Carmen Jenner - Welcome to Sugartown

“I don’t have anything left!” I shout. “I gave you everything I had and you tore it all up. I can’t allow you to do that again. I wouldn’t be the girl you love if I let you destroy me again.”

I try to push him away but he won’t let up, and so he ends up clutching me to him in a vice grip while I cry and scream until all the hurt and tears and heartbreak just dissolve around us. We stay that way until the water runs cold, with him fully clothed and me stripped bare before him, and then I slide his arms from around my waist and pull him down to kiss his lips before I push open the shower door.

“You need to find somewhere else to live.” My throat hurts from crying, my heart hurts from squeezing out those words, but it had to be said. We can’t live like this anymore. Some things are just too broken to fix. “I’m sorry, but this is just too hard.”

I wrap the towel around my chest and walk out, wishing it hadn’t just felt like I left a piece of myself in that bathroom.

I’ve decided I’m going to have to kill Jackson in his sleep. After spending all day on the couch versing one another on Xbox he’s killed me thirty-seven times in some random fighting game and nine times in Race Pro. There’s only so much of a beating a man can take before his masculinity feels threatened. And therefore, Jackson Rowe must die.

I hear Ana pull up in the drive. She’s been at work by herself all day on account of Holly being sick again. Jackson drove her to an appointment earlier in the morning and we haven’t heard a peep out of her since. Bob hadn’t opened the garage today because we’ve been having a dead week and he had some tax audit shit going on, so Jackson and I have put our time to good use by wasting an entire day playing video games.

I glance at the food wrappers lying on the coffee table and then over my shoulder into the kitchen where I can see dishes piled all along the bench. Shit, I should have taken care of that already. I should have made dinner or pulled out a fucking vacuum or something. God, I’m such a cunt. No wonder she wants me out.

Ana comes storming in the door. She’s pissed, but that only gets worse when she sees the mess we’ve made. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath and then turns without a word and stalks down the hall to her room, slamming the door firmly behind her.

“Mate, your woman is fucking pissed,” Jackson grunts.

“She’s not my woman,” I grunt back.

“Come on, you really believe that shit?”

“There’s nothing to believe. She wants me out of here.”

Jackson laughs. “Mate, you really are fucking clueless. She wants you alright, but it’s got nothing to do with wanting you to move out. She’s just scared.”

I toss the controller on the couch beside me and give him a look like he doesn’t know shit. “I don’t know, man. You didn’t see her when she told me to go. I think I broke her.”

“Jesus Christ, do you not know anything about women? If she says she’s broken, you get out your fucking araldite and glue that shit back together.”

“I tried.”

“Bullshit! If you’d tried, you be in there right now fucking your woman, not sitting out here bitching and moaning to me like a fucking pussy.”

“Alright, I’m going. Keep your fucking knickers on.”

Holly comes stumbling out of her room, looking all puffy and pregnant and like she could murder someone for a steak. I cock my head to the side as I watch her and then whisper to Jackson, “You gonna heed your own advice, Don Juan?”

He glances at Holly and a goofball smile breaks out across his face. He can pretend all he wants, but he’s just as pussy whipped as I am. “That train wreck? Nah, I’m not into homicidal bitches.”

“Right. ’Cause that’s what that face means.”

“What face?” he protests as I walk away. “Dude, what face?”

I reach the hall and I’ve already forgotten about my roommates because the woman I love is as mad as a cut snake, and I can’t stand to see her angry or hurt unless I know the cause of it and can fix it in some way.

I knock lightly on the door and hear her sniff before telling me to come in. She sighs when she sees me and says, “I’m not in the mood to fight right now, Elijah.”

I hold up my hands in surrender. “Not here to fight. I come in peace.” I pat down my pockets and find a fun-sized bag of M&M’s I’d stashed there earlier so Jackson didn’t scoff them all down. They’re probably a little warm, but chocolate’s chocolate, and that’s exactly what she craves when she’s upset. I set the bag down on the end of the bed and she snatches it up and tears into it while she leans back against the headboard.

