I drink too much.
The local cops didn’t like it back in the day before the world died. I drank because I was bored. I drank because I failed not only as a man but also as a person. I wanted to be so much more than what I ended up being. I wanted to be a superhero for a woman by making her feel whole. I wanted to be the man that made her forget about other men forever. Not by money or influence, but because I fulfilled this one woman who could make me the man I wanted to be.
I failed. It just became confusing and weird. I thought that she would come out of nowhere, but most of the women I met were not what I needed or wanted.
I suck with women. I always did. Miller Lite built up my courage.
I couldn’t find what I was looking for so I found a group of people that felt as insignificant as I did. But together, we roared. We were amazing and we could do no wrong.
Until, of course, we left the bar.
That’s when the cops came in.
I drank too much. I still do. There is still a lot of beer around because there isn’t anyone to drink it.
Well, expect me, and I’m doing my part.
Back then; I would look for something that I wasn’t sure about. I needed the fellowship of others like me. I had trouble finding it so I went to the bar.
I guess that shit doesn’t matter anymore. I could tell you how hard I worked. I could tell you that the only time I felt real was at the bar, which wasn’t real at all. I could tell you what I needed, what I could give and what was available.
I had to give up my dreams before like a high-priced escort without her sugar daddies’ credit card. After the fall, I realized I knew I was going to need a new place to fall.
For three days, we just heard the gunshots. It was like deer season when I lived with my grandparents on their farm but as much as I tried to pretend that was what it was, it wasn’t.
They were killing the walkers so we wouldn’t get hurt.
And as Lucy said, why were they protecting us?
Luce just listened, as we were alone on the farm, because it passed the time so I talked as she did. She became more beautiful to me. Gray in the wisps of her hair above her brow became quite striking to me as did her tired, yet striking, blue eyes. The way she chuckled and smoked like a fiend, something I never knew about her. The way she talked about the paper and how she wanted so much more but was stepped on by the money people. How eyes welled up thinking of her family, knowing they were gone and trying to accept it. The look in her eyes when she was listening to me talk about my life before all this happened and how she understood to the point my whole body wanted to die a little bit. She understood. I got that.
She made us dinner twice and she wasn’t good at it but she tried. We talked about all the things she wanted. We talked about how she felt stuck here after she left the city. How she thought she was taking a break but then her mother got sick, and in many ways her dad abandoned her after he remarried but she came home to heal from something that wasn’t so much about them, but her and how that still embarrassed her. About how the locals didn’t like her because she was “different” but how they were so worried about what she called “ink by the barrels”.
She didn’t feel a part of the local landscape. She had loyal friends but she hated the falsehoods of those who needed her but didn’t want her.
And how that diminished her because she needed more. I wanted to let her know I understood but I didn’t know how.
And then the gunshots would go off and we would just listen. We knew what was happening but we didn’t have any control.
I tried one time to kiss her. I needed to feel a part of something but she turned away.
When I pushed it, she got up and smiled at me.
Made me feel less than a man and I hated her again. How many times did this bitch put me in the newspaper about my arrests? She didn’t even know who I fucking was.
“Enough!” I screamed.
Her head turned back in a jerk which, to me at least, she found me threatening, which was the last fucking thing I wanted, and she did this thing I will never forget. She reached for her gun, which was in the back of her jeans.
She looked at me with such pity and some fear that I wanted to die but I was so mad. So insane with rage that she didn’t respond. Not with lust or disgust but more it was about nothing.
I didn’t know, or I didn’t understand, that she was just empty. Why didn’t I see that? And then the gunfire went off again and we both looked.
I felt not shame, but anger at that moment. I was scared. I thought she was.
Did I want her? I did. I needed her.
That was my problem.
“People have died,” I howled. “It could just me you or me. I need you. Damn you!” And I did. At that moment, I needed her more than anything because for the first time I wanted to bury myself in another person. I wanted to smell her and know that I wasn’t alone. I reached for her again, and she moved away.
But did I need her but not want her? She had told me before, but I forgot. How in the past before the walkers there was a difference for her about being needed and wanted.
How Luce wanted so much to be wanted. I created a cardinal sin.
And it made me feel small.
She looked at me with a dead expression in her eyes. I look back and know that she wasn’t moving away really, but that my tantrum made her, and me, feel slighted. That she wanted to be won, not overtaken.
I’m an idiot in retrospect.
“Stop.” She said and her voice wavered, and I felt some hope although my anger was burning my retinas. I hated her and I loved her but for all the wrong reasons and she knew it. I know now that looking back. “I can’t right now …”
The gunshots went off again and my head spun around, looking for the distance of the sound.
When I looked up, she was gone and the patio door was open.
That’s when I knew that I had to protect her but my ego was tight and broken but it was my own fault.
It took me a few minutes, and then I followed her eyes to the fireworks in the sky.
Something was happening and we knew it.
That’s when he showed up.
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