Cracks

Once in a while men find themselves wishing they’d made better choices and better decisions, but there’s not much one can do when he’s stuck in a slumlord’s wet dream and a grotesque dog is all up in his face, its tongue dangling out like an old geezer’s nutsack.

“I used to work with Carli,” said Jane as Brendan entered the front door to her downstairs apartment and her dog growled something fierce at him. “That’s where I remembered you from!”
“Oh,” replied Brendan. “That’s not a good thi—”
“She never talked bad about you or anything if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Brendan decked a flat smile and rolled his hunter eyes at Jane as he paced through her dished-up kitchen and into her living room—there were no doors in her apartment, and the bathroom wall was caving in, but she was just glad to have a place to stay, she’d say.

“You can sit on the couch,” said Jane. “I’m gonna go to the little girl’s room.”

Jane gestured at the torn-up pleather couch and pulled up her boyshorts into her crotch. Brendan caught a glimpse or two and looked to his left as she exited the room, only shifting his gaze downward as her footsteps softened in the distance. He sat down on the soda-covered sofa and grabbed her remote to open the tube.

“Harley!” yelled Jane. “Get the fuck back in your bed!”

She was yelling at her mutt, of course, but Brendan jumped and then squirmed as the little yorkie mix ran up at Brendan and jumped on the couch. Harley sniffed Brendan all over and then ran to the hallway and dropped about three or four pellets on the cold hard wood as Brendan looked at the ceiling and counted the cracks in the drywall. One, two, three.

Here came she, barreling through the hallway while her platinum blonde hair dangled in the air, narrowly avoiding the dog shit she casually ignored.

“So all that stuff that happened with Carli,” said Jane.
“All what stuff?” replied Brendan.
“You know…”

Brendan closed his eyes and mouth and ears and sighed through his freckled nose—the girls in school called them angel kisses when he was a littlun, but there were no angels to kiss in this hall of Hell.

Jane continued. “All that stuff where she trashed her apartment. Was that real?”
Brendan’s sweat evaporated damn-near immediately. “Yeah, and it was my fault. She only left because she was scared.”
“Scared of what?” asked Jane.
“Scared of me.” Brendan looked down at his wrist and the uneven scar running up the side. “I wasn’t the best boyfriend.”

Jane looked on at Brendan, expressionless.

“I mean she wasn’t exactly hot shit either,” said Jane as she clapped her hands at the mutt on Brendan’s lap. “Harley, get down.”

Brendan replied. “She was good to me.”
“Every ex I’ve had has beat me,” said Jane as Brendan typed in a song title.
“Have you ever heard this song?” asked Brendan.
“No sir,” said Jane as she grabbed his hand.

They sat in silence for the first and last time and listened to Poachers and all kinds of stupid shit. Brendan looked around the room as she rambled about some shit he probably couldn’t recall — other than a casual confession of meth addiction — the moment he left her house in a panic when the thoughts of Carli crept up on him like a stalker in the DMs of a youngin.

Counting cracks and cracks and cracks and wondering where all the confidence went.