Feisty

by Julia Kent

  I have more than enough, now.

  “When I saw you in your classroom after Rico tried to take Mattie, something in me broke and grew at the same time, Fiona,” he rasps against my cheek. “I knew Mattie was safe, over in the woods with the cops, but they wouldn't let me over there yet. So I came upon you and so help me, Fiona, the first thought I had was Please don't let her be hurt. Because I knew I'd have to kill my own brother-in-law with my bare hands if he hurt you or anyone else in that classroom.”

  “He didn't.”

  “Because you are you. I know you hate that stupid nickname I gave you back in seventh grade, but you are Feisty. Feisty with a big F, feisty with a little f. You're fierce and you fight and you're so goddamn free, Fiona. I saw it in you when we were kids. It's like you glow, even when you don't have a reason to. You just can't help it.”

  He presses his palm against my heart. “I've never met someone so easy to be around. Someone who I know is pure good, no matter what. You had that since the day I met you. You'll have it until the last day on Earth I see you. I want that day to take as long as possible to happen. I want to be in your life for as long as you'll let me.”

  I shut him up with a kiss, tears streaming down the sides of my face, the need to touch his skin greater than the need to hear him say another word. We're on the precipice of saying the word love, and as much as I feel it, it's too soon, too rushed, too something.

  I need more time, even when it feels like we've known each other in past times, and what I want more than anything is to show him how I feel, with my body, with my bare soul, with my naked lust. His hands slide around my waist, pulling me up, into him, splitting my thighs until the full thickness of him is hitting the perfect spot, making me rise up, up, up, gasping as a climax begins, his mouth on mine, his lips suddenly at my nose, biting my earlobe, then stopping.

  He licks his lips. “Salt. Are you crying?” His hold on me lessens. “Fiona, I don't want you to do anything you don't want.”

  “No! The tears–they're happy tears.” On tiptoes, I kiss him, his uncertainty melting as I decide to be bold, stroking him outside his jeans, eliciting a groan that vibrates straight between my legs.

  “You're killing me. I'm ready to make love to you right here, in the snow.”

  “I'm not exactly interested in having a popsicle inside me.”

  “For as much blood as I have in there, no way is it anywhere close to frozen.”

  “How about we go back to that nice, warm bed at the cabin?”

  “You're on,” he says, stiffly lifting one boot, then the other, as we waddle-race back to the cabin, grabbing his bear stick, the beer and wine and hauling it back.

  As we approach the cabin, a loud thump on the wall on the left gives us pause.

  “That was loud,” Fletch says, brows knitting. He opens the front door just as we hear Mallory scream a muffled, “Oh, my GOD!”

  Thump!

  Our eyes meet and we burst into laughter, Fletch grabbing my arm as if he needs me to keep him up as he folds in half.

  “They're loud in bed, huh? Who knew?” he hisses.

  “Will! Oh, my GOD!” she screams again.

  Thump thump!

  The wall seems to shake, a giant thump making pictures in the hallway quiver on the walls.

  “I can’t make it stop!” Will cries out.

  “Can it get in?” Mallory squeals.

  “I don’t think so, but it’s determined!”

  “Where are Fletch and Fiona? We need them to see this!”

  “No. No, we don't,” Fletch says, horrified. “Were we invited to a swinger's weekend and didn't know it?”

  In unison, our phone notifications go nuts. I guess I can get a signal here after all.

  I look at my screen. It's nothing but texts from Mallory.

  THUMP!

  “Bear?” Fletch says, squinting at his phone.

  I look at mine.

  There's a bear in our bedroom. And we're trapped in the closet. Help!

  “What does she mean, bear? Is that a euphemism for–”

  “MALLORY!” I scream as Fletch raises his stick behind him, like a parking lot barricade, holding me back. “WILL!”

  “FIONA! HELP! BEAR!”

  And then their bedroom door opens two inches, the brown snout of a small bear poking out.

  “Holy shit,” Fletch says, holding onto the stick, inserting himself between me and the–

  Bear?

  Chapter 16

  Yes.

  Bear.

  “MALLORY!” I scream as the bear backs up. My shout scared it.

