Progress (Progress #1) (16 page)

The house sat on the edge of one of the busiest roads in the city, and an occasional car passed, reminding me of the guilt in what I was doing. But it wasn’t as if I hadn’t done worse—with less noble causes.

Perhaps she wasn’t even home.

Of course she was; her car sat parked in the driveway.

I leaned in again, putting the idea of coming up with a plan aside, and took in the room in full scope.

An easel sat in the far corner, holding up a half-painted study of a nude woman. Next to it was a small table that held pencils, erasers, and other gadgets used for artwork.

But she was nowhere to be seen.

“Where are you?” I whispered, and sat down in the damp mulch.

As if to answer my question, she walked around the corner from a hidden hallway, holding a cup of water and a paintbrush. I thought to flinch away from the window, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her.

She wore a white, button-down, business-casual kind of shirt, like the ones management wore at the restaurant. It hung loosely over one shoulder, and she wasn’t wearing anything on the bottom except panties. Straddling an old, round stool, she propped her feet up on either side of the footrest and stroked the brush from one end of the canvas to the other.

I leaned in further, watching the way her body moved. She’d lean in, then out, and her arm never stopped moving. It was hypnotic to watch, creating an image of something entirely from her imagination.

But as her calf flexed with her motion, I noticed something I hadn’t until that point. I don’t know where I’d been for the past few months, but there’s no way she was as thin when I first met her as she was at that moment. She had to have lost a lot, too, because the Charlie from my memory was much larger than the one who sat in front of me.

Or perhaps I’d lost my mind.

I closed my eyes, remembering that angry bitch from the restaurant when I’d first spoken to Charlie. Her hair was much shorter and her cheeks were rounder. Her fingers were chubby, her ass plump, her chin and neck wider. But the Charlie who sat on the stool through the window had lost several inches.

Smaller waist.

Smaller ankles.

Smaller breasts.

Thank God she still had her ass. I guess I hadn’t realized that was one of my favorite parts.

I took my time watching, not caring about the world flying by around me. Cars passed, crickets chirped, water trickled into the street drains, and Charlie moved in time with them all, creating a song in my head.
Whiz, chirp, swish, honk.
Over and over in patterned chaos, the music flowed in perfect synchrony on the upbeat.

Whiz, whiz.

Chirp.

Swish, swish.

Honk.

Again and again, the chorus repeated. My mind instinctively came up with a drumbeat for it, the subtle tapping of my sticks together and loops of quiet electronica. I heard other noises around me, but the melody drowned out anything unnecessary.

For over an hour I sat in the dirty mulch, staring in my Charlie’s window as she completed an entire painting of a woman sitting on the floor, holding up her red hair, and wearing a white button-down shirt.

By the time she’d finished, the song had faded. But I remembered every sound I needed to recreate it.

She straightened her spine in a tired stretch. Cracking her neck from side to side, she rose, taking the cup of dirty water and paintbrush with her.

And all I wanted to do was stay there.

There was a dangerous part of Charlene Johnson that I knew I couldn’t turn away from if I took us past what we currently had. She wasn’t the kind of woman that I could woo with money, laughter, or the size of my dick.

She was impossible.

And impossibly irresistible.

Yet another contradiction I didn’t know how to handle.

How could I tell her I wanted to be with her? I couldn’t knock on her door and take her mouth to mine to get the damn point across. I couldn’t use words, because even if I planned them out, something would hiccup through my brain and I’d fuck it all up.

A date might’ve worked. Lots and lots of dates until she was comfortable enough with the idea.

Wait. What idea? What was I asking from her?

Dammit.

People used to talk about it. They used to say when you meet her, you’ll know. And I’d laugh and laugh and laugh. But nothing about my life had been the same since I’d met her. She challenged everything I knew about my faith in mankind. And my reasoning for losing faith had been logical and justified; I hadn’t just made that shit up. People sucked.

But not her.

She couldn’t hurt me if she tried.

Dammit.

I was asking for forever.

Because anything less was unacceptable.

Chapter Four

Jesse

I woke the next morning with a dozen crumpled pieces of paper on my chest. The first signs of daylight shone through my car window, and it took me a second to remember where I’d fallen asleep. My arms were heavy, my chest felt empty, and my head pounded with regrets.

In Charlie’s driveway sat two cars: her green Taurus and a white pickup truck. The clock on my dash read 5:42, and as I sat up slowly, the phone numbers from a dozen women fell to the floor.

How Charlie had guessed I kept them in my ashtray, I didn’t know.

