Jackie flashed me a smile and returned to the oven. Her entire house smelled like Christmas. I envied her kitchen savvy. My kitchen prowess seemed to only appear at holidays. Instead, I’d been blessed with more frivolous gifts, like drawing the shapes of shadows and charcoal shading. You wouldn’t know that about me anymore, given I hadn’t picked up a sketchpad or a pencil in years.
“Well, I think you’re doing great. Just keep your focus positive, you know? If he’s your soul mate, you’ll figure it out, and if he’s not… Are you gonna try them?”
I looked down at my two slices of cake. One was Chocolate with salted caramel buttercream, the other was the lemon raspberry. I took a bite of the lemon.
I moaned. “Oh goodness.”
“You like?”
I nodded. A bite of the chocolate followed. It was sinful, but I soon chose the lemon as my favorite.
Jackie smiled. “Besides, as I’ve said a thousand times, there’s easily a million guys out there who would be overjoyed to have a girl as funny as you.”
“Ha!” I said, without any real humor to speak of. “Oh naturally. I know that’s what they’re all talking about around the locker rooms and water coolers of the world. ‘Damn did you see Dale’s new lady? Oh, the one with the eyepatch and club foot? Hells yeah! That girl can sure tell a fart joke!’”
Jackie shot her a sideways glance. “You don’t have an eyepatch.”
“Shut up.”
She let me finish my cake, the textures of chocolate and mousse, the hint of salt, or the tart of the lemon - as addictive as Crystal Meth. Not that I have ever partaken in Crystal Meth, I’m speaking in allegory here, but you catch my drift. I pointed at the cake, waggling my eyebrows at her.
“What’s with all the cakes?”
Jackie’s eyebrows shot up like some startled animal. “Oh, just trying new things. Feeling a little cooped up these days, I guess.”
I knew the feeling. “Well, they’re spectacular.”
She smiled. “Still can’t make a pie like you, though.”
I scoffed, waving her away. Though I admit, my blueberry pie is pretty life changing.
We both went quiet a moment as she buttered another cake pan. I jutted my chin toward the cakes.
She glared at me. “Tell me you actually want another slice and you can have it, but if you’re going to come in my house talking about being svelte, I don’t want to be responsible for you feeling bad later because you ate like a steelworker.”
I stared at Jackie, part of me grateful for her interference and the other part of me desperate she’d just shut up and be the conductor on my train to fat town. She stared me down as I mulled over my decision. That Lemon and Buttercream was like crack, I swear.
“Ok, one more and then I’ll head out for the afternoon. Is that okay?”
“Of course.”
My phone buzzed just then as I rubbed my hands together in excited expectation. I startled, pulling the contraption from my pocket to check.
Where you at, fool?
Stellan. Apparently his work load was lightened. I could already envision him slumped on my couch. I sighed just so and let Jackie cut me a generous slice.
I was halfway through it when she leaned onto the counter. “You’re doing really well, Faye. I’m proud of you.”
“Shut up,” I said, in the sweetest, self-deprecating tone I had to offer. I knew she wasn’t talking about my dietary choices.
“Why? Because I’m not texting him? Because I was only a little disappointed to see that text wasn’t from him?”
Jackie’s brow furrowed, and she paused.
“What is it?”
She pinched her lower lip between her teeth. “We saw him the other day.”
My heart dropped through the floor. I swallowed. “Where?”
“He was at Vinetti’s having dinner.”
She spoke in the tone of a priest reading last rites. I took a breath. I didn’t want to know the answer to what I was about to ask. Apparently, I’m a masochist. “Was he with someone?”
Jackie dark eyes met mine, and she frowned. Yes, he had.
I took a deep breath. “Ah. Guess I know to ignore his texts – if he texts again.”
The ‘if’ broke my heart all over again. The ‘If’ was the acknowledgement that he might not, that I might never hear from him again, that I never meant anything. Even with his betrayal, somehow the thought of him never reaching out to me was worse. At least it felt worse. It felt worse right then.
