There is more than enough hatred to go around in this world; we all share a common enemy: each other. He knew this, even after his father's passing and his prison sentence finished Tommy had the same inbred hatred floating in his veins. This followed back to the drugs and the alcohol, the abuse wasn't as difficult to kick as first time, but it still made him flinch each time he saw a bottle of whiskey or visited a friend and saw their prescription pain killers in the bathroom cabinet.
Who was he kidding? Tommy didn't have any friends, he had his brother and every time Tommy visited his nieces they hid every item of drugs around the house: even the nail varnish removers. Seeing this was a house populated mostly by women, Tommy found it amusing when realizing they had cleared them out, for his sake. He loved his niece's, that's whom he did this for, the sobering up, for them and for his best friend: Jack, or Jacqueline.
Tommy's days where meaningful now, before they just entailed in him going to the gym, eating, fighting with his father, training some more, then being so exhausted that he passed out on his bed, not moving until the next day.
Paddy, or Patrick, his father had passed while Tommy was serving his prison sentence; this was about two and a half years ago. In his youngest son's best favor Paddy had left Tommy his childhood home, not to Brendan, his eldest, whom he left his beloved "Lucy" a blue Caddy.
Also in some cases Paddy joked about that Brendan was conceived in the back seat. This was never denied or confirmed, but still Brendan kept the car in his garage, where Tommy spends some time before dinner smoking cigarette's thinking about old memories with his mother and father.
He had no good memories of his father, but he had more then he could handle of his mother. It left him teary eyed after the cigarette was smoked and before Tess hollered that dinner was ready.
Tommy's life was good, his days where rich in a number of things: he had moved in with Jack after his prison sentence was done, she was his pen pal in prison, an assignment she got for school. Jack studied law, which meant she was gone most of the days, either at the study halls or at work; she worked as a waitress in a small diner just down town. It was a bus ride away from her university. NYU, that's where Tommy had moved to, with Jack, he needed the change and she loved New York, just for being New York.
To Tommy it wasn't very different from Pittsburgh where he had grown up, it had its drug dealers, that smell of fumes and fog, the night sky cleared up, but you never saw it, you never saw the stars like you could in Pittsburgh. Brendan worried for him, with Tommy's new training job, he worried that his brother would find it too much, especially so shortly after their father's passing, to Brendan two years was like two weeks, Tommy always knew that Brendan could never understand, he needed this, he needed to be in the rings, sweating, jabbing, hitting, grunting and laying people down on their knees, it was the only peace felt since Manny's death.
The job helped, he got some money send to Manny's wife Pilar, each month, a nice fat check of 560 bucks, it was a good better half of Tommy's pay, but it was worth it, he kept his promise to Manny, to take care of her.
After work he would stop by Jack's diner to get a cup of coffee. Jack always nagged him on dating, she cared, he knew, but he wasn't ready, it had been years since he had slept with anyone.
Tommy pondered over it while sipping off a white cup, filled with black liquid: coffee, and observing the waitresses around the diner, they where all good looking women, some were married, other's single, a girl that worked with Jack: Mary, had hit on Tommy a couple of times, he was unknowing of this until Jack pointed it out to him.
Tommy would sit at Jack's table, he knew her schedule by heart, but Mary would always beg and plead Jack to let her have her table, the one Tommy was sitting at.
-"I swear to God, if you don't screw Mary, she will start stalking you" Jack laughed, while plunging her body on the other side of the booth Tommy was sitting at, she looked over at Mary, -"She keeps asking for you again" and waved at her fellow collogue.
Tommy just grinned at her, sipping some more off his coffee, -"I can't help it, my dad always said it was the Conlon charm" Jack made a face at him –"Damn, I suddenly feel super attracted to you" she grinned at him, bending a bit over the table, -"Nice and hard, ey?"
Tommy's grinning and cocky behavior quickly turned back to being embarrassed, he had watched Jack most of the days she paraded around their small apartment in only her University T and some colored panties, she was a small girl, but she had curves, her breasts where plump and her hips where wide, he liked that about women, how feminine they could look naturally. Jack didn't even know it, she always complained about being too fat, but to him, she was perfect, he never told her though, Tommy didn't want to make the wrong impression and he sure as hell didn't need to lose her just because he was attracted to her body.
