Melted & Shattered (19 page)
With her eyes of constant mischief, she told me volumes. She was there for me. Do or die. She shrugged, knowing it was my move for evasiveness. “You know I got you girl. Can with a lime.”
I laid my hand on my side. Fingering the scar j
ust above the edge of my shirt, I splayed my fingers across the marred skin on my side, and thought
Girl, you got to get it together. Shake it off. Eyes on the prize.
I was here with a woman who had my back, no matter what. I needed to stop thinking about yesterday or tomorrow, and focus on being in the moment, this moment, where I was with my best friend, who would die for me, and I her.
José was across the room, standing on the edge of the dance floor shaking hands with some very nice specimens. He flashed me his megawatt smile, and nodded to my beer. I lifted it to him across the room, him mimicking my move with his own. I swear there was a fucking twinkle in his eye.
Down girl. Down. You know he’s off limits.
Grrrr. I was so off my game. José would be easy, but man, it’d be a baaaad idea. Fucking around with the cooks never amounted to anything but bullshit. Fuck. I needed to keep that in mind every time José threatened to wet my panties. I growled.
“Damn, I’m fuckin’ horny,
” I told Chris. We both leaned against the bar, turning around to watch the scene unfold in front of us.
“Yeah. You got that taste of the reg. Having something to tap whenever you wan
t is nice ain’t it, but it fucking sucks when it goes away.” I tapped my can against her glass of Henny.
“Shit. I’ll testify to that,” I grumbled, heaving a sigh. “It’s even worse when you get
the good on the regular, and then have a taste of the bad!”
Chris laughed, probably glad I could laugh about the Tiny’s debacle/Shemar Moore incident
. It was the alcohol. I wasn’t laughing last night while all fetal-ed up in bed. I was a mess a mere twenty-four hours ago and more than likely would be tomorrow. I’d plaster the smile on, though, when in public. I was getting good at that.
Chris interrupted my thoughts, thankfully. “There are some pretty nice gentlemen her
e, Elle. You could score tonight,” she sing-songed. I inhaled a breath, about to say
maybe,
but exhaled and just looked to the floor. “Yeah, you ain’t taking anyone home. I got it, but let’s at least go mingle. Maybe someone will catch your eye that you might want to exchange numbers with.”
I shoved my hand in my hair,
pulling it away form my face, pulling a bit too hard, needing to feel that hint of pain to refocus me. The little voice in me said
shake it off, shake it off,
I had to start living again. This cycle of highs and lows, the lightness I felt when I was with the teens, to the agony of sobbing on my bed, was slowly killing me.
I wrung my hands, and
did a mental fist pump or two, then tried to conjure up Rocky Balboa jumping up and down on the infamous steps. Turning to Chris, I declared, “Alright, let's do this shit.” I swapped the can of beer in my hand for the shot glass in front of me, grabbing the lime off the napkin lying on the bar. “But you lead?”
“Course,
I got this.” We clinked glasses and tossed the shots back.
Chris took my hand and pulled me into the jungle. Clutching my beer, I followed her through the crowd to wher
e José and Rigo were kicking it.
“Ladies.” Rigo pretended to tip his hat to us.
José turned from his friends to us as Chris extended her hand to Rigo. “
Un placer
,” she said with a wink.
“Oh no, the pleasure is all mine,” Rigo responded, taking Chris’s outstretched hand. He laid a gentle kiss on it as they locked eyes.
Ah, hell. There was lust in the air, I could smell it. And where was Chris learning random phrases in different languages, while I was struggling to simply master Spanish?
“What? You like the UN of flirting now or something?” The words slid out the side of my mouth as I leaned in to Chris.
Never breaking eye contact with Rigo, Chris put her hand on my shoulder and leaned in to my ear. “Wikipedia, chica. You’re not the only smart one.” With those parting words, Chris asked Rigo to dance, and of course, he obliged, leaving me with José and... another name I’d forget in ten minutes.
“Elle, this
mi primo
, that’s my cousin, E. E, this is Elle,” José introduced.
E put his hand out to me.
God, another letter-name. What the fuck? And damnit, he was hot. Thin, but tall, and I was in sneakers, making his height all the more prominent. Six foot, one or two inches I’d say. Not bad. I nodded at no one in particular as I got lost in my head for a second. Shit, his hand was still out stretched.
Come on, Elle. Turn it on. You know Clubbin’ Elle is in there somewhere. Dig her up. Let her breathe.
“Hey, nice to meet you.” I shoved my hand in his, showing him with my firm grip
that I wasn’t a girl to be played.
