Because of Ellison (18 page)

Her finger was pointed in my face when she warned, “You try
anything like that again and I’ll take your lip off the next time. You can
forget about kissing me, Hunter. I won’t be making that mistake again.”

She turned around and I watched her as she walked down the
street into the setting sun. I didn’t know where she was going and I wanted to
stop her. But I knew she’d only yell at me if I tried. Bear followed at her
heels and her guitar was held to her side. I wanted to fucking puke and I
wanted to cry like a bitch while I watched her walk away, but I couldn’t do
anything but stand there.

I was defeated in that moment — absolutely and
completely. I’d finally met someone who I could connect with and my dumb shit
decisions were screwing it up.

I was an idiot.

I was a fool.

And I was the man who was letting Ellison James walk out of
my life.

“Bitch! Let go of my fucking extensions! Those cost more
money than your entire fucking outfit!”

“Oh
?!
Of course, your hair is
fucking fake as well! Is there anything about you that’s real or are you 100
percent plastic
?!
I bet if I check your ass, there’s
an imprint there that says ‘Made in China’!”

My eyes bugged out of my head when I witnessed the girl
fight that was going on between Lily and Tiffany. Ryan was doing his best to
pull the little rabid beast that was my cousin off of Tiff.

“Why don’t you just take your
Louboutin
-wearing-Mercedes-driving-coke-snorting
ass right back to the state where you came from
?!
Nobody wants you around here!”

Breaking into a fast sprint, I reached them within seconds
and helped Ryan pull the two girls apart.

Lily looked like she was giving Ryan a run for his money,
but he whispered something in her ear and she calmed down. With her chest
heaving out in front of her, she demanded, “Hunter, love you to death, Cuz; but
you’re going to need to take that THING away from this party before I throw her
fake ass into the fire.”

Tiffany scoffed, but I just grabbed her arm and dragged her
in the direction of her car. “Let’s go Tiff, it looks like your not making many
friends tonight.”

“Like I’d want to be friends with these people! They’re all
a bunch of poorly-bred lunatics!”

I shoved Tiffany in the passenger side of the car and walked
around to take my seat behind the wheel. As we drove down the road, I saw
Ellison walking up the shoulder on her way back to the party. Her face was tear
streaked and red and she looked absolutely alone and miserable. My foot hit the
brake pedal to slow down, but when she looked over to the car, she fake smiled
and waved, and I knew that stopping wouldn’t do me any good.

“I mean, just look at the people you’ve been hanging around.
Take that bitch for instance. Who the fuck wears a dress with cowboy gear? Add
in the guitar and the dog and you’ve got the poster child for backwoods. Mark
my words, Hunter: that girl will be barefoot and pregnant before the night’s
even finished. No class. None of them.”

My hands gripped painfully around the steering wheel while I
kept myself from doing something stupid like hitting her. I remained quiet and
stepped down on the gas pedal. Even traveling at 80 miles per hour wasn’t fast
enough and luckily, there were no animals in the road to slow me down.

By the time we’d reached the hotel, Tiffany had shut up. It
only took 20 minutes of me not responding to her snide comments and annoying
babble for her to realize I wasn’t interested in talking. I helped her carry her
suitcases to the room and she immediately jumped on the bed and assumed a
seductive position.

“It’s about time we get alone in a place where I don’t have
to worry about bugs and rats and shit. Why don’t you come over here so we can
make up? I’ve been missing the shit out of you since you’ve been gone.” She
reached over to her purse and pulled out the rest of the coke. Dangling it in
front of her, she smiled and said, “I’ve got the goods baby. We can still have
some fun tonight.”

She licked her lips and I walked over to the bed. I sat down
and she immediately moved to crawl over to me. She went for my pants without
hesitation.

Grabbing her hands, I stopped what she was doing. “Tiffany,
we need to talk.”

Looking up at me she pouted. “Baby, we can talk all we want
later. My man hasn’t ridden me in over a month and I’m needing it. You know I’m
obsessed with that body of yours.” She worked her way up and went to kiss me. I
placed a hand between us.

