Promise Me (Book One of the Kirkland Family)

Promise Me: Chapter 9

Chapter 9

 
On Monday night, Justin crashed into his bunk at the Sota Naval Station barracks, exhausted beyond belief.  They weren’t scheduled to leave the port until 5am, but everyone had to be accounted for by 22:00.  Tales of wild nights on shore leave filled the living quarters.  Some of the crew showed off pictures of the women they met and had, and others shared tamer souvenirs of sightseeing or visiting with nearby family and friends.  Someone asked Justin what he did during his leave days in Spain.  He calmly replied, “Went to see my brother in Barcelona,” and left it at that.  Things were just starting to calm down when Daley came whooping through their temporary sleeping quarters.

“Hey, guys!  You’ve gotta see what I found on YouTube!”  He waved a disk before putting it into the video player.  Justin didn’t move from his bunk.  He couldn’t honestly care less what stupid video clip the man found on the internet.

“It’s the same chick from that movie,” Daley announced, just before the thrum of an acoustic guitar reverberated off the walls.

Then Justin heard Hannah singing...and the men whistling wolfishly.

He bolted out of his bunk and tripped over his own feet to get to the other end of the room.  And yup, there was Hannah on the pull-down screen, vaguely pixilated in that home-video kind of way.  She sat -- on his mother’s sofa! -- in cut-off jeans and a tank top, playing her battered guitar and singing at the top of her lungs.  Her red hair was pulled up on top of her head, her smile brightened the whole screen, and her voice was just as soft, just as throaty and mesmerizing as he remembered.

And right there next to Hannah...that was Josie.  His little girl.

  They lied to me.

“Hey,” a hushed voice called to him from his left elbow.  Justin vaguely registered Charlie, one of his technicians, next to him.  “Isn’t that your daughter, Josie?”

A few eyes glanced their way.  Justin only saw the pair on the video.  He didn’t even hear the music at this point, his ears throbbing along with a tunnel-like zooming effect on Hannah and his baby girl...together.  A slow boil started somewhere in the region of his toes, and spread upward from there.  He specifically said that Josie was not to hang out with Hannah Baker.  He had made himself very clear…to his mother, to Josie, to everyone!  He didn’t want his little girl anywhere near that woman, never mind he was having crazy-stupid lustful thoughts about the songbird.  That didn’t matter.

Doesn’t anybody ever listen to me?!

Ah, hell, and now she’s got Josie singing and playing a guitar and creating hopeless dreams of becoming a star.

“Hey, Kirkland,” Daley called, hearing Charlie’s question, “You know her?”

“No,” Justin growled.

“But Charlie just said this is your daughter...”

Justin seared Daley with a scathing glare.  “Turn it off.”

Wary faces turned from Justin to Daley.  Over the last few weeks, the navy crew and Justin’s small group had become fast buddies.  Everyone liked and respected everyone else.  This was the first conflict to arise, other than Charlie’s bad habit of cheating at Texas Hold’em.  

“Yeah, sure man,” Daley said, and ejected the disk from the player.  The men around him booed the decision, but Justin stomped over to Daley and snatched the disk out of his hand.

“Hey,” Daley said, “Chill out, man...I didn’t know that was your little girl.”

“Now you do,” Justin seethed, back to being grouchy again.  And it was always the woman’s fault!

Daley held his hands up, not wanting to get into it with Justin, who towered over him and outweighed him by fifty pounds.  Justin nodded sharply, hoping it was the end of this, but Daley suddenly grinned and asked, “So, you do know the redhead...you’ve been keeping things from us, Kirkland.  She your girlfriend?”

“No,” Justin said shortly and turned to leave.

“But you must know her.  I’d sure like an introduction, if you know what I mean.”

Halting a few feet away, Justin half turned back to the crowd of men.  They seemed to be enjoying the scene.  “Hannah Baker would chew you up and spit out the pieces...all of you.  She’s a vicious, self-centered hussy, only interested in how fast she can bleed you dry.  And when I get my hands on her for corrupting my daughter in my absence, I plan to squeeze her pretty little neck until she turns purple.”

Paralyzing silent amplified in the small room.  Justin’s words shocked everyone.  There wasn’t a man present who wouldn’t stand up for a woman, so his violent declaration darkened many faces.  A few men even stood up in muted protest, their eyes hard and solid on Justin.  A few fists clenched as well.  Justin sighed and swallowed and scrubbed a hand through his hair.  He’d never been a violent person, but dammit…Hannah made him want to smash something!

