Disarmed (6 page)

Jessie sat at the dining room table with the late evening sunset on the horizon. The whole of the day had passed, and was well into night by the time he worked up the nerve to call Mavis. He didn’t know how to begin. How to tell her he hadn’t meant to hurt her, or that he really wanted her to be a part of his life. He imagined himself saying that she needed to give him some time to work through his issues with trusting himself and allowing her in slowly, but each daydream turned into a screaming match in his mind.

Not that he had ever had one with her, but he had never fully committed to her in the past and explaining to her that he wanted to try but would need to move slowly would strike her, a slap across her delicate skin.

At eight p.m., he heard his mother returning from her weekly knitting circle, a fancy way of saying that four older ladies sat around and gossiped about everyone and everything that occurred in town. When she entered, he noted how athletic she looked in her navy blue jogging suit. She and her friends usually strode around the subdivision to get a little exercise before they settled into their chinwag session.

“Hey, son. I didn’t see you before you left this morning. You were up early.”

“Yeah. I had to get moving. Had some things to take care of.” He hadn’t divulged that he’d followed up on the call from the clinic, let alone that he had begun treatment. “When I came back, you’d gone knitting already.”

“Oh, okay.”

“So, how are you?”

“Typically well, son, typically well. You know I heard that Mavis has a little friend. Did you know about that?”

“Yep. She’s free to do as she pleases.”

“Well, you know I mind my own business, but I just would hate to see something bad happen to a person when it could be avoided.” Momma Jewell set her pocketbook on the table along with her basket of knitting supplies before going into the kitchen. “You want a sip?”

“Yeah, I would. Thanks.” A
sip
meant a shot of the Captain Morgan’s rum that his mother kept beneath the kitchen sink. She didn’t like for her neighbors or any visitors to know that she occasionally took a drink. It was for times when she was especially upset or sad.

Jessie didn’t know which she was at the moment. Most likely, she was sad as she watched her potential for grandchildren slip from view.

“You know, I remember when I almost didn’t continue seeing your father.” She set the glasses on the table along with the half-empty fifth of rum. She must have been sad or angry quite a bit lately.

“I can’t imagine that. Dad was smooth, or at least he thought he was.”

For a moment, his mother rolled her eyes, then a flash on her face told of the fond memory that must have danced through her mind.

“He thought, so he thought. Anyway, I loved him from the day I laid eyes on him. He was so handsome. You look so much like him when he was your age. He was a ladies’ man, though. He didn’t want to settle down. My goodness, he was something else. So, I thought I best take my chances with Mr. Dermal. He was a hard worker and above all, he treated me like a queen.”

For a moment, she stared out the window as if she was contemplating something, rolling it over in her mind.

“I obviously know what happened—”

“Yes, of course I married your father. But it wasn’t until he had a sudden change of heart. One night, we were all at Lenore's wedding. I had accepted a date with Mr. Dermal. I knew that I wasn’t in love with him, but sometimes a woman has to cut her losses. Go with the best hand, you know? I was into all of one dance with him and here comes your father, stomping across the dance floor. He was red as a wagon and madder than a white-mouthed mule.” A guttural laugh escaped as she took a sip of her drink.

“So, he dragged you off and proposed, right?”

“No. He tried to grab me. Mr. Dermal knocked him clean out, down he went onto his keister and we kept right on dancing. But, after that, my hard heart grew soft on him. He was sending me flowers and everybody in town was laughing at him. One day, I went over to his house to tell him to stop making a fool of himself. I was with who I was with, and there was nothing he could do about it. And that’s when it happened.”

Jessie drank the shot down in one gulp and stared at his mother, waiting for her to finish. She slowly took another swig and stared down at her hands with a smile.

“What happened?” Jessie egged her on.

“I started giving him my speech and I looked into his eyes. He stole the breath right out of my body. I saw a new man. Someone that would love me and treat me with respect, as a man should treat someone he loves. Not like an option. You understand what I’m saying? Women want to be a priority.”

