Something Fierce (19 page)

Shaking out his right arm, which felt full of needles, heavy and useless at his side, he said, “Whoa. We need to talk here. What the hell was all that about?”

“All what about?” She was light, cheerful, back to herself, the diva that had invited him here.

“About you being pissy,” he said, still trying to get the blood moving in his arm, flopping it around like a bird with a broken wing. “And bawling your eyes out, convinced that I was leaving you.”

“Come on, Casanova,” she said, “don’t tell me you don’t know when a woman is PMSing.”

“That was some pretty heavy-duty PMS,” he said.

“You’ve only really known me for,” she looked at the ceiling, “three, four periods. Sometimes, yeah, they can get pretty bad emotionally.” She touched his check and smiled. “Poor baby, I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

“I am freaked out. I feel like we should talk about this.”

“I love it,” she said, her grin widening, “how you always want to
talk
about things. You’re such a girl sometimes.”

“Well,” he said, a little stung by the remark, “why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“That I have PMS?” She looked genuinely confused. “I guess I wasn’t thinking of it as something I needed to talk to you about; I guess I wasn’t thinking about it at all.”

He was starting to feel petty. “Who were you texting on the phone earlier?”

“Lynn: the girl who’s always pregnant without ever actually being pregnant.”

“Her ringtone is ‘Dirty?’”

Kerri laughed. “It fits. Believe me.”

“I didn’t think you were talking with her anymore.”

“I’m distancing myself from her little by little, but she doesn’t have many friends. It’s hard to just totally ignore her.” She narrowed her eyes. “Honey, is something bothering you?”

“Sort of,” he snapped, “I guess, yeah.”

She sat next to him. “Tell me.”

“I’ve been feeling…I don’t know, weird. Like there’s distance between us. Like you’re far away.” And yet, here she was looking at him as open and sincere as a person could be. “Shit. I do sound like a girl.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, kissing his cheek. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s sweet. Really. I’m glad you notice when I’m not myself, when we’re not as connected as usual. And you’re right. I am moody this week. My last couple periods were pretty bad. Years ago, it was a real problem. When I was around fourteen or fifteen, they thought I had Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. I didn’t. Just some very intense mood swings the week before my period. But not always. Just sometimes.”

The high he’d arrived with was gone and the anxiety he’d been feeling lately had returned. He had no idea where he was going with this conversation and he’d felt instantly and uncharacteristically jealous when he thought she might have been texting a guy earlier. “It doesn’t matter.”

“No. It does matter. I want you to be able to ask me anything.” She went on. “My periods were really rough right after I started having them. Then they were normal for a couple of years. I went to the doctor when they started getting bad again. She said there was nothing abnormal. My moods got a little wackier than your average woman sometimes, but not every time. Not always. She usually asks me about them when I have my yearly, but I’ll double check with her if you want. Or get a second opinion.”

As she went on and on, he felt more and more foolish, like he was making a very big deal out of nothing at all. He couldn’t seem to trust his own instincts anymore.

She stopped talking and looked at him. “What?”

“I’m just thinking,” he said, “we could sit here and talk about PMS or we could be defiling your bedroom.”

“Christening,” she corrected him with a smile and added, “but, yeah, we could. Your call, Professor.”

“I’ll take the second one.”

She kissed him. “Let me give you the tour first so you can be well informed when it’s your turn to pick the room.”

And the tour of the Engel residence was on, all twenty-seven hundred square feet of it. The colonial style house was built the year Kerri was born and consisted of four bathrooms, four bedrooms, two fireplaces, formal dining and family areas, a den, computer and storage rooms, three-car garage and out back, a large deck with a pool. By design, they ended up in her bedroom.

It was decorated in black and gray. At first sight, it appeared to have a modern feel to it that didn’t fit with the rest of the house, but upon closer inspection, it was more of a mishmash of styles that wouldn’t fit anywhere. The bed donned a sleek black duvet trimmed in gray with a smiling, well-used teddy bear dressed in pink pajamas sitting against the decorative pillows. The closet was so full of clothes, purses and shoes—most he’d never seen, many with the price tags still on them—that the doors wouldn’t shut. “Like to shop?” he asked.

