44 Chapters About 4 Men (10 page)

I felt like I was that guy in the movie
Memento
. He couldn’t form new memories, so he had all his most pertinent information tattooed on his body backward, so he could bring himself up to speed every morning when he looked in the mirror. Only, my particular affliction wasn’t that I couldn’t remember. It was that I just wouldn’t fucking learn.

Maybe what I should have had stamped all over my body was,
Your parents are going to beat and sterilize you if you break curfew over Harley fucking James one more time, you stupid dick addict!

I was fucking livid. This was exactly what I’d known was going to happen if I came over because it was exactly what had happened every time I came over. Harley would wait until it was almost time for me to leave, and then he’d get all flirty. If that didn’t work, he would go straight for pouty—wrinkling his brow, puffing out his already full to bursting pierced bottom lip, and blinking his beautiful blue puppy-dog eyes at me—until I was riding his cock.

I had to roll Harley’s massive, hard snoring body over to snatch up the last of my invitations, but that easygoing motherfucker just snorted and curled up around one of my skull pillows like it was a teddy bear. (During the height of my decorating obsession, I’d figured out how to use my mom’s sewing machine to make a couple of throw pillows for Harley’s couch. They were shaped like skulls and had black fringe Mohawks. I remember being afraid at the time that Harley would think they were too cutesy, but he liked them so much that he gave them all names and regarded them as if they were his pets.) He really was just a big kid.

I took one long last look at Harley’s sleeping baby face, pompadour of sunny-blond sex hair, and inked-up muscles clutching my pillow, and I choked back a sob. This man was trouble with a capital
rubble
. Even though he’d said he wanted the best for me and supported my plans, Harley had been slowly chipping away at the stable, secure future I’d been working so hard toward. In just a few months, I’d let my obsession with this modern-day rebel without a cause destroy my perfect 4.0 GPA and ruin my relationship with my parents. Now, I’d let him come between me and my freedom.

With the sting of unshed tears in my eyes and the grip of a vise around my chest, I took one last mental picture of the cuddly sex machine at my feet, turned on my unlaced boot heel, and drove the ever-loving shit out of my beloved Mustang one last time before turning the keys over to my seething father, who was waiting for me on the front porch when I got home. Neither of us said a word during the exchange.

The next morning, I suffered through my first three classes in silence. My whole body ached from the night before, primarily from sleeping on the floor, but my eyes were also puffy from crying myself back to sleep once I’d gotten home and a few patches of carpet burn had made themselves known throughout the day as well.

None of it held a candle, however, to the agony I was feeling over having to leave Harley. He had been my daily source of fun and flattery and affection for the last six months. Leaving him behind to trudge into the dark waters of adulthood alone felt terrifying. But how would I ever become a successful college-educated grown-up when my boyfriend was the world’s worst influence, ready with a sexy wink and a grin to undermine my attempts to be responsible at every turn?

I was in such a fog of despair that I almost walked straight into him as I made my way to the smokers’ corner of the parking lot during my lunch break.

Harley caught me in his big arms and hugged me like he hadn’t seen me in days. It was a shock to my already fragile psyche to see him so out of context. I didn’t exactly hug him back, but I let those warm arms squeeze a little of the frost out of my heart before I craned my neck to look at his worried face.

“What are you doing here? You got kicked out, remember? If anybody sees you here, they’ll call the fucking cops!”

I could feel the stares from all around. It wasn’t every day that a dangerous-looking man covered in tattoos and sporting a black stocking cap sauntered onto campus and snatched up a female student, especially one who’d been expelled four years prior and was practically worshipped by every kid rebellious enough to smoke at school.

“I had to see you and make sure you were okay.”

Harley looked like hell—well, sexy as hell—but he did need a shave, was wearing the clothes I’d peeled off of him the night before, and his usually baby-blue eyes were pink-rimmed and at half-mast.

“Did they take your car?”

I simply nodded and turned my attention to the ground, willing my eyes to dry up, before I chanced another glance up at him.

“I’m so fucking sorry, baby.” Harley held my head to his chest and ran his fingers through my angled purple bob, which I was sure also looked like hell.

“When I woke up and you were gone, I went fucking nuts. I just had this feeling like…like I was never gonna see you again. I wanted to come get you so bad, but I knew I would just make things worse if I showed up at your parents’ house in the middle of the night. I thought I was going to lose my shit.”

Harley planted a kiss on the top of my head and pulled me even closer. At first, I thought he was trying to comfort me, but it might have been the other way around. Harley’s usually playful demeanor was gone, replaced by something uncharacteristically urgent and austere. Hearing the sincerity in his voice made my heart constrict, and in that moment, I realized that I’d been blaming the wrong person. Harley was a grown man who could do and who happily did whatever he wanted. He didn’t have a curfew. I did. And I was the fuck-up here.

I kept my face snuggled into his chest, into his musky T-shirt that smelled like gasoline fumes and cigarettes. He smelled like a car guy, my car guy.

“It’s not your fault, Harley. This shit is on me,” I said.

Harley took half a step away and held me by my upper arms so that I was forced to look at him. And what I saw was heartbreaking. His beautifully innocent yet undeniably mischievous face had been transformed into something I barely recognized—the dull bloodshot scowl of a man who’d been up all night, drinking and thinking, both to excess. Even his carefree blond pompadour had disappeared, shoved under a black woolen beanie that matched the circles under his eyes almost as well as it matched the atmosphere between us.

