Page 27 of Expressionate
As if there was ever any question that I would. God, it felt so fucking good to be back in the ring again. I’m already thinking about other fights. I can probably get into another one soon. Just to take the edge off. I’m always on fucking edge even when I’m pretending I’m not. Love distracted me for a moment, but now that she’s gone, it’s back with a vengeance and I’m craving bloodshedagain.
Keith’s relieved sigh pulls me back from those dark thoughts. It tells me just how concerned he was over this. "I can't tell you how much this means, Tax. If you ever need anything from me, man, all you have to do isask."
"Actually," I say, an idea taking root, "you and Abigail still have her old man's loft toward thecity?"
"Yeah, why?" heasks.
"You mind if I borrow it nextweekend?"
"Sure, but it's a wreck man. I keep meaning to clean it up, but with the baby coming and everything..." He trails off, soundingembarrassed.
"I don't care," I tell him. "I'll clean it up. I just need a place away from the guys for awhile."
"Somewhere to bring chicks?" he asks. "I know you have Ally now. That's a good idea. I could have it as a crash pad for a while if you want it, at least until the baby is born and Abigail and I are settled, when I can get around to sellingit."
"Done," I say. "I'll stop by the garage tomorrow to pick up the keys and drop off the money." The wad of hundreds in my back pocket – my compensation for getting the shit beat out of me earlier – burns a hole in my gut, but it will help out an old friend and I got to release my demon for a little while. All in all, it wasn't such a badtrade.
“Thought you wanted to meet at the university?” heasks.
I had forgotten about that. What had made me want that? Oh yeah, I wanted to see if I could catch Love in another element. But after tonight – after the last few moments – I had a feeling she was a little raw. I needed to give her some time. I’d come back. I wasn’t going to stop. I still wanted her. In fact, the closer I got to that icy fire of hers – the more I cravedit.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said, “we can meet at the garage, noproblem.”
"Thanks again, man, Ireally–"
"Yeah, yeah," I cut him off. "See you tomorrow." I hang up the phone, shoving it into one of my front pockets before I head toward thecomplex.
When the front door to my apartment swings shut, it takes all I have not to wince. I'm sore in places that haven't been sore in a long while. No one comes out, and for that I'm grateful. Ally’s not here and the guys know the deal – they come with me, they watch my back, but when we get back, it's like none of it everhappened.
I make my way to my room and shut the bedroom door before collapsing on my bed. Reaching up, I feel along my bottom lip with my thumb. The sweetest torture is that I can still smell her. I can still taste her on my mouth and I wantmore.
* * *
Keith’s loft,set in one of the shitty neighborhoods within a five-mile radius of downtown, despite its decrepit exterior and poorly cleaned interior, is prime real estate. When it manages to get cleaned up, he'll get a pretty penny to really push his business along. He might have been able to sell the thing to get the money he needed immediately, but it would have been at less than half what the place isworth.
Carefully picking through the layer of broken furniture blocking my way into the loft, my thoughts wander to the fight last night. From the moment I’d stepped inside that cage, I reverted back to a place where I was all powerful. Feeling Love's eyes on me had only heightened that sense of power. Halfway through the fight, though, the feeling of being watched by her – the slow, sensual prickles along my spine that let me know her eyes were on me, analyzing me, undressing me – disappeared. For some reason, it bothered me and channeling that frustration into laying out the dick, who had tried to ram his knee into my balls towards the end of the fight, had been a good way to work through it. Too bad I still feel the edges of that lust for blood lingering in mymind.
Shaking away the thoughts as much as I can, I heft a wooden rocking chair in my arms, and set it just outside the front door, on the platform of the stairs leading up to the loft, to give myself some space to move. The rest of the room is filled with similar shit. When I stopped by the garage to get the keys, Keith had told me to use or take whatever I wanted. Looking across the loft, I know most of it will becondemned.
The layer of dust is thick, and I have to cover my nose and mouth with my shirt as I sort through some of the shit left in here. There are heaps of trash and debris that make the entire place smell like mold and rot. By midday, I'm able to see patches of the dirty floor. Boxes – both empty and full – have been separated and piled either together or taken apart and dropped outside, over the wooden rail to the ground below. I manage to get to the other side of the loft and open up one of the windows. It's actually a fairly large place. If someone added walls, and the bedrooms were kept small, it might even be big enough to act as an apartment for two or threepeople.
As the fresh air from the window filters in, I drop my shirt from my face, and something catches my eye. I tilt my head as some of the sunlight flickers over the shiny object sticking out of an untouched box. I make my way toward it, tossing empty boxes and cheaply made furniture out of my way. Bending over, I lift a medium sized, heavy box into my arms and turn, wading out from behind the trash heap I've immersed myself in. I carry the thing that weighs a damn ton to a space I've already cleared, and rip open the top. I pause when I see what'sinside.
The typewriter is an older model, black except for the metal along the carriage and underneath the bubbled keys. I run a hand over the dusty top of it and imagine Love's fingers running along the surface. I don't even know if it's something she would like. I don't even know that much about her; just that she doesn't care about appearances, she works in a bookstore, and she has a sister and a sluttyroommate.
I box the typewriter up again, deciding that she can throw it out if she doesn't like it, but if she does...well...this is one way I've never tried to get into a chick's pantsbefore.
* * *
"Hey,where the hell have you been?" Cross asks from the couch as I walk through the front door, toting the typewriter box in myarms.
"Cleaning up Keith's old loft," I say, dropping the thing on the kitchencounter.
Ally walks out and wrinkles her nose when she gets a look at me. "You look like you buried yourself in trash." She pinches her nose shut. "You smell like ittoo."
"I feel like it," I confess. Abigail's old man – the one the loft had belonged to before he had up and croaked, leaving the place to her and Keith – had been a fucking hoarder and half the shit was so disgusting, all I did was throw it over the side of the landing and then call someone to come get it later. "That's why I'm heading for the fucking shower,man."
"That girl came over earlier," Cross says, his eyes looking meover.
