Saving Katie Baker

by H. Mattern

  Blake pulled into the Target parking lot—the store was still standing, but everything outside was damaged. There were cars on top of one another, and one of the store’s front windows was busted out. He was surprised to see someone enter the store, and figured they must be open.

  “I guess business has to go on,” he said to himself before parking the vehicle.

  He turned his truck into a parking spot next to a Volkswagen bug that was also missing a window. It looked as though the owners had taped a large piece of plastic over the rear windshield. Things were really messy, and would continue to be for quite a while.

  He looked around at the other cars as he grabbed a cart and walked into the store. The sliding doors were stuck open, no longer sensing when to move open or closed. A family walked inside just in front of him, the wife was obviously pregnant. Blake’s thoughts ran to Katie. He realized just then she had done it all alone, birthing Micah and learning how to be a mother. His heart hurt for her.

  His thoughts roamed to children, pregnancy, and parenthood as he entered the children’s department of the store. Diapers were the first thing on the list Katie made, He looked at the many options and felt overwhelmed with choices. She didn’t write down what brand. Someone else was standing next to him in the aisle.

  “Pampers or Huggies?” he bravely asked.

  The woman looked at him with eyebrows bunched in skepticism as if to suggest that he should know the brand of diapers that his child wears.

  “Um, I like Pampers.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and grabbed the biggest bundle that he could find and checked the item off the list before going in search for little girl dresses.

  Blake was in luck—he spotted a whole clothing rack of dresses, super cute and on sale. He picked out four brightly colored cotton knit ones that looked like something Micah would wear, and they were only five dollars each. He never thought he would actually enjoy the process of shopping, but here he was, a bachelor, with a cart full of diapers and toddler dresses and his heart was full.

  The dresses also had a corner area with matching tights so he grabbed some pink and purple polka-dotted ones. He smiled at the thought of seeing Micah in clothes that he had specifically chosen for her. He could see her now, the curly blonde hair bouncing as she ran around in these clothes.

  He really was going to miss them if and when they left. He had to find a way to keep them close. He couldn’t lose them. He thought of maybe talking to Katie tonight about it, hoping to encourage her to stay on, even if it was only just a little bit longer.

  He moved down the list: it was time to get Katie some panties. He wasn’t sure how he felt about buying them for her. His heart beat wildly as he saw the variety. He didn’t want to come home with some that were too sexy and have her irritated with him, but he also didn’t want to return with ugly ‘granny’ panties either. There has to be a balance, he thought to himself. Just then, Blake found an aisle that had some ‘boyshort’ underwear. He thought of her in them and had to immediately shake his head and move on to other thoughts. This was harder than he had anticipated.

  Blake decided to come home with a variety. He grabbed a pair of the cute boy-cut ones, another pair that were black and lacy—a bit on the sexy side—and a pack of regular fruit of the loom cotton bikinis. He moved away from that section as quickly as possible so thoughts of Katie naked wouldn’t keep him from accomplishing his task.

  It had become more and more difficult for Blake to keep his thoughts away from her body and the two of them together. He didn’t know what it was about her that kept drawing him in. She wasn’t like most of the other women that he’d been with. He hadn’t felt this magnetic pull so intensely before. He knew he had to do something about them. He couldn’t continue living with a woman he wanted so much without her knowing it. A thought popped into his head.

  She should be MY girl. I want her. I want Katie Baker. It didn’t make sense to him why such a thought would come up because they weren’t at that place. They would probably never be at a place where marriage was an option. Why now? Why would such thoughts enter his mind? It would never happen.

  The thought of proposing made Blake laugh out loud. Katie would slap him silly if he tried talking her into marrying him, especially since only a couple days ago she thought he was a big jerk.

  The phrase perception is reality came to mind. Ha, you can’t be serious, Blake began trying to talk sense to himself internally while browsing the aisles of the store. You can’t possibly think getting into a relationship with Katie after only knowing each other a couple days is a good idea. Blake was completely in shock at the thought that this might be what the universe had planned all along. Could it be destiny?

  He could really lose her this way. What if she got scared and left refusing to talk to him or ever see him again. At least right now they were becoming friends. He decided to push the thought aside, to ignore the nagging feeling and just be happy and content with friendship status.

  He found some jeans along a wall of the women’s clothing section and looked for the ones that best seemed to fit Katie’s style. He knew nothing about shopping for women’s clothing and Katie seemed sensitive when it came to her blue jeans. He found one in her size that looked similar to the ones that she’d had on and he grabbed two of the same pair.

  Target was full of sales racks, so he decided to browse through them looking for some cotton t-shirts for Katie. He found a couple comfy looking options and a red button down that looked more like her working style. His mind went to the buttons. She didn’t tell him to get her a bra. He wondered about this, but wasn’t about to venture into that area just yet.

