Tell Me It's Real(138)

“But you did something, didn’t you?” I asked him quietly. “You helped her.”

He nodded and looked over at me again. Our eyes met, and for the rest of his story, we stayed that way. “Maybe. I like to think so. I didn’t know the best thing to say to her, so I sat on the steps above her, and I pulled her back into me. I wrapped my arms around her and put my chin on her head and told her the only thing I could, that it was okay. That it was all right. That somehow, I’d figure out a way to make it better for her. I asked her to stop crying because I would always be there for her and I wouldn’t walk out the door. I told her I….” He stopped as his eyes grew brighter and his face trembled. “I told her that there was nothing she could do to make me leave her.”

I reached over with my free hand and thumbed the tears from his face. He kissed the palm of my hand, the tips of my fingers. “What did she say to you?” I asked hoarsely, knowing she must have said something.

“She said… she stopped crying and she looked up at me and smiled. She said that she didn’t know what she would have done without me. She said that she was glad that I was there for her and that she was sorry she was sad. She said that she loved me and that she always would. And then she kissed my forehead and pulled me up, and we went to the kitchen and we made peanut butter cookies and it was a good day. It was a good day, and that is what I want to walk away with. Paul, that’s all I want to remember.”

“Then that’s what you remember,” I told him. “That’s what you take with you, and fuck all the rest. The rest doesn’t matter. The rest isn’t important.”

“It’s like the stars, you know?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

He pointed toward the sky. “You can’t see them now, because it’s daytime. But you know they’re still there because they haven’t left. Not really. It’ll just be a little bit of time before you can see them again.”

“Yeah, Vince. It’s like the stars.”

“Paul?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I’m ready to go now.”

“Okay.”

“Can we go back to your house? I think I just want to lay down with you for a while and not think about things.”

“I think we can manage that.” I stood and offered him my hand. He watched it for a moment, and then a beautiful smile bloomed on his face. He reached up and grabbed my hand, and I pulled him up with me. He put his arm around my waist and laid his head on my shoulder. I wrapped my arm around him and led him away.

We were almost back to the car when he spoke softly. “I’m glad I found you. I think someone somewhere knew I’d need you.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

And that was that.





Chapter 22


God Rides A Harley In My Very Happy Ending





TWO months later, we broke up.

I know, I know. What kind of a happy ending is that?

Sorry.

Unfortunately, it was pretty much all my fault. I hadn’t meant to let it happen. There was this new guy at work who seemed to take a shine to me for some unknown reason. It was like Vince had opened the floodgates, and all the people who didn’t even really know I existed before suddenly found me to be irresistible. One day, stupidly, I let new guy come over to my house and one thing led to another and Vince walked in right as new guy had his hand shoved down my pants, our lips fused together, pressed up against the wall where I’d hit my face months before getting ready for our first date—the first date I had with the guy I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

I regret it. I regret the shit out of it.

The blowup was huge, and there were tears and apologies and begging and pleading. But I’d fucked up and Vince didn’t forgive easily and it ended. Badly. Vince quit his job so we wouldn’t see each other every day. He moved back to Phoenix, and I heard he started dating some random guy that he’d had an on-again-off-again thing with there before he’d come back to Tucson.

My parents disowned me after that, saying that they couldn’t believe that I’d done that to him. I was no longer welcome in their house. Nana agreed with them and told me I that I was no better than what Johnny Depp had been calling me all along.

Sandy broke off our friendship following that whole disaster, saying that no friend of his was a cheater. He moved to Colombia, where he married a drug lord and lived a life of leisure as the madam of the house. I heard a while ago that he had a tiara made entirely of blood diamonds and a wing in his mansion dedicated to all of his wigs.

And as for me?

Disgraced, I headed south of the border and ended up in that little town in Mexico that I knew I was going to end up in. I opened my bar, Taco’s Bell, just like I knew I would. I had a tiny little apartment above it that didn’t have air-conditioning, and the ceiling fan did nothing to move the stifling hot air around.