In the weeks that followed I spent my time avoiding home, avoiding my brother, but most of all avoiding her. Her presence was unnerving and all-consuming. When I was around her I couldn't help but feel like I had to put some kind of guard up. I didn't know what she was doing to me and I didn't like it. I knew for damn sure, though, that I didn't want to be alone with her.

My continued efforts to get a decent mechanic job went just as badly as Mark's Motors, so instead I just started getting as many shifts at the convenient store as I could. I had to convince people to give me their shifts, which wasn't hard, considering most people working at that kind of job were deadbeats, anyway, and weren't trying to earn an honest buck like I was. When I wasn't at work I drifted towards Clint and Phil's, where I would watch cable-less television and endure bad take-out food while they smoked up and passed the time with meaningless chatter. And when I got sick of those two clowns, I wound up at the undesirable but somehow welcoming bar six blocks from my house. There I could waste hours on a single beer, listening to music on the piss-poor stereo and trying hard to clear my mind of all thoughts. I'd made a resolution not to get drunk again, but I did manage to keep a steady trickle of alcohol in my system from time to time, just enough to keep me mildly buzzed and numb.

Sean didn't like it, of course. My absence made him even more unforgiving and hateful towards me. I tried coming home only when neither of those two kids were around, but when Sean did happen to catch me, he'd give me looks of ever-increasing loathing. I know what he saw: a deadbeat brother that's never home, can't get a decent job, spends all his time either in a bar or with his two junkie pals, and doesn't give two shits about anyone else. And yeah, he may have been right about most of that. But I did give a shit, for whatever that's worth. I cared about Sean. I wanted the best for him. I avoided home because I wanted to stay out of the way. Sean had his own life now, and I didn't want to fuck it up. That's what happens when I'm around. Things go wrong, and no matter who's fault it really is, I'm the one who takes the blame.

It was late March, and the last gasping breaths of winter had finally drifted away. Spring was ahead. Time for the world to wake again. I came home one windy afternoon after a tiresome double shift, hoping to God there would be no sour-faced little brother waiting there to toss hateful glares at me. What I needed was peace and quiet. I wanted to sip a beer, smoke a cigarette, and watch crappy TV without any interruptions. A simple dream, right? Should be easy to realize, right? But of course, my life being what it is, my hopes were crushed before I'd even open the door. Within the house, I could hear the rhythmic strumming of an acoustic guitar.

I walked inside and tossed down my keys, and saw her sitting there. She was on the couch, legs propped on the coffee table, cradling the instrument in her lap. I could nearly see all the way up her fringed black skirt. I turned my head and sighed.

She looked over at me. "Well, hello, stranger," she said in her soft tone. "We don't see you around here much, do we?"

I exhaled tiredly and ignored her, walking straight for the kitchen. I wouldn't let her presence faze me, I decided. I grabbed a beer and a cigarette just as I'd planned and collapsed into the arm chair. I alternated gentle sips and drags as I stared at the ceiling fan.

Ellie peered over at me. "I wish you wouldn't drink," she said.

I looked at her and blew out a cloud of smoke. "I wish you wouldn't annoy the fuck out of me."

She smiled. "Touche." I glanced back at the fan, wishing she wouldn't look at me like that.

I was rescued by someone knocking at the door. I jumped up almost too eagerly to answer it. When I swung the door open, I think I stopped breathing for a minute or two. She was there, on my front steps. I know it was naive of me to think I'd never see her again, but that didn't make it any less weird to suddenly have her three feet away from me. She was wearing that red jacket that I loved so much. Her black hair was caught up in the wind, flying freely around her stone face. Her hands were in her pockets as she stood before me, her stance projecting the distance between us. I didn't know what to think.

"Wendy," I said. I almost tossed aside my cigarette out of habit; she had made me quit when we started seeing each other. But then I remembered about us not being together any more. About us being the farthest thing from together. I took a drag right in front of her, subconsciously wishing she'd bitch me out about it. But she didn't. She didn't even seem to notice. "What are you doing here?"

"Come on, Tracker, you know why I'm here," she answered.

I shrugged. "I don't, actually. Am I supposed to be a fucking mind reader now?" Wendy sighed with an exhausted kind of impatience. Mentally, I kicked myself. I didn't want to make her angry again. I wanted to pull her close, touch her again. I'd been dreaming of that red jacket for weeks. But there's something inherent in the Cameron genes that causes me to be an asshole at the moments when I least want to. The harder I try to say the right thing, the more wrong it comes out.

She shifted her weight to one side, hands still in her jacket pockets as she stood on her cocked hip. Her eyes were staring right through me. I almost smiled to myself. She had this way of making me feel vulnerable. No other woman could do that. I was so used to being the charmer, the player, the one holding all the cards, that when I met Wendy, I was thrown for a loop. She knew how to hurt me. Change me. Challenge me. That's what drew me to her.

