29. Love
Love
Vedder
I was back in the barn, though it felt hollow and bleak now.
The big, cavernous space and the tiny loft in the corner was depressing after having spent the night with my woman.
Her cramped, twin-size bed, too small for me and leaving my feet dangling off the edge, was bigger than this expansive emptiness.
I was so close…
So close to having it all. The woman, the kids…a home.
I sat on my red toolbox, back against the rough, unfinished wood, and propped my elbows on my knees. Soaked to the bone, I wondered whether I’d catch a death of cold the way Ma always said I would. Would that be a relief?
I’d promised Melody.
I’d promised I’d wait. That I’d be there, even if she didn’t want me. I intended to keep that promise, but damn…
“The fuck were you thinking?” The barn door slipped open and slammed shut. In came the last person I wanted to see.
The fucking twaffle of a human had his nose up in the air, his too-rich cologne announcing the oncoming bullshit sure to follow.
“Not the time, Griff,” I grumbled, still staring at the ground ten feet in front of me. Ten feet in front, and through the ground, straight down to hell.
I could hear my mother’s voice in my ear. “You’re gonna go to hell, Gregory. You’re just like your father, Gregory. You’re a sinner and should repent, Gregory.”
I rubbed the base of my neck where my hair was plastered.
“Not the fucking time? You left me and Taz in that fucking place with the bill for you and your girl when you just up and disappeared. What the ever-living fuck?” His feet got in my way, his brown boots trailing mud in with him.
I’d taken a page from Melody and left my shoes by the door.
This guy was such an inconsiderate prick.
“Not like you don’t got it,” I said. The fucking bill was pennies to a Griffith of the Virginia Griffiths with the daddy as the head of the CIA and the mother a millionaire socialite. “I’ll wire Taz the money.”
I took out my phone, opening the money app to send her however much it could have possibly cost and then some.
Griff slapped the phone out of my hand.
“Don’t insult me, asshole!” He growled. “You left us there without a fucking word. What the hell? You inconsiderate fuck cock swaddle!”
And like every time before, I let him take out his rage, his fucking problems, on me. I deserved it. But the words coming out of his insipid mouth weren’t his. They were mine.
Thoughtless.
Brainless.
A fucking idiot.
I got the girl. Then lost her.
His tone, my thoughts. They came together in perfectly balanced harmony. A melody…
My Melody.
Mine.
But not.
“Are you even listening?” The punch on my face was hard, sudden, and enough to rattle my teeth. “You fucking bitch!”
I punched back on instinct, jabbing him under the chin.
He stumbled, his hands on his snarling face. Every fucking muscle ticked on his clean-shaven jaw.
“Yeah, no wonder she walked out on you.” He chuckled, widening the cut on his lip. “I was wondering why a sweet kid like that would be into you. I guess anyone can get dick-matized?”
He spat on the ground in front of me.
“Just like all the others you fucking ruined behind you.”
I punched him again.
Not for me. Not for the women who had fallen into bed with me in the past. Hell, we deserved each other. But because in a small, roundabout way, he had insulted Melody. Because he was lumping her with all the alcohol-hazed faces blurring with body parts and moans that I didn’t want to remember.
Because Melody belonged on her own. On her own pedestal. A category all in herself.
She was nothing like anyone else, and he blasphemed when he said otherwise.
“Oh, you poor, poor fucking idiot.” Griff sneered. “You actually like this one, don’t you?”
He laughed, and I growled. He laughed harder. My veins must have been popping out of my head, because I was so God damn mad at him, at everyone in the world, and especially at myself.
“Well look at that,” he marveled mockingly. “All your fucking bullshit came to roost, didn’t it? About fucking time.”
“Shut up!” I felt like a kid again, with Ma hovering over me, wooden spoon in hand.
“You were never going to be good enough. How long did you spend with her? One night? Just long enough to ruin her life, right?” He was cackling.
I roared.
Griff lunged and took me to the ground, his elbow hitting my nose. We wrestled and tumbled, groaning and fighting.
And he wasn’t Griff in that second, he was Ma.
She was calling me a sinner and a blasphemer.
She was using the words of God, saying I should honor my parents.
But they weren’t my parents. She was my mother, but he was never my dad.
Nor was the guy who came after, nor after, nor after…
pastors and Pharisees. I didn’t even believe anymore, but the hand of God and this storm were real, and both were bearing down on me because I was born in sin.
I slammed my forehead on his; the crack was loud, painful, and blurred my vision. We both yelped and stilled as we shook the haze from our heads. He had the bigger brain, sure. But I bet he regretted that right now.
I squeezed, he tried to shimmy from my hold. Griff tried to break my arm, and I was trying to cut off his air. He held me in a half arm bar while I squeezed him into a rear naked choke.
I loved her.
If there was a word of God, of any god, then it would be that love was all. It was a choice; it was a blessing. It was everything.
“I love her.”
We both went limp.
Tired and exhausted, our breaths were labored, and our old bones less limber than the last time we’d done this—when I’d confessed to having slept with his wife and hadn’t known it until that morning.
I’d felt remorse then. I’d felt remorse in the five years after.
But being with Melody?
I wasn’t guilty of that. I was proud of it. Privileged.
And this was a fall from far higher than any skydive. Higher even than when we had hurtled from 35,000 feet into Taliban-controlled territory.
Melody was my everything. Her kids, her house, and even her dented truck, they contained a world that was now lost to me, and I had to grieve that, damn it! Whatever wrong I’d once thrown at Kai Griffith was nothing compared to this.
I stared at the metal ceiling as rain pounded against it, almost too loud to even hear myself think. Thunder shook the barn, but no water leaked in. At least I’d done an alright job on this place.
Nothing else was alright, but I’d done a fine job on fixing up this barn that had tilted to one side the first time I’d slept here two years ago.
I would have fixed Melody’s tilted life if she had let me. If I hadn’t fucked things up.
A phone rang, and Griff grunted. He was on his back too, fishing in his ass pocket for his enormous, not-even-a-year-old iPhone.
“Yes, Dar?” He put it on speaker and held the phone out to his side, as if his arm was too tired to even hold it to his ginormous, egotistical head.
“I’m trying to find Vedder!” She was screaming through the phone. Probably at the car’s Bluetooth.
“He’s right here.”
“Finally, you son of a bitch. When I call, you fucking answer!”
“What?” I sat up and groaned. I yelled over Griff and into the phone at his side. He moaned, lifting his arm until the phone was in front of my face. “Where’s Melody?”
“That’s what I was calling about, you fucking idiot!” She let out a flurry of Ukrainian curses. “Someone took her!”
“What?” Griff and I said in unison as he sat up, too.
“I was going to get her, but there was a car ahead of me that pulled over. She got into the car before I could get there. I thought she was fine, that maybe she knew him, so I was going to drive on home.” She paused, but I needed her to talk faster. “But then I saw he had a gun.”
“Where the fuck…what…who?”
“I don’t fucking know! A towny!”
“Where are you?” Griff asked. “Your tracker on?”
“Of course. I’m tailing them now but keeping my distance.”
“Shit balls.” He grumbled, rising to his feet. “Couldn’t have called like five minutes sooner, before we both got concussions.”
“Well, if you’d stop tugging each other’s dicks and just kiss and make up, maybe your little friend would have answered my call.”
Then she hung up.
She and Taz had the same terrible phone etiquette. No bye. Just a beep and rude silence.
“We’re taking my truck,” Griff said. “I’ll drive. You set up the long guns in the back. They’re under the seat.”
With that cockamamy plan, he walked out, leaving the door open so we could ride together and get my woman back.