–"You're thinking about it, you shameless dog" Jack's laugher interrupted his train of thought, and she was right, he was picturing her walking around in that Uni T, with her butt moving with every step she took, her hips rolling and those small patches of her lower back peeking out just as she bend up too take a cup or a dish from the cabinet.
-"Now you're just being nasty" Tommy corrected her, still with his cheeks burning, he didn't usually get embarrassed, he didn't get flustered, he was 32 years old, she was 25, how could someone below his age range, probably with less experience in the bedroom make him blush like he was 12 again.
Jack had experience though, sometimes at night Tommy would turn the volume of the TV down to listen in on her and Ruby's conversations, Ruby was Jack's big sister, they would have the most strangest conversations, one of them being on Jack's suitors, Jack liked smart and thoughtful men, but she always ended up with jackasses, which was the main theme of Ruby and her's conversation's every now and again.
She was young, that's all Tommy thought, and he remembered being 25, in the army still, right before Manny died, it was the best years of his life, with his marine family.
-"Seriously though, Tommy, it's time" Jack said without a smile this time, she had occupied herself with pouring some sugar into the barrels of salt, she did it to piss her boss off, it made him grin, she was malicious.
-"Again, Jack, for the billionth time, I don't work like you do, I can't pick someone up and sleep with them"
Jack rolled her eyes, -"Christ sakes man" she let the sugar shakers go and looked up at him,
-"Look, you haven't had sex for five years now, I mean, there is only so much hand crème I can buy, Tommy, and I'm running low on tissues" her lips where trying not to form that conning smile of her's, but he saw it, she was teasing him.
-"You know very well, I'm not the one that does stuff like that"
-"Just because you found a vibrator in my room, doesn't mean I use it" she said crossing her arms, it made him blush again, he found a pink vibrator under her bed while vacuuming a week ago, he had tried putting it back, but got lost in his mind, right before she opened the door and caught him holding it.
-"Would you like a flesh light maybe?" she asked tilting her head to the side, now she was really degrading him, on purpose, Tommy didn't even know what the hell that was, not that he wanted to know. There was just a side of Jack that Tommy wanted to explore, on the other hand he didn't, he was afraid of going too far.
-"Maybe we should have sex, if you don't want to have sex with Mary?" now she had dragged it too far, but all Tommy wanted to scream was: oh, yes, please, let's go.
-"Shut the fuck up, Jack" was the only words that came out of his mouth, and then the dead silence, before she broke out in one of her laughing fits, this caught her managers eye, he casted a very angry glance over at their table, that shut Jack up for real.
-"That's my cue" she grinned then walked back to her post, to serve some men that had come in as a group. Tommy followed her hips as they swayed, the cheerful step in her walk, like she wasn't walking over to a table filled with assholes, but a table filled with laughter and jokes.
Tommy never saw the world the way Jack did, it was just hatred and only that alone, it shot him in the gut when he saw one of the guys slapping Jack's ass, she just laughed it off and wrote on her pad what they wanted to order.
Jack had been Tommy's anchor for quite some time, she got his sentence pulled for the desertion, she got him off and the army even gave him a medal for saving all those men back when he was fleeing from his quarter.
It wasn't something he was proud of, even the medal meant nothing, he had given it to him niece Emily, she was more than happy to get it and show it off to her class even.
Tommy looked back at his cup, thinking of all of the nights Jack had to force feed him coffee to keep him awake, hold his head back while he threw up all of the poison he had previously swallowed; he didn't understand why she stuck around for so long.
Jack had a family, she had a perfect 5 by 5 family, two older sisters, a mother and a father, Tommy had only a brother, which he hardly spoke to since he moved to New York two years ago, only at Christmas he would show up, give the girls presents, see their faces light up when he got them exactly what they wanted. The money he worked for, he worked really hard for, at night he would take up arranged fights in the gym he worked at, this was illegal, but it was good money, one fight 400 bucks, he would knock the guys out even before they touched him.
Sometimes they would snag a shot, punching him in the nose or the jaw, and then he would get Jack to patch him up, putting an icepack on his hands while her eyes curiously looking at the cuts on his face.
Jack would compliment him on his good affords instead of lecturing him, she would light him a cigarette and herself one, asking him to tell her all about the fight. Then Jack would ask him nicely if he could take her with him next time he fought, but he knew better then that. If she saw him at that level of violence, she would regret springing him from jail and send him right back, or worse, she wouldn't be able to look at him the same way again.