Momma Jewell finished her drink quickly. She didn’t wait for a response before leaving the table and exiting the dining room. “Clean those glasses up before you go to bed, or whatever you end up doing tonight.” The sound of a door closing let him know that she had left him there to stew in the error of his ways.

Jessie continued to contemplate his decision as the darkness settled about the house. He didn’t turn on any lights, he just sat there considering his father’s ass kicking and the possibility that he would have been one of Dermal’s exceptionally unattractive children had his dad never come to his senses.

The story proved enlightening. He’d often wondered whether or not his opposition to wedded bliss had been something that he alone suffered among the Workings men. Apparently not, and this thing he was battling with was certainly hereditary.

He pulled his phone out, taking exception to the lack of phone calls and text messages during his day of solitude. Searching up Mavis’ number, he fondled the cool touchscreen of his iPhone, the glass smooth under his fingertips. It would be so easy to apply just a tap of pressure to the
call
button, but something inside him crumbled at the thought.

His father had gone to his mother. In the face of a beating and humiliation, he had simply gone after the woman he loved. She hadn’t been willing, but he made her see it.
Something in his eyes
, she’d said.

The phone started ringing before it actually registered he had inadvertently pressed the button. Convinced it would be best to see her in person, he tried to press ‘end’. The next sound took him totally off guard, sending his stomach into a flurry of knots.

“Hello?” The man’s voice was free from any hint of southern dialect. To be exact, it sounded remarkably similar to a guy in his outfit who was from Boston.

“Who the fuck is this?” Jessie demanded.

“‘
Who the fuck is this?’
Who the fuck are you?” the voice on the other end retorted. Cocky. Arrogant, just like him.

“Where is Mavis?”

“She’s not available right now. You’ll have to call back. And next time, have a little respect. Thanks.”

The click of the phone, then the normal beep of a call disconnecting took on an obnoxious tone, sending Jessie into a rage. He’d stopped thinking the instant he heard her
friend’s
voice, or that’s what everyone kept calling him, her friend or her dude.

Grabbing his keys and nothing else, Jessie was on his Harley before he could consider the possible windburn from riding at night at high rates of speed.

All he knew was that Mavis would have an opportunity to choose between the motherfucker from God knows where or the man of her dreams. It would be her decision, but it would happen that night, under his terms.

Jessie’s arms burned from the whipping air against his biceps. He’d ridden there in such a fury that he barely remembered what route he took and the things he encountered along the way. Such as the near fatal accident as he was blowing through a stop sign, or the squirrel he nearly slaughtered beneath the wheels of his bike.

He wasn’t sure exactly how much time had elapsed, nor what he would say or do when he stood before her threshold. A million thoughts ran through his mind. Almost all of them related to his fuck-ups, and there were many. It wasn’t until Mavis’ phone was picked up by another man that the thought of what it would mean to lose her burned into his mind.

The mere possibility of some asshat running his hands over her body, kissing her soft, luscious lips, or the very worst of all, touching her innermost core, where someone could capture her soul. He could not bear the thought.

He stood there in the dark, silent. Listening to the laughter, the sounds of the soft jazz playing. He didn’t even know Mavis liked jazz. When had she developed such tastes? Who was it that introduced his small-town girl to anything other than the country western they’d shared while lying in the sun on handmade quilts?

He couldn’t fathom the things that were happening. It was all too fast.

His pounding on the door matched the lurid questions that rattled about his brain. The music went low and he heard the muffled voices of Mavis and her new guy. Jessie grew angrier by the second, his mind a mushy battlefield of anguish and pain.

“Who is it?” a man’s voice barked from the other side of the door. It was certainly northern, maybe Maine, Maryland, even.

He
was the man who should have been addressing pissed-off visitors, not this asshole.

“It’s Jessie. Open the door, motherfucker!” He used all of the testosterone that he could muster to deepen his voice.

