Shhh...Mack's Side (4 page)

By the time morning had rolled around, I was higher than a kite. No sleep, and an adrenaline buzz I hadn’t felt in years. I had so much energy and I felt enlightened. I worked the photo shoot like a mad lady that day, taking over jobs that
weren’t mine, and getting it done. I even ripped the sleeves off a four thousand dollar dress. Lila almost had to pay for it, but everyone loved it and she got out of it. That was one of the times Jane voiced her appreciation. She loved my work and what I had done.

Colton on the other hand
, was right there with me. He knew something was up. I wasn’t me. I’m not sure who I was, but at the end of the day and the reflection staring back at me through the tinted glass, said a lot.

“I look like I just
finished having sex,” I laughed to Colton, tucking my shirt back inside my dress slacks, sliding back into my heels, and pulling my hair back into a messy bun on top of my head. I didn’t remember taking my shoes off.

“You look like you’re on something. What are you taking, Kenzie?”

“Don’t you call me that. Don’t you ever call me that,” I said, turning on him like a mad woman.

“Whoa, a
ll right, chill out.”

Why did I say that? Why didn’t I like that name? Why didn’t I like it? I stumbled past Colton in a daze, seeing gray spots. Blinking them away, I made my way to the hotel, forgetting about the prescription that I didn’t need. Love was everywhere. Life was beautiful and nobody wanted to hurt anyone.
I didn’t need to be on medicine.

I smiled, stopping directly in front of the little girl. “Cara, you’re so big. You’re growing into a little girl. You’re so pretty,
baby,” I said, squatting to pick her up.

A
lady grabbed her away from me and someone grabbed me. “Sorry about that, sorry, she’s not herself today,” Colton said, leading me away from the woman staring at me in disbelief.

“Did you see her, Colton?”

“What the hell are you on?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked, looking at all the faces. Everybody was the same. They were happy. Everyone was happy, walking along the busy sidewalk, wearing smiles.

Colton insisted on staying with me while I showered. He said he wasn’t leaving me until I came down from whatever the hell I was on. I wasn’t on anything. I was high on life. I poured a glass of wine and drank it in three gulps.

“Go take a shower. You don’t need wine.”

I showered, feeling the warm water flow over my skin. Even the water was happy. It felt like a stream of baby powder, caressing every inch of my body. The shampoo smelled as though I was standing in a field of roses. Pink ones. I liked pink.

“Who was that?” I asked Colton
, who was on my phone.

“You take medicine, McKenzie?”

“What?”

“That was someone named Lila. She said I need to get your meds. What’s wrong with you?”

Laughing, I twirled in a circle, dropping my robe. “Nothing. Everything is awesome. Let’s play,” I sang, wrapping my naked body in his arms.

“Put your clothes on. We have to get to the pharmacy.”

“No. Let’s not do that. Let’s do this,” I said, licking his bottom lip with my tongue before dipping it inside. I felt the area between my legs come to life in an instant. He kissed me back and tightened the hold he had around me.

“McKenzie. Stop. I don’t know what’s going on here, but you need to stop. Let’s go get your medicine.”

“Colton, you’ve been eye fucking me since I started with York Fancy. You slide your crotch across my ass every chance you get. You’re constantly staring at my breasts and making eyes at me. Tell me you haven’t thought about this.”

“I’m a lot older than you.”

“Who gives a shit? You’re not marrying me. You’re just going to get it in.” I knew I had him as soon as I felt the girth on my hipbone come alive. He looked down at me, trying to walk away. I swayed my hips, trying get him to not walk away, convincing the hardness between his legs more so than his mind.

And there you go. Proof that men think with their dicks.

Colton shoved me to the bed and spread my legs, devouring my mouth with his. His touch was magic, like a pathway to happiness. We were communicating through our experience, our minds, our souls, and our bodies. Everything was enlightened. When his hands made their way to the wet folds between my legs, I moaned, but moved them away from me, feeling like I was floating.

I can’t
accurately describe it with words. Psychotic drugs. That might help. I was on an unfamiliar state of consciousness. Higher than a kite. Everything felt liberal, material things meant nothing. This beautiful life was about love. Love like Colton and I were sharing now. Everything was brilliant and intense. I noticed things I never paid attention to before. Like the great detail of the buildings outside my high-rise hotel room. I noticed the architecture when I dropped my head, slowly moving my naked body in twisting motions. Wanting to keep the feeling between Colton and me. I may have been the one hallucinating, but he saw it, too. He felt what I was feeling. I could see it in his brown eyes.

“I don’t know if I should do this, McKenzie,” Colton rasped hot words to my chest while
I moved his fingers away from my clitoris.

“Then get out of my room, Colton. I am going to find someone who doesn’t give a shit about morals.”

