Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (77 page)

“The passive drunk you told me about?”

“One of the many lies I tell about him.”

“The one who seduced Rachel first.”

“Not a lie. That was the beginning of me learning the truth of who I am. He’s a sociopath. Clinical. He has no empathy. He only finds things interesting or not interesting, and hurting people is interesting. Young girls are interesting. Seeing my mother scream during childbirth? Same. My sister Carrie is a psychologist, and once she realized it, realized all the shit he’d done over the years, she moved to Italy. Swear to god. I see that look on your face. It’s not genetic.”

“I didn’t think you were a sociopath.”

“No, but I’m a sexual sadist.” Saying those words was hard, even though I knew how true they were. As much as Debbie had tried to remove all of my negative connotations from them, I still felt a pang of self-loathing. Monica didn’t seem perturbed, probably because it was just us on her porch. I knew that her shame was in how she was seen by strangers, not what we called each other when we were alone. “I thought for a long time that made me like him. That we were the same because I enjoy that look on a woman’s face when I squeeze a little too hard, or that I like to make her uncomfortable. I thought it was a part of him inside me.”

“And it’s not?”

“It is. But even he’s capable of doing good things. He was the one who rescued Rachel from the car and put her into a facility.”

She leaned back as if stunned. “Why?”

“She was about to blackmail him. She was going to expose that he had been with her when she was sixteen. You don’t blackmail J. Declan Drazen. He doesn’t appreciate it, let’s say.”

“Why didn’t he just let her die?”

“I don’t know. He has a thing about not shitting where you eat, so if he thought she was within his circle, he wouldn’t have hurt her. But he was secretive. We found out everything about the accident the hard way. When I went to him about it, he literally laughed. I found out I was driving when some reporter came sniffing around, probably this guy.” I tapped the envelope. “I found out she was alive right after that. It was, let’s say, overwhelming.”

“You felt like a fly caught in a web.”

She’d captured that feeling exactly. What she didn’t capture was the feeling that if I got free of it, I’d be less human for letting go of the grief and guilt. It was mine. I owned it. If I unburdened myself, what would I become? An animal who stopped caring about the things I’d done? I couldn’t allow that. My shame was made me a moral person, even if it crippled me emotionally.

She snapped up the envelope and pressed it to my chest. “You should read this.”

“I don’t need to.”

“It says you were soaked in salt water. Has it occurred to you that
you
rescued her?”

“I dove in, but I was too drunk to rescue anyone,” I said. “Probably nearly drowned myself.”

“They got your medical records. The skin on your hands was totally fucked up. You were banged to shit. Like you wrestled with the ocean pulling someone out of it.”

I remembered that. In my sequestered hospital room, my mother had been at my side, smelling of whiskey, and she claimed ignorance about that and everything. Dad spoke to me after, describing Rachel’s death by drowning, the body’s absence, the car “she stole” floating into the Pacific with the tide. He’d get me another. Not to worry.

I’d been so shredded about Rachel, I’d paid no mind to my bruises or the skin missing from my hands. I figured that in my blacked-out stupor, I’d fallen. Repeatedly.

Maybe Monica was right. Maybe I hadn’t been such a passive player. Or maybe it didn’t matter anymore, because Monica’s big brown eyes looked at me for answers as if I had any. She looked at me as if she was on a starting block, waiting to win the race to forgiveness. I could tell her anything. I could tell her I’d strangled Rachel and buried the body, and she’d forgive me. God damn. I had done something truly evil in letting the woman love me.

“We ruined her family,” I said. “Not that it was worth much.”

“You know, I think—”

I didn’t let her finish. “Jessica’s family, too. My father put hers in his grave. And when I married her, she was cut off. Then she became this
thing
that tries to squeeze me.”

“Jonathan, listen—”

“And Kevin. I mean douchebag, yes. I had my chance to hit him on the head with a cinderblock, but that somehow wasn’t permanent enough. I needed him wiped off the map of Los Angeles. So I had his warrants checked at the border. I needed his career with you to be over, so I made sure the last page of the commercial invoice was missing.”

