No.Tonight I needed to talk to someone who had already figured their shit out.
Pulling to the side of the road, I grabbed my phone from my center console and looked up the number for Ace’s House.I saved the number, and then it rang three times when I dialed, but a cold, robotic voice told me the center’s inbox was full.That was the problem with fucking cell phones.If you really needed to talk to someone, they wouldn’t hear their phone if they turned it off or turned down the sound.And how come everybody’s damn inbox was always full?
I hung up.
Shit.
But I had AJ’s number.A friend would call in their time of need, right?
I hit the widget thingie for my contacts and searched the meager list of names.I didn’t see AJ’s, but the list was only about an inch tall, and at the bottom I saw an entry titled “Tweedledee.”
Smiling like a fool, I hit the little round phone icon under the name and waited.
AJ picked up on the first ring.“Dixon?You okay?”
“May I please speak to Tweedledee?This is Tweedledum.”
She giggled into the phone.“I thought that might make you smile.Remember your brothers used to call us Tweedledee and Tweedledum?”
“I remember.God, that was lifetimes ago.Sometimes I wish I could go back.”
“Are you at Mrs.Ellison’s?”
“No.I’m on Route 20 somewhere.I didn’t want to go back there yet, but I didn’t know where else to go, so I drove.”
“You can come back here,” she said.“I feel like I came on too strong earlier.I’m sorry about that, but when you kissed me, I just… Well, I felt somethin’, but I understand where you’re comin’ from.If you want to come back, you don’t have to worry about that.We’re friends and only friends.I promise.”
“I felt it too,” I admitted.“Don’t you get it?That’s why I had to stop it.I had to stop the kiss because— Fuck, AJ.From the first moment I saw you, I wanted you.But I don’t want just a kiss, and that’s the problem.Anything more than that wouldn’t be fair to you.I’ll fuck it up.I’ll hurt you.”
“I don’t think you will.”
I’d never known a more glass-half-full kind of person!She needed a wake-up call.
“I killed the last woman I loved.Stu’s mama.Her name was Kel.”
I heard AJ breathing over the line as she tried to process what I’d just said.“You killed her?How did you do that?The Dixon I used to know wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“That Dixon is long gone, AJ.That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to make you understand.”
“So, tell me about her.Tell me what happened.”
I didn’t decide to do it, but as I spoke, I drove back toward AJ’s little cottage.It took me a minute, and I had to pull over again, but I finally figured out how to put the call on speaker and then set my phone on the dash.
“Kel.She was… Her name was Kellie Gale.It fit her ’cause she was fearless, like a gale-force wind.We were both sober when we met.She’d only ever done a little coke and pot, but I had just gotten out of rehab for… heroin.Sorry, you probably don’t want the details.”
“It’s okay,” AJ said.“I do want to know.I can handle it.”
“Well, we kept runnin’ into each other.Yeah, we were both sober, but neither of us were bein’ smart about it.We didn’t change who we hung out with, y’know?Which is the first thing you do after rehab ’cause all your old friends are the people you used to get high with.Anyway, we didn’t do that, and our friends were friends, so we kept bumpin’ into each other.
“Finally, she asked me out, but the love story only lasted about two weeks.We bonded over our families hatin’ us.And like addicts do, we became inseparable because we confirmed for each other all the lies we liked to tell ourselves so we could stay sick.
“The next time we were together, she said she’d always wanted to try H.I was feelin’ strong and protective—and stupid—so I tried to talk her out of it, but she’d already bought some and brought it with her.So, then my dumb ass says, ‘If you’re gonna do it, at least do it with me in case you OD or need help or whatever.’”
“Oh no,” AJ whispered.“I think I know what happened next.”
“Yeah,” I said as I parked behind the AVery Pretty Petal delivery van outside her Gran’s house.“And by the next day, we were both hooked and high as kites.”
AJ must’ve heard me pull up because she opened her front door as I walked toward it, but I still had the phone to my ear, so I admitted something that had been eating at me for years because maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to say out loud into a phone instead of straight to someone’s face.
