Find Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book Two) (34 page)

That’s when I hear the smash of my rear
window.

Probably Tolek hoped this would scare the
shit out of me and make me pe
e-pee in my panties all the way home. For a second, I
admit, I got a shock and a fright: Loud smashing sounds of glass
tend to do that. Until you gather your wits and see what caused it.
Which, when the adrenaline is chugging like a locomotive, takes
fractions of a second.

And
the next emotion up the scale is not fear. It’s a deadlier
one. An invigorating one. And one I’ve been dying to get pumping
into my fists since Dino took that sucker shot at me.

It ain’t
flight
. It’s fight.

Which is exactly what I do.

Because I’m angry
.
Yippee ki-yay.

I guess poor Tolek here gets a little more
than he bargained for, because the poor bastard is at the short end
of one
lousy
damn week.
I mean,
lousy
. My father
is killed, Tolek here tries to threaten my girlfriend, Dino damn
near kills me, Blaze is dragged onto the ground by some stoned
dealer-friend. Are you seeing this?

There’s only so much frustration sex can
get rid of. And I a
in’t
had any in quite some days anyway.

I
slam
my
door against his smug face! This brings me instant gratification,
because Tolek had been laughing, looking at the back of my car, at
the friend of his who just slammed into it with a bat or whatever
it was. The slamming of the door against his most unattractive face
smudges some blood on my window.
Good! That means I either cut his lip or
broke his nose. Again.

He stumbles back, hands immediately to his
face. He’s crouching. I could just piston a knee up into his nose
and make the damage more permanent, but I see the bat go way up on
my left and start heading for me.

I fly over Tolek’s crouched back and land on
a roll!

The wooden bat slams the ground and
cracks
. (Ain’t
no
Louisville
Slugger
that’s for
sure.) The third guy now starts running from behind the car toward
me. Tolek straightens. I’m on the ground. I
flip
around and hook my foot around Tolek’s shin,
bringing him to the floor with a
thunk
.

The third dude from the back (also with a
bat), raises it and slams it down in my direction. I
roll
.
Poing
! It hits
the concrete next to me. He raises it again. I
roll
! But before it hits the ground, I flick a hand
behind his ankle and
pull
!

He falls back and—
Ouch!
On his coccyx! He’s wailing! His hand goes to
behind his ass. The aluminum bat has fallen to his left! (Friend
One’s bat was wood, and it has some seriously jagged edges on it
now because it broke as it hit the ground.) Tolek is getting up. I
fumble forward for the aluminum bat and grab it! Above me—jagged
bat heading down. I flip onto my back and slap the wooden bat away
with my aluminum one!

Tolek’s up now. I swing the bat
again,
at his legs. He
falls! Wailing! Grabbing his shin. “Oh, god, I sorry! Stop! I
sorry!”

His friend is not so sorry—the one with
the jagged bat—because he starts charging for me.

That’s the easiest to handle: I drop my
own bat so I have both my hands free. I swing back and use his
motion to rip his bat from his hands and send him flying into the
dead rosebushes.

I have a moment now to gather my wits:

Coccyx boy
—he’s out. No threat there.

Tolek, still grabbing the shin. Not fully
out, but no threat.

And, on my left, Jagged Bat Guy (now with
no bat). He’s still strong and willing. But hesitant now that I’ve
got his toy—jagged bat in my hand.

I could leave it as it is. One busted up
shin—not even broken. A banged up coccyx (probably broken). Lesson
learned.

But it’s not. Because this bullshit needs
to
stop
!

I point the jagged bat over at Tolek. “Get
up. Tell your boyfriends to take a walk by the water. You and me
are gonna have it out—man to man.”

I see his hesitation.
He’s scared
, I think. The dude is a big guy, but he’s
scared.

Too bad
.
Don’t pick fights you can’t handle on your
own
. “GET UP!” I shout.
Tolek does, grimacing. “Call your boys off.”

You know what he does? He
spits
on me! Actually spits on me!
The real gooey kind. It goes in my eye and over my nose
and...
Urgh
!

It’s all I can do not to lose my
cool.

Tolek calls Mr. Rosebush over and says
some bullshit to him in Polish. Probably,
Fuck dis guy up!
Or
Dis not over.

I’m ready for the dude. I am. And I don’t
even intend to use the dangerously sharp half-bat in my hand.

But we both hear screeching tires. I see
bright white spotlights.
Huge ones. Like the kind you find on a Dodge Ram.
A
red
Dodge Ram to be precise.

Skate gets out. “I see you don’t need me,
Deck.”

My eyes are locked on Mr. Rosebush. “Not
true, homes. Keep your eyes on this bozo here. I want a little one
on one with Tolek Twisted Tooth here.”

Skate saunters over. “No problem.” He
spares an indignant look at Mr. Coccyx on the ground. Then moves
over to Rosebush Man; stands in front of him. “You heard?” he says.
“One on one. That means Deck and your Skew-Nose friend, OK? Now
stay put or what you saw on YouTube ain’t gonna be even
close
to the amount of punishment I’m
about to inflict on your ass.”

Now, if they’d only listened. But, alas, they
didn’t. I can’t say I regretted it.

Tolek maybe did. Rosebush
certainly
did.

Coccyx Boy was out for the count. Just
forget him. So we did get our One on One. Rosebush took on Skate
(dumb move, dumb
dumb
move.) And
Tolek got brave and swung one—yes,
one
—punch in my direction.

It was over far too quick. But it did the
trick. I felt much less frustrated at the end.

Midway through Tolek’s swing through
mid-air I swung my own fist—precisely timed. (I felt like I
was
Neo
in the
Matrix, watching a slow bullet fly past.)

