If I'm Honest Ch. 10

Chapter Ten - Madison (Revisited) & Vitamin K

The next few days, I found myself worrying a bit about whatever craziness the bracelet had planned for me, but time and time again, its voice would drift across the back of my skull, saying one thing and one thing only.

Don't worry about it.

Around Wednesday, it decided to actually talk to me a little bit about what was going on. It was remarkably straight forward, most of the time, and maybe I needed that kind of honesty in my life at that point. It was just a sentence or two here and there, reaffirming to me that it wanted to help me, not hurt me.

I was driving home Friday night when the bracelet and I had our first real conversation since the concert, the long haul of fighting my way through rush hour traffic not exactly taxing my brain, people looking over to admire the Bugatti that Larry had given me a couple of months ago. I still didn't feel entirely comfortable driving the thing around town.

So what is it you want out of a partner, Deke?

"Aren't you supposed to know that?"

Let's just talk it out. The more you work with me on this, the easier it'll go.

I didn't have much else to do while stuck in bumper to bumper gridlock, so I figured why not? "Well, I want someone who's attentive to my needs without being overly clingy. Someone who's actually interested in me and what I have to say, instead of simply waiting for their turn to speak."

That's... remarkably insightful of you.

"What do I even call you? I feel like if we're going to have conversations, I need to give you some kind of a name."

Call me Harvey. I'm not a rabbit, but I'm sort of your imaginary friend, so it'll do.

I chuckled at that. "Alright, Harvey it is then. So, Harvey, in a lot of my past relationships, I've tried to be a good and supportive boyfriend, but I've always felt like I gave way more than I got, like I seemed to attract women who only wanted me around to listen to their problems, to help them out of whatever jam they're in. They didn't really give much of a shit about me, other than how could I help solve their problems for them."

Have you tried talking to them about this?

"C'mon, Harvey, I'm not an idiot," I sighed. "When something's bothering me, I'll talk about it for a few minutes, but given the first pause or lull in the conversation, my partners always seem to want to divert back onto themselves, like they've hit their quota for listening and now it's time to talk about them again. Even if I try to circle back to what's bothering me a few minutes later, it's almost like whatever I wanted to talk about is a closed subject now, and my partners don't want to hear any more about it. They have to get on with the important business of talking about themselves even more, usually to retell the same story they've told me four or five times again, or to complain about their problems haven't mystically fixed themselves."

This happens a lot?

"It's sort of my M.O. for what I get stuck with in relationships. I mean, I get it, dudes aren't supposed to be open books. We're assumed to be these closed vaults where we bury all our emotions, but that ain't me. I'm more than willing to talk through what's bugging me, but it takes two people to hold a conversation."

Didn't you also say you have a problem with infidelity in your partners?

I laughed bitterly. "Well, my last real relationship ended because she was cheating on me with at least four different guys, probably more. Two of which were coworkers. One of whom I'd thought was at least a little bit my friend. That's enough to feel justified in ending it, right?"

I'd say so, but that's just me, and I'm just jewelry.

"You asked me to trust you, so that's what I'm doing, Harvey, so if I'm doing something wrong, you gotta help me out."

I'm gonna help you out, Deke, I promise. I'm still just working through the best way to do that, you know? I'm magic, not a miracle worker. And figuring out how to get you the perfect match is a learning process, one that I get a little bit better at each time I try.

"So, wait, you don't know who my perfect match is going to be before you try?"

Do I look like Karnak the Magnificent? I'm making educated guesses and refining what I know about you each time I do. But I'll know when I get it right, don't you worry about that. I have a 100% success rate, and let's see you name anything else with that level of guarantee.

"Everyone you've ever paired up lasted forever?"

Well, within reason.

"That sounds suspiciously like an evasion."

Of my 200+ matches, a few of them have had the unfortunate luck for their partner to die not long after the match was made. I'm not all powerful and I can't control those kinds of things. It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

"You know who says that?" I said to it. "People who've never lost anything. The pain of loss is brutal, agonizing. And losing the love of your life can turn you into a wreck."

