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Lock up, Amy.
Ben and Johnnie, they both used that exact phrase. They even said it in the same light, but firm tone. I felt the squeezing sensation in my chest, realizing it had been more than a full day since I felt it, felt the loss. And then I felt almost guilty because, well, he just died. I was supposed to be grieving. I wasn't supposed to be able to go a full day without thinking about him. Even though there was a lot of crazy stuff going on around me and involving me. Maybe it was stupid to feel guilty about forgetting to feel sad, but what can I say, I wasn't exactly in a great place emotionally.
Feeling weighted, I made my way to the door and slid the locks into place.
Okay. Maybe I wasn't in a great place emotionally because a lot had just happened. And I mean just. In the course of three days, I buried the only friend I had in the world; I found drugs hidden in my wall; I realized how screwed that made me; I found out that a guy I casually dated wanted me because I looked like an ex that he kidnapped and held hostage until she overdosed on the drugs he sold; I realized that being a 'bad guy' apparently didn't make you a bad person if Johnnie, Cash, Breaker, Wolf, and Paine were anything to go by; I traveled fifteen hours to stay with someone who was a virtual stranger... and then I slept with him.
Alright. So maybe that was the thing I needed to address more than anything else. I slept with Johnnie. I had sex. And it was great. I mean, as far as first times go, I was pretty sure I had the best one a girl could ask for. Not only was it good from a technical standpoint, it was given to me by Johnnie. I was pretty sure if every woman on the planet could go back in time and re-do their first time, they would want Johnnie to be the one to break them in. For good reason. He was ridiculously good looking and he had the kind of charm that made me have to work at it to not become a puddle of need whenever he spoke. On top of that, he knew what he was doing. As in he knew what he was doing.
I didn't regret it.
Maybe I should have. I held onto it for so long only to all but fling it at the biggest womanizer that had ever crossed my path. But I didn't regret that. It was a good memory. It was one I wanted to have when things fell apart, like they would. Eventually.
Then I did the unthinkable; I opened up. I took all the dark, ugly parts of my life, the parts I kept so deeply buried that I wasn't even sure I could dig them up anymore, and I gave them to Johnnie. I gave him seven year old me, terrified and hurt beyond words the first time she realized that a man could let her down, that a man who claimed to love her could just as easily leave her. I told him how I coped with my mother; I told him about how ugly her addiction made me. I told him about her death with a detachment that made me feel cold and cruel.
But he got it; he got me. The way I felt about my mother's death was much like Johnnie's reaction to his father's passing. It was devoid of the concept of closure and felt, in an awful way, like a sigh of relief. It felt over. It felt freeing.
Unlike anyone else hearing that, he didn't think less of me. Maybe a small part of me hoped he felt the same kinship that I felt; the feeling of relief that someone else truly understood.
God, what did that say about me?
I rested my hand against the door for a moment, closing my eyes.
I needed to get a grip. I needed to stop creating invisible connections with a man I was going to leave sooner rather than later. There was no future for us. He was a bad boy; I was a good girl. It wouldn't work.
I swallowed hard against the lump in my throat, fighting the tightening in my chest and blinking the tears back.
My hand fell from the door.
"Lock up, Amy," I told myself.
But, buried beneath the safety of my rib cage, I was pretty sure my heart ignored the demand.--Johnnie came back an hour later, kicking at the door to his apartment. "Open up, Red Riding Hood. I'm not gonna eat you," his voice held an edge I didn't trust as I fumbled for the locks and drew the door open. "At least not until I get these bags outta my hands," he added with a wink as he walked in, kissing me on the cheek as he passed toward the kitchen, dropping the bags on the counter.
"Johnnie, I..." I started when I was cut off by the shrill sound of his phone ringing.
"Hold that thought, darlin'," he said, sliding his finger across his phone and bringing it to his ear. "Sugar, honey, darlin'," he said into it, making an ugly wave of jealousy rush through my system, causing my lip to curl up slightly and I turned so he couldn't see my face, but stayed in the kitchen so I could listen. "Yeah. Sure. Shit," he said, and I felt his gaze fall on me though I couldn't see him. "Lo, you sure? Fuck. Yeah. No, thanks. I needed to know. Okay. Keep me posted." I knew he was watching me but I pretended to be super busy pouring my coffee. "That was Lo."
No kidding.
I felt the lip-curl thing again.
"Cash's woman," he added as if sensing my sour mood. That was just lovely. He called one of his friend's women 'sugar, honey, darlin''? Poor Cash had no idea what was going on behind his back. "Amelia," he said, his tone almost a little sharp and it was so strange, I felt myself turning. "Cash's woman," he repeated with a lot of emphasis that must have meant something in man-lingo, but didn't mean anything to me. Seeing this, he exhaled loudly. "I don't touch women who belong to someone else, certainly not ones who belong to my friends. How fuckin' low an opinion you have of me, Amy?"
