Something Fierce (29 page)

But he wouldn’t if he knew what she knew, that it was going to be better than ever between them this time. Hotter, deeper, sweeter. She knew that. Seth would eventually see that too. Though it may take a little convincing, she had no doubt that she was up to the challenge. It took some convincing the first time around, did it not?

At some point this weekend, it had dawned on her that Seth was ignoring her and avoiding her because he loved her so much that he felt he had to get away from her. In his journal, he’d often written that her love consumed him. But he couldn’t do it to her face so he was running, hiding from the insatiable hunger he felt for her, from that unquenchable thirst that burned inside of him when they were together. It scared him and it should. It was like fire. Whether she was
good
for him or not was irrelevant. A moot point. They could not and would not remain apart. And he’d know that the minute he saw her.

She moved the ring on her finger. It was exquisite. Accepting it had been necessary. It made the weekend magical. Sunday was a sad and beautiful day. Kyle dug the grave himself, laid Jinx’s pillow bed at the bottom of it, wrapped her in her favorite blanket, and lovingly positioned her there. Kerri held Jinx’s favorite toys: a plastic frog that squeaked, a small stuffed monkey, and a couple of dirty tennis balls. They stood over the open grave, shoulder to shoulder, and cried. Kyle said Jinx was a good, faithful, and obedient dog and that she was irreplaceable and he would love her to the end of time. Then they knelt down. Kerri dropped the toys next to the dog’s body; Kyle added the collar and the leash, and then filled in the grave.

Mr. and Mrs. McGuire even came out and stood silently for a few minutes. “She was a good one, Kyle,” Mr. McGuire said, and Mrs. McGuire added, “She sure was.” Then they went back up to the house, arm in arm. Kyle had done little in his life to please his parents and had fallen far short of his father’s expectations for him, but Mr. McGuire had approved of Jinx and he approved of Kerri too. Kyle had reminded her on several occasions that if—when—she accepted his marriage proposal, she would want for nothing. They would move straight into their own cottage overlooking the lake and the homes would grow in size with their family. Mrs. McGuire had reconfirmed the cottage as a wedding gift in a woman to woman talk over tea that afternoon. “He was always so awkward around people,” she’d said of her son, staring off in the distance. “We didn’t think he’d ever meet a girl. You reached him in a way no ever has.” Then turning to her, Mrs. McGuire had said, “He loves you dearly, you know.”

“I know,” Kerri had said. “I love him too.” The fantasy of being married to him was easy to indulge as they’d buried Jinx and let the McGuires take them out to an expensive dinner Sunday evening. Afterward, they’d said their goodbyes, standing awkwardly in the parking lot of the restaurant, knowing that the four of them had shared something special.

After she finished eating, she took a long, hot shower and eased into the day. Coming downstairs, Kyle asked, “How long has it been since you had an oil change?”

She shrugged, all girly and cute in a flowered skirt. “You have to change the oil?”

He shook his head like he couldn’t believe her negligence, but she knew that he loved taking care of her and she loved it too. “And your tires? Cripes! They are worn almost smooth!”

“Well, what do you expect? Mother doesn’t know crap about up-keeping a car and my dad never speaks more than a handful of words to me a year.” She thought Kyle might make some snide remark about why Seth hadn’t taken care of her car—which would have started a fight and ruined the nice morning they were having—so she cut him off before he had a chance. “I can’t afford new tires,” she said.

“Well, you have to have them. Good tires are not a luxury; they are a necessity! And you’re going to have to learn to start paying closer attention to stuff like that.”

She stuck out her lower lip and said in a little girl voice, “I know. I’m a dummy.”

“No, you’re not, but I cannot and will not let you drive around on tires like that.”

She knew that Kyle made pretty good money and spent damned little of it. As long as she was his bride-to-be, she might as well enjoy all the perks. She was sure he’d insist on not only having a new set of tires put on her car, but paying for them too. “It’s not your problem. Thanks for telling me about it though.”

“Yes, it is, my problem.” he said. “I’d never forgive myself if anything happened. You know what you mean to me.” Then before she could say anything else, he asked, “Are you coming home after class?”