“No, it’s on me. All my life, I’ve just done what I wanted when I wanted and said,
Fuck the consequences
. I wanted you to stay with me, so I did whatever it took to make that happen, even after I’d promised that I would get you home on time.” Harley’s tone was rough and his volume was climbing.

“I just fucked your whole life up because my house feels empty and wrong when you’re not in it.” Harley shoved his hands in his pockets, breaking physical contact with me, then tilted his head back and shouted, “Fuuuuck!” into the sky.

I scanned the parking lot to make sure the authorities hadn’t been alerted, then took a step forward and resumed our embrace. Breathing harder now, Harley reluctantly pulled his hands from his pockets, but instead of hugging me back he cupped my face in his palms and tilted up toward his.

Honing in on the two big, green, blinking olives inside my face, Harley continued in a gruff whisper, “You have no idea how sorry I am. I feel like a complete piece of shit, and I don’t know what to do to make it right. You have to let me make this right, baby.”

Harley’s brow was furrowed, and those bloodshot blue eyes bore right into my soul. I could tell that he was nervously tonguing the silver hoop piercing that wrapped around the center of his big, beautiful bottom lip, and I wanted nothing more than to kiss his fear away. Seeing the pain etched on his face hurt worse than the truckload of despair I’d been hauling around since last night.

Who was I kidding? Car or no car, I couldn’t stay away from this man for a day, let alone forever.

And as if on cue, Harley, sensing that I was on the precipice of making yet another bad decision, decided to give me one last little push.

“I want this to be forever, Lady.”

Jesus. Okay, okay. You’re forgiven. Can we go back to being happy now?

Trying to lighten the mood and pretend as though I hadn’t just broken up with him in my mind a few hours earlier, I popped two cigarettes into my mouth, lit them both, and smiled as I handed one to Harley. “Is this another proposal? You haven’t asked me yet this week, you know,” I mused.

Harley had been asking me to marry him almost daily for the last two or three months, ever since the day he’d found a gaudy gold Claddagh ring on the sidewalk outside my work. He’d been coming to see me on my lunch break when he spotted it, so naturally, as soon as he’d walked in, Harley dropped to one knee, thrust that little piece of shit into the air, and proposed to me right in front of my boss and all the good patrons of Pier 1 Imports. It was the first of at least three dozen humiliating public proposals.

While having to repeatedly reject Harley in front of our friends, coworkers, and strangers had started off horribly embarrassing and awkward, over time, it’d become a running joke between us. I was just too damn young, and he was just too damn carefree for either of us to take marriage seriously. But I had to admit, seeing Harley James, legendary bad boy with the face of an angel and the body of an ex-con, on bended knee was really starting to grow on me.

Harley turned a gleaming impish eye on me and brought his right hand to his chin, as if he were mulling over a quick parking lot proposal.

He’s back! My playful Harley! Yes!

As he rubbed his oh-so-sexy stubble and scanned the audience of pimply-faced slack-jawed teenagers watching his every move, my eyes were immediately drawn to the four letters I had etched on his knuckles the night before.

Giddily, I squealed, “You really didn’t wash your hand!” and reached for it reflexively.

When my thumb slid across the unexpectedly slippery
A
and
D
, I glanced down, searching for the source of the slime, and gasped. The skin around each letter was an angry pink color, and the entire surface was slick with what looked like Vaseline.

Oh.

My.

Fucking.

God.

1
Miss Cleo’s psychic hotline infomercials were ubiquitous with late-night TV in the ’90s, and they never, ever came on before midnight. Miss Cleo had a riotous Jamaican accent and offered to give a “free readin’,” which actually cost four ninety-nine per minute, to first-time callers. She was later exposed as a Los Angeles–born actress, and the company was sued to the tune of five hundred million dollars. Bet she didn’t see that coming! ’Cause she’s not really psychic. Get it?

Dear Journal,

My first Super Private Journal That Ken Is Never, Never Allowed to Read Ever entry was perfection, Journal! Perfection! I covered all four objectives—adorable pet name, compliments, spontaneous and passionate sex, and a surprise personalized tattoo somewhere visible and brazenly unprofessional. Check, check, check, and
check
!

None of it was true, of course. Well,
some
of it was true. Harley did have tattoos. He did have a shock of blond hair, pretty puppy-dog eyes, and a big ole pouty pierced bottom lip. He did ask me to marry him all the time with a shitty little piece-of-shit ring he’d found on the ground. And he did call me Lady.

Swoon.

So, the Subliminal Spousal Bibliotherapy seeds have been planted, and evidently, they have already taken root. Just last night Ken and I went to see a local rock legend we really love named Butch Walker at this little bar in Athens. While we were milling waiting for the show to start, I got bored and decided to test the waters a little bit. Ken and I had the following conversation.

Me:
So, Butch posted a photo of his new tattoo on Facebook yesterday, and it’s pretty badass. He got this Sailor Jerry–style anchor on the back of his hand with his dad’s name going across it in a banner. It looks so good.

Ken:
I’ll bet he got it next door. That place is open twenty-four hours and always looks busy.