Feisty

by Julia Kent

  “Just like that!” Michael says, shutter clicking. “Now I want you to take off your coat, Fiona, and Dia over there–” He points to a young woman with a headful of box braids, wearing a jean jacket like a second skin, way cooler than I've ever been, “–will get you dressed in our sponsor's gear.”

  My pulse has migrated to my belly, the second chakra pounding like a jackhammer as Dia escorts me to the women's locker room. The place is empty, and I recall Rafaela telling me something about the gym being rented for the shoot, exclusively.

  I change into the skin-tight garments, leggings fitting like a glove, the spandex cotton cooling my skin as I slide into it. The sports bra doesn't constrict like most, and the crossover-back tank, a shade of lilac that seems chosen specifically to match my hair, gives the whole outfit a feeling of the surreal.

  Only my pink-rimmed glasses stand out.

  “Makeup and hair will deal with you next, Fiona,” Dia calls out as I stare at myself in the mirror. Since my first semester of college, I've adopted a very different style of dress than I wore in high school. Back then, it was baggy overalls and jeans, tank tops in warm weather, hoodies over them in cold. But college gave me a chance to redefine myself. Stifled for so many years by an identity given to me that I didn't want, I left high school and stopped being Feisty, the ass-kicking girl who shaved her head and wore a tough shell of armor around herself.

  I became Fiona, all softness and light. It felt easier–it was easier–to be vulnerable and hopeful. To talk about emotions rather than defend them.

  To explore the space of a different personhood.

  As I look at myself in the full-length mirror at a gym owned by the very man who gave me that identity seventeen years ago, I marvel at the synergy. Shedding who I was meant experiencing the painful rawness of new skin.

  And here I am, raw again, this time–with him.

  Again.

  But not the same.

  When I exit the locker room, Dia hands me an eyeglass case.

  “What's this?” I open it, a pair of lilac and turquoise-framed glasses inside.

  “Yours. Rafaela gave us your prescription. Said she got it from you. Our designers determined this was a good fit.”

  “I thought I'd be training. I don't wear glasses when I train.”

  “You wore glasses in the viral video,” she explains as we head back to the main room.

  “I also wore a long, flowing dress.”

  “The client sells clothing. Not glasses,” she says with a wink. “And those are yours to keep when we're done. We have about ten other outfits for you, too. Plenty of sports bras.”

  “Thank you,” I say quietly, fighting a case of the shakes.

  “You may end up in all ten today, though. It all depends on Michael's perspective.”

  “Okay.”

  “You all right? You're getting quieter.”

  “Nerves.”

  “You? Nerves?” She laughs. “Just think of this shoot as one big asskicking of your attacker.”

  I have zero interest in that, but I'm too polite to say so. “How about I think of it as picking a fight with a guy I've known since we were little? I can't believe Michael wants Fletch in the pictures and video.”

  “Don't question artists. Michael's damn fine at what he does.”

  “I'm not questioning it. I just–of all the men in the world to have to work with, Fletch is...”

  “The last guy on Earth you'd ever fuck?”

  The f-word coming out of her jolts me, making me blush as we turn the corner. I'm not afraid of profanity–I couldn't be Perky's friend if I were–but the sudden image of Fletch and me naked and in bed, sweaty and carnal, takes that electrified word and turns the voltage up.

  “You look ready for anything,” Fletch says to me, his hands holding boxing gloves.

  I blush harder.

  “Not yet,” Dia interrupts. “Makeup and hair first.”

  Forty-five minutes later, I'm wearing as much makeup on my face as I have collectively worn since 2009, and my hair makes me look like one of the actresses from that 1980s series about female wrestlers. But we're ready.

  And I'm already tired.

  “Fiona!” Michael says loudly from my right. “I want you to close your eyes.”

  “Okay.”

  “And tell me the story of what happened.”

  My eyes open.

  “The whole story?”

  “Not with words, sweetheart. With your body.”

  “With my body?”

