Something Fierce (6 page)

Absolutely.

W
hen they arrived
at
Kerri’s car
in Willoughby, Seth insisted on brushing off the thick layer of snow that covered it and scraped the ice from the windows while she started the engine and got the defroster going. She wrote down her phone number and when he climbed into the passenger seat to say goodbye, she handed it to him. “I’ll call you right now,” he said, taking out his phone, “and then you’ll have mine.”

She put her hand over his, stopping him. “No. Call me when you want to see me again,” she said. “
If
you want to see me again. Otherwise, I would rather it end here.”

He gave her a look that said this was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, but Kerri knew her only shot at keeping him was letting him go. And if he did go, losing him would be hard enough without the temptation of calling him in a desperate moment. “And don’t call to be polite, to thank me for a nice time,” she added. “Please. Only if you want to see me again.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he said and she knew he was referring to the episode before they’d left his house. “I can follow you home.”

“I’m fine,” she said, holding out her hand to prove how steady it was. “Other than feeling like a total ass, that is.”

“There’s no reason to be embarrassed.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You weren’t the one freaking out.” She didn’t want to talk about it; she didn’t want that to be the image of her he drove away with. “I had the most incredible time with you. I’ll never forget it.”

“You really don’t expect me to call?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t think about it. You will or you won’t. It’s up to you.”

“If I don’t call,” Seth smiled, “just remember that you are still an ‘attractive and intelligent young woman.’”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

He kissed her and then hugged her and held her for the longest time. He said goodbye, got out of the car and walked to his SUV. They exchanged a little wave as he drove off and the good feeling of being with him immediately began to slip away. She closed her eyes to hold on to it as long as possible.

“So we could just be friends?” he had asked her earlier at the breakfast table with that facetious grin of his. She’d shrugged, sure, if that’s what he wanted. Then, he pulled her to him and kissed her. Like the very first time, it came out of nowhere and melted her. She’d straddled him at the table, running her hands over his shoulders and down his back, causing his robe to fall open. She felt his hand gently between her legs. She guided and then poured herself over him, filling the emptiness inside of her. Even the pain was delicious and she started thrusting her hips with abandon, but he stopped her. Brushing the hair back from her face, he looked up into her eyes as if he were shining a light into her mind. “Be here with me,” he whispered. “Just be here.”

It was an odd thing to say, but she knew exactly what he meant. The wild fucking was her way of showing off and hiding at the same time. Having him look so deeply into her eyes scared the hell out of her. There were so many things she didn’t want him to see. Secrets. Lies. Shameful things that she didn’t want to think about…or talk about. Then he tightened his grip around her and stood up. She wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her into the living room and laid her down on the couch without separating from her. His eyes were so soft and open as he moved inside of her that she couldn’t close her eyes or look away. It was terrifying and wonderful. She felt closer to him in that moment than she’d ever felt to another living soul.

That was when the attack started. She closed her eyes, but it was too late. The horrible sensation of falling into darkness was upon her; the room had started to spin and she couldn’t breathe. Her heart was going like mad. She started pounding her hips up into him. “Come,” she said, finding her voice and demanding, “I want you to come
now
.”

He stopped moving, though she kept her hips going. “Kerri?” he said, looking confused. She felt like a fucking idiot and started to cry. Her heart went faster and faster. She felt like she was going to die. “Get off of me!”

“What?”

“Get,” she coughed, bawling now, “off of me!” She thought she was going to be sick.

“Kerri! What’s the matter!?”

“My heart!” she cried, trying to catch her breath. “My heart…it’s beating too fast…too fast.”

“Kerri, look at me!” he shouted, in a voice she’d never heard from him before.

“My heart…”

He slid off of the couch and on to his knees, leaning over her. “Look at me!” he demanded again and she did. He looked determined, more serious than she’d ever seen him, which frightened her and gave her something to grab on to at the same time. “Your heart is okay.”

