Pulling Me Under

by Rebecca Berto

“I need to,” he says. He a-hems, then continues, “Not because your mom bugged me to but because, well, I’d like to make you gnocchi.”

  “Okay,” I hold up my fingers so I can tick them off as I list. “You’re doing this because one, you need to show off cooking talents I so obviously don’t have, and two, because you’re shitty and want to snoop about what happened to me last night.”

  “Bingo. You know me so well.”

  I’m glad he didn’t see what I just did. It’d cause another fight, and we already sound like an old married couple. “That’s where you’re wrong. Maybe you don’t know yourself. Because, three, you’re doing this because you can’t admit you stuffed up and my text message telling you to stay away was right.”

  “No. You suck at cooking, and you need my help.”

  Gee, how heroic. Very romantic, subtle, and brave of him to say that.

  “I told you I’m fine, Liam!”

  “Ka—” he swallows and it sounds loud. He must have the phone pressed close to his face. “Okay, I won’t come. If you want, that is.”

  “No, please . . . ” But I trail off because what the hell? How stupid was that? I’ve spent this call—technically, weeks—telling him to leave me alone and when he releases the pressure, I spring back?

  I don’t want to see him.

  I don’t want his support.

  I don’t need to have him there, just in case I need it.

  Because I rely on myself. Right?

  This situation is normal. I’ll keep dealing with it, is what I tell myself. The chunks missing from my memory are familiar, so the disorientation isn’t shock. The cause isn’t always alcohol, and mostly, in fact, it isn’t.

  After all, I wasn’t drunk when I found Paul.

  Liam finds a way through. I weed through the jungle. He tracks me. I isolate myself. He’s there.

  A memory of us as kids flickers. Our arms were wrapped so tight around each other I couldn’t breathe, and that was okay because the scary movie on TV almost scared my panties off. Yet, I didn’t let go of him. His bones and mine mashed together. This close, I remembered feeling his breath tickling my lips. I wanted to yank my hand from around his waist to scratch, but I couldn’t let go. Petrified by the scary movie, feeling giddy wrapped up next to him. I wondered if my breath tickled his lips, too, and I realized it must have. We were mashed together, as close as could be.

  Maybe he also felt that if we let go the scary monster on TV would gobble us. That he needed that feeling, too, of being important enough to someone. To mean that much to someone.

  How strange that I remember that now. That while I grit my teeth and make frustrated sounds, that I still feel this way toward Liam.

  Liam scoops Ella up when he arrives, and flings her above his shoulders. Satisfied when he puts her down, she runs inside and slams the door.

  Liam comes to me and buries me inside his embrace. After we’re done hugging, he pushes us apart so our noses are inches away from each other, and we’re pushed apart by holding each other’s forearms.

  Most days I can’t remember what I did that morning. I get told by Mom or Dad or Liam that they’re surprised I’m talking to them because, only hours ago, or the day before, I was pissed. It’s my new normal to forget chunks of my time.

  But Liam’s fingers searing my forearms, holding us too close for even Ella’s small body to pass through?

  I can’t forget this.

  He’s like being someone loved, coveted. An actor, an author. They don’t realize how amazing they are because they have high goals, and they’re so used to them.

  Well, I’ve lived my whole life with Liam. He’s attractive, always has been, but I’ve never considered him as more than just a friend. Up until now. His lips are wet. Oh, God. He’s running his tongue over them. He’s staring, too. I blink slowly then look into his sky blue eyes. Beautiful and endless.

  Is that a beauty spot or a freckle? I think. I bring my fingers up to his temple and trace downwards. God, his skin is conducting an electric current, sending a buzz somewhere I haven’t felt in forever. I try to hide it, but I think I groan and I think he hears me. He doesn’t—hide it. His eyelids flutter closed and he ever so slightly bends into my fingers.

  I just miss it.

  The joy of loving someone. The joy of being loved. When He went, he took his space in my heart and sealed me back up, but there’s too much unsaid, too much pressure building, and I don’t know how much longer I can be strong and keep everything inside.