  “You're going to re-enact what happened. The moment you realized something was wrong. No words–only use words if they happened in the moment Rico attacked you. Otherwise, you are narrating with your joints and muscles, with your tendons and ligaments, with muscle memory and neurons firing. Movement is your scribe.”

  “You want me to silently re-enact what happened.”

  “Doesn't have to be silent. Just no words unless they’re true to the moment, during the attack.”

  All eyes are on me. Fletch leans against one of the half walls near the front door. Lights and reflectors are everywhere, about seven crew members in various spots, three video cameras rolling.

  I nod.

  I close my eyes.

  And I remember.

  As I breathe, I remember the thin thread of unease that began even before I heard the squeal of tires. I open my eyes and turn my head toward an imaginary window in my classroom.

  Then bang bang bang.

  I look at an imaginary Rico, feel the rush of fear coursing through me, turn to an imaginary Michelle and have her take the kids out of the room. My body moves to the right, away from Fletch and toward Michael as I re-enact, remembering the backs of children's heads, the gut drop as I heard Rico picking the lock.

  Tears fill my eyes. I freeze.

  “Fiona,” Michael says gently. “You're not remembering this. You are being this. Be with the pain. Be with the anger.”

  “Maybe this is too much,” Fletch interrupts, voice tight with emotion. Our eyes meet. I blink hard, willing the tears away, channeling his anger. He's not mad at me.

  He's mad for me.

  “No!” I call out.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I wasn't saying no to you. I was saying no to that rat bastard. No!”

  “Did you say no when you kicked him? When he attacked you?” Michael asks, holding his camera up.

  “I didn't have time to think. I just… I just–”

  “Then just, Fiona. Just do that. Don't think. Do what you did. Be nothing but movement and instinct.”

  “Be Feisty,” Fletch says, his voice pitching deep at the end, the word enraging me.

  Pumped full of adrenaline and triggered as all get out by this, I turn to him and scream, “NO!”

  He moves fast, body behind a punching bag as he braces it. “Here. Channel it all here.”

  The kick happens so fast, I can't feel the force of the impact, my ankle pushing all of the memory of the attack into the future, as if I can use movement and power to shove emotion through time. Fletch absorbs all the force, body holding steady.

  “Again!” Michael shouts, his word unnecessary, as I one-two punch the bag bare knuckled, then kick twice, finally pulling back to do another Thai te tat roundhouse kick, imagining Rico's jaw moving forward in time, as if I could protect every threatened human being in the world with my body.

  As if that's my responsibility.

  “Now go after Fletch.”

  I stop.

  “What?”

  “It's okay,” Fletch says, opening his arms as if inviting me to fight. “I can take whatever you've got.”

  “I don't want to fight you! You're not Rico!”

  “No, but I want to catch the emotion, Fiona,” Michael explains. “We're going for authenticity here.”

  “This isn't authentic!”

  “It's as close as we can get.”

  “I don't want to beat Fletch up!”

  He chu
ckles. “That isn't happening again, Feisty. Not this time.”

  The word Feisty is a red flag waved in front of a bull.

  No, he's not Rico. And manufactured rage really, really isn't my thing. Absurd and over-the-top, the idea that I'm supposed to “fight” Fletch to reproduce the energy of what happened with Rico so a corporation can turn me into a commercial overloads my circuits.

  And then I realize how I can use this.

  Trauma loops in the psyche precisely because it has nowhere else to go. One of my child psychology continuing education classes taught us that re-enacting the trauma with a safe adult present, or with enough distance to re-imagine a safer outcome, can let the trauma release.

  Fletch is about as safe as you can get.

  Motioning his fingers toward me, hands out in a fighter's embrace, his eyes blaze and his saucy grin turns me into that very Feisty I've been trying to escape.

  Rico crossed a big line. A bold line. Arguably, the line of my life.

  Don't mess with people I love.

  Especially when they can't fight back.

  I charge Fletch, channeling it all, giving him what he's asking for.

