Disclaimer: still applicable… AJ
I stepped out of the car and walked up to the house. I knew that I needed to take a very low profile so the others would not know that I was gone for so long. My knuckles hurt from breaking Tran's nose. My elbow was throbbing from breaking the windshield. I looked down at it and noticed that I was bleeding. I needed a drink.
I walked inside. It was wall-to-wall people. It was going to be pretty easy to hide in this chaos. I went to the refrigerator and grabbed a beer. I opened up my throat and chugged it completely. I sat the empty beer bottle aside and grabbed two more. I made my way over to an empty chair. I opened another and did the same. I was starting to feel slightly better. I opened the third and crashed in the chair.
I heard a phone start to ring on the table beside the chair. It was Letty's. I looked at the screen and it said 'Vince'. I decided to answer it.
"Sup man," I said, curious as to where Vince escaped to and why he was calling Letty. I didn't see her anywhere, lucky for me.
"Dominic, brother," he slurred, clearly inebriated. "Dude, I'm at the house."
"Cool, me too," I said.
"Which house?" he asked. I could see him near the doorway. This was fun.
"Mine," I said.
"Oh…cool. Me too. Where are you?" he said. I could see him looking around.
"I'm in the living room, man," I replied.
"Oh, I think I see you. Dom…listen, if that's you…jump," he said. He was clearly looking right at me.
What the hell? Jump? No. "Dude, just come in," I said and I couldn't help but smile from this statement. You had to appreciate drunken Vince for things like that. The part I loved was that this probably made perfect sense to him. But, I was not going to jump. It had been a long ass night.
"Nah, if you jump then I'll know it's you," he said as judiciously as a drunk man can.
"Alright, I'm jumping," I said without moving from where I was sitting.
"Shit, that's not you," he said somewhat saddened.
"Listen, maybe you're in the wrong house. Go outside and walk next door. Try that house. I'll be jumping," I said.
"Alright, cool," he said and hung up.
I sat there contemplating the potential humor that could come from this. But, at the same time I didn't want Vince to get arrested tonight. Hm, decisions, decisions.
Just then Letty came up.
"What are you smiling about?" she asked sitting on the arm of my chair.
"Vince is wasted. I just sent him next door to try to find me, jumping," I said still smiling and wrapping my arm around her waist.
"What?" she asked very confused.
"Never mind. Listen, there he goes. Will you go snag him so he doesn't get his ass arrested for breaking and entering?" I asked her.
"Sure," she said and trailed off into the crowd to get him. She always enjoyed drunk Vince too.
A few seconds later she was pulling a stumbling Vince over to where I was sitting.
"You stopped jumping," he said surprised.
"Yeah, my legs hurt," I joked.
"Oh, it's cool. I'm glad I found you. I need to tell you something," he said, still slurring.
"Let's have it," I said and waited. His brow furred. He looked confused.
"Hm, oh yeah, Tran called you," Vince said, his voice getting progressively angrier.
"Oh, thanks, it's cool I'll talk to him later," I said quickly trying to get Vince to shut up. Not an easy feat with a drunken person.
"Why would Tran call you?" Letty asked suspiciously.
I shrugged. She didn't buy it. But, luckily Vince continued so I would be sure to get busted.
"He said 'he appreciated it, he hopes you aren't pissed' and…," but I stopped him before he could continue. Damn, Vince, shut up.
"Hey, bro, I think that girl from the race, the one you were talking to," I started, completely lying. I had no clue what, if any, girl Vince was talking to at the race but I figured he probably talked to some girl. "She is right over there and she asked about you earlier. You should go try to tap that." I just pointed, essentially, to the crowd.
"Piece of cake," he said, giving me a high five and a half smile before skulking off into the crowd of people to go hit on some unknowing girl. That left me with Letty. This would be fun.
She just kind of glared at me. This was an interesting but inevitable predicament to get into.
I put my arm around her as she positioned herself back on the arm of the chair. I looked up at her, innocently as possible. She continued to glare at me, eyebrows perked. Maybe if I changed the subject I could avoid the conversation completely.
"So are you having fun?" I asked leaning closer to her.
"Why would Tran call you?" she persisted.
Maybe not.
"I don't really want to talk about it here," I said looking around, mainly procrastinating. No one was listening. But, I felt it the best way to continue my plight of avoidance.
"That's cool. I'm ready to go upstairs anyway," she said taking my hand and pulling me up out of the chair. This was the arm that was killing me at the moment but I couldn't let on. I did not realize until this moment how tired I was either. This had been a very long day. I was in prison this morning. I'm glad I wasn't in prison tonight.
"Let me just grab another beer," I said, downing the one I was holding. "Do you want one?"
"I think I'm good," she said. I headed back in the kitchen. I grabbed three, just in case. I found her waiting for me by the landing of the steps. I followed her up.