A couple guys walked up to E and they exchanged the
only-men-can do-them
handshakes. The ones that included a
this isn’t a gay hug
pat on the back. I took that opportunity to lean into José, giving him a gentle elbow shove in the gut.
“Aw,
cielito
.” He pretended to be injured, clutching his hand over his left side. My hand instinctively went to mine, those ridges of skin reminding me of someone else who was nothing but a letter. A fucking letter that shot me. A fucking letter that I couldn’t quite get out of my mind. A fucking letter that wanted me to wait for him, yet hadn’t shown his face for weeks. God, I wanted to hate him. I wanted to hate him so bad it felt like my scar burned with it. So why was I still thinking about him? Oh yeah, right, because I loved the fucker.
José extended is arm, bent so that I could place mine in the crook. “Come on. Let’s get away from my eye fucking
primo
. Your girl seems good out there. Shot time?” Hallelujah.
“Yes, please,” I said, grabbing the crook of his arm and
following him towards the bar. It was quieter away from the DJ. “Dude, your
primo
has the durty look in his eye. And that’s durty with a U, not an I.”
“Ah, he’s harmless. I got ya.” He leaned
toward the bartender and ordered for us—something, not sure what—in Spanish, and damn if it wasn’t hot. Why were foreign languages so sexy? Two shots of clear liquid were set in front of us, the glasses, slightly larger than a normal shot glass. The bartender placed a cup of limes by our drinks, along with another can of Modelo.
José slid the glass towards me. “This,
cielito
, is the good shit. The chronic of tequilas. Squeeze a lime or two into it and sip.”
His recommendation was sound I discovered, taking a sip of the limed up
tequila. “Oooh, now that’s smooth. What is it?”
He smiled and put his finger in the air, shaking it back and forth. “Ah, ah, ah.
Es un secreto
.” He winked. “Brown folks only, but I’m sharin’ a taste with you tonight.”
I grabbed his finger, feeling the smooth burn of the alcohol warm me from head to toe. “A secret, huh? Well, I guess that makes me special then?”
His thick hair curled around his ears. I noticed it all of a sudden, and wanted to reach out to tuck it behind his ear. It looked soft, and like it would be a thick, wild mess in my hands. I realized I was leaning against a bar stool, the image of him grabbing my thighs and wrapping my legs around him appeared in my mind’s eye. I’d shove my hands into that mass of hair and grind myself on his crotch. I’d throw my head back and—
Whoa, chica. Rein it in girl. Rein. It. In.
That wasn’t one of the many Elle’s in my head. How did Aaron get in there? Aw shit, he was right. No José. He was off limits. Period. I needed to keep reminding myself of this.
I shoved José’s finger back towards him
and tried to be casual. “This is a nice spot you got here. Thanks for the night, man. I needed this.”
“It’s all good. You and me are cool,
cielito
. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you.
Me entiendes
? You got that, right?” His headlight-bright smile was replaced by a somber José, one I hadn’t really seen before, as he said this.
“We all hu
rt each other at some point, even if we don’t mean to. The only person who's never hurt me is out there on the dance floor holding her own to this—” I waved my hand around, referencing the music currently playing.
“
Bachata
. We call this music
bachata
.”
“
Bachata
, yeah. She’s the only one who would take a bullet for me.”
“I’d take one for you,
cielito
.”
I looked at José with a blank expression on my face. “Words. Always words. But when the bullets are flying, where are you
gonna be?” This conversation had taken a turn, and it was not in a direction I was willing to go. I was definitely drunk, and I didn’t want to be sad drunk. That wasn’t the purpose of tonight.
“Teach me how to
bachata
?” I asked José. His smile came back and he grabbed my hand, leading me to the dance floor.
Once we’d reached the dance floor, he took us to the top tier. “Put your hips ag
ainst mine and follow my lead. Two to the left, two to the right.” I did so, moving my feet in time with his, and the next thing I knew I was dancing. It was awesome. Different from grinding as there were steps to follow, but freeing nonetheless, and José was a good lead. The music changed to a song with a harder beat, heavier bass. It was rap, but with an underlying merengue beat. Wow. Now this was some seriously sexy music. I followed José’s lead, moving my hips against his. He moved us around the dance floor when the merengue played, and we straight grinded when the rapping came on.
