Rules of the Road

by K. Aten

  Kelsey shuddered at her father’s words. “Has he started showering more than once a week?”

  “No.”

  “And does he still wear his hair in a long mullet?”

  “Si.”

  Kelsey sighed. “Fine, I’ll start looking tonight.”

  It was actually one of their clients at the office that had helped make her choice of Krav Maga. The man was in for a routine cleaning and he mentioned how sore he was from his new class. He said it was the most hard-core thing he’d ever taken up. Out of sight, Kelsey had actually rolled her eyes because the guy had always been a bit of a douche. But out of learned and ingrained politeness, she asked him about it.

  His voice was full of smug ego but she listened while he explained what Krav Maga was.

  “It’s considered contact-combat and it is a self-defense system developed by the Israeli Defense Forces. It combines a variety of different martial arts along with realistic fight training. It’s the best self-defense system out there.”

  He sounded like he was parroting a manual but the more he spoke, the more she was interested in the discipline. “Wow. That is good to know. I’m actually looking for self-defense classes right now, perhaps I’ll check into the Krav Maga thing.”

  The man turned his head toward where she was standing next to the chair and looked her up and down. “Sweetie, you don’t want to do that. It’s really hard. Maybe you should look into some ladies’ kick boxing or something.”

  And that was how a very stubborn Irish-Latina decided to learn Krav Maga. Though six months in, she was kind of regretting it. Because she was incredibly sore, Kelsey was more than a little cranky on Tuesday morning. Jamie sent her a voice message as soon as the engineer hit the highway. “So, Krav Maga huh?”

  Kelsey’s uncharacteristic grumpiness had one of the blonde’s eyebrows climbing toward her hairline as the other woman growled back at her. “It hurts to blink and I want my cocoa fix!”

  “Cocoa, not coffee?”

  “No.”

  Jamie snorted at her friend’s pissiness. “I can see you’re not in the mood to talk this morning. Poor Kelsey, maybe you need a massage? I’ve been told I have good hands.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  Another growl had preceded the response that came across Olivia’s speaker system and Jamie snickered again. In some twisted way, she was enjoying tormenting the other woman. But she also sensed that it was more than the normal level of attitude. “Are you really that sore, Kels, or is there more to your attitude this morning? Did one of your kittens lose his mittens?”

  Jamie started laughing before the message ran out so Kelsey heard it loud and clear on her end. She sighed. “Besides having every part of my body hurt, I have cramps.” Kelsey hated admitting to something so blatantly female and weak-seeming, but she trusted Jamie not to be a dick about it. She probably shouldn’t have.

  “Ooh, maybe I won’t ask you out to coffee tomorrow!”

  Kelsey scowled in irritation and that irritation carried through via the voice message. “Really, James? Really? We’re both women here, ass!”

  The blonde’s reply came back seconds later. “No I didn’t mean it like that! I simply meant that it might be smart to wait a few days to ask a woman who isn’t interested in me to coffee, when she’s both PMSing and Krav Maga trained! I mean, I know how I am when I’m PMSing.”

  And just like that, Jamie’s words had returned Kelsey’s laughter. “You are crazy! But feel free to ask tomorrow, I won’t bust your ass.” She snorted before the message cut off.

  “Ooh, the lady is encouraging me to ask her out to coffee! Does that mean you’re going to say yes?”

  Kelsey smirked in her silver car, as always loving their little games and interactions. “It means you can ask tomorrow and I’ll decide then whether or not to say yes.”

  “Damn!”

  They messaged back and forth for a little while longer until Kelsey arrived at work. They had to be at work at the same time but because Kelsey left earlier than Jamie, she typically had slightly better traffic at the beginning of her drive, so she made better time per mile. Once she started work, it quickly became clear that Kelsey was not in the best of moods and most in the office gave her a wide berth. They were used to her grumpiness the day after her classes. And she only seemed to suffer from bad cramps every few months. So it was like a rare lunar eclipse when the two physical discomforts intersected on the same day.

  Kelsey caught June crossing herself more than once and the middle-aged woman wasn’t even Catholic. That was when she decided that she needed to chill a little and be more cheerful. With that thought in mind, she entered the room to see their next patient. He was a younger guy and had been coming to see the doctor for years, since his parents started bringing him. He was never a very calm patient, and since he was in for wisdom teeth extraction, he was especially nervous. “Good afternoon, Mr. Kline. How are you today?”

  The twenty-year-old swallowed thickly, causing his Adam’s apple to bob up and down. “I—I’m fine, I guess.” She nodded and smiled at him, then clipped the bib around his neck. She leaned around to look at him when he called her name. “Um, Miss Kelsey?”

  “Yes?”

  The poor kid was white with fear. “Is this gonna hurt? I’m afraid that I’m gonna pass out or something. I really don’t like my teeth worked on.”

  Dr. Davies walked in just in time to answer Steve’s question. “If you’re that nervous, son, we can just put you to sleep. You’ll have to wait a little longer after but you won’t be awake for any of the procedure.”

  “You can?” His face looked so hopeful that Kelsey had to turn away to hide her smile.

