Brando 2
By J. D. Hawkins
Copyright © 2015 JD Hawkins
All rights reserved.
Cover Design: Najla Qamber,
Najla Qamber Designs
Photo:
Love N. Books
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either
are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is dedicated to my lovely ARC readers and cult members.
Thanks for everything.
I love you long time.
Brando
“You
did this to yourself,”
I
say to the bare-chested, unshaven, scruffy-haired mess of a man
looking back at me with pain in his eyes. “You
tried to have it all, and you ended up with nothing.”
I
raise my whiskey glass and he does the same.
“Here’s
to being a complete asshole.”
I
drain the glass and look at the sorry motherfucker. He’s
good-looking, even though he needs a shave and a shower. A strong
jawline and dark eyes, but he’s
got the expression of someone watching his pet being put down. His
eyes are lidded and blank, as if all he wants to do is creep back
into bed, and his lips look like they’re
incapable of saying anything nice. It breaks your heart just to look
at him.
“Shit.
You look as bad as I feel,”
I
growl, stepping away from the mirror with a grim smile.
I
put my glass down on the counter and stop myself just before I fill
it up again –
who
am I kidding? I’m
beyond glasses. I take the whole bottle with me as I cross the messy
room, stepping on dirty clothes and other junk as I make my way to
the record shelf. The place looks like a bomb hit it, a bomb filled
with men’s
underwear, beer bottles, and empty pizza boxes.
“Time
to bring out the big guns,”
I
mumble, as I angle my head to flick through the very last records on
the shelf –
the
ones I hoped I’d
never need again.
Johnny
Cash, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Bruce Springsteen –
the
old, smoky voices of men who knew too much and still had the scars
from learning it the hard way.
I
pick a record and bring it over to the player, taking my time as I
put it on the platter. With slow anticipation, I lift the needle with
my finger and drop it carefully on the groove. The comforting
crackles and pops sound out from the speakers all over my apartment,
and I swing the bottle to my lips as I stumble back over to the sofa
and drop my heavy body onto it.
With
the drink dulling my senses, I let the song take me out of myself.
Guitars and drums swirling and beating like my bad thoughts, that
sympathetic voice like an old friend…
Then
the record scratches to a stop.
I
open my eyes and look toward the player.
It’s
Jax. He raises his hands out wide, looks at me incredulously, and
says, “What
the fuck, dude?”
“Ugh,”
is
all I can manage as I pull myself into an upright sitting position on
the couch. I don’t
need to ask how Jax got in; I gave him a spare key a long time ago –
I
sometimes have a habit of losing my own set in the apartments of
particularly passionate women.
He
steps through the room purposefully, scanning the wreckage of my
apartment like he’s
looking for something. With his crisp, tailored blue shirt and
tight-fitting jeans he should look ridiculous in this pig-sty of an
apartment, but he has a habit of making his surroundings look like
they don’t
fit him, rather than the other way around.
“So
you had your heart broken, huh?”
“How
do you know that?”
I
say, struggling to follow his movements as he paces around.
Jax
shoots me a look. “’Cause
this place looks like a crime scene –
and
you look like the corpse. Don’t
need a detective.”
“I’m
alright,”
I
insist.
“
Alright?
Dude. I haven’t
seen you in nearly a month. I’ve
called you—”
he
pauses to grab my phone from the coffee table, and yanks my finger
onto it in order to unlock it, “twenty-four
times,” he
says, flicking through the call list on my phone. “And
you ignored every single one. That’s
kind of impressive, in a weird way. Looks like your boss called a
bunch of times…your
massage therapist…your
yoga instructor…?”
I
manage a little smile as I bring the bottle to my lips, but Jax
snatches it away just as it reaches them.
“Hey!”
I
say, finding my hand suddenly empty.
“You
even
eating
anything?”
Jax
says as he brings the bottle with him on his march to the kitchen.
“What
are you, now? My mother?”
“Just
a friend,” he
says as he opens and closes cabinets looking for food. “If
I was your mother I’d
be hosing you down in the shower and spraying this place with Lysol.”
“We
can just order a pizza,”
I
groan, as I drop back onto the sofa.
“I’ll
take you to the salad place down the road. My shout,”
he
says, walking back to stand in front of me. “You
seriously look like you could use a bucket of kale or some shit.”
“That
sounds good,”
I
mumble sarcastically. “
Or,
we could just order a pizza.”
“Bro!”
Jax
shouts, gesturing around him. “You
need to get out of this place. You’re
a couple of video games and a superhero poster away from regressing
into a reclusive teenager.”
I
look up at him feebly. “I
used to like video games.”
“So
did I,” he
says, “but
even then, I never looked as bad as you do right now.”
He
slows down for a second, staring at me with more pity than I’ve
ever seen him use before –
and
this is a guy who stops to feed stray dogs. He steps in front of the
coffee table and sits down on it, straight in front of me. Finally,
he nods.
“So
what happened with Haley?”
he
asks. “No
bullshit this time.”
I
push a hand back through my hair –
the
most grooming I’ve
done in a week. As much as I hate to admit any of this, it’s
time to come clean.
“That
night, the one where you and I bumped into Lexi, that scumbag Davis
made a bet with me. If I made a hit with Haley in one month, he’d
give me Lexi back.”
