Chapter Four
By the time I got back to my apartment it was noon and I was already exhausted. I didn’t know how Marie did it…or Paul. Being on the run, picking up your entire life and moving it…always looking over your shoulder…It had to be exhausting. I was worn-out just from finding out about it all…and recovering from the scare Mitch gave me too. I parked in my usual spot and found myself looking around and over my shoulder as I walked up to the door. My hands were shaking when I slipped the key into the lock. I kept alternating between asking myself what I was doing getting into this mess, and telling myself that these people needed all the help they could get and there was no reason why I shouldn’t help them.
I stood inside the door of my apartment for a few minutes…listening. I started letting my imagination work overtime on the way home from Marie’s. Mitch is a cop. What if he broke in? I closed the door behind me and locked it and then I picked up the only thing I saw that I could possibly use as a weapon…my umbrella. It was one of those with a hook on one end and a point on the other. It wouldn’t take out a bullet…but in hand to hand combat it would give me an edge.
I tiptoed through the living room and threw open the kitchen door. I glanced around to make sure that no one was there. My heart was pounding in my chest but no amount of telling myself that I was being ridiculous was working to calm me down. I made my way back through the living room and down the narrow hall. I was for once thankful I lived in a small place. I opened the door to the extra bedroom and flipped on the light. I went over to the closet and opened it. I stepped back and held the umbrella out in front of me like a sword. I struck at the clothes in the closet, beating at imaginary monsters like I was seven again. I did the same thing in my room. I was about to pronounce it all clear. All I had left was the shower.
I swear it was like that shower scene in Psycho; as I pulled open the curtain and aimed my umbrella…my fucking phone rang in my pocket. I screamed and dropped the umbrella. The sound of it clattering to the porcelain floor of the shower startled me again and I dropped the phone. I fumbled for it and when I finally had it in my hand and saw who was calling, I wanted to throw it against the wall. My mother always had impeccable timing.
“Hello, Mom.”
“Jessie! I didn’t think you were going to answer.” After I heard her voice, I wished that I hadn’t. I could tell from her tone that this was not going to be good. I considered hanging up before I even heard it. “Jessie! Are you there?”
“Yes, Mom. I’m here. What’s wrong?”
She instantly went on the defensive. “Why are you saying it like that? I don’t only call you when something is wrong.” Bullshit.
“I didn’t mean to insinuate anything, Mom. I don’t want to fight with you today, okay? What’s going on?” Tell me what you need.
“Tyler is kicking me out.”
Damn, that was the one thing I was afraid of. Tyler was my mother’s latest in a string of younger men. She meets them in bars and moves in with them within weeks. All goes well until they tire of her neediness and realize that her looks really are only skin deep…then they toss her out. She hasn’t had a job in over a year. I have no idea how she can stand to always let someone else support her.
I took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, Mom.”
“I need a place to stay,” she said in a whiny voice. It was the sentence I was hoping not to hear, but expecting. The last time I’d lived with my mother was while I was in college and dating my ex-boyfriend Justin. The whole situation was…ugly, to say the least.
“Mom, you know I love you…but it’s not a good idea for us to be under the same roof.”
“You would let your mother be put out on the street?” Here it comes, the guilt.
“I’m not kicking you out, Mom. Apparently, Tyler is. This is why I keep telling you that you need to get a job and take care of yourself so that you don’t have to depend on these men.”
“Now you’re going to lecture me? So this is what I get from my daughter? A lecture and an “I don’t care if you sleep in the park?”
“Geez, Mom! I didn’t say that.”
“Please, Jessie…just for a little while. I’ll get a job, okay? I’ll move out as soon as I can. I won’t get in your way.”
I don’t know why I even try. She always guilt-trips me into doing what she wants. What I have to feel guilty about…I really don’t know. I wasn’t the one who was a terrible parent. “Okay, Mom. That’s fine. I’ll get the spare room ready for you. When will you be here?”
“Tyler bought me a bus ticket. I’ll be there in the morning.”
Trying not to let her hear me sigh I said, “Okay, Mom. I’ll see you then.”
