[ - ]
Table of Contents [Report This]
Printer Chapter or Story Microsoft Word Chapter or Story
- Text Size +
Before: Close Encounters of the Worst Kind


Nick

Ashley's apartment was a mess.

I stood in the middle of the dining room, looking around at everything everywhere. The evidence of their fight. I could see blood on the floor, stained into the carpet. It made me sick to imagine that was probably Ashley's blood.

She went into the bedroom to get her things and I stood in the dining room, pacing, waiting for her.

There was a time when this apartment was a second home to me because I spent that much time there. I knew the dips and wears in her couch more than I knew them in my own - I spent just as much time on it and she'd had it way longer than I'd had mine, too. There was a time when I'd just walk into this place and grab food or drinks out of the fridge like it was equally mine. Now I had the distinct feeling of being in a place where I was not only unwanted but where I did not want to be.

"Need any help?" I called up the hallway.

"No I'm okay," Ashley replied. "Chris took all his clothes too."

"So he took off then," I said.

"Evidently."

I paced.

Then there was a sound at the door. I stopped pacing and I walked quickly to the door, pressed my foot against it to keep it from opening, holding the lock steady with my hand, and peeking out the peephole. In the hallway was Chris.

I glanced back at the doors of the dining room.

"Hey Ashley, I'm going out for a smoke," I called.

"Okay," she replied.

I quickly opened the door, stepping into the hall, pushing him backward in one fluid motion, and closed the door behind me. I shoved Chris into the wall across from Ashley's door, and pegged him there, my hand on his chest. "What the fuck do you want?" I snarled.

"I need to talk to Ashley."

"Tough shit."

"She's my wife."

"I'm calling the cops." I pulled out my cell phone.

"C'mon man, she's my wife." Anger flashed in Chris's eyes.

"You're fucking lucky that I don't throw you on the floor and kneel on your chest and choke you with my bare fucking hands," I snapped. "Sound familiar?"

"Is that what she told you?" Chris asked, "That I did that to her? She's lying."

"Don't you dare."

Chris looked at me, blank faced at first, but slowly a snarl grew, his lip curling as he stared at me, "Of course you would be here," he hissed, "What were you, circling like a vulture, just waiting for the moment I was out of the picture to swoop in and steal her?"

"I guess a vulture's an accurate word considering you damn near killed her." I hit send on the LAPD's contact entry on my phone and held it up for him to see. "I hope you enjoy jail."

"Fuck off," Chris spat. He shook me off him and went for the door of the apartment. I grabbed him and shoved him back against the wall. "She is my fucking wife, keep your big fucking nose out of our business."

I got right in his face, "Look Chris, you don't know what it's taking me not to drag you out to the parking lot and end you. You fuck with Ashley, you fuck with me. You hurt her, you hurt me. You break her and you answer to me." My eyes were boring right into his. "You are filth."

Chris stared back into my eyes. "You don't have the balls to kill me."

We stared. His eyes were taunting, teasing, daring...

"LAPD. Can I help you?"

Chris waved his arm quickly, pushing my hand off his chest, and he sauntered down the hallway, his middle finger up in the air as he went. He disappeared down the stairs.

A part of me wished I'd killed him.

A part of me woul always wish I'd killed him.




Ashley

I was sitting on the floor of my bedroom, having pulled my suitcase out from under the bed. I'd opened it and added a couple more things to it. In the process of adding things like socks and underwear to the case, I found two things.

The first was the one that should have scared me the most, but somehow seemed less threatening now. It was a box of bullets. It was way in the back of the drawer, on Chris's side, under his socks. My mouth went dry as I stared at the box. I pulled it out and turned it over in my hands. When the hell had he gotten a gun, I wondered.

The second thing was the huge envelope of things that the prison in Kansas had sent me, things that belonged to my father. I hadn't gone through it yet, hadn't even opened it. I'd received a letter telling me it was coming and when it arrived, I'd just shoved it into my drawer and never looked at it again.

I put a hand on my belly looking at the envelope.

If they caught Chris, I realized, my baby might one day feel the pain of getting a letter like I had gotten nearly a year ago, telling me that my father had died in a prison cell. Alone.

