But I miss you. Please come home. We’ll talk, we’ll make things right. I still love you.
Your Pierre
That’s what Lou woke up to. She showed me when I walked next door to see if she was ready to go to the sandcastle festival.
“We were in Jamaica the first time he hit me. All because a bartender flirted with me. I hadn’t flirted back. The visit home to meet my parents ended up with him and my mother making daily laundry lists of all my shortcomings. When I complained, the first night, he told me I was too ungrateful to sleep in a bed provided by my parents. I slept on the floor of my own childhood bedroom. Like a dog, he told me,” she says. “He’s reminding me of some of his favorite punishments.”
“He’s not going to hurt you again,” I say, my jaw painfully tight. He’s hundreds of miles away, but if he were here, I’d dole out some punishment on that fucker myself. Maybe he’d understand it if it came in a form he knows well.
“I’m not scared of him,” she tells me, her eyes squinted, chin high. “I’m fucking livid at his audacity.”
“Good. Hold on to that,” I say, that rising pride I have in her swelling again. How he ever found a way to dim her strength, I’ll never know. Timing in life is everything; maybe he just found her at the worst.
“Oh, I fucking will,” she says, going to the door to put her shoes on, mumbling the whole way. “Fucking cocksucker thinks he can keep threatening me when I’ve left his psycho ass. Piece of shit has another thing coming.”
“Damn,” I mutter.
“Stupid motherfucker can’t figure out that shit has changed. He’s not even supposed to fucking email me anymore.”
“You forwarded it to your attorney?”
“Damn fucking right I did.”
“Where’d that mouth come from?”
“I, I…” she stammers, looking a tad ashamed at the stream of profanity that’s just come out of her. It’s a fucking turn-on. She sees my smile, then shrugs. “I guess I’m comfortable around you.”
Or maybe she’s thoroughly entered the anger phase of healing. She can get to that conclusion in her own time. She’s gotten here quicker than I’d have expected of the woman I first met.
“I’d hope so, considering you had my dick in your mouth last night.” I pull her in so I can wrap my arms around her shoulders.
“Maybe it was your dick in my mouth that made me so dirty.” Playfully, she raises an eyebrow. Said dick grows uncomfortably. Which isn’t surprising. My body seems to react to her every time she’s at ease. Any time she peeks outside of her own head, her own stress, and trauma.
“No,” I say, pointing a finger. “Don’t do that, we don’t have time. And I can’t walk around town all day hard as a rock.” Despite my complaints, I love when she lets this side of her out. They’re glimpses of who she truly is, the part she’s suppressed for too long.
“Then stop talking about your dick,” she says, pressing a kiss under my chin and reaching around to slap my ass.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m ready,” she says, then stills. “I think I’m ready. For whatever today brings. But if I pay too much attention to my phone, you have my permission to take it away from me.”
“We’ll keep busy,” I promise her. “We’ll have fun and try not to worry about all the things the day might bring.”
“Right. Okay. Let’s go have fun,” she says, pulling her shoulders back with determination.
We lock up Irma’s and walk to my house, when a text chimes on my phone. I hesitate to look at it, because I did just say we’d keep busy. But my profession doesn’t really allow for me to be that cut off from the world. It’s not work or my attorney, though.
Juliet:
The pictures from Louisa’s police file are all over the internet already. I’m worried. Do you have her?
Me:
She has herself. I’ll watch her back.
Juliet:
Thank you, that’s what I needed to hear.