  He moves as I plow into the bag, my body still unable to attack him directly, his hands on my waist as I spin. Dropping to the ground, I use my lower position to twist out of his grasp, leg cocked and ready, but he's fast.

  So fast.

  Sweat sprouts all over my body like someone's misting me, the sudden crush of hormones, heat, and the pounding physicality of what we're doing making me wet.

  In more ways than one.

  I'm a mixture of revulsion and arousal, hating myself for feeling this way as his arms encircle me, my mind split between re-igniting the terror of the preschool attack and the very real, visceral feel of Fletch's skin against mine, welcoming the rutting, animal-like push of his slick thigh muscles against my arm as I fight him, working to pin him.

  Failing miserably.

  By the time we're done, this scrimmage is a joke, his body pressing me into the ground, arms immovable, my breath heating his nose as he looks down on me with a grin.

  And then that fades.

  Replaced by the unfiltered expression of a man who is falling. Falling, falling, falling into me.

  Like time itself has collapsed.

  And the sheer force of attraction is how we propel ourselves forward.

  “This is great!” Michael shouts from the sidelines, the click click click of his shutter breaking the silence, Fletch's hips digging into mine, his hardness making it clear how he feels about me.

  He doesn't move. My wrists are pressed into the mat, my hair tugging at the roots, caught under my shoulder blades.

  “See?” he whispers in the space between us. “Not happening again. You kicked my ass in seventh grade. But we're not tweens now, are we?”

  As he says the words, my nipples harden, a yearning in the form of flesh centering between my legs. All I want to do right now is wrap my ankles around his waist and be screwed four ways to Sunday.

  If that's even really a thing.

  “No,” I gasp, fighting and failing to be freed. “We're not. And if we're not, then what are we?”

  “You tell me, Fiona. What are we?”

  All the oxygen in the room rushes out. I'm left in space, floating, aimless and without anchor.

  Jolene was wrong.

  So wrong.

  Space isn't my friend. It's my enemy. It's where everything safe becomes dangerous.

  Where Fletch becomes the good guy.

  The hot guy.

  The I-need-him-in-me guy.

  And where it's all caught on camera.

  Because this journey started there, with Rico and cameras and people watching me because they can.

  As Michael shoots photos and dictates angles, all I feel is Fletch's rum-THUM-rum-THUM beat, his heart against mine, telling me stories that go back seventeen years.

  Before my heart wall had turrets. Before my heart wall had defenses and gun mounts and cannons.

  Before I had a wall around my heart at all.

  The kiss comes, unexpected but oh, so right. Fletch's mouth is inevitable, lips on mine like fate herself stepped into the frame and ordered us to do this. Logically, it makes no sense, but emotionally, it’s what the universe dictates, the kiss aligning so many layers of my being that it's almost painful how perfect this is.

  His hands loosen at my wrists, one threading its way through my hair, tugging just enough to break the sensuality of this moment, but also brutal enough to make my hips rise up and beg for more. His tongue is exploring me like no good guy should, nothing but bad and filthy and raunchy and a promise of slick, hot, no-holds-barred sex if I just let him in, just let him try, just let him–

  Just plain old let him.

  But first, I have to let myself.

  “Excellent!” Michael shouts, lights suddenly bright and exposed, the kiss's magic ruined by the realization that we've been on camera the entire time, used and manipulated for the sake of a commercial.

  Suddenly, the price paid to me for this is not enough.

  “Um,” he says as I push him off me, eyes jumping everywhere and nowhere, my body so dysregulated, it doesn't know how to act like a human made of flesh and bone.

  “No,” I whisper, the word getting louder the next time I say it. “No.”

  “No, what?” he asks, running a hand through his hair, spiking it in places where it's wet.

  “Just no.”

  “Did I… was that not what you… because Fiona, Jesus, I–”

  “You didn't do anything I didn't want.”

  Shoulders relaxing, he smiles at me.

  Until I say:

  “And that's the problem. I shouldn't want this at all.”