“Jessie, I need you to go home. I don’t want to see you right now. Not like this.” Mavis’ voice was loaded with concern. But he also heard the love that dripped from her tone. She was still his and if he could just get her to open the door, he would show her how much.

“M, baby, I know that we have some problems—”

“Man, just go the hell home. She’s asked you to leave nicely. We don’t want this to get ugly.”

“Open the door, you little bitch, and say that to my face! Man to man!”

More hushed voices came from the other side. The doorknob jiggled and rustling noises came from just the other side of the barrier. He wanted to knock the fucking thing off its hinges and press forward to secure Mavis. He paced back and forth across the length of the stairs on the balls of his feet. Tension ran high within him. He wanted to pound something, anything would do. Not Mavis, but the man preventing him from his expression of love to her. He, he could pound. Hell, he was in agony.

“Mavis wants you to leave. She doesn’t want us to scrap it out. She just wants to be left alone.” Again, said through the door.

“Mavis, baby. I need you to know that I love you. Me. I need you. You are the reason that I came back home. I have been through some pretty fucked up shit the last few months and now all I can think about is finding my home. My home is with you, baby. You are my first love, the only one that I’ve ever known. I probably mess up more than I get it right, but you have to know that I need you. I’m dying out here, a million slow, fucking, deaths, but I’ll stand here until you come back to me.”

Jessie had not noticed the tears nor the sorrowful knot forming in the pit of his belly until he finished pledging his allegiance to her. She was a tiny nation that would provide him comfort and warmth. The nation he would die for, the one he would protect with his all.

When he was done, he was completely and utterly spent. He sat down on the front stairs like he had so many years before while waiting for her to go to the movies with him. Back in those days, he would watch her father as he mowed his precious lawn. Without fail, he would warn Jessie to be good to her, to take care of her.

He remembered the day that Mr. VanHorn passed away. His demise had been so very peaceful. That day he had urged them to be good to one another. So many memories, all the promises he had made to her flooded into his mind.

He ached. Nothing in his life had ever ached as much as this moment.

Jessie waited, just as he said he would. He listened in his own sorrow as the pair on the other side of the door moved back into the house. He waited for the crack in the door. He yearned for the sun to rise on the all-too-early night.

How could everything change so swiftly? One moment, he was pushing Mavis away and the next, he was desperate for her touch. He pondered whether or not it would have made any difference to him if he would have been able to foretell that night.

The thing that burned his ass the most was that the wounds were all self-inflicted. His own father used to tell him that a hard head always leads to a soft ass. Before this, he never truly understood the gravity of that statement.

“Are you really going to stay out here all night?”

Mavis’ voice was like rain in the middle of a sandstorm. The soft hand on his arm as she took a seat next to him squelched the flames that had burned so hot only moments before he could have caused a brush fire.

“What does it take to win you back, M? I would sit on hot coals if you need me to. I know I fucked up. It was wrong of me to ask you to keep being my fuck buddy and never to want anything in return. I was wrong.”

Jessie took in the sight of her. She wore a short white mini-skirt and a glittering tank top that showed off her voluptuous cleavage. Her hair was pulled over to one side in a loose ponytail. If he hadn’t known any better, he would have sworn it was all those days ago back in high school.

“Yes, you were wrong. You shouldn’t have asked me to do that. But, as much as you were to blame, I was as well. For years, I let you . . .” She looked away from him for a moment and into the starlit sky. “I let you give me only what you wanted. I never told you what I needed. I cheated myself out of joy and happiness. It was my responsibility to tell you that it wasn’t enough. I didn’t. I allowed you to drift in and out of town, no calls, no letters, nothing. Only to show up at your mother’s house the minute I heard you were in town. You weren’t even the one to call me. It was your mother, or your aunt when I ran into her at Harps Grocery. It never insulted me. Never embarrassed me, because all I could see was you. And this time, it’s not enough. You can’t force me to take it, and I can’t force myself to any longer.”

