J Speaks (L & J 2) (3 page)

I can still hear it
. I would have said something like “I’m flattered by your offer, but if you buy me a drink I will feel obligated to stand here and talk to you. And I don’t really want to talk to you. So I’ll pass on the drink.”
She kept it real, that’s for sure. I look back on that moment, and I get it now. At the time I thought it was funny, witty, sexy, and hot as hell that she would rather buy her own drink. Now I know that statement epitomized Elle. She took care of herself. She owed no one, and she relied on no one. She said every one hurt everyone at some point, even if they didn’t mean to. I didn’t know how true that would be.

I didn’t want to leave her, but I saw the blonde coming back, and I wasn’t ready to deal with her. I didn’t need to be messing with Elle anyway. I knew I couldn’t bring her into my fucked up life. I didn’t want her or the blonde to know about the monster that I was. I went back upstairs and tried to focus on the encoded spreadsheet I kept of each tax I collected, yet I found myself back at the window, watching for her. She came back from the bathroom, and I swear the crowd parted for her. I knew where she was going. I knew the routine and this was my favorite part. So why didn’t I just watch her dance? I have no fucking clue other than her magnetism tripled when she danced, and my steel heart was no match.

I knew it was a ballsy move, what I did on the dance floor. My intention was merely to dance with her. I wanted to feel her body pressed against mine. I wanted to lose myself in her, just like she lost herself in the music. I’m sure she felt my dick hard against her. It was like having a marble fucking sausage lodged in my pants. I knew I wasn’t going to get off anytime soon, so I settled for the next best thing, getting her off. In hindsight, I’m surprised she let me put my hand in her pants. She tensed up at first, and I told her I’d never hurt her. What a fucking lie that turned out to be! I never meant to hurt her. In that moment, I wanted to make her feel good. And for some reason, she trusted me enough to let her. When I felt her pussy tighten and contract around my fingers, it was almost as good as getting off myself. I used my bandana to wipe my fingers, and I swear that piece of fabric became anointed, like she blessed it with her juices.

I didn’t want to leave her.
I should’ve never left the dance floor, but I had guys ready to check in and I had business to handle. No matter how much I wanted to throw her over my shoulder and take her upstairs to fuck every which way, I knew I had a job to do. I also knew I couldn’t falter, or these dealers would jump on the opportunity to try and fuck me over.

I didn’t see her leave
Eight Oh Eight. I thought she would wait for me. Ah, but I didn’t really know her yet. I looked for her after I handled the dealers, but it was like she disappeared. One minute she was there, and the next she’d vanished.

After that night, I looked for he
r at Checks and Eight Oh Eight, but she didn’t come around. I’d freaked her out. I didn’t know it then, but I bet she went straight into deer mode. She ran. I didn’t know if she was avoiding me. At the time I thought she either could’ve been avoiding me, was appalled by me, or just didn’t care. I never asked, even after we got together. After I made her see stars on the Eight Oh Eight dance floor and she bailed on me, I sulked like a bitch for a month. And then I just gave up. I’d fucked up. She stopped coming to Eight Oh Eight, so I couldn’t even watch her through the window. My dick had fucked everything up.

No, I’d fucked it up a long time ago when I stayed with Burns. I shoulda got dead. I’d thought it so many times.

After Elle bailed on me, I was back in my black hole. I didn’t give a fuck. It was worse than before. I’d had a taste of the light, a tiny nibble of her light. Before, I didn’t know what I was missing. After that night, I knew exactly what I was missing, and I dug a hole so deep in my mind, I didn’t think I’d ever get out.

I’d settled into that hole when I saw her at Checks. I saw her before she saw me. That’s how it always was. I wasn’t really doing anything. I didn’t do much at Checks. We didn’t run drugs through there, and I never saw dealers there. They knew Checks was off limits to them, even to come have a drink. Checks and Eight Oh Eight weren’t to be mixed. I hung out there just to be a presence, and because I got bored of the everyday monotony of my life.

When I saw her there the day after Thanksgiving, I was relaxing with a beer in the corner. It’s a perfect corner. Hard to see unless you’re in the perfect spot, at the perfect angle. I could see everyone walking in the door, but they couldn’t see me.

