by J. R. Rogue
Andrew stopped and stared at me with mock shock. “I am hurt, Kat,” he declared, clutching his chest. “I’m not a player.”
“Puh-leeeeeeeease.” I drew the word out for a ridiculous moment and walked back down to the water, illuminated by his headlights. “You fit the profile,” I said, tossing the words over my shoulder, smiling at the sound of his feet crunching on gravel, following me.
“It’s not nice to stereotype people, sugar lips,” he retorted.
“Okay now you’re just trying to be ridiculous,” I said with a laugh in my voice.
“No I’m not, baby boo boo face.”
“Stop,” I howled, holding my hand up. I reached the edge of the creek, and with nowhere to go, I turned to Andrew. “No more pet names.”
“Whatever you want,” he said, with mischief in his eyes.
We stayed like that for a while, still by the water. The current moved at a steady pace past us. To the right was a swimming hole, a placid patch of water created by a large root extending from a mature tree. Hanging over it was a large rope. The moonlight in harmony with the stars and the lights of Andrew’s truck made it easy to see everything around us.
“So what are we doing out here?” I asked, knowing full well the reason behind our little trip. We had been leading up to this. So much fooling around, too much buildup. We were both ready to explode. I wanted it as much as he did, but I was a little pissed at myself. I kept telling myself, and Andrew, that I would tell Sera about our time spent together soon. And although Andrew was never serious, and I often worried that this may turn into just some fuck to him, I knew he wanted his sister to know, too.
“I like to tempt fate,” he said, reading my mind.
I was worried that we would be caught here, by his sister, but I was trying to rein my insane paranoia in these days. When I turned to Andrew, he was pulling his shirt over his head, then reaching for his shoes.
“What are you doing?” I questioned.
“Let’s swim.” He bent his head in the direction of the swimming hole.
“No way, it’s too cold!”
“It’ll warm up,” he argued, done with his shoes, reaching for the button of his shorts. “I’ll warm you up.”
He winked for added effect, and I blushed like a schoolgirl. His clothes were gone quickly after that. Everything but his boxers, and they were snug. I looked away like a shy little virgin. Everything we had done together was suddenly forgotten and I knew it was ridiculous to be coy now.
I put my hands on my hips and tapped my toe on the gravel beneath me, arguing with myself, battling it all out in my head. I needed a drink, badly. I yelled at Andrew as he walked off to the water. “Do you still have that flask in your glove compartment?”
“Yes, Kat,” he said, emphasizing my name, making sure I took note of the fact that he didn’t use a pet name.
I jogged away from his half-naked figure, walking to the water, feeling my head clear a bit when my eyes were no longer on him. I reached the truck quickly and pulled the passenger door open. I unlatched the glove compartment door and pushed aside the jumbled contents crammed inside until I found the worn metal of his flask. I unscrewed the cap and threw a shot down my throat. The burn crawling down my throat was like a slap in the face.
I reached into the truck and pulled myself onto the passenger seat to take another sip. My right heel caught on something below my seat. I moved my foot and the item slid out onto the floor mat. It was a cell phone. Andrew always said he didn’t have one, what the hell?
I bent over and reached out to grab it, my stomach lurching a bit at the sight. I pushed down on the home button of the iPhone and nothing happened. Okay, okay. Maybe this was okay. The phone could be dead, but most likely it didn’t work. It had no case and was pretty rough around the edges. It probably didn’t work, like he had said. It was the broken phone he said he couldn’t replace until he got a job. I groaned a little out loud into the truck. He didn’t have a job. I was about to go sleep with the little brother of my best friend who lived with his parents and had no job.
I knew these were things Andrew was self-conscious about, he voiced those concerns, and I had assured him it didn’t matter to me, but I was fibbing a little. It didn’t make me want to stop spending time with him, but in the long run, it was sort of a deterrent.
I reached down and shoved the phone back in its hiding place and hopped out of the truck, knowing I needed to get down to the water. I needed to get down to him and let him make me feel good.
