Lessons for Lexi (18 page)

Empty.

She’d run.
He’d pushed her too hard and she’d run away from him. His breathing was
constricted and he was having a hard time calming down. He pulled his cell
phone out of his pocket, hand shaking. She couldn’t have gotten far. She only
knew a few people in Austin
and she would have gone to them first. She couldn’t drive. He’d taken her keys
away after her last DUI. He’d find her, bring her back home, and make her love
him again.

He dialed
Raj’s number first.

***

Lexi flinched as she sat down on Raj’s
couch. When she’d shown up red eyed and suitcase in hand at his door, Raj
hadn’t asked questions. Instead, he’d been the constant good friend and ushered
her inside after kicking his latest pretty boy conquest out with a promise to
call.
 

“I’m guessing you left JT?”

Lexi nodded, too upset to speak. She’d
walked half a mile away from JT’s place before hitching a ride into town with a
neighbor and going straight to Raj. She knew that JT would look for her there,
but she also knew that Raj would lie for her if he called.

“Did you leave because he spanks you?”

Lexi’s face went from red, to white to
red again in a heartbeat before she nodded, utterly humiliated. “How’d you know?”

“He’s the only person on the planet
that can make you behave yourself, and every time he gets mad at you, you
immediately grab your butt.” Raj shrugged. “It really wasn’t that hard to
tell.”

“Oh,” Lexi didn’t know what else to
say. The fact that it was that transparent just made her feel that much worse.

“To be honest, I never said anything
before because I felt like he was the first person who was actually helping
you.”

Lexi was still silent because she
didn’t want to be forced to agree, but in the beginning, she’d thought so too. It
was only after she realized nothing she ever did would be good enough that she
realized that she was beyond help. “I’m a train wreck,” she whispered before
putting her head in her hands and starting to cry.

“Hey,” Raj reached out and started to
rub her shoulders. “You’re not a train wreck. You’re beautiful, you’re smart
and you’re incredibly sweet.” He gave her a squeeze. “But you are also the most
self-destructive person I have ever met. You need to understand how hard it is
for the people who love you to watch you hurt yourself like that.”

Lexi looked down, shamefaced. When
she’d gone on her benders, she’d never considered the fact that she was hurting
anyone else. She thought the only person she was hurting was herself. She never
realized she might be hurting Raj too.

“But JT was different. He kept you from
doing things like that.” Raj looked down, looking almost as ashamed as she
felt. “
Which is why I called Althea to tell her about your
DUI that night.
”

Lexi sat up straight, tears stopped due
to frozen surprise. “What?”

“I knew you shouldn’t be driving that
night, but you wouldn’t listen to me. After you got busted, it was like you
didn’t even care. I told Althea about it because I knew she would tell JT.”

Lexi glared at him. “And you also knew
JT would beat my ass for it.” Her mouth was set in a tight frown. “I could
barely sit for a week after that. What the hell Raj?”

“I didn’t know how to help you anymore,
Lex. But I knew JT could. As much as what JT does to keep you in line hurts
you, it’s the only thing that actually seems to work.”

“You son of a bitch,” she was still
outraged,
“you set me up to get spanked!”

“Lexi, you’re only 28 and you have 2
DUIs
on your record.” Raj was stubbornly unapologetic. “Someone
had to do something.”

She continued to glare, but had no
comeback. In truth, she knew that Raj had done what he did out of love, but it
still felt like a betrayal. “I’m
tired.,
” she finally
responded.

Raj pointed her in the direction of the
guest room. “You can sleep in there.” She started to rise, “Lexi, think about
it before you walk away from JT. I really think he might have been the best
thing that ever happened to you.”

Lexi wordlessly walked into the guest
room, afraid to admit Raj was probably right.

***

Lexi was tossing and turning and she
just couldn’t sleep. She missed JT. She always slept better next to JT. In
fact, everything was better with JT. She didn’t feel like it was impossible to
live a normal life. She didn’t feel like she was letting everyone down when she
was with JT. She knew exactly what JT expected of her and what would happen
when she fell short of those expectations.

She loved him. She loved who she was
when she was with him.

But he deserved better than her. He
deserved a woman who could love someone without feeling the need to keep them
at arms length. Because the truth was, Lexi was afraid of love. She’d loved
someone before and when they’d died, it had nearly killed her.

But that pain was nothing compared to
what she was feeling without JT beside her, knowing that he’d never kiss her on
the mouth as he told her he was proud.
Knowing that he’d
never throw his arms around her and squeeze her like she was the most precious
thing in the world.

She hadn’t had a choice to walk away
from Ronnie. Ronnie had died. But JT was very much alive and she was choosing
to walk away from him. Her tumultuous thoughts were interrupted by the sound of
her door opening.

“She’s probably asleep,” she heard Raj
whisper. “She was all cried out when she got here.”

“That’s ok. I’ll wait until she wakes
up.” JT’s voice made her heart flip over. “I was harsher than I should have
been with her earlier and we need to clear some things up.”

She heard the door close, but pretended
to be sleeping. She wasn’t ready to face JT yet. She expected him to lie down
on the couch next to the bed. To her surprise, he slipped into bed right next
to her instead and slid an arm around her waist, tugging her up against him.

“I know you’re not sleeping, but you
can keep pretending if it makes you more comfortable,” he whispered in her ear.
“I’m sorry I was so rough on you earlier, but it was the third time for the
same offense. I had to do something to get the point across.”

Lexi considered his complaint. “It
wasn’t even my fault. Althea and Pennypinch put those plants back there, not
me. I didn’t even know there was anything there.”

