My Life as an Album (Books 1-4): A small town, southern fiction series

by LJ Evans

  “I’m going to stay with Justice,” you said quietly, but you wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  What could I do? Fight your family? Fight you? I knew that if I could just touch you, you’d know the truth because our bodies always spoke the truth to each other, even when our minds got in the way. But to touch you, I’d have to go through them, and that would just cause you to hate me more.

  I’d already lost.

  You were already gone.

  So instead of fighting you, I left.

  And you didn’t stop me.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  I didn’t go home. I went to the gym. I boxed until my fists were bruised inside my boxing gloves. I boxed until my legs were weak and the desire to run to the bar had softened. I boxed until the anguish inside me started to feel as senseless as my body did.

  Then I got in the car, ready to drive home.

  But I didn’t.

  Instead, I drove to the fucking police station because Officer Williams called while I was in the car. He said that Michael had come down to the station sometime before you’d been taken and filed his assault charge against me. Williams and Tate had not been informed because Michael had specifically asked for different officers, saying that he thought they were harassing him and wouldn’t take his report seriously.

  In any event, the charge had already hit the prosecutor’s desk, and the prosecutor knew about my shit-faced, gang-related father. So, of course, he wanted to talk to me. I could imagine that he thought I’d be his big headline: “New York Gang Kid Goes Berserk in Orange County Bar”.

  Maybe because I had already battered myself into a state of anesthetization, both emotionally and physically, I didn’t get angry. Instead, I just drove to the police station.

  Williams met me and took me to the interview room. He said he was truly sorry, and that if he was in my shoes, he’d be ready to kill someone.

  I just nodded. What could I say? I was ready to kill someone, but that someone wasn’t in the room.

  It was like after my mom died. I’d wanted to kill my dad. But he wasn’t there, and I’d become that emotionless kid in the hospital bed until my grandparents had shown up and I’d turned angry. It was like my life was on a repeat cycle of anger and loss.

  For the first time, I was glad that you were at Justice’s because if I was at the station and you were at our home, you would have been alone. And that would have made me insane. I would have wanted to be with you to protect you. Instead, I had to trust that your family would do that. Do you realize what a leap of faith that was for me?

  Williams and Tate joined me in the interview, as well as the officer who’d taken Michael’s report. I never caught his name. It was given, but I didn’t really give a rat’s ass what it was. Williams and Tate had gotten the prosecutor, some kid named Schmuck, to hold off on actually having me arrested until he’d heard the whole story. But he was chomping at the bit, and I could tell as soon as he saw me and my beat-up fists that he was ready to file.

  I didn’t have to say much. Tate took the Schmuck through your case from the beginning. She ended with what had happened to you the day before, and how Michael was nowhere to be found. They told him that the night at the bar when I’d hit Michael, that Michael had not been taking no for an answer.

  Schmuck-boy started to backpedal.

  “Do you have witnesses to support your side?” he asked with a glimmer that said he was hoping I didn’t.

  “PJ and her roommate. I’m sure the bouncers can attest to the fact that he was still coming after PJ even after she started to walk away.”

  “Well…” Schmuck trailed off as he saw his golden egg slipping away.

  “Listen, Peter, we know you thought you had an open-and-closed case here, but it really isn’t. The fact that Michael filed these charges before abducting PJ yesterday tells us he was hoping to keep Seth occupied so that he couldn’t protect her.”

  I just sat, pinching my palm and trying to breathe so that I wouldn’t punch a wall and get myself thrown in a jail cell where I couldn’t make sure you were safe. Because one thing was clear to me as I sat there: Michael wasn’t done.

  After more goddamn questions and a whole journal of notes being taken by the Schmuck, they let me go. All I could think about was making sure you were safe. I wanted you in my arms where I knew I could protect you, but if I showed up at Justice’s tonight, I was sure I’d be shown the door.

  I did the only thing I could. I called Liv because you didn’t have a phone yet, and I wanted to hear your voice. I wanted to make sure you were okay, to warn you that it wasn’t over. Liv said you were sleeping. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell her about being dragged down to the police station when your family was already on an anti-Seth campaign. So, I just hung up.

  I drove home more tired than I’d ever been.

  I hadn’t had any sleep to speak of in the hospital chair. I had beaten myself to a pulp at the gym. My emotions were swinging every way from the loss of you. From fear for you. From the fight-or-flight adrenaline of being at the police station. That’s the only reason he caught me by surprise. Because I was exhausted.

  When I got home, my body was crying for our bed, but I couldn’t face it without you. I headed to the studio instead. When I got there, I stood there in shock.

  Everything was destroyed. Your chair with the silk poured over it was busted apart. The shadow boxes of you had shattered glass. Pieces of you were all over the place. My heart was pounding violently, filling my ears with the rush of blood.

  As I stood there like a moron, trying to figure out what had happened, he smashed me on the head from behind.

  I hit the ground on my hands and knees. My hand went to the back of my head instinctively, coming away with blood. I turned and was faced with Michael and a gun that he’d obviously used against my skull.

