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but sometimes a person’s got a soul so pretty it makes ’em glow prettier than anythin’ else.
First time in my life anyone ever commended me for “good behavior.” I nearly bust a gut laughin’ when they told me. Think they thought I was crazy.
So, I gotta thank you ’cause this is you. This is you remindin’ me about goodness. I lost sight’a it for a while… But before you get excited, fuck if it’s too late for me to reform or some shit so don’t preach it, you hear? I’m just…happy. I’m happy
One thing, you don’t apologize to friends for needing them.
We all have scars. Some of them, like the one you and me share, you can see with your eyes. Some of them, you ink, like you do, on your skin so that they tell the story like a picture book. Like a badge of honour that you overcame something really bad. Then there are others, like the scar that stays in your heart when you’re left alone in a hospital room for a week without anyone visiting you, or when you sleep on a metal bed in a concrete prison filled with bad men or weak men who only touch each other to sin in one way or another.
I think it’s harder to talk about those scars and it’s harder to get over them because they wrap around you like poison ivy, making it hard to breathe and pump blood through your heart in the normal way.
There are no sunsets for men like you and women like I am at the heart of me. Only inky night that clutches at you as you tear past, moving through the darkness like we own it, like we are only free inside the shadow vortex of it.
What I’m trying to say is that I want to run to you. It doesn’t have to be away with you. You’ve got kids, really great ones from the looks of things, so I get that we probably have to stay here. I get that it’ll be hard because you’re a mechanic and I’m the Princess of Entrance, because you’re nineteen years older than my sixteen. But I know it’ll be okay just as long as I can get to you. I’ll leave whenever you want me to. Just say the word. And Z, say it soon.
Forget your parents and their bullshit, forget what anyone else expects from you. Life’s too short and you know it, little warrior, so live while the goin’ is good.
Men forget to treat women with tender affection and platonic encouragement. Lust was no worthy substitute for pure care.
“No tears,” he ordered. “But I’m not alone this time,” I reminded him. “I’ve finally got my guardian monster back.”
“I have every fuckin’ right. As the man who saved your life once, don’t make me save it again,”
“Take a sip of it, little girl. Let’s see how well you swallow the fire down that delicate throat, how you like the burn of it in your belly. I think I might like the sight’a ya with tears in your eyes as you try to take what I give you.”
“Behave,” I ordered. “Yes, Daddy,”
If I have to kill every single fuckin’ man on this goddamn planet to be with you, Lou, you better believe that I fuckin’ will and I’ll do it with a fuckin’ smile.”
“That’s what’s up, baby girl. You eyein’ the beast like you don’t care he bites.”
“To show you. This is me. This is the monster you’re so desperate to make your own. There’s no goin’ into this with eyes closed shut, Lou. I’m the kinda man, someone wrongs you, I cause him the equivalent in pain. I’m a man of loyalty and vengeance, violence and sex. Won’t make apologies for it and won’t have you romanticizin’ it. I’m an outlaw and this is an outlaw’s life. You sure you still want that?”
“You want me, little girl? You want the man who’ll always right your wrongs with blood and teach you all’a the dark ways of life, includin’ how to take a cock and make it come? Who’ll tell you what to do to please him and expect you to obey?”
“You sound surprised. “Can’t surprise a man like me, little girl. I’ve seen it all.”
“Welcome to the dark side, then, little Lou.”
“I’m your girlfriend,” I told him, awed and unable to move on from it just yet. This was my childhood dream come true after all, so I cut myself some slack. “Old lady,” he corrected. I wrinkled my nose. “I think between the two of us, you’re the old one, Z.”
“Fuck yeah. Just a warnin’ though, you ask me to stay away from my little warrior, she’d fight you and win. Even if she didn’t, there’s no way in heaven or hell my fallen angel would leave me in peace.”
“Now, I ain’t makin’ you any promises here, little warrior, but if your fine ass is going to heaven—and it fuckin’ well is—I’ll find a way to get there too. If I gotta move into that fuckin’ church and pay penance every goddamn hour, I’ll do it. If I gotta give up boozin’, guns and drug runnin’, I’ll fuckin’ well do it and I’d do it now if it meant I got a place beside my girl behind those pearly gates.”
“Do it for you, Lou. Do anythin’ for you.”
“You lose your moonbeam hair, your bombshell shape and your sexual appetite, I don’t give a fuck. ’Cause I love your soul better than I love anythin’ else and that includes the fan-fuckin-tastic package it comes in. You got me, Lou?”
“Sorry,” I whispered. He cupped his hands around my face and pressed a kiss to the tip of my nose. “Love you even when you don’t.”
“Yeah, little warrior. See, it’s important to me you get that I’m in this with you. Can’t suffer what you suffer, can’t take that pain from ya like I want to more than fuckin’ anythin’. But I can stand with you. Don’t know if you’ll lose all that hair but if you do, I wanna do it with you.”
“This isn’t about that shit. We deserve each other ’cause we get each other. I know the heart of ya and you know the heart of me. Deservin’ or not deservin’ has nothin’ to do with it and it fuckin’ can’t ’cause if I get to thinkin’ ’bout that question, I lose every time.”
“A true fallen angel, too bad for heaven, too good for hell, stuck on earth like a living divinity.”
“He said something about God having different paths for everyone and then something about some princesses needing dragons to protect them instead of Prince Charmings to save them.”
“My fallen angel.” “My guardian monster,”