And it would be my fault.

"Hey Ashley, I'm going out for a smoke!" Nick yelled.

Normally, I would've yelled at him for smoking. But this time I was too busy staring at the envelope, wrapping my mind around the concept of Chris becoming my father. So instead of saying no, I yelled back, "Okay!"

I heard the front door close.

I took hold of the pull tab on the envelope and pulled it open. The plastic gave way under it and the flap opened and I lowered myself to the floor carefully, my legs sprawled out on either side of me, and dumped the contents of the envelope onto the floor. Several zip-locked baggies fell out, a large manilla envelope and a small, personal sized envelope with scrawly, messy handwriting on the front, spelling out my name, crookedly.

I picked up one of the bags, examining it. Inside was a plain gold wedding band. It looked so much like the one that was on my left hand, just a gold loop with no detail or special markings. I put it aside.

I picked up the next bag, it was an old lighter, like the heavy kind with the flip lid and it was engraved, though the engraving was really old and hard to read because the metal itself had worn so much in that spot, like it'd been used as a worry stone, like it'd been rubbed for years and years and years. I pictured his hand wrapped around it, his thumb running over the engraving over and over and over. I squinted at the engraving. H, with love M.

My mother had given this to him.

I put that one aside and picked through the other artifacts. An old wallet with a license with a photo ID of my father from 1980. Inside was a ten dollar bill and a faded receipt for diapers and milk from a store that no longer existed. An old watch whose battery had died long ago on two-thirty-seven. A polaroid so faded from time that I couldn't even see what it was of in the lighting in my bedroom.

I went with the manilla envelope first of the two envelopes. His messy, crooked handwriting scared me. I was afraid of what he might have had to say to me. I mean, how could it be anything good, after the way I'd stormed out of that jail, those terrible words I'd said to him, blaming him for everything that was wrong in my life. I opened the manilla one first because it was safer. Inside was a stack of paperwork. A death certificate, forms and letters showing the jails he'd been shuffled between over the years, police reports that matched those in my file at the group home.

I heard the apartment door open and close and Nick walked across the apartment, his footfall heavy. He came around the corner and stood in the door way. "Are you almost ready?" he sounded annoyed.

"Sorry," I said, "I'm taking a long time, I'm sorry."

He looked at the stuff all around me on the floor and everything. "What is that?" he asked.

"Things the prison sent me after my father died," I replied. "Things that belonged to him."

Nick glanced back down the hallway, then carefully lowered himself down onto the carpet beside me. He picked up the baggie with the watch and looked it over.

I pushed the paperwork back into the manilla envelope and picked up the letter. I stared at the envelope, at the way his letters looped around on the H, L and Y in my name. At the period at the end of my name. Like I was a full sentence. Ashley.

"What's that?"

"A letter, I guess, from him," I replied.

"What's it say?"

"I haven't looked yet."

Nick's eyes roamed over the envelope. "Well...?"

I shrugged, "I don't know if I care to see."

Nick stared at me. "You gotta open it."

"Why?"

"Because..." he paused. "Ashley, remember when we went to go see that one movie where Tom Hanks is stuck on a desert island and falls in love with the soccer ball?"

"Yeah."

"Remember that one box from the ranch lady there that he never opened?"

"Ugh. I hated that he never opened it. I always wanted to know what was in it," I complained.

Nick pointed at the envelope in my hands. "That is my ranch lady box."

I laughed. "You want me to open it so you know what's inside of it."

"Yes, basically."

I tucked it into the manilla envelope, "Well you're gonna have to wait because I'm just not ready yet." I gathered up all the other things and put them into the shipping container.

"You're killing me smalls," Nick whined.

I wagged my hands at him, "Help me up?"

Nick stood up, and held out his hands to me. I clutched them, and he pulled me up. "Uppppsy-daisy," he said as I got to my feet. We stood there, chest to chest, and I stared up in his eyes, his hands still holding mine. For the briefest moment, I thought we might kiss, and a part of me really, really wanted us to kiss. I wanted to feel his mouth on mine.

But instead he backed away and zipped up my suitcase and uprighted it, and said, "You ready to go?"

"Yeah," I said, "Let's go."