“Don’t thank me, it ain’t a good thing,” I replied.
“Of course it is!”
I shook my head. “Nah, it really isn’t. I’m not a good man, Laney, I don’t do nothin’ good, and I sure as shit don’t know how to keep somethin’ good. One of these days I’m going to wake up and you’ll have left me, and then I’ll be back on my own. And this, this’ll be like a dream—like it never fuckin’ happened.”
I looked away, embarrassed by my own honesty. I hadn’t meant to say those things to her, but now that I had, I realized the honesty I felt behind them.
“I don’t deserve you,” I said, swallowing loudly.
“Of course you do!” she yelled. “Why would you say that? And I’ll never leave you. It’s me and you forever, Jesse, no matter what.”
I smiled sadly. “It’s never forever,” I replied.
“Why would you say that?”
I pushed back her hair. “Because it’s the truth, baby. Everyone I love dies, and everything I touch turns bad. If I wasn’t such a selfish fucker, I would have let you go by now. But I am selfish, and I don’t want to let you go. I’m a bad man, Laney, and one day soon you’re going to realize that and run as far and as fast away from me as you can.”
She stared at me in silence, her expression sad. A single tear trailed out of her left eye and her hand gripped my waist tightly. “Don’t say things like that,” she whispered.
“It’s the truth.”
“I can’t lose you.”
“I told you: I’m a selfish asshole, I ain’t going anywhere. You’ll have to push me away—and I have no doubt that one day you will,” I replied.
Her forehead scrunched up and I used my thumb to rub the little creases away.
“Until then, though, you got me, babe. You got all of me.”
“I’ll never push you away,” she said, defiance in her tone.
“What if you hate me? What about then?” I was only joking, but a deep-down part of me, the sick part, needed to know. How far would I have to push her to stop her from loving me? How long would it take before she came to her senses and realized I was no good for her? A month? A year? Two? It’d happen, I knew that like I knew my own hands. Because a woman like Laney—no matter what she thought about herself—a woman like Laney was far too fucking good for me.
“I could never hate you,” she said, sitting up and staring into my face, her mouth puckered into a little frown.
Goddamn, she was sexy, even when she was drunk off her face and pissed off at me. And that’s exactly what she was—drunk and pissed off.
“Never!” she repeated, pushing my hands away.
I smiled. “What if I fucked someone else?”
She swallowed, and I knew I’d touched a nerve. Sex for her was something sacred, and she knew I knew that. It had something to do with her mom being a hooker, and the fact that she’d slept with someone new every night for almost twenty years.
“You wouldn’t ever do that.” Laney moved back from me, like if she put some distance between us the words couldn’t touch her.
“But what if I did? What then? Would you still hold me in such high regard then? Or would I be just as bad as every other asshole out there?” I gritted my teeth and forced a smile. I didn’t know why I was pushing the issue, or why it was so important to me to know, but it was, and now that I had started I knew I couldn’t stop until I knew.
I wanted to know what it was that would make her stop loving me—maybe because if I knew, maybe I would know why my mom hadn’t loved me enough to quit drugs, or why my dad didn’t love me enough to treat me like his son. I wanted to know what it was that would make her hate me so that I could use it against her one day to send her somewhere far far away from me. Somewhere better. Somewhere without me in it to fuck everything up for her.
“Go on, tell me the truth, Laney: if I fucked someone else, would you hate me then?” I sneered.
She nodded, her eyes glistening with unshed tears. She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again and I grabbed her and pulled her to me. She clung to me desperately, like I was her lifeline, and I felt like the piece of shit I was for talking to her like that and making her cry.
“I’m sorry,” I hushed against her head, kissing the top of it. “I’m sorry, I’m an asshole. I don’t know why I did that.”
My dick was soft, and nothing was going to rouse it again that night so I leaned over and dragged the comforter over us both and she pushed herself in against me. As her sobs died down and her breathing evened out, I thought about heading back to the party, but eventually I decided against it. That night, the only place I wanted to be was in her arms.