  I reach Liam’s jaw then stare at my own hand. Yes, Katie, what the fuck? I cringe back and step out of this too close space. That was way too close.

  “How are you?” he says.

  My voice is silent, making my mouth gawp without noise. Air rushes back in—a reminder I was holding onto the air trapped between Liam and I. “Much better,” I manage on a second attempt.

  I try a smile and when we’re in the kitchen, Liam says, in between skinning a potato, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Thanks,” I say, “again.”

  “You get onto Brent? He sounded worried when he mentioned your name.”

  I grab a new potato, see that it has too many bumps, crevices and eyes, so I fish out a small, smoother one. One that’s easier. “Er. Not yet.” Well, it’s true. “I had so many messages and calls.”

  “Yeah . . . Call him back though. It sounded urgent.”

  Oh, gee. Is this some sort of test? Let’s see if Kates responds to Brent and not me? I knew I shouldn’t have let Liam come. Not that he gave me much of a choice. “Sure. Absolutely.”

  We chat about last night. Actually, he questions me and I answer evasively. We chat like this until we’ve both had enough.

  “I brought the Shrek trilogy to Rochelle’s. I was going to bring the first one ‘cause it’s the original, but then I remembered you like the one with the baby Shreks and I couldn’t remember which movie that was in so I bought the other DVDs on the way.”

  “You bought Shrek? And took it to my mom’s seventieth birthday?”

  Liam picks up another potato and begins peeling. He must have stepped away because now our shoulders don’t rub when we move.

  “Well, have a laugh. Go on, Kates. Pretty stupid, huh?”

  “I can’t believe you stopped by a store to buy two kiddy DVDs.”

  I pick a potato and finish peeling. Liam hasn’t answered. He’s slithered away another inch.

  By the end of dinner, my gnocchi pillows are the soccer balls and my fork is the running man. On the floor in the living room, Liam is on all fours and doing an impeccable job at being an intrigued, grown man smitten by a pink-laced doll. Ella tells him off for not using the doll correctly. After all, the doll doesn’t prance along the floor as she should.

  Ella picks up the toy and demonstrates the action toward a park seat. Liam nods and follows suit.

  It’s like watching Paul. He could amalgamate character to any field or skill. Whenever I had been too busy to play the “picnic scene” with Ella and her dolls, Paul would play the perfect little princess.

  No one else seemed to have this skill. After weekly visits to my parents’ place, she still slaps my dad’s hand away when he forgets he can’t touch that doll. Dad, who sits on the floor with her, despite sore knees.

  Watching Liam reach for Elly is déjà vu from the old days because, other than Paul, no one else could pick up that doll. My heart tha-thumps in my chest as Liam reaches for the figure. I drop the fork, which I’ve been using to outline my bowl, and kick back my chair.

  I outstretch my hand, and say, “No!”

  Both Liam and Ella stare at me, Liam gripping Elly in his hand. He shakes his head at me, palms upwards to the ceiling in a what’s-the-matter gesture.

  “It’s nothing,” I
mouth.

  Suddenly, my hands are fidgety. They poke at the air in front of them until I find my dinner bowl in one hand and Ella’s used bowl in the other.

  Liam follows me to the kitchen. “You have a problem with one of the dolls?”

  Was that a rhetorical question? No, of course he wanted me to answer.

  Prompting me, he adds, “Are you also going to tell me I didn’t ‘prance’ the doll correctly?”

  “Don’t be silly.” I wave him off, sorting the clutter into appropriate positions in the dishwasher. “It was just . . . nothing.”

  “It’s never nothing. Spit it out.”

  “Liam.” I grit my teeth and the air makes a sound as I suck in and out. “Drop it, for once.”

  He continues taunting me, re-dramatizing the scene over, much to Ella’s delight. I attempt a laugh, but it sounds forced. Liam suggests Ella picks what we do next so she chooses one of her favorite DVDs. I’m grateful to be watching a man who was once a human but is now a frog living in a lake, rather than another over-watched princess movie.