“No!” she shook her head, “No…”

“Shhh, listen to me, Kerri,” he said, laying his hand over her heart. “Your heart is okay.”

“It’s beating too fast—”

“It
is
beating fast,” he said, “I can feel it. But you are not in danger. I promise you. It’s okay.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“Look at me,” he said, and again, she did. “I
promise
you. It’s perfectly healthy and strong and we are going to slow it down right now. Okay. Take a deep breath.” He took one himself and she followed. She kept looking into his eyes. They took a second breath. She could feel her heart beating into his outstretched hand, like he was holding it, protecting it. “Feel that?” he smiled. “It’s slowing down.” He laughed. “You are doing it. You are slowing it down.”

“You,” she said, feeling everything coming back to normal as suddenly as it had gone out of control.

“No. I swear I didn’t. It was you. All you.”

He held her for a while like that on the couch, his robe around them as a makeshift blanket. It was a special moment, but she couldn’t hold on. It was disappearing and then it was gone.

She had explained that she used to suffer from panic attacks in early adolescence and her doctor had assured her that there was nothing
wrong
, that it was something that some people occasionally experienced in times of stress or excitement and that she hadn’t had one in years. Seth had kissed the top of her head and told her that it was okay. He seemed to understand, but as she opened her eyes now, on Erie Street in downtown Willoughby, she felt sure that he was only being kind. He
was
kind, but not stupid, not stupid enough to come back once he got away. She was who she was and he was out of her league.

The constant chatter of her mind was coming back, telling her that she should stop stalling and go home, that she should feel guilty about the big breakfast, that she should purge or take a laxative or workout. It reminded her of how lonely the house was going to be. How it was lonely even when the whole family was there, but now, with her mother at work and Timmy at school, and her father and Jimmy moved out a year ago, it would be unbearable.

Out of habit, she turned to her phone for someone or something to counteract the profound sense of emptiness she felt when she was alone. She’d shut it off just before Seth entered the coffee shop yesterday so there’d be no interruptions. There were six messages. The first two were new acquaintances: a pervert she met on the Internet (RP2sexy) and a guy named Matt that she had regrettably given her phone number to on a particularly slow night at The Abyss. The third was a long message from Kyle, her former supervisor and sort-of ex-boyfriend. The sap had gotten transferred to another store so they could date openly at about the same time she’d lost interest. Sounding depressed, he said he really missed their “friendship” and just wanted “to talk,” which was his latest ploy to get her back. Timmy was next, wondering when she was coming home. The fifth was Kyle again, very drunk this time, telling her that Jinx—his Rottweiler and only other friend—missed her too. The last call was Lynn who said she needed to talk ASAP, which meant she was “pregnant” again, a condition that she had managed to be in on a regular basis since the seventh grade without ever having produced a child or even a baby bump.

There should have been return calls from Tiffany and Donna, but they were both pissed off at her, giving her the silent treatment. How petty her life was. Her friends were another of the many subjects she and Seth had talked about. Or rather he’d listened as she complained about them, how her male friends were always trying to sleep with her and how her female friends were always in the midst of some drama that it was getting harder and harder for her to take seriously. Seth had told her that it sounded to him like she was outgrowing them.

“I outgrew them long ago,” she’d said.

“Then why haven’t you moved on?”

She’d never really considered the question, but answered it as honestly as she could. “I don’t know why…but I guess, I’m afraid of being lonely.”

“We’re all lonely sometimes. Filling the time just to fill it won’t help.”

“I know,” she’d said, but realized she was about to do just that by returning the phone calls. Other than Timmy—who was in school now anyway—she didn’t want to talk to any of these people. She took a deep breath and dropped the phone back into her purse. What the hell. She’d give it a try. Pulling into the garage, she was pleasantly surprised and relieved to see Timmy’s car.

“Where have you been?” Timmy asked before she was barely in the door. He stood over the stove, stirring a small pot of ramen noodles, looking at her through the curtain of hair hanging in his eyes.