We got upstairs. It was much quieter. Excellent, that way she would not be able to miss a word I said. I wanted to be honest with her. If we had any chance of picking up where we left off in our relationship I knew that I couldn't start out lying to her. I made my bed, now I would have to lay in it. And, she would probably be mad at me, especially after she found out about her windshield. But, maybe then we could have makeup sex. Lofty ambitions.
"Okay, so what's up?" she asked, sitting down on my bed.
"I didn't get the money to race from Hector. I should have just told you the truth but I didn't want you to get pissed," I started. Her looked changed from inquisitive to pissed. This was going well so far. I opened the fourth beer and drank half of it, waiting for her to respond.
She didn't say anything. She waited. I decided that it was in my best interest to drink the other half. Then I continued.
"I got the money from Tran. Hector told me that he has been looking for drivers to run some shit and I called him tonight. He gave me $2500 to pick up some stuff in Santa Monica. That was where I went after the race. I went, picked it up, and dropped it off to him. It was a clean break, nothing happened," I decided to leave out the colorful details for Letty's sake. And, for my own. I didn't want her to get any more upset than she had to.
She still didn't say anything.
I hesitated before saying, "that's it."
"Oh is that it?" she said, her voice smooth mixture of sarcasm and fury.
"No, actually," I said, sighing and hesitating. "I'm going to have to replace your back windshield in the morning."
"What? Why?" she yelled.
"There was this guy and I have no clue what they had to do with the whole exchange. Apparently he was upset with the situation and he shot out your back windshield. But that's totally it," I said. I covered my elbow. I didn't want her to see the dried blood on it.
"That's it? Damn, Dom, you don't waste anytime! What the hell?" she said, getting more upset.
"That's really it. That's what happened. I don't know why he called later and frankly I don't care. I've got money now. I don't want to do business with Tran," I explained. I wished that she could just understand. I did what I had to do, that's what I always do. And, now that I had a couple of extra grand to last me a while, I would be fine.
"That was stupid!" she yelled, more. "And in my fucking car! I can't believe you would take my car to do some shit like that. If you don't care enough about me to not pull idiotic crap that's going to get you locked back up, you should at least respect my car!"
"I do respect your car. And, I care about you. That is why I'm telling you this. I want this to work out, I really do," I said, motioning between the two of us.
"Why lie?" she said. Her expression was starting to soften, a little.
"I didn't want to lie to you," I said. And that was true. Now Mia, yeah, I wanted to lie to her about it. That conversation would have been painful.
"So?" she shrugged.
"I don't know," I said.
"Stop!" she said, loudly.
"What?" I asked confused.
"You can't do that. If you can't talk to me about shit, and honestly, then we got nothing here," she said exasperated.
"Alright, look," I said, sitting down on the bed next to her. "I didn't want you to try to talk me out of it. I knew it wasn't a good idea but it's something I needed to do. And I didn't want you to worry."
"Dom, I've always let you do what you felt like you needed to do. I mean, yeah, it was extra stupid tonight consider you just got out of prison. But, damn, give me a little credit. I'm a lot more pissed that you lied, and about my windshield, then that you're hauling shit- and I don't even want to know what it was- for Johnny Tran," she explained. She stood up and turned her back to me. "No, that's not true. I'm pissed about that too."
"I'm not going to do it again," I said. This was definitely true. I would like to kill Johnny Tran, though.
She gave off a sad, pathetic laugh with her back to me. "Well, you know what, Dom? Your 'I'm not going to do it again' list is pretty fucking long," she stated.
I could see her better as she walked over to the window. She looked beautiful. How could I have already messed up? I guess, she was right, I don't waste anytime disappointing people.
"Letty?" I said, standing up and walking up behind her. I put my arms around her. I could feel her flinch, as if she wanted to release herself from my embrace. But, then she softened. I looked down at her and kissed her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I don't want to fuck this up. If I fuck up all the other shit, this is what matters the most, you and me."
She turned her head and looked into my eyes. She was so beautiful. It was like the moon was reflecting off of her and nothing else. She turned around and hugged me. Then, she looked up at me again.
"Then prove it to me Dom," she said earnestly.
"I will," I said. And, God, I wanted to. I wanted to be the man that she thought I was, the man I was only in her eyes. To everyone else I was just a fuck up. But, Letty never lost faith in me. "God, I missed you. I don't really have any excuse for what I did. And, if I'd known that anything was going to happen to your car I wouldn't have taken it. You know that, huh? This is the first time we've been together in two years. Can you get pissed at me tomorrow? Like a 'get out of jail free' card?" I asked pulling her closer to me.
"Oh don't worry. I will," she said. But then the attitude started to fade. She looked me square in the eyes and started to say, "if you do it again, lie I mean," but I stopped her. I placed my hand under her chin and stared into her dark eyes.
"I won't," I said softly before pulling her in for a kiss.
TBC
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AJ