  Blake walked to the food section and picked up a couple of pizzas to pop in the oven when he got back to the house. He checked out quickly, glancing at the lady who was ringing up his items. He was sure that she was probably attempting to make sense of the puzzle: little girl and women’s clothing and pizza—a very unusual shopping cart. He smiled; it was actually more fun that he thought it would be. He would love shopping for these two the rest of his life.

  “Okay, seriously, stop with the marriage thoughts. I can’t marry her.”

  He didn’t at first realize he’d said the words out loud, but he had. The woman looked at him as if he was some crazy person, and truth be told, he probably was crazy for considering such an off-the-wall idea. Blake handed her a credit card from his wallet and smiled.

  “Lots on my mind, sorry.” He said.

  The woman looked at him with an irritated look and pointed down to the sign that hung in front of her station, “Cash only. Card machine broken.”

  “Ah, sorry.” Blake opened his wallet and happened to have just enough cash on him to pay for everything already bagged and ready to be taken home. “In luck,” he replied to the girl, handing her the cash.

  Blake walked out in a hurry and headed back towards the house. He was anxious and yet excited to see what Katie thought of his little shopping spree. Would she find the items acceptable? He hoped that his choice for underwear wouldn’t offend her.

  Blake walked in with his hands full of bags and pizza. Before saying anything, she went to the kitchen and started the oven.

  “Thanks, Blake, for doing this for us. I hope you weren’t too inconvenienced.”

  Blake laughed, “Let’s just say it was educational.”

  “Oh really? Hope that’s not a bad thing.”

  Katie reached to take the bags from his arms, and with a glance inside, he knew she had seen the black lacy panties.

  Before her mind could continue to finish the marathon that he was certain she had begun, he interrupted any thoughts of hers with, “I didn’t have any idea what to get, you know, for you, so I got a few different kinds.”

  Katie’s face heated up, the brightest red yet to find it’s way on her skin
. Blake smiled.

  “I am a gentleman you know,” he said and walked to place the other items down.

  Blake could smell the pizza cooking in the oven. The feta and spinach with garlic started to make his stomach growl and his mouth water. He walked into the kitchen to see if he could be of any help and found Micah standing at the oven window, gazing intently at the pizza, watching the cheese slowly begin to melt.

  “Bake, pizza,” she said to Blake, pointing, getting her little fingerprints all over the front of his oven.

  He smiled at the thought of her left-over toddler prints and wanted to treasure each and every little moment that he had with them while he could. He feared that they’d be leaving him sooner rather than later.

  “You don’t like pizza, do you?”

  The question was posed to the little girl in obvious jest. She looked up at him and made a silly face as she nodded her head yes.

  “Are you helping your mommy?”

  Micah looked up at Katie who was standing up on her tiptoes, attempting to grab plates from off of the top shelf in his kitchen. He liked her there. He had heard others talk before, making jokes of wanting their woman barefoot in the kitchen. He always assumed that this was because of some biased idea that women were meant to be in there, doing “their kind of work”, but this scene literally took his breath away.

  The woman inside, cooking and cleaning—he’d always thought it a bit chauvinistic, but now he found out the true secret behind the phrase. It’s really meant to be a compliment, men actually appreciating how their wives look and move in the kitchen. Katie looked sexy as hell reaching up, stretching, and moving about, more so in the kitchen than in any other place he had seen yet.

  There he went again, running away with those crazy ideas of her being his. How could he stop the thoughts from invading? Just because she was in his house right now, did not make her his woman. Why was this so hard for him to soak in?

  CHAPTER

  13

  Katie turned and found Blake looking at her. It wasn’t just any look; it wasn’t just a friendly smile. She sensed there was more behind his eyes and it puzzled her. She tried to figure it out, and the realization dawned on her like a punch in her chest. She remembered the look perfectly because she had seen it time and again in the eyes of her husband. Blake was looking at her with longing.

  He shouldn’t be looking at me like that. He can’t be, she thought to herself.

  Their eyes met and he smiled with a light in his eyes that said it all. Katie knew her suspicions were unfortunately correct. The heartbeat in her chest wouldn’t slow. All she could think of was that she couldn’t breathe.

  “Here, let me help you,” Blake said as he stood up and moved in closer to Katie.

  She quickly backed away, as if scared of him. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to think, but she needed to do something. When his hand touched hers to grab the plates, she pulled away as if his very touch had burned her.

  “Katie, are you okay?”

  Blake looked at her in confusion and with concern. Katie didn’t know how she should respond; she just knew that she needed air. She couldn’t breathe.

  “I . . . I think I need some air.”

  She began walking toward the door, but just before making it to the living room her knees shook, her legs gave way from underneath her, she struggled for air, and hit the floor, gasping. It didn’t take long for Blake to be by her side; he knelt over her with panic on his face.

  “Katie. Katie are you all right? What happened?”

  Katie struggled to find the words. She forced herself up. “Too close.” She began pushing him away, shoving him, struggling to get up. Katie’s face was red, and she was sweating and attempting to catch her breath.