You mean like your father.

I tensed up reflexively, grinding my teeth together firmly. "What the fuck do you know about that?"

Not much, Harvey admitted, but I know that whenever you think about your father, there's this weird mix of rage and depression that crosses your brain. You want to tell me about it?

"There's not a ton to tell, Harvey," I said, my fingers relaxing a little from the death grip I'd had on the steering wheel just a moment ago. "My mom died when I was two. Cancer. Came at her quick, so there wasn't even time for Dad to build hope that she was going to get better. She was in the hospital and three weeks later she was gone. Dad never remarried and had to raise me and my sister on his own, but the house was like a goddamn shrine to my mother, so that probably didn't help Dad move on either. When I went off to college, I was worried about leaving him alone, since my older sister had left for college across the country a few years earlier. Jillian, my sister, said he'd be fine."

You're tensing up again, Derrick.

"Yeah, well, Jill was wrong, and I never saw Dad alive again. Neither of us did. She was in her junior year at Cal Poly and I was in my first semester of freshman year at Seattle University when we both got a call from La Jolla PD telling us our dad had committed suicide."

Oh shit, Deke, I'm so fucking sorry.

"Me too, but life fucking sucks, so sometimes you have to learn what it's like to get pissed on by life all the time. Dad left a note saying he'd wanted to make sure me and Jill were up and running as adults, and that he'd originally wanted to wait until we were both out of college, but that the grief of constantly missing mom was too much for him, and that he just had to go now. He'd done it to make sure that the neighbors found him, so that me and Jill wouldn't have to see his body. And his note said again and again how sorry he was, but that he just couldn't take it any more. So yeah, that's why I say the pain of loss can be all consuming, because it can."

Just because it happened to your father doesn't mean it'll happen to you, Deke. Is that what all the walls are about? Are you trying to compartmentalize your heart, thinking that if you keep it walled off, you're never going to get hurt?

"I think you know me better than that, Harvey," I chuckled bitterly. "I'm just being cautious with my heart, because while I don't want to go through the loss that Dad did, I also don't want to go through what Jill did either."

What happened with your sister? Every time you've talked to her on the phone, she seems incredibly upbeat and happy.

"Well, sure. Now. Her third husband, Damon, he's a great guy. But her first two marriages lasted less than a year, and I can't say that either of them were real peaches."

You want to talk about it?

"It's more of her story than mine, but the first guy cheated on her the entire time they were dating and the entire time they were married, I guess, although she didn't find that out until after they'd been married six months."

Ouch. And the second guy?

"He got drunk and beat her up pretty bad one night."

Damn. But she got out of it?

"Oh yeah, Jill's quick on her feet. After he was done beating her, he crawled into his bed and passed out. Then Jill handcuffed his unconscious body, shackled him to the bed with a second set of handcuffs and then called the cops."

She kept handcuffs around the house?

"The guy was a cop."

She got out okay, though?

I smirked, grimly. "There's this expectation that cops always cover for their own, I guess, but Jill knew her husband's watch commander, and called her personally. When she saw what he'd done to Jill, she arrested him and threw the literal book at him. She decided they needed to make an example of what happened to cops who beat their partners, and the guy's doing a dime in prison, he'd hurt Jill so bad. Broken nose, broken ribs, broken collarbone, broken leg. If he could break it, I think he tried. Trial didn't even take a week to convict the prick, the hospital photos were so grotesque."

Maybe you should give me to her after you're done with me.

"Nah," I said. "When she was in physical therapy for all the injuries her second ex had caused her, she met up with a very nice pediatric surgeon named Damon who had the PT session right after hers, having broken his leg skiing. One day, she asked him out, he said yes, six months later they were engaged, and they've been married for five years and change, with two kids. Damon's a great guy, and Jill's very happy. I just don't want to go through the two exes, like she did."