And here she was again, making me feel like I was only half a man. Suffocating me with her... Wendy-ness. "I'm here for the divorce papers. It's been two mother fucking months. I'm tired of waiting on your ass."

And of course. It wasn't enough for her to make me feel weak. She had to drive the stake through my heart, too. "Oh... the uh... Right. I thought I sent those." God I was such a shitty liar around her.

"Yeah, well, you didn't." She sighed and looked around. "I really don't want this to drag out, Tracker. I'm not leaving without those papers in my hands."

The neighborhood had never seemed so deafenly silent as it did as I stood there in the doorway of my duplex, dangerously close to a woman I was never allowed to touch or love or want again. God, those eyes like stone. Like she felt nothing at all. We'd both been hurt, but her wounds had been so cleanly stitched you almost couldn't tell. I was the one that was still bleeding inside.

To my horror, I suddenly thought of Ellie, as her words echoed in my mind: I'd give anything to have your strength.

I dropped my eyes to the cracked concrete porch and rubbed the back of my neck, leaning from side to side in discomfort. "Uh, yeah," I said. "I probably just... misplaced them or something. Lemme go look inside for a minute. I'll be right back."

I turned away from her, that bittersweet vision on my front steps, and crept back into the house with my burden of shame. As I shut the door behind me, I spotted Ellie at the window. She cowered slightly in embarrassment; she'd been watching everything through the blinds. Un-fucking-believable.

I felt my last threads of patience snap. "What the FUCK are you doing?" I yelled. Ellie's eyes grew wide with fear. It was the first time I'd ever screamed at her with any real conviction. I wasn't in the mood for her twisted little girl games this time. The thought of her watching such a dark moment of mine with her little baby doll eyes made my skin crawl. She might have been able to slither her way into every other moment of my shithole life, but no way was I going to let her near this one. Not Wendy. I wouldn't let her have Wendy. I needed this to stay unstained by Ellie.

"Get the fuck out of my sight, Ellie." She stood there, frozen, her lips perched on the edge of words I didn't want to hear. "I said, GET THE FUCKOUT OF MY SIGHT!"

She let out a small squeak and scurried away to her bedroom. I exhaled slowly and turned to the table by the door. Beneath weeks worth of accumulated junk was the crumpled manila envelope that held all of the signed, completed divorce papers. They'd been sitting on that table for two months, stamped and labeled with Wendy's address, waiting to be mailed. But they hadn't gone anywhere. I couldn't do it. I knew it was what we wanted, what we both needed, but I just wasn't strong enough to let go. I guess I thought if I left the papers on that table long enough, they'd get buried so deep under the shit of life that I could forget about them altogether. Forget they'd ever existed. Forget I'd ever been married. Forget I'd ever even met that beautiful, dangerous woman.

I breathed and reached for the papers. I slipped back outside where Wendy was waiting. There was that empty space between us again, and as I clutched the envelope in my hand, I tried to break it. I tried to catch her eye, see if there was any feeling left in them. Any love left in them. That's what I was looking for, I realized, and the thought scared me. I still needed Wendy to love me. I still needed her.

"Are they signed?" she asked.

I nodded and took a step towards her. She held out her hand for the envelope, but I didn't loosen my grip at all. I wasn't ready to hand them over. I tried prying into her eyes once more but I saw nothing. Emptiness. She was gone from me. God I loved her.

"Are you going to give them to me or are you going to make me stand here all day?" she said. And extraordinarily enough, she wasn't even being a bitch about it. There was a light, sarcastic quality to her tone. She smiled slightly. It was worse than her being cold. It meant she was so completely over me that she didn't even need to hold on to bitterness. She could laugh it off.

I wanted to smile back but I couldn't. She was so close to me now. I could smell her. I wanted to taste her. I swallowed my pride; I'd never done that before in my life. "We don't have to... we don't have to end it like this, Wen," I said, so soft it was almost a whisper. Only Wendy could make me feel so fragile. "We shouldn't end it like this. We should talk. You could stay for awhile and we could just talk."

She let out a slow, cautious sigh. Her eyes softened. Her smile faded and she bit her lip. "There's really nothing left to say, Tracker." She reached for the papers.

"I know." My fingers held tight to the envelope. "But... stay." I touched her hair.

She stepped back, standing firmly against me. She looked at the ground. She laughed tiredly. "Jesus. This is why I didn't want to come here, you know. I knew you'd try and make it hard." She inhaled and brought her gaze back to me. "But I'm not going to let you hurt me anymore. Just give me the papers."