“Listen...I’m not really going to hurt her or anyone.  Never in my life would I hurt a woman, and I'm not gonna start now, but she’s pissed me off.  My Josie means the world to me -- she's all I've got -- and I don’t want her corrupted by a woman like Hannah Baker.”

Though they were still resentful for his outburst, they accepted his explanation.  Justin cleared his throat and walked back to his bunk.  He could look forward to waking up to shaving cream in his boots in the morning now, thanks to his stupid mouth.

Charlie grabbed his elbow.  “You alright, boss?”

“I’m just fine,” Justin said through gritted teeth.  Charlie could see the vein in his neck throbbing violently, the one that always announced when his boss was upset, but this time, it wasn’t the throb of stress.  This one was full of anger and rage.

“Well, you better be,” Charlie said in a low voice.  “We’ve gotta live with these guys for the next week...and I’m not a fan of pubic hair in my oatmeal. You get me?”

Justin exhaled most of his raging emotions and tried to look less hateful.  “Yeah, I know...I’ve got it under control.”  Then he grabbed his cell phone and headed out of the barracks, needing to call Josie immediately.  He didn't care that it must be the middle of the night back home...he was talking to his daughter tonight.

But the phone rang and rang.

"Goddammit!"

Justin dialed his brother.  "Yo, Justin!  What's up?  I thought you'd be halfway to Iceland by now."

"We leave in the morning, but I need you to do something for me."

"Sure, whatcha need?"

Justin explained the video to Luke and how he told his family he wanted no association with Hannah.  His voice grew sharper and tenser the more he talked and thought about his daughter’s recent activities.  "Find out what the hell is going on," he told his brother.  "I'm gonna try again before we leave, but just in case I can't get a hold of them, I'll call you back."

Luke paused, then said, “Alright, I’ll see what I can find out, but I’m not so sure about this negative attitude of yours toward Hannah.  Surely, she can’t have changed that much since we were kids.  You’re going to give yourself an ulcer over this.”

Justin grunted.  “I’m already to that point.  I’ll call you at 4am.”

“4am!  Are you nuts?”

“We board the sub at 4:30 and leave at 5:00,” Justin explained impatiently.  “That should give you plenty of time to call Mom and Dad and find out what kind of trouble my daughter has gotten herself into now.”

Luke grumbled for a second.  “You’ll owe me for this.”

“Yeah, well...if you hadn’t dated the woman, none of this would be happening,” Justin shot back.

“You’re blaming me?” Luke thundered.  “Oh, that’s hilarious!  If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear you were jealous.”

Jealous of his kid brother, who’d been popular in school, graduated with honors despite that, married to a wonderful woman and had a wonderful family, a wonderful home and a wonderful life in an exotic, foreign city?

Well, hell.  Now that he thought of it that way.

“I’ll call you in the morning,” Justin growled and ended his call.  Why was the whole world making him out to be the bad guy?  Dammit, I’m just trying to protect my baby.  He pivoted on his heel and returned to the barracks.  The guys were oddly calm and occupied.  Justin barely noticed them, then...

He found a present on his bunk -- a twisted mass of blown-up condoms, which upon closer inspection resembled a red-haired woman (drawn with a red marker), sporting big breasts and spread legs...and a note that read, “You can squeeze me all you want, Big Daddy.”  Justin blinked at it for a moment, then felt a grin spread across his face.

“Very funny...we’ve got an artistic smart-ass in our midst.  The condoms are a nice touch.”  He picked up his doll and set it on the locker at the foot of his bed.  “I guess that means somebody didn’t get laid this week.”  A round of burning hoots erupted as the guys got up in Daley’s face, taunting him with the same jibe.  Justin chuckled and dug through his bag for his own box of protective gear.  He tossed it to Daley.

“Here,” he said as the box was airborne.  “You can have some of mine.”

Daley, the normally good-natured guy he was, caught the box and examined it.  With a knowing grin, he asked, “Not opened?”

Justin shrugged.  “I was visiting family.”  Then he went over and clasped the man’s hand in an apologetic shake.  “Sorry about before.  I go a little crazy when it comes to my kid.”

“Eh,” Daley said.  “Don’t worry about it.”

Justin accepted that and returned to his bunk to lie down.  But Daley wasn’t quite done yet.  “But you can still set me up with your girlfriend, right?”

