She licked her lips. Kissed my cheek and went inside. I was further down the driveway when I heard the squeals that women make when they are very excited and happy.

Chapter 11

I’m staring at the ground in my old hideaway. I feel dizzy; I feel this ache in me. The ache made me think everything was about to change the radio was on the news was all about the stock market and the phenomenon that was El Nino, nothing about the robbery but something about a shooting. My guess was that they kept that to themselves…you know the news people…and the cops.

The lock turns. I held my gun in my shaking hand. It was Carmen. She had bandages and cleaning stuff for the wound. She rushed over to me and kissed me madly, little kisses on my face and neck, she was crying, she was suffering. She cleaned my wound.

It was all over me, the blood. She peeled the soiled clothes off. She could see the marks of where I had been shooting up. She looked me in the eye and I looked away. She cleaned all the wounds, the wound I gave her cut deep because she couldn’t stop crying.

“I’ll stop…..I’ll stop for you….I am willing to make that commitment…..it’s you that I want…..”

“…….I don’t know what I want anymore.”

“Carm……its you and me…….together…..just us…..it doesn’t have to be anything else….I’ll do what you want….we can leave tonight….I’ll do anything for you…..anything….you know that.”

“I know……I know.”

I felt it in that moment. Everything I said to her was true. I would have gotten clean for her. I would have given her everything, because I loved her. And she saved me, a huge part me.

With my head bandaged and shirtless I felt like…..I don’t know what I felt like, like I had to be with her….or maybe I felt that she had to be with me. Like it was something frantic. Yes….because that is what it became. It was Carmen taking her clothes off almost ripping them, it was Carmen pushing me back, it was Carmen pulling my shoes off, brushing her nakedness against me, I could smell how much she wanted it, and me I was so fucking stupid…I was so high all the time I wasn’t paying any attention to her….I was nervous and sweaty and I couldn’t get away from her fast enough. If I had been halfway intelligent I would have seen it sooner that this, that it was a goodbye fuck.