I
pushed José against the wall, pressing my back to his front, I moved to the music against him. I could feel his hard-on pushing on my lower back. He took my hands and wrapped them around his neck, now following my lead with his hips. I kept my hands around his neck as his traveled down my sides, gripping the outside of my hips. I closed my eyes and let the music take me away, and once again, I was floating. I'd only been on the dance floor once since the accident, and that was Tiny’s makeshift one with the tragic look-alike.
The song changed
, but the beat stayed the same. José and I continued moving in sync. I knew dirty dancing with him was probably a bad idea, but it was cathartic, releasing all the bullshit that had been going on in my head. Just like at Eight Oh Eight, there was nothing else in that moment. Just José, me, and the bass line guiding our movements. I let it take me away to someplace else, someplace better than the world I’d been trudging though. I let my worries slip away as José’s hands moved from my hips, exploring my thighs and abdomen.
With my hands in the air, my shirt rode up and exposed an inch of skin. He
ran his hand across my stomach, and I could tell the moment he felt my scar. His moves stiffened, and like a vacuum, I was sucked back into this world. The one where the man I loved shot me. The one where I cursed that man. The one where I hated myself, because no matter how much I denied it, I still loved him. Although I may have fucked Donte, that didn’t mean he had my heart. Far from it. Only one man had it, and I didn’t have a clue where he was.
We stopped dancing, and I looked up at José. Our eyes met, mine filling with tears, and his with anger.
“I gotta find Chris.” I threw those words out and rushed away. I located Chris in the sea of bodies and grabbed her arm, not letting go her until we were standing by her truck.
“Uh, it’s time to go, I take it?” she asked, hitting the
key fob to unlock the doors.
I couldn’t respond. It was taking all I had to keep the river of tears from flooding out of my eyes, and raining down my cheeks. Chris drove, not asking a single question. I loved her for that.
I finally broke the silence as she started heading for my house. “Can I crash at your place? I don’t feel like going home.”
“Of course.” She turned the car down a side street, and took us back onto a main road leading to her
place.
When we arrived at
Chris' house, she put a DVD in and packed a bowl. “Do you wanna talk?”
“
Fuckin' A. Maybe tomorrow.” She nodded, never one to push. We watched TV, and drifted off to the voice of Charlie Hunnam, deep and rasping about guns, drugs, and motorcycles.
I woke up to pounding. I grabbed my head, only to realize the pounding was on the door. I looked around. I was at Chris’, on her sectional, and a dog was now barking, adding to the pounding. I peeked through the curtains, and the sun blinded me instantly. It couldn’t have been past ten in the morning. Between the blinding sun, barking dog, door pounding, and the fact that it was Sunday and I was being woken up before we were even in double digit hours—I. Was. Pissed.
I drug my ass off the couch and to the door. Throwing it open, I yelled, “Who the fuck is it and what the fuck do you want?” I shielded my
eyes from the sun. Once they adjusted a bit, I realized I was looking at the dark angel that had plagued the recesses of my mind for the past month.
Fuck. “What do you want?” I wasn’t even going to ask why he was here or how he fo
und me. Shit, for all I knew he’d been in mother fucking Russia for the last month.
He didn’t answer right away. My giant of a man stood on the door step clutching his left shoulder and clenching his left fist. I was about to flip out when he finally said, “I saw you with José last night.”
Oh my God. Is this what he came for? I fucked Shemar Moore a few weeks ago and he hadn’t shown up on my doorstep. I shook my head and motioned for him to come in.
Even though I was at Chris’, it was basically my house. I shuffled myself into
the kitchen, suddenly aware I’d answered the door in just the tank and panties I wore the night before to the club and then fell asleep in. Whatever. The man had his dick in me before, it was early, and I was a 'lil hung-over. Fuck modesty.
I found a note on the kitchen from Chris saying she’d be back later, no mention of where she’d gone. I hoped
not to fuck Rigo, or Chuy, or José. Shit. I busied myself making a pot of coffee. I wasn’t going to start a conversation with J. He’s the one who showed up at the front door of my best friend’s house. He could lead.
“Are you going to say anything?” he asked.
“You showed up on
my
doorstep. Well, Chris’ doorstep. Say what you gotta say.” I said this without looking at him. I couldn’t look at him. I had no idea what would happen if I turned from where I was, standing at the kitchen counter, watching the coffee drip slow, oh so fucking slow, into the decanter.
J sighed
, apparently something he, too, was doing a lot of. Even without looking at him, I knew his right hand was plastered to Gramps, the eagle on his left shoulder.
“You were out with José Saldón last night.”
“Is that his last name?” I said it laced with insolence, but really, I had no idea what José’s last name was. And I didn’t care too much either.
