104-Partially Destroyed

**XAVER**

With Pippa safe with my parents, I move from my position of holding up the wall outside her door. I plod to Justice’s car with heavy feet and an even heavier heart.

When he starts the engine, my newfound friend suggests we go to Clancy’s.

I agree.

I need a drink in the worse way.

Entering what I used to consider a dive, I found my new appreciation for the bar knows no bounds. I now consider the place somewhat of a sanctuary. It is the only thing keeping me from an empty apartment.

Justice goes behind the bar, grabs a tumbler and pours me a double.

His phone rings. He answers as I settle on a stool. The conversation is short.

Besides Pippa, we have that in common. I hate long phone calls... unless they are with Pippa.

*Damn. I really messed things up.*

“Thanks, man,” Justice says, snapping his phone shut. It is an old school dime-a-dozen burner phone.

*Didn’t even know they made shit like that anymore.*

I take a sip of Scotch, trying to erase the image of Pippa battered and bruised.

Because of me.

The amber liquid goes down smoother than I deserve. Justice must have brought out the good stuff.

*Just for this momentous occasion.*

I bark out a laugh at my wit and my situation. I am going to be a father and the mother of my soon-to-be children wants nothing to do with me.

Just the opposite of the one whose child wasn’t mine.

I lay my head down on my arm. My headache creeps out its feelers, like the heat from the fiery furnace of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The grace of God saved them.

I’ll have no such dispensation.

Not for the way I have acted towards Pippa—starting in LA and ending tonight.

She is finally had enough, and there is no coming back from leaving her exposed. I left her ripe for an attack from an enemy I had the only hand in making.

“Xaver,” Justice says, clapping his hands to get my attention.

I lift my head, and my headache explodes. The furnace in my brain could melt steel. His gaze is on the glass in my hand. He is probably wishing he hadn’t wasted his good liquor on a dumb-ass like me.

I take a huge swig. This time, the liquid scorches my throat. I crave the burn. It helps me focus for just a moment or two on the matters at hand instead of listening to the deserved negativity inside my head.

Justice pries the empty tumbler from my hand, giving me a look of commiseration.

He should hate me… *revile me*—instead he is taking care of me.

*He* is a good man.

Justice was looking out for Pippa from the get-go, while I had dropped the ball.

*If it weren’t for those kids...*

I shudder to think what would have happened.

Justice told me he pays them a weekly ‘allowance’ to watch the apartment. To watch *and wait* for the day her stepfather shows up.

Well, it wasn’t that particular asshole. Nope. It was Craig ‘The Perv’ Farkas who had taken delight in laying his hands on my girlfriend and in making me a cuckold.

“Tell me, Sayle. What happened?” Justice asks, pouring me a finger from the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue.

I tell him, in as few words as possible, how I utterly screwed up the best thing in my life.

I cringe when I relate how I had blamed Pippa for shit that had happened way back when. For laying my hurt at Sonia’s betrayal at Pippa’s doorstep.

Pippa had probably expected me to go off the rails, and I’d proved her right.

And then some.

After downing my drink in one gulp, I dig my fingers into my palms, disclosing every hurtful, mean-spirited, asinine thing I had told Pippa on the way to her apartment. I leave out not a single detail—even when Justice’s eyes seem to bristle and his hands clench.

Probably with the need to circle my throat.

When I am done, his eyes cool and his stance relaxes.

Justice is a way better man than I am, because, if the roles were reversed, he’d be missing some teeth.

All he says is, “You really need to control your anger.”

*Tell me about it.*

I’ve always been a cold, angry prick. Don’t know why. My parents never had more than a few curt words for each other, spoken in hushed tones when they thought I was asleep. They never (nor anyone) abused or bullied me.

True, I didn’t grow up as rich as I am now, but I have never wanted for anything. It was always* ask and ye shall receive* at the Sayle house. Yet anger from an unknown origin grew inside me, anyway. Forever bubbling below the surface.

Old Faithful has nothing on me.