“Why aren’t you in school?” she asked.

“I’m taking a mental health day,” the sixteen-year-old answered.

She laughed at this.

“Where were you?” he asked again, pulling his hair out of his face. “I called. Why didn’t you answer? Why didn’t you call back?”

“I didn’t get the message until just a few minutes ago,” she said, hanging her coat on the rack by the door and going through the kitchen, heading for her bedroom upstairs.

“I called last night. How could you not get it?” he shouted after her, and then was following her up the steps, his noodles now in a bowl that he was slurping from. “Did you get his name?” he said, trying to sound worldly, like it didn’t bother him when she whored around.

She went into her bedroom and dropped on to the bed. Timmy stood in the doorway. “Toss me the remote,” she said. “Next to the television.”

He picked it up and considered it for a moment, as if he were thinking of blackmailing her with it. Then, he tossed it on the bed beside her. She turned on the television and idly went through the channels. Images of thin, beautiful women flickered by and the mental prattle was there again reminding her that she should go for a run or at least ride the exercise bike before going to work.

“Grammy was in the Emergency Room again last night,” Timmy said. Kerri switched from the television to the DVD which held
Phantom of the Opera.
Timmy continued. “She wants us to have dinner with her and Grandpa tomorrow night.”

Kerri didn’t answer. She skipped to Christine singing, “Think of Me.”

“You should have checked your messages or just called us, anyway,” Timmy said, “Mom was worried.”

“Mother couldn’t care less about me.”

“That’s not true. She was worried and so was I.”

Of course,
he
was worried. He probably thought she was running off again, abandoning him the way she did three years ago with that asshole, Rant—Richie Rant—as he was known on the comedy-circuit or to those suing him for slander, as Richard Lawson III. He was her biggest fuck-up to date. After seeing him on stage, sleeved in tattoos and making fun of everyone and everything that was wholesome, healthy or holy, she’d made it her seventeen-year-old business to meet him and the next thing she knew, she was running off with him. For two months they lived on the road while he performed at dive bars. He was so obsessed with her—especially when he was stoned—so jealous that he’d never let her out of his sight. “I’d keep you on a leash if I could. You’re like a bitch that’s always in heat.” She snuck out in the middle of the night and managed to get back home by morning. Rant stalked her for months, everywhere she went. They even got a restraining order that helped some but didn’t stop him. Not for a long time.

She closed her eyes tightly to silence the memories of that whole mess. “What?” Timmy said, still standing in the doorway.

“I didn’t say anything,” she said, opening her eyes and going forward on the DVD to where Christine and the Phantom first share the screen.

Timmy looked at her helplessly, then drank from the bowl like he didn’t care, tipping his head all the way back, draining the last of his ramen noodles, and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, a gesture that she would have made fun of if she’d been in a better mood. They had always shared a special bond, much closer than either of them shared with his twin brother, Jimmy, or rather “Jim” as he insisted on being called, who lived with their father and always took his side.

So she should be nicer to Timmy; he was all she had, really. He got her sense of humor, which everyone else found too mean, too sarcastic. Her imitations, mostly of relatives and her mother’s friends, could make her little brother laugh himself right out of breath, his face red, his eyes watering. Not that she needed to work that hard today. Following her around like a lost puppy, he would take whatever she offered. But it was like there was an invisible track in this house that she often slipped onto and couldn’t get back off of. So much of the time, this was who she was when she was here.

When Timmy finally gave up and turned to leave, she wanted to cry out,
don’t go! I’m being a moody bitch. I’m sorry. I should have called last night. Don’t leave me alone. Please.
What she actually said was, “You need a haircut.”

It was enough to make Timmy turn around and come back to the doorway. “I’m growing it long,” he said.

This, she was sure, was to further separate himself from Jim who, like their father, had short, sensible hair. “You’re going to look so gay,” she said gazing at the screen.