by Kristen Mae
Now if I could just learn to keep my shit together and not act like an obsessed lunatic.
The next day we were back to studying Italian in Claire’s music room. It was weird, the way I felt better being near her. I figured it was easier not to obsess over her if she was right there beside me being a regular human and not some ridiculous fantasy I’d conjured from nowhere.
She was sitting on the rug cross-legged and cupping a fat coffee mug in her hands. “I think Mike is a little jealous.”
My heart tripped over itself, and then I came to my senses. He’s not jealous of you, idiot. “Really? Why?”
“Well—you remember what I said about our agreement’? She looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded slightly, commanding my heart to resume its regular rhythm.
“He’s the only one who’s acted on that agreement, if you know what I mean. And he’s the one who suggested it in the first place, way back, when we were still dating. We thought we were being very modern and hip by taking that approach to our relationship, you know?”
I nodded as if that made perfect sense to me even though I thought it was insane.
“So, fast-forward several years and he has this chance to hook up with this girl. We both knew her, and it was very casual how the whole thing happened—it didn’t feel desperate or threatening or anything. And…well, I felt, at the time, that it was something Mike needed…so it was okay.”
“But?” I tried again to imagine Oren having sex with another woman, one who could please him in ways I couldn’t. The thought made me nauseous.
“But it made me feel terrible. I was jealous. It was a weird sort of jealousy though, because I never doubted Mike’s love for me or his commitment to our relationship, not for one second. I think it was more like…like I was sort of annoyed that I didn’t also have someone else, or that he’d beaten me to the punch. I felt like he’d thrown things out of balance.”
I pursed my lips in sympathy. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to punch Mike for doing that to Claire. Dick.
Claire scrunched up her nose. “It’s bizarre, isn’t it? Anyway, that was the only time, and it was three years ago. Mike finished it after a few months because she became attached and fell in love with him. It got pretty messy, trying to extricate her from our lives. She was like a leech.”
“Ew.” My face twisted in disgust. But I thought, That’s how I would be with you—a leech. I’d have a taste and never be able to stop.
Claire just laughed. “Yeah. I think we have a different view about our arrangement now that we’ve experienced how weird it can get, but…I never got my chance. That’s how Mike sees it, anyway. He thinks I’m going to use Italy to…I dunno, get back at him or something. Find some hot Italian stud to fuck around with.”
“Well, it’s not as though you haven’t considered it.”
Imagining Claire arm in arm with a dark-featured Italian man made me want to claw my skin right off my bones. If she’d come a step closer, she would have felt bitter heat radiating off me.
She shrugged. “Meh. I’m not looking for it though. Not really. Although…” She tilted her head at the ceiling in thought. “I guess I won’t rule out the possibility.”
For the entire twenty-minute drive home, I sobbed.
ELEVEN
I was jogging along the beach, barefoot as usual, when a noise behind me attracted my attention. A small puppy followed in my wake, his long ears flouncing with glee as he galloped along on his over-sized puppy paws. Happy for his innocent companionship, I let him shadow me.
Moments later, I turned back to check on him, but he was gone. I stopped jogging and flipped my attention from the surf to the boardwalk and up and down the beach. Nothing—just endless sand and water. Then I heard a sharp yip from the water and jerked my head around to look. The little puppy was tossing violently about in the waves.
I rushed out into the water, kicking up sand with my feet and then diving into the crashing waves, as fearless as if I had always been at home in the water. He was just beyond the whitecaps, close enough that I could reach him if I swam fast enough. I paddled my arms as hard as I could and kicked furiously at the seaweed that snaked around my ankles, but the distance between me and the puppy only seemed to grow. The seaweed thickened, wrapping itself around my legs, slithering up my thighs and chest and over my shoulders, threatening to pull me under.
