"You needed to feel it in the moment. If I'd told you beforehand, you'd have been in your head. You'd have been planning and preparing. I needed you to feel the rage. The power. The realization that he's just a man and you're stronger than he ever was."
Tex planned all of this, phone calls, calling in favors, logistics, coordination, not to protect me. To free me by my own hands.
"The brass knuckles were a surprise," I say. "When Sheila threw them to me, they were cold and heavy. And when I put them on my hand became a different thing. A weapon. I've never had a real weapon before. I've had my fists which are small and useless. When I put those on my hand it was the first time in my life I've ever felt dangerous."
"Trust me, you were dangerous. And sexy, too. I'll just throw that in there. I was holding him and I felt every single hit through his body. I could barely keep my grip on him with the force of your blows."
"I went for his mouth first. His mouth told me everything was going to be okay behind a gas station. That mouth smiled at you while it described the things he did to me while pretending to be talking about a motorcycle. I needed his mouth to stop running and for that evil smile to be gone."
"Oh, it is. Permanently."
"I knew exactly where to hit his ribs because I know exactly where they break. Four times he broke mine. Four times. And every time, the sound was the same—this wet crack—and I heard it from inside my own chest. And tonight, I got to hear it from the outside. The same sound. Exactly the same. And it was the best sound I've ever heard."
"Better than the sound I made this morning behind the bar?"
I lift my head. "You're comparing the sound of ribs cracking to the sound of you getting a blowjob?"
"I'm just saying, it's a competitive field."
I drop my head back to his chest. "I love you, but you're insane."
"I know, keep talking."
"Okay. When I hit his hands… the right one first, because that's the one that—" I stop. I breathe. Tex doesn't need to hear those things. "That's the one he used the most. And when the bones broke it felt like breaking a key. Like snapping the key to a lock that's been on me for four years. That hand can't hurt me anymore. I broke his best tool the way he broke me."
Tex's arm tightens around me in a strong hold that says I'm here and I hear you and keep going.
"And the pocketknife. He recognized it. He saw that little dull knife come out of my pocket and he knew what it was. He'd seen it before. And the look in his eye when I put it against his cheek was amazing. He was scared. Ron was afraid of little me and a dull knife that can't cut tomatoes."
"Your knife did just fine. It's been waiting years for its one special job to come along."
"Yeah, it didn't cut clean. It tore through his cheek. The scar is going to be ugly because of it. Ragged. The kind of scar people stare at and wonder what happened. And every time he sees himself in a mirror, he'll think of me."
I go quiet, and just like that the talking has run its course. Everything that needed to come out has come out. There's nothing bad left inside me to hold.
Tex has been patient while listening to me talk. Impossibly patient for a man who vibrates with energy. He's been lying still, listening, and holding me. The restraint must be killing him because I know he's been dying to talk about what happened.
He lasts about four more seconds, ten at the most.
"Okay, but can we talk about your first hit?" His voice suddenly changes to animated. The volume comes up. The energy comes up. He's been a pot with the lid on and the lid just blew off. "Because that first hit. When you stepped in, wound up and connected with his mouth? The way his head snapped back? I almost lost my grip on him because I was so damn excited. Your form was—I mean, you've never thrown a punch in your life and you stepped in like a middleweight and drove through the target. You didn't pull back. You drove straight through. That's instinct. That's natural. I couldn't have coached you to do that better."
"Tex—"
"And the ribs! Oh my God, the ribs. When you hit the left side and I heard the crack—I felt it through his body, Stormy, I was holding him and I felt the rib go."
"You were giving a play-by-play right in the middle of it."
"The beat down deserved it. It needed to be documented. This was a historic event. This was like watching a high school football game where my kid just scored the winning touchdown and I'm the dad in the stands losing his ever-loving mind."
I lift my head from his chest again to look at him. He's beaming in pride. His face is so full of joy that the grin can't contain it and it leaks out through his eyes and his voice and the way his hands move when he talks.
"You sound like a proud dad at a football game right now," I say. Then I stop and take a deeper look. His face lit up, his eyes bright, his whole body vibrating with the joy of telling this story. A thought clicks into place in my chest that I wasn'texpecting. "You would make the best dad in the world, Tex. The absolute best."
The energy shifts. Tex's grin softens, becomes quieter, deeper. For a moment the man who never stops talking is silent.
"You really think so?" he says.
"I know so."