Jax
cocks an eyebrow. “And
you won.”
“I
won.”
He
nods slowly, finally understanding. “But
you don’t
want Lexi anymore. Do you.”
I
sigh— this
is way too much to think about on just two quarts of whiskey.
“I
don’t
know what I feel for Lexi anymore. But I do know that I had pretty
much given up on having anything with her ever again. Losing Haley,
though…”
I
shake my head.
“So
here’s
the part I don’t
get,” Jax
says. “How
did you lose Haley? I thought things were going great.”
I
stare at him, using his compassion as a point to fix on, so that I
don’t
get angry, or depressed, or frustrated, or any of the other negative
things that thinking about it makes me feel.
“She
found out about the bet.”
Jax
takes a moment, then rubs his temples like he’s
suddenly got a killer headache as bad as the one I have.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,”
I say.
“
Oh.
”
“She
thought you were faking all along. Well, damn.”
“I
don’t
blame her,” I
say, looking up at the ceiling. “To
top it all off, Rowland –
my
boss – has
us all by the balls. Davis gave us Lexi. Then Rowland threatened me
and Haley with his lawyers and forced Haley to sign a deal –
with
my help. And now I’m
supposed to manage both of them.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.
Ouch.
You
know, it took a really long time, a lot of days like this, and a
whole load of women, before I could even stop dreaming about Lexi.
And Haley…I…I
don’t
know. But this time it’s
even worse. I’m
so fucking stupid!
”
I
ball my hand up into a fist and slam it on the sofa.
“Jesus,
buddy! Calm down. It’s
not over. Not yet, anyway.”
“Shit.
Sorry,” I
say, putting my hands on my face and leaning over to calm myself
down. “What
the fuck am I supposed to do, dude?”
“Here’s
what you do,”
Jax
says, leaning forward and putting his hands on my shoulders. “
Don’t
think
.
Remember when you told me that? Well do it. Just go take a shower,
put some clothes on, and come get something to eat. One step at a
time. Get yourself off the couch, and then just follow your
instincts. Keep on moving. Don’t
stop to wonder.”
I
let out a sigh.
“That
sounds like good advice. But it’s
the same damn reasoning that got me into this mess in the first
place.”
“Sure
it is.”
Jax
just grins. “And
it’s
the only thing that’ll
get you out of it.”
Haley
Ever
since I was a kid, I’ve
written down my dreams when I woke up. From the recurring one about a
white horse, to the strange ones about flying through an auditorium.
Even the anxiety dreams where I feel like I’m
falling, and the nightmares about Freddy Krueger. I’d
wake up and write them all. Maybe it was some way of trying to make
my dreams come true, maybe it was an attempt to cling to the fantasy
and weirdness in my otherwise typical life. At the very least, it
gave me a lot of stuff to work from with song lyrics. I’ve
done it almost every morning for over ten years.
But
not anymore.
I’d
like to say it’s
because my life this past month has been pretty much a dream come
true –
which
it has –
but
it’s
not. I’d
like to say it was because it takes me at least five minutes every
morning to remember and realize where I am, in a beautiful new
apartment I’m
sharing with Jenna –
but
it’s
not that either.
It’s
because I keep dreaming about
him.
The
more I try to suppress it, and the more I try to fill my head with
junk so that I don’t
have to think about him, the more vivid and explicit the dreams
become. It’s
gotten to the point where I can almost smell him, taste him. The
dreams are different, but the feeling’s
always the same. The guilt mixing with ecstasy, the bitterness mixing
with sweetness. But in them I can’t
help myself. I can’t
pull away. It’s
only when I wake up, my thighs rubbing together, my hearth thumping,
that I feel real enough and strong enough to remember what he did to
me. The bet. Then I get angry.
This
morning is no different. I wake up and realize my hand is between my
thighs, the other against my neck where he was kissing me. I pull
them away in annoyance and jump out of bed. I can hear the sound of
the juicer outside my room, and Jenna’s
voice. After pulling on a pair of sweatpants I push open the door,
eager for the distraction of company.
“She’s
alive!”
says
Josh, breezily.
My
record producer is sitting on a stool at the counter while Jenna
buzzes around the kitchen. Since we moved in together, using the
proceeds of my advance and the money from the play she finally got
paid for, Jenna’s
been making sure she’s
getting her money’s
worth from the apartment’s
furnishings and appliances. The juicer, the coffee machine, the bread
maker, it doesn’t
matter: if it does something, she’s
been using it as much as she can.
“Morning,
Haley!” she
says as she pours out a big smoothie for herself, the toaster popping
in the background. “Coffee?”
“Absolutely.
Hey, Josh.”
“You’re
up late,”
he
says, as I rub the gunk out of my eyes.
“We
were up all night watching horror movies on the TV,”
Jenna
says, excitedly, nodding for Josh to turn around and look at it.
“It’s
fifty-five
inches!”
“And
you know how we ladies love our inches,”
I
grumble drily, not caring that I’m
tossing out inappropriate innuendo to my producer. I know Josh can
handle it, though. He’s
seen worse from me by now. They both have.
“Oh,
Haley,” Jenna
mock-scolds me. I’ve
been in a foul mood ever since things went south with Brando, but she
(and Josh) (and my music) have been my rock this whole time. With
their help, I’ve
even managed to have a few happy moments.