I gave Jackie a hug and headed home, making sure not to crack in her company.
I was fine. I would show the world that I was just fucking fine. Sure, I was still crying myself to sleep at night, I’d only sent my resume to one job offer, and let’s just say my brain recoiled at the thought of even trying to have an orgasm. I couldn’t help but think of Cole if even the hint of sexual thought crossed my mind. The man that accused me of being obsessed with sex was the reason I was now practically asexual. I wondered if he’d find that ironic.
I rolled past the air force base and into Concord, shaking off every thought that drilled its way past my stony exterior.
You can cry when you get home. Cry all you like when you get home.
Anyone who sees me driving will see a normal person. They don’t need to know I am an empty outline of myself, hardly holding it together.
When I arrived home, Stellan’s Jeep was outside, and I growled. I’d forgotten his ‘where you at?’ text. Crying on the floor plans thwarted.
I found him sprawled across the couch.
He looked up at me as I came through the door. “Glad to see you out of the house, babe.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Leaves you free to raid the fridge without disdainful looks.”
He smiled, turning back toward the TV. “That was disdain? I thought that was undying love.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re the same thing.”
I offered him something to eat, and fled into the kitchen. He accepted, as I knew he would. Stellan never turned down food.
I was standing over the stove, a stew pot filled with water still cold on the burner when Stellan appeared at my shoulder.
“You alright?” He asked.
I shrugged. Much like Cole’s Asshole Clairvoyance, Stellan seemed to have his own superpower – Faye’s About To Lose It Clairvoyance.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then.” He said.
I shrugged again and felt the tension in my throat return. I didn’t want to cry. Damn it, I hate people seeing me cry.
I kept my eyes on the stove as my chin creased. It was coming. I turned back toward the pantry for the box of spaghetti so he wouldn’t see my face. He moved as I moved, and when I reached the other side of the kitchen island, he was there. Fucking ninja.
He grabbed me around the shoulders and pulled me into him. I clutched my fingers into the folds of his t-shirt, begging the knot in my throat to dispel. I held it together, my eyes welling with tears, but I didn’t lose control of myself. I’d reined it the hell in.
Fuck Cole. Fuck him and the girl he took to our restaurant. Fuck that pierced girl who could very well have had no idea I even existed – a girl whose only fault was falling for the same guy Faye fell for and having her clit pierced when it happened.
After a long moment, Stell released his hold on me, glancing down at my face. His gaze almost set me off anew, the lump in my throat tightening all over again. He paused, then headed to the sink to grab me a glass of water. As he disappeared, my chin creased, and I let my lip tremble.
I could cry alone, but I didn’t want to be alone. So trembling chin crease would have to suffice.
“Hang on. I think I have a glass in the living room.”
I headed down the kitchen hallway, knowing full well there was no glass. I just needed a moment.
My phone buzzed in my jeans pocket as I reached the living room. I pulled out my phone and read t
he message.
I miss your laugh.
Cole.
I stared at it. There was a fleeting instant of joy – relief almost. I was loved. I was missed. I was important and needed and worthwhile and desirable. I’d left a mark that some pierced clit bombshell couldn’t completely erase in a matter of weeks.
I wasn’t worthless.
I wasn’t forgettable.
I wasn’t unloved.
Oh wait, yes I was.
The fleeting, instinctive rush of hope quickly faded, then splintered and died.
“I fucking hate him!”
Stellan came in just in time to watch me scream at the top of my lungs and throw my cell phone across the front room, shattering it against the bricks of the fireplace. I took a breath, then dropped to the floor and screamed again. Stellan didn’t speak. He sat beside me and grabbed me, and I didn’t just bawl; I primal-scream-therapy-style bawled. I was hollering and wailing and slobbering all over this poor bastard, cursing the very air that Cole breathed. Stellan didn’t say a word.
