Worthy of Redemption Read online

“Emmy tried to teach me to be nicer to people,” I said quietly as we neared my apartment building.

  “It didn’t work,” Lily said. “Clearly.”

  I couldn’t argue with her, so I remained silent until I had to direct her to my assigned parking space. I didn’t feel as drunk as I did before I vomited, but when I tried to get out of the car, I was hit with a wave of dizziness and damn near fell on my face. Lily reached out and caught my arm and then steadied me against the car while she closed the door and activated the alarm.

  “Now take your time,” she said, taking my hand. She slowly led me to the sidewalk.

  I grinned down at our hands. “You really are holding my hand.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think I’m still drunk.”

  “You’re really good at stating the obvious,” she said.

  “I have to pee,” I said, stopping on the sidewalk.

  “Okay,” she said slowly, eying me skeptically.

  I released her hand and pulled down the zipper on my jeans.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she cried.

  “I can’t wait until we get upstairs,” I said and pulled my semi-hard dick out without caring that Lily was standing right next to me.

  “Oh my god,” she said and then averted her eyes while I pissed onto my neighbor’s car. I hated that guy and his stupid yappy dog.

  I felt myself swaying and a second later Lily’s hands were on my back to steady me.

  “The last thing we need is for you to fall into your own piss,” she said with a loud sigh.

  I gave myself a little shake and turned back around to say something to Lily. I turned too quickly and almost fell backward onto the car and into my own pee, but Lily reached out and grabbed my shirt. She started to look relieved until she looked down and saw that my dick was still hanging out of my pants. Rarely has any woman ever looked at my manhood with disgust, but Lily did.

  “Put that thing away!”

  “What’s wrong? Never saw a penis without a piercing before?” I teased.

  “If you don’t put it away now, you’ll never be able to use it again,” she growled.

  I put my boy back in my pants and went to take her hand again.

  “Don’t touch me with that hand,” she said and shook her head in disgust.

  “Why?”

  “You have Penis Pee Hand!” she said incredulously. “I’ll hold your other hand, but not your Penis Pee Hand.”

  We managed to get up to my apartment without me falling down or touching Lily with my PP Hand. I had not been nice to her even once all night. I fully expected her to deposit me into my apartment and take off, but instead she pushed me towards the hallway leading to the bedrooms.

  “Please go take a shower and brush your vommity teeth.”

  “You’re not going to hold my hand in the shower?” I asked her. “I may fall and crack my head.”

  “Maybe you need your head cracked,” she said and walked off towards the kitchen.

  I staggered to my master bathroom and started to strip out of my clothes. I unbuttoned my jeans and started on my shirt. Like a little kid, I got my head and arms stuck trying to pull off my shirt.

  “Damn it!” I yelled as I staggered around the bathroom trying to free myself. To make matters worse, my jeans began to slip. “Fuck it!” I yelled.

  I heard the bathroom door open and knew Lily was probably watching me with disbelief. I could hardly believe it myself. She grabbed a hold of my shirt and yanked. I stumbled forward, but her hands were on my bare chest, keeping me upright.

  “Wow,” she whispered, looking at her hands on my chest.

  I looked at her with my eyebrow raised and flexed. As if my skin burned her, she quickly pulled back her hands. Her face reddened as she took a step back into the bedroom.

  “You can handle the rest,” she said quickly and practically ran out of the room.

  My shower had a sobering effect. My head began to clear some as I stood under the steaming hot water. As the effects of the alcohol began to dissipate, my emotional pain intensified. Emmy was gone, completely. I called her every day after I woke up in rehab. I emailed her every night before I went to sleep, and I sent her letters via snail mail. She never answered any of it. Eventually, she changed her number, deleted her email address, and all of the letters came back to me unopened. I left rehab several weeks early, against professional advice, and went to find her.

