Mercy F*uck (2 page)

I love you should be the easiest words you ever say.

As far as timing went, it would never be better than this.

With his messy hair, cocky grin, and possessive grip on my hips, I rolled myself on top of him and cupped his face in my hands. It was time.

“Axle,” I whispered tracing his stubble with my fingertips. “I need to tell you something and ask you something.”

“You can tell me anything,” he said and I could feel his anticipation because it mirrored my own. “Ask me anything, you know that.”

“Last night,” I stumbled to say. “You—us. It was perfect.”

“Yeah, it was,” he said taking my hand to kiss the top, which melted me. No one else saw this side of him but me, just me. “You were perfect, Drew, then again everything about you is.”

“We were in synch,” I smiled lovingly. “Like we’ve done it a thousand times before.”

“Believe me,” he grinned again. “I know.”

“I want to be in synch again, like as much as possible, with you. Twenty-four-seven, with a key and your boots by the door,” God, I was babbling. “Because you’re not just my best friend.”

“Hey,” he said softly. “You’re not just my best friend either.”

Elated about that, I kiss him once and said, “Axle, I—,” when someone knocked on his door. College dorms had paper thin walls and the knock sounded like an explosion. I was kicking myself for not doing this at my place. Where we could make noise and not be interrupted. However, there was nothing to be done about that now.

Kissing me on the nose and rolling me gently to my back, he whispers, “Whoever it is, I’ll get rid of them. We’re not done yet.”

“Okay,” I sighed dreamily up at him and groan when I catch sight of his bare ass.

So fucking beautiful…

My place, his, it didn’t matter, I decided. Not as long as he was there.

Smiling into the pillow that held his scent, I hear laughter followed by words that would change the course of my life.

Two words specifically.

“No shit?” the voice I recognized as annoying asshole, Mike, roared in laughter. “Drew was a mercy fuck?”

“Keep your voice down,” he said angrily but it was too late, the damage had been done.

“Mercy fuck?” he roared again digging the blade in deeper. “Priceless man, fucking priceless!”

I knew exactly what it meant to be a mercy fuck. The stigma behind it, the fucking ridicule that would now follow.

Naked in his bed I felt my trust shatter, my hope being crushed and the very essence of me being ruined.

Hollow, vulnerable, and cold. So cold my teeth began to chatter, followed by my stomach bottoming out.

Nausea was swift, the room began to pitch and my nose was burning too.

Indescribable pain.

I even clutched my chest wondering if my heart had been cleaved in half.

It hadn’t. It still beat, just differently now.

Everything was different now.

Evidently, I was the girl he didn’t actually want to fuck but he did it anyway because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

Oh yeah, Axle scored big, huge even.

He tagged the bartending virgin.

Since the day I started slinging drinks the pervs brought their A games.

I literally lost count of how times men tried to ‘tap my ass’.

Never, not once, did I play into it.

No, I waited. Fucking waited!

All I could think was, how? How did I not know? Nearly two years of non-stop friendship, brutal honesty and that’s what he thought of me? The humiliation was complete when I heard Mike, the narcissistic fuckstick, telling other people in the hallway and Axle threatening to kill him if he didn’t shut his mouth.

I wasn’t stupid.

I’ve heard guys talk about mercy fucks for years. Even as horny as college guys were, they drew the line at tagging another guy’s mistake. It was like some frat boy fucking code or something. I’ve seen how mercy fucks were treated and it wasn’t kindly. The poor girls were campus jokes and they didn’t deserve that. No one fucking deserved that.

I refused to be brought low.

I refused to be the campus cautionary tale.

The second Axle and I started hanging out together people had talked. Now the gossiping assholes had an actual reason to talk.

There was no more speculation. They’d know the second I walked out the door and commenced my walk of shame.

I set myself up for an epic fall and the fault lied with me. I broke my rule and fraternized with a customer.

Wrong!

I fell in love with a customer.

Had I kept to myself no one would have shit to say because there was no shit.

Which means I fucked up and I could never show my face around here again.

Hardening what was left of my heart, I looked around his room and debated ripping it apart with my bare hands.  The only reason I didn’t was because the need to escape was more powerful than the need for destruction.

By the time he came back in, I was already dressed and sliding my flats on.

“You’re leaving?” he asked reaching for me and I couldn’t stop myself. With every ounce of strength, I had, I cock-punched him and when he hit the floor, I stepped over him, snagging my bag on the way out. I was extremely proud of myself for not looking back or worse, begging him to love me even a fraction of how I loved him.

My heart urged me to fucking stop, turn back around and ask him why?

But I no longer listened to the useless, deceptive organ. Instead, I tuned out his voice roaring for me to come back. The second I hit the steps and the sun hit my skin, I tuned everything out.

