Shhh...Mack's Side

by Jettie Woodruff

“It’s not real, Mack. It’s not real,” I told the empty room, trying to calm the adrenaline running through my veins at a rapid speed. The only way to describe it is to imagine those times when something horrific has happened. That first initial response of a disaster. A close accident, missing an oncoming driver by centimeters. You get that rush that takes a while to dissipate and even out the nerves. Your muscles turn to jelly and your heart beats from your chest.

  It had been a while since it had gotten this bad. I just wanted the day to come and go, so I could move on with my life. I had a magazine to lay out.

  “It’s not real. It’s not real. Seven. Seven. Seven years. Seven days in a week. Jesus preformed seven miracles on the Sabbath day. Lucky number seven. It’s not real. Seven Wonders of the World. Seven continents. It’s not real. Seven colors in a rainbow. Seven rows in the periodic table. There are seven deadly sins. It’s not real. Seven years of bad luck when you break a mirror. Rome was built on seven hills. It’s not real. Seven astronauts were killed in the Challenger. Seven dwarfs. Seven year itch. The 7-eleven on the corner has grape slushy’s. The opposite dots of a dice add up to seven. It’s not real.” I breathed long, deep breaths, forcing my mind to venture to safer places. The number seven. The number of years Mr. Nichols had served thus far.

  “You look like shit. You okay?” Colton asked.

  “Yup, let’s get started,” I ordered, avoiding eye contact.

  “We have a month. Chill out. Get her some coffee, Jane,” Colton teased, turning to our boss and York Fancy’s Editor in Chief. She flipped him off and passed the buck down to her assistant.

  “Make coffee in the conference room. We’re going to be there for the next month,” Jane ordered Adina.

  I spent the day with Colton and Jane, mostly listening to the chatter about new trends, old trends, what worked last year, what to do different. Both Colton and Jane went through photo after photo, searching, sorting, tossing, un-tossing.

  “Do you have anything to say about this at all?” Jane finally asked.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well today. I’ve got a killer migraine. I’m going to take a break and grab a sandwich.”

  Jane looked down to her designer watch, taking up three inches of her wrist. “Okay, that’s a good idea. I need you on board, McKenzie. We have to pull this off.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

  My entire week went that way. Sleep was virtually impossible. I knew what I had to do, but I was trying to hold out as long as I could, hoping my creative mind would kick in without doing it. I talked to Lila about it the first time I had seen her. I explained how I would come off my meds when I needed to be creative, or like now. When I needed sleep. I was so tired. I needed sleep. She made me promise to never ever do that, explaining how dangerous it could be for me. She had no clue.

  I could use Colton. I just had to work up the audacity to do it. It wasn’t like he didn’t know. He found out once when we were working on a photo shoot in L.A. It wasn’t on purpose. My medication was sitting on my bathroom sink in New York. I remembered getting them ready to go, but I couldn’t remember packing them.

  It was the first year Mr. Nichols was up for parole and my sleep was replaced with visions of the trial and wind chimes. I was going on four, nonconsecutive hours of sleep in three days. Colton and I had just worked a twelve hour day, and I was exhausted. I went back to my room, bathed and fell into bed. I sat up when I realized the fuzzy feeling I felt in my head was due to not taking my medicine. I forgot to take it that morning, so it was already starting. Digging through my purse, barely lifting my head from the pillow, I searched for the three bottles of pills, knowing I had better take them before I started going crazy. I didn’t want Colton to see that side of me. He wouldn’t understand, and he would probably tell Jane. They weren’t there. I searched everywhere, dumping the contents of my purse to the floor. I panicked and called Lila. I had to have them. The best she could do was the following morning.

  By the time morning had rolled around, I was higher than a kite. No sleep, and an adrenaline buzz I hadn’t felt in years. I had so much energy and I felt enlightened. I worked the photo shoot like a mad lady that day, taking over jobs that weren’t mine, and getting it done. I even ripped the sleeves off a four thousand dollar dress. Lila almost had to pay for it, but everyone loved it and she got out of it. That was one of the times Jane voiced her appreciation. She loved my work and what I had done.

