(A/N: Just saw Kick Ass 2 today...needless to say this little drabble from the train ride home was totally warranted. Go see the movie! It KICKED ASS!)
It was really late. I'm not sure how late but I'm pretty sure it was late enough for the moon to be shining obnoxiously into my bedroom on 81st and 5th. I was asleep, trying not to pay attention to the niggling feelings of being watched she'd trained me never to ignore. Of course once it got to be too much I opened my eyes.
"Boo."
I prided myself for a while after that with the fact that I didn't jump and scream like a little girl. I was a grown ass man and at 25, way too old for that shit. But I wanted to. All I did thought was gasp and flinch a little.
"Good job. See my training stuck with you even after all this time. How touching."
She was somehow cozily tucked in beside me, blonde hair curling and flowing in ridiculously beautiful waves around her shoulders. She had a light layer of makeup on, but she didn't need it. She'd grown up nicely.
"Mindy." I breathed. It had been 6 years since the Motherfucker incident. And the kiss. She'd be 21 now. I felt the hairs raise along the back of my neck and fought back a raging boner.
"Yup. S'me. Miss me much? Doesn't look like it, I see you're still seeing Night Whore." She held up the framed picture from my nightstand of me and the old gang in a grassy area sans costumes. We all looked pretty happy.
"Night Bitch, and you know we don't use our codenames anymore. Besides, I'm not seeing her. That picture is from our yearly reunion in Central Park."
"Oh."
I didn't like the tone of that word. Coming from her, in this moment, in this position, in this particular situation, no, nope, didn't like that tone at all.
"So…how's life?" I asked, trying to lighten the mood and shift attention away from the massive fucking elephant in the room.
A long silence. Great.
"As good as you'd expect. I moved out to LA, got a job working in a local martial arts dojo, I'm the owner now. Nothing bad, I swear."
"…during the day." I finished for her. She smiled in that big goofily cute way she had and cuddled against me. Ohhh my good sweet lord baby jesus why…? But then I thought to myself, I was single, successful, I rented a beautiful high rise apartment and lived off a comfortable salary from my job at the boring law firm in midtown filing criminal cases. There was no longer any reason to say no. Mindy certainly had figured this out for herself already.
"I missed you Dave. I never stopped thinking about you. Sure there were loads of guys down in LA and the dojo who wanted to jump my bones and I let a few, but only because I wanted to be ready…once I came back. I wanted to be ready for you."
What. Exactly. Do. You. SAY to a girl after that? A mind blowingly beautiful girl, no, WOMAN, who saved your ass more times than you can count, and could kill you as soon as kiss you? Nothing, that's what. Because I'd finally made up my mind.
It was time. It was time to do that truly ridiculous thing that grown ups do when they find someone who understands them on a level no one else ever will.
"Mindy. I have to tell you something."
She tensed. I could feel it ripple through the tangled bedsheets like a gunshot. Real fear seemed to pool in her endless green eyes. But I didn't panic, even though I was more than sure she could see the same thing in mine. We were so intuitive, she and I…
"I love you."
The fear vanished. She didn't even really answer me, but that was her typical Hit Girl style. She just attacked me like a raging animal in heat. And I tried my best to keep up with her. It was hard to believe that this used to be the scared unsure 15 year old who worried so much over what the popular girls thought of her.
She was just so heart-achingly, mind-numbingly beautiful. I'd seen her at her best and her worst, her most vulnerable and her strongest. She was batshit insane, but then again, now that I thought about it, so was I. I was just a little better at hiding it.
After, as we lay in that pool of shame near the center of the bed, I couldn't keep myself from caressing her cheek, still just as round as they'd been 6 years ago, as she'd been braver than I thought possible and kissed me for the first time. Those eyes that drank you up in one gulp and enjoyed every second. Those lips…oh god, we weren't normal. This couldn't be normal, How could we ever even begin to try to be normal?
So we didn't. We wasted no time with any attempts at normalcy except for cover. We quietly got married before moving up to Detroit, the housing was dirt cheap up there, and we worked hard "cleaning" after hours.
