III
By the time their dutch had burned down to a glowing little nub, and they were halfway down a bottle of peppermint schnapps, AJ and Jillian had become fast friends. Some brightly-colored cartoon where all the characters were named after food played in the background of Jillian's life story. He had absorbed of lot of the information she spouted- about her exceptional performance in grade-school, how she lost her drive around the time high school had really begun to suck, what her roommate is like. A few pieces were lost to the hypnosis in her voice. He had stopped listening just to hear.
Her groggy head rested on AJ's lap as she mused upward, blowing her smoke in his face and inhaling his when he breathed downward toward her.
"And that's why I chose screenwriting," she continued, "My life has sucked so bad I've just been wanting to re-write it, you know? Life isn't like that. It's not a movie."
AJ sighed, barely aware that his long, pianist's fingers were weaving themselves in Jillian's curls.
"Life is too much like a fucking movie," he said in between drags, "Too much shit going on."
She smiled at him.
"I bet. Your life must have been some Bruce Willis shit."
He chuckled, passing her the little bud that had become the dutch. He was careful not to drop ash on her.
"I wish I had a stunt-double. That shit gets too real sometimes."
She grinned up at his face. His perpetually-relaxed expression.
"You were the smart one, weren't you?" she asked impishly before correcting herself, "Well, I know Jake was smart, too, but you did most of the planning and stuff, right? You always looked so busy. Like you were deep in thought. Intense, but you were on top of shit."
He nodded a little, slightly put-off by the admiration in her words.
"I did a lot of the planning. Jake helped me execute a lot of it. The tech shit, wiring, stuff like that."
He really didn't want to talk about it.
"You must have gotten a lot of respect."
"We all respected each other. Trusted each other."
He felt his high slipping away.
Jillian watched him look away. Her eyes studied his jaw-line, speckled with stubble. The dimple in his chin. The almost painted-on-looking quality of his lips. His sleepy-looking eyes were big yet almond-shaped. Their blue irises looked electric.
She had taken in his features and admired them before. She had done the same with John Rahway and Gordon Cozier as well, but not nearly as intensely. They were a good-looking crew. Of course, none so much as AJ. She briefly wondered about their sixth, a man called Ghost. He was always referred to but never there.
AJ blinked, his long eyelashes bringing her wispy thoughts back to the task at hand. She was absorbing his face, making an imprint of him exactly as he was in this moment: young, serene, beautiful. He could die, like her brothers. Or he could go away and she would never see him again. AJ…now her friend. Now her partner in crime. She never wanted to forget what he looked like.
Sometimes she forgot what her father looked like.
He caught her eye and smirked. His fingers still twisted in her curls therapeutically.
"What are you staring at me for?"
He had a feeling. "She likes you," Rahway said the week before. He didn't make claims without evidence, no matter how small. It was possible that Jillian had said something to one of her brothers who had said something to John. His head was spinning. When did this become high school? He blew that shithole when he was 16.
"You're beautiful," she giggled.
The answer shocked and puzzled him. It must have shown in his face, because they both burst into hysterical laughter. When they sobered a little, his laughed turned into a grin.
"You're beautiful, too," he smiled, looking down at her to remind himself if he meant it or not.
He did.
Though, he figured he'd change his mind by the time all the pot and alcohol had left his system, and she'd melt back into that mediocre cute.
Jillian smiled bashfully, her cocoa-colored cheeks tinting with blush. Her color was richer than her brothers'.
"I'm not…" she said softly, her head turning slightly into his stomach.
She was like a kitten. So sweet. He petted her cheek.
"Of course you are…" he replied, just as softly.
She had fallen asleep.
The pot and alcohol made AJ drowsy, but not sleepy. He wondered if he might be dreaming. He sat there, one hand still tangled in Jillian's soft, bushy hair, studying her. Her nose was what old ladies would call a button-nose. Cute, small, slightly upturned. Her lips were full and lush, the top and the bottom of almost equal proportions. Her mouth turned down slightly, so she always looked like she was pouting if she wasn't talking or smiling. He decided he still thought she was beautiful.
Her chest- her breasts- rose and fell with her soft breathing. They felt as soft as they looked, AJ noted as the back of his hand slid over them, and then turned to cup one gently. He felt himself get hard.
The blaring of Jillian's ringtone shook them so that his hand instantly flew away from her chest and that she awoke with a start. She didn't seem to know that she had been violated in her innocent slumber, or that her cheek rested an inch away from an erection.
