Chapter 6 #2
"Nope. Well, sort of. Indirectly. And I'm not sharing even the little bit she did tell me, because it’s not my story to tell.
But after she freaked out and I left, she blocked my number.
I didn't see her again until the wedding, and she was…
icy toward me. Avoided me. Then I found her having a breakdown in the alley and tried to comfort her.
She wasn't having any of it. Fine, whatever.
So I left again. Woke up in the guest room over the bar with her naked in bed with me. "
"Nice. Round two?"
"Nope. She asked me to just hold her."
"Mean. Hot body like that, naked, all up in your shit, and you can't have it?"
"She was clearly so upset about whatever the fuck that it wasn't as difficult to deal with as you'd think. When a woman is that fucking upset, I'm not exactly thinking about smashing."
"I guess that's valid," he said. "So…then she, what? Vanished? Which is when you called me in?"
"Pretty much, yes. I woke up, and she was gone.
Number still blocked. Fine, whatever. But then Raquel called me, saying she couldn't find her, and she wasn't answering her calls or messages either.
And when a girl won't answer her bestie, we have a problem, especially if said girl is clearly going through some kind of crisis. "
"Understood. So you showed up in LA, and she was, what, just chillin' at home like, why the big deal?"
"No. I mean, yes, she was at home. But she wouldn’t let us in. Wouldn't let Raquel in. If Rune had been there, she'd have let her in, maybe. Raquel and Hamish took the hint and left."
"But you're a stubborn-ass bitch, so you badgered her into letting you in."
"Pretty much." I sighed.
"Did she take a lot of convincing for her to tell you what the deal was?"
"I told you; she didn't tell me what the deal is.
She hinted at it, vaguely. I just…once she let me in, I realized the last thing she needed was to have me demanding she bare her soul to me.
She'd ghosted not just me but Raquel. Rune is on her honeymoon, obviously, and none of us are about to tell her about this because she'd come home early, and Linz doesn't want that. "
"So she wasn't, like, at risk of self-harm?"
"No, or I wouldn't have left."
"So what happened? How'd you go from 'little pig, little pig let me in' to 'Lindsey, I love you?'"
“She put her finger up my butt."
Jax had been mid-toke when I said this, and he lost it, cackling and coughing. "The fuck?"
I laughed. “We just watched TV and talked about nothing important, and then crashed together on the couch. Woke up horny, and she was in nothing but my T-shirt, and…" I shrugged. "We fooled around."
"You'd already fucked, right? So why only fool around?"
"She…I dunno where to start, man. It's personal, what happened.
It wasn't just messing around. It wasn't just sex, either.
That first time, I mean. She…I think she feels things, but it scares her.
She doesn't want to feel things for me—for anyone.
Whatever happened to her left some serious trauma behind.
She's a mess. She's trying to deal with it, but some shit isn't easy to heal, y'know? "
"In theory, yes. I understand the idea." He handed me the roach. "We've lived pretty charmed lives, you know. We have a lot of blessings—most significantly, two parents who love each other and us, and no significant traumas."
"Right, exactly. We…it escalated. I know I normally have no problem sharing details, but this is different."
"Dane, bro, you can’t lead with 'she put her finger up my ass' and then not spill the tea."
"Let's just say that I saw Jesus."
"Should I give you a dildo for your next birthday?"
"Fuck you, no. And this stays between us. Everything. You got me?"
"It's in the cousin box."
I rolled my eyes, snorting out smoke. "Flashback to tenth grade."
"Lotta shit in that cousin box."
"Like when you broke your dad's framed photo of his SEAL unit while we were playing bop-sock in your basement?"
He cackled. "Oh…my…god! Bop-sock! I haven't thought about that game in years."
Bop-sock was a game we rambunctious, half-feral boy-cousins used to play all the time as kids.
You take a pair of socks, stuff one in a ball into the toe of the other, and swing them around like weapons, whacking each other with them mercilessly, either using a pillow for a shield or dual-wielding.
It was a fun, mostly harmless game, but sometimes it'd get out of hand, and someone would end up with a black eye, or we'd break something and get sent outside.
"We claimed Doo-Dee broke it, as I recall," I said.
He face-palmed himself. "Doo-Dee was six inches tall and weighed half a pound, and the photo was on the wall at head height.
" Doo-Dee was their mini-poodle/Pomeranian mix dog, now gone over the Rainbow Bridge.
She was a sweet little dog; the idea that she could have broken a picture on the wall was a comically implausible claim.