She laughed. “I get all kinds of stuff on clearance at the store. They practically give it away.”

Above the metal, antique headboard hung a huge framed
Phantom of the Opera
poster with the famous white mask, red rose, and letters of the title looking like a broken mirror. The wall next to that held a poster board covered with snapshots, a collage of Kerri surrounded by dozens of others, male and female, all hugging and mugging for the camera. “Who are all these people?” he asked.

“I used to think they were my friends. Acquaintances, I guess, would be more accurate.” She pointed out two of the girls she did consider friends. “This is Donna and that’s Tiffany.” Both were very pretty in completely different ways. “You can pick your jaw off of the floor now. Donna is engaged and Tiff is a virgin.”

“The blonde is a virgin? She looks like a porn star.” He pointed her out in several other shots. “In every single picture.”

“I know. She always dresses like that. You should see her dance. Total cock-tease. She’s never paid for a drink in her life.” Kerri laughed. “She used to see how many guys she could get hard on the dance floor. As soon as she got one she’d move on to the next.”

“That’s kind of fucked up,” Seth said.

“Just girls having fun. Tiff’s not your type, but you’d like Donna. She’d like you too. She reminds me of you actually.”

“You’ll have to introduce us.”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to take a chance of you two falling in love.”

He turned her face to his. “I’m already in love.”

“Good answer,” she said, shoving him on the bed and climbing on top of him.

“What’s that?” Seth asked, noticing something on the ceiling above her bed: a carved wooden symbol, sort of an interlacing heart.

Kerri unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his bare chest. “It’s a Celtic symbol meaning, I think, ever-lasting love.”

“A gift?”

“God, no.”

“It looks like someone carved it by hand.”

“Someone probably did. I bought it at a yard sale for fifty cents.”

“I can’t quite picture you at a yard sale.”

“Mmmm, so I still have some mystery left. That’s good.”

Looking up at the heart again, he said, “It’s not going to fall on us, is it?”

She nibbled lightly at his ear and whispered, “Do you really care?”

“Not really,” he said, rolling her on to her back and getting on top of her, kissing her deeply.

“Did you hear that?” Kerri asked.

He did. It was the sound of the garage door opening.

“Kerri!” Rebecca shouted from downstairs. “Is that Seth’s car?”

“Yeah,” she shouted back. “I’m giving him a tour of the place.”

Seth dropped his head on Kerri’s chest and whispered, “Fuck.”

“Correction,” Kerri whispered back. “
No
fuck.”

S
he was losing him.

She could feel him pulling away. When she mentioned future plans, he didn’t build on them with her the way he used to. He would play along just enough to change the subject without being too obvious about it. She could see it, too, in the way he looked at her sometimes, like he had no idea who she was, like he realized he’d made a huge mistake and was trying figure a way out of it without crushing her. This upset her so much that she couldn’t help being distant and bitchy which usually led to a fight which pushed him further away. It was an ugly cycle.

Kerri was crying so hard now, thinking of all this, that she drove right past the exit for Northeast. What did it matter? She couldn’t go to school like this anyway so she just kept driving.

In the beginning, she hadn’t expected him to stay so she could have handled his leaving. But now. Now she needed him like air, like water, like food. She couldn’t live without him. She wouldn’t. She thought of jerking the steering wheel and swerving across the yellow lines and into on-coming traffic. Even if she were dead, she wouldn’t want him with someone else. If they couldn’t be together, she would rather they both be dead.

Still crying, she found herself in Seth’s neighborhood. She drove past Dr. Jarrell’s place and parked on a dead-end street two blocks away. She sat there and cried herself out. Then, without thinking about it, she walked to the house. She peeked in the garage window to be certain the SUV was gone and continued around to the back porch.

She wasn’t surprised to find the back door still unlocked. Seth never used it so he wouldn’t have thought to check it. The last time she was here, she’d unlocked it from the inside. She and Seth had been fighting and she’d done it when he had left the room. She didn’t know why she’d done this, but she had been very angry at him at the time and unlocking the door without his knowledge had made her feel better.

