Chapter Three
Dax
I was trying to concentrate on looking through the tapes, but it was hard with Olivia sitting on the floor next to me. She suddenly wanted to believe in me and I was torn between being elated and being angry that she still didn’t believe me. I was more elated than angry.
If my arrest hadn’t come so soon after everything she had been through with her father, it would have made a big difference. She had been lied to and disappointed over being lied to constantly by someone she loved and trusted. I understood her fear that it was happening all over again.
I tried not to stare at her, but she was so damn sexy. I used to draw sketches of her when I was in prison and hang them on my cell wall. It helped me not feel so lonely. Even then I couldn’t really be mad at her. Nothing she ever did was mean-spirited. She was confused and hurt and rightfully so.
My anger needed to be focused elsewhere, at the people who did this to us in the first place. I looked at her shuffling through dusty old tapes and actually hoping to find something to help me and I had an overwhelming desire to reach out and touch her soft hair as she tossed it back over her shoulder. I pictured myself kissing her… I thought about the last time I did and how she ran away. That thought put a damper on it. Forcing myself to put it out of my head I finally decided that a mundane conversation was the best route.
“So what did you say happened to school?” I asked her. “You were doing so well.”
She stopped what she was doing and looked at me like she wasn’t sure what to say. She shrugged. Maybe conversation was a mistake. She was looking at me and no matter how hard I tried I still got lost in her big brown eyes. Her lips looked so kissable I actually started to lean in a bit. Thank goodness she started talking.
“I was so messed up after you got arrested,” she finally said. “I tried to keep going, but that whole next semester I didn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time. I was angry at first. I kept asking myself how I could have been so stupid, how I could spend all that time with you and not know you were running drugs.”
“You didn’t know because I wasn’t,” I told her.
“Do you want me to explain it or do you want to rehash all that again?”
She was right, we had rehashed it enough.
“I’m sorry,” I said, properly put in my place.
“I’m not comparing you to my dad or saying that you’re him, okay? It just reminded me so much of how my mother denied knowing he was cooking meth. The police officer even asked her the night he arrested him, “How could you not know?” I mean, he wasn’t doing it in our kitchen, but the little house he used was on our property and the air always smelled funny. Plus, we weren’t allowed to go out there at all. I used to wonder after he was arrested if she did know, but wanted herself to look like the victim. Then it happened to me and I realized, or at least I thought that it was entirely possible to be duped by the man you loved. I was angry and hurt and that part made me feel like such a fool.
You were my safe haven, Dax. You and I had plans for a real future and a family someday that wasn’t going to be touched by any of this club stuff. I believed in you more than I ever have anyone in my life, even my father. When I found out you were arrested that day I felt like all of that had been for nothing and the man that I thought I loved didn’t even really exist. I would lay awake at night trying to figure it out, but no answers ever came. However, thinking about you would inevitably lead to thinking about you all alone in that awful place. I would wonder if you were sleeping. If you were eating…If they were hurting you.”
“I’m sorry, Liv. I hate that you had to go through that shit.”
“No matter how angry with you I was, I hated that you had to go through that. I tried telling myself that you were a criminal and you were right where you needed to be the same way I had to do with my dad…but I hated that thought too. From that point forward, everything just fell apart. I couldn’t concentrate in class because my mind was either too preoccupied or I was just too damn tired. My grades started slipping and at first the instructors were willing to give me a break because I had been doing so well before. It finally got to the point where they had to either give me the failing grade I deserved or suggest strongly that I withdraw so that I didn’t have a bunch of failed classes on my transcript. I chose to withdraw so at least I can go back some day and start fresh.”
“And that was when you started working for your uncle and seeing a lot of Terrance?”
“Yeah, my uncle could see how messed up I was and he was hoping that the job would be a distraction until I got my head back together. We were all hoping the next semester I would be ready to go back. But then—”
“You started dating Terrance.”
She shot me another, stop interrupting me look.
“Then, you were sent to Pelican Bay. Knowing you were sitting in county was bad enough, but when you got your sentence and they sent you to that place…I was physically ill when I first found out you were going there. I got online and looked it up. I read the CDC website first and told myself it wasn’t so bad, but then I started finding all kinds of links to websites that talked about all the gangs in there…and the violence…and the drugs. I almost drove myself crazy over it. My uncle even started suggesting that I see a doctor and that maybe I needed some medication. He was probably right, but I refused to go.”
“Then you started hanging out with Terrance?”
“You’re in an awfully big hurry to get to that part,” she said.
“I’m just trying to figure out how you two became an item. I mean…was it gradual or was my best friend suddenly like, ‘Whew, he’s gone. Now I get the girl.’ ”
She glanced at me and I could see the hurt in her eyes. “It really wasn’t like that, Dax. It was a whole year…you had been gone a whole year before we so much as had lunch. I swear. He was coming around a lot but dating was the furthest thing from my mind or his. He was just being supportive because he knew how devastated I was.”
