Page 34 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
I hear anguish in the husky timbre of his voice. Anguish, and a loneliness so vast and deep it makes my heart ache. Whoever this dead Aleksandra is, she clearly meant a lot to him.
I say his name. He leans his arms against the bookcase, closes his eyes, and hangs his head. He whispers, “You shouldn’t be here.”
I fight the violent urge to go to him, put my arms around him, and murmur words of comfort in his ear. I’m almost moved to tears by this spartan room, by the way he lives here, in a crumbling old ruin high in the hills, alone. Kat told me he’s lived here as long as Nico has known him. He goes to a pay phone at a liquor store off Sunset Boulevard once a day to check in with the band’s manager, who receives all his mail and phone messages. Anyone who needs to contact A.J. knows to go through the manager, and anyone who doesn’t know him would have one hell of a hard time finding him, if they ever could.
It’s as if he’s exiled himself from the world. As if he’s removed himself from the human race, from any chance of a random encounter.
As if he’s doing penance.
If A.J. has secrets, they belong to him. And they’re best left alone. I wonder if Kat knows more than she’s telling.
A.J. breaks the tense silence by saying, forcefully and with surprising bitterness, “Just go. Call your boyfriend to come and get you, and go.”
“We broke up.”
He lifts his head. He turns toward me, intense and intimidating, eyes blazing. “Was it because of the other night, what I said to him on the phone?” His burning gaze rakes over me. He snaps, “What happened? Did he hurt you?”
Here we go again. “No, he didn’t hurt me.”
Clearly not believing me, A.J. prowls closer. His energy is dangerous, yet I know it’s not directed at me. His gaze darts all over my face, my body. He’s looking for any sign of injury. That alone gives me the courage to say what I say next.
“And it wasn’t because of the night you and I were together.”
He waits, watching me in molten silence. A muscle in his jaw flexes over and over.
I whisper, “It was because I called him by your name.”
My face burns. So does his. We stand there staring at each other wordlessly, until I hear a soft whine from behind me.
Trembling, the three-legged dog cowers in the corner of the hallway, his thin tail between his legs. He gazes up at me in terror. His big brown eyes, which take up half his face, dart to A.J. He lifts his snout and yips.
He wants to come in.
A.J. kneels and holds out his bloodied hands. The dog, keeping a wary eye on me, hops slowly forward into the room until he’s past me, then breaks into an awkward run. He leaps into A.J.’s arms. A.J. stands, cradling his frail body and stroking his ears, murmuring softly to him. The dog snuggles closer to A.J., licking A.J.’s chin, wagging his scrawny little tail.
And I melt into a puddle like a stick of butter left out in the sun.
“What’s his name?”
Still stroking the dog’s head, A.J. says, “Bella.”
So he’s really a she. “She’s yours?”
“As much as anything can be.”
I don’t know what to make of that. But the dog has softened something in A.J., and I want to keep him talking. I move a little closer, noting the tattoo on the left side of his neck. It’s two black crosses, with a third, larger, in between. “Was she a rescue?”
His jaw tightens. I think I’ve asked the wrong question. When he answers, I realize it’s not annoyance with me, it’s a bad memory that’s making him frown.
“I found her in the back parking lot of Flaming Saddles one night last year. Some drunk asshole ran her over, left her there to die. Took her to the emergency vet, but they couldn’t save her leg.”
So Flaming Saddles is his regular hangout. Obviously he hasn’t made any friends there, either.
A.J. murmurs tenderly to the dog, “Doesn’t seem to bother you too much, though, does it, baby?”
The dog wriggles in glee in A.J.’s arms, responding to his gentle coo with a frenzy of licks to his face, and I think I might faint from shock.
A.J. loves this dog.
