i break chains all by myself.
Apr 28, 2016 1:54:28 GMT -5
Post by ketamine on Apr 28, 2016 1:54:28 GMT -5
“Fuck Zero,” Remy said, taking a drag off of the clove cigarette that was perpetually stuck between his lips on drives like this. The ones they made back from Mama Kay’s in the middle of the bayou where they could go half an hour without ever seeing another set of headlights. Beside him, Nero was slouched down in the passenger seat, her hoodie dragged up over her head. She wasn’t sure if it was just her imagination like Remy tried to tell her, but she was freezing, even with the muggy late Spring Louisiana heat bearing down on them.
She felt especially cold leaving Mama Kay’s. She still wasn’t one hundred percent certain that whatever the old woman was conjuring was true but… she couldn’t deny that her string of wins had started when she’d gone to see the priestess for the first time.
“He’s not the only one who thinks that,” Nero said, biting her lip. She didn’t want to admit and wouldn’t admit that despite McHannon not being alone in his opinion of her and her in-ring ability, it stung. Despite her best efforts at shaking it all off, it had packed a punch down in that part of her who believed that people were basically good and that friends meant friends.
She’d looked up to him for so long and she’d defended him to Brandon on more than one occasion and for what? It made her feel small and sad and as much as she hated to admit it, it made her wonder what everyone else thought or said when she wasn’t around. Brandon, Fel, the RicHomiez… everyone she had considered among her friends from the very start… did they think those things about her to? Make fun of her when she wasn’t around?
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” she said, interrupting whatever rant on her behalf Remy had launched into when she wasn’t listening.
He reached over and ruffled her hair, tipping her chin up so he could glance away from the road for a moment to look into her eyes. “Oh, cher, you ain’t gonna let him bother you none, yeah? You got somethin’ more than the rest of ‘em got on they side. You got the Lwa and Mama Kay say they taken a shine to you.”
Nero frowned, biting her lip a little. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad thing. “...Are you really sure I’m not possessed?”
“Sure,” he said, a little too quickly and too easily. “But I’m serious, cher. Don’t want you worryin’ your pretty head over that mess. You’re talented, Nero. I been thinkin’ that. You got that pure heart and it keeps you up above whatever tangle they try to string you along in. You gonna go out there and you gonna show ‘em when you leave Good Golly Miss Molly in your dust.”
Nero giggles a little at Remy’s nickname for her opponent. “But I thought you were Molly’s biggest fan,” she teases, pushing the lingering unease that crept up on her like a black cloud back to wherever it had come from. Every time they started the long drive back to New Orleans she convinced herself that she wouldn’t let him take her to see Mama Kay again. She’d convince herself that she wasn’t going to take part in whatever dark magic, voodoo rituals Remy swore kept her winning… but after each win she wanted it again. She wanted that feeling of showing people that she was just as good as the rest of talent standing in the ring.
So when Remy asked if she wanted to go back, she always found herself saying yes even against her better judgement.
“I’m nobody's fan more than I’m yours, cher. I’m with you up to the very tippy top.”
She smiled at the sentiment, easing the seat back and watching the few and far in between street pass by overhead.
-----------
“I know I’m not the favorite to win… anything…”
Nero Darling is sitting cross legged on the plush leather couch in her hotel room, long blue hair separated into two fat braids that hang down past her shoulders. She’s wearing a Brandon Banks t-shirt and a pair of shorts to combat the Spring heat in Kentucky. “I know that, but it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me when Zero McHannon says my match is going to be the worst match on the card. It doesn’t bother me when people say that there’s not a single way I could beat Molly Reid. None of that bothers me.”
She flashes a sweet smile at the camera. “Because your opinion doesn’t matter to me. Your opinion doesn’t win my matches and most of all, your opinion doesn’t lose ‘em either.” She winks playfully at the camera. “If I cared what other people thought or said I wouldn’t have made it through my training at KWI. I got told all the time that I was too small, not mean enough… blah blah blah. And maybe I’m not mean enough but I don’t believe that I have to turn around and be Zero McHannon to win matches. I don’t need to be nasty and disrespectful to win because once again… words don’t win matches. Whether I beat Molly or not isn’t going to be based on what I say to her before a match… and if a little bit of trash talk runs your opponent off then maybe that person didn’t belong in this business anyway.”