The puppy yipped and whined as I thrust gobs of seaweed out of my way. Now there were no more breaking waves, only an ocean of thick black seaweed rolling and swelling and gluing me in place. I tried to paddle but couldn’t move. My hands brushed against something. I grabbed at it, thinking I’d stumbled upon the puppy, but it was cold and hard, not alive. It was a plastic fashion doll, like a Barbie—but with no eyes, only craggy holes cut into her plastic face. I hugged her to me and began to cry, rocking her as well as I could in the dense, heaving seaweed.
Suddenly the doll’s hardness yielded to flesh-like softness, and she stretched into a life-sized woman, too big to hug to my chest, though I cradled her as if she were a baby. Welts and bruises covered her arms and chest. She startled to life and grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me as she stared at me with gaping, sightless sockets. She screamed in my face, but it was a silent scream, hollow and empty and far more terrifying than if sound had come out.
The seaweed sucked at my feet. I kicked with all my might to keep afloat, trying now to save both myself and this broken woman, but my weakened limbs were failing fast. The seaweed was up to my neck now, lapping and sucking at my chin and ears, then slowly closing in over my cheeks, my nose, my eyes. I clutched the eyeless woman tight in my arms as the world turned to black.
She was shaking me by the shoulders. Even as the seaweed pulled us down, drowning us, even as I stubbornly kicked my leaden legs, unwilling to give up, she shook me. No, not her. Him. Oren. He jostled me by the shoulders once more as the last bit of darkness cleared my vision and I was able to focus on his face. The clock on the bedside table said 7:19. The panic from the dream still felt very real in my belly, and my breath was as labored as if I had actually been swimming in an ocean of seaweed. I’d pushed all the pillows and blankets off the bed and managed to scrape the fitted sheet halfway off as well.
“Hazel,” Oren said, “you were making choking sounds. Dreaming.” He sat on the bed beside me and rubbed my back. “Do you want to talk about it?”
I brought my hands to my face and felt them tremble against my cheeks. I wanted to cry, but it was as if the seaweed from my dream had gotten lodged in my throat. “You have to go to work.” I was whispering—it was all I could manage.
“It can wait.” He reached for a couple of pillows from the floor and wedged them behind us. “What is going on with you lately? Tell me. Please.”
I concentrated on my breath, trying to slow it down. Oren wrapped his arms around my shoulders and leaned against the headboard with me cradled against him. My hands shook uncontrollably in my lap. I had been trying to hide the shaking from Oren, hoping it would go away, that I’d be able to manage whatever the hell was happening to me, but the dream had affected me so violently that I had no control over myself at all.
When my breath and heart had slowed a little, I started talking. First, I told Oren what I could remember from the dream—the puppy, the seaweed, how the doll had turned into a real woman and dragged me down with her. I hesitated then, not sure I wanted to go into the panic attacks I’d had recently, and if I did, how much to tell him.
He waited for a minute, but when I didn’t speak, he said, “Hazel. I know there’s more. You’ve been acting really strange lately, doing these crazy long runs, and sometimes you go all glassy-eyed, staring off at nothing. Sometimes, when you’re sitting still, you start breathing really hard. Too hard.”
Oren was never as oblivious as I thought. I sighed into his shirt and let my tears come as I told him about the puppy tied to the chair at the downtown café. He’d understand the significance, of course. I to
ld him how I’d dropped the ceramic music box I’d bought, how Claire had taken care of me and kept me from driving, and how ever since that day I’d been jittery and out of sorts.
I told him I had confided in Claire but stopped short of telling him about the dreams and images that had been plaguing me since the day we went surfing. I wasn’t going to act on the feelings anyway, so why should I confess them? It would only hurt him. But my stomach still lurched with shame at all the things I didn’t say.
I almost wasn’t sure which was worse: facing my violent past or harboring a secret lust for Claire. Even now, as I lay back in Oren’s comforting arms, I let him believe that my tears were about what had happened to me, when my real frustration was that I burned with lust for her. I fought images of my hands tangled in her curls, of her soft hand sliding up my thigh and under my skirt. I winced into Oren’s shoulder. Good god, I have to stop.
I shifted so he could slide out from under me. His lips pressed together in a thin line as he contemplated me, his blue eyes narrowed with concern. He traced my cheekbone with his finger. “You gonna be okay if I leave?”