“Tiffany, I’m serious.”

“Fuck! Whatever! Just say whatever it is you need to say so
we can get back to our lives and forget all about this bullshit trip of yours.
You need to call your parents. I convinced them to let you come home early.
That’s why I’m here — to pick you up.”

I let out a loud breath and my head dropped down. When her
hands went to massage my shoulders, I forced her arms away and looked her dead
in the eye. “We aren’t going anywhere, Tiffany. You are getting on your plane
tomorrow and going home. I’m staying here to finish fixing up my uncle’s house.
He needs the help and I’m going to finish the job before I return.”

She rolled her eyes and I resisted the urge to get up and
leave without saying what I needed to say. Ellison was right when she said I’d
been disrespectful to people. I lived for myself and made decisions that would
benefit only me regardless of the needs of any other person. I was hurting
people and I was hurting myself in the process.

“I shouldn’t have broken up with you over voicemail. I get
that. But what I said was the truth. I don’t want to be with you anymore,
Tiffany. I want to move on with my life and change some things and I can’t do
that and remain around people who only care about getting off and getting high.
You have a whole group of men who want you back home and I suggest you go
choose one of them. I’m not boyfriend material anymore — not for you
anyway.”

Her mouth opened and the shrill quality to her grating voice
as she screamed at me was enough to chase me out of that motel room. When I
heard something hit the door after I’d closed it behind me, I knew she was most
likely destroying the room. But that wasn’t my problem and it wouldn’t be my
problem ever again. She was a grown woman. If she wanted to act like a spoiled
brat, she’d have to suffer the consequences all on her own.

. .
.

I walked around the porch attempting to mentally survey the
damage and come up with a game plan on how it needed to be fixed. The piles of
miscellaneous car parts and chemicals would have to go first. Once I could get
the area cleared out, I’d be in a better position to determine what needed to
be done to the structure itself in order to repair it.

The porch had been neglected for too many years and I was
sure once I removed all the excess baggage I would find a weak shell
underneath. But, just like any good thing that’s been neglected in life, all it
took was a little TLC to make it functional again — unless it’s neglected
for too long. In those instances, the only thing you can do is tear it down and
start all over again. Regardless of what you had to do, there was always a way
to pick up and fix it. It just took some desire, will power and elbow grease
and a person could always turn things around. I was looking forward to this
part of the job. At that time in my life, the mundane task of clearing out the
garbage, fixing the loose boards and slapping on a new coat of paint would be
rewarding. It was a type of meditation I could understand — one where I
could force myself to work through things and one where I could be alone with
my thoughts.

Lily stepped up behind me and huffed out a breath. “I’m
surprised to see you up so early. What time did you make it home last night?”

“Late. It was a four-hour walk back from the hotel. I didn’t
sleep well so I’ve been out here since about six.”

“You weren’t trying to catch Ellison before she went on her
hike, were ya? She left with her daddy real early in the morning. I don’t know
where she was taking him, but she said she wouldn’t be around here today.”

Crap. After all the other drama that happened yesterday, I’d
completely forgotten about what El was going through with her dad. I hoped
they’d taken the day to have some fun and it wasn’t something having to do with
his health. She didn’t need that shit on her shoulders and I felt like a dick
for having made things worse for her. I was also pissed to realize that I’d
been hoping to see her. I wouldn’t have admitted it to myself if it wasn’t for
what Lily said, but now that I recognized it, the fact that I wouldn’t see her
added disappointment to the load of crappy emotions I was already experiencing.

Lily followed me as I walked around the perimeter of the
porch.

“Well, it’s going to need new screening, that’s for sure.”
She pointed a spot at the base of the structure. “Looks like you’ve got a snake
living around here as well. That’s definitely a burrow of some sort.”

I looked down where she was pointing and looked up at the
bent and busted rain gutters that ran along the top. “I don’t think so. I think
the rain has just been beating the hell out of the ground. It probably drops
heavily right there where the gutter is broken.”

