Kristen Ashley - Fire Inside

“I’ve been so worried about my girl,” she admitted and I felt the guilt hit me again like a moving brick wall going at the speed of sound.

“I’m a terrible friend,” I announced.

“You’re a woman who went on the lam with her fiancé, watched him die and got shot in the process. That’s big shit to deal with. I let it go on too long. I’m a terrible friend.”

“You didn’t know what to do,” I defended her. “Tack told me, you were torn and didn’t want to set me off.”

“Well, that’s true,” she agreed.

“So I should have noticed you were worried, come to you sooner and ended it,” I stated and she smiled.

“I’m thinking we could talk about who was the worse friend until we’re old and gray,” she said.

“Maybe, but I suggest we don’t since I don’t think this bottle of wine will last that long,” I returned.

She made a choking noise then burst out laughing.

I grabbed her hand, held tight and smiled.

When she stopped laughing, we sipped more wine, then I squeezed her hand until she looked at me.

“I’m going to be okay,” I shared and strangely, the words came out resolved.

I meant it.

I would.

And I knew that because, throughout the conversation, my monster hadn’t made an appearance.

Not once.

I didn’t fool myself it was over. It was just that, the first step was easy so maybe the next ones wouldn’t be so hard.

It was bittersweet to admit that Hop had been right. We talked and Ty-Ty felt better.

So did I.

“I know,” she replied.

She believed in me.

Yes, maybe the next steps wouldn’t be so hard.

“Mostly, I’ll be okay because I’ve got you,” I whispered.

She pressed her lips together.

I lunged toward her and hugged her.

Ty-Ty, my best girl, hugged me back.

* * *

Tyra had been gone for five minutes when I heard the Harley pipes pulling up my back alley.

I was standing at the sink, rinsing out the wineglasses and I went still. My eyes slowly moved to the back doors when those pipes stopped in my back drive.

Oh God.

Had it been Hop who came earlier? Did he see Tyra’s car in my drive and ride away?

The answer to these questions came clear when I saw him walk through the gate and into my courtyard.

Oh God!

Damn.

I watched him, eyes on me, walk through my courtyard.

Right. This was okay. I’d locked the door. I always locked the doors. I would ignore him, finish rinsing the wineglasses, turn out the lights, go upstairs and fall apart up there where he couldn’t see.

I turned off the water, set the glass aside and did all of this with my eyes on Hop, who came right to the glass door but didn’t knock. He didn’t call. He crouched, pulling something out of the back pocket of his jeans. Then he worked at the lock.

My mouth dropped open.

I heard the lock click.

My breath caught in my throat.

Wow.

He picked my lock.

He straightened and walked in, sliding the door closed behind him.

I stood staring at him, statue-still.

He took three steps in, stopped and asked, “You talk to Tyra?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“No, babe, did you talk to Tyra?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Good,” he whispered back and God, that whisper, full of pride and relief.

It killed.

I straightened my shoulders. “Hop—”

“Now we gotta talk,” he declared.

I shook my head. “That isn’t happening.”

“Lanie, I gave you some time. Now we gotta sort this shit out.”

Oh. He didn’t show last night because he was giving me time.

That was nice.

And supremely unfortunate because it was too late.

“There’s nothing to sort. It’s over,” I announced.

“Babe,” he leaned toward me, “it isn’t.”

“Hopper,” I leaned toward him, “it is.”

He leaned back and studied me.

Then he said, “What we got, you know, it’s worth gettin’ past this.”

“I know what we have and it isn’t worth that work,” I retorted and his body twitched.

“Come again?”

I threw out a hand. “I know how this goes, Hopper. I’ve been here before. I fall for a guy and he makes stuff about me he doesn’t like clear, and I knock myself out to stop doing that stuff, and I’m not me anymore.”

“You fell for me?”

I clamped my mouth shut.

Hop’s face got soft and he took another step toward me. “We’ll let that go for now and start with the other. What is it you think I don’t like about you?”

“The drama,” I answered.

He grinned. “Babe, I like the drama.”

“You throw it in my face all the time when we’re fighting.”

“And lady, I fuckin’ love it when we fight because I love how we make up and don’t bullshit me, you love it too.”

He wasn’t wrong about that.

“Anyway, I never said I didn’t like it,” he went on.

“You’re always bringing it up.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t like it.”

“Well, I’ll give you some insight. Insight, I’ll note, that you already know with your speech about stuff soaking into women, burning a wound that will never heal. If you mention something, it’s going to be on my mind and since I…” I tried to find the right word that didn’t expose too much, “cared about you, I’d work myself into a tizzy trying to tone it down. Willing to do anything to make sure I don’t drive you away, drive you to do what my dad does to my mom.”

“I’m not your dad,” he returned instantly.

“That doesn’t matter, either, Hopper. It’s just who I am, how I work, what I do,” I shared.

“What your dad does to your mom is not on your mom. It’s on your dad. He’s a dick, he does that to his family and a bigger dick, he does it for decades,” Hop continued like I didn’t speak.

“That’s true. But that’s not the point.”

“Yeah, it fuckin’ is. You think you gotta tone down you so you won’t drive your man to another woman’s pussy. That shit’s whacked, Lanie.”

“Well, it’s how I’ve been conditioned to think.”

“Then stop thinking it.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Then let me help you work that shit out.”

