All Strung Out (5 page)

I try to focus on my work, but I can't stop thinking about what happened after I dropped Jen off. Yeah, most guys would say, what the hell are you freaking out about? It's just a boner. Happens all the time. But I'm not most guys. It's not the erection that bothers me. It's the timing, and what it could mean. I firmly believed I was asexual, and I made sure all my friends knew it. I haven't slept with anybody, ever. I don't advertise this fact. I know that anyone who looks at me would never believe that I'm a virgin. Let them think whatever they want.

Why Jen, though? Why not Sophie? Could this really be as simple as meeting the right person? Maybe I'm picky to a fault. Maybe I didn't know what I wanted before. Maybe some guys take longer to figure it all out. I have to remember, too, that Jen has not said a word about being interested in me. She gave me a quick kiss on the mouth. So, what? It doesn't necessarily mean anything more than she had two glasses of wine.

Just as I talk myself into working again, my phone rings. Sophie, again. I stare at it and sigh. I'm really not in the mood for more drama; I seem to be making more than enough all on my own. I relax when it goes to voice mail. Of course, ten seconds later, she calls back. I grab the phone and walk down the hall.

"I don't know what to do," Sophie says as soon as I answer. Her voice is hushed, like she's hiding.

"About what?"

"Mark."

"Listen, I don't have time for this right—"

"Hondo, just shut up, OK? Something's wrong with him," she says. "I'm locked in my studio, and he's screaming and banging on the doors and walls and shit."

Instantly, my protective side takes over. "I'll be right there. Do not unlock those doors until I tell you it's safe."

I jog back to my desk for my car keys. Jen looks up from her screen and smiles. I tell her I have to run an errand.

I make it all the way to the front gate of the Winter mansion before hitting a roadblock. Someone changed the damn security code. I call Sophie back and get the new code from her. I'm sure the asshole changed the code after I left. Like I care.

The front door is probably locked, too, but I know there's one ground-level window that's easy to open and crawl through. I have to take Mark by surprise to maintain my advantage. I'm ninety-nine percent sure he's on something, which makes him more dangerous than me, even though I have thirty pounds and several inches on him.

At the bottom of the stairs, I hear him yelling and banging, like Sophie said. Lang's studio door must be open. I take the stairs two at a time and burst into the room. I know he's in the sound room, so I go straight in, pull his arms behind him, and put a knee in his kidney, forcing him down to his knees.

He roars, twisting around to free his arms. He's not even yelling words at this point. He sounds like a trapped feral animal. Right about now, I'm wishing I brought the police. This is far worse than I thought it would be.

He breaks his right arm free from my grip and runs his fist into my cheekbone three times. I automatically let go of his other arm and stagger backwards a few steps. When I look up, I see him coming at me. I put my knee up just in time to meet him in mid-air, and we go down together. Using our momentum, I roll him onto his back and straddle him. He takes another swing at me, but he misses completely. I give him five quick pops to the jaw.

He looks me in the eyes for a moment, as if he can't figure out why I'm hitting him. Then, his eyes roll back in his head. He takes a sharp, gasping breath, and then stops breathing completely.

What the hell?

I throw my phone on the floor and dial 911. On speaker, I give directions for the paramedics as I'm doing chest compressions. No response from Mark. I give him another round of compressions. After a few minutes, he makes a horrid choking sound and starts taking fast, shallow breaths. I let him go and stand up, fairly sure he's in no condition to keep fighting me. He looks up at me with fear and confusion in his eyes.

I run downstairs to open the front door for the paramedics and police. While they work on Mark, I tell Sophie it's all right to unlock the doors. She flies through the door and into my arms like a kid who just discovered the monster under the bed is real.

Scene 12 ~ Sophie

I was used to a certain amount of violence from my father—and we dealt with idiots high on all sorts of shit while I was growing up—but I've never seen anything like what happened with Mark. I cling to Hondo, my fingernails digging into his back. I can't stop shaking.

After the paramedics strap Mark to the gurney, they ask if one of us is riding along. We both shake our heads. He's on his own for now.

