The Funeral of a Good Girl

By – TempestRaces

Chapter Thirty Eight – Of Recriminations and Going There

I'm a good person. As he sat on the picnic table in the back yard with a bottle of tequila in one hand her words chased each other around Vince's head repeatedly. The way she had said them, as if desperately trying to convince herself as well as the rest of them was impossible to forget. Clearly I'm not, he thought. No, he certainly wasn't. He was selfish and cruel. And now, the woman who he still, after everything, thought of as his was downstairs with his best friend. And she was right. From now on he would smile and—pretend at least—to like it, because it no longer concerned him. Because, in his confusion and uncertainty with the situation, he'd almost broken her. More than once. And he clearly didn't care all that much. After all, he'd done it again. After telling himself the first time was enough, he'd done it again. He'd seen the fact she was too good for him, and too good for the role he was thrusting her into in his life. But he'd not only let her stay there, he'd put her back there more than once.

He had been told to let well enough alone. He had been told not to go there in the first place. He had been told by the girl in question that every time he and she got together again, it hurt her just a little bit more. But yet, he'd taken advantage of her emotional state and taken her to his bed again. And then, he'd gone and allowed her to see how deep his infatuation with Mia still ran, again. She was a good person. He could see that. It wasn't that he couldn't. And maybe that was why he needed her to be his so badly—while he could have her. Because she was a good person who liked him. That didn't happen very often. And instead of being grateful, and making her the most important thing in his life for the short amount of time he could have her, he treated her like dirt. Instead of realizing he only had two weeks of actually getting to be someone's everything and treating the time and the woman like they were priceless, he squandered one and broke the other, time and time again. And, in the ultimate punishment imaginable, now the girl was with his best friend instead.

He didn't want to accept that he was going to allow her to sleep with Leon without a fight. He didn't want it to be true. He wanted to go and find her. He didn't particularly care if he had to go and pull her out from under Leon. He just wanted to go and find her and show her just how much she belonged in his bed. Just like she knew by instinct that things would not be as good for him with Mia as they were with her—in terms of the amount of fireworks the sex set off, in any event—he knew the same was true of what would be between she and Leon. Leon was far too easygoing for her. He was the epitome of easygoing. And that was the very quality that she herself had pointed out wouldn't work between her and a guy. If anyone would allow her to run roughshod over him, it was Leon. Their fight had proved it. Leon'd kept going easy on her and doing his best to turn her on and she'd kept on beating the crap out of him. He'd never have allowed her to continue landing blows past the first one. He'd have put her down and given her a far more interesting and beneficial activity to accomplish with her legs. Namely, wrapping them around his waist while he was deep inside her.

But it wasn't any of his business. Not anymore. So he took another swig of the amber liquid he was swilling down and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. This time, the second time she had told him she didn't want him, she wasn't taking it back. He wouldn't overlook her words this time, he reassured himself. He wouldn't let her drop him for the second time, in front of Leon none the less, and end up back with her. She'd made her decision, and if he had anything to say about it, this time she was sticking with it. And now, if he could just drink enough to make that decision start to sound fine and good, he'd be all set.

He put the bottle to his lips and started pulling the burning fluid down his throat like it was a beer, not hard liquor. He didn't stop until the bottle was empty. Ok, so forget about drinking enough to make the decision the right one. It wasn't going to happen. But he'd settle for drinking enough to just not have to think about it any more tonight. When he stood up, he almost fell over. He chuckled to himself, despite his rather morose mood. So this was what it felt like to drink over half a quart of the hard stuff in just under an hour, huh? He really couldn't recommend it, in terms of how it made your stomach feel. But in terms of the capacity it left you with to think about your problems, it was pretty effective. He stumbled into the house, knocked over one of the chairs at the table when he fell into it, swore about it, and somehow made it into his room without falling down the stairs.

When he flicked the lamp on so that he could see his way to the bed, not pass out on the floor, it illuminated the mess his bed was still in. Whatever, I'm not fixin' it tonight. What do I care? I'm just gonna pass out anyway, he mused to himself drunkenly. He staggered closer to his bed, intent only on laying down before he fell down instead. When he got close to the bed, it allowed his unfocused eyes to see what was lying in the center of his rumpled sheets. The discarded undershirt he'd ripped off the body of the very woman he was trying to forget. That was when he noticed that the rest of her things were gone from beside his bed.

He stood beside his bed in a stupor for a few moments. He wasn't sure what to do. On one hand, he wanted to go find her, make the apology Mia had told him he needed to make and see if she'd forgive him again. On the other hand, he wanted to go get another few dozen drinks. Deciding that getting back up the stairs wasn't within his realm of possibilities and that he wasn't capable of making the kind of apology he needed in the state he was in, he crawled onto his bed and collapsed there instead. The room spun around his body and consciousness proved blessedly hard to hold onto. He slipped into a deep sleep quickly.

To say he was cranky when he woke up to his alarm the next morning was putting it far too mildly. Fuckin' shop. He got dressed and left his room with a hand pressed to his forehead. His brain felt like it was trying to pound its way out of his skull. He closed the door behind himself just as Leon was leaving his own room.