She shrugs, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she fixes the camera with her big blue eyes. “I don’t dislike Molly, in fact… I was proud to be a co-winner with Molly at the Goldrush Rumble. I couldn’t have picked a better human person to win with. Molly Reid is incredibly talented and whether or not I sit here and disrespect her by saying that she isn’t… well, that doesn’t change her talent. Molly is an amazing wrestler and she’ll continue to be an amazing wrestler even if I say she isn’t.”
Nero tilts her head slightly, “But the bottom line is that Molly has a lot of skill in the ring and I can guarantee she’s going places with that skill. It’s an honor to be able to be a part of Molly’s story but… I don’t want to be the part of Molly’s story that becomes a footnote. I don’t want to be that little line in her bio that says that she beat me on this date and that’s it.
I want to be the part of the story that says that she gave me everything she had but I gave her back a little bit more. My story is just beginning and it’s not going to stall out here. Cause, see… I fully believe that I have the talent and the skill and everything else to beat Molly.”
Nero’s cheeks flush red slightly. “I’m not trying to brag… but I believe in myself. I believe that no matter what happens that I’m good enough. I spent too long doubting myself… I’ve spent most of my life doubting myself in some way or another but that doesn’t mean that I have to doubt myself forever.
I don’t have to doubt myself anymore. I’ve got a lot of learning and a lot of work to do… basically, I’m a Charmander right now. But I only have to get to level sixteen before I become Charmeleon and after that? Well, you’re gonna be dealing with Charizard.”
She playfully growls, crooking her fingers like dragon claws at the camera. “What I’m saying is that I’m not scared to put in the work and I’m not scared to try and fail because each time I fail, I’m learning something important and I know I won’t ever make the same mistake twice.
Take me seriously, don’t take me seriously… I don’t care. Like I told Zero… I don’t give a fluff if you think I walk on water or if you think I’m a joke. Your opinion of me isn’t gonna make one difference when I’m putting your shoulders down to the mat.”
-----------
It hadn’t been intentional that she’d ended up in Louisville almost a week early, though maybe subconsciously it was in some ways. It had started when she’d booked her flight in between dealing with a nasty stomach bug that had taken out both twins and run her ragged. One wrong keystroke and her flight was leaving much too early. She could have shelled out the few hundred to adjust the flight but… she’d gone anyway.
Maybe it would have been different if the Lima Beans had still been sick, but they’d bounced back quickly in the way only four year olds could and they were more than happy to spend the next week with her mother who spoiled them.
It wasn’t intentional, but none the less, here she was in the city that she’d fallen in love in and fallen in love with. Everywhere she turned there were memories that she could escape… and the gnawing thought in the back of her head that he was only a few minutes away.
She could have texted him, let him know she was there but she couldn’t find a justifiable reason. The twins weren’t with her, so she couldn’t pass it off as letting him know so that he could see the kids that would always bind them together in some ways.
Instead, she lounged on the deck by the pool when it was warm enough and hit the hotel gym when it wasn’t. Sometimes, at night when everything was quiet, she wandered around the endless art spaces set up on the ground floor of the 21C. It was a splurge that maybe she wouldn’t normally have taken but she’d always adored everything about the hotel right down to the red penguins standing at attention on the roof top. She’d just never had a reason to book a room until now…
At the moment, she was stretched out near the pool. It wasn’t the right time of year for tourists to really swarm the city yet; usually it didn’t get congested with out-of-towners until around when the Derby started, so she had the pool deck to herself. Arms stretched out in front of her to prop up her iPad, she grinned from beneath her bright blue curls as she listened to her babies babble about their first day at preschool. Almost every square inch of her fridge was already covered in their colorful doodles and finger paintings but Gracie was holding up another, explaining the piece as though it were a masterpiece created by Van Gogh himself.
“This’s you, mama,” she lisped, jabbing a chubby finger at a stick figure with a blue scribble of hair. She pointed out herself and her brother and her mawmaw and Aunt Jaxie. But it was when she flipped the page over that Nero’s heart caught in her throat. “This’s daddy,” she said, jabbing a finger at a drawing of what was meant to her father, his smile flipped into a frown and light blue tears scribbled around his eyes.
