die. Trying to pretend like I hadn’t just pissed my pants, I dramatically chucked my plastic cup onto the ground—once I’d regained the use of my arms—and shouted after them, “What the fuck was that, Angel?”
I’ll tell you what that was, Journal. That was divine intervention. Angel Alvarez was a solid buck fifty of Valtrex-and-crystal-meth-fueled trailer-park scrapper. I wouldn’t have stood a chance. I would have been liquefied on impact had I not been blessed with a guardian angel who wasn’t above tripping a bitch, not even a bitch named Angel.
After that little incident, I decided I needed to hook up with someone who could shoot lasers out of his fucking eyes. But as it turned out, Trevor couldn’t even shoot semen out of his penis with all the antidepressants in his system.
Anyway, this girl in my social studies class heard about the incident, sized up my shaved head, combat boots, and desperation and told me that Harley James, the Harley James, was staying at his mom’s place for a while.
Oh, transient! How mysterious!
And his mom’s place just happened to be in her neighborhood. She plopped his mom’s number on my desk with a sad smile. At the time, I thought the forlorn look was her way of expressing pity over my current situation. I now know it was guilt over introducing me to the complete and utter disappointment that was Harley James.
That night, I tapped each digit on my cordless phone with shaking hands. Sitting in an upright fetal position in my bed, I clutched my knees to my chest with my free arm and took deep breaths as my other hand clutched the ringing receiver, trying hard to channel someone older, someone cooler, someone who didn’t have fucking braces.
Oh my God, I’m a child calling a grown man from my bedroom in my parents’ house, hoping he’ll accept sex in exchange for protection from my steroid-secreting psychotic Cujo of an ex-boyfriend.
Right as I was about to slam the phone down and hyperventilate into an empty Camel Lights carton, I heard his voice. Despite being deep and rough like a Hell’s Angel would sound if he’d been smoking glass shards since the age of nine, Harley’s tone was disarmingly relaxed and warm.
I now know that he was probably just stoned out of his mind, but it was such a nice, unexpected contrast to Knight’s sharpness and intensity.
Harley’s slow, raspy cadence sounded like an old, familiar gravel road. I could almost hear the playful smile on his face and see the empty space on his lap where I would curl up and let him shield me from danger with his giant manly arms.
Knight’s post-breakup rage had been so apocalyptic that my mother had actually let me stay home from school for three days after a particularly psychotic screaming episode he’d initiated outside of my Spanish class.
This man, Harley, was exactly what I needed. In my mind, he was a fifteen-foot-tall Minotaur with devil horns, who breathed napalm and could beat the shit out of Knight with nothing more than his giant, veiny man cock, but now that I had him on the phone, he sounded like gritty, crystallized, slow pouring honey. Mmm…
Despite being lulled into a state of calm by Harley’s deep, unhurried drawl, my stomach was doing somersaults, and my skin was flushed in pink blotches from head to toe. What was happening to me? I was positively giddy. I felt excited but at ease, wanted but not hunted, and flirty without fear.
I hadn’t realized until then how hypervigilant I had been with Knight. Whenever he and I had been together, I’d found myself subconsciously scanning my surroundings for makeshift weapons and mapping out potential escape routes. It was like being in a relationship with a tranquilized velociraptor—or a skinhead who had recently started taking hard-core steroids.
Thank God Harley couldn’t see me because I was all goofy grin and blushing cheeks and twiddling fingers and suppressed squeals.
After I nervously agreed to meet him for coffee that weekend (Coffee! How grown-up!) and stumbled through my awkward good-bye, Harley delivered the final blow.
I bit my lip, trying to hold in all the excited girlie noises, until he said his farewell. I was hoping he’d be quick about it because I could feel the giggles percolating up behind my clenched jaw, but there was nothing quick about Harley James.
I waited for what felt like hours, listening to what I imagined was a self-confident I’ve-got-her-now smile on the other end, before Harley finally