"You ok dawg?"

"Do I fuckin' look ok?"

"Um, no. That'd be why I asked. You look kinda green."

Vince went to answer, before remembering what he'd seen and what had been said the night before. "I'm not speaking to you. One, because I'm pissed at you for last night, and two, because if I do too much talkin' I might throw up."

"Why're you pissed at me for last night? You're the one who had sex with one girl and then tried to pick up another one right in front of the first one. Again, I might add. You're the one who did all that stuff with Jesse's cousin, of all people, and I just don't know where you get off being mad at either her or me for what your actions made her do."

"Just because I messed up with her to the point she wasn't speaking to me didn't mean you had to move right in and sleep with her right behind me."

At first, when Tempest had suggested they not tell anyone what they'd done, he'd been slightly hurt she was embarrassed about it. Now he understood where she was coming from. He really didn't want to give Vince the satisfaction of being right. "Who says I did?"

"She did sleep in your room last night, didn't she? I mean, she's not out here and she wasn't with me."

"Just because I let her stay in my room because some asshole almost broke her heart doesn't mean I slept with her. For the record, if I had, it wouldn't be any of your business, and after what you did to her, you really don't have a leg to stand on getting mad about her moving on. But just because she slept in my bed last night doesn't mean we had sex."

"So you're saying you didn't?"

"I'm saying that you lost any rights over her you might have had when you let her leave the house with me'n Jesse after what you did to her. After what you've been doing to her."

Vince watched as Leon slowly got more and more angry. It wasn't something he was used to seeing from Leon.

"What I'm saying is that you don't get to ask after her sex life anymore. You don't get to care who she sleeps with. And if I want to take her to Vegas and marry her for real, you don't get to care anymore. You don't get to be angry. You had your chance. You blew it."

"Big deal! You heard her. She's only here to visit Jesse, and even he's not enough to bring her down here for longer than her vacation."

"Did you ever think to ask her to do it because she cared for you, you stupid fucker?" Leon growled.

"What?" Vince asked, looking rather shocked.

"Did you ever think to ask her to move here, not for Jesse, not because she could make lots of money, but because you thought that you and she could have something special together if she was willing to come here and give you time to mean it?" When the look on Vince's face became stunned, Leon knew that no, Vince hadn't ever thought of that. "Convincing yourself you weren't losing anything because she wouldn't move here was your easy way out of looking at your feelings for her. And now it backfired. So fuck you! You don't get to almost break her over your inadequacies. Now I need breakfast before I go to work." Leon stormed off.

Vince followed a few steps behind. He wasn't sure about eating breakfast, but if he didn't go to the shop and work, not only would he be answering some questions about why he blew off Dom again, he'd be answering to why he got so loaded on a Sunday night. Alone on Sunday night. If Dom and Letty—please god, not Letty—didn't know about his latest fight with Tempest, he'd like to keep it that way. He climbed the stairs at a snail's pace and shuffled into the kitchen.

"What's wrong with you?" Letty asked him as he sat down.

"Don't feel good," he mumbled in answer.

"Yeah, after he fucked up his own life and then some last night, he musta gotten shit faced about it," Leon threw out angrily.

"What now?" Dom asked.

Leon shot Vince a nasty look.

Vince caught it and it was more than he could take. "You really wanna go there Leon? You wanna go into how you were practically dry humping her in the backyard last night? I'm not the only one who was fucking around in other people's lives last night."

"Then if you'll recall you saw me walk away. And that was when you decided you'd just take one more shot at her. Like you hadn't kicked her when she was down enough yesterday, you decided to take a little light flirting between friends and turn it into something dirty to see if you could possibly make her feel like an even bigger whore than you already had. So yeah, let's go there Vince."

Dom looked between Leon and Vince. It was also hard to miss the look of shame on his sister's face. "Would someone care to fill me in on what you guys are talking about?" he growled.

Before either Leon or Vince could speak, Jesse bounded up the stairs. "'Mornin'," he said with a grin. "What's for breakfast?"

"Usual," Mia answered, forcing herself to grin back.

Leon glanced around the table before Jesse could sit down, warning them all to keep it to themselves. If Tempest didn't want her cousin worried about her, than they weren't going to give him a reason to do so.

Mia sat down with her own breakfast and stared at her plate. She felt horrible for her part in what occurred. She didn't know what to say so she kept her mouth shut. She knew that she had responsibility for some of what had happened. Sure, Vince shouldn't have decided to take her clothes off with his eyes when the girl he'd just slept with was right there. But she shouldn't have given him any signs whatsoever that his attention was appreciated.

She was never more glad for a meal to be over than she was for that breakfast to be over. She was happy to do the dishes behind everyone because it meant that everyone else was gone and the oppressive atmosphere which had hung over breakfast was gone. Thankfully, Jesse hadn't seemed to pick up on the tension between everyone. Well, everyone but Letty. Letty seemed pretty in the dark about the whole goings on. Not that Dom wasn't, but Dom knew just enough to worry about it all now. When she finished cleaning up the kitchen she left to open her café. She knew she was going to worry all day long about her coming apology to Tempest, but there was no way around the necessity of it.