Hondo takes me downstairs to the place I feel safest: my closet. As we walk in, I worry that he's thinking about seeing Mark and I kiss in here. It's a tiny consideration, give the circumstances, but a strange shade of guilt overcomes me. How could I have betrayed Hondo like that? Everything we had together, I threw away for sex with a virtual stranger. Is this the way it will always be between Hondo and me?

Trembling, I sit on the floor, pull my knees up, and wrap my arms around my legs. I fold myself up as tight as I can. Hondo sits next to me, but he doesn't touch me. His physical presence is almost more than I can handle in this state. I close my eyes and put my head down on my arms.

We sit together for what feels like an hour. I can't stop telling myself over and over that I was unbelievably stupid for letting Mark come between us. How can I fix something like that? I didn't mean for it to happen in the first place. I was upset, Mark was consoling me, and the next thing I knew, we were kissing. It felt too good to stop. It really had nothing to do with Hondo. If he hadn't walked into my closet at that moment, things might be fine now. Would I have let Mark kiss me under different circumstances? Or did fate decide it was just time to really fuck with me?

Eventually, Hondo gets restless, and I realize he's anxious to leave. To get back to his ordinary Saturday. I get to my feet. He stands up, too, in an awkwardly formal stance. I can make this easy for him. For being my hero, that's the very least he deserves.

"Thank you for rescuing me," I say, not moving close enough to touch. And then I simply leave the closet.

Later, after I'm sure Hondo has left the house, I go to the kitchen and start opening cabinet doors. I go through half of the kitchen before I find what I'm looking for: a bottle of tequila tucked in a corner.

I grab a shot glass from the cabinet, too, and pour one, two, three shots. I then go back to my room, lie down, and wait to be unconscious for a while.

Scene 13 ~ Hondo

After Sophie walks out, I head straight for the car. I'm shaking, and the blood is pounding in my head. I'm angry, incensed, enraged. If Mark were in front of me now, I would kill him. I would reach out and snap his neck instead of saving his life.

And Sophie? I don't know. That's what makes this state of mind so damned confusing. I love Sophie, and I want to protect her. I'll always want to protect her. At the same time, I want nothing more to do with her for the rest of my life. I'm starting to understand the true consequences of growing up the way she did. Drama sticks to her like thousands of burrs. It's not her fault. She couldn't control who her parents were, and she raised herself the best she could. But I don't know if she can overcome a past that far from normal.

As my anger cools and the adrenaline fades, I feel defeated and empty. I should go straight back to the office, but I'm not quite ready to face Jen yet. I drive to a fast-food restaurant and tell the order taker to surprise me. I'm hungry, but I don't feel qualified to make a decision. When I pull up to the window, the girl taking my money says, "Wow, what happened to you?" I don't bother answering. In the parking lot, I sit in my car and eat, barely tasting the food I didn't choose in the first place.

What is Jen going to say when she sees me? We're business partners now. We depend on each other for our livelihood. Will she think that all I do is run off to be Sophie's white knight? Will she think I'm violent and unstable? Will she even notice the drama? Jen has such a calm, logical presence, it's hard to imagine that she would ever get tangled up in this kind of shit.

I pull the rearview mirror toward me. The left side of my face is purple and swollen. Perfect. I push the mirror back in place and consider calling in sick.

Of course, I go back to the office. This is my company. I'm not punching a damn time clock here. I have to stop thinking like an employee and start acting like an owner. Calling in sick is not an option. Knowing that Jen will ask me about my face when I walk into the office, I decide to tell her the truth.

As expected, when Jen looks up from her computer, her face clouds with concern. She rips her headphones off and tosses them on the desk.

I hold my hands up in front of me. "It's not as bad as it looks," I say.

She immediately goes to the back of the office, where we're building out the break room. She searches through the cabinets until she comes up with a zippered storage bag. She fills it with crushed ice from our new ice machine. Then, she wraps the bag in the scarf she wore today.

"Here," she says, "You're already swollen, but this might help. The cold should feel good, at least. Sorry, we're fresh out of raw steak."

I sit down at my desk with the ice pack so that she doesn't think I'm not grateful for her help. She perches on the corner of my desk.

"Did you go out and pick a fight with our competition?" she says. "You don't have to take them out that way, you know."