“I know that
now ,sweetheart
.”
JT kissed her ear. “I promise I’ll never punish you again without at least
letting you try to explain yourself first.”

Lexi stayed silent, not sure how to
respond. She hadn’t expected him to be reasonable. “I’ll never be perfect JT.”

“I know that.”

Lexi rolled on her side, finally facing
him. “No, you don’t, because you don’t even notice when I try to be. I was
trying so hard to make you happy all week, and you didn’t even notice. The only
time you notice is when I do something wrong.”

“That’s not true.” JT eased her onto
her back and leaned over her. “You think I don’t see how amazing you are? I’ve
been crazy about you from the moment I met you, even though I didn’t realize it
at the time. You’re brave, you’re beautiful,
you
always keep me on my toes. I might not tell you how much I appreciate you, and
it probably gets overshadowed by when I have to discipline you, but I love you
Lexi. I wouldn’t act this way about you if I didn’t. I’m sorry if sometimes I
concentrate too much on disciplining you, and not enough on loving you, but I
need to. I love you too much to let you self destruct.”

Lexi’s eyes filled with tears and she wanted
so much to lean into him, to tell him she loved him too. But she couldn’t.
Loving him meant letting everything go, letting him lead her. It meant taking
the risk that she would lose him someday.

“I can’t JT. I can’t take the risk of
loving you back. God knows I want to, I really do, but I’m scared. I’m scared
that I won’t be enough for you.” She rolled onto her back and stared up at the
ceiling. “You deserve someone who isn’t as damaged as me. You deserve a woman who’s
an even match for you.” She swallowed. “You deserve someone who can give you
children.”

 
“I don’t want someone else. I don’t want some
perfect frozen trophy wife.” JT leaned over her again, grabbing her by the chin
and making her look at him. “As for kids, we can adopt if you want to. I don’t
care either way.” JT sat up on the bed. “I’m going to give you some space to
think about this Lexi, because I know that you’ll come back to me. But when you
do, you need to be ready to let go of the past and love me back.” He kissed her
quietly and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

Lexi turned on her pillow and wept for
what she would never be brave enough to have.

***

The dead air was back. She was running,
racing down the hallway to get to the recording room in time. This time, she would
stop it. Like clockwork, the gunshots came. Suddenly, she was over Ronnie,
trying to stem the flow of blood coming from his neck.

“You can’t stop it, Lexi baby. You
can’t stop it.” Lexi turned around and in the doorway was Ronnie, but it was
Ronnie as she’d known and loved him. Not Ronnie with the gaping hole in his
neck and the dead eyes. It was smiling Ronnie, looking healthy and alive.

She looked down at her hands and the
Ronnie she’d been trying to help was gone.

“It’s too late to help me, Lexi baby.
But you can know that you did everything you could.” Ronnie put his hand on her
shoulder. “You need to let it go. You fought to keep that radio show alive,
afraid that if you let it go, I would have died in vain. But the only way I’ll
really have died in vain is if you spend the rest of your life alone because
you’re too afraid to love again.”

“I’m scared, Ronnie”.

“I know, but you don’t have to be. You
already have someone who loves you, who would do anything for you.” Ronnie
smiled. “Who knows how to handle you when you get out of
hand.
God knows I never could.”

Lexi was surprised that she could blush
in a dream. “Jesus, does everyone know about that?”

“You can’t help me, but you can help
yourself Lexi. You can go back to the man you love and live out a beautiful
life with him or you can keep going down your destructive path and both of our
lives will have been in vain.” Ronnie started to fade. “I know you’re smart
enough to make the right decision.”

Lexi awoke with a start, tears rolling
down her cheeks. But they weren’t sad tears, they were happy tears. They were
the tears of a woman who was ready to start over, to return to a life that was
a gift and not a burden.

She jumped out of bed, feeling light
and filled with energy. She threw on her clothes and grabbed her purse. She was
going back to JT.

But first, she had to make a special
and very unpleasant purchase.

***

JT came down the stairs the next
morning, a day’s worth of stubble on his face. He hadn’t slept well the night
before. As sure as he’d told her he was, he was still afraid Lexi wasn’t going
to come back. Her demons might be too big. She’d been through so much.

He rubbed his eyes as he turned down
the hall to his office. He continued to work from home. He wanted to be there
for when she came back. His stomach turned. If she came back, he amended
silently.

He opened his office door and suddenly,
his bad mood disappeared. Lexi was there, seated in a chair in front of his
desk, waiting for him.

“Hi,” her voice was a little bit shy.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“I can see that.” He struggled to keep
his voice even and not rush at her, waiting to let her speak first. He sat in
the chair across from her and watched her expectantly.

She cleared her throat. “I love you JT.
I love you so much that it hurts me.” She blinked back tears. “It hurts because
I loved someone before and I watched him die. My life changed that day, and I
stopped being me. I was driven by fear, afraid to love anything again.” She
shook her head. “That’s no way to live. Someone very important to me made that
clear to me.”

JT had to resist the urge to throw his
arms around her. She wasn’t done talking, but her announcement that she loved
him had filled him with hope.

“I want to come back JT. I want to love
you the way you deserve to be loved.” She reached into a bag she had sitting
beside her chair and pulled out a small device. It looked a bit like a flat kitchen
whisk, made of two looped wires attached to a black rubber handle. “I know that
loving you means being disciplined by you and I’m ready to accept that as
well.”

He took the device out of her hand.
“What’s this?”

She blushed. “It’s called a loopy Johnny.
I asked the lady at the store what the most painful thing she had for spankings
was.” She nodded at the evil looking device and stood up. “She told me it was
that.” She unbuttoned her pants and started to push them down. “I think you
should use it on me now.”