Willa
I get home at seven o’clock, not sure how to feel about the day at the station. On the one hand, Brittany hasn’t been as annoying, and Peter hasn’t been as, well … Peter. But on the other hand, I’m still getting nowhere. Two of my proposals for stories were rejected, and maybe that was because they deserved to be rejected. Maybe that’s because I’m not sure if my heart is in this anymore.
I have my own key to the apartment so I let myself in, going into the kitchen and microwaving some leftover pasta, and then pouring myself a glass of wine. As I go to the couch, I look around the apartment, thinking this is the strangest living arrangement I’ve ever experienced. My grandmother, with her four cats and her obsession with bottle caps, was pretty strange, but this beats it. I’m living with a man in separate rooms but we kiss and touch every night but never have sex. I’m sexually frustrated and it’s all my fault.
But it’s more than that, I reflect, as I pour myself my third glass of wine. I’m tipsy, but I don’t care. It’s half past eight o’clock and the TV is playing and I’m hardly watching it at all. Diesel is out somewhere, doing something. It’s more than that, I reflect as I take a long sip from my third glass of wine. I’m sure there’s more to it than sex. I’m sure there’s more to it than wanting him inside of me. I think about that first conversation we had about a baby. Lately, when I close my eyes, I see myself holding a child with Diesel looking down at us. It makes no sense. And yet it won’t go away.
I clean up the broken bowl, scooping up the big pieces and vacuuming the small awkward ones. I shouldn’t be with a man who breaks bowls, I tell myself. I start on my fourth glass of wine, opening a second bottle. I wish Diesel was something else, but then if he was something else, wouldn’t he be somebody else, too? I think about how I told him about my past, how easy it seemed, how well he listened. Do people get to choose who they fall for, or is that decision made for them?
The TV image is slightly distorted from where milk has dried on it. For some reason, that seems hilarious. I take another sip, and then spit it out laughing.
“What’s funny?” I turn at the sound of his voice. He’s standing in the doorway, a bottle in his hand, his words slurred. As he walks into the apartment, he trails the smell of smoke with him.
“Nothing,” I say. “You’re drunk.”
“Am’nt,” he slurs. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, little lady, lady little. The world needs to get off my goddamn case.”
“Don’t throw yourself a pity party,” I tell him. “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s that.”
“I better not do that, then.” He drops heavily into the chair and then takes a swig from the whisky bottle. It’s almost empty, a few trickles dropping onto his tongue. “What’re you drinking?” he asks.
“Wine,” I say.
“I’ll have a glass. Womanly shit, but better’n nothing.”
I think about telling him no, but if I’m drinking I might as well have company. Plus, he looks terrible. His face—and the smell of smoke—tells me that he’s just done something as terrible as his face. I should be running to the nearest police station. Instead, I get him a glass of wine and refill my own, placing them both on the coffee table. He drains half of his in one gulp.
“This is disgusting,” he says.
He takes a matchstick from his pocket and chews the wooden end, and then tosses it to the floor. “One day I accidentally broke the switch that turned the shower on and off. It wasn’t the shower unit or anything. Just the switch that let the water pass through. Maybe they’re not common?” I shake my head, but he doesn’t look at me. He stares into space. “I pulled on it too hard. I was twelve but I was big, way bigger than the other boys. Maybe that’s why he hated me so much, or maybe it’s because I killed my mom when I was born. Whatever it was, I broke this switch and my dad—my fine, upstanding policeman dad—came home and found out.
“I knew there’d be hell to pay because there was always hell to pay, so I’d blocked myself in my room.” He chuckles darkly. “He busted right through that door, his policeman’s boot smashing right through, and there I was, nearly as tall as him, pissing my goddamn pants. Sometimes it was the belt. But if it was more serious, he’d get out this long, thin blade.”
“Oh God, Diesel …” Tears prick my eyes. I move up the couch so that I can reach across and place my hand atop his.
“I got used to it after a while. He’d cut into my back and tell me I was a useless piece of dirt who’d never amount to anything. He’d cut patterns into my back and tell me he was doing it for my own good. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
“It’s okay.”
I wipe tears from my cheeks. I try and remind myself that this man most likely just burned down a building, that people might be hurt, but right now he just seems like a troubled drunk man who needs somebody to care for him. I don’t know if I want to be that somebody. But I am that somebody. I’m holding his hand. I’m listening. I can’t stop myself. Something inside of him is calling out to me and I can’t ignore it.
