“So, tell me.Talk to me like you used to.”
Placing his hands on the island in front of us, he shook his head.“My family, my life—I’m a fuckin’ mess, AJ.You don’t want me.”
“I work with dirt and manure, Dixon.Messes don’t scare me.”
He tried to one-up himself.“I barely graduated high school.The only job I could find was as a janitor.I don’t have money.”
“True,” I said, nodding, pretending I agreed with all the dumb excuses coming out of his mouth.“And you bought an El Camino.That’s a red flag right there.”
“C’mon now.Don’t joke.I’m bein’ serious.I’m no good for you.Look at this life you’ve made for yourself.”He looked all around the kitchen but, inevitably, his blue eyes landed on mine again.“I don’t belong in your world.”
Reaching across the island, I clasped my hands around his.“Don’t you think that’s somethin’ I should get to decide for myself?”
Wordlessly, he laid his head on top of our hands, and his long hair spilled over the butcher-block top.I pulled one hand free, then gently and so slowly drew my fingers through the deep-brown strands.I pressed my palm against his head, and he moaned quietly and pushed into my touch.
“Dixon—”
The teakettle’s whistle pierced the night air, and it startled us both.Dixon sat up, and he pulled his hands away, then stood and went to the stove.
I followed and slipped my arms around his waist, pressing myself against his back while he lifted the kettle and set it on a back burner.
“AJ, I can’t even tell you how good it feels for you to touch me and kiss me, but”—he turned and put two feet of space between us—“we don’t know each other anymore, and besides, I’m in no place to be the man you need.And there’s Stuart.I need to figure out how to be his dad.Or his friend.Or… somethin’.”
“Oh.”Right.Stuart.That sweet little boy was way more important than my libido.“You’re right.I totally understand that.But just for the record, you don’t need to figure out how to be a man for me.You already are.You proved it today when you fixed my door.Just the fact that you noticed it needed fixin’ shows me who you are now.
“But I don’t want to come between you and your son.That wouldn’t be right.”
“No,” he said, reaching for me.He pulled me close again and leaned down.But he hesitated before he pressed his lips lightly to mine.“I didn’t mean you’d come between us, just that I’m so confused about who I am to my own kid, and I don’t think I’d be any use to you as a boyfriend or a… whatever.I’ve let so many people down, AJ.I don’t wanna let you down too.”He tucked me against his chest and hugged me.“But I’m all in to be your friend, if you’ll have me.I wanna get to know you again.Would that be okay?”
His warm breath on my cheek made me shiver, but I knew he was right, and I was proud of him for knowing what he needed.
“Of course,” I whispered, hugging him, too, my long-lost best friend, because I realized it might be the last chance I had to be close to him.
Dixon was home, but he was broken and beaten down, and before he could be anything to me or anyone else, he needed to figure out who he was to his son.
And to himself.
ChapterTwelve
Dixon
Just to drive,just to be somewhere that wasn’t my little ten-by-eleven room at Mrs.Ellison’s, I headed out of town down Route 20, and as I passed the vet clinic where I would start work in a few days, I couldn’t stop hearing AJ’s words in my head:
Of course.Of course.Of course.
AJ agreed with me that Stu was more important than anything else, but I heard the disappointment in her voice, and I couldn’t help thinking that I had just lost the only chance I might ever get with her.
A week ago, she was just my memory girl.It had never crossed my mind she might be real, that she might be someone I’d want.
Goddammit!I was so fucking sick and tired of feeling confused.
I needed a meeting, but there wasn’t one within driving distance of Wisper this late in the evening.I didn’t know him well yet, but I knew Theo lived above the community center, so maybe he’d be awake.He might know of a meeting close by.
I wanted to call Nesty.I wouldn’t have survived my last stint in rehab if he hadn’t been there with me.I’d heard he’d relapsed again and had gone back in, but I assumed by now he’d gotten out and Ihopedstayed sober.I had his old number written on a slip of paper tucked in my wallet, but he didn’t know I had a phone again, and I had no clue if he had one either.His number could have changed five times since the last time we’d talked.There were probably fifty messages on cheap phones that had been lost or traded or forgotten from here to LA.No one would ever hear them.
And besides that, Nesty might be high.My sobriety wasn’t as fragile as it used to be.I wasn’t scared that my best friend being high would make me want to get high.It might, but I had coping mechanisms now that I didn’t have in the past.
But talking to someone who was three sheets was draining.Exhaustion weighed heavy on me just imagining how the conversation might go.And I knew I’d end the call feeling angry and frustrated and scared for my friend if he really had relapsed.