When I made it down to the water, something dark on the gravel made me pause. I halted my steps and squinted my eyes at the object. After a moment, I realized it was Andrew’s boxers. I laughed and bellowed to him down in the water. “Oh my God, Andrew!”
“What?” he asked, laughing, knowing what I had spotted.
“Are you naked, you freak?” I accused.
“Yes, woman! Now take your damn clothes off and get in here with me!” He started splashing in the creek like a toddler who had just discovered the kiddie pool. I couldn’t hear the sound of my own laugh over the wolf like howl he let loose into the night.
I walked to the water and dipped my toe in. Oh hell no. I yelled as loudly as I could, so that the goofball in the water could hear me over his splash-fest. “It’s too cold. I’m not coming in there!”
“Woman! Are you going to leave me in here alone? What if a snake gets me?”
“Should have thought about that before you got in.” I arched an eyebrow in his direction that he had no way of seeing.
“Kat, if you don’t get in this water I won’t be giving you my snake, if you know what I mean.”
“I always know what you mean, Andrew.” I rolled my eyes. For some reason, Andrew’s constant joking about sex made the thought of our first time less terrifying. “Just get out of there!” I begged. I did not want to get into that water. My eye rested on the dark pile of fabric on the gravel. I heard Andrew yell something that sounded like “Never” as I reached for them.
I tucked the boxers into my armpit and pulled my hands to my face, cupping them around my mouth so he would clearly hear me. “Sorry, buddy, I have your underwear now. You’re going to have to come and get them.”
In response Andrew cursed and I heard the sound of water rustling my direction.
I shrieked like a teenage girl and took off for the truck at a ridiculously slow pace, given I had no shoes on. I waved Andrew’s boxers over my head like I had won a prize but I knew I would be punished for it. My heart had never been so light. I was drunk on his youth.
I heard more water splashing behind me and then the sound of feet on gravel gaining on me. When I reached the passenger side of the truck I dropped the boxers and flung the door open, stretching across the seat to reach the steering wheel to pull myself up. Before I could get my second foot off the ground, I felt Andrew’s cold, wet, naked form pressing into me. I screamed again into the seat, then started laughing hysterically.
It was when I felt the cold hard length of him pressed against my ass that the laughing stopped. My body went warm all over, and a desperate breath escaped me when Andrew brought his mouth to my ear. He pulled my lobe into his mouth, causing me to whimper a bit. I felt so much warmth building between my thighs you could probably start a fire there.
When Andrew released my ear, his husky voice filled the cab. “God, Kat, I want you.”
His desire for me was such a drug. It felt so honest. “I want you, too,” I breathed, pushing back with my hips into him.
I am not a believer in trigger warnings. I know for some they are necessary, and I will never fault someone for that. But for me, you can leave them out. I don’t need them stamped on movies or books or TV shows. There are no trigger warnings in life, and I wouldn’t change that. If there were then how would I have felt all night, how would my laughter and my wide smile have changed? How would it have changed if I knew this moment was coming?
Andrew reached down to my hip, he slipped my
clothes down, pressed his fingers into the space between my thighs, searching, and I lost my mind.
I used every bit of strength I had to push off the ground, ramming my hips into him, crushing his hand. At the same time, I flung my head back, the cracking sound of my skull making contact with his nose echoed around the cab.
I heard Andrew garble out “What the…” right as I screamed “Stop!”
When I turned around, Andrew was on the gravel, naked, staring up at me, his hand closed over his nose. Please don’t be broken. My mind was screaming. I was getting dizzy. I reached both of my hands up and clamped them over my ears, then clenched my eyes.
“What just happened?” Andrew mumbled through his hand. I opened my eyes and sunk down to the ground with him. The tears came then and for the first time I wasn’t alone when they fell. I pulled my hands back up to my face and tried to press them back into my eyes but it was useless.
In the dark, I heard Andrew pulling his underwear back on, scooting close to me. “Kat, what happened?” he asked again, tender, warm.