He’d been doing this since we were kids. When I was stood up for prom by my closest female friend because she miraculously found a date the night of the dance – Stellan let me slobber my mascara all over his Jane’s Addiction t-shirt. When I had to put my cat, Freya, down during sophomore year of college, Stellan was at the house when we got home from the vet. He handled enough snot that day to be patented by Kleenex. And when David Gregory kicked me between the legs in sixth grade and I tried to hide how much it hurt – Stellan pulled me aside during recess and let me cry.
Stellan later punched that kid in the nuts so hard, David Gregory was out of school for three days. This tendency of his really is the opposite of Cole’s ‘asshole clairvoyance,’ – if I’m going to lose it, Stellan can tell.
“Why is this happening?” I asked – more of a crying declaration than an actual question. Stellan rubbed my shoulders, fanning out his shirt to dry it when I finally pulled away. I frowned at the mess, but he just rubbed my head and offered to blow his nose on my sweater.
Even Stellan had never seen me lose it like this, but I didn’t care. I was a fucking mess to be mopped up by the cleaning lady.
He waited for me to look at him.
I met his gaze, but could only hold it for a moment. “I’m sorry.”
He grabbed me behind the neck, pulled me into his chest and squeezed. When he let me go, he smiled. “You’ve seen me worse.”
I frowned.
Stellan’s tough exterior has crumbled twice since I’ve known him. Once in a waiting room at Emerson Hospital as his father was wheeled in for surgery. The other was at the hands of a girl.
Stellan met her Junior year of high school. She was one of those girls – you know the ones – they run in packs, all with names like Stacie, and Kylie, and Heather, and Danielle. This one was a Danielle. This one made me hate all Danielles.
It wasn’t anything she said, really – I admit I can be a bit judgmental, but thus far, that judgment has never been wrong. It was her laugh. She had one of those awkward, almost vapid laughs - the laugh that means she didn’t get the joke, or didn’t think it was funny, but would pretend anyway.
It was the only response she had to anything.
She broke Stellan’s heart at the end of senior year.
Four days later, Evan and I were in the lunch line, weaving halfway across the cafeteria. The line slowed and stopped us right at Danielle’s lunch table. She sat with her girlfriends, all busy with their outfits and diet soda.
I can’t guarantee that her volume was intended for Evan and me, or if she simply projected bull shit at all times when she wasn’t laughing awkwardly, but we heard every word. She was describing the break up to her girlfriends – that Stellan was curled up in a ball on his then bedroom floor, sobbing, begging her to change her mind. She said she was done, that he played too many video games, that he was a hornball, that he was boring.
My Grandmother would have referred to this as “the small talk of small minds.” She would have also prescribed grace and silence. Given the circumstances, I would have disappointed her greatly.
I blew that cafeteria up. I ripped that girl a fiery new asshole the size of Mount St. Helens. I threw the c-word around like beads at Mardi Gras, ladies and gentlemen. I hollered with such abandon, several teachers heard me down the hall, and as they hauled me away, still screaming as Danielle and her friends sat in stunned silence, Evan gave me a slow clap.
I was suspended for a week.
Stellan didn’t talk to me for a month.
People from high school still mention that event from time to time, followed by ‘never piss off Faye.’ I always prided myself on maintaining my calm, but on that day, I couldn’t maintain. I couldn’t because she was telling the truth.
The day she broke up with him, I sat on Stellan’s bedroom floor with his head in my lap for three hours as he cried so hard he nearly choked.
As far as I was concerned, she had every one of those c-words coming.
She works at the DMV now. I suppose that’s karma.
Stellan wiped a tear from the corner of my eye and pinched my chin. “Come on. Let’s go for a drive. Put your coat on.”
I shook my head and whined, but slipped my arms into their sleeves when he held my coat out for me. “But I don’t want to.”
He grabbed his sweatshirt off the couch and gently led me out the front door.
The air outside was crisp and calm. Stellan opened the door to the Jeep for me, and I grumbled as I climbed in. I didn’t think to ask where we were going. I felt like a complete idiot at that moment – a slobbering, miserable, phoneless idiot, and I was still sniffling every few seconds.
Stellan handed me his iPhone. “Even if it’s Shania Twain - if you wanna hear it, it’s my favorite song.”