  This was a Michael that I was sure you had never seen. No sweet nerd in sight. Instead, his eyes were dark and dilated. His mouth was twisted into a sneer. His hair was out of control. He looked like the cover page for a serial killer magazine.

  But he’d already made the biggest mistake he could make. I was on the ground. He thought that was a good thing. He didn’t know how the hell we fight in the Bronx. He didn’t know that I’d been in this position way too many fucking times with my dad, and that I’d dreamed as a kid of all the ways that I could get out of this exact fucking situation if I was in it again.

  “Some big He-Man you are,” he spit out because he’d thought I’d gone down easy. “Where’s Patterson?”

  I didn’t respond. You’d understand that I didn’t have words while I was fighting for control, but my lack of response just seemed to flame his fury.

  “I’ve waited four years to have her. Do you know that? She was supposed to be mine in high school. It was my turn.” He scowled and tried to kick me, but I moved myself back so that I could be prepared the next time.

  As I stared at his contorted face, I was filled with disgust and fury that he thought he had a right to you. That he and all those jackasses had thought it was okay to pass a human being around as if she was a bag of chips to be shared.

  “I thought I’d never see her after she graduated. When I walked into the gym my first day, I was stunned. There she was. Beautiful as always, but even stronger. I was waiting to make my move.”

  I watched his body.

  “And then you showed up in her life…” This time when he kicked me again, it was his second fucking mistake. I grabbed his leg and pulled it out from under him before he could even react. His head slammed down on the concrete floor of my studio, and his gun flew from his hand.

  That’s all it took for me to be on top of him, choking him. He was strong. I had to give him that. He worked out at the gym with you, and you all knew how to build sinewy muscles, but I was full of rage.

  Rage at what he’d done to you. Rage at what he’d done to my fucking studio. Rage at my fucking ass
hole father and all the times he’d battered me and my mom. Rage that you had run away. Just fucking rage.

  And that rage came out as I smashed his face repeatedly with my fist, feeling bones smash and skin break and blood ooze underneath my hand.

  Do you know why I didn’t kill him? Do you know why he ended up passed out, tied up, and then in an ambulance instead of in the back of a coroner’s van?

  Because of you.

  Because once he’d been knocked unconscious by my fists, and the blood had splattered him and me and the floor of my studio, I saw next to us the twisted metal shape that I had made of you and me. The knots forming a single unit. The twists and curves as if it were one piece when I knew for a fucking fact that it was two because I’d made it.

  I knew as long as we were both free and alive that I had a chance to make us work. But if I was in jail and you flew away, it would be over. I didn’t want to end up behind bars. I didn’t want to be my father.

  So I lifted myself off of him and stepped away. Because of you. You were still saving me from myself.

  The doorbell rang, followed by Locke’s voice. I hollered, “In the studio.”

  That’s how Locke found me. With Michael passed out in a bloody heap while my studio and your art were destroyed.

  “What the—?” Locke was on the phone to 911 before he even finished his own expletive.

  And you know what happened.

  The cops came. They took my statement. They took pictures. They took the shithead to the hospital, and I sat through what felt like another twenty hours of questions.

  My answers were the same no matter how many times they asked. I’d learned that in my childhood. You never change your answers once you start. You keep them short and sweet and to the point. If you can tell the truth, all the better, but if you can’t, you just keep saying the same thing.

  I thank my abuela’s god that I didn’t have to lie. That I could tell the truth. That I could stand there before all those people judging me with the blood on my hands and not have to make something up. He broke in. He destroyed my studio. He threatened you. He threatened me. He fought back. I ended it. Nothing more to tell.

  Finally, Locke interrupted. I honestly had forgotten that he was there. But I’m glad he was. He said I needed to go get checked out at the hospital because my head was still bleeding. And my hands.

  None of that hurt. What hurt was what they couldn’t see.

  What hurt was that you weren’t there.

  The investigators weren’t happy about it, but they let me go while they scoured our home and my studio. While they took pictures and spread crime scene chemicals around that would never go away. That would always be a part of us.

  I’d been exhausted when I’d gotten home, so by the time I got in Locke’s car, I was part zombie. I fell asleep on the way to the hospital, but Locke’s voice drug me back.

  “You didn’t kill him,” Locke said.

  I just turned my eyes to stare at him.

  “He deserved it, but I’m glad you didn’t,” he said gruffly.

  I wasn’t sure I was glad. It was more like I knew it was the right thing. The right thing to keep my butt out of jail. The thing that might mean I could hold you in my arms again, praying that I was a better man than when you found me. While I prayed that you’d take me back. That you’d come home.

  It’s been a long wait.

  PJ After Letter Ten

  WE ALL FALL DOWN

  “Why’d your dreams fall apart at the seams?”

  -Bon Jovi & Shanks

  Seth’s letters are getting harder to read. Maybe because the damage in them is no longer caused by unseen people in his past. Maybe because the damage is damage she caused…is causing. Seth, who had initially seemed like a rock that couldn’t be carved into pieces, had actually been carved apart before she’d ever met him and was now being carved up again, this time by her.