Nero had always known that their break up affected the kids just as much as it had her, but sometimes it still caught her like a punch to the gut when she was confronted with just how much they picked up on.
Swallowing down the sadness that ached in her chest, she danced around the topic and steered them to something else; but she was only half-listening as Lil T took over the conversation, telling her about the new legos her mother had gotten for him. ;
An alert suddenly popped up on her phone, causing her to take her eyes off of the ipad for a split second. Seeing the recognizable blue bird, she immediately passed it off as one of those twitter notifications that never seem to have anything to do with her. Going to erase it from her screen, her eyes caught sight of the username attached.
MR.502 just posted a photo.
This caused her eyebrows to rise a little. He’d been dead silent for the most part since their break up, the only tweet she remembered from him recently being that he’d finally gotten off of probation.
She waffled silently for a moment, some part of her that only enjoyed torturing herself wanting to click on and view whatever it was he’d posted. The shred of reason she had left when it came to him was screaming at her to ignore it and go back to listening her son babble on about whatever he was building with his new lego set.
In a moment of weakness, she clicked on the notification, letting it load the picture on her phone screen.
Her mind nearly went blank at the image that popped up, of the mountain of muscle that was the father of her children celebrating his freedom, holding up a gun that looked bigger than she was at a shooting range. His face was intense and serious, but she could see his inner child threatening to break out, wanting to give that arrogant smirk she’d seen every day for nearly three years.
Her mouth went dry as she nodded absently at something that her son was saying, forcing herself to pull her eyes away from the photo. He would always have some kind of effect on her, that man. She couldn’t help it… he’d been the first and only man she’d ever loved… the man who had taken her innocence and given her her Lima Beans.
She wrapped up the phone call, her mind in a dozen places, as she rolled over on the chaise lounge she was sprawled across. Her thoughts were overwhelming, engulfing… the urge was there to protect her heart, to keep him firmly at a distance. But…
-----------
The camera centered on Nero’s face, the playfulness in her eyes replaced with a determination. A bit of a steel that wasn’t usually there. “I’m not perfect. I try to be kind and do to others like I want them to treat me and I won’t stop because of some fluffin’ jerkfaces who think they need to run their mouths to overcompensate for the fact that they’re not one hundred percent confident in themselves.
But don’t mistake my kindness for weakness.
Molly, I’ma make you claw and fight and scrape for every inch that you gain and I hope that you do too. Because you and me are going places and maybe they don’t wanna see that because they don’t want to admit that when we come for their belts, we’re gonna be packin’ one heck of a motherfluffin’ punch.”
She winks at the camera, a huge grin on her face.
-----------
She didn’t know how she ended up down here. She just wanted to drive around downtown Louisville and look at the museums, and the next thing she knew she’d found herself driving through the neighborhood she’d spent three years in… three years with him. She passed by their home, seeing that his car sat in the driveway, the same spot it sat every time that he was in town.
Nero sighed softly, absently adjusting the radio as she maneuvered out of the neighborhood. It had taken a while for her to get used to driving but once she had, she’d discovered that she loved it. There was something soothing to a good playlist and light traffic.
A good playlist that was interrupted by her phone’s metallic chime. He’d favorited her picture, the Twitter notification told her and she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, chewing at it a little. He knew she was here now. There was no use in trying to really hide the fact that she was in the city, but… she wasn’t sure if she should see him.
She forced herself to pass their house quickly and she didn’t glance in the rearview again, forcing herself to keep her eyes on the road in front of her instead. Her phone vibrated once next to her as she came to a stoplight and she glanced down at the text message, swallowing hard.
Tom Pendergrass: I know you don’t have a reason to… but are you really just gonna drive through the neighborhood and not stop by for a hello?
She bit her lip, driving a few more blocks before she finally turned around. She navigated the neighborhood easily as she slowed the car by the curb, slowly stepping out and staring up at the house that held so many of her best and worst memories.
“Aye, Nerokinz… ” He said softly, his large body taking up most of the stairwell from his seat on the porch. He pushed himself up, walking over with a hesitant smile on his face.
She stares up at the house for a few more moments before slowly flicking her eyes up to his. “Hey… how’s it going?”