She sprung up, reaching for the bulge in her pocket, pulling it out, as AJ shifted to hide his own bulge.
"Yeah mom?" she sighed groggily.
AJ listened to the lie Jillian told Mrs. Attica. Apparently, Jillian had needed to "get away" so she went for a long walk, took a cab to this nice little bed and breakfast, and booked a room. He wondered how the very Christian Mrs. Attica would die if she found out Jillian was drunk, high and had just been sleeping on an erection- one that happened to belong to her late sons' crook friend, the one with the tattoos. He came to the conclusion a heart-attack would be most likely, but a stroke was also a possibility. Maybe an aneurism.
"Mhm. I'm fine, Mom…" she groaned into the phone, "Yeah, you just woke me up… I will be careful. I'm always careful. Love you, too."
She deposited the phone back into her pocket and started to recline back into his lap.
"Hey, do you want my bed?"
"Sure."
Jillian pulled herself back up. Her hair had landed on the tent in his pants. Her head just missed it.
It occurred to him that going in the room and curling beside the girl may help. It was four-thirty in the morning and he hadn't even dozed. At least, with her lying in his lap, sleep had felt like a possibility. With her and her softness so many feet away, that possibility had become gravely out of reach.
He tried to remember the last time he slept beside someone. He had sex two nights before he was shot, received and given oral sex a couple times since he snuck out of the hospital (his wounds hadn't healed enough for intercourse to be more enjoyable than painful). None of those girls slept beside him. Either he left, or she left, or they both left because it was a public place. Holding Jillian had been nice. Contact for the sake of contact, not the sake of orgasm, had been nice.
He decided one more sleepless night would make no difference. As John pointed out the night of the funeral, AJ had not been himself since "what went down" which John had assured was understandable. AJ was even less like his usual self after drinking the better portion of a bottle of schnapps. If he climbed in bed with Jillian Attica tonight, he wouldn't be able to stop his hands from slipping into her panties, whether she was awake or not- whether she wanted him to or not. But he was sure she wanted him to. He could see the adoration in her eyes as she called him beautiful.
He shook it off. Whether she wanted it or not, he told himself he could not fuck Baby Girl.
It was eleven in the morning and he was still telling himself that. She was still beautiful.
He looked over at her staring out the passenger's side window. It was his first time seeing her in sunlight. Her hair wasn't black, as it had appeared in the gloom of the day of the funeral, and the eerie television glow in his apartment, and the nighttime dark in between. Her curls were a dark reddish-brown. Only true sunlight could do it justice.
The wind whipped her curls, disheveled but still lovely. Her eyes were a little sleepy, even after the coffee they shared, and it gave her a dreamy quality. Like she was half-here, half-not. He appreciated her a while longer. His eyes turned back to the road.
"Thank you," she smiled over at him.
He thought for a second perhaps she had heard his thoughts about how pretty her hair was, but that was illogical.
"For what?" he asked, looking back over at her.
"Last night…" she trailed, and their eyes connected for a long appreciative moment as she continued, "It was the first night in weeks I didn't spend feeling like shit."
He almost replied, "Yeah, me too." Instead, he settled for a smile.
He had thought about kissing her the night of the funeral, while they were smoking in the car. He thought about doing more than kiss her last night, and would think about it in the shower that night. In his head was the image of him sandwiching her between his hungry body and some surface, taking her innocence. It would not get out.
'We're takers, gents. That's what we do.'
He thought about holes, which of her three she might let him enter. That intuition that his crew so depended on told him that she was a virgin. Jesse called it his "spidey-senses".
'Something's tingling, all right…'
She turned to him. They had come to a stop outside the Attica house.
"Thanks again," she smiled.
He wondered if she knew he'd undressed her and fucked her in his mind six times already.
He smiled back.
"For what?"
She shrugged sheepishly, looking away.
"I don't know. Just for being cool to me."
He could see the baby in her again. He could see what Jesse and Jake saw. He looked away, feeling like the lowest form of scum.
"You don't have to thank me."
In fact, he wished she hadn't.
'Don't thank me for feeling your tits in your sleep…'
"Maybe we could do it again sometime?"
He allowed his eyes to meet hers. He willed himself to say no. He saw it happen in his mind- the look of hurt and confusion and disappointment on her face as he declined and sped away for her sake. For her brothers' sake. For everyone's sake but his.
Instead, he replied, "I'd love to."