Jessie couldn’t say anything. Her truth stabbed him in his liver and twisted downward, ripping his gut out.

“I didn’t know what I was doing, M. I have been in so much pain and darkness, and all I wanted was to protect you from that. It didn’t feel like I was punishing anyone but myself. It wasn’t until I was in my counseling session today that I began to see.”

“Are you in therapy, Jessie?” Her concerned gaze scanned his features. “Why didn’t you tell me? Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m all right. I just have a long road ahead of me. I’m dealing with the pain of Antoine’s death. He was a good friend of mine who died because I couldn’t protect him. And even before that, I have been so afraid that I may die one day and leave all of you suffering, so I put a wall up around myself. I blocked so many people out that I overlooked the fact that I was walling myself in with bricks made of dynamite. I’ve been on the edge of imploding for months now.”

She chewed her lower lip. “I’m really sorry you’re going through that. I’m sad you didn’t trust me enough to share this with me.” Her eyes glistened with moisture.

The moonlight made them look like an ocean. He wanted to swim in them, bask in their light.

“I couldn’t share with you what I didn’t even want to face myself,” he began. “And now, now that I’ve lost you, I want to tell you everything. That’s what is so fucked about it. I don’t know if you can ever forgive me, but I would go on forever trying to make it right.”

He reached for her hand as the words came forth, longing to touch her. He needed to connect with the one woman who seemed to hold the keys to making him whole again. It was clear then, that he would dream of her during his darkest periods because she was his torch that would light the way.

To Jessie’s surprise, Mavis didn’t pull away from him. She allowed him to hold her hands, to touch her precious, delicate skin.

“I don’t know if we can go back to what it was before . . .”

“I’m not asking you to go back there. I’m asking you to move forward with me. I want to be honest with you. I need to share the experiences that have made me the way I am. I won’t ever be that boy who followed you around again. And you won’t be the girl who allowed me into your bed at my whim. We have to start here, now. There are parts of me that are as black as night. I’ve killed people while I was away. But, I still love you and you are the only person who makes me feel again. Without you, I’ll lose my humanity. You keep me from becoming a savage beast. I need you.”

Mavis’ shoulders quivered and tears ran down her cheeks, dripping onto her shirt.

Jessie’s heart swelled as he watched her, so angelic and vulnerable. She hadn’t looked at him again. She stared into the darkness of the night.

The compulsion to soothe her pain overcame him. He gently placed his arms about her shoulders and turned her to face him. He tilted his head, placing his partially open lips over hers and indulged in her sweet mouth.

It was a kiss, but he tried to make her feel everything that his words lacked, all the sincerity and love he had held back from her for too many years was encumbered into that simple kiss. Her svelte body leaned into his and her arms slid into the tightness of his arms. They devoured one another, nibbling and gasping from desperate gulps of air.

He leaned her back onto the cool porch, which felt refreshing in the humid air. He slid his hand down to her waist, feeling her soft skin just beneath her tank top. Any other night, he would have longed to take her, but on this evening, he suppressed his urges to conquer her sugared mound. Instead, he delighted in pleasuring her. He allowed her to have her way with him as she rolled atop him and continued to kiss him with abandon.

When she stopped and laid her head on his chest, he wrapped his arms around her and held on to her as if he were afraid to let her go.

“M?”

“Yes, my love?”

“Can you please tell that dude in your house to leave? I’m ready to go to bed with you and fall into a coma-like sleep.” He remained calm, not wanting to start another argument.

“I would, but he’s my cousin Brian from Massachusetts and he’s staying with me for the week.”

A symphony of emotions roiled through Jessie. From embarrassment to fury to confusion and finally to amusement, he stood and pulled Mavis to her feet.

Draping his arm over her shoulder, he didn’t ask any questions. He merely accompanied her into her house, locked the door, and went to bed after apologizing to Brian, and wrapped around her like a comfortable, old blanket.