The look of shock on her face, the feel of her limbs tightening made me want to reassure her at the same time as it strengthened my resolve. “I mean, look at you. You’re surprised. You can’t believe I’d do something like that, right? You knew it was true, but you can’t believe it. Say it.”

“I believe it.” Her voice was soft and low, as if she was telling herself more than me.

“And you still love me? Because you believe in my innate
goodness
?”

She rolled off my lap and sat next to me, looking into the empty, diagonal street. “You hurt me too, when you did that. With the invoice. Any box could have been held up. I might not have been able to figure it out.”

“I didn’t care. Don’t you get it? I wanted to possess you, and I didn’t want Kevin in my way. And you love me, Monica? Do you still love me? Are you that naïve?”

“I still love you.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about. Look what I’ve done to you already. You’re stealing things and drugging me. What are you turning into?”

“You’re turning into a dick.”

“I’m not turning into anything. What I am now, I’ve always been. I can’t believe you can hear this story and sit there as if it’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” She pulled her knees up to her chin, a defensive posture if I ever saw one. “Did you want me to judge you?”

“Why wouldn’t you? Don’t martyr yourself to me.”

“Jesus Christ! What is
wrong
with you?”

“Your decency is endearing, but it’s already dying.” I stood up, my course of action set. I felt that tightness in my chest again but ignored it. “At least with Jessica, she knew what she was getting, and she could handle it. I can’t say the same for you.”

That hurt her, as it was meant to. The urge to gather her in my arms and say I was sorry was overwhelming. I had a moment where I could have done that, explained it all away, but that would be an act of a cowardice. I refused to allow another woman to be ruined because of me.

“Get out,” she said, feet on the swing, curled and tangled at the ankles. “Just go.”

“Your car is fixed,” I said, scooping Jessica’s phone and envelope.

I walked off the porch without looking back. The slap of the car door seemed final. The roar of the engine and backing onto her sheer drop of a street seemed like continued punctuations in an ever long sentence. I rounded the corner, then another, up a hill, until I was at the top of hers again. If I went back around and she was still on the porch, I’d grovel. I’d pour my heart out to her. If I told her I was afraid of corrupting her, exposing her to my family, turning her into an unscrupulous monster, killing her, maybe she’d prove me wrong.

But she was gone. Part of me was glad she was protected from truths that could be used to draw forgiveness and love from her. But the rest of me felt cracked down the middle.

I parked the car at the side of the road by the freeway entrance because the crack had opened into a void, and I was falling into it. I couldn’t drive. I knew I’d done what I had to. I knew I’d been a man. Done it right. Taken responsibility. I vowed that my single life wasn’t going to be what it had been before. I wasn’t going to bed whoever caught my fancy. I would play it straight. No looking. No dating. No casual fucking.

Because who else did I want? Who else fit so right? Who else could heal me? Who else could I damage as deeply, hurt as fully? Who needed more protection from me?

Right there, in my car, I said good-bye to a piece of myself. I gave up on it because doing so saved Monica from being the third in line for ruination. Saving her was a dark glow at the edge of the void, and that void… My God, that void was endless, lonely, black with loathing, and I clutched the wheel, white-knuckled, as I fell down it.

MONICA

T
hat was bullshit.

That was a guy who felt responsible for his first love dying.

The choice was clear. I could get upset or not. I could disregard everything we’d been through already and write him off, or I could do him the favor he did me when I walked away and be ready for his return.

I opened my text messenger to let him know I was there for him when he came to his senses. I didn’t hit send. The send button would deliver an immediate
ding
across the city, and he’d answer it (or not) and then we’d bounce texts (or not) but nothing would be solved. I’d prolong whatever agony he was going through.

I was fully awake, and though my second wind would be short, I had enough in me to give him something with the ghost of a chance of truly comforting him. I wanted to sing him a song. Make him music, and one
ding
wouldn’t cut it. He needed more
dings.
A chorus of them. A symphony. His phone needed to light up and make music.

