2011
The sound of shattering glass and the hiss of beer as it spilled onto the floor next to me made me look up. In front of me was a mountain of a man, hovering over my new friend Deacon. He appeared to be upwards of six-foot-five, had broad, rangy shoulders, and a gut that couldn’t be contained by the leather cut he wore. He stared down at Deke ominously, his grizzled jaw working back and forth, the vein in his neck throbbing wildly. I squinted at him through my whisky-soaked haze.
“Something I can do for you, Tiny?” Deke slurred from where we were seated at a wooden table in the back room of the bar we were currently holed up in. I had no idea what it was called, but I’d been hanging out here for the last week with some bikers I met at another bar across town. I didn’t do much of anything else these days. I’d spend my afternoons and evenings drinking shot after shot of Jack Daniels, chased by a good bottle of Budweiser. Eventually, Deke, his bunch, and I would stagger out and find some after-hours place to go where the booze was still flowing freely, and we could find a few easy women to party with. I’d pass out at some point, only to get up in late in the day to repeat the whole cycle all over again. If I’d paused long enough to evaluate the sorry state of my existence, I’d have been disgusted at my slovenly, unkempt appearance, and complete lack of self-respect. I didn’t pause though, other than to have gotten tired of working the tangles out of the long hair Elise had loved so much. Now, I kept my head shaved for sheer convenience. Other than that, I couldn’t be bothered to give a shit about anything but chasing the bottom of the next bottle.
Tiny continued to loom over us. “I said, your ass is mine,” he ground out in his gravelly voice, spittle flying from his lips and onto his scraggly beard.
I snorted, obviously not appreciating the danger of our current predicament. The big dude glared at me maliciously before turning back to Deke.
“Now, Tiny. I didn’t know you swung that way. I’m flattered. Really, I am. But you’re not my type,” Deke drawled as he tried to shoo him away with a drunken wave.
The giant’s fist slammed down on the table, splitting the wood right down the middle. I jumped unsteadily to my feet.
“Whoa!” I shouted. “What the fuck?”
“You were with Stella last night!” Tiny raged. “Don’t try to deny it. You were with her, and now, you’re gonna pay.”
Stella… Stella. Who the hell was Stella? I tried to scan my memory banks for any kind of recognition of the name but came up with a big goose egg. I looked over at Deke, who had the same blank expression.
“Sorry, Tiny. I have no recollection of anyone named Stella. Or anything else for that matter. In fact, I’m sure I was home alone last night,” Deke muttered.
“There’s a fucking video of you two going at it on a continuous loop in the clubhouse!”
Taking a closer look at his vest, I finally saw from the patches on the front that he was Sergeant-at-Arms for Satan’s Breed MC. My stomach dropped to my feet. This was the last kind of trouble I needed to get myself into, but I wasn’t about to run.
“Look, dude, I don’t know your old lady,” Deke mumbled as he tried to inch away from the murderous looking man. “I’m sure Stella is great, but I didn’t touch the bitch.”
“Stella is my sister!!” he screamed as he lunged for him. I stumbled out of the way, the Jack Daniels taking its toll as my arms pinwheeled to keep me upright. I wasn’t quite fast enough in my drunken retreat. Tiny had a friend I didn’t see before because his massive girth blocked the slender man with a pockmarked face.
That guy caught a fistful of my shirt and hauled me right up to his chest. He pulled back his arm and just as I was about to close my eyes against his punch, I saw a cat-like figure leap at him and knock him sideways on the head with an unopened bottle of beer. He went down in a heap.
I looked over to see the smug face of a petite red-head staring back up at me, right before the entire bar erupted in chaos. Chairs were being thrown, glasses were crashing to the floor and patrons were jumping on each other in a full-on barroom brawl. The little sprite tugged on my arm.
“C’mon Romeo. My brother isn’t going to be distracted for long. We gotta get you and Deke out of here or you’re going to wind up needing an ambulance or a gravedigger.”
“He ain’t going nowhere, Stella,” said the gravelly voice I’d already grown accustomed to. “Step aside, li’l bit.”