“I’m not letting you go wandering around L.A. like this. No strings, right?”

I blew out a puff of air. He was so weak. I had him before he ever entered my room and he didn’t even know it. I was using him, not the other way around.

“Do you really think I’m that girl?” I asked, keeping his hand from touching me. I noticed I had lost some of my muscle control and felt extremely relaxed. I wondered if I really was moving that slow, or was it the effect of abruptly coming off my meds? The lights. They were sooooo pretty. They glowed, illuminating neon colors.

Colton’s touch from his fingers running down my spine caused me to buckle, arching my back away from him and my ass in the air. I don’t know what the hell I was doing. I wanted him to touch me everywhere. My body longed for that touch, that drug of choice. It was so intense like I needed him to touch every inch of me.
That wasn’t the first time I had experienced this. It was the weirdest thing. I felt like I would die if he didn’t touch every inch of me, the longing for it was strong and powerful.

I never once told Colton what to do with words. I held the reins and directed him with my body and my eyes, moving his hands down my hips. I rolled to my side, slid his hand down my leg and to my ankle. It was like he knew. His hands caressed their way down my legs, to the bottoms of my feet, all the way to my toes.

I didn’t care that this position left me vulnerable and exposed. I wanted him to see me there. I twisted my hips and spread my lips for him to look at me. His eyes were part of the magic. My lower extremities ached with the pleasure of him looking. After guiding his hands or his lips to every part of my body. I sat up, pulling away from him. He stood, too, quickly removing his clothes. I spread my legs for him and watched while his erection was freed.

“Don’t touch it. Just look at it,” I whispered. Colton dropped to his knees between my legs and blew warm breaths to my throbbing nub. “Don’t touch it,” I teased, moving my hips close to his mouth.
He was in the same high trance that I was. He stared at it, obeying like a dog in training, waiting for permission to tear it up. I spread my legs as wide as I could, and rocked on my heels, coming closer and closer to his mouth. “Don’t touch it,” I taunted in a whisper.

I played this game for hours, telling him what to do with my body. When I nodded
, he licked me. When I pulled his hair, he stopped. When I shoved my hips toward his, he slid inside me. When I wanted to watch, I rolled him to his back and rode up and down his shaft, watching with every stroke. I spread my lips, showing him my clit when I noticed him watching, too. I’d never seen that look on Colton before. It was pure, dirty, sinful lust. That was the look I was after. Victory was won and I carried the torch. He ate out of my hand and I fed him the poison with my overactive mind and sensitive body.

The kind of sex Colton and I had was dangerous. The kind a husband and wife have while learning and experiencing each other over years of sleeping in the same bed. I had him doing things that I never did, not even while I was married for six whole months. I wanted him to use and abuse every opening in my body. I came more times than humanly possible, and when he did, I found it incredibly fulfilling to spread his essence around my body
. With both hands, I coated my breasts with his come. 

Colton was amazing in bed. Colton did everything right. It wasn’t that at all. I don’t know what it was, but it was messed up. I didn’t
feel fulfilled. Not at all. There are a lot of reasons why I would never be like the rest of society, marry a good man, have kids, and live in the suburbs, but that was another reason. I was never satisfied after sex. During, yes. After, I hated myself and wanted to take it back.

I crashed that night harder than I had in weeks. When I woke
, all of my prescriptions were on my nightstand, plus one.

Eighteen hours later.

Colton never said a word.

“We were going to discuss the
visions. You said you were around ten when they started?” Lila questioned. I studied her seventy-something face, wondering where life had taken her. How she had come to settle in this profession, listening to crazies like me, trying to live in a great big world and blend in. That’s all I had to do, blend in. I looked at the new message from my mother and ignored it. She wanted me to write the letter. I would write the letter. I had until the end of the month. I’d do it when I had time.

“Yes. I was around ten. I was at Gia’s house that night and I was woken by wind chimes. I hear them all the time.”

“Now?”

“Well, not right this second, but at night.”

“And where was the wind chimes coming from?” Lila asked.

I stood and moved behind her desk. “I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “I keep having this
vison where I’m on a beach with Gia, and I’m trying to find her. I can see the blue water at my feet, but to look up it’s dark, like in the evening, but not completely dark. I’m in something. Like a little building or something. Gianna calls my name, over and over, looking for me, but she doesn’t find me. I watch through a window while she walks up the steps and into the house. That’s where the wind chimes are. I see them above her head. Somebody is there with me, but I don’t know who. That’s when I wake up. Terrified. Do you think something happened when I was a little girl or something?”

“No. I think we need to talk about the rape. I think you’re visions are suppressed nightmares of bottled up memories.”

