Little Conversations (12 page)

“You fucking
whore
!” he ground out. 

Her courage disintegrated at his grating intonation, and he
violently pushed her back up flush against the wall.  Like a slow motion movie
sequence, she saw him bring back his fist.  She closed her eyes and turned her
head slightly, as if his anger was blinding her.  Her knees gave way, and she began
to slide down the wall to kneel on the floor.  As she dropped, she heard a
crack to the side of her head and felt bits of sheetrock dust her shoulder. 

Jake stood above her for a breath.  “Oh my God,” he breathed
in shocked revulsion.  “God, Devin.”  He looked down at her crouching on the
floor before him.  “See what you do to me?  Why do you piss me off like this? 
You always do this.  God, I almost hit you.”

Devin’s chest felt constricted.  She’d never been hit—ever. 
Not even spanked as a child.  The aftermath of the last few seconds began to
build in her, her breathing became jerky, and she frantically tried to calm
herself.  Jake stared at his hand, a little scraped and bloodied from the
spackled texture on the wall.  He stared through the darkness of the room at
the shadow of a hole his fist had left.  “God,” he breathed again.  He got down
on his knees, and clasped her face.  “Jesus, Devin.”  He kissed her.  “I’m so
sorry.  God, I just love you so much…”  He kissed her again.  Devin let him,
too shocked to respond.  She didn’t push him away.  She didn’t kiss him back. 
She just stayed there, appalled by what had just transpired. 

Jake stood, and pulled her to her feet.  She stood
emotionlessly.  He wrapped a hand around the back of her head and he kissed her
hard.  His lips slid down to her neck.  The tears in Devin’s eyes began to fall
as he unbuttoned her shirt.  He tugged at her skirt until it dropped to the
floor.  He slid her shirt from her shoulders and pushed her back towards the
bed.  Devin didn’t fight him.  She was on autopilot.  She felt outside of her
body, as though she was looking down and watching this in horror, watching as
she shamefully gave into him… gave herself to him.  Again.  Her tears streamed down
the sides of her face as Jake slipped on a condom and took her, quickly and
forcefully. 

When he was done, he fell to her side.  Devin turned her
head away, her mind reeling. 
What had just happened?  What kind of
fucked-up parallel universe was she in? 

“Devin?” Jake mumbled sleepily.

“Yeah?”

“You kinda smell like a smoky bar.”

Devin eased out of the bed and crept to her bathroom.  She
started up the shower in a daze and climbed inside.  As she closed her eyes to
position her face in the spray, her mind flashed to see Ronin standing in the
doorway to the bar tonight.  She had barely glanced at him when he had spoken,
but she could see him so clearly in her mind now, as if it were a photo, larger
than life.  She saw the indecipherable look on his face.  She heard an echo of
the strange lilt in his voice.  She felt the burn of tears, her breath
hitched.  And in the shower, naked and alone, she wept. 

 “Last call!” Todd hollered from the back of the bar.

Ronin sucked down the last of his beer and looked over at
Joe.  “Ready?”

Joe looked at him intensely.  “I’m driving, Ronin,” Joe warned.
 “You haven’t left that stool all night, and, it seems like every time I have
seen you, you’ve been finishing off another beer, like you’re mad-drinking or
something.”

“Fuck off, Joe,” Ronin responded and he stood.  Or he tried
to stand, but the floor felt like a trampoline, and he weaved, barely able to balance. 
  

“Holy shit, Ronin.  Matt, Shane—get the fuck over here and
help me.”  Joanie and Amy stood to the side and watched with worry as Joe lifted
Ronin’s arm to cross his shoulders.  Shane grabbed Ronin’s other arm and did
the same.  Amy held open the door to the bar, and Joanie ran ahead to open the
passenger door of Ronin’s truck so the guys could push him in. 

“You got him, Joe?” Matt asked. 

“Yeah, I’ll just walk home from his place,” Joe responded.  “It’s
only a couple blocks.”

“I’ll ride along,” Shane offered.  “Amy, can you get my
truck and pick me up at Joe’s?”

“Yeah, I can do that, big brother,” Amy quietly murmured.

Ronin was slouched in the middle of the bench seat, his head
lying back against the headrest. 

“Fuck,” Joe muttered.  “I haven’t seen him like this in
years.”  

Joanie stepped forward, reaching in and across Ronin to
buckle his seatbelt.  “More to keep him in his seat than for safety,” she said
looking worried.