Jack's curvy body bent over the counter of the diner, she was grabbing a fork and some knives: he needed to stop looking at her in this matter. It might have just been the sexual frustration talking or just him talking, he didn't know anymore. All he knew was that he wanted to look after Jack; he wanted to take care of her in the same way she had taken care of him; helped him with his rehabilitation, gotten him a place to stay with her, even pitched in more on rent every month so he had a place to stay.
Jack was amazing in Tommy's eyes.
He picked up a news paper, trying not to noticed as they were cleaning up the diner, Jack had spilled some water on her white uniform, it showed out her breasts and the blue laced bra underneath. Tommy had never lived with women before, he had lived with his mother, but that was different, she didn't wear laced underwear, Chloe perfume or play sad Cat Power songs, she didn't share her period pains, or show him clothing options for dates: asking him if he thought this dress was sexy or this one.
No, Tommy was very glad his mother was nothing like Jack, he shook his head at the disturbing thoughts of his mother in underwear. Jack was free, she was something Tommy had never been near to understand, her laughter crossed his thoughts again, she was guiding the men that where their last costumers out of the diner, they had tipped her very well, more then she deserved.
-"Look at this" she grinned and popped the 50 dollar bill they had given her,
-"And I didn't even need to lose any clothing for this" he pride was almost too much to take for him, she had told him about her previous life choices, Jack used to be a burlesque dancer, it was a honorable job, only to Tommy he had the worst scenarios in his head of dingy underground clubs, low lighting, fat, disgusting grabby handed men that drooled and got boner by the very sight of the girl Tommy was now looking at.
He was jealous, it was a new feeling for him, it appeared a month ago when she started dating a guy called Derek, he was a broker and the guy was a dick, just how Jack preferred them.
-"That's great, Jack" he brushed her comment off looking at the newest zodiac signs, he hated the fucking zodiac, Tommy noticed how her smile didn't disappear, you had to do a lot more to Jack then that.
-"We're gonna eat well tonight" she skipped when they got out on the hot summer streets of New York, it was the beginning of June, summer had come early this year, which made the air-condition in their small flat impossible to use, resulting and explaining why Jack was walking around half naked.
Tommy included, he would take off his shirt, walking around in his wife beater with his tattooed sleeves, Jack had tattoos just like him, except for her's where on her thighs and arms, she preferred them there, she used to say how else am I suppose to see them.
-"Where would you like to go" she asked him, hooking an arm around his, looking up at him with those sparkling hazel eyes, letting her brown hair fall over her shoulders.
-"I don't know, Chinese?" he really had no idea, he was trying to cope with the fact that her breast was pressing against his arm, she gave out a small sigh, making him wonder if that's what it sounds like when she use's that pink vibrator of hers.
-"Alright then, I'll get shitloads of fortune cookies for Obi"
-"Cats don't eat fortune cookies" Tommy frowned, Jack had taken in a black and brown stray cat a year ago and the furry bastard had gotten a name and even a collar now, Tommy didn't hate animals, he enjoyed dogs, but never cats, they just seemed shady.
-"Damn, you are deciding everything tonight, I kinda like this new side of you" she teased,
-"Maybe you might get lucky" her hand struck on his stomach as she turned to him and moved it down to his pants, Tommy grabbed it and pulled it away, -"Give it a rest, Jack"
She made another face then nodded her head, -"For later then" her brows rose in a teasing kind of way.
She was torturing him all the way through dinner too, they had picked a small Chinese restaurant close by china town, it was the best on noodles, meanwhile Tommy wasn't paying any attention to the food, he was too busy noticing how Jack's naked leg was swaying back and forth as she talked to him about some job related stuff he couldn't be bother listening too.
At one point he had to excuse himself to go to the bathroom, he had gotten a hard on, it was the worst fucking moment to get one, right before they were about to pay the check and Jack would probably think that Tommy couldn't pay for his share, but he could, he wanted to, instead, he had to think of every disgusting thing possible to get this fucking thing between his legs not to react to Jacks swaying white soft skinned leg and plump breasts.
After he got out of the bathroom, he saw that she had her bag of fortune cookies in one hand and a smile around her lips, she had paid the bill. He felt whatever was left of his arousal disappear, he was irritated, not at her, but at himself. Also she had been right all along, he needed to sleep with someone, this would never work for long, he couldn't masturbate this want from his bones, he needed human flesh, he needed the warmth and worst of all he wanted it all from Jack.