  Minutes into the cartoon, Liam nudges my shoulder. The TV spreads light across Ella on the rug to the edge of the sofa where Liam and I sit. It’s too dark to see him without staring, but I shoot a glance at him as a matter of principle.

  His lips turn up.

  “Li–”

  He punches the sofa to shift his weight ninety degrees, facing me.

  “Ella told me about the deal with that doll.”

  “I’m . . . sorry?” I hesitate, a little embarrassed with the realization I’m almost as interested as my six-year-old in this cartoon.

  Liam repeats himself again, saying, “El-something. Whatever her name is. Oh, that’s right. She’s called Elly. Ella told me not to worry about you being sad when I played with her dolls. I asked why and she told me you barely play dolls with her anymore. Said you haven’t touched her dolls in months.”

  My eyes dart to my lap and I prod the cushion with steel irons for fingers.

  “Who are you? The Doll Police?” I say.

  “It’s not about the dolls. You know that. It’s not about celebrating Rochelle’s party either.”

  “Yes it is.” My tongue tightens. It fills the space in my mouth, guaranteeing silence on my part. My jaw tightens too, and as I concentrate on my tongue, my jaw, it’s then that Liam’s arm becomes apparent. It’s draped on the back of the sofa.

  It becomes blurry now. My thoughts, I mean. His heat touching me, knowing his arm is in such a suggestive yet effortless position, screws with me.

  What if he can be my Johnny?

  What if he can stop my need for the alcohol and pills I so hate?

  As I close the distance between us, I feel the heat from his breath, see his chest start pounding. I love to hate myself. It’s like a rush I can’t describe other than pain. Sometimes it hurts so bad that after that initial moment, it’s soothing.

  I think that’s why I lean in, hold my lips a whisper away from Liam’s and suck in a shaky breath. He stills for a second and then his hand trails the air near my cheek, but then he drops them and maps my waist, the span of his fingers dipping well into my V-line and at the edges of my lower back.

  I don’t remember starting to kiss Liam.

  One moment I was drunk off his scent, his touch. The next we’re hungry at each other’s lips, and dread fills me with so much weight I’m happy I feel like shit for betraying Paul. The release hurts—I can feel something—and I have no intention of stopping.

  Liam cups the back of my neck and holds me tight against him while he sucks on my lips, releasing only to instantly devour my mouth with his tongue. I deepen the kiss, sucking, biting on his tongue, lips and anything I can make mine.

  The moment I sense I’m losing control I pull back, and take stock of the room. It’s still dark, curtain closed, Ella resting back on her heels and entranced by the movie.

  “Oh, good,” I say, whispering to Liam. I avoid his eyes, though, even though I know he’ll notice this with the light projecting from the TV. “Ella didn’t see.”

  “Katie?”

  “Look, it’s all good. I enjoyed it.”

  Enjoyed? I don’t intend to share how my brain is wired. I feel sick and horrible, much like the times when Ella was barely weeks old and her poo was green cloggy stuff . . . yeah, I feel like hurling from my betrayal but . . .

  I can breathe.

  I can feel.

  Is this what living feels like? I’ve been in bubble wrap for months, only just stepping outside and feeling insignificant in the big, wide world. Surely this is better than passing out or potentially OD-ing on sleeping pills.

  Surely, Katie.

  “What?” I say.

  I must have sunk into that world of mine again because the giddy look seems like something I must have imagined in Liam’s expression, and now he’s stern-faced, his body slid back.

  “I just . . . never mind.”

  “What? Really.”

  He whispers, “This is the part where I read through your games, Kates.”

  That was fucking fast. But I do deserve to be treated like shit if I don’t treat him right. I sense he’s trying to reach inside to grab the Katie that emerged from within my soulless body moments ago, but that’s small. This Katie is overpowering.

  The rage.

  The numbness.

  It’s rolling back like a tidal wave.