Because of those two words I vowed to spend my future making certain I was never a mercy fuck again.

I sure as hell wouldn’t be foolish enough to ever fall in love twice either.

Feelings and romance were for pussies.

The very next day, I moved to a new apartment, quit my job at the bar, and relocated deeper into the city. I found work at a menacing establishment off the grid. A place where college assholes dare not come. It was here I would find the means to explore men on my own terms, where I could fuck them and leave them because that’s what people like me did. It’s what I would continue to do too.

No guy would ever hold that power over me again.

I held the power now.

Therefore, I became the mercy fuck master.

It’s like the man held no regard for money.

Considering that’s what we needed to make a living, I had been spending all my time sorting through old files he had ‘forgotten’ were in his basement.

While he may not care about paying his bills, I did and I considered this unfinished business. The boxes held forgotten bounties or as he called them, ‘favors’. Here I’d worked for the man for years and had no idea these boxes even existed or that he even did favors.

Six months ago, I bought Foxy’s Bail Bonds from him when he mentioned retirement. The problem was, taking over a business took a lot of man-hours and I had yet to take on any new business because I needed to close out the old first. Between improvements to the building, transferring licenses, and buying a computer to store shit electronically, meant I was just now able to find the time to sort through. Creating files were the God damn bane of my existence and it wasn’t the first time I wondered if buying him out was a mistake. I enjoyed field work, not desk work and my headache agreed with me.

Finally, to the bottom of the last box, I tore open the file never in a million fucking years expecting to see her face. Every emotion I had buried, every memory of her, of us, pummeled me. It was a swift and brutal assault and I planted my hands on my chair to hold me upright. Not only was it excruciating, it was a motherfucker of a reminder of what I’d lost too.

I scanned the pages quickly but found myself going back to her picture. There was no taking my eyes from it, no stopping my fingers from tracing it. Drew was even more beautiful now than she was the one night I had her in my arms. And believe me, she was a thing of beauty. A woman that I could never, even nine years later, forget.

Foxy and I established a simple relationship early on. I busted my ass making us both money and in return he refused to speak of Drew. He’d made it clear from the get she was not a topic he’d discuss and in nine years, he never did. Even when Drew’s dad stopped in he spoke of everything but his oldest daughter. Behind these walls, she did not exist and in the beginning, it grated but after a while, I had been grateful. Because I associated Drew with pain, unspeakable pain.

Dialing him, I ask why he never mentioned this to me. Then I asked him why he didn’t let me handle it and in his usual gruff way, he simply said, “Drew pistol whips a motherfucker, Drew has reason. Which is why I left her the fuck alone.” I didn’t like this at all. I’d been with Foxy for years and he never kept business to himself before, it’s not how we operated. He should have trusted me to handle her like I’d handle any other bond.

“Care to tell me why I wasn’t brought in on this?” I asked and at his silence, I pointed out, “She pistol whipped a cop’s kid, Foxy. No way Drake was cool with that.”

“Drake knows his daughter and raised a fine woman. A cop’s kid should know better than to put his hands on a woman, Axle. A woman who don’t like kids, cop’s spawn or not, putting their hands on people; so she taught him a lesson. That lesson ended nine months ago. So do what I did, stuff it back in that God damn box.”

“Can’t,” I said tracing her mugshot with my finger again. Her mugshot with her rolling her pretty eyes at the camera. Still fucking sassy as ever, clearly time and arrests hadn’t altered that.

“Drake asked me to handle it personally, not you, for good reason. Nine years is a long time, son, people change. She’s different now. Not as soft and sweet, but hardened. I promise you, she is not the Drew you know anymore…” he said with a sigh.

“Actually old man,” I said tracing her photo again while ignoring his warning. “No one knows her better than I do.”

Or at least, I hoped what I said was true.

Because once we had been in synch, as she’d said.

And I didn’t believe she could have changed much more than I had.

She and I were one in the same, made for each other.

Drew was the girl who laughed at my jokes, whose laugh sounded like the tinkling of soft bells and who never left my side for nearly two years. The girl who looked at me like I hung the moon and lit the stars. The same one who let me be her hero, best friend, and her first. The fucking girl who saved it all for me.

We were supposed to have forever, had been on our way to finding it when I kissed her for the first time.

The second our mouths met, I knew being apart from her was unthinkable.

At least it was until she left and made living without her a reality I wasn’t equipped to face.

To this day, I don’t know why she looked broken when I reached for her or why she nutted me leaving me to writhe in pain on the floor. It’s not like I could ask her dad, Drake, or her surrogate grandfather, Foxy, why the girl they adored and I banged, took off without a backward glance.