  The doctor did smile congenially. “Sure can. Is that what you’d like to do?” Steve nodded vigorously. “Okay then. Kelsey will just need to get your signature on a few papers then we can get started.”

  Once everything was sorted out, the doctor sedated the man with Versed. It was a standard medication and worked quite well, but it was not without its side effects. Forgetfulness was the most innocuous of them. Not long into the procedure movement near the unconscious patient’s lap caught Kelsey’s attention. Dr. Davies heard her groan and glanced at his assistant. “Sup, Kels?”

  She laughed at his newest attempt at slang. “It’s so cute the way you keep trying to be relevant to the younger generation.” She paused then added the problem. “It’s the Versed.”

  The doctor glanced down that the patient’s crotch and grimaced at the way Steven Kline was scratching at his erection. It wasn’t idle scratching either, the man had a serious itch. Pruritius was one of the unfortunate side effects of the highly effective drug, that and the erection. “Sheila!” The young tech came around the corner into the room wide-eyed with panic, thinking something had happened to the patient. Dr. Davies nodded toward Steve Kline’s raging hard-on that now had both hands scratching away at it. “Throw a drape over that, will you?”

  Sheila’s nose wrinkled with disgust. “Oh, eww!” Then she caught the look on her boss’s face and rushed to comply. “Yes sir, sorry!”

  Once the drape was in place the tech took off out of the room and Kelsey started laughing. She nodded toward the drape over the young man’s lap, indicating the frantic movement beneath. “I don’t know if that’s any better, now it just looks like he’s choking the chicken under there!”

  The doctor glance down and went back to the extraction. “It could be worse.”

  Kelsey looked at him seriously. “How is that?”

  “He’s gonna be in the chair a while. I’d hate to think all that stimulation leads to a culmination of sorts. The poor kid will be very embarrassed.”

  The assistant looked at her boss, then back down at the action under the drape. The scratching had clearly picked up in intensity. “Oh, eww!”

  Dave Davies chuckled because he’d seen just about everything in his near thirty years of practice. “Don’t worry, thanks to the Versed he won’t r
emember the erection or the itching. But he’ll sure wonder what went on in that chair if he makes a mess in his shorts.” His laughter continued as he dropped a wisdom tooth into the metal pan with a wet sounding clank.

  Kelsey was in a slightly better mood that night on her way home. It brightened further when Jamie was the first one to send a message.

  “For the love of feck, don’t get on the highway!”

  She responded, still a good half mile from the on-ramp to the expressway she usually took after work. “Why, oh wise admiral? Is it a trap?

  “I’m actually being serious here, Kels. Check your app, there’s some kind of freaking accident halfway between me and home and I’m stuck on a stopped highway!”

  Kelsey looked down at the map on her phone and noted that the highway was a solid red line with multiple heavy traffic symbols. She replied to her friend’s message. “Woo, you caught me just in time! Looks like I’m taking the back way home. I’ll just hop on Grand River Drive and take that down past the accident.”

  “Olivia is grumbling at you right now!”

  “Just Olivia?” Kelsey laughed at the way Jamie had become the cranky one, a one-eighty from that morning. A few minutes of silence went by and Kelsey assumed that Jamie was trying to navigate her way off the expressway. After ten minutes went by she gave in to the urge to check on the nerd car. “You still there, James?”

  Another couple minutes of silence then it was broken by a burst of profanity that had Kelsey cracking up in her seat. “Mother-sonnofa-furkin-fecking, goddamn piece of—”

  Jamie’s voice cut off so Kelsey tried again. “Um, James?”

  A long sigh came through the speaker of Kelsey’s phone then Jamie’s calmer voice followed. “The good news is that I got off the highway.”

  “I’m assuming that means there is bad news too.”

  “Nigel is pissed at me. I’m in the middle of nowhere and apparently I’m not taking any turns that bastard likes. I’ve taken so many wrong turns now that he just told me, ‘well fuck off then!’ and shut down. So now I’m flying blind here.”

  By that point Kelsey nearly had tears in her eyes she was laughing so hard. “He did not!”

  “Well, no.” Jamie conceded. “But he wanted to!”

  “Jamie Schultz, you are certifiably insane!”

  Jamie was in her own car grinning like a mad fool. It was very possible that she was indeed insane. Why else would she feel so happy while lost in the middle of B.F.E. with only the guidance of a pissy digital Brit? Despite their drastically different routes home, they still arrived at their respective places about the same time. Though they were each significantly later than normal. Jamie did a forty-five minute workout in the gym before grilling a boneless chicken breast and steaming some broccoli.

  While the deck for her condo wasn’t huge, it was big enough for a gas grill and table with two chairs. Jenn told her once that it was cozy. After dinner, the cleanup, and a shower, she decided to just chill for a while on the couch with her laptop. “Let’s see who is online tonight.”

  Kelsey’s evening was not so productive. She still hurt and felt exhausted but she managed to feed the two greedy pigs as soon as she came home. Instead of eating her own dinner right away she opted for a long hot bath. Only after her soak did she pull two tamales out of the freezer for dinner, made from her abuela’s recipe. Meal cleanup involved throwing away the paper plate and tossing her fork and glass into the dishwasher. By 8 p.m. she was settled onto the couch with a heating pad across her abdomen and a laptop on her thighs.

