I STOOD OUTSIDE the door leading to the bedroom inside Anne’s house, watching the two women interact like they barely knew each other, wondering how far they were willing to take the charade.
When I walked inside Anne’s bedroom, she quickly grabbed Trisha’s hand and frowned at me. “Don’t make her do this, Dr. Brenton.”
I was far from fucking moved. “I don’t think fighting a losing argument with me is the last thing you want to remember, is it, Anne?”
Anne pointed a finger at me. “Stay away from Trisha, do you hear? You read as nothing but trouble. She’s a good, upstanding young woman who fell into hard times. I don’t care about what’s going on with the man whose name I’m not supposed to mention; don’t tempt Trisha.”
“Mom,” Trisha groaned, embarrassed.
Finally. A crack in the fake play they put on for me. I read between the lines. Victor was fucking with me in a different way than I’d originally assumed. The problem with this new direction was I had no idea where the fuck the end would land. I mentally shrugged it off. It would be dealt with after Anne was dead.
“I’m ready,” Anne announced, “but don’t you feel guilty about this, Trisha. Remember, it’s what I want. You gave me peace. Take that with you when I depart, will you?”
Trisha looked at me instead of the woman minutes from dying. “I will, Mom.”
I flipped the covers from Anne’s foot and pointed out a specific location between Anne’s toes to Trisha. “There.”
I left them alone to do whatever the hell they were going to do. Usually I would stay, but watching Anne die wouldn’t do for me what it used to do. I was never going to be at fucking peace again.
I’d been staying away from Nikki for weeks since I’d made a huge mistake in coming back to her. She had me, and now she knew exactly how strung out I was over her. My carefully controlled chaos was out of control. I felt like I was starting to lose my damned mind. I hated her. I loved her—I think. I wanted to do very, very bad things to her. I wanted to make love to her. I couldn’t think straight without her. I couldn’t think straight with her. The thoughts running through my head were giving me an intense stress headache. I never touched a drug in my life, but the way I felt was severe enough to make me consider changing my stance on prescription medicine.
I trotted downstairs, and exited out the backdoor inside the attached garage.
Anne lived in a mostly rural area with neighbors that were few and far between. Nothing was before me but a few feet of snow covering the yard and the trees. My fingers twitched, itching for something to hold—aching to hold Nikki.
Staring at the snow, making me feel blind, I couldn’t move.
More than a few minutes must’ve passed, because Trisha came into the backyard from the back door of the house and startled when she saw me. “Eric.” She treaded through the snow, walking toward me. “I didn’t know you were still here. Is everything okay?”
Closely examining her face, I registered every detail. I was used to the somber—and sometimes guilt-ridden—expression on people’s faces when I had to bring them bad news about their loved one. It was ingrained in my head so much, I could be frigidly calm when I brought them the news. Trisha didn’t look like a woman who’d just lost her mother.
The more I stared at her, the more uneasy she became.
Game on.
“I’m not the one who just lost my mother,” I said.
She nodded and a look came over her face like she suddenly remembered to look sad. “It’s different this way. It’s expected. I’ve cried for her before.”
I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my Italian wool jacket, slipping my back to rest on the siding of the house.
“You look tired, Eric. Do you want to rest here before you have to go back?”
“Wish I had a fucking cigarette,” I muttered.
“You smoke…as a doctor?”
I cranked my neck and rolled my shoulders. “In med school. You wouldn’t believe the shit they get away with doing to med school students. It stressed me out.”
She pulled out a dime bag and looked like a shy schoolgirl about it. “I got a little something from my mother’s leftover stash.”
I cut my eyes at her. “Can’t. Randomized drug testing.” And then there was the other reason. I never took anything that would alter my mood and leave me without control over my thoughts and emotions. I never would.
“Do you have any idea how to roll these things?” she asked, trying to stifle a giggle. “Because I don’t. I think there are some rolling papers inside the house.”
I broadened my shoulders and stared her down, waiting for her to falter in her role a little more than she already had. “I do.” Only because I used to do it for my stepmother when she was too drunk to do it herself.
“Come inside? They’re gone.” She cleared her throat. “They took my mother away, and I could use some company.”
Despite the game, I shouldn’t have wanted to stay. If I went to Vic’s, it would’ve meant more bullshit slinging, or worse, another one of his whores. I couldn’t go home. Nikki made me feel things I wasn’t comfortable with. I didn’t know who the hell I was. I’d been feeling that way a lot lately, but I know I almost completely checked out the moment Aimee told me I’d lost my unborn child.
Sitting on the floor, in front of the dining room table, I did my duty and picked through seeds. Trisha sat on the couch behind me. Uncomfortable with the silence, she flipped through the channels like a kid with ADD.
Picking out seeds made me remember my college days—made me remember further back. My stepmother was addicted to the stuff.
“Eric?” Trisha slouched forward on the couch. “It would probably make me feel better if you shared whatever is bothering you.”
“I don’t do that.”
“It’s not good to hold it in,” she sang.
