Page 72 of Fox
“Janie!” He limps toward me and grabs my shoulder. “Baby doll, you didn’t let me speak. I have feelings for you too.”
“But?” I sob out as I hang my head low, waiting for the blow.
Fox sighs and rolls his neck. “Yeah, there’s one of those…I need to talk to you about some shit that has happened to me in my life. Maybe it can help us work things out better.” He lifts my chin so our eyes meet, “Will you listen to me? Please?”
I nod, allowing him to lead me back to the couch. I take a seat next to him as he rubs his hands over his thighs. “I’m not very good at this,” He says weakly. “So um… If you could just bear with me and know that nothing I say should be misinterpreted as a shot against you during this conversation, okay? Just let me get this out. Please?”
I grab his hand and give it a squeeze. “Okay, I’ll listen.”
Fox nods and stares over to Winston, snoring away in his hammock, making Fox chuckle.
“I like animals,” he says after a moment. “You said when you found Winston that I didn’t like animals, but I do. I just didn't want to get attached and have to watch them go. Or worse, they need me, and I’m unable to help them. So I figured it was better not to bring that kind of worry into my life, that kind of pain.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from speaking. He needs to get this out, and I need to listen, really listen.
His gaze reaches his hands, resting between his bobbing knees. It’s weird seeing someone as confident as Fox so nervous.
“Janie.” He breathes my name, and I want to hold him to me, to kiss away whatever was causing him this much mental anguish. “My dad, I’ve mentioned he was a shitty person. But I need you to realize that maybe he was right about some things.” He runs his hands through his long hair before resting them back on his knee.
“He beat my mom and sister for a long time. Until I was about twelve or thirteen. By then, I was hitting puberty, and I was pissing him off so that he would hit me instead of them. He’d beat me with a belt or whatever was handy. Punch, kick, put his smokes out on me…” I watch as his hand absently runs over his chest, and I wonder what he has hidden under all of his tattoos.
Fox takes a breath before continuing. “The physical abuse sucked, but I took it. Hell, I preferred it over the mental shit. The yelling, the belittling. Telling me I was stupid, worthless, a waste of space. All the while my mom and sister would stay in their own world, ignoring him. Which, I get, they were probably just relieved that he was onto someone else after the years of abuse they suffered before I stepped up.”
Oh my god. How could a father do that to his child? How could a mother see it happening and not stop it? Relieved that your husband was beating your child instead of you?
I cover my mouth with my trembling hand to hide the wobbling of my bottom lip. Ihaveto keep it together. Fox has been holding onto a past that needed to come out, and I know that if he feels that it’s overwhelming me, he will stop.
He will stop to protect me, even if it hurts him just like he did for them.
“As I grew up, in my teens and even early twenties, I couldn’t leave home. I couldn’t move out or go to college, not that I was smart enough to make it there anyway.” His self-deprecating laugh breaks my already shattering heart. I wonder if younger Fox had college dreams about doing something else with his life, but his dad made him feel like he couldn’t make it.
“I had to stay home,” he continues. “At least until my mom and sister left. I couldn’t leave them alone with that man. But they wouldn’t leave. I don’t know if it was fear or love or what it was, but I could not get them to leave him.” I hear the frustration in his voice as he speaks through gritting teeth.
“I was working at this tattoo shop as an apprentice. And no, not like the apprenticeships Tony had.” He laughs, and I can’t help but smile softly. My dad was known for being much kinder to the apprenticing artists than most shops.
“So, I was getting beat down at work and then going home to get beat again. It was just a constant, never-ending stream of shit. I never felt good enough; I never felt like I would get out.” His eyes have a slight sheen over them as he continues to speak, his voice cracking slightly.
“Then I met Tony. He was doing a guest chair at my shop back in Washington. Everyone was so excited because he was theGood Luck Tattoo Artist. My boss made a huge deal about Tony coming in and how nobody had better even think about talking to him. The last morning, he was there. I was the one who was supposed to let him into the shop, and I was late. My father had given me a beating, and when I tried to get him off, I shovedhim too hard, and he fell down the stairs and broke his leg. My mom…” His voice cracks, and I watch his hand ball into a fist. “My mom kicked me out. Told me I was a monster and to leave. So, I got to the shop, and your dad saw me and took pity on me, I guess because my drawings back then were atrocious. But he told me to pack my shit and come work for him here. I don’t know why I agreed, but I did.”
He rubs his hands over his face, and I can tell what’s coming next is the hard part for him. “I was only there for a couple of months, and they’d been the best months of my life. Then I got a call from mom. Dad had beaten her so badly she had to be in the hospital for days. No one had told me. The guilt I felt for not being there, for not protecting her… I told her that she and my sister needed to come down here. They could live with me in my shitty apartment, and things would be tight, but we would get by. She asked me to come up there to go get them. Janie had I known… You have to know I would’ve gone.” Fox chokes out a sob, and it’s then I remember that his mom and sister died in a car crash while moving here.
I can’t fight it any longer. I pull him against my chest as he silently shakes. I feel the wetness of his tears on my shirt but say nothing. He needs to let it out. He’s been holding it back for too long.
“At their funeral,” he whispers, his head still resting on my breast, his hand gripping my hoodie. “My father beat me within an inch of my life. Told me it was my fault and everyone who got close to me would be in danger. I was more to blame for their deaths than the truck driver that hit them.” He grabs my hand and guides my fingertips over his bare chest to a tattoo over his heart of a broken pocket watch. I run my fingers across the tattoo and notice the center is not smooth skin. “He drove his lit cigar into my chest here. Told me to remember that pain because that’s the pain I would cause for anyone I ever let in.”
He sits up and looks at me; I’m sure my expression is everywhere. I feel so much. So much for the young boy trying to protect his mom and big sister. For the young man just trying to feel worthy of something. For the man now, finally opening up because he does feel something for me, but he is scared that if he lets me in, we will both only get hurt.
“I’m sorry your dad hurt you.” I finally say after a long stretch of silence. “Was that the day you showed up at mine and Dad’s place, drunk or high or something?” He nods softly, holding me tighter.
“About a year later, my dad suffered a stroke and needed round-the-clock care, so I had to start paying for his assisted living. So I got to spend several years paying for that and for him to have access to me. And he continued to tell me how much of a fuck up I am, how I’m unworthy, unloveable, that anyone that gets close to me will end up leaving me. Over and over, including on his deathbed.”
“You know it’s not true,” my voice is soft as I pull him back to me, laying on the couch with him on my chest. “You’re so amazing, Fox. You’re worthy of so much. You deserve the world.”
“That’s not what I want,” he whispers while gripping my arm as if I may float away.
“Well, what is it you want?”
“For starters,” Fox looks up, cupping my cheek as he leans over my face, his lips forming the softest of smiles. “I want to kiss you the way I’ve been dying to for far too long unless you tell me no.”
