Chapter Eight
Kane
“What the fuck, dude,” I snapped at the asshole that’d just bumped into me. “Tryin’ to fuckin’ throw darts, dick.”
Tia, the gal from Philosophy class, was hanging on my arm, and I shrugged it off as I squared off with the asshole.
The man sneered at me. “Then get outa my fucking way,” he snipped back, his shoulders tensing forward as though he were going to lunge. He was being cocky. Cocky didn’t fucking work on me.
I chuckled, dismissing his aggression as if it was nothing, and Tia giggled. “Hey, sweetie,” I said to her. “Get me another beer. This asswipe spilled mine all over the floor.” I handed her a five dollar bill, folding her fingers over the money as she batted her eyelashes and bit her lower lip. She nodded and bounced off toward the bar.
The man turned his back on me, and for whatever reason—reasons that never seemed to make sense even as they were happening in my mind—I tossed my half spilled beer on the back of his head and then threw the glass to the floor. It erupted in an explosion of glass that sent shards flying across the floor, but I had little time to listen to the sound as the man turned around and instantly took a swing at me.
I took a fist hard to my left cheek, and the searing heat that shot out from the point of contact to the rest of my head lit a fire in my gut. I threw the next punch, connecting squarely with his lower jaw. He staggered back, but when he regained his footing he lunged toward me, throwing me back against a bar top table. I fell, scraping my cheek on the side of the table where the cheap plastic veneer had chipped off leaving a jagged rough edge. When I landed on the floor, it was in a pool of beer and broken glass.
I pushed up, feeling the shards of glass slicing and grinding into my elbows and the backs of my upper arms. The sound of the bar was loud, people shouting, gasping, cheering, and yelling admonishments.
“Knock it the fuck off,” the bartender yelled over the crowd.
But that just wasn’t something I could do. I lunged next, throwing the man into the pool table. I came down on top of him, pinning his back to the worn green felt. I swung, connecting with his nose that time, and blood splattered across the table as his head snapped to the side.
“You piece of shit,” he yelled in a nasally wet voice even as his hands reached up for his face.
And then arms were wrapped around me, pulling me back as I fought against the restraint. “Let me go,” I raged.
But the arms were strong, and when the man sprawled across the pool table stood back up, there was nothing standing in the way of him and me. He stalked up to me, grabbed my shoulders, and then brought his knee straight up into my groin. My breath left my lungs as my restrained body tried desperately to double over. My skin flushed as the agony coursed through my guts and down to my balls. The nausea nearly left me vomiting on the floor, and my body slumped as my head pounded and I tried to pass out.
“I’m calling the fucking cops, you stupid fucking assholes,” the bartender shouted.
I stopped paying attention after that, let my head drop, and closed my eyes. I inhaled and exhaled deeply, exhaustion slowing my brain even as pain coursed through me. A strange relief came over me. It wasn’t a new relief. I knew this feeling even if I didn’t understand it. Hell, I was pretty sure I’d gone looking for it.
* * * *
She stared at me with her arms crossed on her chest when I stepped through the large security door. She looked furious.
“Hell,” I said, my voice rough and scratchy as I walked toward her. “Thanks for—”
“Go fuck yourself,” she muttered, and then she turned and stormed out of the police station.
I followed, shaking my head as I walked. Pain was pulsing through my brain, and my gate was lazy. I was quite sure I was still half fucking drunk. It was dark out now. The day had somehow gotten away from me. This wasn’t how I’d expected my Tuesday to go.
I’d not stopped thinking about her since class the previous Wednesday night, and it had started to consume me. I would zone out even as I rolled a paint brush over a wall or pounded a nail into something. It wasn’t a fun thing for me leaving things on a bad note with Helene. Any other person in the world, no problem. But her … it was like nothing in the world, not fighting, not drinking, not even fucking could give me an ounce of peace. So when Tia called just before lunchtime, saying her afternoon class had been canceled and suggesting I knock off for the day and join her for some fun, it was an easy decision.
I was in handcuffs praying my balls wouldn’t fall off by one-thirty. And now it was five-thirty, and apparently my charges were simple enough that an arraignment wasn’t necessary. Nothing at all about what I’d done that day was simple.
“How did you even get my cell phone number?” she asked as she yanked her car door open.
I stood on the passenger side, watching her over the roof of the car. “It was on your syllabus.”
She gaped at me. “And that somehow translated into an invitation to call me the first time you got arrested?” she asked rudely.
“Wasn’t the first time I got arrested,” I muttered as I pulled the car door open and climbed in. My balls felt like dangling bruises, and my cheek burned. My head was pounding, and while I couldn’t remember for sure what had happened to my elbows, they seared with the same hot heat I felt in my cheek. “Thanks for bailing me out,” I said even as I stretched my jaw and pressed on the joint with my thumb.