I crawled out of bed and got my metronome. After placing it on the night table and setting it mid-tempo, I broke down a song into the beats of a send button without sending it.

I_a

m_h

er

e_und

er_

the

_r

ains

If each letter became the tap of a beat, time taken, and the send button punctuated each line, assuming the network functioned properly, his phone should ding to the rhythms of my hurt and my steadfast concern. Three/three/two/five/three. Sixteen beats. Four measures. No downbeats or dynamics with a phone ding, but I could play with the timing and give every fourth a dotted quarter for
umph
if I needed it.

I set the metronome and practiced tapping into my phone. I used the enter key instead of the send button. An hour later, I felt like I’d nailed it, and my second wind was wearing down. Now or never. I cracked my knuckles and began.

JONATHAN

T
wo in the morning. Still raining. I could have called any Asia office and caught them in time for a good balling-out over whatever. God help them if they called me with some crap they could manage themselves.

I wanted her already. Her body under mine. Her voice saying my name. Her all-consuming hunger for life. The first months would be the hardest. I knew that from losing Jessica. How could I compare the blip that was Monica to the ten years I’d spent with my bitch of a wife?

Even if I hadn’t believed it at the time, Jessica had run her course. That was the difference. My time with Monica had been cut off at the knees.

I already wanted to know what she was doing. Instead, I went into the shower and tried to scald the thought of her from me. I undressed in the bathroom, leaving my clothes on the floor like a slob.

My phone dinged once, then again. It was in my jacket pocket, draped over the vanity. Fucking Asia. The whole continent should fall into the sea, and by the urgency of the dinging, it sounded as if it was. By the time I got there, it had gone off another ten times, and a rhythm was appearing. The texts were coming furiously. The thing must be broken or stuck.

I finally got it out of my pocket.

The

_sk

y_

split

_ap

art

_t

ears_

fal

lin

g_

into_

the

_un

It went on. And on. It was Monica, singing me a song. I sat on the toilet, dripping, staring at my dinging, buzzing phone, and the seeming nonsense streaming across my screen. I could put it together if I concentrated. The effect was hypnotic.

The dinging stopped, then something came in a full sentence.

I_am_here_under_the_rains_the_sky_split_apart_tears_falling_into_the_unbreakable_sea_I_am_wider_for_the_rain_fixed_under_the_cracked_sky_waiting_for_you

A fist gripped my chest, tightening when I thought about what to do next. My neck and arms hurt as if the nerves were being squeezed. I broke out in a sweat. Ridiculous. I tried to get control of myself, but it was hard to breathe. I leaned back again. I must have been coming down with something.

I did the only right thing and blocked her number.

MONICA

I
didn’t hear back.

How long had he waited for me? Two weeks or more? I felt as though that would kill me, but I’d do what I had to, even if it meant I didn’t sleep the night before a huge meeting and I felt like hell. I checked my phone constantly. Nothing. I had to remind myself to breathe.

That was why I’d been celibate, to avoid staying up all night before meetings. Of course the meetings had come just as I was getting more drama than I could handle without a therapist.

I am music.

I am music.

I am music.

In a sense, I was a wreck. The night was emotionally devastating. I never heard from him after my song. I believed I’d have him back, eventually, if he didn’t find someone else in the meantime, but I was upset. I’d never been dumped, and the powerlessness and vulnerability was physical. My veins felt sucked dry, and my rib cage seemed to have shrunk too small to contain my lungs.

A good cry might release some of my anxiety, and I’d been tempted to let it come, but I didn’t want to risk being unable to stop. I put all of my emotions in a box and taped it shut with words.

I’m fine.

I’m fine.

I’m fine.

I couldn’t play my viola. Much as I tried to keep the notes strong, the dynamics kept dragging toward sad. I had better luck with the piano, pounding the keys until I was sure the cops would come.

I got control of myself. I didn’t know how long it would last, but if I could keep myself together through the meeting with Carnival, I’d be satisfied.