I couldn’t go back from this. I couldn’t keep my truth inside. So I told him.
“How long have you been working on this?” Kat asked, her eyes canvassing the roof. She walked along the edge of the building, running her hands along the brick I had painted.
“Since I got back home,” I said, stretching my arms up, wrapping my fingers around the nape of my neck, watching her move. “I come out at night to paint. It’s really run wild here, and I think I finally get that this is the way it needs to be. It’s not supposed to be here, and it’s rebelling, and there is something beautiful about it.” The garden had become a metaphor for Kat, to me. It was probably once a clipped and tidy haven for whoever had tended to it. Now it was wild and unruly. It nearly died, but it came back to life and in its natural state, it was breathtaking.
Kat was staring at me when I pulled myself from my thoughts. When I made eye contact with her, she spoke. “Do you believe places hold memories? Like people do? Maybe in the cracks, in the soil, in the air?”
“That’s a pretty romantic idea,” I started, shuffling to the bench in the center of the roof. I ran my hand along the top of the metal fixture. “So yeah, I do believe that.”
She smiled at my answer. “I do, too.” She sat down on the ledge and absentmindedly began playing with her skirt.
A summer dress was not the right attire to be climbing the side of buildings, but she had no idea this would be our destination. I should have told her, but then I wouldn’t have been rewarded with the sight before me. Her pale legs crossed at the knee. Her bare shoulders glowing in the moonlight.
I tore my eyes from her and walked back around to the front of the bench. I sat down, facing her, wanting to walk the feet between us, wanting to bend down, to wrap my arms around her waist, to breathe her in, to stop the war in my mind. Why wouldn’t I let myself just give in? I needed to focus on conversation. That’s why I took her here. There is a pull I feel when her skin is near mine. I feel coiled up, ready to pounce. It’s exhausting to fight it. Whenever I find myself in the moments after I’ve been near her, I am always filled with an ache in my shoulders, a heaviness in my hands, like I was walking around with two-ton boulders resting on my head the entire time she was speaking, breathing, or even just near me.
“What was your mother like?” I had been wanting to ask Kat this question since I came home. I learned while I was away that she had passed on. When the news reached me, hours away, I ached. I knew that the relationship the two women shared was nearly non-existent, but it was heavy.
Kat started wringing the fabric of her skirt in her hands at my question. Her voice was so low when she spoke. “You know what she was like.”
“I mean before. When you were a kid. Is there a place in this town where a good memory is still alive?”
“I don’t know really.” She shook her head.
I thought there had to be one, but she just didn’t want to admit it to herself. Or to me. Like she was afraid I would make her go there.
Kat’s mother would walk the streets below us, with an old K-Mart cart filled to the brim with her belongings. You didn’t see the homeless often in small towns like ours.
While I was away, I would lie awake and think of ways we could help her, if I decided to come home. My mother liked to put together care packages for the homeless in the city. She would pack toiletries and also notes of inspiration. She would spend nights scribbling down kind words and uplifting thoughts. I loved to help her when I came home from work, worn to the bone. She always smiled so brightly as she packed everything up. She was the warmest person I knew, and in moments like those, I wondered what she ever saw in my father.
Drugs were never a part of my life, and I admit I didn’t understand much about them. My vices in high school were drinking and sex. I didn’t run with a crowd that was into anything worse.
Kat’s parents had split up when she was a small girl. Methamphetamines had torn the marriage apart, and the court awarded her father custody. I knew their relationship was one she treasured, and I hoped to meet him one day.
For the longest time, I never knew who Kat’s mother was. I didn’t make the connection. The town had a name for her; everyone knew who she was. She would camp out in the small alleys of the square, holing up until a member of our small police department would run her off. There was a dingy laundry mat behind the Town & Country grocery store that she would frequent. If you saw her cart in the grass out front, you knew she was inside. Sometimes people would leave stray quarters and she would go in to wash some of her belongings.
