Missing Dixie(38)

I used to feel proud of that. Now I feel . . . sick. Sick to my f*cking soul, and who the hell knew I even had a soul?

Dixie did once, I guess. Even if she’s still questioning it, she’ll soon know I don’t, or not one worth saving, anyway.

The year she was in Houston, I kept picturing her with some fancy college guy, or the maestro of the orchestra taking her to expensive dinners, wining, dining, and f*cking her six ways to Sunday. It drove me insane.

In-f*cking-sane.

I became obsessed. I was literally waiting for her wedding invitation to arrive in the mail. I’d missed my shot and I missed her. I missed her so much it caused me physical f*cking pain.

Missing Dixie was hell. It was the deepest, darkest pit so when my mom left drugs out on the kitchen table or in the bathroom or in the laundry basket, I traded them for blow jobs in back alleys. They needed their fix and I needed mine. Seemed like an even trade-off.

I can tell you exactly where most downtown Amarillo bars’ security cameras are and what they can and cannot see.

Dallas has caught me more than once. He once yanked me out of a very lively foursome while I was butt naked and swinging at him with both fists. He made me get tested and while everything was negative, I’m not going to pretend I didn’t sweat it pretty hard while I waited for the results to come in.

Hence his hesitation about letting me date his sister.

But in a strange way, he seemed to understand. He called me out for self-medicating, said he’d done some similar stupid shit when Robyn dumped him. Though he thought I missed the band, not his sister specifically, and I never clarified.

We played a few gigs, just me and him, then we met up with Dixie for a few and it did help. Some. For a while.

But then the knowledge that I could never have her, could never hold her, and would eventually have to watch some other f*ckhead marry her would get to be too much and I’d slip out to downtown and f*ck the first girl who made eye contact.

I imagine Hell will be a lot like my life only hotter and more densely populated.

Once I’m dressed, I make the bed, as if cleaning up the scene of the crime will somehow help. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above her dresser and I look like hammered shit on a stick. Or worse.

Thank f*ck it was dark.

I stagger to the bathroom where she’s barricaded herself from the monster in her house. I lean against the door and I don’t know how but I can feel her. She’s sitting against the other side. I open my mouth to say I’m sorry, or to tell her to just steer clear of me for the rest of her life, but no words come.

Being soulless would be easier. I think I was once, but the first time I kissed her some of her soul slipped into me.

Damning me for life.

And maybe a piece of her, too.

“I’m sorry, Bluebird,” I say quietly, barely getting it out over the hard sob threatening to break free. I clear my throat so I can continue. “I’m a f*cking * and I wanted you to . . . know, I guess. To see who I really am, what I’m capable of, so you would move on or whatever.”

Christ almighty this is harder than I thought it would be.

“Gavin.” The pain in her voice shoots straight through my chest.

“Dixie—”

“Tell me why, Gav. Tell me all of it.” She’s trying so hard not to cry. I can hear exactly how much effort it takes to get those words out.

I sigh against the door and just start talking. I begin somewhere around the beginning, around why this reminds me of my mom locking me out of the bathroom as a kid. My rambling takes us through my horrific childhood, into meeting her and Dallas, and I do my best to explain why they’ve always been and will always be the most important people in my life. I tell her about Lindy Preston and how that became an addiction—physical contact and why.

“You hurt me on purpose,” she says after a few minutes of excruciating silence.

“I did.” My voice is raspy and I’m not sure she heard me until she responds a moment later.

“Why?”

I breathe deeply and do my best to maintain my composure while the emotions flood through me.

“To help you see how awful I can be. How selfish and just . . . f*cked-up, for lack of a better term.” I take a deep breath. “Asking you to wait for me to get my life together when I don’t even know if that’s ever going to be possible is unfair to you. But I know you. You have the biggest heart of anyone I know and you’d wait, you’d love me through whatever. And I love you for that. I love you for a lot of reasons. I love you because I didn’t know what love was before you.” And I apparently have opened that gate of unlimited I-love-yous. “You’ve been my Bluebird for a long time. But I’ve kept you in captivity. I’ve tried to hold you in some tiny cage and when you flew free, to Houston, I lost all control of myself. I . . . there’s so much.”

A sudden turn of the knob startles me and I’m face-to-face with her. She’s wrapped in a robe I assume was already in there and I’m grateful she wasn’t cold.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Hey,” I answer barely above a whisper. “Thanks for opening the door. I have issues with . . . being locked out.”

Dixie’s eyes widen and gaze into mine. “It wasn’t locked, Gavin. I could never lock you out.”

Something about this, maybe because of my mom or my childhood, or whatever, it breaks whatever has been holding me together.