“Now, you gonna tell me what’s bringing you home in tears, or do I have to threaten to take away the chocolate?”

“I ran into Mrs Turner today.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Because you can’t fight all my battles for me.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t want to,” I whisper.

“I know. I had to deal with this on my own though. Can you believe that bitch actually blamed me for her son being in prison?”

“What did you say to that?” I ask, and even I can hear the quiet tremor of rage in my voice.

“I told her to go fuck herself.” She laughs half-heartedly and then adds, “Then I asked her how it felt to raise a rapist, and whether she was proud of his fondness for virgins.”

“Shit, baby girl, you got some lady balls, that’s for sure. Remind me never to take you on again,” I say and we both chuckle at that until the realisation of our last argument punches us in the face again and leaves us both speechless.

Ana tips out the last of the M&M’s. She eats the remaining chocolate with the exception of one, which she places on her outstretched palm and offers it to me. When we were together she always did that. She’d eat the majority and offer me one tiny morsel, like it was the most important gift she could consider parting with, but I never minded because the taste of it on her lips was always sweeter than the lolly itself. I take it from her palm and pop it in my mouth.

We settle into the silence, both of us side by side and resting against her headboard until I can’t take the weight of the hurt between us. “You should know I’ve been looking for somewhere to live. I’d go to the motel, but the smoke damage from their fire means they have to gut the entire place and start again and, funny enough, no one wants to rent to an ex-con. I’ll find someplace and I’ll make things right between us, it might just take a little longer than we wanted.”

Ana’s quiet as she chews that over and then she places her hand in my upturned palm and whispers, “Don’t move out.”

“I should,” I mutter like I’m on autopilot. I don’t want to go anywhere. I can’t think of anything worse than not seeing her face every day, of not being able to touch her in passing and pretend like I was just reaching for the milk. I miss her like fucking crazy and I haven’t even left yet.

“You should,” she agrees and then adds, “but you won’t.”

I won’t let myself believe she means that until I hear it directly from her lips. “You sure?”

“Yeah. If there’s one thing you’ve taught me, Cade, it’s that running solves nothing. It just hurts your feet in the long run.”

I laugh. “Amen.”

She rests her head on my shoulder and I tuck my arm around her waist. It’s a force of habit but she’s not making a big deal about it so I decide neither will I.

“Hey,” I say, “I got that bottle of blue in my room, whaddya say we crack that sucker, order a pizza and drink away all the shit behind us? All our mistakes, all the hurt, all the shit we’ve waded through to get to this point, everything?”

“That actually sounds like a nice idea,” she replies and so we do. We hole up in her room with our old friend Johnnie and we eat and laugh and forget about all the hurt we’ve caused one another. We wipe the slate completely clean. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about fucking her. I think about it at least a hundred times a day, and I could tell she was thinking about it too, but the point was that, for maybe the first time ever, we didn’t give in to that physical shit that always seems to fuck us over.

Sometime around 2 am she fell asleep in my arms and I tucked her under the covers and held her until I passed out.

That night I slept more soundly than I have in years.

I rest my head against the edge of the tub and try to think about something else. I always knew this day was coming. I said I was fine with it, but I’m not fine at all. I’m furious. I want to ride around town until I find his bike and go and give his new fuck buddy a brand new face. Preferably one with my fist-print in it.

This is the fourth week in a row he’s been out on a Friday night. The shop closed its doors hours ago, so I know he’s not working late. The same time I pulled the shop door shut and flipped the sign around, Elijah had been jumping on his bike. He gave me a wave through the window and took off in the direction of home, but just like last week and the two weeks prior, he wasn’t here when I pulled in the drive.

Jackson and Holly were getting ready to head to a movie when I walked in. They offered for me to come along, but I declined. No one wants to be a third wheel to a relationship as dysfunctional as theirs. I thought Elijah and I had it bad, but there just aren’t words for how messed up those two are. So, instead of sitting through two hours of awkwardness, I decided to drown my sorrows in vanilla-scented bubble bath, only with Elijah out screwing around I wasn’t feeling so damn relaxed. I was about ready to annihilate someone.