33 - Y'all Ain't Gonna Believe This...

“It’s time to talk,” Tony stated quietly, emerging from the bathroom and buttoning his shorts as he walked.

Lilah nodded, pushing damp palms down the legs of the jeans she’d re-dressed herself in while he was disposing of the condom.  She wiggled her butt on the bed with her legs crossed Indian-style, while her eyes were hungrily riveted to his chest.  It begged to be touched.

You’ll never get enough of him, Lilah Jane.

That was neither here nor there. Her feelings didn’t come into play yet.  She hadn’t allowed herself to acknowledge having feelings up to this point.  It wasn’t to say that she didn’t have them, and logically know what they were, but indulging in them before they had this talk was only asking for heartache. 

Oh well.  No matter what happened now, she could at least be content that he’d left her arms satisfied.  More than once.  She could make that be enough.

If she had to.

“So, talk,” he invited, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and easing open the room’s one window before bringing a flame to life with the flick of his lighter. 

“Anyplace in particular you want me to start?”

Blowing out the first cloud of smoke, he shook his head.  “No.  Say what you wanna say.  If I think you miss anything important, I’ll let ya know.”

“Okay.”  She closed her eyes, willing her heart to slow and her hands to stop shaking as she thanked God for the common sense to email Morgan and Angel earlier.  At least she had some idea of how to present this thing now. 

Talk slow, Lilah Jane.  You talk too fast when you get nervous.

It was true.  She hated being the center of attention or listening to herself talk.  Maybe it was more that she usually didn’t think she had anything interesting to say, so, to minimize her audience’s lack of interest, she talked fast and kept it short. 

Don’t do that this time.  Use your words.  All of ‘em.  Make him understand.

Inhaling deeply, she began with a disclaimer.  “I warned you this was a redneck fairytale.  I wasn’t lyin’.”

“S’ok.  Go on.”

Lilah closed her eyes again, believing it would be easier to concentrate on her story if she didn’t have to see every ‘bat shit crazy’ thought flit across his face.

“Joanna and I have been best friends for eleven years.  When she and her husband Steve got married fifteen years ago, Steve had two best men in the wedding – Walter and Amos.”

“Your ex-husbands are both friends of your best friend’s husband?” Tony snickered on an exhale.  “Yeah, I can see the redneck fairytale coming out.”

Oh, honey, that’s not a drop in the redneck bucket.

“After Walter and I divorced, Amos had been hangin’ out a lot with Joanna and Steve.  Joanna got it in her head that we should go out.  He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he got up and went to work every day, he was good to me, and he seemed to be good with Andrew.  When it progressed to that point, I agreed to marry him.  I weighed all the pros and cons and went into it with my eyes wide open.  ”

God, there was so much to this story.  She was already tired of telling it and she wasn’t halfway through.  Before today, it would have never entered her mind to mention the financial mess Walter left her in.  It was irrelevant to everything, but since it had Jon’s shorts in a wad, she had to take the time to tell Tony, too.

“My financial situation at the time was not good, but then again, Amos’s wasn’t either.  We worked on it, and everything slowly improved.  We bought him a car.  We upgraded my car.  Then we upgraded both cars, and finally bought a house.  During the course of things, he went from being a furniture deliveryman to being a collection representative, to a unit manager, to an account manager.  He also went from working days to nights, with his two days off in the middle of the week.”

“And you work days?”

Flicking a glance toward him, she nodded.  “Monday through Friday.  So I was alone most of the time.  I had Andrew four days a week, so that helped.  Joanna and I spent a lot of time together, too, and I rediscovered Bon Jovi.  After a while, I finally got used to only seein’ him a few hours a week.  But, to make a long story a bit shorter, Amos didn’t like the fact that I was…” 

Lilah paused, not really sure how to say it without sounding full of herself. 

Just say it.  If it’s the truth, it ain’t conceited.

“Well, to be honest, I was smarter than him – by a lot – and I guess he got tired of feelin’ like I didn’t respect his mind.  Apparently, one of the girls who worked under him showed the proper appreciation for his sheer brilliance by working under him.” 

The whole thing still made Lilah queasy.  The trampy little crack whore was twenty-nine to Amos’s thirty-five, which wasn’t much of an age difference in the grand scheme of things, but she was a twenty-nine year old grandmother.  She’d had a baby when she was thirteen, who had turned around and had a baby when he was thirteen.

“I’m sorry, Bluegrass.”  Tony winced as he put out the cigarette and closed the window. Joining her on the bed, he tucked one leg under the other and scooted forward until his knees were touching hers.  He curled strong, comforting fingers around her ankle and asked gently, “How did you find out?”

This was where things started to get interesting.  With a deep breath, Lilah lightly blanketed her hand on top of his and shamelessly took solace in his simple touch. 

You can make it through this.  It’s over, and it got you here.  Just remove yourself from the situation and tell the damn story.

