Chapter Forty-Two

“You gonna stick by me?”

“Maybe…”

**

“Hey Letty, can we talk?” Vince asked as I walked into the house the week after Dom’d nearly killed him.

“Shit,” I muttered to myself. I hadn’t seen Vince since everything went down, and I didn’t really want to, either.

“C’mon, girl…please?” he asked when I didn’t say anything.

“Okay, fine,” I sighed, shrugging. I figured I was gonna have to talk to Vince eventually, so I might as well get it over with.

“Can we…uh…can we go sit down or something?” he asked hesitantly. It was weird…the Vince I remembered never hesitated about anything. Made me think maybe he really was sorry about how he’d been treating me.

“Fine,” I said shortly before following him into the back room and sitting down on the couch. Sorry or not, I was still annoyed with him.

Vince didn’t say anything, just sat there on the couch next to me. It was like he wasn’t sure where to start. He started cracking his knuckles, and I knew he was nervous.

“So…uh…” he finally said after he’d run out of bones in his hands. “I…uh… Well…”

“Vince!” I interrupted him. “Will you just say whatever it is you want to say already?”

“Uh…yeah…” he continued, looking over at me quickly. “I’m… I’m sorry. You know, for how I’ve been treating you and all… I’ve been a real dick.”

“Yeah,” I snorted. “Yeah, you have.”

“Well, I was… I was wrong.”

“Why?”

“What?” Vince asked, looking over at me again.

“Why were you being such an asshole to me? I mean… Before you went to juvie, you were actually pretty decent to me…like we were maybe friends, even… So what happened? What’d I do?”

“You didn’t do anything…” Vince said slowly. “It was all me…just me being stupid. I saw you and Dom together one night…kissing… And then at the races, I saw him all over the girls there… I just… I thought he was using you, taking advantage. I mean, we all knew you had a huge crush on him before…”

“Oh, that’s great,” I groaned to myself.

“So,” he continued, “I thought Dom was playing you, and that’s what got me pissed off and made me act like an idiot. And then with the thing in your room…it just pushed me over the edge…”

“Okay,” I said, “I can understand that… But why’d you take it all out on me?”

“I just… I never thought you would grow up to be stupid enough to let anyone use you like that, you know? Didn’t think you would let yourself be played… And I guess… I was pissed that you grew up to be like that, to be just another slut. Pissed that you let it happen to yourself. And part of me was just pissed at myself, ‘cause I wasn’t around to keep it from happening…”

I didn’t know whether to hug Vince or smack him then. “That’s almost sweet,” I said slowly. “Completely fucked up, but still, almost sweet…”

“Yeah, I know that now,” Vince replied, running his hand through his hair. “Dom told me everything that happened while I was gone, explained how it is with you guys, what you’ve had to do… Must’ve been hard, and all I did was make it worse.”

“Yeah, well, can’t really argue with that,” I said, looking over at him and smiling.

“So… Think you can forgive me? Or am I gonna be on your shit list for the rest of my life?”

I didn’t answer right away, cocked my head to the side like I was thinking about it. “Eh…I guess I can forgive you…” I finally said.

“Good,” Vince replied as he got up. He walked towards the door but stopped just short of it, turned back to me and said, “So I see you finally got your 240-SX, huh? What’d Dom think of that?”

Shit,” I laughed, “Dom’s the one who got it for me!”

"Damn, girl, what’ve you done to him?” Vince said, grinning at me. “No…wait… I don’t think I want to know…”

With that, he left. And just like that, things were fine between me and Vince again. He went back to treating me like his kid sister, stopped bringing all the random sluts around Dom’s place, and it was almost like none of the other shit had ever happened at all.