I wanted and said, Fuck the consequences. I wanted you to stay with me, so I did whatever it took to make that happen, even after I’d promised that I would get you home on time.” Harley’s tone was rough and his volume was climbing.
“I just fucked your whole life up because my house feels empty and wrong when you’re not in it.” Harley shoved his hands in his pockets, breaking physical contact with me, then tilted his head back and shouted, “Fuuuuck!” into the sky.
I scanned the parking lot to make sure the authorities hadn’t been alerted, then took a step forward and resumed our embrace. Breathing harder now, Harley reluctantly pulled his hands from his pockets, but instead of hugging me back he cupped my face in his palms and tilted up toward his.
Honing in on the two big, green, blinking olives inside my face, Harley continued in a gruff whisper, “You have no idea how sorry I am. I feel like a complete piece of shit, and I don’t know what to do to make it right. You have to let me make this right, baby.”
Harley’s brow was furrowed, and those bloodshot blue eyes bore right into my soul. I could tell that he was nervously tonguing the silver hoop piercing that wrapped around the center of his big, beautiful bottom lip, and I wanted nothing more than to kiss his fear away. Seeing the pain etched on his face hurt worse than the truckload of despair I’d been hauling around since last night.
Who was I kidding? Car or no car, I couldn’t stay away from this man for a day, let alone forever.
And as if on cue, Harley, sensing that I was on the precipice of making yet another bad decision, decided to give me one last little push.
“I want this to be forever, Lady.”
Jesus. Okay, okay. You’re forgiven. Can we go back to being happy now?
Trying to lighten the mood and pretend as though I hadn’t just broken up with him in my mind a few hours earlier, I popped two cigarettes into my mouth, lit them both, and smiled as I handed one to Harley. “Is this another proposal? You haven’t asked me yet this week, you know,” I mused.
Harley had been asking me to marry him almost daily for the last two or three months, ever since the day he’d found a gaudy gold Claddagh ring on the sidewalk outside my work. He’d been coming to see me on my lunch break when he spotted it, so naturally, as soon as he’d walked in, Harley dropped to one knee, thrust that little piece of shit into the air, and proposed to me right in front of my boss and all the good patrons of Pier 1 Imports. It was the first of at least three dozen humiliating public proposals.
While having to repeatedly reject Harley in front of our friends, coworkers, and strangers had started off horribly embarrassing and awkward, over time, it’d become a running joke between us. I was just too damn young, and he was just too damn carefree for either of us to take marriage seriously. But I had to admit, seeing Harley James, legendary bad boy with the face of an angel and the body of an ex-con, on bended knee was really starting to grow on me.
Harley turned a gleaming impish eye on me and brought his right hand to his chin, as if he were mulling over a quick parking lot proposal.
He’s back! My playful Harley! Yes!
As he rubbed his oh-so-sexy stubble and scanned the audience of pimply-faced slack-jawed teenagers watching his every move, my eyes were immediately drawn to the four letters I had etched on his knuckles the night before.
Giddily, I squealed, “You really didn’t wash your hand!” and reached for it reflexively.
When my thumb slid across the unexpectedly slippery A and D, I glanced down, searching for the source of the slime, and gasped. The skin around each letter was an angry pink color, and the entire surface was slick with what looked like Vaseline.
Oh.
My.
Fucking.
God.
* * *
1 Miss Cleo’s psychic hotline infomercials were ubiquitous with late-night TV in the ’90s, and they never, ever came on before midnight. Miss Cleo had a riotous Jamaican accent and offered to give a “free readin’,” which actually cost four ninety-nine per minute, to first-time callers. She was later exposed as a Los Angeles–born actress, and the company was sued to the tune of five hundred million dollars.