I sigh, “Too long, man. Way too long. What do you need?”
He stalls, “Nothin’ much. Just checking in. I hadn’t heard from you since you asked me to track down that girl. Just wanted to see if you reconnected.”
My face voids. Standing, I wink at Lexi and mouth, ‘important’ before taking off upstairs to my office. Once I close the office door behind me, I tell him honestly. “I did reconnect. She’s actually my girl now.”
Silence, then a restrained, “Glad it worked out.”
Sitting in my desk chair, my brow furrows at his tone, “What’s the problem here?”
Nox sighs, “Just…don’t get pissed, okay? But Julius called and…” Motherfuck! “And he might’ve mentioned that this girl was in danger.”
“From me, right?”
Pause. “Yeah, man. So you could say I’m a little worried about her, seeing as you’ve claimed her.”
My blood pressure soars through the roof. I grit my teeth and count to ten.
Breathing deeply, I assure him, “Regardless of what Julius thinks, she’s my girl. And I’d kill for her.”
Nox sighs, “Julius doesn’t see it that way.”
I spit, “Julius needs to mind his own f**king business!”
Silence.
“Nox, don’t f**k this up for me. I’m in a good place. For the first time in…ever.”
Nox snorts in disbelief. “Your dumbass went and fell in love with her.” A statement.
“I’ve always loved her, in a really f**ked up way. You know that saying there’s a thin line between love and hate? I hated her. But that line teetered when I met the real her, compared to my mind’s version of her.” Nox is a good guy, and one of the rare people I work with that I trust. I need him to know this. “Listen, bro. I’ll be honest here. I wanted to hurt her. I was going to hurt her.” His intake of breath lets me know he’s pissed at me. I continue quickly, “But you gotta understand that my obsession with her started a long time ago, when I was a kid, and the mind distorts things. Especially when you’re high most of your teenage years.” I say quietly, “She’s nothing of what I made her out to be.”
He says gently, “Sometimes you gotta walk away for the sake of the people you love.”
“Spent my life searching for more. Never had something so good. Finally got something I’m proud of, and you want me to give her up? Not likely. You can pry her from my cold, dead fingers, bro.”
“I’m worried you’ll hurt her without meaning to.”
My eye twitches.
Anger surges through me. “You don’t know me anymore. She changed me. She calms me.”
Pause. “Twitch, you’re my friend. I got an obligation here. I’m telling you something that you need to hear. Not just hear, but hear. Listen carefully.” Rolling my eyes, I grunt for him to go on. “You love her, then you need to tell her the truth. You need to tell her now. Because time’s gonna pass and that secret is gonna be a noose tightening around your neck. You’re gonna love her so much and do everything to keep her, and that noose will become so tight that you can’t breathe. But one day, she’s gonna find out. And that’s when you’re going to realize that you lost her and that you got hung. With a noose you put around your own neck.”
Thinking hard about what he said, I say quietly, “Noted.”
A squeal in my ear sounds, and Nox yells out, “Lily! He’s loose!”
What the f**k?
A woman calls back, “You know, he wasn’t the Immaculate Conception. He’s your son too!”
Nox attempts to cover the phone, but I hear every word. “Rocco, go see mama. Mama’s got cookies. You want a cookie? Good. Get daddy a cookie too.”
The woman calls out, “No cookies! Dinner will be ready soon.”
He calls back, “I want a cookie! I earned a cookie, dammit!”
The woman scoffs, “Oh yeah? What did you do to earn a cookie? All I remember was coming home to a messy son and an even messier husband!”
Nox scoffs, “He wanted to paint! What was I meant to do, princess? You know I can’t say no to him.” Suddenly, he shouts, “Rocco, come back with daddy’s leg!”
A few more scuffling noises, then he’s back, “Sorry about that. It gets a bit rowdy here at dinner and bedtime.”
“What happened to your leg?”
He chuckles, “It ran away.” I smile. Idiot. He explains solemnly, “Mission gone bad.”
“You got a boy?”
I hear his smile. “Sure do. I’m retired. Married too.”
I smile at that. “I heard. She sounds like she puts you to work.”
He barks a laugh. “Oh yeah. Lily was my last mission.” He doesn’t have to say it. She was the reason he lost his leg. He whispers, “She’s worth it, though.”
I ask in all seriousness, “And if someone asked you to give her up?”
Long pause. “It’s not the same.”
I return fiercely, “Love is love. It don’t discriminate. And it sure as f**k don’t wait ‘til you’re ready for it.”
He sighs, “I know it, man. I know.” The sound of things clattering, then, “Listen, man, I gotta go. Rocco’s playing Frisbee with dinner plates.” I chuckle. “Just think about what I said.”
Then my friend is gone.
Chapter Twenty Four
I hear footsteps come up the stairs and stop typing. Lifting my head, I wait for them to come closer to me, but they stop halfway down the hall, by my office. My office, which is occupied by a tiny woman dressed in sweat pants and one of my tees.
Listening closer, I wait for my visitor to find me, and I’m already making excuses in my mind.
Can you believe that? Fucking excuses. As if I owe him an explanation. I slowly shake my head at my misplaced panic.
Finally, he comes looking for me, but by the time his silhouette shadows the door, I throw myself back into my work. If it looks as though I’m busy, he might leave me alone.
Keyword there: Might.
“There’s a sparrow sittin’ at your desk.”
Not looking up at him, I grunt. “She has work to do.”
Let it go, man. Let. It. Go.
As he takes a few steps into the room, I look up at my oldest friend. The man who most likely saved my life when he took me into his home and kept me under a hawk’s eye, making sure I was healing from…well…what life had dealt me. I’m not sure which one of us was dealt the worst hand, but I do know that my head is not programmed like other peoples’.