“Shit’s a little better, with me off probation and all… ” He shrugged, his very noticeable drawl still music to her ears as much as she hated to admit it. “Ain’t really much else going on other than getting ready for my fight. What about you? How’s things in FGA?”
“Going okay,” she murmured, biting her lip slightly. The awkward small talk and stilted conversation made her think about how close they’d been and how far away they were now. Like strangers, except for the fact that they’d combined DNA and created life together. “Congratulations… on the probation thing.”
He snorted. “Not much to congratulate. Three years and some change gone and I still ain’t learned shit during the entire time and made mistakes.”
Nero caught the double meaning behind his words, the mistakes he’d made when he’d cheated on her. She tilted her head slightly. “Takes some people a little longer to learn than others but they might still, eventually.”
He looked down, shaking his head a little. “... Mistakes were already made. Even if everybody involved said “I forgive you”, I still gotta live with ‘em, y’know? I still fucked up and fucked up somebody’s life in the process… ”
She looked away briefly then back up at him, “If you’re talking about my life, you’re wrong.” She shrugged slightly, looking at once vulnerable and more strong and capable than he’d ever seen her. “Nothing about my life is fucked up… I grew and I changed.”
“I know… I see that,” he said, giving her a once over as his eyes softened a little. “Wasn’t meaning your life, even if I think I did.”
Softly, hating herself for it even as she asked the question. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Try and fix it…” he said simply. “... Well, fix this. I ain’t fixing that officer’s jaw, since it’s been three years and all.” Tom flashed her a tentative smile, trying to lighten the mood a little bit. Things were always too heavy between them.
She cracked a slight smile, unconsciously taking a step closer to him. “Yeah? How?”
She didn’t know if she knew how to go about forgiving him; she didn’t know if she wanted what he was trying to offer. Not in the long term anyway, but in the short term… she would never be able to stand face to face with this man and not be affected in ways that put her mine at war with her heart and her heart at war with her body. “Show me.” The words come out a little throatier than she’d intended, the effect a husky drawl that sounds far sexier than someone like her should be able to sound.
He closed the distance between them, large hands circling her waist as his mouth found hers. No matter what, no matter how bad of an idea it was, no matter how much some logical shred of her screamed that this solved nothing and probably only made it worse, it always ended like this when they were in the same zip code.
No matter that what lay between them was a barren wasteland of the smoking wreckage of their relationship, they couldn’t leave each other alone.
Tom hitched her up into his arms, her legs wrapping around his waist as he carried her through the doorway, neither of them coming up for air.
She felt especially cold leaving Mama Kay’s. She still wasn’t one hundred percent certain that whatever the old woman was conjuring was true but… she couldn’t deny that her string of wins had started when she’d gone to see the priestess for the first time.
“He’s not the only one who thinks that,” Nero said, biting her lip. She didn’t want to admit and wouldn’t admit that despite McHannon not being alone in his opinion of her and her in-ring ability, it stung. Despite her best efforts at shaking it all off, it had packed a punch down in that part of her who believed that people were basically good and that friends meant friends.
She’d looked up to him for so long and she’d defended him to Brandon on more than one occasion and for what? It made her feel small and sad and as much as she hated to admit it, it made her wonder what everyone else thought or said when she wasn’t around. Brandon, Fel, the RicHomiez… everyone she had considered among her friends from the very start… did they think those things about her to? Make fun of her when she wasn’t around?
“I don’t wanna talk about it,” she said, interrupting whatever rant on her behalf Remy had launched into when she wasn’t listening.
He reached over and ruffled her hair, tipping her chin up so he could glance away from the road for a moment to look into her eyes. “Oh, cher, you ain’t gonna let him bother you none, yeah? You got somethin’ more than the rest of ‘em got on they side. You got the Lwa and Mama Kay say they taken a shine to you.”
Nero frowned, biting her lip a little. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad thing. “...Are you really sure I’m not possessed?”
“Sure,” he said, a little too quickly and too easily. “But I’m serious, cher. Don’t want you worryin’ your pretty head over that mess. You’re talented, Nero. I been thinkin’ that. You got that pure heart and it keeps you up above whatever tangle they try to string you along in. You gonna go out there and you gonna show ‘em when you leave Good Golly Miss Molly in your dust.”