Hopefully, she’d be with Seth after class, but there was no way to predict how just how much convincing she’d have to do and if he refused her first advances, she wouldn’t want to be alone. If things did work according to plan, she could cancel with Kyle. “I can. My last class is over at 12:30. Will there be lunch?”

“Now she wants lunch!” he said, acting all exasperated. “What are you hungry for?”

“Anything. Surprise me.”

S
eth had been sleeping
for a long time now. Too long. He needed to wake up.

His whole body ached. His mouth hurt. He got off of the bed and walked into the bathroom. He flicked on the light switch and…no.

He was still in bed. His eyes were still closed. His head and arms and legs felt heavy. Very, very heavy. He could stay in bed forever. But he had to get up. Now. He got off the bed, walked to the bathroom, switched on the light…

Damn it. He hadn’t moved. His eyes hadn’t opened. It was the sleeping pills. And the booze. This was bad. He had to get serious here. He threw his legs over the bed. He threw his legs over the bed. He threw his legs over the bed.

Goddamn it! He threw his legs over the bed. His feet hit the floor hard and his knees buckled. He was on the floor. He got up and lunged toward the bathroom but hit a wall and cried out in pain. That wall wasn’t supposed to be there. He slid to the floor and opened his eyes. Everything was fuzzy but he could see well enough to know that he was not at Dr. Jarrell’s place. He had no idea where he was. The room was dark. The bed was still made, covered in a floral bedspread he’d never seen before. There was a television, a dresser, a small desk, a night table, a picture on the wall of a boat in a storm.

His head started nodding. He was going back to sleep. Not good. Not good. He tried to sit up. He rubbed his eyes, took in the room again. He used a metal thing with nylon straps on it to stand up. It folded shut and he fell back to the ground. “What the hell?” It was a luggage rack. He was in a motel room.

He staggered toward the bathroom, holding on to the door frame, sweeping his arm along the wall until he knocked the bathroom light on. His eyes kept trying to close. He stepped into the shower and turned the water on full-blast.

FREEZING!

He grabbed the faucet and turned it back some. Too hot. Then okay. Colder than he normally liked it, but okay. His tee-shirt and underwear clung to him, heavy and wet. “Fuck.” He peeled the shirt off and it hit the bathtub floor with a fat, slapping sound. He stepped out of his underwear and damned near fell. He kicked the clothes aside, adjusted the water temperature some more and then stood there for a long while, his forehead leaning against the cold tile of the shower walls, the water spraying over him, running down his back.

He tried to remember how he got here. It was raining and he was staring at his SUV. He remembered his sisters teasing him about carrying a bottle of wine and two crystal glasses everywhere he went. That wasn’t all he carried. There was also a fresh set of clothes in the back of that vehicle. And even better, there was an envelope in the pants pocket with a credit card in it. It was only there for emergency purposes. The APR was so absurdly high that it could have been offered by the mob.

Washing himself gingerly, he remembered where he was now and how he’d gotten here. Across from Arby’s, there was a Super 8, an Econo Lodge, and a dumpy looking place called the Drop Back Inn. He’d gone to the dumpy one because it was the kind of place where they wouldn’t ask too many questions. The credit card had a picture ID on it which came in handy since his wallet was still missing. Even looking like he looked, he didn’t have a problem getting the room. As soon as he’d gone inside the night before, he’d showered off the blood and the dirt, put on a fresh t-shirt and underwear, finished the flask, and went on to the wine. He took two sleeping pills. Maybe a third one later. He wanted to sleep so badly. Yes, a third one. A fourth one? No, surely not. He wasn’t certain either way.

No wonder he felt like hell. He tossed the washcloth—once white, but now bloodstained pink—to the corner of the tub. His whole body ached, especially his mouth and ribs. He took his time and then finally shut down the shower and dried off. Standing in front of the mirror as the steam lifted, he looked at himself. He’d looked bad for the last couple of months, but tonight, or this morning, or this afternoon, or whatever time it turned out to be, he looked truly awful. The left side of his face was swollen. His lip was split: fat, raw looking, hot to the touch. There was a large purplish bruise on his right side below his chest.