I thought of climbing on top of Oren and giving myself to him, pouring over him what little of myself I could offer, as if that would make things better. He had to get to work, anyway—it was not like him to be late. I painted on a brave smile. “Of course. You know me; I’m strong. This is just…a temporary setback.”
“As long as you’re sure.” He tapped my nose. “But please call me if you feel overwhelmed, or call Claire. She sounds like a great person to lean on. I’m glad she’s going to Italy with you so you won’t be alone.”
I couldn’t look at him. What would he say if he could see the images of Claire’s milky white body flickering through my brain even as he spoke so highly of her? Every inch of my skin prickled with shameful lust.
After Oren left, I lay in bed a few minutes longer and listened to my breathing. Too fast. The dream, my past, Oren, Claire. I was burning up with a crazy mix of anxiety and…need. I needed to be touched and handled and grabbed and wrung out until all my relentless energy was finally expended. I checked my pulse the way I had learned in exercise class at the gym. I wasn’t watching the clock, but with my musician’s sense of tempo I estimated my heart rate at around 80 beats per minute. I had imagined it would be much higher than that, given my labored breathing.
I lay huffing and puffing until I couldn’t stand it anymore, then finally slid out of bed and turned on the shower. While the water warmed up, I stood in front of the mirror the way I’d done after the day I learned to surf. But this time was different. This time, I removed my T-shirt and underwear slower than usual, watched as the fabric peeled away and revealed the skin beneath. My chest had erupted in red splotches in response to the heat now coursing through me, and even my lips looked puffier than usual. In my mind, I separated myself from the woman in the mirror. She bit her lip at me and teased me with her eyes. Seduced me. Her fingers scraped so viciously over her taut abdomen that they left pink zigzag lines behind. She swept her palms up over her breasts, along the sides of her neck and into her hairline, then tilted her chin and exhaled a shudder of desire. That woman, she was terrifying; she looked like she wanted to devour me. I tore my eyes from her and threw my clothes in the hamper. I was shaking again.
In the shower I stood beneath the hot stream of water, letting flying droplets pelt my upturned face, my arms wrapped around myself in a vain attempt to stop the violent trembling in my hands. For a while I stood like this, letting the heat of the water soothe my tightly wound muscles. Then I opened my eyes into the stream of water and noticed the showerhead. I hadn’t given it any thought before, but it was the detachable kind, with multiple settings. I reached up and removed it. My heart thudded faster in my chest when I realized what I was about to do, as if the thought had been placed in my head by someone other than me.
I turned the setting on the nozzle to ‘pulse’ because it seemed…logical. I aimed the pulsating spray of water at the shower wall and watched for a moment as it battered the tile, and then took a deep breath and slowly turned the nozzle on myself, between my legs. The instant the water hit its target, my nerves exploded. The orgasm hit me so suddenly and with such unexpected force that I shrieked and dropped the nozzle. The showerhead wriggled away from me like a snake, spraying water in every direction as I scrambled to grab onto it, still trembling and throbbing and gasping.
When I finally got my hand around the showerhead again, I stared at the nozzle in disbelief. To be sure I’d really felt what I thought I’d just felt, I sprayed myself between the legs one more time and staggered as I let loose a primal groan that echoed off the bathroom walls.
I leaned with one hand on the wall of the shower to support myself, breathing deeply and trying to gather myself. I didn’t know whether I should feel terrible that I couldn’t have an orgasm with my doting husband or if I should be thrilled about how fun showers were going to be from now on.
I’d been running alone every day, but on Saturday morning Claire joined me on the beach. We ran silently, and I thought how, if I weren’t crazy, this would be the kind of friendship that had no awkward silences. I wondered if Claire could sense the energy buzzing all around me and was simply very good at ignoring it or if she honestly had no idea how far gone I was.
After our run, we splashed out into the ocean, and this time I didn’t almost drown. I gave myself over to the violent waves, let them beat me about, suck me under, and tumble me head over heels. It felt good to let go.