I tell her the short version of the story, eager to get it out of the way. She listens and nods. Nothing too difficult to grasp here, especially for a genius. It's all of us average people who can't hold things together.

"This guy was a coke-head before he went to rehab a few months ago. Who knows what kind of shit he was using today," I say.

Jen leans over and kisses me on the forehead. "I'm sorry he ruined your day, but it sounds like you did everything you could for him and for Sophie," she says.

"Yeah, I'm the big hero," I say. "You'd think doing the right thing would feel a little better."

I've already wasted hours today, and now, I'm keeping Jen from her work, too. "You don't have to babysit me," I say. "It's not even a flesh wound."

When she laughs, it shows all over her face. She's beautiful in an understated way, but I wonder if she knows that laughing reveals her true beauty? With her sitting on my desk, so close to me, I can smell the coconut of her hair conditioner. I breath in deeply, trying to capture as much of her as I can. It would be so easy to reach over and take her hand, to pull her toward me for a kiss. A real kiss. She would slide into my lap and wrap one arm around my back. With her other hand, she'd reach up my shirt to tickle my chest.

Jen interrupts my reverie by hopping off my desk. "I'm going to be right over here, coding my little fingers to the bone. If you need me …"

She trails off as if purposely leaving the invitation wide open. If I need her.

I turn back to my computer and realize that, once again, I have an erection that I can barely conceal with my loose shorts. Why? Why has my body picked this time to make me the randiest guy on the damned planet?

Scene 14 ~ Mark

I wake up in a hospital bed, feeling like an elephant trampled me. Twice. I can't remember why I'm here, though. The nurse tech, whose badge says Shirlene, comes in with a food tray.

"Good, you're awake, hon," she says, speaking to me like I'm ten years old as she opens the juice box on my tray. "We need to call your family."

I think about that for a second. No, we definitely don't need to call my family. We need to call Sophie. I give Shirlene her number, surprised I can remember it. Where the hell is my phone, anyway?

Shirlene leaves to call Sophie. I try to sit up to eat, but my chest hurts so bad, I give up. I raise the hospital gown I'm wearing and see that I have a tight white band around my ribcage. Great. That means at least one broken rib. Was I in a fight? I look at my tray and see that it's all clear liquids. That's not a good sign, either. I close my eyes and let myself drift off.

When I wake up again, the little dry-erase board on the opposite wall tells me it's Sunday. It said Saturday the last time I was awake. I slept all night. A breakfast tray that has the same items as the last tray is waiting for me on the hospital table.

Before I can use the nurse call button, a woman in a white coat whisks into the room. "Dr. Taylor," she says as she pulls up my gown and puts her chilled stethoscope on my chest in several places. She helps me sit up a little so she can listen to my back. Then, she looks at a paper coming out of a little printer next to the bed. I realize it's an EKG readout. They're monitoring my heart. That's definitely not good. She drops the paper and turns to me.

"Mr. Dillon, you suffered a heart attack. The cocaine in your system is the likely cause. You also were in a physical fight, and someone performed CPR on you. That's why your ribs are fractured."

I'm too stunned to respond. A heart attack? At my age? It has to be a mistake.

As the doctor wakes up the screen on the portable computer she shakes her head at me. "You are a healthy young man, Mr. Dillon. It's a shame to see someone like you throwing his life away."

Irritated by her assumptions, I turn away from her and look out the window until she leaves the room. This can't be serious. If it was serious, I'd be in the intensive care unit. Dr. Taylor is just trying to frighten me away from coke. It's her duty as a physician to do that. Bring it on. I'm not scared.

Half an hour later, I realize that I forgot to ask if anyone called Sophie.

Scene 15 ~ Sophie

Sunday, I wake up with an unusually quiet brain. I turn over and stretch, thinking about the song I've been working on. I must have forgotten to brush my teeth, though. My mouth tastes like the inside of a liquor bottle.

Oh, shit. What did I do?

Then, I remember yesterday, and the phone call from the hospital. Mark named me as next of kin. I told the nurse tech that I didn't have the medical history information they asked for. I didn't ask about visiting hours. I didn't even ask for the room number.