Standing inside the kitchen, she wondered why she was here. The house felt different without Seth in it. Like an empty stage. She sat her purse on the kitchen table, took off her boots and draped her coat over a chair. Walking around, hearing the floor creak in places she’d never noticed it creak before, she visualized the many scenes that had played out here between the two of them since that first night in early January. She saw them having breakfast at the kitchen table, snuggling on the couch, talking in front of the fireplace, their voices and laughter echoing through the rooms, bouncing off the wooden beams of the high ceilings.

She continued on to the master bedroom. His side of the bed was mussed, hers was smooth. There was an empty glass on the nightstand on his side. She picked it up and brought it to her nose. Whiskey. She didn’t even know he liked whiskey. Together, the only thing they ever drank was wine. She opened the closet and ran her hand over his clothes like she had done the first morning she woke up here. She went into the bathroom then. One of her hair-ties was on the counter. Her toothbrush was next to his in a heavy ceramic mug. Sliding back the glass shower doors, she saw mostly her stuff filling the corners of the tub: her shampoo, conditioner, razor, shaving cream, face wash, body gel and sponge. He had a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap. This made her smile.

Kerri turned on the water, adjusted the temperature, undressed and stepped into the warm spray. She stood there like that for a minute, with her eyes closed. Instead of using her toiletries, she used his. She took her time, appreciating the scent of his soap on her body, letting her muscles relax, her worries and fears wash away. After the shower, she dried off and sprayed herself with his cologne. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this close to him. This was exactly what she needed today.

Knowing he wouldn’t be home for several hours, she slipped into his side of the bed, liking the way her naked body felt between the cool sheets. She snuggled in and felt something under the covers jabbing against her side. It was his journal. His journal! A pen dropped out from between its pages. He must have fallen asleep writing in it. She laid the pen on the nightstand and brought the book to her nose, inhaling the smell of leather, paper, and ink. Oh, this was perfect. She propped up the pillows, leaned back and opened the book at random. Even his handwriting—sloppy, unpretentious, real—made her feel good.

She began to read and found that he was describing a meal he’d had at a friend’s house. Who else but Seth Hardy would take the time to write about a damned pizza, she thought with a smile. She went to the start of the long entry which was dated this past December, only a week or so before their first date. He had been visiting a couple he knew from his college days. They had gotten a pizza stone for Christmas and were giving it a trial run. It was a small gathering of friends, mostly married couples, ribbing him about still being single.

His writing affected her so. She could hear the easy conversations and laughter of people warmed by good wine and camaraderie. She could almost see them. Everyone was in the kitchen, lending a hand: rolling out the dough, shredding and separating the cheeses, slicing peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and zucchini, chopping onions and fresh basil. It was snowing outside. Smooth jazz was playing quietly in the background; there was a fire in the fireplace.

Kerri closed the leather book and pressed it against her chest, one hand on top of the other. With her eyes shut, she could easily see the two of them there together, his friends quickly becoming her friends. There would be some teasing about the age gap, of course, but it would be lighthearted because anyone could see they were deliriously happy and so good for each other.

“He grounds you,” her mother had said to her on more than one occasion. When she was exasperated with her daughter, Rebecca would say, “Call and talk to Seth. He calms you down. Makes you bearable, at least.” Even her former therapists—though they’d insist that Seth was a father figure—wouldn’t be able to deny how good he was for her. They had all morphed in her mind to a single person, a large, bald man with a deep, soothing voice that she facetiously thought of as Dr. Dipshit. Then, as if she’d brought him to life by thinking about him, he sent up an open-ended question like a flare in the darkness of her mind:
And who are you if Seth goes away? Who are you without him?

The answer was obvious: no one.

She didn’t want to think of that now and started flipping through the journal again. She wanted to go back to the first week of the year, the day after their first night together and read all about them. Before she could find a time and date, a single line of five words caught her attention.