If Tomorrow Never Comes (14 page)

           
His continual absence made her feel
as though the apartment was hers, the mere idea chest inflating.
 
All too quickly, she grew accustomed to the
security, the warm showers, and Margaret’s fabulous culinary art. Luxuries that
tugged at yearnings to one day live a normal life.
 
Runaway yearnings that occasionally strayed
down sugar lined Avenues until halted by realities stop signs.
  
Lacking the education and finances to secure
the necessary status made them nothing more than pipe dreams requiring
admirable ability to end the invasions of foolishness.
 

           
Tonight before Jake arrived, once
again the cloak of darkness wrapped around the city.
 
Without a word, after tossing a, grease
soaked, bag of food that would go to waste, onto the table, he changed his
clothing. Together they entered a world that now seemed a space age away where
she dutifully delivered a package then returned before daybreak.
  

           
Ritually, the evening withered away,
and the hands of time unleashed another dawn. The morning sky had turned inside
out displaying a dark interior that plundered the earth with
thundershowers.
 
As usual, Jake was
gone.
 

           
Obediently prepared to visit
Margaret, pausing at the door, Jordan turned, and as though she was seeing
through Margaret's eyes, inspected a living room that had become a battlefield
of life.
 
Desperately she searched for
answers to pick up her spirits, every fiber sulking from anticipating another
day of monotony.
 
Scrutinizing the
apartment, she concluded the condition was worse than the first time she saw it
a sudden whiff of the gagging smell made her exit, and descend the stairs two
at a time.
 
With newly found excitement
bubbling over, she charged into Margaret's apartment.
 
                                                         
           

           
Margaret didn’t have the heart to
decline.
 
Arms laden with rags, cleaning
products and tools, they embarked on a formidable project.
 
Singing and dancing to music on the radio, together
they washed windows, opening them to the rain as if inviting the moisture to
cleanse the air.
 
They scrubbed the
kitchen and bathroom, organized shelves and drawers, took out the garbage,
vacuumed, swept, rearranged, and polished furniture, washed clothes and bedding.
 
At the end of the day with excitement
overflowing, Jordan dared to think of the day as a celebration, a new
beginning.

           
Everything was going well until she
opened a closet and found Jake's bulletproof vest tossed into a corner.
 
Picking it up with intentions of hanging it
on a hanger, bludgeoning questions twisted her stomach into knots.
 
Hearing Margaret sigh behind her, the need
for answers became oppressive.
 
“Why
doesn't Jake wear the vest?”
 

           
“He did until John died.”
 
Regrouping distressing thoughts, Margaret
paused, “He thinks he's Superman I guess, doesn't care anymore, and feels he'd
be better off if something happened to him.”

           
Disturbing sensations made Jordan
turn, her wide-eyed glance finding a face swamped with a sadness embedding
wrinkles she’d never noticed before.
 
As
soon as the last word left Margaret's mouth, moisture turned her blue eyes
pale, the problem erased by a quick swipe of her forearm.
 
Moving away, she began busying herself with
something she'd given no thought of doing.

           
The sadness that over took Margaret
dampened the excitement of the day.
 
Silence paraded on until Jordan approached an old wooden trunk tucked
into a corner of the living room, the lid piled high with books, and magazines
she planned to organize.

           
“Jake would be very angry if we
disturbed anything inside the trunk, my dear.
 
Trust me; it's best to leave the dead where they lay.”

           
Unable at the time to comprehend
Margaret's implication, Jordan went on to challenge another project.

           
It was seven o'clock before the pair
stopped to admire their handiwork.
 
Facing each other, for the first time, Margaret saw what a genuine smile
could do to Jordan's exquisite features. A smile quickly erased when offering a
hug and Jordan withdrew, a cold look of distrust radically changing her
features. Though deeply saddened, Margaret dismissed her despondency, said
goodnight and returned to her apartment.
  

           
Jordan hated herself for wounding
Margaret's feelings.
 
She wasn't
accustomed to affection.
 
She’d forgotten
what sincere affection felt like and it frightened her.
 
The last time she'd been touched, hugged, or
kissed by a woman was when she was five, the night before they carried her
mother away on a stretcher.
 
Little did
she know then she’d never see her again.
   
Jordan clamped down on the tears that almost reached her eyes, almost.

           
A long hot shower eradicated those
memories, along with slipping into another set of clothes Margaret claimed a
girl in the building outgrew.
 
Jordan
knew better.
  
Entering the kitchen,
placing the kettle of stew they'd prepared earlier on a burner, she began
stirring, the circular motion's brewing visions of Jake's pleasure over their
efforts.
 
Hearing his footsteps, certain
that he'd be thrilled, she stepped back to witness his reaction.

           
The instant the door swung open; at
a glance, Jake was convinced his drunken stupor had caused him to enter the
wrong apartment.
 
Stepping backward into
the hall he tried focusing on the apartment number, it was his all right.
 
Returning inside, scanning the living room
instantly cleared his vision.
 
Nothing
was recognizable, as if a hurricane had touched down and removed the bad
replacing it with lace doilies now covering threadbare furniture.
 
Never before was it so clean, the air so
fresh, as though purified by the storm outside.
 