“Good old Terrance, there to catch you when I fall,” I said.
I couldn’t help it. Of all the violations against me, I found him moving in on my girl the worst. Of all people, Terrance knew more than anyone else how much she meant to me. I actually talked so much to him about her that I had made it easier for him to have a relationship with her. He already had the advantage of knowing her likes and dislikes. I wondered if he had been taking notes just in case the opportunity presented itself.
Olivia sighed. “Maybe you’re right. I’m obviously a terrible judge of character. It didn’t seem that way to me at the time though, Dax, I swear. It seemed like he was only being kind and like he was hurting too and we were helping each other.”
I really had heard enough about her and Terrance. I picked up the tapes we had so far and said, “Let’s go start watching these. If we don’t have what I’m looking for here I can come back later.”
“Okay,” she said. As she pulled herself up off the floor she said, “Dax…the thing with Terrance, just so you know…it’s never been what you and I were. I don’t think I’ll ever feel for another person the way I felt about you.”
It was the best thing I had heard all week. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say, but I liked hearing it.
We took the tapes into the outer room and I decided we would watch from a few days after my arrest and work our way back. We saw a lot of crap, had to listen to my dad bullshit with the guys and one of them I had to completely fast forward because it was of my father fucking one of his young groupies on the desk. It was disgusting, to say the least.
As it forwarded, I caught a glimpse of my mother’s face. Olivia and I looked at each other and I stopped it and went back. I restarted it right after the groupie chick left. I was really hoping this wasn’t a husband/wife/I caught you cheating conversation. I knew my mother knew as well as the rest of us what a sleaze he was, but I had no desire to be a witness to it. I kept my thumb over the fast forward button just in case.
We watched as my mother stormed into the office. At first, my dad looked nervous too, like he thought she was there to confront him about the groupie who had just been spread-eagled on top of the desk.
Instead, with tears in her eyes and a significant tug at my heart she said, “They’re going to send him to prison. I can’t stand the thought of it. He’s not a criminal. He’s not like those people. I can’t even imagine him in there. I can’t breathe. Please make this go away! Make it stop!”
My dad got up from his chair and came around the desk. He genuinely looked like she was tugging at his heart too. He tried to put his arm around her and she almost let him but suddenly she pushed him away and said, “This was you, you did this! You can fix it. I don’t want your comfort! I want you to fix this!”
My dad looked her in the eye and said, “I don’t know what you mean by this being my doing, but I didn’t do anything. The boy got himself into trouble. Maybe it’s time you stopped coddling him.”
“You’re a liar. You’re disgusting! He was doing so well. He was in college, an honor student! He had a chance at a real life, a real chance. He didn’t want any part of this place and you just keep doing whatever you can to suck him back in. How could you do this to your own son?”
“Baby, listen to me,” he tried the soft voice. “I didn’t do anything to him; I didn’t know he was carrying drugs.” He reached out for her again and he got another shove in the chest for it.
“You make me sick, you and this pathetic club that you love so much more than your own family. He tried so hard to not be a part of this miserable life. He didn’t need a club full of losers and sluts following him around in order to feel like a man the way you do and that’s what pissed you off. Now, even if he lives through this, thorough being in that awful place…he’ll never have a chance. You may as well have killed your own son. You’ve taken his life away so it’s all the same. I hate this place, this fucking, stupid club. If anything happens to him in there, you will wish you were never born.” I knew that my mom was mad. She never said the word fuck and as far as I knew she’d never threatened my dad.
I could tell by the look on my dad’s face that he’d had enough of the trying to be Mr. Nice Guy stuff. He wasn’t going to let a woman, not even my mom talk to him that way.
He stepped close to her and in his scary, low, controlled voice that told you he was just a hair away from snapping and going off he said, “This stupid club has kept you in those pretty clothes and put a roof over our son’s head and food in his belly all of these years. It pays for that fancy SUV you drive around and those monthly trips to the salon to keep your hair that pretty blond color. And let’s not forget those fingernails. I’ve got more money in those nails than I do beer in my bar. I don’t ever hear you complaining about any of that.”
My mom looked at him and I could see the tears on her cheeks. My heart was breaking for her, I wanted to reach out and hug her. How cold was he that her heartbreak had no effect on him at all? Not giving a shit about me was one thing, but my mom should have been a different story. She looked like she had more to say, but she knew my dad too well. I could almost see the wheels turning in her head, telling herself that it wasn’t going to be worth it. He wasn’t going to admit to anything and the more she pushed him the meaner he was going to get.
She gave him one more accusing look, shook her head and slammed the door. I could feel Olivia’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t take mine off my dad on the screen. He dropped down into his chair and put his head in his hands for a second. He sat up and leaned back in the chair, staring at something on the wall lost in his own thoughts.