits for Lex to react, and when he doesn’t he moves back across the room, crawling onto his bed and sitting so that his back is against the wall, reaching for a box of playing cards on the bedside table. “Try someone else’s way. Just try it. Don’t be ashamed to give in a little.” He pulls the cards out and shuffles them, looks up at Lex and shakes his head sort of sadly. “Grow up, Alex. Start trying to love yourself…love other people. Especially that little girl who loves you probably more than you deserve it.”
Lex stares down at the floor, tries to keep his breaths even, the only sound in the room coming from Mike’s cards sliding and snapping against each other. There are no more tears to be cried, no more excuses or reasons for why things are the way they are. He just knows they have to be different now. It’s an overwhelming feeling, but it makes the tightness in his chest dissipate, makes his throat clear, makes his heart not so heavy. Things can be different.
“Why are you always playing by yourself?” he asks suddenly, hurriedly, finally looking up at Mike, who smiles at his eagerness. Lex wants answers now, to anything, to everything.
“Behavioral therapy. Sometimes I can’t put two and two together, sometimes I can do the Times crossword in half an hour.” He shrugs. “I was a smart guy, before all of this. But now I’ve got so many holes in my brain everything gets kinda fuzzy sometimes. I just play to keep my thinker thinkin’,” he chuckles. “And I think, actually I know, you love her and you don’t even realize it. But, if you don’t man up and realize it, and start treating her like you love her, you’re gonna lose her.”
16
“These are the results of a thousand electric volts
A neck with bolts, nurse we're losin him, check the pulse
A kid who refused to respect adults
Wore spectacles with taped frames and a freckled nose
A corny lookin white boy, scrawny and always ornery
Cause I was always sick of brawny bullies pickin on me
And I might snap, one day just like that
I decided to strike back and flatten every tire on the bike rack
My first day in junior high, this kid said,
It's you and I, three o'clock sharp this afternoon you die”
Alan studies the back of Lex’s head, listens to his mouth mutter lyrics coming from the computer speakers as his hands flip through a book he plucked boredly from the shelf. It’s about relationships, Alan notes mentally, and he wonders if Lex’s urge to read it goes beyond his seeming disinterest as his fingers flip the pages. He would put money on it, were he the betting type.
Lex popping into the office is unexpected this afternoon, most notably because it’s visitation hours. He wonders if anyone plans to see Lex today, wonders where his mother is, what happened to his brother. From what he’s heard of Lex’s father, he doesn’t expect to have the guy knocking down the door to get to his son, but he can’t help wondering where his family is in all of this.
Personally, he worries a lot more about Lex than he is professionally obliged. He knows he has a job to do, but with Lex he wants to do it well. He needs to do it well.
He needs to get this kid out of here.
They don’t say much, the visit soundtracked with The Slim Shady LP, which Lex had selected upon his entry to Alan’s office. It’s routine now, Lex flipping through Alan’s CD booklet silently before the two ever speak a word, extending the selected disc across the desk, which Alan then plays without questions. The angry Eminem, he’d requested today.
“I wish I could rap, you know? Just say whatever the fuck I want, like him,” Lex finally says, nine tracks in, eyes still on the book’s pages as they flip too rapidly for him to actually read whats printed there.
“You can say what you want anyway,” Alan reminds him, and Lex just gives him a look, shrugging.
“Yeah…I guess it just sounds better when it rhymes.”
“There's people that love me and people that hate me
But it's the evil that made me this backstabbing, deceitful, and shady
I want the money, the women, the fortune, and the fame
That means I'll end up burning in hell scorching in flames
That means I'm stealing your checkbook and forging your name
Lifetime bliss for eternal torture and pain
Right now I feel like I just hit the rock bottom”
“So…you like…get a lot of ass talking that therapy shit with girls?” Lex asks suddenly, his hand squeezing the book shut with a muffled snap and Alan blinks dumbly, Lex’s rapid change of subject momentarily throwing him.
“What?”
He chuckles, shelving the book. “You know, all that emotional talk. Chicks eat that up, right?”
“Uh, I guess.”
Lex holds his hands up innocently. “Woah, sorry man, you got a girlfriend or something?”
Alan gives him a strange look, not sure if his voice was that hesitant, or if Lex is getting around to something. Knowing Lex the way he does, he assumes the latter.
“I don’t believe for a second that you’re really concerned about my relationship status right now, but yes, I have a girlfriend,” he answers, amused.
“Oh yeah? How’s that working out for ya?” Lex grins brightly, and Alan laughs, leaning back in his desk chair and shaking his head at Lex’s attempt to deflect what he’s finally deducted as the real reason he came to the office today.
“Is she coming to see you today?” Alan grins smartly, already knowing the answer.
“Pft, you think that’s what I came to talk to you about?”
“Well, I hope you’re not trying to ask me out, 'cause t
his is a terrible come on.”
“Oh shut the fuck up.” Lex laughs, falling into the chair opposite his, accepting defeat. “And yes. She’s coming.”
“Things getting any better with you two?”
“I don’t know what better is.” Lex sighs, running a hand over his dark hair. “But yeah, I guess. I dunno. I…” He sighs again, sitting back, uncomfortable. “Can I just be honest with you?”
“Well, that’s been the idea since day one,” Alan shoots back sarcastically, and softens when he realizes Lex’s shifted to a more serious conversation. “Yeah, go ahead.”
“I…I just don’t even know what I’m doing.”
“Don’t know what you’re doing with what?”
Lex laughs but it’s humorless, his hands raising and then falling to his lap again in defest. “Anything. Relationships. I mean, real ones. Like, with a girl and shit.” He rubs the back of his neck, a nervous habit. “I don’t even know what it’s like. I met Leala when I was 21. And before that it was just high school bullshit and slut-bangin’, and I sure as hell wasn’t bringing a girl around into my family situation, trying to make her my girlfriend.” He shrugs, and adds a moment later, “And don’t do that ‘oh, now it all makes sense’ thing that you do,” which makes Alan chuckle.
“Well, relationships aren’t a bad thing. It just depends on what you want, what you’re ready for,” he answers simply. “What do you want?”
“Right now?”
Alan shrugs. “Right now, in five years, in ten minutes…whenever. I mean, really you should be focusing on your recovery right now but I’m gonna be honest and say I know she’s going to be a big part of that. Your head should be in a different place than you’re probably used to when it comes to relationships. You’re over that early twenties bullshit whoring. I mean, you’re practically married to the girl.”