  Colton on the other hand, was right there with me. He knew something was up. I wasn’t me. I’m not sure who I was, but at the end of the day and the reflection staring back at me through the tinted glass, said a lot.

  “I look like I just finished having sex,” I laughed to Colton, tucking my shirt back inside my dress slacks, sliding back into my heels, and pulling my hair back into a messy bun on top of my head. I didn’t remember taking my shoes off.

  “You look like you’re on something. What are you taking, Kenzie?”

  “Don’t you call me that. Don’t you ever call me that,” I said, turning on him like a mad woman.

  “Whoa, all right, chill out.”

  Why did I say that? Why didn’t I like that name? Why didn’t I like it? I stumbled past Colton in a daze, seeing gray spots. Blinking them away, I made my way to the hotel, forgetting about the prescription that I didn’t need. Love was everywhere. Life was beautiful and nobody wanted to hurt anyone. I didn’t need to be on medicine.

  I smiled, stopping directly in front of the little girl. “Cara, you’re so big. You’re growing into a little girl. You’re so pretty, baby,” I said, squatting to pick her up.

  A lady grabbed her away from me and someone grabbed me. “Sorry about that, sorry, she’s not herself today,” Colton said, leading me away from the woman staring at me in disbelief.

  “Did you see her, Colton?”

  “What the hell are you on?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked, looking at all the faces. Everybody was the same. They were happy. Everyone was happy, walking along the busy sidewalk, wearing smiles.

  Colton insisted on staying with me while I showered. He said he wasn’t leaving me until I came down from whatever the hell I was on. I wasn’t on anything. I was high on life. I poured a glass of wine and drank it in three gulps.

  “Go take a shower. You don’t need wine.”

  I showered, feeling the warm water flow over my skin. Even the water was happy. It felt like a stream of baby powder, caressing every inch of my body. The shampoo smelled as though I was standing in a field of roses. Pink ones. I liked pink.

  “Who was that?” I asked Colton, who was on my phone.

  “You take medicine, McKenzie?”

  “What?”

  “That was someone named Lila. She said I need to get your meds. What’s wrong with you?”

  Laughing, I twirled in a circle, dropping my robe. “Nothing. Everything is awesome. Let’s play,” I sang, wrapping my naked body in his arms.

  “Put your clothes on. We have to get to the pharmacy.”

  “No. Let’s not do that. Let’s do this,” I said, licking his bottom lip with my tongue before dipping it inside. I felt the area between my legs come to life in an instant. He kissed me back and tightened the hold he had around me.

  “McKenzie. Stop. I don’t know what’s going on here, but you need to stop. Let’s go get your medicine.”

  “Colton, you’ve been eye fucking me since I started with York Fancy. You slide your crotch across my ass every chance you get. You’re constantly staring at my breasts and making eyes at me. Tell me you haven’t thought about this.”

  “I’m a lot older than you.”

  “Who gives a shit? You’re not marrying me. You’re just going to get it in.” I knew I had him as soon as I felt the girth on my hipbone come alive. He looked down at me, trying to walk away. I swayed my hips, trying get him to not walk away, convincing the hardness between his legs m
ore so than his mind.

  And there you go. Proof that men think with their dicks.

  Colton shoved me to the bed and spread my legs, devouring my mouth with his. His touch was magic, like a pathway to happiness. We were communicating through our experience, our minds, our souls, and our bodies. Everything was enlightened. When his hands made their way to the wet folds between my legs, I moaned, but moved them away from me, feeling like I was floating.

  I can’t accurately describe it with words. Psychotic drugs. That might help. I was on an unfamiliar state of consciousness. Higher than a kite. Everything felt liberal, material things meant nothing. This beautiful life was about love. Love like Colton and I were sharing now. Everything was brilliant and intense. I noticed things I never paid attention to before. Like the great detail of the buildings outside my high-rise hotel room. I noticed the architecture when I dropped my head, slowly moving my naked body in twisting motions. Wanting to keep the feeling between Colton and me. I may have been the one hallucinating, but he saw it, too. He felt what I was feeling. I could see it in his brown eyes.