I stared at the foreign display screen of Stellan’s hacked iPhone. I searched for five minutes, trying not to get worked up at the title of every love song in the contraption. Finally, I found something I thought might ease my mood – AC/DC.
We drove aimlessly. After an hour or more, Stellan stopped at White Hen to buy me a water and himself some snack food. We cracked open our bounty, letting the Jeep idle as we each agreed to eat a whole Devil Dog in one bite. The resulting spray of dry cake product got me laughing again. Stellan won, naturally, and I managed to spray Devil Dog across his windshield with such force that when he attempted to wipe it off, he swore there was some on the outside.
“Oh man, did I tell you about my dream last night?” He asked as we pulled out of the parking lot.
“I don’t think so.”
Stellan proceeded to regale me with a dream about his demise during zombie apocalypse.
“See, I told you,” I said.
“Told me what?”
I took a sip of my water for effect. “You’d never survive Zombie Apocalypse.”
Stellan feigned offense. “Who says? And when did you tell me that?”
“I’ve told you that repeatedly. Many times.”
“Bull shit. I’d be a killing machine in Zombie Apocalypse.”
“False. You can’t even handle a dream about zombies. You’re screwed.”
Stellan laughed. “Hey, I’m a certified badass -”
“The subconscious doesn’t lie, Stell.”
“What? You think you know me?” He asked in his best Robert De Niro impression. “And you suppose you’re going to somehow thrive when the walking undead hit the streets?”
“Oh, hell yeah. I’ve already got a plan and everything.”
He smirked. “Well, what’s your plan?”
“I’m not telling! You’ll try to take it.”
Stellan went quiet. When I looked at him he was purposefully pouting.
“Oh, fine. I’m gonna take everybody and head up to East Bum, Maine. Live on a peninsula in the middle of nowhere. We’re gonna live on Mussels, Lobster, and Moose unt
il the plague passes.”
“I’m hurt that I’m not invited.”
“Oh, you’re invited. You’ll just need to declare yourself with some kind of flare to let us know you’re cool. No flare? We shoot you.”
“Ok, I can handle that,” he said, then paused. “Now, do you mean like emergency flare, or like TGI Friday's FLAIR?”
I laughed.
“Or both?”
I imagined him in some red and white striped uniform, covered in pins as he stood on a blown out bridge with an order of nachos and kept laughing.
Stellan cracked open a bag of salt and vinegar chips. “Or emergency TGI Friday's flair, even?”
“As of this moment, I've decided that both are now required.”
“Can do.”
He drove around for a time and I sporadically burst into laughter for the duration of the drive. When we pulled up to the house, my mother’s car was in the driveway. I was relieved to see her.
I walked inside to find her fretting at the fireplace.
“Oh god, you’re okay!”
I furrowed my brow. “Of course I am.”
She gestured to the fireplace and the bits of cell phone everywhere, her face taut.
I frowned. “Oh…yeah.”
“What happened?”
“I lost my temper.”
I noticed the dustpan under her arm and demanded them from her, determined to clean up the evidence of my tantrum. I got close enough to see tears in her eyes, and I realized she’d come home to a scene of damage with no way to contact me and had done the ‘Mom’ thing – assumed I’d been murdered. She asked what had set me off and despite my usual lack of candor, I simply told her. Stellan was there to hear. I didn’t mind. She pursed her lips and set her hands on her hips, staring down at the remnants of my phone.
“I have the afternoon off tomorrow. We can go to the mall and grab a new one.”
“No Mom, you don’t have to do that. I can make do without -”
“I would feel much better if I knew you had a means to contact someone if you need to.”
I attempted to protest again, feeling miniscule, but she simply ignored me, said a quick hello to Stellan who had slumped down on the couch, and stormed off into the kitchen. I tossed the shrapnel into the office waste basket and joined Stellan on the couch. He looked completely oblivious to my discomfort. The motherly generosity left me feeling like a twelve year old.
Catch My Fall Page 4