I heard once that when Kat knew she was there, she would pull up and shove a twenty in the shopping cart. I wondered if her mother knew who had left it. Kat was one of those people who liked to help, and she didn’t care if she got the credit for it. Her voice pulled me from the memory.
“One day I was riding the bus home from school and we passed her in the square. Some kids in the back yelled ‘there’s crazy Carol’ and I didn’t say a word. I didn’t stick up for her. I was too afraid of what they would think of me if they knew she was my mother. I still hate that I did that.”
“You were just a kid. And kids can be mean,” I corrected.
“I know,” she said, “but those are the things you hold onto sometimes, after. I wish I had been able to know her better. I wish I had made more of an effort to reach her.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to you when I found out.”
“There’s a lot of sadness here,” she said, looking up, ignoring my apology.
“Where?” I asked, pulling my ankle up onto the bench, tucking it underneath myself.
“This town,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Places hold memories and this place is full to the brim with bad ones. Sure there are good ones, but I only feel the bad ones most days.”
“Then why are you here?” I often wondered if she ever considered leaving. It had been on my mind a lot lately, too. I went back and forth on what was running away and what was making a better life. I needed to let my head rest somewhere new. Someplace where no one knew me, where I could start from scratch. Change wasn’t hard for me, I craved it; but Kat seemed to resist it.
“I don’t know,” she groaned. “I should. The shop isn’t doing well.” She shook her head and turned to the side after she said it, like it was a secret she never meant to spill.
“How bad?” I asked, part of me hoping it was bad enough for her to need to let it go. I felt so guilty at the thought, but it was there before I could stop it.
“Pretty bad.” She huffed out a breath. “That’s the real reason I’ve been working so much. Normally I would have a few extra employees right now, but I can barely pay the ones I have. It was a great idea, it really was. But I was just blind to the odds. A cute little shop like that would probably flourish in a town that was actually flourishing. But we haven’t been doing that here for years, have we? The novelty of Fiddlesticks has worn off, a
nd people have realized they don’t need the fancy cute little knick-knacks we sell.”
She was talking so fast now, I was having a hard time keeping up. I could see the vein in her neck pumping. Her hands had moved to the brick ledge she was sitting on. Her knuckles were white.
“I don’t regret trying though. I never regret trying anything. When things fall apart in life, and they inevitably do in mine, I hate it, but I never regret the trying. I don’t want to become the kind of person who stops. I just can’t be that person. I’ll just become her, dead inside, in the ground. Failed.” Her last words wounded her. She reached up and clamped her hand over her mouth, too late. She couldn’t put it back in. Her voice was strangled when she pulled her hand away. “I didn’t mean that. Oh, God.” The tears were falling down her cheeks so quickly, like a faucet had been turned on inside of her.
I stood up and quickly made my way to her. All I wanted to do was pull her in my arms. I wanted to kiss her cheeks and taste her salt, her sadness, but I didn’t.
I sat next to her and placed my hand over hers. She turned it over instinctively and let me interlock my fingers with hers.
“It’s okay,” I began. “You can be mad at her and you can not be mad at her and you can love her and you can hate her and you can miss her. You can feel whatever you need to feel.”
“Some days it’s so obvious why my dad left after I graduated high school. Every street sign, every building, it held some piece of her, of their past, and he needed to be free of it. He felt like he failed her and he only stayed here so he didn’t have to rip me from the school I grew up going to. He fled as soon as he could. I should have stayed away, too, after college. But she was still here and I think I just wanted to come back and be some sort of guardian angel.” She gripped my hand then, and I squeezed back.
“I wanted to know that when she died, when no one cared, when it was just strangers’ eyes seeing the news in the Sunday paper, at least there would be one set of eyes who felt the absence. Even if all I had was this ghost of her inside me. This memory of Christmas morning when I was seven years old. When she made hot cocoa and her and my dad shared the same recliner, watching me open gifts. I wanted that feeling to never end.”