Nero giggles a little at Remy’s nickname for her opponent. “But I thought you were Molly’s biggest fan,” she teases, pushing the lingering unease that crept up on her like a black cloud back to wherever it had come from. Every time they started the long drive back to New Orleans she convinced herself that she wouldn’t let him take her to see Mama Kay again. She’d convince herself that she wasn’t going to take part in whatever dark magic, voodoo rituals Remy swore kept her winning… but after each win she wanted it again. She wanted that feeling of showing people that she was just as good as the rest of talent standing in the ring.
So when Remy asked if she wanted to go back, she always found herself saying yes even against her better judgement.
“I’m nobody's fan more than I’m yours, cher. I’m with you up to the very tippy top.”
She smiled at the sentiment, easing the seat back and watching the few and far in between street pass by overhead.
-----------
“I know I’m not the favorite to win… anything…”
Nero Darling is sitting cross legged on the plush leather couch in her hotel room, long blue hair separated into two fat braids that hang down past her shoulders. She’s wearing a Brandon Banks t-shirt and a pair of shorts to combat the Spring heat in Kentucky. “I know that, but it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me when Zero McHannon says my match is going to be the worst match on the card. It doesn’t bother me when people say that there’s not a single way I could beat Molly Reid. None of that bothers me.”
She flashes a sweet smile at the camera. “Because your opinion doesn’t matter to me. Your opinion doesn’t win my matches and most of all, your opinion doesn’t lose ‘em either.” She winks playfully at the camera. “If I cared what other people thought or said I wouldn’t have made it through my training at KWI. I got told all the time that I was too small, not mean enough… blah blah blah. And maybe I’m not mean enough but I don’t believe that I have to turn around and be Zero McHannon to win matches. I don’t need to be nasty and disrespectful to win because once again… words don’t win matches. Whether I beat Molly or not isn’t going to be based on what I say to her before a match… and if a little bit of trash talk runs your opponent off then maybe that person didn’t belong in this business anyway.”
She shrugs, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear as she fixes the camera with her big blue eyes. “I don’t dislike Molly, in fact… I was proud to be a co-winner with Molly at the Goldrush Rumble. I couldn’t have picked a better human person to win with. Molly Reid is incredibly talented and whether or not I sit here and disrespect her by saying that she isn’t… well, that doesn’t change her talent. Molly is an amazing wrestler and she’ll continue to be an amazing wrestler even if I say she isn’t.”
Nero tilts her head slightly, “But the bottom line is that Molly has a lot of skill in the ring and I can guarantee she’s going places with that skill. It’s an honor to be able to be a part of Molly’s story but… I don’t want to be the part of Molly’s story that becomes a footnote. I don’t want to be that little line in her bio that says that she beat me on this date and that’s it.
I want to be the part of the story that says that she gave me everything she had but I gave her back a little bit more. My story is just beginning and it’s not going to stall out here. Cause, see… I fully believe that I have the talent and the skill and everything else to beat Molly.”
Nero’s cheeks flush red slightly. “I’m not trying to brag… but I believe in myself. I believe that no matter what happens that I’m good enough. I spent too long doubting myself… I’ve spent most of my life doubting myself in some way or another but that doesn’t mean that I have to doubt myself forever.
I don’t have to doubt myself anymore. I’ve got a lot of learning and a lot of work to do… basically, I’m a Charmander right now. But I only have to get to level sixteen before I become Charmeleon and after that? Well, you’re gonna be dealing with Charizard.”
She playfully growls, crooking her fingers like dragon claws at the camera. “What I’m saying is that I’m not scared to put in the work and I’m not scared to try and fail because each time I fail, I’m learning something important and I know I won’t ever make the same mistake twice.
Take me seriously, don’t take me seriously… I don’t care. Like I told Zero… I don’t give a fluff if you think I walk on water or if you think I’m a joke. Your opinion of me isn’t gonna make one difference when I’m putting your shoulders down to the mat.”
-----------
It hadn’t been intentional that she’d ended up in Louisville almost a week early, though maybe subconsciously it was in some ways. It had started when she’d booked her flight in between dealing with a nasty stomach bug that had taken out both twins and run her ragged. One wrong keystroke and her flight was leaving much too early. She could have shelled out the few hundred to adjust the flight but… she’d gone anyway.