"Dad didn't buy it, obviously but he couldn't prove it was us. We weren't allowed to play bop-sock in the basement anymore after that, though." Jax sighed. “So was it, like, just whoooop, finger up the butt, or…?"
I groaned. "I shouldn't have said anything."
"No, but you did. I'm not gonna let it go."
"Two words, and that's all you get."
"Okay?"
"Prostate milking."
He spluttered. "Oh fuck, man. She's into that?”
“Huh?"
“It's a whole thing. Like, a whole subgenre of kink."
"I dunno about any of that, man. It was, like, maybe the first knuckle while jerking me off. It wasn't even kinky. It just felt fucking incredible. Best orgasm of my life."
"For real?"
"Fuck yes. I couldn't walk straight for like ten minutes."
"Huh. Maybe I should try that sometime."
"I'll get you a dildo for your next birthday," I said, laughing.
"No, you won't."
"Are you seeing anyone?" I asked.
"We aren't changing the subject, Dane. Still not understanding how that led to a profession of love followed by a French exit."
"It wasn't a French exit. I looked directly at her, told her I loved her, and then left."
"Whatever. So again—how do you go from a butthole-fingering handjob to I love you?"
"It's complicated."
"Is it?"
"She…I…we…" I sat up slowly, with effort, worked unsteadily to my feet, and took a long piss over the side; I sat back down next to Jax and tried again.
"We talked. She was...not freaking out but…
I dunno. She was conflicted. We have chemistry.
Real deal shit. Not just physical chemistry.
Deep shit. The unexplainable thing our parents all have—we have that.
She's just in denial because of whatever happened and how bad it fucked her up. Her words, not mine—‘I’m fucked up,’ that's what she says all the time.
Like she…she doesn't think she can have…
" I shrugged. “Anything real, I guess. I don’t know, she won't elaborate. "
Jax didn't reply for a while. "And you thought declaring your undying love was the move, huh?"
I stared at him. “I don't like how you said that."
"Oh, like you're an idiot?"
"Says the guy who—" I clapped my teeth together, deciding against that particular dig.
"You were about to be a meany-head, weren't you?" Jax guessed.
"Yep."
"I'm not in love with Em anymore. It's residual affection and latent attraction, because she is objectively hot."
"She's legally your first cousin, now."
"I know. But we share zero genetic material, I wasn't raised in the same house as her, and also she's married to someone else."
"I didn't actually say anything. I was gonna say something dickish, but decided against it. You're welcome."
"Dane, you've completely missed my entire fucking point."
"Which is? How is me telling her I love her—which is the objective truth—being an idiot?"
"Because she can't handle that. She wouldn't have P-I-V sex with you because she was afraid of being dragged into feelings.
I'm inferring, here, but it really seems like she used quasi-kinky sex—or foreplay, or whatever you wanna call what you did—to distract you from everything she didn't want to talk about, think about, or feel.
" He shrugged, pulling a there you go face.
"She did everything she could to protect herself from what she feels like is a threat to her emotional stability, which seems pretty damn fragile.
She was trying to get rid of you so she could get a grip on her shit.
And you go and drop the L-bomb on her…and then leave. "
"Fuck. I hadn't thought of it like that."
"Clearly. You think after you left, she sat on her balcony plucking flower petals and gazing wistfully into the sunset, daydreaming about your ass?"
"My ass? No."
"Dane. This is real shit, man."
"Shut up. You do the same thing."
"And you call me on it."
I sighed. "I know, I know." I groaned, rubbing my face with both hands. "I don't know what to do, Jax."
"If it were me, I'd give her some time."
"This is a dance of months, Jax."
"So? Whatever she went through is deep, dude. Clearly, it's an open wound, not even a scabbed-over thing. That shit is still bleeding. If you really love her, which I don't doubt, you're gonna have to be patient."
"Patience is not my strong suit."
“We're Badds, man. None of us are exactly overflowing with it."
I cackled. "I dunno. Your mom is kind of a saint. She deals with your ass."
He flipped me off. "I'm her precious little angel."
"Mommy's boy."
"Yup!" He leveled a look at me. "And you're not? You're still living with them. Ten bucks says she does your laundry."
"Does not. Unless it's really stained." I wasn’t gonna mention the jeans LIndsey washed which were, as we spoke, still in my bag…laundered.
“No, but for real! Why are moms so good at stains?"
"Periods, apparently.”
"Huh?"
"They deal with bloodstains every month. You think after that a little mustard on your Care Bears T-shirt is a big deal?"