“I don’t know if I should tell you. Giving you ammo to irritate me later seems dangerous.”
“Don’t be a pussy. Just tell me.”
Laughing at his hunger for gossip, I relent. “My brother Peat fell for a bad woman, and she treated him like shit. She beat on him, and he took it. Mostly because if he left, she'd faked suicide attempts to make him feel guilty. Then one day, she was wailing on him with a frying pan, and he lost his shit. Punched the bitch out. She called the cops, and he ended up serving three months for assault. Once he was out of prison, Peat avoided her. Moved to a new state and gave up his whole life, but he was free. Until he fell for another bad woman, who killed him when he tried to leave her. The bitch claimed self-defense and the prosecutor decided not to charge her. The fucking whore shot him in the fucking back, and the law believed her.”
I pause to control my temper from spiraling out of control. Every time I think of my little brother’s murder, I want to kill someone.
“Peat was covered in bruises, and she didn’t have a mark on her, but the prosecutor didn’t think she could get a conviction after Peat’s criminal past.”
I grip the table, wanting to shake the world until my brother got his fucking justice.
“So I told that story to Toby one night at dinner, and he said, and I quote, ‘He sounds like a loser.’ I’d just told him my brother was murdered, and the pampered piece of shit responded in a fucked up way. I decided if my feelings didn’t matter then Toby’s didn’t either.”
Hayes studies me, looking irritated. “The guy’s an asshole, so why not get a better man to father your children?”
“Are you deaf?” I grumble, and he smiles at my anger. “My family has bad mojo. Or shitty genetics or whatever. We can’t pick good partners. I’m unable to look at a bad man and see him for what he is. It’s why I don’t date. Toby wasn’t a good man, but he had what I wanted.”
“Fine. You’re cursed.”
“You don’t have to believe in the curse for it to be real.”
“You sound crazy. You know that, right?” he taunts.
“See, you think of the curse as a magical, paranormal type thing, but that’s not it. Some people are just doomed. They make bad choices. It’s like how addictive habits can run in a family. Maybe it really is genetic, or it might be environmental, but we always trust the wrong people. The only way to beat it is to be the asshole, rather than the victim.”
“Makes sense.
“If we can’t be the asshole, we have to be alone. If Peat stayed away from women, he’d be alive. Honey could have gone to college and gotten the career she wanted, but she kept falling for one loser after another. Now she’s married to one, and he’s locked her down with four kids.”
“Love is a hell of a lot of effort even without a curse.”
“Love’s overrated, for sure. I don’t mind being without a man. I always wanted kids, but romance and even lots of friends never mattered to me.”
“You’re smart not to give anyone power over you except your kids have power.”
“I love them enough to let them ruin me. I won’t love anyone else that much.”
Hayes sits quietly for a long time. The appetizers arrive. I eat one potato skin and set the rest aside for leftovers. I’m accustomed to Hayes falling silent and entertain myself on the phone until he’s ready to talk.
“I could speak with Andrew Mayer,” he offers. “Make him keep his hands to himself.”
Smiling at his offer to help Honey, I find his mood today to be nearly irresistible. All of our talk about love being crap is less convincing when we connect this way.
“You could help her, and I’m not going to tell you not to, but I think it’s better if you didn’t.”
Hayes loses the warmth in his expression and just looks pissed. “What in the fuck is your reasoning there?”
“Honey is thinking about leaving Douche. My moving here gives her an out, and she’s inching toward it. If Douche stops being rough, she might convince herself that he’s not so bad. She’ll think he isn’t abusing her if he doesn’t smack her. He is, though. Douche wears her down with his comments and rules. Whenever he feels threatened about her leaving, he wants another baby.”
“I can make him fucking leave her. No inching toward freedom. He’ll just be fucking gone.”
“Then she’ll end up with another Douche. Are you planning to save her forever?”
“Pretty cold thinking,” he says, shaking his head.
“Honey needs to break free on her own. Peat never truly left the first bitch, so he ended up with someone just like her. The only way to be truly free of the wrong way of thinking is to face it and make the choice to walk away.”