“You’re not safe with him.”
“But I’m safe with you?” I knew that was backhanded. I knew it was uncalled for and I knew was being a bitch, but I couldn’t help myself. He told me to fucking wait, then disappeared, only to reappear when he sees me with another man? What, did he miss the Donte episode?
“I’m
leaving, Elle.”
“So you’ve said.”
“I mean I’m really leaving. It’s do or die time.”
“So do.”
Damn, even I was a little surprised at what a bitch I was being. It’s not that I wanted to be, or that I hated him as much as I was pretending. Quite the opposite, I loved the mother fucker and it was eating me alive piece by piece. This whole situation felt like I’d swallowed a lion, and it was chomping its way out of me. I wasn’t sure what would be left of me when the lion was satiated. Fuck, I was losing it. I could feel my hands begin to shake. I bowed my head, trying to get it together, because I wasn’t sure how much more falling apart I had left in me.
I was so caught up in holding it together, I didn’t notice J behind me. His hand was on my shoulder, and I could feel his body shaking behind me. Fuck. We were quite the pair, neither one of us able to keep a handle on our emotions.
“Please, baby. Please. I need you. I love you. I can’t go into this without knowing you’ll be here when I return.” The tremor in his voice broke me.
“I’m not sure what to say. I want to tell you I’ll wait. That I’ll be here, waiting like a good girl for you. I want to because I love you. Fuck, I love you.” I turned, finally ready to look him in the eye. “I don’t know where I’ll be. I can’t tell you that. But I can tell you that I love the fuck out of you, and no matter how much I try to stop,” I paused. Fuck this mother fucker. Fuck!
God, why was he doing this to me? Angry tears, sad tears, hopeless tears, tears filled with longing—just tears—fell from my eyes. J caught then with his thumb, but there were too many. They ran over his fingers like a waterfall.
“Fuck, J. I don’t want you to die.”
He pulled me to him, and I inhaled his scent. I’d never be able to smell Acqua di mother fucking Gio again and not think of him. Today it was mixed with the smell of exhaust, like he’d been riding around all night on his bike. For what felt like the gazillionth time, I crumbled into his arms. How did two times come to be a number exponentially higher?
“I don’t want to die, baby. I want to fall asleep next to you. I want to wake up next to you. I’m fighting this war for you. To be with you.”
I tried to break free of his embrace, but he held me close. “I never asked you to wage war on my behalf.”
I continued fighting his grip on me. Every word out of my mouth was at least fifty percent bullshit. I couldn’t look at him and
pretend I didn’t feel it too, but how many times could I do this with him? How much pain was worth loving this man?
“
It doesn’t matter if you asked, Elle, my sun. Baby," he said, despair filling his voice. "You blew into my life all ablaze. You act cool and subtle, but you’ve shown me the fire underneath. I’m addicted to your heat, and I don’t want to live if I can’t have your light shining down upon me. Baby, please, tell me you feel something. Anything.”
He was desperate
, pleading. Fuck. “Damnit," I whispered to myself.
I beat my fists on his chest. On anyone else I’d have half a chance, but with J my fists were about as damaging as cotton balls.
I found my voice, and shouted, “Damnit, J. You have me.” I gave up my fight and grabbed the edge of his shirt. “You fucking have me.”
With that, I tore his shirt off and we
dissolved into a frenzy of limbs and lust. Clothes were haplessly tossed on the floor as we made our way from the kitchen to the couch. He clutched the sides of my face, devouring my lips with his own. He kissed me like he’d never see me again, which only made me more aggressive. As if to counter him, I spoke against his kisses, “You’ll come back. You
have
to come back.”
He
grabbed my hips, lifting me onto the arm of the sectional. He drove himself deep into me and practically roared, “I love you, Elle, and I'll always come back to you.”
Wanting to believe his words, I shoved my fists into his hair,
grabbed him and pulled my body flush against his. I tightened my legs around him, giving him little room to move. Nevertheless, he continued fucking me like the apocalypse was near. I kept begging him to return, and he was unrelenting with his declarations of love for me.
I felt it building inside me, those familiar fireworks. I fell back onto the couch, J
sinking on top of me. He repositioned us, him on top, one leg on the ground, the other bent in the crook of the couch. I grabbed his shoulders, lifting myself to meet him with each pounding drive into me. In this new position, he was able to hit my G-spot, and I found myself crying out his name. It’d been too long since his name had been on my lips like this.