“God!” I cried, throwing up both my hands. I’d tried, I’d really tried to tamp down the drama but he wouldn’t shut up! “Hopper, we don’t work!”

“Lanie, that’s total fuckin’ bullshit and you know it.”

“How, if you look back from start to finish, is any of the mess that was us a good thing? Fighting. Drama. Me pushing you away, you pushing back. You cutting me out then thinking you can just say you fucked up and all would be okay. It’s lunacy.”

“That’s a goddamned relationship, Lanie.”

“Well it hurts,” I hissed. “And I didn’t spend seven fucking years guarding myself from that pain only to have it shoved down my throat!” I ended on a shout.

“Jesus, lady, are you seriously gonna stand there and tell me you don’t remember all the good we had, and there was a lot of good in there, Lanie, good so good it was the best and it totally fuckin’ outweighed the bad in time and importance, and you’re gonna throw us away just because you’re shit scared?”

“Yes, I’m seriously going to stand here and tell you just that, Hop,” I shot back.

“So you’re okay, in taking that away from you, taking it away from me.”

My breath pressed out of my lungs on a wheeze and I stared.

Hop continued.

“On the road groupie pussy. Biker pussy. Fuckin’ Mitzi. I’ve had a lot and some of the women in there, they were good. Fine women. Sweet women. Excellent lays. But never, not in forty fuckin’ years of life, have I had a woman who I felt about like I feel about you. You tell me you care about me and yet, we both fuck up and hurt each other, you won’t make the effort it takes to forgive and get back on track? In doing that, taking away the only shot I’ve ever had in forty fuckin’ years of being genuinely happy?”

I didn’t say anything because I hadn’t thought of it like that and thinking of it like that made the pain I’d been feeling for nearly two weeks unbearable.

So unbearable, it was a wonder I stayed standing.

Unfortunately, I battled the pain too long. It gave Hopper the time to jump to a conclusion.

And Hop, being Hop, did just that.

“I did not fuck around on you. I did not use you to shield me from bullets. I did not lead you to heartbreak. I did none of that shit, Lanie, and you’re makin’ me pay for all your,” he jabbed a finger at me, “mistakes. You wanna stand with an island between us, not touch me in weeks, not talk to me for days and be done, baby? You got it. We’re done.”

My body listed to the side, preparing to go after him, my mouth opening to call his name but he stopped in the opened sliding glass door, turned to me and landed his last blow.

“You know, this reminds me of Mom and my old man. All this bullshit fighting about fuckin’ nothin’, two people just so shit scared of the love they feel for each other, they’d rather drive each other away than take a risk on feeling the fullness of that feeling.” And if that wasn’t enough, then came the coup de grâce. “So I guess that means I didn’t fuckin’ learn after Mitzi.”

Did Hop just kind of say he loved me?

“You love me?” I breathed.

“You’ll never know,” he replied, turned, slid the door to and walked away.

Two weeks and three days later…

I was at the Chaos hog roast, freaking out.

Hop had not yet showed and the longer I was there, the longer I courted running into him.

I had not called, texted or hung out at Chaos for a second chance at a second chance with Hop. Hop’s finale was final. The pain was immense. I couldn’t do it, not again.

I had to let it go. Try to find a way to survive. Not court more pain I wasn’t strong enough to endure.

I had to move on.

I hated it.

I missed him so badly, it was an ache. I fell asleep with it. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling it. I pushed through the day suffering it.

But I had to hope it would dull. Someday.

And maybe it would. In about fifty years.

I had not told Tyra about what happened between Hop and me. Not yet.

I was not procrastinating.

We were gearing up at work for a couple of campaigns going live so work was insanely busy. And I’d found a short-term counselor I liked so I started seeing her.

This was, surprisingly, working, and it had from the very first visit. That was to say, before talking to Tyra and going to the counselor, I didn’t have that dream about Kansas City every night but it came frequently. I hadn’t had it now since talking to Tyra.

So that was one bit of good.

I still wasn’t sleeping well but the reason wasn’t Elliott and Kansas City.

The reason was that Hop wasn’t lying beside me and I ached for him to be close to me.

But, as Hop said, we were done.

Also taking my headspace, Tyra had told Mitch’s wife Mara to get Mitch to give that guy my number and he’d called, four times.

His name was Jed. He had an unbelievably attractive voice and, back in the day when I was the old Lanie, I would have jumped on meeting him for coffee and, if his face or personality equaled the beauty of his voice, I would have hoped he’d jumped on me (and not end up being a jerk).

Alas, I was in love with another man and I felt terrible since I was going through the motions with Jed. I had absolutely no intention of taking it any further but I had to do it for Tyra.

I had a feeling Jed knew I wasn’t into it about two minutes into the first conversation, when getting-to-know-you discussions that might lead to coffee, a date and maybe sex turned into getting-to-know-you discussions that would lead to just getting to know you.

In other words, he didn’t only have a beautiful voice, he seemed like a nice guy who was giving me what I needed to keep my friend happy without putting on any pressure or blowing me off when he could totally do that. He just didn’t. I didn’t know why. I just knew it made him a nice guy.

If that wasn’t enough, I spent a goodly amount of time licking the wounds I’d opened myself by having and then losing Hop.

So there wasn’t time to sit down with Tyra and tell her about Hop.