it was heavy. And I didn’t want Diesel to know they kept at me after it was all over, and how ugly it got, and how much it was, and how I started to hate them. I mean really hate them, Rush. They were shoving their hate at me and I just absorbed it, and it grew, and I started shoveling it back. Hate is a burden. And it’s so fucking heavy.”
He moved to the counter opposite her, keeping hold on her eyes, and when she stopped talking, he agreed quietly, “Yeah it is.”
“So I cut them out and it hurt. I’ve totally blocked all of them. And I didn’t have . . .” She shook her head. “I have friends. I have Essence. I could have unloaded. But back in the day, I’d unload on Diane. Or if I needed a mom unit, Amy. And I didn’t have them to unload on with this shit.”
You have a beautiful voice.
Christ, she’d been all alone.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered.
“I’m directing porn. I don’t want to direct porn. I didn’t come to the realization that I wanted to make films and my first thought was, ‘Great! I’ll do porn!’”
He chuckled, and she shot him an amused look, but she kept talking.
“And Valenzuela is creepy. And Harrietta is even more filled with hate than my brother Gunner is. To the point she kinda scares me. Even more than Benito does. And I’d gone down to Phoenix to be with Diesel because I was worried about his frame of mind and they were all tight. Tighter than ever. And I’d lie in bed in my hotel room down there, knowing they were all piled together in their big bed. And, Rush, there is absolutely nothing conventional about what Diesel has with his man and his woman. But it’s so beautiful. They just fit. From the start. D does the yardwork. And Mad fixes shit around the house. And Molly does the laundry. And they all tangle up together to watch TV.” She grinned. “And they fuck like bunnies.”
He grinned back.
Her grin died.
So his did too.
“It should have made me happy that my big brother, who’s so awesome and so loving and so protective, had that back and he was out and real and himself and happy, and at least the weight he’d been carrying for years had been lifted. But it just made me feel lonely.”
“You felt that way because you were going through some big shit,” he explained.
“I was feeling that way because I was going through some big shit and I thought I was Superwoman. I could do it all. I could do it all by myself. Take care of everybody. Get justice for Diane and Paul and Amy and bring down the bad guys. Take D’s back and give him support while he decided to keep the family that was good for him and scrape off the one that made him feel like dirt. I meet you, and you have your brothers with you. You talk about your dad and your sister. You’ve worked through not having your mom.”
“I still miss her,” he admitted.
“But you have people.”
“You have people too, honey.”
“I do.” She shrugged. “I just didn’t let them have me.”
He leaned into his elbows on the counter toward her. “You learn your lesson about that?”
“Not to let it all overwhelm me and then melt down in front of you again, and thus eventually make you get shot of me because you think I’m a psycho?” she asked back.
He just smiled at her.
“Yeah, I learned my lesson.”
His smile faded before he said, “Valenzuela.”
She waved her hand in front of her face like she was shooing a fly, and he started to get ticked at that casual response.
Then she spoke.
“I was having a moment of temporary insanity. After dinner, if you have a computer, we can type out my resignation letter together.”
This gave him great relief.
But after dinner, he was going to have his hand up the skirt of that dress and his tongue down her throat, so maybe after he tired her out and she was unconscious, he’d get up and type it out for her himself.
He didn’t share that.
“Don’t think I’m crazy, but I’m gonna miss the cast and crew. They’re good people. It’s not as skeevy as you might think,” she told him.
“I don’t think that’s crazy.” He reached his hand out and caught hers. “Sweetheart, you live with a screaming hippie who shares Woodstock orgy stories within two minutes of