“Why didn’t you just call Shawn?” she asked. Her voice was cold and angry. “I’m guessing he’d be a little less shocked by all this than me.”
I glanced over at her as I stretched my neck, feeling my bones crack. “His wife doesn’t like me very much, and I doubt posting bail for me would be her idea of money well spent.” I tried to smirk, but the corner of my mouth split open, and I hissed.
“And you think it’s mine?” Her voice was shrill.
“I’ll pay you back, Hell.”
She started her car and pulled away from the curb, saying nothing else.
“Will you take me to your place?” I didn’t look at her when I asked the question. I knew she was mad enough at me to put her own fist through my face, so inviting myself over was likely the last thing in the world she wanted to hear.
She pulled up to a stop light, and I could feel her eyes boring holes into me as she glared some more. “You must be kidding—”
“Listen,” I finally snapped back at her. “I don’t have any water right now. They’re replacing part of the main, and I have no way to get this mess cleaned up.” I sighed loudly but it was as much frustration as anything else. “I’m sorry,” I tried again. “If it’s too much to ask, just drop me off at home, and I’ll deal with it. But my fucking head is killing me, and it would be great if you could just be pissed at me after my headache’s gone away.”
She pulled away from the stop light, and we were silent as she drove. Hazleton wasn’t a terribly large town, but it stayed plenty busy. And it didn’t take me long to figure out she wasn’t taking me to my house. I relaxed into the seat, staring out the window. I wasn’t above being humiliated by the situation, and I didn’t bother trying to talk to her or look at her as she drove.
She pulled up in the driveway of a small bungalow style home with a stone exterior. It was surrounded by old mature trees with branches that hung way too low. It was charming. It was also in serious need of a tree trimmer.
I climbed from the car, looking around. “I can trim these branches back,” I said as I turned right into one, smacking my face and sending shooting pain through my entire head.
“That’s not necessary,” she said as she turned and walked toward the house.
“My face begs to differ,” I muttered as I followed her. “Hell, it’s better to get them trimmed back now before winter hits. The last thing you need is heavy snow on these branches—”
“I said, it’s not necessary,” she snapped as she stopped and turned around to face me. She let out a frustrated huff. “It’s a rental property. It’s not my problem.”
“Until one of those branches snaps after a heavy snow, and you end up with a hole in your roof,” I said.
She stared at me for a moment, but then she turned and kept walking, ignoring my comment.
I followed her inside and closed the door behind us. Her home was clean, but there were stacks of books everywhere, stacks of printed papers, a laptop open on the coffee table, sitting off-kilter on top of an open book. It still looked like her, smelled like her, it just was her.
I picked up a picture from a sofa table that sat along a wall in the living room. It was a picture of her and her sister Hilde. I instantly smiled at nothing more than the smile on her face in the picture. I’d not seen that smile yet since re-inserting myself in her life, and I had this incredibly depressing notion it was because of me. I wanted her to smile—a real, spontaneous one, and not only that, I wanted it to be because of me—something I said, something I did, something that had anything at all to do with me and how I made her feel. She used to smile all the time when we were kids. I could always make her smile. Now I just seemed to have the opposite effect on her.
When I set the picture down, it was just so I could pick up the one next to it. It was Helene with two small children. A boy and a girl. They were clearly Hilde’s and Mark’s. Hilde and Mark were both a few years older than us, and they weren’t the type who would have been friends with someone like me. The little girl in the picture looked like Hilde, Helene too for that matter. The boy was the spitting image of Mark.
I glanced at Helene, and she was already watching me. “Hilde’s?”
She nodded, walking over to me and looking at the picture in my hands. She was close, and I could smell the subtle scent of her perfume. I caught myself leaning into it as though I could absorb part of her.
“Sienna and Brody. Sienna’s three and Brody is five.”
I nodded. “They’re beautiful.” A quiet laugh escaped my mouth. “You’re an aunt.” My brain wrapped around the notion, but it wasn’t just that notion. It was seeing a picture of her smiling with two children in her lap. It was the notion of her with her own children someday. I had no idea if that was something she ever thought about, but she deserved that kind of happiness if she wanted it. Me, I’d be a nightmare, but she could pull it off—knowing Hell, better than anyone else in the world.
“Can I shower?” I asked as I set the picture back down. I reeked of beer and whatever other filth was on the bar floor—not to mention the holding cell I’d been in.
She looked up at me for a moment, but she didn’t scoff, she didn’t glare. “Yeah,” she finally said, turning and walking away. “Leave your clothes outside the bathroom door, and I’ll toss them in the wash. I’ll get you a pair of sweatpants.”