Before I could react, Tiny’s fist crashed into my left eye. I groaned as the pain sparkled across my vision, then wondered where the fuck Deke had gotten off to. Little shit, leaving me to take his beating. I had a vague awareness that I had no choice but to make a stand. As the thought “In for a penny, in for a pound” raced through my mind, I leapt onto Tiny and hammered his skull with my own fists.
By the time all was said and done, the entire bar was trashed. I lay groaning on the wood floor, peanut shells crushed beneath me. My face was so swollen, I could hardly see. I tested my arms and legs, hands and feet to make sure they weren’t broken. Just as I took a deep breath to make sure my ribs were still intact, I felt myself being roughly hauled to my feet. I squinted to make out one of Los Angeles’ finest pulling out his cuffs. I never said a word as he slapped them on me and led me out to a waiting truck.
“Sever!” the guard on duty shouted from the holding area door. I slowly rose to my feet and dragged myself across the room. Several grumbles followed me, punctuated by a few loogies hocked in my direction. My entire body was screaming in protest at any sort of movement as was the raging hangover I had, but I kept moving. The guard escorted me out to the front of the station where my long-time savior, Vance Ashcroft, stood waiting for me.
He handed me a sweatshirt and a bottle of water before turning his back on me and walking outside. I shrugged into the soft cotton hoodie, my own shirt shredded after the fight. I shuffled after him, trying to open the bottle in order to swish the vile taste of stale booze from my mouth.
We finally stopped at Vance’s car. It was a new-to-him BMW. He was still doing his best to gain attention at his law firm, and it seemed they were beginning to take notice. He opened the passenger door for me with an impatient look on his face.
“You getting in?”
I hung my head and folded myself into the seat. I pulled the door closed before leaning my head back on the headrest.
Vance climbed in the other side and started the car, still not speaking. We drove for some distance before the icy silence got to me.
“Are you going to say anything?” I asked.
“Should I?” he replied as he cast a sideways glance at me. “Is there anything I could say right now that you don’t already know and don’t care about?”
I huffed out a breath. “No, there’s not.”
“Then what? Should we talk about ‘our feelings’?”
“Fuck you, man,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Seriously, Sever? How far are you going to sink? You stopped going to your job, so they fired your ass. Without an income, you got evicted from your apartment and had to move back home. That wasn’t enough humiliation for you though, was it? Instead of pulling your head out of your ass, you wedged it a little higher and decided to spend your every waking moment sauced to the gills. Now you’re screwing questionable chicks and getting into bar fights. You reek, you look like shit, and you’re dangerously close to becoming a scumbag. Have I left anything out?”
“I don’t need you to point out the highlights of my shitty existence, Vance.”
“Yeah, I think you do. It’s been almost three whole years since Elise died,” he looked at me pointedly. “What happened sucked, Justin. It was awful, senseless, and tragic. It should never have happened. But it did.”
“I’m quite aware of that,” I said pointing to myself. “My life, remember?”
“Yes, it’s your life. For now, anyway. But with the trajectory you are on, my friend, it won’t be for long. You’ll either find yourself in prison, the gutter, or just plain dead yourself. It’s only a matter of time before it all catches up with you. I’m surprised it hasn’t already.”
I started to shut down. He was right before. He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know and didn’t care about. How could he possibly understand though? Where was my reason to care when the one I breathed for in the first place was gone? The entire purpose for my existence had been ripped from my grasp twice. First, Renee’s death had stolen my angel from me in bits and pieces, then the drugs consumed the rest of her, making sure there was nothing left for me to cling to. I’d spent the last years in defiance of the grim reaper. Daring that fucker to come take me, too. I wasn’t worth anything without Elise, anyway. It was obvious he thought so too because he had yet to claim me.
“Man, you may not care about yourself, but I still do. We all do. No one is happy watching you self-destruct. Didn’t you learn anything watching what Elise did to herself and everyone else that cared about her?”
“That’s fucking low, Ashcroft.”
“No, it’s not. It’s the goddamned truth. You may not be willing to admit it, but you know it is. You are matching her step for step, you’re just going about it in a slower fashion. You’re drowning in your own grief, just like she was, and you’re going to take the rest of us down with you, just like she did.”