Shane and Joe climbed in the pickup on either side of Ronin,
and Joe backed it out of the parking space.  The streets were relatively
quiet.  It was just before two o’clock in the morning, and the bars hadn’t
started to kick out their patrons yet. 

“Turn here,” Ronin slurred in his drunken stupor.

“We’re taking you home, Ronin,” Joe replied.

“Joe, turn,” Ronin said more forcefully.  “Turn right and
then left in three blocks.”

“Ronin, buddy, I don’t think you wanna see what you’re gonna
see,” Shane warned. 

“Fuckin’ turn,” Ronin muttered angrily, starting to sit up
and reaching for the steering wheel. 

“Christ, okay!” Joe ground out.  “Just sit back and keep
your God-damned hands off the wheel.”

Joe turned, following Ronin’s directions.  He slowed as they
drove quietly passed Devin’s place.  Ronin again raised his head a touch and
looked down the driveway.  Jake’s truck.  The lights were off.  He was
evidently spending the night.  Right now, Devin was probably blissfully wrapped
up in his arms.  Ronin swallowed hard, dropped his head back, and closed his
eyes.

“Okay, Joe.  Take me home.”

Devin opened her eyes to find herself in her bed.  Alone. 
Not surprising.  Jake never stayed until she woke up.  Her eyes travelled
across her wall to the hole, the size of a fist.  She felt numb, ill.  Not used,
but not loved.  Detached. 

Completely alone. 

She looked over at her clock and saw there was about an hour
and a half left before her shift at the Sundowner.  Her hands lifted to rub her
temples and her eyes, and she clumsily shuffled out of bed and into the
bathroom.  Her thick hair fell around her shoulders, still damp from her
late-night shower.  She brushed it harshly and pulled it back into a painfully tight
ponytail.  She applied her make-up, pinching her lids a bit with her eyelash
curler.  She looked closely in the mirror and plucked a few wayward bits from
her brows.  She brushed her teeth harshly and kept the Listerine in until it
burned.  Through all this, she felt nothing.  Completely disconnected.  A void
where her soul once endured.  She couldn’t seem to shake the dismal air.  She
couldn’t shake the gray cloud that enveloped her.

She pulled the sheets off the bed and threw them into the
washing machine with extra bleach.  She doused her eyes with Visine to reduce
the bloodshot appearance resulting from the flood of tears the night before.  She
applied a heavy coat of eyeliner to mask the red, swollen rim of her eyes. 

Still feeling outside of herself, she headed outside, started
her dumpy little Jetta, and mechanically drove to work where she quietly stood
in the wait station, rolling silverware and napkins into little bundles.  The
lunch rush began, and she dutifully rotated onto the floor, taking tables as
they arrived, smiling when expected, but without it ever reaching her eyes.  As
she stood in front of the till ringing in a guest’s ticket, the bell at the front
door rang, and she turned to seat the new customer.  It was Ronin.

She froze.

He looked at her standing there staring at him.  His eyes
travelled over her, focusing on the hollow, empty look in her eyes. 

Slowly, she came to and walked over to him. 

“Did you want a table?” she asked tremulously in a barely
audible voice. 

Ronin nodded, so she turned and grabbed a menu.  He followed
her to a small booth in the corner.  As she set the menu on the table, Ronin’s
hand reached out to softly grasp her arm.

 “Everything okay with Jake?” Ronin asked, standing closely
behind her. 

“No,” Devin murmured without looking at him.  “No, it’s not.”
 Her voice hitched a little, and she took a deep, steadying breath.  “But, I’ve
gotta work right now.”

“You get off at four o’clock?”

Devin nodded.

“Stop by my place?”

She paused, then nodded again. 

He gave her arm a light, reassuring squeeze.  “It’ll be
okay, honey.”

“Will it?” Devin asked, clearly disbelieving him.  She looked
up at him and took a shuttered breath, wanting to change the subject.  “Want
some coffee?” she asked.

Ronin looked at her for a long moment, picking up on her
reluctance to discuss last night.  “Please.  And steak and eggs… hash browns.”

Devin nodded again, and stepped away from his table towards
the kitchen.

The day passed neither slowly, nor quickly.  It was all
pretty much a blur, and then it was just done.  Ronin sat in his booth in the
corner for close to two hours before he headed home to wait for her.  His quiet
presence seemed to give her the strength to get through her shift. 