I followed her down a short hallway, passing the bathroom along the way. When she walked into her bedroom, I stayed standing in the doorway. It wasn’t a large room—nothing of this house was large, but it was just another visual piece of who she was now. I soaked it in, letting my eyes delve. Her bed was made with a simple white quilt, the sheets peeking out from underneath were white and black floral, and there was a gray throw at the foot of the bad.
I stared at the bed, imagining what it would be like to fuck her brains out in that bed. I was half-drunk after all and fucking and drink seemed to go hand in hand for me. Fighting too for that matter.
Sex was generally a simple thing for me. It didn’t require commitment, it didn’t require a relationship of any kind. But fucking was complicated with Helene and me. It could never be simple. Simple ended a long time ago for us.
She caught me staring at the bed, and her eyes flit to the bed too before quickly moving back to me as she pulled the sweatpants from the drawer. She handed them to me as she passed me. She grabbed a towel from the linen closet in the hall, and set it on the bathroom counter, and I stepped into the small room standing behind her at the bathroom sink.
The suit she’d been wearing the first night of class was hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and as it caught my sight, I reached over and closed the bathroom door. I fingered the material as she turned and faced me.
“You looked beautiful in this—so smart, so confident, so mature and accomplished.”
Her focus settled on my chest, and her face slackened. “I don’t feel like I’m any of those things most days.” Her voice was distant and quiet.
I nodded. “You were so much stronger than me.” My voice sounded hoarse, and I had to clear my throat as it tightened around my vocal chords. “You coped—”
“Coped?” She sounded incredulous. “Coped?” Her face was pinched and angry, and her eyes were suddenly swimming in tears as if they’d been waiting for any excuse at all to fall. “This is all I have,” she said. “I … I don’t have friends, I don’t have a life. I have an education I can’t stop pursuing, regardless of how tired…” her voice broke as a tear ran down her cheek. “…how tired I am, because I can’t seem to handle what happens in my head when I stop thinking, studying, pursuing, working toward something, anything…”
I nodded. “Not so different from me.” I smiled, but it was humorless. “You’re coping mechanisms just have a better end result.”
“So this is you now? You like to fight, you … like to get drunk?” She paused. She wasn’t really waiting for an answer though. “Is there anything you like to do that’s worthwhile?”
I swallowed over a lump in my throat. “No,” I said quietly. “Sorry.”
The disappointment wasn’t something she could hide from me, and her lips pursed as her eyes avoided mine. She walked out then, closing the door behind her.
I stripped out of my clothes and left them, as she asked, just outside the door. By the time I’d showered, tossed on the sweatpants she’d left me, and made it back out to the living room, she’d made a bed up on the living room sofa for me, moved all her books and her laptop, and left a first aid kit on the coffee table.
I wandered down the hall toward the bedroom, and when I peeked in, she was sitting at the head of the bed with her laptop on the bed in front of her. She had a few books spread out beside her, and she’d changed into a pair of cotton shorts and a tank top. Her hair was up in a high pony tail, and she was wearing black rimmed reading glasses. She looked adorable; she looked young; she looked so fucking innocent. How the hell had she managed to keep hers and I hadn’t?
She glanced up at me, pushing the glasses up her nose, and she inhaled and exhaled deeply. “I’ll … uh … help you with the…” She pointed distractedly at her cheek.
She crawled from bed, and I walked back out toward the living room. I sat on the sofa, and she sat across from me on the coffee table. She opened a packet of antibiotic ointment, squeezing a small amount on her fingertip. I scooted forward, parting my knees around hers, and she glanced down nervously for a second.
She dabbed the ointment on the abrasion just below and outside of my eye socket. It instantly burned, and I flinched. She looked at me, pausing.
“Why fighting?” she asked as she reached for a Band-Aid.
“It feels good.”
She just stared at me for a moment. “This feels good?” She searched my eyes. I could tell she was trying to figure it out. She didn’t seem to know how to respond, and she shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand you,” she finally said, her voice quiet. “Why—”
“Can we please not do this?” I asked.
Her eyes focused on mine for a second before slowly moving down from my face to my chest and then lower to my stomach. I was shirtless, and her attention zoned in on the scar on my abdomen.
“It’s just…” I continued. “…every time we talk things seem to disintegrate into a pool of tears or a twisted up mess of anger. I don’t want it to be that way.”
She inhaled sharply, and she nodded. When she reached for my arm, she lifted it, looking at my elbow. She did the same with the other, and when she was finished, she finally looked at my face again. “Anything else falling apart?” she asked, her lips tugging up in a small smile.