When she walked in with one of those cooks, my heart hammered in my chest like I was fifteen and about to get my first blow job. I’d shot men point blank between the eyes, but this chick was somehow making my heart pound around the steel coating I’d applied to it. I didn’t think about the fact that I had my cut on. Last time
, I took it off so she wouldn’t see it and know I was MM. This time I was so hype to see her again, I forgot to take it off.

The same war from Eight Oh Eight raged inside me. I should leave her alone. I wanted to beat that into my head. I told myself there was no place for anything more than a fuck in my life. And I wanted Elle for way more than a fuck. I wanted her to be mine. Mine and only mine. I wanted all of her. I wanted to lose m
yself in her. I couldn’t though. I couldn’t bring her into my world. Shit, I didn’t even want to be in my world.

Elle was stunning. She was radiant. I don’t even know where the fuck those words came from, but as I thought them, I found my fucking feet moving towards her. Just like before, a magnetic force emanated from her
, and I felt helpless.

I wasn’t
helpless though. I was selfish. In that moment, I didn’t give a fuck that I might shatter her heart. All I thought was that I wanted her to be mine. I wanted her in my bed, on my counter, on the floor, on any space I could find. I wanted her body wrapped around mine when I fell asleep, and to be there when I woke up. I wanted to lose myself in her light.

That was the night I learned the name that went with the girl who’d been starring in what she would call my “masturbation fantasies.”  I’d been jerking off to her for over a year
, and I finally knew her name. I shoved all those thoughts, all the shit in my head down, and put my game face on. Little did I know, she had hers on too. Elle had one helluva game face.

I learned a lot about her that night. Some
from what she said, but I learned most from what she didn’t say. Again, I could tell the guys she was with deferred to her. They treated her… not like glass. Elle wasn’t made of glass. She was strong. They didn’t treat her like their sister either, because they both would’ve fucked her if given the chance. No, it was like she was the sun, and they were the planets orbiting around her. Gravity kept them spinning, and she was the force that kept them from flying off into space. She shined the minute she walked in a room. Damn, but she had some serious lady swagger goin’ on. It wasn’t until she let someone know her, that they realized she was radiant.

And she was so fucking cool. Her damn Roger Waters speech. Fuck. She was more than a hip hop chick. I wanted to know everything about her. I wanted to know every thought and emotion that passed through her. I didn’t know at that time that she’d make me work for it. Elle didn’t give up information freely, which was our downfall.
That mother fucking starfish. Hindsight’s twenty twenty. Man, hindsight’s a bitch.

It
didn’t matter. I would’ve still fucked with her phone, got her number, and gave her mine. I swear I paced the floor of the office at Eight Oh Eight the next day. I thought for sure she’d call before she came to the club. Then I watched for her all night and she never showed. If it’d been any other chick, I would’ve thought she was playing games. But I got the impression that Elle didn’t play games. So I freaked. And paced. And was a total dick to dealers who came to pay their tax. For once, I wanted one of them to come up short so I could beat the fuck out of someone, but of course they all were straight. So I paced. I paced until I worked myself up into such a frenzy I sent her the weakest text any man can send.
You didn’t call.
I’d heard that before from those whiney, high pitched voice chicks. And here I was, texting those same words to Elle.

I could go on about acting like a lil
’ bitch, but fuck it. When she walked into the door of Starbucks, I didn’t care what I’d texted. Because when she walked in, she brought the sun with her and shined it into the dark hole I’d been in for almost a decade. And by the end of the day, her light had melted the steel that I’d so carefully built around my heart.

My dick had been in love with Elle for a while. And my head had already been in love with the idea of her too. But as we walked out of Tilt, my heart and every other piece of me fell in love with her. I fell hard. Like I’d fall
en from a ten story building onto concrete. That day with her at the arcade and then at my place, fuck, it was the best day of my life. I knew I wasn’t letting her go after that. I couldn’t. I couldn’t go back into the darkness. I should’ve known it wouldn’t be up to me.