“Oh wait!”
“Yes, Mother?”
“I saw Justin.”
If there was one name that brought the weight of the world crashing down onto my shoulders quicker than my mother did, it was that one. “Mom, I don’t want to hear about—”
“Honey, he misses you.”
“Are you kidding? Are you still buying from him?” Justin was my own personal nightmare. He was gorgeous and intelligent…and he was a drug dealer and although he didn’t use his own product, he loved his alcohol. It was an explosive combination that I’d been too young and inexperienced to see in time.
“No!” she said in an indignant tone. “That is so insulting! You know I’ve stopped using.”
“So you say.” In my defense, it definitely wouldn’t be the first time she lied to me about her pill use. OxyContin had been her drug of choice. “If he’s not dealing to you, why were you seeing him?”
“I wasn’t seeing him. I ran into him. He was at the bar where Tyler was playing and we started talking. He told me he was happy for me that I’d gotten clean. Honey, he had tears in his eyes when he talked about you. He misses you so much. All he wishes for you are good things.”
I was gagging on the bile that had come up from my stomach. “Justin cares about two things, Mother, himself and money. You know how long I struggled with that and how hard it was for me to get away from him when I finally figured out I couldn’t change him. Why would any mother want her daughter to be with a man like that?”
“He’s a good boy.”
“Are you freaking kidding me? He’s a ‘good’ boy? He’s a drug dealer, Mother!”
“It’s a rough economy. He’s just trying to make a living. Not everyone is handed a good start in life, you know?”
I growled into the phone and said, “He took the easy road for him, Mom. He doesn’t want to go to work and have to answer to a boss. He thinks the rules are for everyone else. He wants to live his life as if it’s one big party.” I realized then I could have been describing her. She and Justin were made for each other, really. “If you want a place to stay there will be two conditions: No drugs and No Justin! Do you understand me, Mother?”
“You don’t have to yell.”
“I’m not yelling,” I said through gritted teeth. “Try this, Mom…since you seem to have an easier time putting things in perspective when it’s about you. When you think about Justin, remember the time you were at his apartment and it got raided. Remember the time you did in jail…away from your kid because of that. Remember that he wasn’t in the least bothered by letting you take the fall for all of that. He’s not a ‘good kid.’” You need to get over that. He’s a man, and a dangerous one to boot.”
“Okay, Jessie,” she said. She had the ability to morph from a poor, misunderstood old woman to a teenager to a little girl and back again in thirty seconds flat. She could also be a raging bitch in between if it suited her purposes. She was what she thought she needed to be at that moment in time. She was a master of manipulation and whether or not she was using, she had an addict’s personality. I knew that her living here was a mistake…but what the hell was I supposed to do? I wouldn’t be able to live knowing that she was homeless either. I was so tired of all the drama.
*******
I needed a respite from how I was feeling after I got off the phone. I spent the rest of that day pampering myself. It was something I rarely did, but I was on the edge of letting my nerves from everything that had happened take over. I took a long bubble bath and deep-conditioned my wild hair. Then, I slathered lotions and creams all over my body. I got dressed just in a tank top and pair of shorts and put my still wet hair into a smooth braid down the side of my head. I sat down and painted my toenails and fingernails. It wasn’t as good as a day at the spa, but by the time I finished I felt a whole lot less stressed. I knew it would all return in an instant when my mother arrived the next day. She’d bring a suitcase of crap with her, I was sure. But for that night, I wasn’t going to think about it. I was just about to go see what I could round up in the kitchen for my dinner when there was a knock on the door.
The anxiety returned all at once and I froze. I wondered if I should just pretend that I wasn’t there. I wasn’t expecting anyone…what if it was Mitch again? Could I even call the police? Would they even help me? The intruder knocked again and I tried to walk quietly over to the door to look out the peephole. Before I got there I heard, “Jessie! It’s Paul.” I jumped at the sound of his voice before I processed that it was him. This was getting a little bit ridiculous. I wasn’t even this paranoid when I dated a drug dealer.