I nodded even as I chuckled. “Yeah, but I don’t think there’s anything in that first aid kit that can help my bruised testicles.”
She laughed quietly. And when she stood, it was too soon, and I wasn’t ready to let go of that small ounce of closeness.
“I have…” She cocked her thumb over her shoulder. “…a lot of work to do yet. If you’re hungry, help yourself to anything in the kitchen. You can watch T.V. too … if you’re bored.”
“Thanks, Hell. I appreciate it.”
“Why do you insist on calling me that?” Her smile was sweet though, and her tone was light.
“Because no one else in all the world would dare to think it was an appropriate nickname…”
She bit her lower lip as she studied me.
“So I guess it’s mine alone…” I continued. “…and it always will be. You’ll always be my Hell. And I like that.”
She nodded subtly.
“Good night,” I said quietly.
She didn’t move for a few seconds. She just stood there, staring at me. She finally gave me an awkward nod, turned, and walked away.
I didn’t bother with the T.V. or food, but I did get lost in a photo album she kept on the bottom shelf of the coffee table. It was her life from the moment of her birth to nearly this very day, and there were parts that intersected with my life too. The five or so childhood pictures that included me proved it. We were swinging on a tire swing in a couple, swimming in the creek that ran behind both my father’s house and her childhood home as well. And then there were a few from high school too. Pictures of us at the gas station, posing like idiots behind the counter.
We’d been playful with each other. We’d goofed around constantly. In a way it was just how we flirted. It was easier to flirt with her that way, because in truth it was always a far heavier thing with her than any other girl I’d dated, fucked around with, or just plain fucked. She was my friend first and foremost and had been since we were children, and that apparently meant something to even me.
By two in the morning, I was still wide awake, and I’d looked at the album so many times I had it memorized. She’d always had a far more blessed life than me, but I’d never resented her for it. Her baby pictures, or the fact they even existed, proved that much. I’d been tearing apart my father’s home for months now, and I’d yet to find a single picture of me, let alone any from my infancy. And a mother… that wasn’t something I’d had either after I was about a year old.
I finally gave up on the album, stood, and walked down the hall to the bathroom. I stared at myself in the mirror. The side of my lip was swollen and red. My cheek was bandaged, but the skin around the bandage was pink and puffy. I looked like hell.
Her bedroom light was still on when I walked back out of the bathroom, and I ignored it for a second, taking a step toward the living room, but I didn’t make it more than that one step before I turned and headed back toward her bedroom.
Her door was cracked, and when I peeked into the room, she was sound asleep, her glasses still on, her laptop still open, her lamp lit, and books spread out around her. I walked in and gathered the books and stacked them on a small chair that sat in the corner of the room. When I took the glasses from her face, she murmured and wiggled her nose. But she didn’t wake. I picked up the laptop, and when my thumb accidentally brushed over the mouse pad, the screen woke up. It was open to her email.
This email was certainly not meant for my eyes. It was from a man by the name of Brian Campbell, and the subject line said nothing more than, “I’m sorry.” Not reading it wasn’t an option after that. It was dated a little more than a month and a half prior.
Helene,
I’m sorry. Ending our relationship wasn’t how I saw our weekend going. You took the time to come visit me in the city, and I will always be the asshole who then broke up with you.
I knew a long distance relationship would be difficult. I did. But there’s more to it than that. You asked why. I’m going to tell you, and please understand I have an enormous amount of respect for you and nothing I say now is meant to hurt you. It is, in fact, this very respect that compels me to be honest with you.
I’ll say it again. I knew a long distance relationship would be difficult. What I never expected was for it to be so easy. It shouldn’t have been. I need intimacy. I need warmth. I need to be touched, and yes, I need sex. None of those things were ever high on your priority list, and I’m not going to lie, I felt unimportant to you as a result.
I don’t like the word frigid, because I don’t think it’s ever used in any constructive way, but I don’t know how else to describe you. You’re this beautiful, intelligent, insightful woman who just feels … cold. And so when you went away, I didn’t miss the intimacy or the warmth. Because it had never existed.
I hope you meet the man who can warm you some day, who can touch you, reach you, get close to you. And I’m very sorry I’m not that man.
Take care,
Brian
I stared at the words on the screen as I held the laptop in my hands. When I glanced over at Hell, she was still sound asleep. I finally closed the laptop, sighing as I set it on top of the books. And then I turned to walk out, but like the hallway before … I just didn’t quite make it. Instead, I turned the lamp off and crawled into bed next to her. She rolled toward my body, and she hummed as she snuggled up to me. I wrapped my arms around her, and I kissed her forehead.
Her body and the way she pulled herself close to me didn’t feel at all frigid. It felt warm. It felt intimate. I closed my eyes, and I was finally out.