  In truth, she’d known that when she walked away, she’d be adding to his damage. But she’d had to concentrate on healing herself. She’d known enough then to know she wasn’t ready for him. For them. She had to find a way to fix her own shattered pieces first.

  It was why she went to Justice’s from the hospital. To heal both physically and mentally without Seth being the glue or the gold holding her together. She had to be her own glue.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  After she’d gotten back to their house, Liv had found her at the kitchen table, staring into the backyard with a cup of tea in her hands, trying to let the numbness settle over her. Because it was then that she realized she’d been going through life numb before she’d met Seth. And he’d made her feel. And all she wanted was to be numb again for just a little while. Just long enough to feel like she wouldn’t completely crumble.

  “PJ, talk to me,” Liv said.

  “It’s ridiculous.”

  “I’m sure it’s not. You’ve been through a lot.”

  “I feel like all my mistakes have caught up to me,” she mumbled.

  “What happened yesterday was not your fault.”

  “Maybe it was.”

  “No.”

  “I think he’s one of the guys from high school.”

  When Liv didn’t say anything, PJ knew that Justice must have told her the story.

  “That doesn’t make this your fault. If anything, it makes it even less so,” Liv said, squeezing her good hand.

  They sat quietly while her mind went from Michael, to high school, to how screwed up she really was, and then back to Seth.

  “Seth loves me, Liv. I know he does, and yet, all I can think about is all the ways I don’t deserve him.”

  “Nobody deserves another person, PJ. You can’t earn someone like a merit badge. All you can do is love one another, and if you do, that should be enough. If you truly love each other, mistakes and all, then you get to help each other be the best version of yourselves that you can be.”

  PJ heard her. She did. And the truth was, it was more than just feeling like she didn’t deserve him. It was also like he was more than she could handle. She didn’t know how to explain that to Liv, but she tried.

  “When I’m with him, there isn’t anything but Seth. It isn’t his fault. It’s like he’s this big, dynamic star that’s just forming, and it’s pulling all the surrounding dust and particles into its gravitational force until there’s nothing left of the bits. Instead, they are all part of the star. I don’t want to disappear.”

  “Maybe the star is both of you. Pieces of both of you being built together.”

  PJ liked the idea of that. That maybe they were building a new galaxy together. But she wasn’t sure if that was really the case when, most days, she felt like Seth was the only thing allowing her to stand.

  “We’ve all made mistakes, Peej. Horrible ones that have impacted others and marked our souls. That doesn’t mean you can’t be happy. You don’t have to do penance for those mistakes forever. As much as Seth seems rough around the edges, I truly believe he loves you with all his heart. That you could be happy together.”

  “She’s right,” Justice said, coming in and sitting down at the table with them. “My biggest wish for you—” He stopped, face full of emotions, as he tried to get himself back under control. “No, Mom and Dad’s biggest wish for you would have been for you to be happy.”

  Tears flooded PJ’s eyes at the mention of their parents who would not have been proud of the life she’d lived.

  “They would have understood, kiddo,” he continued as if he’d read her face and known what she was thinking.

  He pushed a paper toward her.

  “What’s that?” PJ asked.

  “Your half of Mom and Dad’s insurance money.”

  PJ pushed it back at him. “I don’t want that. We already spent that money.”

  Justice nodded. “I spent that money. I bought a house and started the gym. I used it to get my life on track, and now I want you to use
it to get your life on track. Whatever that means to you. However it will make you happy.”

  “You fed me, clothed me, and housed me. You helped pay for school. I’ve long spent my share.”

  “No. And to be fair, I didn’t really see it like I do now. Liv helped me, and she’s right. I thought I bought the house and the gym for both of us. And it still is. You’re welcome in both our home and our gym any time. You’re family. It will always be a place you can come home to. I mean that. But I also want you to be able to figure out what it is you want for yourself in this life. You only get one, Peej. One life. You should make everything out of it that you can. It might be hard work, but you’ll make a success out of whatever it is you choose because you’re a fighter. Because you’re a Hensley, and Hensleys are fighters.”

  Tears fell, and PJ tried futilely to stop them. “I can’t take it.”

  “It’s already in your account.”

  They stared at each other, and then she got up and hugged him, and he hugged her back.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t. It was your money all along.”

  PJ turned to Liv and hugged her as well.

  “Are you going to go to New York?” Justice asked.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Probably.”

  “If that’s what you really want, then we’ll be happy for you,” Liv said with a watery smile.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  Later that night, they got the call from Locke. Liv came in breathless, placing her phone in PJ’s hands.

  “Hello?”

  “PJ?”

  “Hey, Locke.”

  “I’m with Seth at the hospital,” he said, and her heart fell to her stomach where it disappeared into a pit of seething acid. Thoughts of Seth and what he might have done to himself swirling. Tortured thoughts.

  “W-what?”

  “Michael broke into the house, destroyed the studio, and Seth walked in.”

  Her heart filled with a million emotions, but the one that settled in was fear. Fear for Seth. That Michel had been in his house.

  “Oh my God!”

  “He’s okay. Just needs some stitches to the back of his head, but I’m sure they’ll want to keep him.”