  What I found was a house in the process of being emptied by movers, but no Emmy. I found her best friend Donya hostile, but no Emmy. I found her cousin Mayson a little less hostile, but still no Emmy. No one in the office had seen her since the company’s New Year’s Eve party. I even called her mother, who was much less hostile than Donya and Mayson, and even more helpful.

  “She was here, but she’s gone now,” Samantha Grayne had said.

  “Gone where?” I asked. My heart raced when I considered the fact that she may have gone to Luke to tell him about her son – the son that I wanted to raise as my own. “Did she go to Luke?”

  “That would be the smart thing, you know,” she sniffed. “But no, she didn’t. She’s not here, Kyle, and she won’t be back for a long time. I can’t tell you where she is. I feel for you, I guess, but she’s…broken. I think you broke her, even though she won’t say so, but I think you did. I won’t tell you where she is.”

  She hung up on me then. I was sitting in my car when I called her, and all I could do for a half hour afterward was stare at a picture of Emmy taken at the very beginning. It was a week before the gala and the night that I would first tell her I loved her. It was a picture she obviously took with her cell phone, lying in her bed and smiling broadly up at the camera. She looked so carefree, so unburdened with life – with me. I never again saw that level of happiness in her eyes.

  When I was sure that I could leave the parking lot I was sitting in without driving directly to my dealer, I headed to the Main Line to get rid of Jessyca. I felt a little bad for what I had done to her, but what she had done to me was beyond cruel. She knew about Emmy, how could she not? She knew I was in love with her, and every time she felt me drawing close to dumping her, she would make little comments regarding my dad and Sterling Corp. We both knew what she was talking about, but neither of us ever said it. I didn’t want to push her and jeopardize everything I was working so hard to save, and she didn’t want to push me to push her. But I didn’t want Jess. I wanted Emmy, and Emmy was fucking gone. I would never be able to pretend with Jessyca again.

  “If you really mean this, Kyle, I will destroy you and Sterling Corp!” she screamed as I stormed out of her parents’ home.

  “I’m already destroyed, Jess,” I had said darkly.

  I drove to SHOTZ out of desperation. I hoped that everyone had lied to me and that Emmy was really hiding out there. It was an irrational hope, but it was the only one I had to hold on to, and the only one keeping me from completely falling apart.

  Standing under the shower, I wondered how I had made it thus far without the self-destruction that I strongly felt was necessary. Then I thought of Lily. I didn’t know whether I should curse her or thank her.

  *~~~*

  When I came out of the bedroom, showered, vommity teeth brushed, and dressed in some warm clothes, I found Lily sitting at my dining room table busy with her cell phone. Across from her on a plate were two baked potatoes, a large sports drink, and two aspirin. I stared at the items with a heavy heart.

  “Emmy used to give me this hang over treatment,” I said in a low tone.

  “Where do you think she got it from?” Lily asked and then gestured to the seat across from her. “Sit down. The sooner you start the better.”

  I sat down and started to un-wrap a potato. “Was I in the shower that long?” I asked.

  “You were in there for a good while,” she said, peering at me over her phone. “Long enough for me to sneak out and go to Wawa and that diner down the road.”

  “Thank you,” I mu
rmured. “You’re being very kind to someone who hasn’t ever been nice to you.”

  She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, but then turned her attention back to her phone. I watched her as I ate. Her slate gray eyes narrowed in concentration. She occasionally bit down on her bottom lip, and when she would release it, she would run her pink tongue over it. I was really looking at her for the first time, I guess. She wasn’t the kind of girl that guys like me looked twice at. It wasn’t that she wasn’t pretty, because she was. In fact, she was far prettier than I ever believed before. Admittedly, I was shallow and didn’t see past the ten thousand bracelets on her wrists, her sometimes colorful hair, the intricate floral tattoos on her arms and clavicle, and her pierced eyebrow and tongue. Being a typical guy, I let my eyes drift down to her chest and almost nodded in appreciation. How did I not notice her ample breasts before?

  “Texting your boyfriend?” I asked after eating a whole potato and drinking half of the drink.

