“Yeah, didn’t mean to leave your best friend out there lookin’ like a burnt piece of toast out there wither, did you?” she scoffed, glaring to the side. He was playing her. Those sweet words, as sweet as they were, as much as they made her heart thump-thump-thump a little faster…he needed her help right now.
“Haven’t been getting that feeling lately,” Tulip replies with a quiver in her voice that makes her hate herself. “I told you, I have a man to kill. Can’t babysit you.”
She’s stuck as stuck can be on being stubborn, curling Jesse’s fingers into a ball around the cement block of the prison phone. He could just command her to come get him-like he commanded Cas. Cas. Shit.Jesse ain’t gonna bring that motherfucker up right now. Not to her. Not like this.
“Tulip-” he says, like he’s going to beg, but then decides against it. “Tell Carlos I send my regards.” Fingers grip the phone-an in a quick, swift move, he hangs up on her, typical, broody, moody.
She laughs for a minute straight, dropping her cellphone on the floor of her chevelle in the process. “Whew….hoo fuck,” she gasps for air for a moment, leaning on her steering wheel before she picks up the phone. The smile on her face twists into a grimace.
“I’d love to help you, Custer, but I’m on my way to kill a man in Albuquerque. Can’t be bothered.” There is no way that soft little voice of his is gonna do shit, even though fuck he’s mastered that soft little voice to tug at her heart.
He can hear her, laughter loud, clear, ringing through the phone like a scorch over his heart. Yes by God did he fuck up, but did she really need to dance all over his pride like she does? To be fair-if she didn’t, he probably wouldn’t love her like he does.
“Tulip…” he starts, slow, quiet, “I didn’t mean it, you know, I never do. I-” he stalls to a stop, not about to say what was going to come out his mouth. He does miss her, it would be stupid to tell her. “There ain’t a single soul out there for me but you, you know that don’t you?”
Of fucking course. It only seemed right that the last person she wanted to hear from needed her help. “Well knock me down and steal my freakin’ teeth. The holy son needs my help? Thought I was just a dumbfuck O’Hare!” she seethes into the phone, trying to ignore how broken he sounds. She’s broken too. She just gave the fastest friend she’d ever made away to the most bloodthirsty friend she’d ever made.
“You have no clue what you’ve put me through, Jesse Custer. This better be good.”
Her sarcasm is enough to make him want to hang up that god-damn phone and rot in jail. God her ridiculousness is driving him insane, straight to the edge of his own rope. He bites his tongue-he needs her help.
“You’ll get a kick out of it,” he mumbles into the phone, “-M’ in jail. Need ya to get that can we buried and bail me outta here.” A heartbeat- “Please.”
She’s not the kind of gal that swoons, not like those hoity toity girls do in the soaps that she’d watch all day in the hotel, but she’s damned well near it. She feels like she’s walking on air and everything else in the room is blurred—besides him. It’s almost like the first time she saw him, with that mousy brunette bitch of a girlfriend.
“If this is some sort of sick joke…”
She’s angry as fuck, but she’s also scared as fuck and relieved as fuck. In her current state, she nearly considers turning around and leaving, but no, she’s not that stupid weak girl in that fucking hotel anymore. She’s Tulip.
Tulip takes one step after him, and another, unable to look him in the face, only at those fucking collar tips.
“You were dead. You fell from that fucking plane and you died.”
It’d been months of that private hell in that hotel. Fucking months.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
Her fist followed her harsh words, lifting to his cheek and dissipating into sprawled fingers as her lips quivered. One trembling finger touched his cheek, trailed along the ridges of his scruff. She dropped her hand, suddenly conscious of the bags upon bags beneath her eyes and the way she’d just lashed out. It wasn’t his fault. He hasn’t even known.
“I don’t understand,” Tulip admitted in a broken voice, one of the few times she’d ever admit something so weak.
Fell.
More like dropped.
That fucking shit was not something he was about to go down memory lane on. He was already searching her face for anything but the pent up rage that boiled over into her gaze and down her cheeks, across her lips-that vein in her neck that he knew when she was angry, aroused-emotional.
Of course there is always the fist, too, that seems to knock Jesse Custer back to his senses.
He doesn’t even dust his cheek with his hands when she socks him hard, only keeping his eyes on her. Her voice cracks like the way his heart cracks for her, aching to let her in on all that has been done. But he can’t. He’s not going to drag her into the hell he’s been living-not again.
There are still fresh wounds of watching her head explode before his eyes before. Since then, he keeps her at arms length. Sometimes that arms length is like now, stark and cold, and other times it’s velvet soft like her skin and the sheets of motels they say they aren’t staying in.
“I don’t have the time to explain it to you, Tulip,” he says, and knows that that is not the answer she is going to like hearing. He drops his hands from her clothes and steps back. Specks of blood glitter off his white pants.
He gets a second to think about things before he speaks, confused.
Valium and vodka lost their charm, eventually. She’d never been addicted to anything of that sort before, though she’d certainly seen the affects, seen how fucking careless those druggie bastards acted on the shit. Tulip was better than them, though, she was better than all of them. She’d just been a little lost, was all. Grief made people do stupid shit, and any grief on account of Jesse Custer would make her shoot God in the fucking balls if she had to.
But she was Tulip again, Cassidy was out hiding from the sun after the minor act of defiance she’d shown—fuck. She still flinched at the thought of the bony fucking bastard. He’d defiled her into a state of numbness. Sure, she’d fucking accepted that numbness, but he fucking well knew what he was doing too.
So here she was, driving through BFE in his truck. She’d lost count of the hours and days, only stopped when she needed a piss and a bite to eat. Now was one of those times. One step after the other, she walked into the skeevy little bar she’d stopped for.
Tulip pushed into the door with her shoulder, tired eyes scanning the joint—
“You’re fuckin’ kidd— Jesse?”
Well shit.
He stares with wide eyes, the red haze of anger boiling fading away like the edges of a storm. There’s a face he wasn’t sure he’d ever see again-not even in death did he figured she’d be there.
She looks like shit.
But she looks like the good kind of shit-like the way a fire burns down the backside of the mountain away from the range, a wildfire burnt kind of good. He’s got so many questions for her and she, probably has a thousand more for him. There’s a deep unsettling feeling in his stomach-something along the lines of tears. Like fuck if he’s gonna cry.
