And what conversation was he talking about?
I didn’t have a chance to ask, Hank continued. “What I said about them in no way… Roxie, hear this right f**king now… in no way does it transfer to you.”
“Hank –”
Now he was on a rol and he was angry.
Way angry.
“You need to learn to give yourself a goddamned break.
You’re so f**kin’ hard on yourself, I wouldn’t even begin to be able to make you feel as badly about yourself as you do.
Even if I wanted to. Christ!”
“You don’t understand.”
“I think I f**king wel do.”
“No you don’t!” I pushed at him but he wouldn’t budge so I carried on anyway. “You didn’t see us together, when we’d visit my folks, the looks on their faces. My friends who’d try to be nice to him even though they knew he was a piece of dirt. I knew they wondered about me. Why was I with him?
What was wrong with me?”
“What was wrong with you?” he asked.
My head jerked like he smacked me in the face.
Then I started struggling. “Get off me, I’m going home!” He caught my wrists and held them over my head.
“Answer my question, what was wrong with you? Why were you with him?”
“I thought he loved me!” I shouted. “He promised me everything. He was ful of grand dreams. He was going to show me the f**king world. I was young and stupid and believed him.”
“So, you’re sayin’ that you’re stupid because you believed a pack of lies some shithead fed you?”
“Yes!”
“It’s you who’s wrong in this scenario, just because you loved someone and since you did you trusted him to tel you the truth?”
I blinked in the darkness.
I hadn’t thought of it that way.
“That’s what love’s al about, Roxanne. You love someone, you trust them always to tel you the truth.”
“Hank, please, get off me,” I begged.
“Did he get you to deal drugs?” Hank asked.
“What? ” I screeched.
“Did you deal drugs with him? That’s what he did. He was a drug dealer. Smack.”
For some reason, the last word he said jarred me out of the moment and I became confused.
“What’s smack?” I asked.
I could almost hear Hank’s teeth grinding.