  Her eyes widened as she looked at me. “Oh, no. I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said, shaking her head and waving that thought off. “I’m playing a word game.”

  “Are you…a lesbian?” I asked carefully.

  She looked at me as if to say “What the hell is wrong with you” and said “No. Why would you even ask me that?”

  “You looked a little disgusted at the idea of having a boyfriend.”

  “Well, I’m not a lesbian,” she said. “But that part of my life is just as complicated as yours, but we don’t need to go there.”

  “I told you some very personal things tonight,” I said, staring at her. “Do you understand how difficult it is for me to open up to anyone, let alone someone I barely know?”

  She sighed and looked at me with some compassion. “Kyle, I know how hard it was.”

  “Do you really?” I asked darkly and set my fork down.

  “Yes, I do. I know it seems like I don’t know you, but…” she bit her lip and shook her head. “Never mind. I get it though. So that’s all that really matters.” She sat back in her seat and pretended to focus on her game again.

  “But what?” I pressed. “Finish your thought.”

  She looked at me carefully for a few seconds. To my surprise, she began to blush, and when she spoke again, she didn’t meet my eyes. “I know it seems like I don’t know you, but I know you more than you know me. I’ve been watching you since that very first night you came in.”

  I watched as she shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and then her words really hit me. I couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of my mouth.

  “You like me,” I said. “I mean…you have a thing for me?”

  “A thing?” She rolled her eyes, but still didn’t look at me.

  “Oh,” I said stupidly. “You never said anything.”

  “And why would I say something?” she asked and finally met my eyes. She gave me a look that told me I should have known better than to say what I said. “You had two serious girlfriends and one of those girlfriends happened to be my boss and she had a boyfriend. You’re right. I should have totally spoken up.”

  She put her phone down and got up from the table. As she walked towards the powder room by the door, she turned and walked backwards and with a smirk said “And because guys like you totally dig girls like me.” Before she went into the bathroom I saw her smirk turn into a frown.

  I sat there staring at the rest of my potato in a stunned silence. Lily wasn’t the first woman to be attracted to me, obviously, but at the moment she seemed the most significant. I was sure that I was rarely on my best behavior when I was inside SHOTZ. My relationship with Emmy was as volatile as it was passionate. How many times had she witnessed me being a possessive and controlling dick to Emmy? How many times had she witnessed me say distasteful things to Mayson? Probably more times than not. The fact that she liked me – or whatever it was – after witnessing me at some of my worst moments was indeed significant, but I didn’t know what to do with the information. I was very much in pain over losing Emmy and as cliché as it may be, I couldn’t imagine ever loving someone else again.

  Then there was the obvious, what Lily herself had pointed out. Guys like me don’t typically ‘dig’ girls like Lily. I was very well aware of my tolerances, good and bad, and I wasn’t sure if I would be the guy that could look past her appearance.

  The bathroom door opened and Lily walked out yawning.

  “Are you done?” she asked as she reached in front of me to take my plate.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Take your aspirin and finish your drink,” she said and carried the plate into the kitchen.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said.

  “Oh. Was that a joke?” she called.

  I swallowed the aspirin with the rest of my drink as she had commanded. I got up and carried the empty bottle to the kitchen where Lily was washing the plate and fork I had used.

  “I am capable of humor,” I said.

  “I don’t think vomiting on my sneakers and showing me your dick is humorous,” she said dryly. Her eyes grew large as did the smile on her face. “Actually, the second part was humorous.”

  “Is that some kind of jab at my manhood?” I asked.

  She gave a noncommittal shrug as she dried her hands on a dishtowel.

  “Wow,” I said as I followed her back into the dining room. “I thought I was the asshole.”

  “I never claimed I wasn’t an asshole,” she said as she plucked her phone off of the table.

  I followed her into the living room and said “I don’t think you’re capable of being an asshole.”