I went over and just to be sure, looked out the peephole. It was definitely Paul. I pulled open the door. “Hey,” I said. He was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt that hugged his tatted biceps nicely. I wondered if there was anything that he didn’t look good in. If I recalled correctly, he also looked good in nothing. He was holding a bag in one hand from a hardware store and a hammer and drill in the other. “What’s up?”
He held up the bag and said, “I brought a chain lock for your door. Is it okay if I put it on? I’ll feel a lot better. I don’t want that asshole trying to muscle his way back in.”
I smiled and stepped back to let him in. It was nice of him to worry about me. “Sure, thank you.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Don’t thank me. None of this is your fault. Thank you. I’m just so sorry about all of this.”
“It’s really fine. You can stop apologizing. I was just going to fix myself some dinner. Are you hungry?”
“Always,” he said with a grin.
“Okay, I’m not sure what I have but I’ll find something.”
I went out to the kitchen, stopping to look once over my shoulder at him as he got ready to drill holes in the door for the chain. God, he was hot, and now he had power tools as well. I forced myself to tear my eyes away and go start on dinner.
I had some boneless chicken in the refrigerator. I took it out and cut it into cubes. I was thinking about making it with rice and vegetables, but then I thought about Paul’s upcoming fight and I was sure that he needed his protein. I pulled out the peanut butter and made a spicy peanut sauce that a friend of mine in college had showed me how to make. It was easy and quick and packed with protein. I put the cubes of chicken on metal skewers and put them in the oven while I made the sauce. I made the brown rice while the chicken cooked, poured on the sauce and it was done. I fixed out plates and carried them out to the dining room table. Paul was cleaning his mess up by the front door and the shiny gold chain lock was in place.
“Good job!”
“Thanks,” he said. “That smells good.”
“It’s ready.” He went in the bathroom to wash up and met me back at the table. Sitting down with him for dinner was a little weird and uncomfortable at first, but eventually I asked him about fighting and the conversation grew from there.
“So your match that I went to last week was the first one I ever watched live. You’re good.”
He grinned. “Yes, I am.”
“Oh, and you’re modest too,” I said.
“There’s no room for modesty in fighting. When it means the difference between getting your ass kicked or not, you have to know that you’re good.”
“True story,” I said.
“So why have you never been to a match? Don’t you train fighters all the time?”
“I train with some. I haven’t really been out of school that long, so I can’t say all the time. But, it’s just the idea of watching someone get beat up that bothers me.”
“Well, at least you’ll never see me get beat up,” he said with another grin.
“It never happens?”
“Never…not anymore anyways. I might not be able to take them down, but I do know how to protect myself.”
“That’s always a good thing,” I said. I was thinking about Mitch now and hoping he could protect himself against an angry cop and apparently jilted boyfriend.
“This is amazing by the way,” he said of the food.
“Thanks. I like to cook. It’s hard just cooking for me. I haven’t had this peanut sauce in a while. I like it.”
“Me too,” he said, cleaning his plate.
“So this fight at the end of the week, this is a pretty important one for you?”
“Yeah, really important.” He didn’t even really have to speak; I could see it in his eyes. He genuinely loved what he did, that was good…I guessed. It was strange to me to think about being in love with fighting. “If I win this one I go up against the champion next. Winning the championship gets me professional status…endorsements and the whole bit. It’s what I’ve been working for all these years.”
“Then I’m glad I made you protein and not carbs,” I said with a grin. I was also glad to hear he had goals and ambition. It was one thing my ex was seriously lacking.
“So you just got out of college this last semester?”
“Yeah. I graduated in June.”
“Good deal. I wish I would have gone sometimes. With fighting and Marie and Victor…things just got too out of focus for a while. When I began really focusing again, I put all my energy into winning this title. How was it, going to college? Did you live in the dorms or a Sorority house or something?”
“No, I lived with my mom. I had to subsist mostly on grants and loans so I couldn’t really afford school and room and board.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
I laughed. “You probably wouldn’t say that if you knew my mom.”
He put his fork down and looked at me seriously. “Relationships with parents can get really screwed up sometimes.”