“Maybe,” I decided. I still wasn’t talking about the rape. I couldn’t describe that night one more time. This wasn’t my first rodeo. I knew how to manipulate therapists, well, maybe not Lila. She had a way of getting me to say things I never talked about with anyone else. I had been to enough of these doctors in my life to know how to maneuver around the things I didn’t want to discuss. I didn’t want to discuss any of them. I wouldn’t, had I been able to find someone to give me my meds without a shrink. Unfortunately, my condition called for therapy along with meds. Lucky me.

“Fine, we’ll work up to that. Did you vacation with Gia and her family?”

“Yes, we did everything together.”

“I feel that you were raised in a very unhealthy environment, McKenzie. I feel like you were raised to be a fake.”

That made me laugh. “You don’t even know. You think our mothers competed before, you should have seen it once Gia and I started cheering and dance. I wanted to play basketball. My mom made me go out for dance and cheer competition. That’s what Gia wanted to do. By the time I was ten, I stopped fighting it. I wasn’t going to win anyway. I did try to talk to Gia about it one day. We were on the tire swings Kyle hung for us in the corner of her yard.

“Gia?” I questioned, reaching for the rope on her swing.

“Yeah?” she replied, doing the same to mine. We worked hard, swerving our bodies, trying to entwine our ropes so we could spin around and around, out of control.

“You think your mom wants to be like my mom?”

“No. Your mom wants to be like my mom. She always has to get what my mom has.”

“No she doesn’t.”

“Yes she does.
My mom said so.”

Gia and I had the whole
“my dad can beat your dad up” fight, and went to our own homes. That lasted an hour. It was summer. We were bored. We pretended to be mermaids in an underwater forest, deciding to leave the grownups to their competition, placing Gia and me right in the middle.

Gia and I were
closer than ever during those years. We shared a lot. Like talent. We were both good at dance and cheer competitions. I’d say Gia was probably a little better than me. My legs had reached this awkward, lanky stage. Gia was easier to toss around. I would never say I loved competing in this thing that our mothers became obsessed with, but it was fun. Gia loved it. Gia worked me to the bone in our backyards. That’s about the time I became infatuated over Gia’s dad. Not in a sexual kind of way. It was more for the attention. He gave it to me.

We were eating takeout on Gia’s patio one evening after school when my mom mentioned to my dad about getting me
a trampoline for the back yard so I could practice my flips.

“That’s a good idea, Kyle. We should get Gia one too,” Melanie suggested.

Kyle walked behind me and draped his arms over my shoulders. “Can you tell these two quacks that you and Gia are joined at the hips? Explain to them we could buy five trampolines and you’re going to both be on the same one,” he teased, letting me go. Kyle made me feel like my dad didn’t. Even that day. My dad was trying to get him to talk about a bid or something. Kyle told him it was the weekend. He wouldn’t discuss it.

They argued about it and Kyle told him to stop doing all that he does. I felt rejected, listening to him accuse my da
d of doing twice as much as he was paid to do. He sacrificed time with me to work countless hours that he wasn’t paid to do. Kyle didn’t do that. I often wondered how Kyle had so much time to be a dad and have fun when they worked at the same company. My dad worked so much because he wanted to. To stay away from me and my mom.

I smiled, watching Kyle nonchalantly walk past Gia and
swept her up, jumping to the pool with Gia in his arms. She screamed and kicked her legs, trying to get away.

“I hate you! I just straightened my hair,” she yelled, angry that she’d just spent an hour in her room making her hair flat and shiny. I thought it was funny. I tried to be playful with my dad that night
, too, wanting what Gia had. I shook my head like a dog after my shower, sprinkling water to his face. He didn’t think it was funny. He asked me if I was trying to be stupid, or was it bred into me. I knew it was a low blow to my mom. Thank god, she didn’t hear. I would have been going to bed listening to a screaming match.

I paid more attention to Gia’s dad after that. One evening when I knew Gia had a dentist appointment
after school, I watched for him to get home. I had asked my dad what time he would be home that morning before school, knowing they carpooled. In my dad-stealing defense, I did try with my own dad first.

I walked into the den where he was already getting situated to work.

“Dad, can you help me with my math?” I asked, carrying my book.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She went to the gym.”

“Can’t you wait? I’m sort of busy here.”

“Yeah, okay, sure,” I sadly responded. He didn’t care whether I passed math or not. He was just like my mom, only he was seeking the glory in his office, not with his best friend.

My heart pounded a little when I made my way to the
side entrance, where I knew I would find Kyle. Tapping on the door, my legs shook, knocking my boney knees against each other.

“Yes!” he called, landing the dart to the red dot right in the center. I smiled. He was playing darts. He wasn’t even busy.

“Hey, sweetie. Gia’s with her mom. She’s getting her braces today.”