  “FIONA! FLETCH!” she shouts back. “Thank God! Help!”

  “Where are you?” Fletch yells.

  “IN THE CLOSET!” Will bellows.

  The door's cracked slightly, the glimpses of dark fur roaming back and forth making it clear the bear's not full grown. Which means there's a mama nearby.

  “That's a cub,” Fletch says, as if reading my mind. “An older one, maybe a year or so. I need to get him out of there. Fast.”

  “The mama is close, isn't she?”

  “I guess. All I know is they stay with their mothers for about two years.” He turns toward the door. “HOW DID IT GET IN?” he shouts.

  “WILL WAS CLEANING THE GRILL AND IT APPEARED!” Mallory screams.

  “We ran for safety and hid in here!” Will adds.

  The bear startles, banging against the open door, shutting it again.

  “Hang on!” Fletch says. “Stop shouting! Just text!”

  He pulls out his phone and starts a group text with: We're scaring it and keeping it in the bedroom with the screaming.

  OK, Mal texts back. But I'm scared too. And I think it peed in my shoes.

  “You,” Fletch says to me as he holds the hiking stick like a baseball bat. “Go in our bedroom. Lock the door. Shove the bed against it. And don't come out until I tell you it's okay.”

  “What?”

  “I don't want you getting hurt.”

  “You think you can single-handedly He-Man your way through getting a bear out of the cabin? No way. You need my help.”

  Bzzz

  Use a stick to open the bedroom door. It wants to leave and can't figure it out, Will texts.

  I'll lure it out the front door with some food, Fletch replies.

  Use the taco stuff, Will answers as I type, Use taco fixings.

  Will and I are on the same wavelength. I see I have a Taco Ally.

  Fletch gives me a funny, incredulous look.

  None of this would be happening if we'd gone to that ski resort with the couples stone massage and the CBD-oil options! Mallory texts, adding nine red angry faces after.

  You said you wanted to try something new, Will replies.

  THIS IS NOT MY IDEA OF NEW! she answers in all caps.

  “Aren't they sitting in a closet right next to each other? Are we seriously stuck watching them textfight?” I ask Fletch, who moves to the fridge.

  “I'll get the damn bear out of there and ignore the rest,” he sensibly states. “Must be feeding before hibernating at the end of the month. Biggest worry is the mama. If she shows up, we're toast.” He eyes the front door.

  I walk toward it.

  “No!”

  “Why? I'm looking to see if she's out there. We have to open the door to get the baby out. Right now, we're all reasonably safe, Mallory's shoes aside. If we open that door to shoo the baby out and she's there, we escalate this.”

  He tilts his head as he looks at me. “You would make an excellent first responder. You can triage a situation damn well.”

  “I'm a preschool teacher. My entire day is nothing but triage.”

  THUMP! THUMP!

  The bedroom door shakes on its hinges, the young bear making huffing sounds, the distinct scrape of claws on wood making my back teeth ache.

  I close my eyes.

  I imagine the bear.

  I ask my ancestors for help.

  I summ
on the energy and light force of all beings and I synchronize.

  Slowly, I walk to the window, eyes barely open, and look out. Fletch is holding a container of blueberries and a piece of frozen salmon.

  “No, mama. Stay away, mama,” I tell the mother bear.

  “You see her?”

  “No. I'm telling her to stay away.”

  “Why are you–”

  THUMP!

  “It's safe,” I tell him, hand on the front door.

  “You open the door and run into our bedroom. I'll throw the food on the porch, then I'll open Will's bedroom door and run. You got that?”

  “Yes.”

  He grabs my arm. “I mean it. You RUN into our bedroom and lock the door, no matter what.”

  Adrenaline races through me, the feeling old and familiar. My arms and legs feel numb and electric at the same time, Fletch's protective intensity making it hard to argue.

  Because he's right.

  “What about you?” I beg, worried sick that something could go wrong.

  “I'll be fine. I can run outside if I need to, or tip the couch over and get under it. I'll grab that pan,” he points to the clean cast-iron skillet on the stove, “and bang it against something metal to scare it. The thing just wants to leave.”

  “Okay.”

  “You ready? Open the door, run to our bedroom, shove the bed in front of the door. That's all you have to do, babe.”