“Yeah, tell me,” I said. “I’m not the best at relationships in general. I studied really hard in college…I got straight A’s, I worked out hard, I ate right. I was healthier physically than I’ve ever been and I loved it. It was good for me.”
“But…?”
I laughed. “You heard that, huh? Nothing really. It’s just that while I was pursuing my goals, I got a little off track with trying to help others pursue theirs. The ‘but’ was a guy I met during that time.”
“Uh oh,” he said with a smile.
“Uh oh is right. He was a mess and I thought that I could ‘fix’ him.”
“He was unfixable?”
I laughed again, nervously. I didn’t usually talk about Justin. It was one of those really low points in my life that I’d love to forget. “Yeah, he was. It took me way too long to figure that out and when I did, he didn’t want to go away easily. It’s true that you can’t change a person. They have to be determined to do that for themselves.”
He was quiet for a few seconds and then he said, “Can I ask what was wrong with him that you wanted to fix?”
This was the part that I hated telling him. What did it say about me that I dated a drug dealer, and how did I tell someone I barely knew that I’d met him through my mom? “Don’t judge me?”
“The day I am in a position to judge anyone,” he said with another grin. “I won’t judge, I promise.”
“He was a drug dealer,” I said.
“Oh, yeah…definitely he had issues.”
Laughing, I said, “That sums it up, pretty much. The lifestyle was unbelievable…Constantly partying and constantly paranoid and worried about getting caught, running from the law. Me putting up with it for two years even more unbelievable I guess. He was addicted to it. Not the drugs, but the money, the power it gave him, the partying and having people calling him at all hours of the day and night…even the adrenaline that came from worrying about getting caught…all of it. I thought he loved me and me him. I finally had to accept that he was a creep and I was a codependent, but I was too naïve to realize it for a long time.”
“What did your mom think of him?” He of course would think that my mother would have objected. Most mothers would have, but mine was definitely not the norm.
“Oh God…I think that’s a story for another dinner,” I told him. That would just be way too much disclosure. Telling a guy I was just getting to know that my mother was an addict who encouraged me to date a dealer…way too much information. Too much self-disclosure was not a good thing sometimes.
“Okay,” he said. He stood up and picked up our plates. “I’ll tell you a sad story while we clean up. It’s only fair.”
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“Tell the story?”
“Oh no, you owe me that,” I said with a laugh. “You don’t have to clean up.”
He ignored me and took the plates to the kitchen. I followed him and opened the dishwasher. While he rinsed, I loaded and he talked.
“When I was sixteen I got into working out. I was always looking for something…anything that made me feel…alive, I guess. My sister was gone off with Mitch at that time and I was stuck at home. Our home life left a lot to be desired. My father didn’t win any awards for his parenting skills. He was a gambler first, before everything else. He gambled everything he could get his hands on…even if he had to borrow it from dangerous people to do it. I was going to the gym every day and running every evening. I had a job after school and I used every penny I made to buy healthy food and pay for work-outs and jiu jitsu classes. Then one day right before my seventeenth birthday I came home to find the old man beat to a bloody pulp on the doorstep.”
“Oh no!”
“Oh yeah. He borrowed money and he lost and lost and lost. He didn’t pay them back and by then the interest was astronomical. He was crying…I’d never seen him cry. He said they were going to kill him. I spent a lot of my life angry with him but I didn’t want him killed, you know?”
“I do. More than you know,” I said with my mother in mind.
“Anyways, I heard about this underground cage fight. The first prize was fifteen grand but you had to be eighteen. I told the old man about it and a light-bulb went on in his head. He somehow got me an ID that said I was eighteen and entered me. I won and he took all the money.”
“Oh wow. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I didn’t care about the money. I’d finally found something I was good at. It was something I knew I could get better at. More than anything it gave me a purpose, something to look forward to. That’s when I started fighting all the time. It gets in your blood.”
He stopped talking and all of a sudden, the room was completely silent. He turned toward me and I knew he was going to kiss me and I knew we would have sex. It was one of those moments…if I leaned in for the kiss, the wheels would be in motion. My body completely overrode my brain and I just went with it.