Page 97 of Break for Me

“That’s not really what I asked.”

I sighed. “I don’t even know if I know what love is, Memphis. Do we have to have this conversation right now? Do you love him?”

“Of course I do.”

I felt my whole face twist and scrunch at those words. Memphis laughed again.

“I’m not in love with him, you psycho. I just love him. He’s like that crazy cousin who nobody really wants at the family cookout, but he shows up anyway, starts a food fight, pisses everybody off, steals your brother’s new girlfriend, and then just leaves. How could you not love that?”

“What the fuck?”

How was it even possible that my first real, face-to-face conversation with this girl was turning out this way?

“I know you guys talked a lot,” she said.

“Never about him,” I said while something latched onto separate edges of my heart and started to pull in opposite directions. “It was always about me. I don’t know why I thought we’d have time later for that. For me to have the chance to really get to know him. Nothing about that makes any sense now that I’m thinking about it in hindsight. How well do you know him?”

I forced myself to look at her despite the tears trailing their way down my face again. If she knew him, I wanted to know what she knew. And I was beyond willing to beg her for that.

She sighed. “I know him.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s never known how well I know him.”

“Can you tell me?” I asked. I squeaked, really. I sounded like I was suffocating on the question. She looked at me for a long time. I killed the engine and laid the keys in one of the cup holders between us. I had nothing but time when it came to this. I was prepared to sit there for as long as she was willing to talk.

“I think Jersey was a normal guy once upon a time,” she said. “He was married. Had a daughter.”

I couldn’t breathe, but she kept talking like her words weren’t stabbing me to death with each syllable.

“I obviously didn’t know him then. I just did a lot of digging after we were assigned to one another. The Marines snagged him right out of high school. He was married a few years later, had a daughter. Turns out his wife wasn’t the picture of mental health. It was so bad that every time he was deployed, his parents kept his daughter. But the last time that he was gone, his wife really lost it. She went to his parents’ house in the middle of the night. She killed his parents, killed their daughter. She killed herself. Jersey nearly drank himself to death after that. Our organization got wind of him, and having this job seemed to be the only thing that kept him going. He doesn’t do anything else. He hasn’t done anything else in all the years that we’ve worked together. I don’t know how much of him is really still human, but whatever there is that’s left, it all revolved around this job.”

“Around you,” I corrected. “It all revolves around you, Memphis.”

She smiled. “And now you.”

She stayed quiet for a minute. I imagined to give me a second to try to process the amount of heartbreak that she just delivered. Then she reached for the keys in the cup holder. She put the key into the lock on the glove box in front of her knees, but paused.

“He doesn’t know that I know this is here,” she said. “I caught a glimpse of it through the camera once.”

She opened the box and pulled out a very thoroughly loved, nine inch tall, stuffed Tigger. The thread that made up his mouth was starting to unravel and most of the stripes were faded to almost nothing.

I sobbed uncontrollably when Memphis placed the stuffed animal in my lap.

His favorite tattoo.

He had a wife.

A daughter.

The most wonderful thing about Tiggers is I’m the only one.

I dropped my face into my hands and continued crying. Memphis let me just cry for a long while, but eventually she squeezed my leg until I looked back at her.

“He’s still alive, Trista. They won’t kill him yet because they want you,” she said. “He changed his mind about you. He went back for you. He came for me. And we’re going back for him.”

She was quiet again for another few seconds to let me get myself back together.

“Trista?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell me that’s not your thong wrapped around the shifter.”

“Umm.”

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