  “Oh my God, I don’t . . . I don’t know what else to say. Leave.” I’m not going to talk and I sure as hell don’t want to fight with him.

  “No way,” he says. “What just happened? And that doll. It’s—”

  “It’s nothing. Get out, now!”

  Ella turns around. She looks like a bug-eyed beetle.

  “You don’t mean that. I—”

  I cut in as soon as my mouth will move. “No more. Just . . . ” If any substantial answer should come to mind, it isn’t now. Well, anything that’s appropriate around Ella. If she wasn’t here . . . I don’t know what I would say or do.

  I run, turn from him and tuck Ella into the sofa upstairs with a blanket, playing the remainder of the movie there.

  He’s waiting by the front door as I pad down the stairs and run my teeth over my lips, pondering, thinking. I clear my throat, which he mistakes is some sort of sign for him. Crap. Now I have to talk about the kiss.

  “Should we talk about . . . ”

  I make a “hm” sound. “I dunno.”

  He strips me with a gaze I can’t handle just standing here. I don’t care to find out if it’s confusion, lust or love.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.”

  “But . . . ” he runs his hands through his bronze hair. “I don’t want to be the friend who walks away from helping you because it’s too hard. You’re never too hard to help.”

  I smile but my lips are tight, so it comes out sad looking. “That kiss is mixed up in there and we really shouldn’t get into that, so . . . ”

  He smiles sadly.

  “I’m not the girl to fall for, Liam. You’re all I’ve got beside Ella, and I know you know that. But I wan—”

  “Katie, I’m sorry. Shit, I’m sorry I let you do that. I don’t know what I was thinking. I just want to protect you but I’ve done the opposite. I don’t want you pushing me away further. I want the old you back and I want to help you get there.”

  “I don’t know the old me.”

  “Come on. It’s a nightmare what’s happened, but—”

  “Liam,” I say, “you do not know my nightmares.”

  “Yeah, but what I mean is—”

  “No,” I cut Liam off again. I don’t want to hear. “This isn’t working anymore. Avoiding, kissing, being angry. Whatev
er we do, we are two different people now. I’m sane enough to appreciate that. I’m as likely to kiss you as I am to scream at you or ignore you and . . . as I said. This isn’t working anymore.”

  “What?” He mouths a few silent words before a full sentence. “What isn’t working? Us?”

  “Yes: you and me. I don’t know you anymore and I certainly don’t know me. And I want what we used to have but those happy, naïve days are gone.”

  “Shall I come back in a few days?” Liam says, imitating an upper-class English accent.

  I’m not sure what makes him think I’ll slap my knee and burst into hysterics but he misses the mark by an Olympic-sized pool.

  “I’m dead serious. Don’t blame yourself for the kiss because I liked it, but you’re not inside my head and I need you to be there.” I point my finger to the exit.

  Liam steps back and shakes his head, like he’s accidentally run into a pole. At first, he seems lost, still moving parts of our conversation into the proper order in his mind. When he figures it out, his eyes squint.

  “No, you’re doing this as a knee-jerk reaction.”

  “I’m certainly not. Get out.” I’m protecting what I know, and I can do that with shut down shut down shut down.

  It’s happened with everything since Paul. I can’t live without him and it’s as if, until I figure that out, everything else is put on hold too. I can’t live without Paul.

  “You’ve lost the plot, you know? You drink yourself to oblivion. I know you take more than the recommended dosage of those sleeping pills after you miss half of the day and spend the rest groggy. You shut out all of your feelings.”

  Liam holds out his hand, patting an invisible shoulder. Sort of saying, this is funny, listen, listen! “No problems with anger of course. I’d grow a pair of wings before you really laugh or cry, or before I see that glow everyone misses.

  “Except before. I don’t know why, but I swear I pulled the old Katie, the living Katie, out for a moment. We miss you. I refuse to give up on you. Logan didn’t have a wink of sleep last night. I promise you that. Rochelle, even Paul’s parents have worried themselves sick over you. I know this is hard,” Liam says. “He was my best bud.”