  I nod and grab the doorknob.

  “One, two, THREE!” he shouts, my hand turning the knob, opening the door all the way, hoping it doesn't ricochet back. Sprinting to our bedroom door, I look back to see Fletch fling the food outside, then run to Will and Mal's bedroom, opening that door and leaping back with the stick, grabbing the skillet and–

  The bear comes rumbling out, sniffing, racing toward the door. Musk, thick and pungent, fills the air, making me stare, encased in a cloud of energy that feels wildly present yet dangerously distant.

  The animal makes a beeline for outside.

  Without thinking, instinct makes me race back to the front door, Fletch beating me to it, shutting it hard, his back against it.

  The bear, I see through the window, devours the food on the porch and sniffs at the door.

  “GO AWAY, BEAR!” I shout, slapping the window a few times.

  It runs off, looking back once with a sad face.

  “JESUS CHRIST FIONA THAT WASN'T THE PLAN!” Fletch yells at me.

  “I COULDN'T EXACTLY DROPKICK IT!” I scream, shocked by his fury. Being yelled at by someone I'm close to isn't in my repertoire. In my family, we don't yell.

  Ever.

  “IT COULD HAVE COME BACK AND HURT YOU!” He grabs my shoulders, pure fear in his eyes, his energy a ball of fiery orange, like sunspots.

  “STOP IT! STOP SCREAMING AT ME!!!”

  And then I'm in his arms, my face in his chest, his heart beating so fast, it's like a freight train, the thump of it against my eye socket like a ball peen hammer to the skull.

  “I wasn't there the day Rico went nuts and almost got Mattie. Candi never told anyone what was going on. I couldn't stop him from hurting her, or Mattie. You stopped him that day. You and you alone, Fiona. But you don't have to be alone anymore and I have a hell of a lot more to lose now than I did a month ago. So damn it, don't do that again. Don't put yourself in danger right in front of my eyes when I can't do a damn thing about it. Please. Please,” he says, voice choked with emotion, as Will and Mallory emerge from their bedroom, wide-eyed and completely freaked out.

  Mallory clings to him, her shock evident. “Did that just happen?”

  “It did,” Will says definitively, holding a large lamp in the hand not touching her. “Bear's gone?”

  “Completely gone,” Fletch informs him. “We got him out. Door locked.”

  I'm sobbing, the tears coming hard, so hard, as he holds me. It's difficult to breathe and I don't care, because every moment from that day in my classroom rises up, the safe sanctuary of his arms, his visceral fear, his abject horror at all the possible ways harm can come to those we care about finally letting me face it all.

  “I–I didn't want you to get hurt,” I finally say, pulling back and hitting his chest with the heel of my hand. Our eyes meet and his are a bit teary, though he's not crying. “You ever think of that, Chris? That maybe I had something more to lose just now, too?”

  “I lost my really nice Canada Geese jacket Will got me for my birthday,” Mal says. “The bear decided to pee on that and missed my Uggs.”

  I love you, I think, blocking out Mallory's mournful ode to a coat.

  “Holy crap, that really just happened,” Will says as Fletch stares at me, the words I said sinking in, his eyes becoming kaleidoscopes of emotion. With his fingers, he strokes my cheek, running his index finger down a tear-soaked trail of skin.

  In the periphery, I see Mallory open the bottle of wine, the screw top a godsend in the moment. Unceremoniously, she drinks straight from the bottle, guzzling enough that Will stops her, but only to take it and have a few chugs, too, before handing it back and reaching for a beer.

  “Fiona... ”

  THUMP!

  Mallory screams as the front door rattles, the metal handle shaking.

  “We're safe. It can't come in,” Fletch assures her. Will moves toward her out of instinct, their arms wrapping around each other's waists.

  “It can't break the window, right?” she whispers.

  “No,” I say. “It knows we have food. We just need to scare it off.”

  “Is the car safe?” she asks.

  “We locked it,” Fletch assures her, our own communication set aside for the sake of the moment's urgency. “It can't get in, and there's no food in it. But now's as good a time as any to do this.” Letting me go, he walks over to the window on the far side of the room, opening it.