“I found out on July nineteenth of last year, when Daisy May tried to kill me.  The story goes that he was too chicken-shit to ask for a divorce, she took matters into her own hands.”  Lilah’s laugh was bitter, even to her own ears, and she lifted eyes that brimmed with resentment to flick over Tony’s disbelieving face.  “Welcome to the redneck part of this story.”

“Daisy May?”

“Amos’s mistress and, no, I am not making that up.  Her name really is Daisy May.”

“She…”   The fingertips of his free hand came to lightly trace one of the scars.  “She did this?”

“Yes.”  Lilah guided his index finger to the smallest and most innocent looking scar, near the base of her throat.  “This is the one that almost did the trick.  My carotid artery got pierced, and I came close to bleeding to death before the ambulance could get there.”

“Tell me how,” he murmured, eyes locked on that tiny blemish that was practically invisible among so many other bigger, deeper ones.  His troubled gaze and the repetitive, tender brush of his fingertip over the puckered tissue were nearly Lilah’s undoing. 

Don’t go fallin’ in love with him, Lilah Jane.  This isn’t over.

She scratched her nose and blinked back the emotion that threatened to steal her composure.  Hiding her sniffle under a quiet cough, she forced herself to close off her heart and fell into a cold, clinical recitation of the events.

“Joanna and I were having dinner at Jenny’s – our favorite local diner.  It was a pretty regular Monday night thing for us, to where we had a ‘usual’ table by the front window.  After we gave the waitress our orders, Jo went to the ladies’ room.  I was sitting with one elbow propped on the table, jaw cradled in my palm…”  Lilah demonstrated how her fingers and hand had covered her right cheek. “… checking email messages.  It was just a minute later when the world exploded around me.  Glass flew everywhere, and there was a blinding pain at the base of my skull.”

Phantom pain made her ache with the memory, but it lasted only a moment when Tony’s fingers curled around her neck and located the biggest scar.  His gentle touch, once again, brought soothing to both her skin and her soul.

You’re fucked, Lilah Jane.  If this blows up in your face, you’ll never be the same.

Shushing that damned annoying inner voice, she focused instead on his next logical question.

“She shot you?”

“She shot me.  With a crossbow.” 

“No fuckin’ way!”

A sardonic smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.  She knew how ridiculous it had to sound to a man who grew up a stone’s throw from New York City and Philadelphia.  He’d probably been expecting a high-powered automatic rifle, or a handgun of some kind.  “We do things a little different in the country, Jersey.” 

“C’mere.”  He tried to pull her into his arms, but she resisted.

“No,” she declined quietly, wanting nothing more than to sink against his chest and accept his consolation.  They still had  a ways to go, and if she stopped...  “This isn’t a play for pity.  You wanted to know why I’m here, and this is where the story begins.  If I quit talkin’ now, it’ll be like pullin’ hen’s teeth to get me started again.”

“Hen’s teeth?” he chuckled with a bemused smirk as he reluctantly returned to tracing his fingers along her neck.  She briefly wondered if he was trying to erase them with his touch.  “Do hens even have teeth?”

“No.”  One side of her mouth kicked up with humor.  “That’s why it’s so hard to pull ‘em.”

The smile slid away.  Lilah was tired of this, and wished nothing more than for it to be over. 

“Long story short,” she sighed.  “I, obviously, didn’t die.  The crack whore was pissed.  She went to boil her anger in whatever her drug of choice was, killed Amos, and tried her best to humiliate me in the wake of his death by saying she was pregnant with his baby, that I had every sexually transmitted disease ever discovered and that she was going to sue me since he’d passed them all from me to her.  You might sense that Daisy May wasn’t all that sharp either?  It was a fiasco that lasted for weeks afterward.”

God, this is a pitiful embarrassment.  No wonder Jerry Springer came knockin’ on your door after Daisy May stirred all that shit and called ‘em.  At least Uncle Eddie and Uncle James shut that down before it got out of control.   

“In the meantime, I got out of the hospital, talked to the police, hid my face in shame, buried my husband, wished I was the one in the box, and got a lot depressed.  All in the course of three days.  I don’t have the STD’s, by the way,” she tried to joke.  “In case you were worried.”

Tony was, understandably enough, speechless.  He was just staring at her, his forehead wrinkled with confusion. 

He’s tryin’ to make sense of somethin’ completely senseless, Lilah Jane.  Stop him before he hurts himself.

“You’re probably wondering how this has anything to do with you, or Bon Jovi,” she pushed forward, knowing that this was the point where she could drown – halfway between the beginning and the end.  Lilah couldn’t go back, but she hadn’t gone far enough toward the other shore to save herself, or if that was even possible.

“Kinda, I guess.”

Now for the part that will make him think you’re certifiable…

“Well…  July nineteenth plus three days of insanity brings us to the morning of July twenty-third.  The day of HullabaLOU Two Thousand and Ten…”