“Piss off,” Justin shouted back and closed his eyes.

*****

On Monday evening in Arkansas, around nine o'clock, Hannah was finishing off a pan of fudge brownies when her home phone rang.  Normally, she never answered it, only keeping a landline out of habit, but this time, she grabbed the portable from its charging station.  With a mouthful of gooey chocolate, she said, "Hullo?"

"Is this Hannah Baker?" a man's voice asked.  It sounded somewhat familiar to her, but all she could think was, Yay, a solicitor!  It's my lucky day!

"Yeah, that's me."

A growl erupted through the line, and then the man said, "I want you to stay away from my daughter."

Hannah frowned with confusion.  "Who is this?"

"Justin Kirkland," he growled again, and Hannah's eyes grew big.  A lump of brownie stuck half-way down the pipe and she had to swallow noisily to get it to move.  "Leave Josie alone,” Justin ordered intently.  “Stop talking to her.  Stop visiting her, and for God's sake, stop filling her head with stupid dreams of becoming a singer.  I don't want you anywhere near her, you understand?"

"How did you get my number?"

"The phone book," he said.  "Did you hear me?  Stay away from Josie!"

"My number isn’t listed in the phone book, so try again, buster," she retorted.

"What does it fucking matter how I got your number?!  I want you to--"

"It matters because you're invading my privacy, jackass."  Hannah rose to her feet and stomped to the kitchen, the portable handheld against her ear.  There was a beer in her fridge that was calling her name right now.  

Wait.  Beer and brownies?

Then Jackass Justin snarled another profanity in her ear, and she thought, Yes, beer and brownies.

“Forget about your damn phone number,” he hissed.  “My daughter has enough issues without you creating more for her.”

Hannah twisted the lid off her beer as she said, “The only issue your daughter has is that you don’t trust her.”

“She hasn’t given me any reason to trust her!  Especially now!”

Hannah guzzled half the bottle of amber brew in one giant gulp.  Oh, that’s good.  “Listen, stupid,” she said to him, “Josie is a sweet girl, and she only wants a little love and affection--”

“I give her plenty of love and affection,” he expressed sharply.  “But it’s women like you who are corrupting her.”

“Women like me?  You don’t know anything about me!”

“I know enough to know that you’re a conniving, self-centered leech who enjoys crucifying men just for the hell of it, like every other beautiful woman in the world,” he shot back.

Hannah paused with her bottle pressed against her lips.  “Wait...did you just call me beautiful?”

Justin rumbled an inarticulate sound, and said, “You know you’re beautiful, and that’s the problem!”

Conflicting sensations coursed through Hannah’s veins -- warmth that he thought her to be beautiful and irritation at his outlook on the subject.  Being beautiful was a problem?  Who did this man prefer to date?  Ugly, hairy hags?

“Now stay away from Josie,” he barked again.  Hannah sighed.

“Well, since you’re on the other side of the world, you can’t do anything about that,” she told him, feeling satisfied, but then she wondered and voiced aloud, “You are on the other side of the world, right?”

His evil grin soaked through his response, “Why?  Are you scared?”

“Of you?” she snorted.  “Not bloody likely.”

“Oh, that’s rich,” he said.  “Adding a little British accent now?  Is this that your flourishing acting career speaking?”  There was a sarcastic tone to the word “flourishing”, but Hannah only winced because she didn’t realize she always mimicked her mother’s voice when she said that one phrase.  

“What’s your problem with me, Justin Kirkland?” she asked hotly.

“My problem is that you intentionally sought out my daughter because I pissed you off that night,” he proclaimed, raw animosity coloring his words like a black crayon in a three-year-old’s hand.

Hannah really wanted to tell him that Josie sought her out, not the other way around, but then her promise to the girl infiltrated her mind, I’ll take all the blame.  Closing her eyes and praying for fortitude, she simply replied, “Yeah, that’s what I did.  I’m a horrible person that way, using a child as revenge on some man’s absurd assumption.  I’m so ashamed of myself.”

“You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”

“What do you think, genius?”

“I think you’re a heartless bitch,” he snapped, and Hannah returned with, “And I think you’re a bitter, soulless jackass, so I guess we’re even on that account.”

“We’re not even close to being even, sweetheart.”