  “I don’t know if I should do this, McKenzie,” Colton rasped hot words to my chest while I moved his fingers away from my clitoris.

  “Then get out of my room, Colton. I am going to find someone who doesn’t give a shit about morals.”

  “I’m not letting you go wandering around L.A. like this. No strings, right?”

  I blew out a puff of air. He was so weak. I had him before he ever entered my room and he didn’t even know it. I was using him, not the other way around.

  “Do you really think I’m that girl?” I asked, keeping his hand from touching me. I noticed I had lost some of my muscle control and felt extremely relaxed. I wondered if I really was moving that slow, or was it the effect of abruptly coming off my meds? The lights. They were sooooo pretty. They glowed, illuminating neon colors.

  Colton’s touch from his fingers running down my spine caused me to buckle, arching my back away from him and my ass in the air. I don’t know what the hell I was doing. I wanted him to touch me everywhere. My body longed for that touch, that drug of choice. It was so intense like I needed him to touch every inch of me. That wasn’t the first time I had experienced this. It was the weirdest thing. I felt like I would die if he didn’t touch every inch of me, the longing for it was strong and powerful.

  I never once told Colton what to do with words. I held the reins and directed him with my body and my eyes, moving his hands down my hips. I rolled to my side, slid his hand down my leg and to my ankle. It was like he knew. His hands caressed their way down my legs, to the bottoms of my feet, all the way to my toes.

  I didn’t care that this position left me vulnerable and exposed. I wanted him to see me there. I twisted my hips and spread my lips for him to look at me. His eyes were part of the magic. My lower extremities ached with the pleasure of him looking. After guiding his hands or his lips to every part of my body. I sat up, pulling away from him. He stood, too, quickly removing his clothes. I spread my legs for him and watched while his erection was freed.

  “Don’t touch it. Just look at it,” I whispered. Colton dropped to his knees between my legs and blew warm breaths to my throbbing nub. “Don’t touch it,” I teased, moving my hips close to his mouth. He was in the same high trance that I was. He stared at it, obeying like a dog in training, waiting for permission to tear it up. I spread my legs as wide as I could, and rocked on my heels, coming closer and closer to his mouth. “Don’t touch it,” I taunted in a whisper.

  I played this game for hours, telling him what to do with my body. When I nodded, he licked me. When I pulled his hair, he stopped. When I shoved my hips toward his, he slid inside me. When I wanted to watch, I rolled him to his back and rode up and down his shaft, watching with every stroke. I spread my lips, showing him my clit when I noticed him watching, too. I’d never seen that look on Colton before. It was pure, dirty, sinful lust. That was the look I was after. Victory was won and I carried the torch. He ate out of my hand and I fed him the poison with my overactive mind and sensitive body.

  The kind of sex Colton and I had was dangerous. The kind a husband and wife have while learning and experiencing each other over years of sleeping in the same bed. I had him doing things that I never did, not even while I was married for six whole months. I wanted him to use and abuse every opening in my body. I came more times than humanly possible, and when he did, I found it incredibly fulfilling to spread his essence around my body. With both hands, I coated my breasts with his come.

  Colton was amazing in bed. Colton did everything right. It wasn’t that at all. I don’t know what it was, but it was messed up. I didn’t feel fulfilled. Not at all. There are a lot of reasons why I would never be like the rest of society, marry a good man, have kids, and live in the suburbs, but that was another reason. I was never satisfied after sex. During, yes. After, I hated myself and wanted to take it back.

  I crashed that night harder than I had in weeks. When I woke, all of my prescriptions were on my nightstand, plus one.

  Eighteen hours later.

  Colton never said a word.

  “We were going to discuss the visions. You said you were around ten when they started?” Lila questioned. I studied her seventy-something face, wondering where life had taken her. How she had come to settle in this profession, listening to crazies like me, trying to live in a great big world and blend in. That’s all I had to do, blend in. I looked at the new message from my mother and ignored it. She wanted me to write the letter. I would write the letter. I had until the end of the month. I’d do it when I had time.