Sunday, I couldn’t find peace no matter how I busied myself. I paced the house, breathless and burning, trying to keep my hands away from my phone so I wouldn’t send Claire some insane text.
I was really starting to scare myself. It wasn’t right that I needed to be near her to feel at ease, wasn’t right that without her presence I felt like I might peel out of my skin.
Even after a six-mile run, even after a date with my shower nozzle, I was so restless and jittery that Oren—after catching me adjusting a picture frame that was not remotely crooked—finally demanded to know what was the matter. I snapped at him that maybe if he didn’t leave his things lying around all the time I wouldn’t be so obsessive about keeping the place tidy. I stomped to my music room in a huff and left him standing in the hallway dumbfounded, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
But I didn’t want to play violin. Instead, I pulled the storage bin containing my drawings and supplies out of the closet and spread fresh paper and a few pencils across my desk. Of course I drew Claire. I didn’t set out to do it, but the frustrated energy that boiled inside me flowed unprompted out of my pencil and onto the page, every graphite line of her alive with my anguish. I felt ashamed invading her that way, touching all the curves of her face and neck with my pencil. I cried as I drew her—cried freely and noisily, and after a while it seemed like some of my anxiety was being flushed out with my tears, too. I knew Oren might hear my sobs, but I didn’t care. There was no keeping it in anymore.
After twenty minutes or so, the drawing of Claire was finished, my tears had mostly dried, and I was much calmer. I stood back to observe my artwork. I’d drawn only her head and shoulders, with her chin tilted up to show the distinctive gap between her front teeth. It was a feature that would typically be considered a flaw, but no one but an orthodontist would dare suggest Claire ought to have her teeth fixed. In the drawing, as in real life, her eyes shone with joy and mischief. I was proud of how well I’d captured her spirit, impressed by my own ability. I even thought of giving her the drawing, but I didn’t want her to suspect my twisted feelings for her. I slid the drawing to the other side of my desk and covered it with a stack of papers.
Next I sketched a tree, but built into the trunk was a woman. I planted her feet in the earth, sent roots down into the soil, and drew her arms and hands as branches reaching up to the sky. I took time drawing every little piece of bark and blended the lines so the curves of the woman
could still be seen, and instead of smearing a pencil smudge to fool the eye into seeing a group of leaves, I drew each individual leaf on the tree.
I knew a lot of time had passed because when I finished the drawing I had a frantic need for the bathroom. I opened the door to the hallway and almost slammed into Oren, who was standing with his fist in the air ready to knock. “I have to pee,” I said stupidly, pushing past him. I thought of the drawings on the desk and hoped he would not move the papers that rested on top of the picture of Claire.
When I returned, Oren was no longer in the hallway, and on my desk, everything was as I had left it. I scraped the drawings together and the papers rustled strangely against each other in response to my nervous fingers. My hands hadn’t shaken, I realized, the entire time I’d been drawing.
I made a mental note to draw more.
TWELVE
Later that night, I lay beside Oren in bed, listening to him breathe the kind of breaths only awake people breathe. It was not typical of him to lay awake like that, and so I reached out to intertwine my fingers with his. At first he kept his fingers limp, but the sting I felt from his rejection must have been palpable, because he finally took pity on me and squeezed back.
I turned on my side so I was facing him and ran a finger down his bare chest, moving quickly so the tremor in my hand wouldn’t be too obvious. His chest rose more rapidly with each stroke, and his breathing became louder. After a minute, he tugged at my wrist, inviting me to straddle him. I pushed the sheet down to his thighs and settled on top of him, keeping my underwear and nightshirt on. I felt his hardness underneath me, but he made no move to encourage me to do anything about it. Normally I could feel when he expected me to respond to him, but now, with his hands resting lightly on my thighs, I couldn’t tell what he wanted. He seemed almost purposeful in his stillness. I looked down at his stomach, where his six-pack was still evident under the thin layer of fat that betrayed his march into nine-to-five adulthood.