“I started staying out nights when I got older, getting in with the wrong crowd. That’s what they say, isn’t it? The wrong crowd. But it didn’t seem like that at the time. These were people showing me some goddamn kindness, who I could laugh with and drink with and smoke with and fight with. If we hurt each other, it was fair. It wasn’t some grownup asshole cutting a kid. You can guess what my dad thought of me staying out. My proud policeman dad. My respected-in-the-fucking-community dad. The beatings came down harder. I got more scars. Look at me, Willa, and you’ll see everything the bastard did to me marked for life.”
My heart is breaking for him. I tug on his hand, leading him to the couch, and then get on my knees so that I can wrap both of my arms around him. We’re both drunk but it doesn’t matter. This is real. I know this is real.
“This wasn’t in LA. It was down near San Diego. When I was sixteen, I saved up enough money from all my small jobs—fighting, mostly—and I skipped town. I came to LA not giving a shit about anything other than never being dragged down into the basement again. I didn’t care. Not about myself, not about anybody else. I’d go to bars and pick fights with the bouncers just for the hell of it. That’s where Grimace found me, a pup gone wild … That’s what he called me one night, when we were drinking. I’m boring you. I’m boring myself.”
He leaned forward and picked up the wine glass, draining it.
“You’re not boring me. You could never bore me.”
I kiss him on the cheek, holding his shoulders, trying to keep him from swaying. He brings my glass of wine to my lips. “You’re not drinking,” he says.
“I am,” I reply, and let him tip the glass so its contents empty into me.
Both of us swaying together as though slow dancing, he goes on.
“I joined up with the Riders. I was an enforcer. Beating people up, getting money, and then I got word that the old man had died in a shootout. I didn’t give a damn about him. Or maybe I did. Fuck, I don’t know. All I know is I went down there for the funeral and that was the biggest mistake of my life. I ended up getting into a fight with one of my dad’s cop friends and having the fucking book thrown at me. It was a scuffle and the man wasn’t hurt, not even close to hurt, but they gave me five years for it. Five years, Willa, but it might as well’ve been life, ’cause when you’re the son of a cop it don’t matter if you’ve joined up with a one-percent club, you’re still the son of a cop. I would’ve been torn apart in there if Grimace hadn’t set me up with some of his inside boys, fixing it so they were transferred to my prison. He saved my life.
“So what choice to do I have?” He leaps to his feet, hands in his hair, pacing. “He saved my goddamn life!” He stumbles into the kitchen and returns with the bottle of wine. “I burn, Willa. I burn and I burn and I fucking burn.” He takes a long swig from the bottle, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his leather. “And I burn and I burn and I …” He drops onto the couch.
He’s admitted it, I tell myself. It’s out in the open now. I can’t lie to myself. He’s done it and I need to get out of here. I can’t be with a man who burns down buildings. I can’t. So why am I resting my head on his shoulder, and why is my hand straying to his knee, and why is my clit aching and my body screaming? My head is groggy. Logical thinking is difficult. All I can think about is Diesel, younger then and not named Diesel, being beaten by a fully-grown man.
I turn my face and see him looking down at me.
“Tell me your name,” I say. “Tell me your name. Tell me your name, tell me your name, tell me your name.” I leap onto his lap, splitting my legs so that our crotches press together, his cock hard despite how drunk he is. I giggle as I writhe, grinding up and down on him. It feels good. That’s all I can think about right now. “Tell me your name or I’ll stop. I promise I’ll stop.”
“Don’t you fucking stop.” He reaches around and grabs my ass, his hands firm.
I slam them away. “Your name or nothing, mister. I mean that.”
“My name is Diesel.”
“Okay, fine. If you want to be pedantic. What did your name used to be?”
“Why do you want to know so badly?”
He keeps trying to touch my ass and I keep slapping him away.
“Because if I’m going to make love to you, I want to know what name to scream.”
I twist my hips. The denim is hard, rough. I wish it away. I want what’s underneath.
He looks into my face, his dark green eyes full of life even if they are full of whisky as well. I’m drunk, too. There’s no denying that now. “My name was Damon Holmes,” he says, “but my father beat that name out of me. I was called Damon when these scars were being made. I was called Damon when I was picking my baby teeth off the kitchen floor. I was called Damon when my head was bouncing down the stairs. If you’re gonna scream for me, scream Diesel. It’s the only name I’ve ever wanted.”
I know it’s wrong. I know I should run. I know—
I bring my lips to his, unable to stop myself, kissing hard , moving my hands down his body to the front of his jeans, feeling his rock-hard cock, rubbing it and making it harder.
When the kiss breaks off, I moan, “Diesel, Diesel, Diesel …”