“Didn’t know you were a psychiatrist.”
“I’m not, but it doesn’t mean I can’t help.”
“Therapy is bullshit. It hides the shit that goes on in your head with more mess. Do you know anyone who’s in therapy? They are still fucked up. People pay copious amounts of money to self-indulge and whine about the monsters inside their heads and how badly they want them to go away. They never will go away. Mental illness can’t be cured, only managed…or mismanaged. The profession is utter shit and full of theories constructed by mad men who were in need of therapy themselves.”
“Funny coming from a doctor.”
I licked the end of the paper and handed her the most pristine joint I’d ever rolled.
“Are you sure you won’t join?”
I shook my head.
“Is it your wife? Is that why you’re delaying going home?”
It was time to kick the game into a higher gear and get her to make one false move to show me what was real. “I went to my paternal grandmother’s house once,” I started and paused for dramatic effect.
My father claimed he was tired of the trouble I was getting into, and he’d sent me to her for the weekend. I knew what was up when he sent Thaddeus and his wife to Palm Springs for the weekend. It meant he was throwing one of his sex parties and didn’t want them or me around. The last time he had one when I was around, I was two centimeters away from getting my cherry popped by a horny housewife who liked to swap with her husband. Eamon stopped it, but she found me a few years later and granted me the gift of being the first to fuck her in the ass.
“You would think it would’ve been better with her…” I trailed off not wanting to get into the why and the what of a grandmother who was just as screwed up as her son. “She had a birdhouse mounted in a tree in the backyard where I spent most of my time. I found a baby bird with a broken wing on the ground. Course she told me to leave it alone, and let nature do its job. ‘The weak ones never survive this world, as it should be,’ she said. To me, I didn’t think it was true. It wasn’t weak—it just got in a bad spot that rendered it that way. I took it in, did what I could, learned everything I could about taking care of it.
“Two months later…I released the bird to take flight,” I said with a smile. I was lying through my pearly whites. The bird tried to fly and couldn’t. The wing didn’t heal properly. My grandmother stomped on it and said she was putting it out of its misery. She told me I should never put my all into things that were broken, because I’d fail every time. The weak ones died early because it was the way it should be; natural selection existed for a reason.
I’d learned another lesson. Never put your all into something, only to release it once you think it’s “fixed.” But that wasn’t the point. The point of the heart-warming version of the story was to get Trisha where I wanted her.
“I know when people look at my wife, they see her as a weak, fucked-up girl with no hope, but I saw something else in her. I wanted to be the perfect man, so I became someone different from who I was. I became her dream man. I became the man she needed and wanted me to be.”
“If it had worked, I don’t think you’d look as depressed as you do,” Trisha said.
“She’s new…for me. I don’t know how to be with her sometimes. I’ve done things to her lately that I’m not proud of. Things that did more harm than good. Things I think made her worse. I don’t know how to reverse it. I looked at the baby we were supposed to have as my muse to change—my muse to keep being a good guy. But for her? It destroyed her little by little, because it reminded her of all the things she keeps in her head and believes about herself. I knew it, and I ignored it.
“I can’t lose her. I do everything I can to keep her. But what I do…is not what a normal guy in love does. Honestly, I don’t know what’s normal. I only know manipulation. Fuck.” I said more than I worked out in my head to say to her. Shit happens. Might’ve worked to my advantage anyway.
When I looked at Trisha and her eyes were as big as saucers, almost brimming with tears, my thoughts were confirmed. Yeah, it worked exactly how I wanted it to.
“Think I’m getting secondhand effects,” I lied.
“You don’t normally talk this way with anyone?” she asked with a tinge hopefulness in her eyes.
I held back a smirk. She was too damned easy. “Never.”
“Maybe that’s the problem, Eric. You need to talk to her.”
I shook my head. “Not that kind of guy.” Hard to admit, even though it was a neon sign in front of my face. It wasn’t other people who were fucking things up for us. I was. Memories were coming back to fuck with me. Incidents I forgot about because I didn’t want to deal—still couldn’t deal with it. I continuously avoided it. I believed things about her when in my gut I knew they weren’t true, and she saw it as me withdrawing from her. She saw it as the beginning of the game I usually played and the beginning of the end of us.
At first, I could keep everything I hid from her under my control. Lately, I’d lost all sense of the power I used to have when I was around her. It was dangerous with all that was going on around me. Control was my source of sustenance. The woman had tried to starve me on numerous occasions.
With her—when she let me in—I felt like I was invited to a dinner with foreigners in their native land. Sure, the table and the atmosphere were inviting, but it was clear I didn’t fit in. As I dined on the best meal I’d ever tasted, people around me began to realize I didn’t speak the language. Because I was too busy with the meal to pay attention to the world outside like I should have, I couldn’t convince them I should be there. I didn't give a shit, ‘cause the host bought my act. Unfortunately, she’d begun to catch on. She knew I didn’t speak the language. I grew concerned over getting kicked out of the place permanently. Kicked out of the places I wanted to be in. Her mind, her heart…her body. The places that made me feel like I did before Eamon had gotten a hold of me. If she ever completely shut me out, I didn’t know what would happen to me.