He hooked the corner of his mouth with his finger and pulled it to the side, turning up the pain in his lip. He tilted his head to get a look at the tooth. It was the canine tooth on the left side. It was bloody around the base. Using his index finger, he rocked it back and forth. It moved easily, making a sickening squishing sound and shooting off shards of pain. He squeezed the tooth between thumb and forefinger and yanked downward. There was a crunching sound inside his head, unbelievable pain, the taste of blood, his eyes blurring with tears, but the tooth stayed put.

Fuck it. He rinsed his mouth out until the water went from red to only slightly pink. He went back to the bedroom. The nightstand clock read 10:18 AM. The last he remembered, it read 3:34 AM. Almost seven hours ago. That meant he’d slept a good six of those, which was longer than he remembered sleeping in one shot in months. That was good. That was something at least. He pulled the curtains back. It was so bright outside that it blinded him for a moment.

His phone was on the floor next to the bed, still silenced. “What the hell,” he said, looking at it. There were endless missed calls and text messages from Kerri, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing his phone was telling him. It had to be wrong. Maybe when the screen got cracked, it messed something up because according to the phone, it was 10:20 AM on Monday. But it was Sunday morning, not Monday morning. Right? He looked around the room for something to verify this or contest it. He thought of the pills, and the whiskey, and the wine. Could he have slept over twenty-four hours? Holy shit. He looked at the phone again. It was possible. He felt out of it. Hungry, disoriented, sore. But if it was Monday morning…he was missing class.

He was missing his composition class! It started at ten! The semester was winding down. He couldn’t miss. And the money. Oh fuck, the money. Part-timers didn’t have sick days or personal days. If he missed class for whatever reason, he didn’t get paid. He grabbed the jeans he’d kept in the back of the SUV. His underwear and the clean shirt were in the tub, soaked. He could go without underwear and he’d have to wear the ripped shirt. He was pulling on the clean jeans when he realized that there was no way he’d make it. The students would be long gone by the time he got there. “Okay,” he said, looking at the phone making sure he was reading it right. “Okay. I can make this up. I can figure something out. It won’t be a big deal.”

But the money. “The damned money.”

He hadn’t called in. Chances were good that the students showed up, waited fifteen minutes or so and bolted. Which would work. No one in the payroll department would know or would need to know that he had missed the class. And there was time to make his next class: Creative Writing. He could do this. He hadn’t written a lecture, but he could wing it. He had to.

K
erri explained
to the no-nonsense administrative assistant for the part-time faculty that she’d had a flat tire on the way to class and arrived twenty minutes late only to find the room for her composition class empty. The woman looked up over the top of her glasses at the clock on the wall—10:30—and then to Kerri. “There’s no one there?”

Kerri shook her head no. “There wasn’t a note or anything written on the board. I don’t want to miss anything and I don’t want to be marked absent.”

“I didn’t get a cancellation notice,” she said. The woman, whose name was Robin according to her nameplate, took a file from the desk drawer and pulled out a class roster. “And you are?”

“Judy,” Kerri said. Seth had often talked about Judy. A brown-noser who lived in great fear of getting anything below 95 percent. This would be just the kind of thing Judy would do.

“Let me call his cell. See what’s going on.”

Kerri could hear the phone ringing and Seth’s voice after the third ring. “Hello.”

“Seth Hardy?”

“Speaking.” At the sound of his voice, Kerri inwardly smiled. So he was answering calls, just not her calls.
Run all you like, honey
, she thought,
all roads lead back to us.

“This is Robin Wallace, part-time faculty. There’s a young woman from your 10:00 AM class looking for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Judy was a little late and when she got to the room, it was empty.”

“Right.”

“So,” she asked, “where are you?”

“Here,” he said.

Robin made a face. “Where’s here?”

“On campus. But…ah…I dismissed class early.”

“You dismissed class early?” she repeated.

Robin, Kerri could tell, didn’t believe him. And she shouldn’t because Mr. Open and Honest was lying. Kerri had been hovering outside that classroom at 9:50 ready to greet her man at the door. She saw the room fill up with students and when he didn’t show, she saw them leave.

“Yeah,” he said. “Everyone needed more time to work on their final paper. So we met briefly and I excused them to the library to do that.”