           
Though Jake's pride prevented him
from admitting it, what his eyes sought first was Jordan.
  
The instant he saw her in the kitchen,
relief cleansed his fears an acknowledgment of eagerness he cursed while
staggering to the bedroom.
 
There he
found the bed neatly made, clothes put away, a new lamp sitting on the crate,
drawers no longer spitting pieces of wrinkled clothing, the folding lawn chair
replaced by a small stuffed one that once belonged to John.
 
Instantly his emotions became bubbling acid
that churned and filled his stomach, his throat.
 

           
Walking heavily into the bathroom,
doubled over from excruciating grief he clutched the sink to steady a body that
was shaking uncontrollably.
 
The brightness
of the sparkling porcelain hurting his eyes, forced his head level.
 
Staring back from a mirror otherwise streaked
and dull was a crystalline image of a stranger.
  
A man with long, stringy, hair tied back,
unkempt mustache, and beard, an earring, lines creasing a face with smudges
under blood shot and dim eyes.
 
Abhorrence provoked fingers to bite into the hard, cold, mass that now
seemed to be moving.
 
His chin crashed to
his chest.
  

           
In the caverns of the strangers,
eyes Jake caught a glimpse of the young man whose life was once so full of
purpose, of youthful mischief someone that, ages ago, believed he had
everything.
 
How was that possible when
he'd killed him?
 
That spirit could never
rise again.
  
He couldn't allow it,
couldn't take the chance the pain would return so convinced was he that if he
did not allow anyone back into his life, no one could ever hurt him again.

           
Pain, that retaliates when we're
least prepared, brought on a violent urge to empty a stomach abused by
alcohol.
 
As reality lashed him, on his
knees holding on to the toilet basin his stomach turned inside out.
 
His heart ripped open and bled.
 
With his clothing sweat drenched head
spinning, he prayed to the heathens possessing him to let him go.

           
Finally, he came to understand that
he had spent too much time in the arms of memories and regrets drifting on a
lonely sea of self-pity.
 
He was much too
young to be feeling so goddamn old.
 
It
seemed forever before he could stand, when he did, he caught a glimpse of
Jordan in the doorway with concern painting her features.

           
“Are you all right?
 
Is there anything I can do?
 
Anything I can get you?”

           
All too quickly, his mind registered
that her pale blonde hair had grown out considerably, and shined with
luster.
 
Her gold eyes were clear and
bird bright, her cheeks, rosy, lips a darker pink than before, lush, sweet
kissable lips.
 
She had gained much
needed weight and, although her blouse was colorful, it remained too large, the
short sleeves revealing creamy skin too enticing to his liking.
 
Jeans slightly tighter, hugging legs he
remembered naked all too well.
 
If she
quit becoming more beautiful each day, he could erase her from his mind, his
dreams.
 
Only a witch had such powers,
damn her to hell, she'd ambushed him, taken him completely by surprise, and
annihilated his control.
 
How could he,
of all people, allow her claws to dig in so deep?

           
With his face turning crimson, his
body trembling, eyes radiating the fire of self-disgust from wanting her, saturating
emotions too numerous to separate or define forced him to rap out words laced
with caustic censure.
 
“Get out!
 
Get to hell out of here, out of my life.
 
I don't need this shit.
 
I don't want it.
 
I don't need you.
 
Do you hear me?
 
You have nerve disturbing my things,
uprooting everything.
 
What do you want
from me?”

           
An almost audible crash said
Jordan's mood sunk to the dregs, so much for spending the entire day agonizing
over the apartment’s appearance and, unbelievably herself.
 
Galvanized by his words, anger poking at
startled senses turned her blood cold.
 
The man she was beginning to think of as different from all the others
in the world, wasn't at all, the realization convulsing her whole body with
agony.
 
Despair clamping its icy grip around
her throat turned her breath into the coldest wind of winter, crystallizing the
words that cracked with scorn and emptied her mind.

           
“You're nothing more than a,
barbaric, pompous, asshole; all you do is wallow in self-pity?
 
Look at you.
 
Take a close look.
 
You are
nothing.
 
You'll never be anything.
 
You'll never win.
 
You can’t win because Scorpio has proven
himself a better man.
 
Look at what
you've allowed him to do, he has turned you into a looser, Morgan.
The bitch that finished you off must be
something.
 
She deserves an award.
 
You want me out of here you've got it,
mister.
 
And, if you dare come after me
I'll cut your balls off, finish what little manhood she left behind.”

           
Jake blinked and yanked his head
back as though her verbal attack had thoroughly thrashed the hell out of him.

           
Jordan was aghast over the words
spewing from her mouth leaving her throat cooked.
 
Her chest was heaving from the heart pounding
a tattoo against her ribs.
 
Any second
now, her head would explode.
 
Every speck
of her vibrated hurt more than she ever believed possible.
 
Never before had her emotions been so tied in
knots that she wanted to shout at the top of her lungs the string of curses
colliding in her throat.
 
She could not
figure out what there was about the beast that made her want to kill him one
second and hug him the next?
 
Unable to
swallow the sob growing in her throat, she spun around barely able to see where
she was going through the moisture splashing her eyes.