  “Yes. I was around ten. I was at Gia’s house that night and I was woken by wind chimes. I hear them all the time.”

  “Now?”

  “Well, not right this second, but at night.”

  “And where was the wind chimes coming from?” Lila asked.

  I stood and moved behind her desk. “I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “I keep having this vison where I’m on a beach with Gia, and I’m trying to find her. I can see the blue water at my feet, but to look up it’s dark, like in the evening, but not completely dark. I’m in something. Like a little building or something. Gianna calls my name, over and over, looking for me, but she doesn’t find me. I watch through a window while she walks up the steps and into the house. That’s where the wind chimes are. I see them above her head. Somebody is there with me, but I don’t know who. That’s when I wake up. Terrified. Do you think something happened when I was a little girl or something?”

  “No. I think we need to talk about the rape. I think you’re visions are suppressed nightmares of bottled up memories.”

  “Maybe,” I decided. I still wasn’t talking about the rape. I couldn’t describe that night one more time. This wasn’t my first rodeo. I knew how to manipulate therapists, well, maybe not Lila. She had a way of getting me to say things I never talked about with anyone else. I had been to enough of these doctors in my life to know how to maneuver around the things I didn’t want to discuss. I didn’t want to discuss any of them. I wouldn’t, had I been able to find someone to give me my meds without a shrink. Unfortunately, my condition called for therapy along with meds. Lucky me.

  “Fine, we’ll work up to that. Did you vacation with Gia and her family?”

  “Yes, we did everything together.”

  “I feel that you were raised in a very unhealthy environment, McKenzie. I feel like you were raised to be a fake.”

  That made me laugh. “You don’t even know. You think our mothers competed before, you should have seen it once Gia and I started cheering and dance. I wanted to play basketball. My mom made me go out for dance and cheer competition. That’s what Gia wanted to do. By the time I was ten, I stopped fighting it. I wasn’t going to win anyway. I did try to talk to Gia about it one day. We were on the tire swings Kyle hung for us in the corner of her yard.

  “Gia?” I questioned, reaching for the rope on her swing
.

  “Yeah?” she replied, doing the same to mine. We worked hard, swerving our bodies, trying to entwine our ropes so we could spin around and around, out of control.

  “You think your mom wants to be like my mom?”

  “No. Your mom wants to be like my mom. She always has to get what my mom has.”

  “No she doesn’t.”

  “Yes she does. My mom said so.”

  Gia and I had the whole “my dad can beat your dad up” fight, and went to our own homes. That lasted an hour. It was summer. We were bored. We pretended to be mermaids in an underwater forest, deciding to leave the grownups to their competition, placing Gia and me right in the middle.

  Gia and I were closer than ever during those years. We shared a lot. Like talent. We were both good at dance and cheer competitions. I’d say Gia was probably a little better than me. My legs had reached this awkward, lanky stage. Gia was easier to toss around. I would never say I loved competing in this thing that our mothers became obsessed with, but it was fun. Gia loved it. Gia worked me to the bone in our backyards. That’s about the time I became infatuated over Gia’s dad. Not in a sexual kind of way. It was more for the attention. He gave it to me.

  We were eating takeout on Gia’s patio one evening after school when my mom mentioned to my dad about getting me a trampoline for the back yard so I could practice my flips.

  “That’s a good idea, Kyle. We should get Gia one too,” Melanie suggested.

  Kyle walked behind me and draped his arms over my shoulders. “Can you tell these two quacks that you and Gia are joined at the hips? Explain to them we could buy five trampolines and you’re going to both be on the same one,” he teased, letting me go. Kyle made me feel like my dad didn’t. Even that day. My dad was trying to get him to talk about a bid or something. Kyle told him it was the weekend. He wouldn’t discuss it.

  They argued about it and Kyle told him to stop doing all that he does. I felt rejected, listening to him accuse my dad of doing twice as much as he was paid to do. He sacrificed time with me to work countless hours that he wasn’t paid to do. Kyle didn’t do that. I often wondered how Kyle had so much time to be a dad and have fun when they worked at the same company. My dad worked so much because he wanted to. To stay away from me and my mom.