Hurt her? She didn't know the half of hurting. She'd burned a hole right through me, knocked me to the absolute bottom. I had nothing left. I put the papers in her outstretched hand. She walked away and didn't once look back. I threw my cigarette to the ground and stomped it out.

When I went back inside, I slammed the door so hard that a picture fell off the wall. I heard it crack but didn't bother to check. I grabbed my beer from the coffee table and sulked off to my room. I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the dingy beige carpet beneath my feet. I focused so completely on the floor, hoping my eyes would see nothing but dull beige. But hard as I tried, I couldn't wipe the image of Wendy walking away from my mind. I liked it better the first time, when it was me walking away. When Wendy was still right where I left her, waiting for me when I decided to be a man and come back.

I tried to think to myself when it was that I'd pissed away all my chances. Nothing precise came to memory. All I knew was that it was all gone now. I tilted back the brown bottle in my hand and sucked the bitter liquid down hard. I was alone.

I heard the door creak open but didn't bother to look up. I knew it was her. "Get lost," I said, still staring at the floor. "I'm not in the mood for your shit tonight." I tried to sound as pissed off as I possibly could, but instead it just came out sad and pathetic. I was sad and pathetic. I was on the verge of crying, and the last person in the world I wanted to be with at that moment was that red-headed cunt. I wanted her far, far away.

So of course, she came closer. She sat down beside me and put her hand on the bottle of beer. "Don't do this," she said, her voice as delicate as glass. "This isn't what you need."

I laughed. I felt the tears sting and slip down my face. "Go fuck yourself, Ellie."

She took the bottle out of my hands. She was shaking. I was shaking. Why did she think she could sit so close to me? "I already am fucked. You know that. What I'm worried about right now is you. Why the fuck do you want to do this to yourself? Didn't you learn anything from your parents?"

"My parents were drunks. I'm not a drunk. And you, you're a dumbfuck two-faced whore who doesn't know SHIT about anything or anyone. So could you please, please, PLEASE leave me the hell alone? Jesus. Five minutes, Ellie. Five FUCKING minutes. Can I not have five minutes with YOU not around? Stop pretending like you have a place here or something. You don't. This isn't your fucking house, and this isn't your fucking problem. Fuck."

I covered my eyes and turned away from her. I was choking. I needed to scream. I was falling apart and I needed a drink and why the FUCK was she still sitting there? Whatever it took, I wasn't going to let myself break down and cry in front of her.

She started snapping at the rubber band on her wrist as she bit her lip and stared at her knees. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry." She said it over and over again, mumbling pathetic cliches and looking helpless. She kept watching me, hoping I'd say something. I couldn't speak. I had nothing to say.

A single tear dripped gently down her face and I thought, well fuck, if she's going to cry, I'm going to punch her in the face. But she held it in. She exhaled. She laid her face hard against my shoulder. "I'm sorry," she mumbled again into the cotton of my shirt. She stretched out her thin fishnet-covered arms and held on to me, face pressed against me, breathing hard but not crying. She lifted her lips from my sleeve and leaned in closer, trailing her mouth softly into the nook of my neck and shoulder. Her hands moved gently down my side, barely there at all and yet covering me completely.

"God," I breathed out.

She brought her hand to my cheek and pulled me towards her, and I kissed her, without even the slightest hint of remorse. I was hurting so bad inside I couldn't stand it; the blood was pounding in my head and I was just trying hard not to think about what I was doing. I kept kissing her, fast, hard, and careless, as she pressed her body against mine. She fell into me as easily as stacked spoons, as if this was the way she'd planned it from the moment she first saw me. She wrapped her bare legs around my middle, drawing her lips down my neck and back again, easing her hands down my back, rendering me senseless with the way she touched me. Her whole body was silk. I slid my hands slowly up her thighs, touching the tantalizing flesh that had been eating away at my thoughts for weeks, and snuck into the hidden corners beneath her strategic black skirt.

A gentle yelp escaped her lips and fluttered right past my ear.

"Fuck," I said, opening my eyes once more and looking at her. Cold sweat broke out on my forehead. I shoved her off of me without thinking twice. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." I jumped off the bed and started pacing.

Ellie tugged at the hem of her black skirt. "God, I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

"No!" I stared hard at her for a single moment, trying to balance the confusion and fury and hurting I felt all at once. "No, man, don't give me that shit! You DID mean! This is... God, this is fucking crazy.I can't TAKE this shit anymore!" I took in a deep, fuming breath and stormed out the door, despite Ellie's half-assed mumbling and ever-echoing "I'm sorry"'s. I grabbed my jacket from the back of the armchair and my keys from the table. I slammed the door hard behind me as I ran out of the house, hoping to God I would never have to come back.