Devin headed to his house after work to find him sitting on
his steps waiting for her.  He rose to his feet and walked towards her car as
she pulled to a stop.  Woodenly, she climbed out of the driver’s seat, and walked
straight into his arms where she finally surrendered to her wretched grief.  Her
eyes flooded with tears and he held her, gently rubbing her back as she sobbed. 

They stood like that, not speaking until her crying began to
still.  He pulled back and looked down at her, and her eyes focused on the
blotches of mascara and eyeliner that had bled into his faded light blue chamois
shirt. 

Her fingers brushed across the splotch of black.  “Oh jeez, I
made a mess on your shirt,” she mumbled dismally.

“It’s okay, honey,” he reassured her as he used his thumbs
to wipe the smudges from under her eyes.  “You want to come inside?”

She nodded and Ronin took her hand to lead her inside.  He
motioned for her to sit on the couch, then walked down the hallway to the
bathroom and came back with a cool, wet washcloth which he handed to her.  She
blotted at her eyes, grimacing at the amount of eye makeup that came away on the
cloth.  He sat close on the couch, half-facing her.  She wasn’t sure what to
say, didn’t know what she was feeling.  Shame mixed with loneliness.  Feelings
of foreboding of all things Jake. 

Turmoil about how much she was growing to depend on Ronin. 

All she knew was that she felt safer next to him.  Safer
when he slipped his arm around her and pulled her to lean back with him on the
couch.  Safer when she laid her head against his shoulder. 

“Want to talk about it?” he asked gently.

“It’s just the same shit that keeps happening,” Devin
answered flatly.  “Melanie leaves.  He pays a visit.”  The shame crept into
Devin’s voice.  “And I always… always…”  Her throat closed, unable to finish
and admit her powerlessness. 

Ronin didn’t say a word.  Instead, his fingers began to
smooth over the ends of the hair that had come loose from her ponytail to fall streaming
down her back. 

“I’m so pissed that I can’t fix this.  I think I hate him as
much as I love him,” Devin whispered.  She looked up at Ronin’s introspective
expression and then snuggled back into him, breathing him in.  “I don’t even know
how to explain last night.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” Ronin said.  “I
didn’t ask you here so I could judge you.  I asked you here so I could comfort
you.”  

There was something about Ronin, being so close with her
face pressed against the soft flannel covering his chest.  There was something
about the way his heartbeat and his breathing echoed through his body, the
slight movement of him slowly chewing his gum.  Her senses began to relax, and
her feelings shifted from the humiliation of her abasement.  The warmth of
Ronin’s body began to soothe her misery.  For a little while, she began to feel…
safe.

Ronin studied Devin closely as her eyes began to droop.  Her
breathing softened and her body relaxed against his.  He knew he should shift
her around a little, move her slightly so he could lay more comfortably on the
couch.  But the knowledge that she was escaping this torment for now kept him
in place. 

Her expression when he first saw her today was frighteningly
somber.  Likely matching his at the sight of Jake’s pickup in her driveway.  He
wasn’t sure what to expect when he went to see her.  In the past, when Jake had
looked her up, her mood was a bit erratic—sometimes excited by Jake’s renewed
interest and sometimes wistful with the knowledge that it wouldn’t last.  But
this, he’d never seen her like this.  She looked as though she was completely
wrecked inside.

What had happened last night? 
He grimaced, knowing some
of what had happened.  She hadn’t actually spelled it out, hadn’t finished the
sentence, but she’d told him all the same.  The thought of Jake’s hands on her
made him ill, tense.  The thought of Jake fucking her made him want to throw
up. 

But something else had happened.  There was a telltale sign
in the small catch in her voice.  Something had really gotten to her.  Something
had hurt her deeply.  Something she wasn’t telling him. 

Ronin’s unease burgeoned as he held her.  His mind flipped
through her words outside the bar as they reverberated through his brain.

It doesn’t mean anything…

We’re friends…

We’re just friends, Jake…

It’s not what you think! 

You know I love you!

And then she had looked at him.

I’m sorry…

This was getting way too difficult. 

Over the next couple days, Devin seemed, outwardly and from
a distance, to come out of her desolate cloud.  Where she had been withdrawn,
she began to smile, then to laugh.  She began to joke around and tease.  But
Ronin, Joanie, Amy, those closest to her, saw something had changed.  She had a
hardness about her, a fierce and wary aura that kept her on edge, a caustic
lilt to her voice, a brusque undertone to her mood.  Her smile was brittle. 
Her laugh was cold.  Her jokes were sharp.  Her teasing was callous. 

Devin was most definitely not okay.