Page 94 of Money Shot

It shocked me that he knew I had even quit. The entire time I knew Jackson I had smoked, and was never around during the time I had quit. As far as answering the question, I didn’t even have to think about it.

“When we broke up,” I responded.

“Figures. Okay, and before that, did you smoke at all? You know, maybe an occasional cigarette?” he asked.

I nodded my head. “When I was really pissed.”

“Alright. Now, here’s a few questions I want you to either answer, or just stand and stew on for a minute. Let me ask them all,” he said. “And then you can chew on ‘em.”

I shrugged my shoulders, pulled out another cigarette, and lit it. “Okay.”

He held his clenched fist in the air and extended a finger each time he asked a question.

“Did you ever make a New Year’s resolution to quit?”

“Did you ever tell your pop you quit? When he was alive or after his death?”

“Did you ever go to his grave and talk to him about it, you know, out of pride?”

“Did you ever tell your mom you weren’t smoking when you were?”

“Did you…”

I held my hand in the air, spit my cigarette on the driveway, and stepped on it. “Stop.”

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Almost everything he had asked, I had done. I gave up cigarettes, at least initially, as a New Year’s resolution. Before and after doing so, I had gone to my father’s grave, and told him that I intended on quitting, and after having done so, that I had successfully quit.

I had also told my mother on a few occasions when she said I smelled like smoke that I wasn’t smoking.

I felt sick.

Somehow, someway, I had become exactly what I despised.

I was a hypocrite.

And there was no other way of looking at it.

I had made promises that I didn’t keep; to myself, my mother, and to my father.

“You look sick, Brother,” he said as he slapped his hand against my bicep.

“I feel sick,” I said.

“Probably that cigarette. Those things’ll kill ya,” he said. “So, you didn’t answer, you going to?”

“Don’t think I need to, you already know the answers,” I said. “How’d you know?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Most people who smoke actually smoke their cigarettes. You take a couple hits and toss it. It told me you either felt guilty or you wanted to quit. I picked the former. Asked a couple of the fellas, and Axton told me you’d gone without for about five years as far as he could remember. And almost everyone who quits makes a resolution. The rest was just a good guess.”

I felt as if my entire world had been turned upside down. My entire life had been lived under the premise that I was the one person who had never made a promise he didn’t keep, and I expected everyone who befriended me to do and be the same.

And I used my ex-wife’s shortcomings against Sienna, the only woman I truly ever loved, based on my belief that she had broken a promise.

“Think I’m going to be sick,” I said.

“You already said that. You’ll be fine. Oh, I got one more question,” he said.