“Do you want to ask me about all the tattoos and why I got them?”
Grabbing my half-empty wine glass and taking a sip, I lean forward in my chair and join him, resting my elbow up on the table, holding the glass in my hand, and swirling the red liquid around. “Only if you want to talk about all the tattoos.”
He shrugs, and I keep a close eye on his smile to make sure it’s still easygoing and not fake or tense. I really don’t need to talk about anything he’s not ready to talk about, no matter how curious I am about what’s been going on with him the last five years.
“I want to reassure you that I’m perfectly fine talking about all this, and I will spend as much time as you want, whenever you want, telling you every little detail,” he starts. “But for the sake of this being our first date, and one of those twenty-five steps is not putting your date to sleep, I’m just going to make this as quick and painless as possible right now. Is that good?”
I nod, giving him a reassuring smile before taking another sip of my wine.
“Before I begin, let’s just remember that Douchebag Dax was 100 percent motivated by money, every minute of every day. To a trust fund baby, not having money is like killing off everything we’ve ever loved, slowly, and with a lot of sharp, rusty weapons, while we watch.”
I laugh at his analogy, and he begins.
“Okay, here we go. Dad cut off my money after I spent all of high school throwing ragers, sleeping with every girl and her mother in my school, trashing his house, and not giving a shit about anything related to my future, because what I really wanted to do, he thought was ridiculous and a waste of time. He forced me to man the fuck up, get my shit together, and join the army, or I’d never see another dime again. Did as I was told, because… money. And like I was actually going to work to earn it.” Dax scoffs and then shrugs. “Got my revenge by spending all four years of my enlistment working and training as an Animal Care Specialist, doing everything he spent my entire life calling me a pussy about and refusing to support, in the place he forced me to go.”
Dax picks up his beer and clinks it with my wine glass. Sharing satisfied smiles with our cheers about the revenge he got on his dad in his own way, we take sips of our drinks, and then he continues.
“I came home from the army, and Martin Trevino was not too happy I spent my time there taking care of animals, instead of getting ‘real training for a real career.’ So, I gave even less of a shit about doing something with my life and became cockier than ever. Lather, rinse, repeat, ragers, day drinking, and women, and then bye-bye money. ‘I pulled some strings and got you into the police academy. Don’t fuck it up, stop yammering about animals, be a fucking man, and then you can have the money back,’” Dax says in a deep, gruff voice that is supposed to be his dad. “I did finally become a responsible adult with a job, but it also just gave me a gun and a badge to do stupid shit legally. Like impress women and get them to sleep with me in the back of my cruiser. Along with having dollah-dollah bills again, yo.”
He gives me a wink, and I roll my eyes and laugh at him, waving my hand for him to continue.
“Same thing after the shit that happened with my friend Phina.” A little of the humor leaves his voice, and I set my wine glass down, reach over, and rest my hand on top of his.
Dax flips his hand over on the table, and I trace soft circles with the tips of my fingers in his palm, trying to soothe him the only way I can in the middle of a crowded restaurant.
Everyone around here knew what went down when Phina Giordano, a phlebotomist manager at the local hospital. But especially me, since I was a detective when it happened. I can only imagine the kind of guilt Dax went through, but it wasn’t his fault. No one blamed him.
“I’m sure you’ll get to see Phina and DJ soon, and I’ll let her tell you what happened that night. It’s not really my story to tell. I quit the force right after everything, because it fucked me up. I walked away from my promotion, and my friends, and as you can probably guess…” he trails off.
“Lather, rinse, repeat, ragers, women, and dollah-dollah bills, yo,” I finish for him, giving him a small smile.
He nods, staring down at the circles I’m still gently drawing in his palm.
“Dad cut the money off again, and since I was broke as fuck and feeling like the lowest piece of shit in the world after what happened with Phina, I didn’t put up much of a fight when he told me he pulled some strings again, and I had to reenlist in the army and get my shit together again if I wanted access to my money.” Dax sighs, closing his eyes for a second before opening them again to look at me. “Had to start over again with basic training and lost my rank, since I’d been out so long, but I did it. And then the old Dax started creeping back in when I was shipped overseas immediately after basic and boredom set in. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but you can get away with a lot of shit in the army before they kick you out. And I tested that to the very limits. The best way I can describe it is if you’ve ever seen basically any military movie ever. There’s always some fuck-up doing things he isn’t supposed to behind his commanding officer’s back. Well, I was that fuck-up. I was totally selling counterfeit merchandise over there, setting up boxing matches and taking illegal bets, going places I wasn’t supposed to, and getting reprimanded every damn week. But I didn’t care. If I wasn’t doing something risky, it gave me too much time to think and let the guilt come back in.”
Dax pauses when the waiter comes back to our table, and we break apart for a moment while he clears off place settings, leaving the check behind in a leather billfold. Once he’s gone, our hands meet again in the middle of the table.
“One day, I was driving a Humvee picking up supplies, dicking around and not paying attention. I was chatting on my headset with a woman back at command that I’d been trying to sleep with for weeks. Started swerving all over the place, telling her over the mic what I was doing, and saying some stupid shit about how I’d crash the Humvee if she didn’t say yes to stopping by my barracks later. Next thing I know, there’s a loud explosion, I’m flying through the air, and the inside of my vehicle is on fire, along with my skin.”
My heart is beating fast while he quickly tells this story, and I keep my mouth closed and don’t interrupt him, knowing he needs to get it out and over with.
“The only good thing is that I was alone in the vehicle and my stupidity didn’t hurt anyone else, but it could have. It could have been a lot worse.”
I stop drawing circles on his palm to wrap my hand around his and squeeze it. Dax brings my hand up to his mouth, placing a soft kiss on top.
“When I got discharged after leaving the army hospital, after all my surgeries to fix my burns and pull out all the shrapnel, I was at the complete opposite end of lather, rinse, repeat. I just didn’t care about anything anymore,” he tells me, staring down at my hand he’s still holding in both of his on the table. “I had been stationed near Chicago, so I got a small apartment, locked myself in there in the dark, and only came out to start getting tattoos to cover up my scars and for therapy at the VA when I felt like, which wasn’t that often. A guy who owns a gym called The Barracks for wounded veterans came in when I was walking out one day. I guess he heard about all the stunts I pulled overseas and about the stupid boxing matches I organized. He gave me his card and told me to stop by the gym. I did it a few times then decided I’d much rather sit in my dark, empty apartment and feel sorry for myself.”