Maybe it would have been different if the Lima Beans had still been sick, but they’d bounced back quickly in the way only four year olds could and they were more than happy to spend the next week with her mother who spoiled them.
It wasn’t intentional, but none the less, here she was in the city that she’d fallen in love in and fallen in love with. Everywhere she turned there were memories that she could escape… and the gnawing thought in the back of her head that he was only a few minutes away.
She could have texted him, let him know she was there but she couldn’t find a justifiable reason. The twins weren’t with her, so she couldn’t pass it off as letting him know so that he could see the kids that would always bind them together in some ways.
Instead, she lounged on the deck by the pool when it was warm enough and hit the hotel gym when it wasn’t. Sometimes, at night when everything was quiet, she wandered around the endless art spaces set up on the ground floor of the 21C. It was a splurge that maybe she wouldn’t normally have taken but she’d always adored everything about the hotel right down to the red penguins standing at attention on the roof top. She’d just never had a reason to book a room until now…
At the moment, she was stretched out near the pool. It wasn’t the right time of year for tourists to really swarm the city yet; usually it didn’t get congested with out-of-towners until around when the Derby started, so she had the pool deck to herself. Arms stretched out in front of her to prop up her iPad, she grinned from beneath her bright blue curls as she listened to her babies babble about their first day at preschool. Almost every square inch of her fridge was already covered in their colorful doodles and finger paintings but Gracie was holding up another, explaining the piece as though it were a masterpiece created by Van Gogh himself.
“This’s you, mama,” she lisped, jabbing a chubby finger at a stick figure with a blue scribble of hair. She pointed out herself and her brother and her mawmaw and Aunt Jaxie. But it was when she flipped the page over that Nero’s heart caught in her throat. “This’s daddy,” she said, jabbing a finger at a drawing of what was meant to her father, his smile flipped into a frown and light blue tears scribbled around his eyes.
Nero had always known that their break up affected the kids just as much as it had her, but sometimes it still caught her like a punch to the gut when she was confronted with just how much they picked up on.
Swallowing down the sadness that ached in her chest, she danced around the topic and steered them to something else; but she was only half-listening as Lil T took over the conversation, telling her about the new legos her mother had gotten for him. ;
An alert suddenly popped up on her phone, causing her to take her eyes off of the ipad for a split second. Seeing the recognizable blue bird, she immediately passed it off as one of those twitter notifications that never seem to have anything to do with her. Going to erase it from her screen, her eyes caught sight of the username attached.
MR.502 just posted a photo.
This caused her eyebrows to rise a little. He’d been dead silent for the most part since their break up, the only tweet she remembered from him recently being that he’d finally gotten off of probation.
She waffled silently for a moment, some part of her that only enjoyed torturing herself wanting to click on and view whatever it was he’d posted. The shred of reason she had left when it came to him was screaming at her to ignore it and go back to listening her son babble on about whatever he was building with his new lego set.
In a moment of weakness, she clicked on the notification, letting it load the picture on her phone screen.
Her mind nearly went blank at the image that popped up, of the mountain of muscle that was the father of her children celebrating his freedom, holding up a gun that looked bigger than she was at a shooting range. His face was intense and serious, but she could see his inner child threatening to break out, wanting to give that arrogant smirk she’d seen every day for nearly three years.
Her mouth went dry as she nodded absently at something that her son was saying, forcing herself to pull her eyes away from the photo. He would always have some kind of effect on her, that man. She couldn’t help it… he’d been the first and only man she’d ever loved… the man who had taken her innocence and given her her Lima Beans.
She wrapped up the phone call, her mind in a dozen places, as she rolled over on the chaise lounge she was sprawled across. Her thoughts were overwhelming, engulfing… the urge was there to protect her heart, to keep him firmly at a distance. But…
-----------
The camera centered on Nero’s face, the playfulness in her eyes replaced with a determination. A bit of a steel that wasn’t usually there. “I’m not perfect. I try to be kind and do to others like I want them to treat me and I won’t stop because of some fluffin’ jerkfaces who think they need to run their mouths to overcompensate for the fact that they’re not one hundred percent confident in themselves.
But don’t mistake my kindness for weakness.
Molly, I’ma make you claw and fight and scrape for every inch that you gain and I hope that you do too. Because you and me are going places and maybe they don’t wanna see that because they don’t want to admit that when we come for their belts, we’re gonna be packin’ one heck of a motherfluffin’ punch.”