My fist
connects with Tolek’s face, and just like an
action replay, I hear him in warped sounds say, “OOOOOOHHHHHHH
OOOOOOOMMMMMPPPFFFFFF!”

He falls.

Meanwhile, Rosebush’s stomach steps into
one debilitating cracker of an uppercut from Skate. Then another
hook into the dude’s ribs. “Urgh-Oompf” he cries. Then he
gurgles.

And he falls.

Skate’s pumped, big time. But he holds
back. Rosebush is groaning on the ground. Tolek is feeling his
face, blood dripping from his nose. Not a lot, just a
trickle.

I decide I need to
send a very clear message here. So I kneel
down next to him, and I hold his face against the concrete. I hear
the crunch of his nose just as he wails a screaming howl of ragged
agony.

I let go a little. I make my message
simple, because simple messages are best: “Bl
aze is mine. But even if she wasn’t, I
would still not let you anywhere near her. So no matter what
happens between her and me, if I
ever
see you near us, I’ll...” I push down.
Crack
. He howls. I lift. “...Well, I think you get the
point.” I push down. “
Do
you
get the point?”

He nods
, as best he can with my hand crushing down on his
cheek.

I
could
spit on him now. I could. (It doesn’t help that he looks so
much like Dino, doesn’t help him at
all
.)

But I don’t.

I tell him he’s paying for my
rear windshield, and he doesn’t
say anything. I don’t think he can afford it. Doesn’t matter. I’d
rather have him disappear from our lives than to have to deal with
him again.

I scrape the remaining glass from the rear
windshield with the aluminum bat. Then I throw it and the two
halves of the other one into the back of the truck. Skate and I
touch fists and bump shoulders. “How did you know to get
here?”

“Trev called me. Told me the bullshit you
were up to.”

“And he didn’t believe I wasn’t gonna drop
it?”

“
You’ve never been one to get off a course
once you set your mind to it, now have you?”

“
I’m still not. Except I decided on another
course before
I started
this destructive one. I’d just forgotten it
temporarily.”

Skate doesn’t ask me which course. Because he
knows I mean Blaze.

Blaze looks tired when I see her at her
place. Fearful. There’s still love in her eyes for me, but there’s
also caution. Tremendous caution.

When she shows me the photos, I understand
why.

“
Uhm, Deck, we’ll get out of your way,”
says Skate. I don’t even look at him and Vikki behind me. I’m
totally stunned at what I’m seeing in front of me. The door closes,
and I guess it’s my turn to talk.

“Surely you can’t believe any of this,” I
say.

Blaze stares.

“
Blaze, please, it was fabricated. I went
in there to get my money for the move—”

“
Your
money
?”
Something about the way she says it makes me feel really
dirty.

“
C’mon, Blaze, I swear it. Look, I even
recorded it on my phone. Remember? I told you, I didn’t trust
her—”

“Maybe you told me that to protect your own
ass in case the truth ever came out.”

“
Blaze, please, this
is
the truth!”

“
And how do I know the
recording—”

“
Wait!” I put the recording on and scroll
to about three and a half hours of us being there. With a dull thud
of certainty, it dawns on me that I’d left my phone on the living
room table when I went into Tatiana’s room to pick up the
cash.

“
Fuck,” I say. My legs are weak now. I
actually sit on
a stool.
“I...uhm...didn’t record it, Blaze.” What I
did
record was Trev talking about how fuckable the
blonde was. Guy-talk. And this is a
really
inopportune time to explain that to a girl.

“Give me the recording,” she says.

This is like a nail in the coffin to me,
because I realize it might end up incriminating me more than not.
With an incomparable level of dread, I hand her my phone. “Look,
Blaze...never mind.”

She takes the phone, starts listening to
it:

Trev’s voice: “
Bro! Are you fucking insane! Damn!
There’s three hot hot HOT women in there right now just asking for
it!”

Trev again: “
I think she expected us to see her titties
and then do her right here, two on one.”

Me: “
When Tatiana called yesterday, I confess, my cock
twitched.
”

You don’t hear Dalya calling me from the
bedroom, just some mumbling. Which is how the rest of the bedroom
scene plays out on the recording. Mumbles which
, like photographs, can be sorely
misconstrued when taken out of context, or when not heard
properly.

“
I think I’ve heard
enough
.”

“You haven’t even let me explain, Blaze.”

“
You said it yourself, the recording
explains it. And that you never told me, only makes me believe
this
Tatiana
’s
version even more.”

“
Please, Blaze, let me
at least tell you my version.”

She folds her arms, eyes swollen and puffy.
“You have five minutes. Start.”

Blaze Ryleigh

I want to believe him. I do. But I can’t.
Because
, if I’m wrong,
I’ll be the idiot.

And have
you
ever heard of a
dude facing a trio of
gorgeous
, naked and willing women, and simply walking away from
them? Not even so much as a squeeze? Or a gentle caress down one of
their...
Urgh.

Just the thought
of it makes me shudder.

W
e could do all manner of psychological analyses on this:
Was it that “coolest guy” Eliasz Piscor kissing Zuzanna Osik
instead of me? Was it Tolek’s baboon mentality when he groped me
below? Was it losing my virginity to my best friend’s brother while
high on Molly and then being grappled down to the ground by him
years later? But none of it changes the way I feel. Psychological
analyses and theories are all wonderful and happy-clappy when it
comes to drinking martinis and philosophizing about the nature of
life down at the country club. But in the real world, where the
rest of us live, they’re about as useful as a
Pantera
album in a rave’s ultra-mellow
chill-room.