Lily cocked an eyebrow at me. “If you say so, Hunter —
but I’ve been living in Florida long enough to know that when you see a hole
like that, you’ve got critter problems. And that one there is a snake hole. I’d
bet money on it.”

I shivered. One of the things you didn’t run into very often
in the city was a snake. Sure, they could be found in the state parks and even
the city parks on occasion, but not too often. Most of the time, it was too
damn cold for snakes in New York to be out in the open where you could see
them. And that was a good thing — because I hated snakes. Reptiles that
could chase you on four legs were scary enough; it just got weird when they
could chase you on no legs at all.

I walked back up to the porch and picked around in the piles
of junk. A lot of it was garbage and I would need several boxes of contractor
bags to get rid of it. Lily stood silently on the steps watching me complete my
task. The silence between us was killing me and I couldn’t get past my urge to
ask her more about Ellison.

“Did Ellie say anything to you after I left last night?”

Lily nodded and smiled. “Yep. She high-fived me for kicking
your girlfriend’s ass. It wasn’t that she cared about Tiffany being with you or
anything; she just didn’t like the fact that the girl was carrying cocaine
around with her. El’s got a real problem with drugs like that.”

I stopped and looked at her. “Did she say anything about
me?”

She sighed and slowly moved up the steps to stand beside me.
“Hunter, listen — you hurt Ellison pretty bad by not telling her about
Tiffany. I understand that you are a man and that instantly makes you an idiot,
but still … you should have known better than to keep from telling her about a
girl you had just stopped dating. It’s important when you’re trying to date
someone new.”

Turning to her so I could look her in the eyes, I argued,
“That’s just the thing, Lil. I wasn’t trying to date Ellison. I mean, sure,
I’ve been into her since I laid eyes on her, I’d be blind and stupid if I
didn’t want her — but after she asked that we remain friends only, I
respected her request. She’s the one that … well, you know what — I’m not
going to be the one to tell you what happened. Just know that she wanted things
to change and I didn’t have much time between that occurrence and Tiffany
arriving to tell Ellison about my previous love life. It all kind of happened
at once.”

The understanding look in Lily’s eye made me feel better
because I thought, for once, someone was listening to what I was trying to tell
them. Ever since I’d left El on that road, I was pissed off at myself for not
having chased her down to make her listen. Sure, it wouldn’t have worked and,
in fact, it would have just pissed her off more; but at least I would have
tried, at least she would have known my side of the story — my
complete
side of the story. But like a
pathetic bitch, I let her walk away and I may have lost the opportunity to
repair what needed to be fixed between us.

“Well, I think El should hear that. But, she’s not at a
point where you should approach her on it, Hunter. Something’s been going on
with Ellison — even more than this thing with you. She hasn’t been
herself lately. She’s sad, or scared, or I don’t know … she’s serious. All the
time. I don’t know what’s bothering her, but I can’t let you push yourself on
her. You’re going to have to give her time to come to you.”

I looked over towards Ellison’s bedroom window. I hadn’t
been able to sleep for shit last night. All I could think about was the fact
that the girl of my dreams was sleeping within a thousand feet of where I lay.
I couldn’t stand that I wasn’t lying beside her. I fantasized about getting up,
sneaking over to her window, breaking in and telling her everything I wanted
her to know. There were even two occasions where I physically got up from my
bed and got dressed to go over there. But, I didn’t go. Even with the picture
of what her face looked like when she walked down that road playing in my head,
I couldn’t go to her. I was too scared. Both times I lay back down and hugged
the pillow to my chest. I imagined she was sleeping beside me and fell asleep
with the imaginary Ellison by my side.

“I know what you’re saying, Lily, and I’ll be patient.”
Reaching out, I hugged her to me. I turned around to start clearing the porch
and I picked up a pile of towels that had been thrown down near the stairs.
“Are these trash or what?”

“Yeah, I think Daddy just used those for cleaning up
chemicals. You should probably throw them out.”