“Eric,” Trisha called sweetly and tried to touch me.
Immediately, I swallowed everything down and stood. It was time to wrap things up with the woman who thought she could fuck with me.
“You know why you’re spilling this way? Because you’re holding too much in. It either comes out this way, or it comes out with an explosion that—from what you say—your wife does not need.”
“She…needs me.”
“Does she have all of you?” she asked.
“Not a single person on this planet has ever had all of me.”
“You don’t think that’s a problem?”
“There are too fucking many to name.” I looked at my watch. “I have to get out of here and hit the gym. Don’t go to that dealer again. He fucked you over.”
“I told you, it was my mother’s weed,” she said, trying to convince herself more than me.
“If the woman currently being drained of her bodily fluids and pumped with formaldehyde smoked a little weed to get over her symptoms”—I snorted—“I was born a fucking woman.”
“O-okay…so you caught me in a lie.”
“Not the only one.” I scowled.
“I-I’m not sure what you mean.”
“What the fuck is this, Trish?” I pointed between her and me. “Do you want to fuck me or betray me? Maybe a little of both? What?” The purpose of my question came about to stir her up. I knew what she wanted. When she didn’t answer fast enough, I started to head out.
“No, I don’t want any of those things. Eric, it seems you need to talk to someone.” Walking closer, she spoke to my back. “I’m here, if you need me. Maybe…maybe you and her should separate. It seems like you’re no good for each other. You should get her help—maybe in a facility and let professionals deal with her. It might be the best thing for her.” She reached up and squeezed my bicep.
It took everything inside me not to crack my signature smile. Without looking at her, I said, “Won’t happen. Has to be the last time you see me. When I go home, I’m going to fuck my wife senseless. I’m not saying it to turn you on, it’s really what I’m going to do, because I’d never fuck you.
“Tonight, you should get on your knees and thank your deity that I’m not interested. I would seriously destroy you and your shitty semblance of a life. You would be so easy to break. It would take me less than a day until you were ready for the mental ward. I’m not saying this in the ‘I’m a tortured guy because my life sucked. I push people away but secretly want someone to love me and make it all better’ act. No. I will fuck your head hard, rough, and raw. I will fuck it so much you won’t know what’s true and what’s false. I won’t feel bad about it. Matter-of-fact, I’ll feel damn near giddy about it. It would give me a bigger high than that shitty weed you just smoked.”
I turned to her, no longer hiding my smirk. “Let’s stop playing games. Why don’t you tell me who the fuck you really were before you came to Vic? A glorified high-priced whore? A junkie? Were you primed by your real mother to become a millionaire’s whore? Are you Vic’s? Or did he groom you to become my whore?”
She looked up at me, appalled, angry…disappointed. “Eric, you don’t have to do this.”
I grabbed her by the hair and jerked her neck back. I stood close enough to make her feel the temperature of my breath against her face. “Do you think…because I told you things about me that I feel something for you? Trish? I was fucking with you. I was dismantling your poorly written script. Most of what I told you was bullshit. I’m…a damn good actor. Can I tell you something else?” I firmed my hold on her hair, making her snivel.
“I’m never gifting you with my cock. Making you wet. Making your pussy strangle my cock as you come, begging for more. Because believe me, I’m very gifted at making a woman come, over…and over again. You can fantasize about me all you want. Come screaming and aching to the thought of me being inside you. I don’t care. You’ll never have it. Make sure you tell Vic what I told you, word for word, when you report back to him.” I gently slipped my hands from her hair and kept up a smile so dark she started to shake.
Fuck, that felt good. It threw me out of the mental state I didn’t like being in.
Cracking my neck, I straightened the sleeves of my jacket and walked out the door.
I had shit to feel good about, because I was right—Victor was fucking with my life. My smile disappeared. If he could do this to me, there was no telling what else he had planned.
A careful strategy needed to be developed and executed. The first item of notice on the agenda was to contact the man who’d warned me about Vic when I was too busy buying the bullshit Vic sold me to listen to his pearls of wisdom. He told me to never look at Vic as a mentor, but instead as a puppet-master. He was the man more feared than Vic and had given me solid advice. I didn’t listen.
ON THE WAY HOME, I stopped by Janet’s apartment and picked up Kifo. I had maybe three hours before I had to head into work. I was tired of crashing with Vic, and at the moment, it wouldn’t have been a good idea until I had a solid plan.
I wasn’t sure of what I was going to do until I wound up walking through Nikki’s front door. The house was quiet. Too quiet. When Kifo tucked her tail and began to whine, I knew something was wrong.
“What the fuck is wrong with you now, dog?” Leaning down, I ruffled her ears. I barely had my hands in her fur when she took off down the hall and circled the living room. When she came back to me, I noticed her paws were tracking blood throughout the house, and it wasn’t hers.
My heart bottomed the fuck out.