Haven't you already sort of done that, though?

"I mean, I had the ex who cheated on me a bunch, sure, but we weren't married. And I haven't gone through the physical assault, and I'm totally cool with skipping past that one."

So what you're saying is I should've let the guy in the hotel room beat you up and stab you a couple of times?

Somehow I know Harvey was kidding, although it's hard to read tone from a voice inside of your head. "Let's not and say we did," I said, as traffic inched ever forward, ever slowly.

Okay, so let's talk about all the options I've given you so far. Who's been your favorite and your least favorite? What's worked and what hasn't?

"I'd definitely put Colleen at the top of my list," I said to Harvey. "You sure that's not going to work out?"

I know what I'm doing, Deke. What did you like about her?

"She was positive, she was friendly, she was genuinely interested in me for me, and wasn't shy about asking me about the little day-to-day shit. Despite the fact that my job generally bores the crap out of people, she still found new ways to ask about it each and every time. I mean, the fact that she was gorgeous didn't hurt either."

If I'm not delivering you gorgeous people, Deke, I'm not really doing my job, so let's just take that as a given. Who else did you enjoy?

"You remember that Uber driver? Rita?"

You were with her like two hours, tops, Harvey laughed inside of my skull. What about her did you like in particular?

"She was... I dunno, she was aggressive. I guess I like aggressive women, people aren't afraid to express their affection for me, to be the one to initiate and say 'hey, let's get it on.'"

That's good to know, actually, and it helps explain how maybe I've been getting mixed signals out of you. I haven't intentionally been trying to sabotage you with any of these women, Deke.

"Really?"

Okay, that's not completely true, Harvey laughed, but almost all of them were genuine attempts. The robbers were an attempt to sort of shake you from the funk you were in, and the rockstar was your idea, I'd like to remind you, and I even warned you in advance that one was going to go south.

"Yeah, that's true, you did warn me, although you didn't really explain why I shouldn't do it before hand."

You were hell bent on making that mistake, despite me cautioning you, so I had to let you just make it yourself. And I guess I should apologize for sort of putting pressure on you to make sure you're using me, but for a while, maybe you didn't realize it, but you were sort of cockblocking me, which isn't cool, especially when I'm just trying to help.

"Cockblocking you? What the hell does that mean?"

For a while, I tried to steer women subtly at you, but you didn't bite. Which, hey, I get it, not every piece of trim I send your way is your speed, but you weren't giving me any feedback as to why you weren't biting, and that was a BIG problem, because I couldn't get any better at what I was sending you. I can only sort of see your active thoughts, and you're pretty good at keeping emotional stuff buried, which may have been a defensive mechanism when you were younger, but all it's doing now is getting in my fucking way in trying to help you, you jerk.

"So why didn't you just talk to me then, tell me what you were doing and why?"

Eh. I don't usually like directly talking to the people I'm trying to help. It's sort of a last resort tactic, if you know what I mean. Because usually they have an actual mountain of questions, most of which I can't or won't answer, and that pisses them off.

"There's a difference between questions you can't answer and won't answer?

Sure. I'll give you an example. I won't answer if I know if someone's a perfect match for you or not; I can't answer how my abilities work, or what the goddess's endgame with all of this is.

"That's... remarkably honest."

Hey, I'm all about honesty, Harvey joked, if I'm honest. I am going to get you your perfect match before I move on to the next wayward soul, but I have a process, and it takes as long as it takes. If it makes you feel any better, I think I'll have you squared away within the next year or two.

"How do you- Never mind. Can't or won't?"

Can't but you're learning, so good on you. We're getting more in sync with one another, and that'll make this whole process easier. You know I'm not out to hurt you, and I think at this point, I feel comfortable in saying I don't think you're going to continue to resist my help.