  “Katie, you just collapsed. Something isn’t right. You’re having trouble breathing. I’m not backing away until you steady your breath and tell me what the fuck is going on.”

  Right then the timer went off on the pizza.

  “Get off me. Leave me alone—I just need some fresh air.”

  It took him a while to get the hint, but finally Blake turned away from Katie. I must have finally made myself clear, she thought as she slowly stood and made her way outside.

  “Katie, please be careful,” he said to her as she walked out the front door.

  Outside, Katie inhaled deeply, slowly. She looked across the street and thought of her husband. She thought of the life that she’d had before all of this, the life that she was supposed to be living. She remembered the ways her husband looked at her. How his looks could make her melt. She had never thought that she would see another man look at her like that.

  Was Blake falling in love with her? It couldn’t be. She couldn’t let that happen. She had made a promise to herself that night—the night that she was being pulled out of her car, screaming with labor pains and fear at seeing her husband lay motionless next to her with his eyes opened and unseeing. She knew then that she would never fall in love again. She would never be with another man. When death took away her husband, he took away her love. She wouldn’t risk it, not ever.

  These thoughts made Katie’s head start to spin again. She needed to move, she couldn’t just stand there and let her mind roam or she’d end up passing out once more, attracting even more attention from Blake. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want him anywhere near her.

  Katie did the only thing that she knew to do in order to get her mind moving in another direction, she took off running. Running from the thoughts of Blake; running from her messy life. One foot in front of the other, she moved quickly down the trail without any intention of stopping until the hurt had gone away.

  Katie thought back to life before marriage, before Micah—a life of running. She had spent so much of her free time back then training and running marathons. Katie thrived off of the challenge of competing against herself, striving to beat her previous times on the track. She’d loved it and had assumed that she’d go places, but life had a way of changing plans.

  She didn’t regret getting married, and she tried to run when she could, but because they were expecting, her husband asked her to stop. Then, there was no time to run anymore. She could feel a pain creep up in her side but she shoved it aside. She didn’t know where she was going; she was just running, through the woods, jumping over logs that were in her way. She felt wonderful.

  She felt free. Nobody near her, she invited the fresh air into her lungs and pushed her body. She didn’t care and didn’t worry about how far she was going, or how fast; she just ran. Katie focused on her breath, pacing herself as she had remembered doing before. She ran and ran. Nothing could stop her.

  It didn’t dawn on Katie while she was enjoying her runner’s high that the sun was setting. She was in her own world, and running away from all that life had taken away and left behind. The stitch in her side increased in intensity, but she kept going. She kept pushing. She wasn’t ready to give up or go back just yet.

  Another pain. Her thoughts went back to training and injuries. She had suffered quite a few back in those days. As the remembrance of them all came back to her, she decided to obey her body and stop. When Katie slowed her run to a quick walking pace, she realized the sun had set. She turned and took a few minutes walking toward what she assumed was Blake’s house, but then, as if in slow motion, the atmosphere all around her went dark. Night had won the race.

  Fear began to torture Katie. Her mind filled with images of hungry animals, snakes, spiders, and all those childhood nightmares. She tried to shake them off, but began to panic instead. She’d only had a few panic attacks in her life, but lately they seemed to be coming all too often. Now, here, in the middle of the woods, that all too familiar feeling began to return. Her heart raced and once again she found breathing to be difficult. Katie debated what to do. As a ch
ild she was told to stay exactly where you are if you get lost, that moving around would cause you to possibly be missed by your seeker.

  Katie wasn’t sure about that theory. She was here, alone. She had been alone for a long time now, but here, she felt it. She felt loneliness as she had never felt it before. Her eyes tried to make sense of anything: shapes, ground—she could make nothing out.

  She kept moving forward, slower this time, feeling with her hands outstretched, searching as she imagined a blind woman might. Nothing: her hands just clawed at empty space. She bent and touched the ground—it was there, and she felt thankful. It was something familiar, something that she could recognize.

  Katie decided that she would sit; she would be still and wait. Blake would come to look for her. She just knew it. It won’t take him long, she told herself, he walks these woods. He knew them better than anyone else. She would wait.

  Blake was cleaning up pizza from Micah’s face and glanced at the clock. Katie had been gone for two hours. He wondered if he should attempt to go looking for her. She acted as though she really needed some space, so maybe that wasn’t a good idea. The last thing he wanted to do was to create more issues between them by being too smothering. He recalled her words, “too close.” What did she mean by them?

  Micah began to rub her eyes and suck her fingers, Blake guessed that it was getting close to her bedtime, so he went ahead and changed her. He knew nothing about bathing a baby, so he decided that he’d wait and let Katie bathe her in the morning.

  He grabbed the little girl’s blanket and began cuddling with her on the couch. It didn’t take long for the little girl to start dozing off. He tried to calm his worrying about Katie, but he just couldn’t. He had a feeling something wasn’t right. She should be back by now. She wouldn’t have left me to put Micah to sleep on my own. Something was wrong.