I picked one up and turned it over to find the written music of the song that had lingered in my head while I’d watched Charlie the night before. The sounds, the noise, the beat, ideas of how to create them all, and one had a few lyrics as well.

Rock me in your arms, I can feel it burn.

A vague recollection of trying to find a pen entered my head, but I must have been somewhere else when I wrote them.

A tap on my window startled me, and I realized I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I rolled down my window, looking out of the corner of my eye at the man that stood next to my car.

“May I help you?” he said with the sun rising on the horizon behind him.

I sucked in through my teeth and squinted one eye shut. “Probably not.” My lips weren’t working as fast as I wanted them to.

He scratched his head, and spread his fingers to give his graying moustache a quick combing. “You must be Jesse.”

I looked in my rearview mirror for a police car, and then noticed his uniform. A FedEx patch was sewn to the breast of the navy blue and purple shirt. “Who are you?”

“I’m Charlene’s father.”

Oh shit.

“Mr. Johnson. It’s nice to meet you. Yes, I’m Jesse.” I stuck my hand out my window to shake his, and he accepted. But that motherfucker had a warning grip.

“Why are you sleeping in my driveway, son?” He quirked an eyebrow.

I had to admit, it looked a little strange. “Umm…” I chuckled but my mouth didn’t smile. “I came by last night, but didn’t want to wake the whole house. So I guess I fell asleep.” My eyes widened. “Hey, look at it this way,” I casually flipped my hand, “at least you didn’t find me asleep in her bed.”

I set my jaw at my words.

Mistake.

Mr. Johnson tried to hide his smirk and nodded, then tapped the top of my car. Turning away, he called over his shoulder, “If you could move your car, I have to get to work.”

His reaction—more than anything—left me scratching my head. I knew I had said something that would’ve justified dragging me from my car and beating me senseless. But perhaps he knew that my intentions with his daughter weren’t twisted, and he was a young man once himself. It could’ve been that the man just had a good sense of humor and took the comment in stride. Or maybe he was just happy to see his twenty-two-year-old daughter be the object of someone’s affection.

“Sir!” I yelled.

He stopped and turned to me, seeming just as surprised as I was that I’d called him sir.

“Thank you…for the money last week.”

He nodded and raised his bushy eyebrows. “You’re welcome.”

I pulled out of the driveway with my bare and dirty feet, wondering what it would be like to have a father like that. Something told me Charlie knew how lucky she was; she wasn’t the kind of girl who took kindness for granted. The warm Christmas gatherings around the fire, opening presents and being just as delighted to spend those days with family as she was to receive gifts from Santa Claus; the hot summer days that burned her toes on the pavement only to find relief in the cool grass and drinking straight from the hose; the man she held closely, clinging to him for support when they buried the family dog out back; the comfort that she had the opportunity to turn to a man over failed tests, lost jobs, and broken hearts.

Some men just weren’t that good.

Some of them continually failed.

Some of them should’ve never had children.

I should’ve known that by the time I reached my house, my mood would have shifted. From not remembering what I’d done a sober night prior to the elation I felt when I watched Charlie through her window, it should’ve been obvious to me what was coming.

But I didn’t see it.

I didn’t
want
to see it.

I’d been in the Whirl.

That meant the Grim would approach quickly, and I didn’t have much time until that darkness pulled me inside. Soon my mind would be gone, trapped in the endless black hole, falling into a place where no light was allowed to enter—no matter how bright and stubborn she was.

I had a day, maybe two, before Charlie saw the other side. And if I hadn’t already scared her away, I shuddered to think what she’d think of me in forty-eight hours.

Maybe I
was
a monster. Maybe I
was
crazy.

Maybe it was good I hadn’t acted on my urge to knock on her door. What kind of man could I be for her if I couldn’t even get out of bed?

Because that’s what was coming. After weeks of nonstop fast-forward, my existence would embrace a never-ending deadlock: no where to go, nothing to do, and all the time in the world to dwell on regret.

The medication hadn’t worked. The promises to change me through a balance of chemicals and serotonin had failed.

I’d have to wait for another time to prove to Charlie that all the bullshit I’d put her through was worth it, because I was about to become a shred of the man I had once been.

And that was what I had feared all along: wanting to keep the girl close, but knowing she needed someone better than I was capable of being.

***

I walked through my door and went straight to my room. If I only had a day of clarity left, I was going to put it to some use. Maybe there was a way I could beat it—stop the cycle of disastrous beginnings without endings and keep the demons away for another few days until I’d talked to Charlie.