I got stronger, better, and it wasn't long before my reflexes matched hers. Every moment spent fighting with her by my side made me feel almost superhuman, unstoppable, and most importantly, unafraid of death. I could die happy now, knowing that I'd gotten the chance to love such a perfect human being.
But that started changing the night she got knocked out during a routine drug bust.
She almost never got hit, and was on a no-hit streak, like greased lightning, never staying still long enough for anyone to make contact.
But in a split second she'd slowed, evidently to be violently sick, and she'd been punched upside the head.
I'd had to finish the raid myself, killing everyone in my rage and frustration, something I'd never done before. I carried her gingerly to the Emergency room, expecting to hear she had another concussion. But…
"Your wife is stable Mr. Lizewski. But she's going to have to take it easy for quite a while."
"Ok, thank you doctor, it's just a concussion, right? She'll be fine, this is like her 10th one, she's really clumsy around the house."
"Oh no, no concussion." The doctor smiled.
I hated that smile. It smelled of secrets and half truths and I hated both.
I just barreled past the jackass into Mindy's room. She lay there, calmly watching me, hands splayed out to her sides like she thought she would float off the bed. The sheets crinkled where she grabbed onto them.
"What…have you done to me?" she said really quietly once I was within earshot. She looked confused, hurt, betrayed. And I didn't understand any of it.
'What-? I didn't do anything! You were the one who had to go vom in the middle of a drugbust, sweetie…"
She gave me this stern, meaningful stare and I figured out what was wrong a split second before she spoke.
"I'm knocked up, you imbecile. Definitely something you had a part of."
It felt like the world just fell away from under my feet. I didn't have words or any of my senses actually. Just darkness.
I woke up in a bed next to hers, monitors buzzing annoyingly near my ear.
"I'm aborting it. I can't have a baby." She said matter of factly once she'd noticed I'd opened my eyes.
"What? But-"
I think the flat tone in which she said it got to me a lot more than what she'd said. I'd never been averse to children, althoughI knew the massive responsibility it took to have one. But to hear her so flatly deny the idea…it hurt. That little bean growing inside of her was half of me too.
"My body, my life."
I didn't answer. I just went to sleep. It was all I had the strength for.
When I woke up I wasn't all that surprised to find out she was gone. And by gone I mean she completely disappeared from my life. As in her closet was empty at the house. All evidence of her existence had vanished. And she hadn't even left a note.
I assumed she'd gone to get an abortion and then scattered to the winds to fight crime in another impoverished neighborhood that needed her. I can't even begin to tell you how horrible I felt after that. I ended up moving back in with some friends in Hoboken, and trying to figure out what I really wanted to do with myself. I hadn't even had 7 months to meditate on my fucked up life and why the girl of my dreams kept leaving me, when she showed up again on my fucking windowsill.
"Dave? I can't stay, I have a flight to catch in the morning-I just thought you might want to-"
I wasn't sleeping. I'd been staring, awake at the window the minute I heard her start climbing.
"Oh. Hi." She sounded bashful and shy, not at all hard and cold like I'd expected her to. The shadow she threw from the window was dark, so I couldn't make out her face, but I knew something was different. I took my cell phone and turned it towards her…
Her entire figure was rounded in pregnancy, the baby bump sloppily covered with a shawl sweater, in her customary purple. Once she pushed it aside I saw she was wearing a graphic tee shirt that read "bun in the oven" and had a picture of a loaf of bread over her tummy.
"I couldn't go through with it…I-I love you, and I will love this baby, and I will raise him or her to be the best person they can be. I'm sorry for leaving…I know you can't forgive me but-"
"Shhhh…" I bent down, knelt, tears blurring my vision as I pressed my ear against her warmth, caressed the little life we'd made together. I didn't hear anything, but I felt it moving slightly. I choked back a sob. She threaded her fingers in my curly hair and held me there, like I would ever want to let go...
"Stay." It was the only word I could manage, and for the first time I think in her life…she listened. for all the right reasons.
"I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die."