Nowhere Man - 12. Chapter 12: Lunch Box

I had never had a sleepless night before. No matter what had happened in my life, the tragedy, uncertainty, and loneliness, I’d always been able to count on sleep to be my reprieve from reality. My down feather escape.

Not that night. That night, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling and wondering. Trying to connect the dots. Sleepless.

Wade.

Tyler.

What was their connection? How did Tyler know I was with Wade, let alone know that Wade was bad news? What did they know about each other? And why was Wade around?

Part of it made sense. They knew each other. How? I had no clue. But it made sense that if they knew each other, Wade would follow Tyler to Wellmington. But why?

What was I missing?

My mind swirled that way over and over as I lost sleep for the first time in my life.

Just when I thought I couldn’t go over it anymore, the sun crept through the blinds and cast a shadowy glow on Tyler. He looked so peaceful, so angelic and beautiful.

Where are you going? I thought, wondering where this nowhere man was taking me. More importantly, I wondered: Where have you been?

Two hours and an endless number of theories later, Tyler finally stirred. He turned to me as he stretched and yawned, like a cat. His arms fell around me and he kissed my shoulder.

“I’m sorry if I scared you last night,” he whispered. I could smell everything about him, and although I was scared and confused, he was just as intoxicating as ever.

“What was that about?” I croaked. I coughed. “What were you saying to me?”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“And Wade?” I asked, turning my head to glare at him with a raised eyebrow. I hadn’t practiced how I would bring up the subject, so I just did.

“I’ll take care of Wade,” Tyler said, sitting up and stretching out of bed. His naked form walked confidently to the bathroom. It was unnerving how completely terrified I was of a man that I was so drawn to. There were two forces working against me and I couldn’t give the edge to one over the other.

Tyler turned the shower on and hummed as he messed around the bathroom.

Stay the hell away from Wade.

The words circled and drained as I listened to the water run. It was a promise, not a threat. It was a certainty, not a warning.

I’ll take care of Wade.

“You gonna shower?” Tyler called from the bathroom.

“Yeah,” I croaked.

“No use wasting water, huh?”

I slid out of bed and crossed the floor to the shower, pulled by the magnetic force of a man who terrorized me. Someone smart could have written a study on how I felt that morning.

I pulled the curtain to see the water wash over his face and stone carved body. He turned when he saw me, smiled, and pulled me in.

“Listen, we’ll be leaving here soon, okay?” he said quietly, just an inch away from my face. “Is that okay?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking me,” I replied. “You call the shots.”

Unamused by my attitude, he turned away from me and the stream hit his front side, blocking the water.

“I want you here, Trav,” he said loudly. “I want you with me.”

“I wanna be here,” I confessed.

“Then be here.” Tyler turned around and planted his lips on mine, drawing me in deep. “Be right here with me.”

His hand roved down my torso, hesitated for just a second, and then grasped my dick. A soft moan escaped my mouth as Tyler worked my boner back and forth. I took his dick in my hand. He was impossibly hard, and he jerked as soon as I grasped him.

“Be here,” he whispered, licking my ear. I rested my head on his shoulder and let him pleasure me as I used the momentum to pleasure him. We worked in tandem to bring each other up slowly. The firmer and faster he pumped, the firmer and faster I returned the action. For every action he made, I created an equal and opposite reaction. I felt our breathing sync as he whispered “Be here” in my ear.

It was the most intimate I’d ever felt in my life. Forget being fucked or fucking Wade. Forget sleeping with Tyler draped around me. Forget the beautiful night under the sky of a thousand diamonds. This was pure intimacy. The two of us connected, washed over and feeling every inch of each other.

We came together. It wasn’t a violent, powerful orgasm. It was a peaceful one. The kind that lovers share. The kind that transcends lust and casual desire, breaks the surface and exposes something deeper. The second he began to shoot in my hand, I felt my cock tense and shoot in his. Simultaneously, we let the other know how we felt about each other.

Love.

We toweled off, kissing as we made our way back to the bedroom. I anticipated a round two, more unadulterated intimacy, but instead of initiating anything, Tyler announced that he’d be back later.

“Are you taking the truck?” I asked, lounging in bed as he got dressed.

“No, it’s yours.”

I had no plans to go anywhere, but the freedom to do so was nice. I didn’t want in the truck to go anywhere. I was here, like he’d asked. I wanted in the truck to get something.

Tyler bound out of the trailer and up the hill, headed for the center of town, I presumed. I waited a few minutes in case he came back; when I was sure he wouldn’t, I crept outside, to the pickup and pulled the tin lunch box from under the passenger’s seat.

I raced back into the house, locked the door behind me, and spread the contents out over the bed.

Everyone has that one possession that gives them strength. That gives them hope that everything, no matter how difficult, will work out in the end.

My tin lunch box contained everything I would ever need in life. It was my life box. Passport, birth certificate, social security card, in case I ever needed it. There were photos of my family from when I was a kid. My mother, still happy. My father, still alive. Me, blissfully unaware of the perils that came with life.

Next to the photos was a death certificate. I had the original, my mother had a carbon copy. She refused the ashes, but she kept the certificate. Paper clipped to that dingy beige piece of paper was my mom and dad’s marriage certificate. Of all the pages in the box, it was in the best shape. Card stock, white, blue letters, signed by the appropriate clergy and statesman. I surveyed the paper with a tear in my eyes.

I put the memories aside and pulled out the prize. The gold in that tin box.

Before he died, my father, unable to speak for the last two months of his life, realized that his two boys would be forced to forge the world without him. He insisted on handwriting a series of letters to my brother and me for all of the different stages of our lives.