"Now that I know you're actually trying to help me, it's a little easier to not want to get in your way," I said to the bracelet. "You know, you may want to start talking to people again. I mean, when you get to whoever it is you're going to after me. If you're more upfront with them at the start, they'll be more likely to get in step with what you're trying to do for them. Did you talk to Christian at all?"

The guy who gave me to you? Harvey asked. Nah, didn't have any need to. He didn't fight me in any way, letting me throw woman after woman at him, trying to figure out what the fuck it was he wanted out of a partner.

"You sound a little grumpy about it."

Only that he was so damn indecisive. See, finding someone a perfect match, it's more art than science, and sometimes I would think I was just about ready to have him matched up with exactly what he was looking for, just to see it fall apart because there was some hidden booby trap in his past that I didn't know about.

"Okay, what do you mean by 'booby trap,' just so I can try and point out any of those in my own history for you before you stumble upon them accidentally?"

So, I knew pretty early on that 'allergic to dogs' was going to be a dealbreaker for you, because there was no way you were going to get rid of Astro.

"You best not say an unkind word about my dog," I said sternly to Harvey.

Dude. Chill. I fucking love your dog. Shit, I've talked to your dog.

That took me more than a little by surprise. "Uh... you've what now?"

Okay, well, maybe more talked at your dog, but me and Astro, we're cool. But Christian didn't have a dog when I first met him. Now, after a while I found out that it was because his last girlfriend had taken their dog when they'd split up, but I thought I had the perfect match for Christian all lined up. It felt like I was just about ready to unlatch from his wrist, and then out of the blue he said that he wanted for them to get a dog and move into together, and she said she was allergic. A week later they were going their separate ways, and I was fucking back to square one.

"Then you probably also want to add 'not allergic to cats' onto my list, because at some point, I'm probably going to want to get a cat again, just so that Astro has someone to play with when I'm at work, and so he's not just moping around the house."

Okay, good to know. Anything else?

"I don't have to tell you 'can't cheat on me,' do I?"

Yeah, I think I gathered that one, from you telling me your last ex cheated on you a bunch. What's the actual definition of a bunch, anyway?

"Well, I found out initially that she was cheating on me with one of my coworkers, but after I split with her, I went on to learn it wasn't just him, but that she'd been fucking, like, seven or eight different dudes beyond me. She'd even had several of them over to the apartment we'd shared, and fucked at least three of them in the same bed that she and I slept in."

Goddamn that sucks.

"You ain't lyin', brother," I agreed. "After I broke it off, I loaded up everything that I wanted to keep into a truck and moved into a temporary apartment for a few months before buying my house. I loaded it up with almost entirely new furniture, because apparently she'd been boning other dudes all over everything in our old place. So I think basically everything bigger than a suitcase in my house is Post Vanessa."

See, now I know another dealbreaker that I don't know that I would've known before.

"Which is?"

I don't think I can hook you up with any girl named Vanessa.

I grinned a bit, nodding. "Yeah, that's probably fair. I think that name's scorched earth at this point, whether I want it to be or not."

We've all got damage, kid. No need to be ashamed of it.

"You're right, you know. We do seem to be getting much more on the same page now that we're talking about it and aren't getting in each other's way."

Good. Good. I'll get you the girl of your dreams before we're done with one another.

"Anything I can do for you?"

... Excuse me?

"You're trying to help me, right? Is there anything you want, any way I can repay you for all this work you're putting out on my behalf?"

... Nobody's ever asked me that before.

"I'm trying to make up for having been a bit of an ass earlier, Harv. I thought you were trying to use me, not help me, so I made your job a lot more unnecessarily hard for you than I should've. So if there's anything I can do to make your existence easier, hell, I figure it's the least I can do, right?"

Lemme think about it. But you know what? Thank you for even asking.

Traffic was finally started to ease up, and the Bugatti began to purr as it got the chance to move a little more through the streets. Of course, this was exactly the moment that my phone chose to ring. Thankfully, I've got hands free in the car, so I just answered it.

"Go for King," I said.