Before Hannah could come up with another insult or basically a “Screw You”, she heard a second man’s voice in the background of the call, “Yo, Kirkland!  Time to load up!”  That’s when other noises registered in her ears.  Clanging of metal on metal, the vague lapping of water on a pier, and lots of masculine voices clamoring together to make the whole conversation with Justin almost ridiculous.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m in Spain, not that it matters.  When I get back home and find out you ignored me, I’m gonna--”

“You’re in Spain?” she cut him off.  “In Barcelona?”

A slight pause emptied the phone of all noise, with the exception of the odd bedlam behind Justin.  Then he suspiciously asked, “Why do ask about Barcelona?”

“No reason,” Hannah answered quickly.  Did he go see his brother?  She’d not been stalking Luke’s Facebook page in a while, so she honestly didn’t know what he’d had been up to lately.  Did he shave that beard he’d been growing?  Or did his wife prefer the scruffy look?  Either way, scruffy looked pretty freaking good on Luke Kirkland.  Then her mind wandered to, What would Justin look like with a little scruff?  Probably sexy as hell, the hateful bastard.

“You’re still hung up on Luke, aren’t you?” Justin inquired as more shouts for “Kirkland, get your ass on board,” roared at him.  Hannah didn’t reply, but she found herself chewing on her bottom lip.  Justin added, “Get over it, Songbird.  Luke is very happily married and better off without someone like you.”

She sighed.  They were back to an encore of describing her questionable character.  “I think you were about to threaten me again,” she prompted, hoping to change the subject.

“Now, Kirkland, or we’ll leave your ass here!”

Justin growled.  “Stay away from my daughter,” he dictated, the menacing and silent threat shouting at her through his tone, and then the line went dead.  Hannah pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it.  How did he even know about her and Josie?  Then the answer came to her and she groaned.  Those videos on YouTube.  It amazed her that he saw them at all.  Out of all the millions of videos on that website, he saw theirs.  Did he even listen to the music and see how talented his daughter was?  Or did he just zone in on the idiotic impression that she and Josie were purposefully flipping him the finger?

Stupid jackass.  He only saw what he wanted to see, and nothing else.  That was his problem.  He couldn’t get over his ex-wife’s betrayal, so he projected that mental state on every other woman he met.  He knows nothing about me! she scoffed in her mind, and to make it clearer, she glared at the phone in her hand and shouted, “Nothing, Justin Jackass Kirkland!  You know nothing about me!”

Now, there’s a song title -- “You Know Nothing About Me.”  And just like that, the lyrics started forming in her head.  That hadn’t happened in over five years.  Hannah tossed the handheld on the kitchen counter and went in search of her guitar.

Two hours later, she plugged her video camera into her computer and sang a song, dedicating it to Justin:

In your eyes, I’m someone to hate
You force your mind to recreate
A person I’m not even close...to being,
‘Cuz you can’t purge and separate
A memory I didn’t make
And now I’m answering...for her cheating.

So take your words and go away
I have no need to soothe your pain
I’m happy to survive...without you
You see, I won’t die or evaporate
If I never speak your name
I’m sure I’ll be just fine...without you

You don’t know me, you’re full of spite
And that’s alright by me
I’ve got my pride and my heart’s whole
I’m not afraid to bear my soul
And you just won’t admit... you’re hurting

I don’t have a mind to care,
To think that you’re possibly aware
Of a heart that’s deserving...and fair
You think that you’re a better man,
But show me something other than,
The bitter cross that I...won’t bear

You don’t know me, you’re full of spite
And that’s alright by me
I’ve got my pride and my heart’s whole
I’m not afraid to bear my soul
And you just won’t admit... you’re hurting

You don’t know me, and that’s okay
Your venom oozes still
My heart will never moan and cry
And I can tell you precisely why
Because you don’t know me...and you never will
You don’t know me...and I’m thrilled

Hannah sucked in a calming breath and clutched her guitar to her chest.  She hadn’t been that emotionally involved in a song in a long time.  It was scary and exhilarating in the same heartbeat.  She sat there, shaking uncontrollably, not realizing that her camera was still videoing her reactions.

Damn you, Justin, for making me feel this way.

Her songwriting and singing days were supposed to be behind her.  She closed that chapter in her life a long time ago, accepting the fate delivered to her with all the rejections.  Now, she was right back to where she started.  Right back to yearning for something she knew she would never achieve.  

When she noticed the blinking light of her camera, Hannah stared directly into the lens and said, “Consider yourself crucified, Kirkland.”  Then she got up from her seat, uploaded the video to the internet and went to bed.