The day would come and go. Charlie worked a double, and it was my day off. If I was lucky I’d have the night, but there was no telling what kind of mindset I’d be in by then.

I’d lived enough life to know the warning signs. I’d seen plenty of bad days, not knowing if I’d end my life at that moment or wait another week to see if it got better. I’d had the razors to my wrists, the pills in my gullet, and the noose around my neck.

People always said
“It will get better.”
They claimed they
“knew”
what I was going through.

I knew better.

They’d only know how low I could get if they’d experienced how high I could go. And I hadn’t met a single person who understood my reality.

Depression was for pussies. My Grim was beyond any clinical definition I’d ever read.

I grabbed a random book from my bookshelf and pieces of text jumped out at me. I studied the mind, the body, and the chemical reactions. I read the experts who’d written books on their own experiences, fellow unsatisfied surge junkies like me, only to find that none of them had the answers.

As the day stretched on, my body weakened but my will to seek out information strengthened. I longed to find the research; I craved the opportunity to think clearly and brainstorm for ideas and life again. I encouraged it and wouldn’t let anything stop the rush. The Whirl had taken over, and I was powerless to stop it.

Book after book, articles, newspapers, and case studies became my obsession. Quick ideas and feelings captivated me. The ordinary became extraordinary. But by dinnertime, that clarity became muddled. My synchronized thoughts brought me from one vantage point to another until I had no idea which thought I’d started with. The logic became illogical, and the manageable became unmanageable. Soon it would all come crashing down.

The clock became my enemy as the seconds crumbled, then dissipated.

It’s 6:02.

Will I have one more hour? Six? Can I chance going to the restaurant and having Charlie see me like this? Could I fake it? How much time do I have left? Can she see it? Feel it? What kind of insight does she really have? Why do I adore her? How could I hate her? She could’ve changed your whole world. She’s already started.

I haven’t eaten. Did I take my meds? What kind of person lets his mind get like this? It’s not genius. I lie between panic and dread knowing that once Charlie sees the man I am beneath the coldhearted prick that she’ll leave like the rest of them. She’s different but she’s not too different. Logic tells me it’s silly to compare, but my gut tells me to run away and never turn back. I’ve got nothing, no one. Friends are a joke and the joke’s on me. Never could stomach most of them anyway.

Rock me

in your arms,

I can feel it burn.

It’s too hot in here.

Charlie and Jesse. The idea is as silly as a woman who gets squeamish at the sight of blood and a man who stands next to her to lap it up as it drips. Never mind. Being alone isn’t as bad as it seems. Charlie is the kind of girl who needs that time. I don’t know how she does it. I hate it. Being alone isn’t something I look forward to.

I used to be smart; I used to be a lot of things. Bree knew me at my best, the days when problems were plentiful and their resolutions were simple. My mind worked differently then; it thrived on the discussions, the passion, the foundation of moral judgment, space, time, sex, love, compassion, and rules. But at some point it all got too complex, and I didn’t see things as clearly as I once had.

We were young, alive, and nothing we said was going to make a difference anyway. At what point should we all just stop talking about it? Is that when the change occurs? For Bree it was roses. For Charlie it’s daisies. Sunflowers, tulips, dinner, wine, cherished moments. It would be nice if there were still women out there worthy of it all.

The young and the pure are worthy. Once we grow up we’re only good for one thing. I wish I could go back to the time I was young, untouched, and worth some fucking effort. But those days ended early for me. Earlier than they should have.

“Listen here, boy, things are tough enough around this house without your attitude added to the mix. Your mother is sick and I’m out of work. You think maybe you could shut your damn mouth and keep out of trouble at school?”

It’s too hot in here. Stifling. And I don’t know where she is.

It’s almost too much to bear. People become worried, scared of my words and thoughts. It’s only when I stop making sense
to them.
They call me crazy, but every word I speak has an experience to back it. I still make sense. I’ll always make sense. It’s not crazy. Not any crazier than Charlie thinking everyone has good inside them.

Besides, crazy is relative.

Seclusion. It’s the only way for me. Although being alone with my thoughts is a grisly place to lurk, I couldn’t stand to see the look on Charlie’s face when I turn; that moment when her laughter becomes faded and distant, more concern and doubt riddling her soft eyes than wonder and gratitude. That’s the minute I stop making sense and skip to the next subject too quickly, not being able to stop them from coming.

I’ve seen the look before. So I try to keep quiet. I try to keep her from looking at me that way again.

Fuck, it’s so hot in here.

The clearer we are in the moments that define us, the longer we vividly remember them.

Dammit. It’s only 6:03.

It has begun.