When I was eighteen, I had accused a supplier of marking up the price of the paper my company used to print its books on. He denied it. I cursed him out and terminated the contract, counting myself lucky.

I then came to find out that my competitor, who had given me the ‘tip’, had set me up. The supplier I had was the lowest in the business. I found that out for myself after getting numerous quotes from others.

I tried to apologize. Didn’t work. I ended up having to make a new contract, and I paid a lot more.

A costly mistake which, unfortunately, I didn’t learn from.

Back then, my parents were the only ones I could take my complaints to. Jake was off in LA and any girl I ‘dated’ at that time wasn’t worth telling my business to.

While retelling my story, the gall at being tricked bit a hole in my stomach. My folks listened with sympathetic ears, nodding in all the right places.

At the end of my rant, Ma had some good advice for me.

*“Xaver,”* she had said, patting at a roller in her freshly washed hair. *“In anger, we should refrain from both speech and action.”*

“Who said that, Ma?” I’d torn my eyes away from Jax Teller beating up yet another scruffy-looking somebody on TV to meet her gaze.

*“Not sure.”* She had pulled a bobby pin from between her teeth and secured her scarf with it. *“That’s not the point, though.”*

*“Yeah, Ma, you are right. I get it.”* I then walked off to the kitchen to drink milk straight from the carton.

I *hadn’t* got it. Not by a long shot. Not until now. My anger has lost me a lot over the years. Contracts, employees, and now the most precious gift I have ever received and ever *will* receive.

*Pippa.*

“Xaver, are you still with us?” Justice asks, wiping down the bar with a wet cloth.

“I want to talk to those kids.” I drum the bar with my feet, like a little boy on a plane. The movement is comforting. It gives the illusion I am doing something. “I want to thank them.”

Their college education paid for. *At least.*

“Yeah? Well, we will have to go easy on that. Their mother doesn’t know about my arrangement with them. She spooks easy… always thinking someone is out to get her or the kids.” Justice wrings out the towel with such force, it seems to dry instantly. “Stubborn woman won’t accept help from anyone.”

*Pippa is like that too.*

“Whatever she needs, it is hers. It is just a good thing those kids came to get you.”

“Yeah…” his eyes look haunted, like he wished he’d arrived sooner or done more.

Pointing at him, I say, “You didn’t fail her.” I poke my thumb in my chest, hard enough to leave a bruise. “*I* did.”

If some asshole had told me a week ago… hell… *yesterday,* that I would defend Justice, I would have laughed in their face.

His shoulders heave, then fall like hundred-pound dumbbells on a concrete floor.

For a split second, I see what Pippa’s future would have been like if I hadn’t made a move.

Justice would take care of her. he would have never make her cry— like I have. All those damn times when I had acted like a prick. Like when I had made her go to another bathroom because I didn’t like a little clutter.

What anal asshole cares about that shit?

*You did.*

No more, son. Not me.

*Son…*

My babies.* Mine.*

Twins.

*What will I do with two kids?*

*Kids bring chaos.*

They do. They sure do.

And I swear I will love every minute of it.

***

I am heading home to change when my phone rings.

“Collect phone call from Metropolitan Correctional Center. Will you accept the charges?”

*I sure as fuckadoodle will.*

I want to cuss that mofo out.

“I accept.”

“Sayle?” Craig’s voice sounds muffled.

Justice told me he had a few contacts at the jail where Craig is being held. Those contacts were happy to work over an abuser.

No payment required.

I, however, *have* one requirement: they need to leave enough for me to ruin—when and *if* the fucker ever gets out of prison.

*Maybe he sounds muffled because he’d gotten his lips beat in?*

*I can only hope.*

“What do you want, Craig? I’m out and about, enjoying the sunshine,” I say like it’s the best damn thing in the world to be free.

“Can… can you come see me? I have some things I want to tell you.”

“Sure.”

*I’m happy to rub the pain coming your way in your face.*

“What time are visiting hours?”

“Come in with my lawyer, otherwise they won’t let you in. She’ll meet you in the prison's lobby at noon.”

I clench the phone tight, imagining it’s his neck. “I’ll be there.”