He wrapped his arms around my back, pulling me closer to him. One, two, three more
plunges into me and I was gone. It wasn’t fireworks this time, it was lightning. My toes curled and I squeezed my legs even tighter around him. I felt the bolt shoot through me, threw back my head and screamed, “I love you, J. I’ll wait for you. I’ll always wait for you. My heart belongs to you, and no one else.” As wave upon wave of lightning coursed through me, my body shook. I couldn’t handle it. I bit down on J’s right shoulder, eliciting a growl from him.
That was all he needed to find his own release, to have his own
lightning storm erupt inside him. He poured himself into me, as I kept my body tightly wound around his. It didn’t matter how we started, we always ended tangled in one another, sated. This time was different, though, with desperation hanging in the air around us. We were desperate to keep each other, to love each other. It didn’t matter how many men I fucked, I’d always be J’s. My heart was incapable of loving anyone else. I tried, and I failed.
J kissed my face—my forehead, each of my closed eyes, my nose, my jaw line, and finally my lips. He held my head in his hands, his lips resting against mine. It felt like static electricity was being passed back and forth between us. He went to pull out, but I held him to me. “Not yet,” I whispered, not knowing when I’d feel his body pressed up against mine again. He held me in his arms, whispering his love and promising to come back to me. I wanted to believe it. In that moment, our limbs entwined, I think I did believe it. The stars had brought him to me, and then fucked me over when I tried to replace him. If the stars in the universe couldn’t line up to bring
the man I loved back to me alive, I wasn’t sure how much faith I’d have left in a higher power. He
had
to come back to me.
We were a mess of bodies, jagged breaths, and dripping sweat on Chris’ couch. That was how we lay as the door opened and Chris stepped inside.
“Shit. Ah,” she fumbled around with her keys. “Fuck.”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, not letting go of J just yet
, as we were both naked, though covered mostly by each other.
Chris, seeing the trail of clothes leading to the kitchen was frozen.
“Give us a minute?” I requested of my best friend.
“Oh, yeah. OK. I’ll, uh, be in my room.” She darted off to her
bedroom, and I let my head fall back onto the couch.
“Fuck, you gotta go
,” I told J, even though it broke my heart to say so. “I don’t want you to go,” I said, trying to keep the tears at bay, “but if you don’t leave now—just go. Do what you gotta do so you can come back to me.”
As much as I wanted him to stay, to freeze this moment and exist in it until the end of time, I knew he
had to go. The sooner he left, the sooner I could try to straighten out the disaster that was my life. I may have said I would wait for him, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to fuck him out of me with another man, but that didn’t mean I was going to stop living my life. I pushed on his chest, and J reluctantly got up.
I went to the bathroom to clean myself. When I returned, J had his pants on and was shoving his black bandana in his pocket.
He’d found my tank and panties, tossing them to me, I threw them on along with my leggings that were thrown over the other end of the sectional the previous night.
We dressed in silence.
I turned to him once we were both clothed and opened my mouth to speak. He chose that same moment to do the same.
“Go ahead,” I said
, letting him go first.
“I love you," is what he had to say.
I ran my hand through the bird nest that was my hair and sighed. “I love you, too.”
“You’ll wait?”
With a shrug, I told him, “There’s no other option for me. Just come back alive.”
He took me in his arms, and I let him mold himself to me. I sunk into him one last time. “That’s the plan. That’s the only plan, baby.” He brought my face closer to his, pressing his forehead
against mine. “I’ll love you until the sun ceases to shine.” With that, he kissed me one last time, and was out the door.
I sunk into the couch.
“Is it safe?” Chris called from the bedroom.
“Get out here, bitch.”
She came out wearing sweats, but what looked like last night’s makeup. “What was that all about?” I filled her in. “And you’re going to wait on the turd stick.”
Fuck, I couldn’t
take this from Chris. “Where’ve
you
been?” I asked with a neck roll.
“Out.”
“Before noon on Sunday?”
“
Fuckin' A, Elle. Starmotherfuckingfish. Now, do you want some coffee or what?”
I nodded, but knew something was up. She was irate over the last visit
I had with J, so there was no way she’d just given up so easily without a reason this time. And she’d never starfished. She detested the starfish, as she believed it’s what got me shot in the first place. She was hiding something. I felt it in my gut. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the energy to grill her when she returned with two hot mugs of caffeinated heaven. We sipped in silence. I found my purse on the floor, and dug through it for a piece of paper I’d been carrying around for the last week. I passed it to Chris.
“What’s this?” She asked
, after examining the advertisement I received from the university.
“It came in the mail last week.”