  “What are you doing?” Mal asks.

  And then Fletch begins to undo his belt.

  Eyebrows flying up, Mallory looks at me for an explanation.

  As if I have one.

  Ziiiiiip

  Fletch undoes his fly, his jeans loose at the hips, the tip of his butt crack showing. Perfect dimples top each buttock, the columns of muscle along the sides of his spine so well defined, they look carved.

  “Are you–is he–Fletch, are you peeing out the window?” Mallory hiss-screams.

  Yes.

  He is.

  “Urine perimeter,” he calls back over his shoulder. “Will, come on, man. Let's do this. Male urine is what we need.”

  “Male urine?” Mallory says, incensed. “That's sexist!”

  Will looks down at his crotch, then shrugs. “Might as well. The bear damn near scared the piss out of me, but not quite.”

  My emotions feel like they're attached to bungee cords and I just BASE jumped off a radio tower.

  Fletch sniffs the air. “Ah. Now I get it. Asparagus pee!”

  Will opens the window adjacent to Fletch's, undoes his pants and pulls them down enough to unleash that which needs to be unleashed. The sound of a second stream of urine fills the air.

  “Spray it in an arc, man. We're going for the perimeter. Can you stop your pee midstream?”

  “Why?” Will asks, the sound halting.

  “Nice. Now, let's move to the bedroom window in our room.”

  They pull back, moving toward the door to Fletch's and my room, pants still undone.

  “What on Earth are you doing?” Mallory yells at them.

  “Making a pee perimeter,” Fletch calmly explains, he and Will turning toward us, their penises tucked in but pants undone. “The scent of human male urine keeps bears away.”

  “Maybe,” Will reluctantly adds. “I'm not convinced.”

  “Then why are you doing this?” Mallory asks him.

  “Because it's a thing to do and I drank a little too much beer at dinner.”

  And with that, the guys disappear into our bedroom.

  A flaming ball of emotion,
Mallory walks over to the kitchen, grabs the half-chugged wine bottle, and offers me some. I take it, the dry white wine helping slightly.

  “Tapped!” Will calls out.

  “We need more beer,” Fletch announces. At least they had the decency to zip up this time before moving into a new room.

  How did we get from making out in the moonlit snow, to fighting off a bear, to screaming at each other, to–

  A urine perimeter?

  “You're going to drink more beer to produce more urine for your pee line around the cabin that will keep the bears at bay?” Mallory asks in a tone that makes it clear she thinks they've gone batshit crazy.

  “Yes,” they answer in unison.

  “What if we want to be part of the urine perimeter?”

  “First of all,” Fletch explains as Will hands him a cold one, “it only works with male urine. And second–”

  “How would you aim?” Will arches his hips. “Your stream would go all over the place. You'd pee down your leg. We're not being sexist, Mal,” he says, holding in a burp. “We're just being pragmatic.”

  And then he grins.

  How much beer, exactly, have these guys had?

  When you've been friends with someone for as many decades as I've known Mallory, you know what they're thinking by the simplest of details. The way the corner of her eye twitches, how her lips push out before she bites one. How she cracks her fingers just by tightening her hands into fists, then relaxes them.

  But mostly, I know exactly what Mallory's thinking because she yells: “ARE YOU INSANE, WILL?”

  “Cheers!” Fletch says to his old football buddy as the amber necks of beer bottles clink in the blissfully bear-free space of our weekend getaway, Mallory's words hanging there as we all process far too much near-death energy, the residue clinging to our skin, in our eyes, lining our noses. It's everywhere, like a dusting of ash after a fire.

  Time to clean the room.

  Quietly, I walk into the bedroom and find my suitcase, the search for the small muslin bag quite quick. Inside it, there's a series of other bags, the scent of sage and pau d'arco wafting up.

  “Can you believe those two? They're out there saying wait till Ramini and Osgood find out they warded off a bear with their bare hands,” she says, incensed. “And now they're going on about the bear/bare pun. So much for a romantic weekend of fun! They want to finish off all the beer, leave us the wine, and pee their way to wilderness man status. Grunt grunt,” she punctuates, until hysterical laughter is the only sound she makes.