His words had taught me to drive, shave, behave towards women. He had a full page on the importance of hard work. There was a section on how to treat my mother’s new husband in the event she remarried. That was a letter I chose to ignore.

I rifled through the letters for the one I desperately needed at that moment.

Love.

The title was simple. My father had written one page in his dying scrawl on what to do when my brother and I found love. It was the last letter he’d written and the last one in the stack. He assumed that once we’d found love, everything else would work itself out.

It was the first time I’d dug through the tin in a million years. I hadn’t needed it in a while. I’d learned to shave and drive. The box had been buried under my bed for so long because for the longest time, I assumed I wouldn’t need it. I assumed I would never need that last letter on love.

I surveyed his words quickly, trying to find a little piece of nugget that would help me in this situation. A glimpse that he had some advice for me regarding what I was going through.

I feared that my father hadn’t anticipated a situation quite like the one I was in, but halfway down the page, I spotted something that made me cry and gave me hope.

When you find that someone who you can’t live without, eat without, sleep without, you’ll know it, hands down, without a doubt. And sometimes it will feel like you are being pulled to do things that you wouldn’t normally do. You’ll find yourself changing to accommodate that girl. To fit her in. And you will. You’ll find a way. And no matter how hard it gets or how confused you feel, protect love above everything else. You’ll die before you’re dead without it.

The words hit a nerve like a pianist striking the final chord of a dramatic score.

You’ll die before you’re dead without it.

“Whatchya doin, good lookin’?”

My head shot up from the page. My first instinct was to hide everything. Hide the most private portion of my life that I had never shared with anyone.

“Wade,” I said, trying to sound casual as I picked up the photos first and put them back into the tin. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I was hoping you’d be home,” he said.

“How do you know where I live?” I was sliding the letters together. I kept my eyes focused on Wade as he stood firmly in the doorway. He didn’t approach, but he looked as if he was there to stay.

“I dropped you off last night, remember?”

“You watched me walk down?”

There was something different in his eyes. I caught a flash of anger, and then it all melted away. His casual smile returned.

You’re better off knowing as little about me as possible.

He inched towards me just as I placed the lid on the box and slipped it next to the pillow behind me. He sat down next to me, and leaned in for a kiss. I pulled back. I was in love with someone and that someone wasn’t Wade.

“Wade,” I whispered. His face was a centimeter away from mine. I saw the anger flash once more. His eyes darkened right before me. Again, it disappeared as quickly as it came.

He pulled back, smiling like a maniac.

“I guess I’m only good to you after a couple of drinks, is that it?” he stood and turned away from me. I didn’t know if he planned on leaving, but I wouldn’t have been upset if he did. And then I saw it.

With Wade turned away from me, I saw the small scar right behind his left ear. There was a patch where hair hadn’t grown, and without me looking closely, I never would have noticed it.

I tried my damndest to control my face, not wanting to hyperventilate. I wanted more than anything to vomit right then and there.

Stupid clown.

“Does he know you’re here?” I asked in a hollow voice. I looked around for some way out. Any way out.

“I should be asking you.” Wade turned around and glared at me. The fiery red anger in his eyes had been replaced by a well of water. His smile was bisected by a trail of tears.

In a flash, Wade moved his arm and sent the small television on the dresser drawer flying across the room. I flinched, inched backwards, and almost let out a scream. I looked around for something I could use, anything, to even the score. This man would kill me if given the slightest opportunity.

“What the fuck do you have that I didn’t have?” he whispered. His smile grew larger as he shrugged his shoulders as if I was supposed to answer that question. “What?!”

“I don’t know,” I stammered. I didn’t think my voice would hold, but it did. I cowered deeper into the bed.

“You’re nothing special,” he said, matter-of-factly. “I’ve had it and you’re nothing special.”

“Wade.”

“Let me give you a word of fucking advice,” he said, inching even closer to me. He hovered over me like an attacking cat, ready to pounce. “He’ll get tired of you, I promise you that. You’ll do something to set him off and before you know it, you’ll be lying on the floor, bleeding from the head. Is that what you want?”

“No.”

“Then leave now.” He was finally on top of me, lying over me with only an arm-length separating his torso from mine. His voice was low and chilling. I had never heard him like that before and every ounce of me wanted to scream. “Leave.”

“Wade.” I said the name with more strength than before. His intentions were clear. There was rage in his eyes, no longer suppressed. And everything came together. His melancholy, his longing for Tyler, his forced acts of excitement towards me. As he pressed down on my harder, I knew that he wanted nothing more than to see me dead.

I had to act, do something, get him away from me. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes, Wade meant to kill me. If I didn’t do something first, he surely would have.

In a swift motion, I hurled my hand straight to his neck and gripped as hard as I could. I mimicked Tyler’s grip on me last night, restricting the clown’s airway and forcing his face to turn red.

He struggled above me, and I used what little size advantage I had to flip him over and pin him to the bed, not once letting go of his neck. I gritted my teeth, putting as much pressure and force down on his neck as I could.

Wade’s eyes bulged. I watched them turn red, waiting for a vein to pop. The entire time I used my body to stop him from struggling, his smile never changed.

Stupid clown.

I don’t know how long I squatted above him, pressing down, but eventually his body stopped moving and his eyes stopped bulging. Whatever life was in them disappeared as they limped shut. I loosened my grip, poised for him to leap forward. But he didn’t. He lay under me, his head next to the lunch box of memories I had tried to hide behind me. He lay there still, not moving, not breathing. Only smiling.

“What did I just do?” I asked myself audibly. I took a deep breath, wiped the sweat off my forehead and stood back, looking at my handy work. “What the fuck did I just do?”