She winks at the camera, a huge grin on her face.
-----------
She didn’t know how she ended up down here. She just wanted to drive around downtown Louisville and look at the museums, and the next thing she knew she’d found herself driving through the neighborhood she’d spent three years in… three years with him. She passed by their home, seeing that his car sat in the driveway, the same spot it sat every time that he was in town.
Nero sighed softly, absently adjusting the radio as she maneuvered out of the neighborhood. It had taken a while for her to get used to driving but once she had, she’d discovered that she loved it. There was something soothing to a good playlist and light traffic.
A good playlist that was interrupted by her phone’s metallic chime. He’d favorited her picture, the Twitter notification told her and she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, chewing at it a little. He knew she was here now. There was no use in trying to really hide the fact that she was in the city, but… she wasn’t sure if she should see him.
She forced herself to pass their house quickly and she didn’t glance in the rearview again, forcing herself to keep her eyes on the road in front of her instead. Her phone vibrated once next to her as she came to a stoplight and she glanced down at the text message, swallowing hard.
Tom Pendergrass: I know you don’t have a reason to… but are you really just gonna drive through the neighborhood and not stop by for a hello?
She bit her lip, driving a few more blocks before she finally turned around. She navigated the neighborhood easily as she slowed the car by the curb, slowly stepping out and staring up at the house that held so many of her best and worst memories.
“Aye, Nerokinz… ” He said softly, his large body taking up most of the stairwell from his seat on the porch. He pushed himself up, walking over with a hesitant smile on his face.
She stares up at the house for a few more moments before slowly flicking her eyes up to his. “Hey… how’s it going?”
“Shit’s a little better, with me off probation and all… ” He shrugged, his very noticeable drawl still music to her ears as much as she hated to admit it. “Ain’t really much else going on other than getting ready for my fight. What about you? How’s things in FGA?”
“Going okay,” she murmured, biting her lip slightly. The awkward small talk and stilted conversation made her think about how close they’d been and how far away they were now. Like strangers, except for the fact that they’d combined DNA and created life together. “Congratulations… on the probation thing.”
He snorted. “Not much to congratulate. Three years and some change gone and I still ain’t learned shit during the entire time and made mistakes.”
Nero caught the double meaning behind his words, the mistakes he’d made when he’d cheated on her. She tilted her head slightly. “Takes some people a little longer to learn than others but they might still, eventually.”
He looked down, shaking his head a little. “... Mistakes were already made. Even if everybody involved said “I forgive you”, I still gotta live with ‘em, y’know? I still fucked up and fucked up somebody’s life in the process… ”
She looked away briefly then back up at him, “If you’re talking about my life, you’re wrong.” She shrugged slightly, looking at once vulnerable and more strong and capable than he’d ever seen her. “Nothing about my life is fucked up… I grew and I changed.”
“I know… I see that,” he said, giving her a once over as his eyes softened a little. “Wasn’t meaning your life, even if I think I did.”
Softly, hating herself for it even as she asked the question. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Try and fix it…” he said simply. “... Well, fix this. I ain’t fixing that officer’s jaw, since it’s been three years and all.” Tom flashed her a tentative smile, trying to lighten the mood a little bit. Things were always too heavy between them.
She cracked a slight smile, unconsciously taking a step closer to him. “Yeah? How?”
She didn’t know if she knew how to go about forgiving him; she didn’t know if she wanted what he was trying to offer. Not in the long term anyway, but in the short term… she would never be able to stand face to face with this man and not be affected in ways that put her mine at war with her heart and her heart at war with her body. “Show me.” The words come out a little throatier than she’d intended, the effect a husky drawl that sounds far sexier than someone like her should be able to sound.
He closed the distance between them, large hands circling her waist as his mouth found hers. No matter what, no matter how bad of an idea it was, no matter how much some logical shred of her screamed that this solved nothing and probably only made it worse, it always ended like this when they were in the same zip code.
No matter that what lay between them was a barren wasteland of the smoking wreckage of their relationship, they couldn’t leave each other alone.
Tom hitched her up into his arms, her legs wrapping around his waist as he carried her through the doorway, neither of them coming up for air.