It was the most obvious of things what he said. My own life had begun to parallel Elise’s last month’s so closely, it would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic. My poison was different from hers, but I was using it in the exact same way. I’d shut everyone and everything out, checked out of life, so to speak, while waiting to check out permanently. I wasn’t ready to be quite so honest with myself though.
“No one said you have to go along for the ride, Vance. You’re welcome to walk if that’s what you need to do,” I said caustically.
“You’ve turned into a real douchebag, you know that? I have hauled your ass out of trouble no less than twelve times in three years.”
“Most of that was just for public drunkenness. You didn’t have to bail me out or anything, just give me a ride home after I sobered up.”
“That was twice! The other times were for other scrapes you got into with these degenerate bikers you’ve been trolling around with.”
“Whatever, man. I won’t call you again if I need help.”
“Don’t be a dick. I’m here for you, I just hate seeing you acting out like this. How about getting your shit together, so you don’t need this kind of help? You need to sit and think about where you want to go other than the great beyond. You’re still here, and we’d all really like it if you’d stop being a pussy. Rejoin the rest of us in the real world rather than feeling sorry for yourself.”
“You’re going too far, Vance,” I said, feeling my temper begin to rise. He didn’t know shit about having his world crash around him. “What makes you think you are qualified to give me any kind of advice in this situation? You’ve led a charmed life, from where I sit.”
“Look, you have my complete sympathy. I may not have had my world destroyed, but it’s time to start piecing yours back together. I wouldn’t be a good friend if I didn’t tell you what you can’t see. Elise didn’t pick herself back up or let anyone else help her. Look what happened. It was a total waste of her life. Bad shit happens, Justin, and sometimes, it’s unthinkable shit. Don’t let your life and all your potential be a waste, too.”
The fight went out of me. I just didn’t have the energy to keep it up. What I really wanted to do was just break down. Lay down and never get up again, but that wasn’t me, not really. I wasn’t capable of taking a complete mental inventory of my life at the time, battered and bruised inside and out, tired and hung over. I sank back into my seat and blew out a deep breath. We both stayed quiet for the rest of the ride to my parents’ house. When he dropped me at the curb, I turned to him.
“Thanks, bro. For everything.”
Vance just gave me a quick nod, then pulled away.
I stumbled into the house, past my disapproving-looking father. That look alone was worth more than Vance’s entire lecture though I was already chewing over everything he said in the back of my head. My dad, though? His opinion and approval mattered more to me than most things in the world. I’d long ago decided to be the kind of man he could be proud of, and I realized I’d strayed far from that path over the last few years. I waved him off as I passed, just like I did every other time I stumbled in drunk and disheveled since moving back in. This time I was acutely aware of his judgment, and I tossed it on the pile with Vance’s stuff to contemplate later.
I’d love to say I woke up the next morning invigorated and with a renewed outlook on my life. Far from it. I still felt empty. There was this giant hole in my heart telling me life was no longer worth living without Elise. My first instinct was to run far and fast from that constant agony like I had been doing, but there was no denying that the jig was up. I’d been called out by my best friend and, although silently, by my father as well. Rather than continue to be a complete embarrassment to them, I decided I had two options. I could either off myself and spare them this ongoing pain and humiliation while I tried to do it slowly, or I could dig up whatever remained of my pride and at least go through the motions of being a functional human being. Since I wasn’t real keen on killing myself, even if I was miserable, the choice was a no-brainer.
I took a couple days to heal from the injuries I got in the fight. I’d been lucky to walk away with only some bumps and bruises, but they were heinous looking, all mottled with purple and green. Looking for a job in that condition wasn’t the best idea if I wanted to make a decent impression, so I went about writing a plan for the next year of my life.
I’d likely get another warehouse job since that was all I really knew how to do. If I was going to rejoin the land of the living, I needed bigger goals. Any job would do me fine for now. I could start socking away money again while giving some to my parents since they’d been supporting me while I fucked off. What kind of future did I want though? When Elise died, I had been making plans to get into a graphic design program. The option was still there, and truth be told, the idea gave me a glimmer of hope. That little sliver of something positive was more than I’d felt in a very long time, not since Renee’s death, if I were honest. It was enough to fuel me in the months to come.