  Her smile faded almost completely. “I guess it’s a good thing you really don’t know me,” she said quietly. Before I could comment, she spoke again. “How are you feeling?”

  I raked my fingers through my still damp hair. “Physically or emotionally?”

  “Well…both really. Emotional pain can be physically painful,” she said and for a few seconds her eyes were focused on some point in her past. “How are your hangover symptoms?”

  “I think once I lay down I’ll be fine.”

  “Your drug craving?”

  She didn’t even blink while asking. It didn’t seem to faze her, which made it easier for me to discuss.

  “Not as strong as it was an hour ago,” I said with a sigh. “But it’s still there.”

  “It will always be there,” she said softly. “You’ll just have to find ways of pretending it’s not. I’m not even going to ask about the emotional stuff. It’s going to hurt for a very long time.”

  “Was that supposed to make me feel better?” I frowned.

  “No, but I’m not going to bullshit you about it. I’m not going to tell you that you will feel better after you get some sleep, or that in weeks from now it won’t still be your first thought when you wake or the last thought before you fall asleep.” She looked at the floor between us. I saw her swallow hard before speaking again. “It can be…two years later and you think you’re fine, but you can wake up one morning and boom…there it is again. Feeling just as fresh as it did the day everything fell to shit.”

  I’ll never forget that moment. It was the very moment that I really did see through Lily’s appearance and saw the hurting human woman. I never argued that I was a dick, but I wasn’t heartless. I couldn’t overlook Lily’s pain when we were the only two people in the room having a very candid conversation. Seeing her pain, however magnified my own, and my anger flashed.

  “So, you’ve been heartbroken,” I snapped. “Though you won’t say so. But I’m sure that you didn’t beat a helpless pregnant woman while you were fucked up on meth and alcohol. I’m sure that you didn’t break that same woman’s wrist while in a rage because she tried to purge you from her system by trying to fuck another guy. I’m sure you didn’t force that woman into a dysfunctional relationship with you out of selfishness, stretching her thin, wearing her down, and fucking her up piece by piece. You’re onl
y brokenhearted, Lily. My heart is shattered and on top of that I have to carry the fucking enormous burden of my own guilt and self-hatred!”

  She stared up at me with her eyes wide in shock and her mouth hanging open.

  “I don’t even know if her baby is okay,” I pushed on, though I shamefully felt my voice trembling. “I could have killed him – both of them!”

  I was the one who just yelled, but Lily was breathless when she spoke. “Did…were you on drugs when you broke her wrist?”

  “Yes, but that doesn’t excuse it, Lily,” I growled.

  “No,” she agreed in a whisper while shaking her head. “It doesn’t excuse it.” She turned away from me, but not before I saw two tears slip down her cheek.

  “Where are my keys?” I demanded.

  She turned back to look at me with a startled expression. “Why?”

  “Because they are my damn keys and I want them.” I held my hand out. She looked at it like it was diseased.

  “I’m not giving you your keys.” She looked at me dubiously.

  “This is the last time I’m saying it, Lily. Give me. My fucking. Keys.”

  She narrowed her teary eyes. “No.”

  I closed the distance between us with two strides. I stood so close to her, I could feel her hurried breathing as her chest rose and fell against mine. She boldly met my eyes and stood stock still as I ran my hands over her generous hips and over the front pockets of her jeans. To be thorough, I pushed my hands into her pockets in search of my keys. Her breath hitched, but she didn’t look away from me. I pulled out what felt like a small wad of cash, probably her tips for the night. I let it fall to the floor and reached back in and pulled out what must have been her license and maybe a credit or debit card. Her other pocket was empty. I slowly moved my hands back over her hips to her ass. As I ran my hands over her back pockets, I boldly squeezed her ass with both hands. She inhaled sharply and I heard her swallow hard, but she still didn’t look away from me. I slid my hands back up her ass and into her pockets, but only produced a pack of gum from one pocket and several small pieces of paper and a few business cards from the other.