Starfish. That fucking starfish
. I should’ve never agreed to that shit. No, I had to. I knew it. She would‘ve run if I’d said no to her request. Not to mention it was perfect for me to use in order to keep her away from the shit I did, from the monster I was. When she used it on me the next morning, I wanted to grab her and tie her to my bed so I could have her all day, every way. It took everything I had not to roll over and pull her to me. She’d given me an out. She’d given me the chance to give her the out. Out of my life and the darkness, the drugs, guns, and killing. She would never know the monster. I fuckin’ let her go.

I texted her the next day, but I knew she was bailing on me. She was in deer mode, and it was for the
best. If she knew what I did, she would go straight to deer mode anyways, and I’d never see her again. Might as well, rip the Band-Aid off. I let her go and didn’t call her after that. I dialed her number and held my phone in my hand, ready to hit send a million times.

I didn’t. I spent the week acting like a dick to anyone who got in my way. I had to make a run to KC that week. I had some 240B and P90 machine guns I was hauling.

I wanted to take one of them and shoot the fuck out of something, anything. I stopped at a rest area along the way. Something I never do when I transport merchandise. Thank god no one was there, because I flipped the fuck out. I knew I couldn’t touch the guns in back, and I was so pissed at even getting involved with Elle in the first place. It was like I was setting myself up to feel like shit.

I fell to the ground in front of the shitty little bathrooms
, and screamed like a rabid animal. I raged out like a psycho. And then I begged. I begged Gramps to help me, take away the shit I was feeling, take me to where he was, to do something. Anything. I don’t know what I wanted. A fucking sign?  Yeah, nothing happened. I knelt in the dirt a minute longer, and then got my ass back in the van and delivered the merchandise.

Well, it seems that even for a mother fucker like me, who deserves to rot in hell for what he’s done, the spirits saw fit to give me that sign. I saw her again at Eight Oh Eight the next weekend, and I was right back where I started. I’d spent the whole week drowning in darkness
, and in walks the sun. I’d like to say I fought with myself about going to her. I’d like to say I fought to stay away, that a war waged inside me, that I tried my best to stay away. But I didn’t. I didn’t even try. I saw her, and like always, the magnetic pull that was Elle drew me to her. I didn’t even fight it. The disappearing made me feel like a monster, but Elle made me feel like a man again.

After that night, Elle was mine. By some miracle, she went home with me and didn’t run away again. Instead she let me in. She fucking let me in. Each moment together, she let me melt a little more of that heart of hers.
Her heart was so big, and the love she had for those she cared about overflowed in it. Fuck, I wanted to be on the list of people she cared about. I wanted her to shine her light on me. I would’ve done anything to keep her. I didn’t care if that made me a selfish prick. I had a taste of the sun between her legs, and I wanted to dine on it every night.

Shrek. I can’t believe she quoted Shrek.
We were in the car at Tilt, and I was still trying to figure her out when she said it.
Like ogres and onions, I have layers.

Who the hell quotes Shrek?
Elle did, and when she did, her light shone even brighter because I knew I’d never be bored with her. As I peeled back each layer of the onion, I fell more and more in love with her.

She wasn’t
what I expected. She was more. So much more.

I don’t know who I thought she was gonna be, but each time she told me new shit about her, I was amazed at what she had been through
, and what she was doing for herself now. I felt like maybe she could handle my world, but only if I gave it to her in small pieces. I had to keep her the fuck away from all things MM. I knew she had her shit together way better than me. She didn’t need to be messing with anything even remotely connected to MM. She was better than MM. Yet at the same time, had we been back in Ratchet’s days, the days of a true MC, she would’ve made a fine old lady. She would’ve been the best.

She felt the pull too.
Every time our bodies were naked together, it was like a little slice of heaven. She knew that just as much as I did. Neither one of us could deny that part of us was perfect. In those moments, and the ones right after the fireworks exploded, I’d never felt more connected to another human being as I did with Elle. The sex was phenomenal, but it was more than just an act. It was a connection. When we lay in bed afterwards, tangled up in one another... Those were precious moments, because it’s when Elle bared herself to me. There were so many Elles. The one right after we both were sated the fuck out was full of stories, confessions, and laughter. She was free, and that energy radiated out of her. I was the lucky bastard basking in its glow.