  Chapter 9

  We're settling in for morning circle, the children in their slippers, Jahra and Janelle ready to start passing the sacred stone, when Mattie looks at me innocently and asks, “Miss Fiona, are you going to marry my Uncle Chris?”

  “Huh?” I'm finishing my sip of tea as Mattie asks. Nineteen children turn to me, eyes curious.

  Michelle and Ani's eyes have questions.

  “My mommy told Uncle Chris that he should kiss you again. When people kiss, it means they want to get married. Are you going to marry Uncle Chris?”

  “If she does, then Miss Fiona will be your cousin,” JoJo says with the gravity of someone who is completely wrong but has no idea.

  “Not cousin. Aunt!” Myles calls out.

  Half the students look at him in amazement. He's saying something unscripted.

  And it's correct.

  “I am not,” I say, a frog in my throat, “I am not going to talk about my private life.” Unfortunately, I’m not really ready to explain what that means to a group of four-year-olds.

  “Is that like our private parts?” Jahra asks, looking at her lap with narrowed eyes.

  “No, I don't mean–”

  “Did Mattie's uncle give you a safe touch or an unsafe touch, Miss Fiona?” Janelle is in fiery warrior princess mode.

  “He–”

  “Private is personal! Adults don't touch you in your private places!” Myles shouts.

  Michelle and Ani exchange a look.

  I wave my hands. “All eyes here,” I declare, and they follow my command, which makes me feel, for a shred of a second, like I have some sliver of control. “We are not going to talk about me, or Mattie's uncle. We are here to learn about ferrets and pineapples today.”

  “Do ferrets eat pineapples?”

  “Are ferrets from Hawaii? My grandma went to Hawaii and ate pineapples.”

  “When I eat pineapples, my tongue falls off.”

  “Does not!”

  “Does too!”

  “Then how can you talk? I see your tongue!”

  As the standard bickering begins, I breathe a sigh of relief. Whew. Saved from four-year-old curiosity by four-year-old arguing.

  Michelle takes t
he peace stone gently from Janelle, who has dropped it unceremoniously next to her foot so she can enter into the fray, and says in a calm, authoritative, nonjudgmental voice, “I have the stone.”

  The class goes quiet.

  We spend the next two hours moving through work cycles, a group effort to test the hypothesis that ferrets don't lose their tongues when they eat pineapple. Myles's mother helpfully lent me their family's pet ferret for this lesson, though I hadn't planned to feed it pineapple. I've done enough research to explain to the children that ferrets are carnivores and cannot digest fruits easily.

  “But can he have a taste? Fairy the ferret really, really, really wants some!” JoJo squeaks as the animal wiggles in my hands.

  “No!” Myles says, gleeful and excited to know something he can contribute. “He will be sick! We want him to be happy! Sick is not happy!”

  “But I am happy when I eat pineapple,” JoJo argues.

  “You're not a ferret,” Ani reminds her.

  “I could be!”

  Tap tap tap

  Every student looks up, so startled as a group that two empty chairs behind standing children pitch backwards and fall with a muted thump on the braided rug. We all follow the source of the sound.

  It's the front door.

  Through the glass, Fletch waves, a big smile on his face.

  “Uncle Chris!” Mattie gasps, running for the door at breakneck speed. Ani opens it.

  “He is your husband!” JoJo shouts, just as Fletch walks in the door.

  Mattie hugs his legs, looks up, and asks his uncle, “Are you and Miss Fiona gonna have a baby?”

  Fletch looks at me, eyes wide. “I don't know. Are we?”

  Before I can even try to regain composure and respond, Jahra walks to me, places her ear on my belly, and thumps once, hard enough to make me oof!

  “No,” she announces. “She's not fat enough. And the baby didn't kick me.”

  “But you kissed her!” Miguel shouts, pointing at Fletch like he's the suspect in a murder. “That's how babies are made!”

  Eyebrows up, Fletch looks to me for an explanation.

  I got nothin'.

  Clap clap!

  Ani's gesture saves the day as she gets everyone to simmer down. “It's time to wash hands and get ready for lunch,” she says.