  First she checked e-mail and other headline news, then she checked all her regular friend’s social network pages. She gave in to her desire to search for Jamie after she couldn’t find anyone else she wanted to chat with online. Typing in “James Schultz” immediately brought up a profile with Jamie’s pretty blue car as the picture. She clicked on it and was disappointed to see her nerdy friend’s page was private. “Damn it, Newman!” She usually addressed the cats out of the blue and they were quite used to it. “How am I supposed to stalk her properly if her profile is private?”

  Her obsessing was interrupted when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked over to her large aloe plant that sat in a pot on the floor. Then without missing a beat she grabbed the spray bottle from the end table and shot Pierre right in his stalking dickish face. “You stay away from Lo, you evil plant-killing bastard! I mean it, Pierre!” The cat jumped and ran out of the reach of her sprayer, then settled in to glare in her general direction.

  “Mrow!”

  “Sass all you want, mister. But you better not touch either one of my plants!” She glanced up to the second plant, which sat at the very top of a six foot book shelf. That one was named Auntie after a friend of her mother’s that had passed away before her parents moved to Texas. She got the pothos plant at the funeral because no one wanted to take the poor thing home. Even though he had never bothered them before, for whatever reason Pierre had become obsessed with her plants in the last few months. He would bat at the leaves, shred them with his claws, and just terrorize them unless Kelsey tossed a shoe at his head or sprayed him with the water bottle.

  Lo had been looking a little sad of late, but so far Auntie was out of his reach. He was crafty though and she didn’t trust him one bit. Once satisfied that he was going to leave it be, she turned back to her laptop. She scanned the page one more time and before she could talk herself out of it, she hit the friend request button. She was startled when seconds later it was accepted. Startled, but pleased. However she nearly jumped out of her skin when the message box popped up.

  Still stalking me, I see.

  Kelsey chuckled and typed back to her.

  Oh, of course. Since you are so shy and all, I had to do all the work!

  Is it too soon to ask about coffee?

  The woman surrounded by her cats giggled.

  Yes. But you get points for persistence.

  Siiiiiiiggghhhhh

  Jamie’s response brought on a wave of affection for her friend and a smile to her lips. It also elicited an eye roll from the sore woman. Curious, she typed back.

  Shouldn’t you be out gadding about or something? It seems early for you to be settled in at home.

  Jamie was settled in at home and actually enjoying it for once. She was also borderline giddy that Kelsey had friend requested her. She didn’t really know why but thinking about her friend made her really happy.

  Gadding? Who says gadding?

  Kelsey’s response only made her smile wider.

  People. People say gadding, James! Psshh!

  Jamie was shaking their head as she typed back.

  Nope, nobody outside the middle ages or something. Try again.

  Fine, out on the town then? Being les-b-social?

  Jamie cracked up laughing as the little ellipses disappeared and Kelsey’s words appeared.

  Well I USED to “gad around” but I’ve been staying home a lot more lately.

  Immediately after sending the message Jamie wondered if she wanted to confide such things to her new friend. The revelations prompted by her conversation with Jenn had been eye-opening. And the changes she had made since that day were deeply personal. She wanted to call her words back but it was too late as they placidly sat on the screen in front of her.

  So why are you staying home more?

  Because she was still changing, Jamie wasn’t sure how to answer or if she wanted to answer. She didn’t talk about deeper things to most people, but Kelsey wasn’t like most. Even though they had only know each other a few months, Jamie felt as close to her as she did Burke and Jenn. She believed that sometimes you just know if you’re meant to be friends with someone. Sometimes you are so drawn that you know without a doubt your life will be happier with that person in it than without. Kelsey was one of those people. Because of that, Jamie made the decision to trust her.

  I’ve found myself in a rut the past few years and I’m not sure I like who I
’ve become. So I’ve been spending a little more time with me and a little less time with others.

  Kelsey’s eyes widened as she read the other woman’s personal message. She grew concerned about her new friend.

  Is everything okay, James?

  It took a few minutes for Jamie’s reply to come through, the entire time Kelsey stared at the little ellipses that signaled the other person was typing.

  I’ve just been through some shit, you know? Of course everyone has, I know this. But I ended my last serious relationship about five years ago and I was damaged for a long time. I finally feel like I’m coming back again.

  Kelsey forgot all about her cramps and focused solely on the screen in front of her. “Whoa, Newman! Did you read that?” She looked down at the cat who was completely dead to the world next to her. Pierre was laying along the length of her legs with his fat head pressed against the back of her laptop screen. She thought about how to answer and realized that if they were really friends then trust had to run both ways.

  I know exactly what you’re saying. My ex cheated on me for months before I found out. We were only together two years but it still stung.

  Yes, something similar for me too. My ex was my first girlfriend though, together almost seven years .And I clearly saw everything through rose-colored glasses because I ignored the drugs and cheating as well as the verbal and emotional abuse.

  After a second, she sent another message.