“I know. I was just wondering if you could help me for a second.”

“Sure, love. What do you need?” he offered, waving a hand to the second chair at his desk.

“Finding functions,” I answered, plopping to the chair and opening my book.

“Really? How old are you again? I didn’t learn this stuff until like ninth grade.”

Kyle helped me with my homework and
I had a new goal.

“I never knew you were so smart, McKenzie. You got it. You could be teaching me this stuff,”
he teased. I smiled, feeling wanted for the first time ever. I wanted approval, but not just any approval. Gianna’s dad’s approval. That’s when I decided to be smart, wanting to impress Gia’s dad, rather than my own.

I didn’t really know it at the time, but I wasn’t really being smart. I was occupying my mind
with information. Information that would quiet things I didn’t understand at my young age.

I threw my last homework ta
ntrum that night. It took ten years of me whining, laying on the floor, crying that I couldn’t do it, tipping my chair, leaving marks on the table with my eraser, writing on my arms, getting a million drinks, and peeing a million more. Ten years of careful planning, gone in one night.

I didn’t know he was there. I guess I was crying t
oo loud. My mom was trying to work at the dining room table while trying to make me put one line under the noun, two under the predicate noun, circle the verb, and check mark the correct punctuation at the end of the sentence. It was too hard. Ten-year-olds couldn’t remember that much.

I kicked my too-
long legs, landing my feet hard to the floor. I just wanted my mom to give up and get mad. Half the paper was done. All she had to do now was get angry and do it. She didn’t see Kyle, either. I’m sure neither of us would have been acting that way had we known he was there.

“Goddamnit, McKenzie. Will you stop? You’re not five anymore,” my mom
yelled, cracking me on the back of my bare leg. It stung, but worked. She grabbed my paper and started reading, just like I knew she would.

“That’s great, Liz. You should come over to my place. I have some homework
, too,” Kyle offered. I sat up, tantrum instantly over when I heard his voice. His tone was joking, yet, it wasn’t. He looked at me with condescending eyes and I came to my feet and slid in my chair. I took the paper from my mom and underlined the noun.

My grades went from C’s and D’s to straight A’s.
The tantrums I threw every night about homework with my mother became nonexistent. Doing my homework made me feel good about myself. Like I accomplished something on my own. I reminded my mother of the fact a couple times, seeking her approval.

“Mom, my homework’s all done,”
I chanted excitedly, running to her preparing spaghetti while talking about a house warming party she was going to throw on the phone. She shushed me with her finger.

“Mom. Look at the time. It’s only six. I already did my math and my history.”

“Mack. Shut up. I’m on the phone.”

“Mom. Look.”

“McKenzie, shut the hell up for a minute,” she yelled, moving the phone behind her back. I just wanted her to be happy that she didn’t have to get onto me. That she didn’t have to fight with me. She never told me “good job” or anything, not that night or any other night. She just did what my dad did and worked more. It was her turn to plan the vacation. She had to sell one more house before she decided on the twenty-thousand-dollar vacation, or the ten-thousand-dollar one. She was too busy to notice that she wasn’t spending two hours sitting at the table with me.

When I got my report card, I ran to Kyl
e, not my own mom or dad. He made a big deal out of it. High-fiving me and making up gangsta handshakes. Gia didn’t like it. Gia was like I was before, minus the way I got my way with my mom. She didn’t really do that with Melanie. I guess Gia was a lot more laid back than I was.

“He’s not your dad. Stop trying to steal my dad. Go find your own dad,” Gia whispered behind
Kyle’s back. I didn’t listen. I sought his approval every chance I got. His kind words and the attention he showed me was more rewarding than Gia’s whining. I know he showed me more attention than he should have. I’m not sure why he did, but as a kid, you long for that attention. I did, anyway.

I was always high-strung. I think that’s one reason I hated staying at
Gia’s house. I needed to be in mine so I could wander around my own house, and go to my own kitchen. I didn’t want Gia to think I was any more of a freak than I already was. It wasn’t unusual at all for me to be watching television in my room at three in the morning. I never understood why Gia slept so much.”

“Tell me about the visions, McKenzie,” Lila interrupted, looking to her watch. “You were around this age when they started?”

“Yeah, I mean I s
aw them before, but not as bad. I don’t know what to say. It’s the same one, over and over. Sometimes it’s very vivid and sometimes I can only see dark images, but I always hear the chimes. The chimes are always there.”

“Do you remember a place where there were wind chimes on a beach?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it’s possible. We were always on a beach for vacation. I don’t remember anything specific about the place. Just that it was on the beach, wind chimes hung on a porch and I was alone in this building or something. Someone helps me, but I don’t know why and I don’t know why I am crying.”