Rock My Body

by Lee Piper

  I looked up at him, shook off my despondency and grinned. He was a good man, Robin. He was kind, encouraging, complimentary, funny—definitely boyfriend material. In fact, these musings probably accounted for why I gently wiped away the remaining crumbs from the corner of his mouth before licking them off my fingers. “Don’t want any to go to waste,” I murmured.

  Robin’s hazel eyes darkened to a burnt toffee color as he leaned forward, gently pressing his lips to mine. They were so warm, soft and sweet that I melted into him with a sigh. All too soon, however, he pulled away, though not before whispering, “I’d like to take you out again.”

  Smiling, I nodded in agreement and shifted back on my stool. Robin stood, winked, and walked inside to pay the bill.

  It was when I was sitting in the dim light, basking in the afterglow of the kiss that I felt it—the hairs on the back of my neck bristled in warning. Everything was going to change. My entire world was about to be completely upended because of a simple, innocent kiss. Don’t get me wrong, the kiss itself was fine, enjoyable even, but did it warrant a total life upheaval? Guess I was about to find out.

  My stomach clenched as I slowly turned to the right.

  Oh, no.

  And my insides plummeted to their grizzly death.

  No, no, no.

  He was standing there, stock still, glaring at me.

  Please, you don’t understand.

  His body stood rigid while his hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

  You don’t—

  But that wasn’t what caused the panic. Heck, that didn’t even trigger my jagged, painful breaths. It was the look in his eyes. With him, it was always the eyes, and they sucker-punched me with their brutality. Even when I opened my mouth and called out his name, Dominic didn’t assuage his silent fury. Instead, he spun on his heel and stormed away.

  Into the darkness.

  I dropped my head, thinking back to an earlier time when I felt equally powerless.

  “What brings you here today, Riley?”

  I stared down at the tissues clutched tightly in my hands. I had brought them with me, figuring I was probably going to burst into a fit of hysterical sobs at some point—it was best to come prepared for that shit. After all, I sure as hell did not want mascara dripping down my face while walking back to the car—never a good look.

  So, shrugging one shoulder, I feigned a nonchalance I really didn’t feel. “A friend suggested I see someone.”

  It was true. As soon as I walked out of the bedroom in my favorite summer dress, Grace took one look at how it hung off my diminished frame and demanded I book an appointment with a psychologist. She even threatened to do it herself if I didn’t.

  So I did, I was here. And I hated it.

  Doctor Powell nodded. “Why is that?”

  I sighed, it was long and low. “I, ah, haven’t been eating properly, I guess.”

  She took out a notebook, her pen rapidly scribbling across the page. “I see, and what do you mean by, not eating properly?”

  Shrugging again, I stared down at the tissues in my hand. After systematically folding and refolding them several times, I took a deep breath. “It’s not that I don’t eat, I do, I just…” My eyes landed on the bookshelf to my left, it was jam-packed with titles like, I Am Enough: A Perfectionist’s Guide to Imperfection, CBT: The Power of Processing, and even, The Art of Mindfulness: Finding Calm Amidst Everyday Turmoil. I looked down at my lap again. “Whenever I try to eat something, it’s like I’ve got no room, you know?”

  Doctor Powell gazed at me, her eyes thoughtful.

  “Like, my stomach is already full,” I explained.

  “With what?”

  “Lots of stuff, butterflies, barbed wire, sailor’s knots—you name it. It’s like a junkyard in there.” I barked out a laugh, but it sounded so beyond forced I immediately gave up and fell silent.

  “I see.” She rifled through her notebook, took out a sheet of paper and handed it to me. “I’d like you to fill this in.”

  In front of me was a double-sided questionnaire. It wanted me to scale the severity of my symptoms when faced with specified situations. The first question asked how often I felt nervous for no good reason.

  All the time. Duh.

  Once done, I passed it back and waited while Doctor Powell calculated my score. After a conclusive nod of her head, she wrote some more information in her notebook, though this time with several words emphatically underlined.

  I chose to ignore that part.

  At last she looked at me, her eyes empathetic yet steady. “Tell me, Riley, what do you know about anxiety?”

  I swallowed, with effort.

  ****

  “So, are you going to tell me?” Mae panted.

  “Tell you what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “About the economic impact of soil erosion in Mozambique, what else?”

  I blinked. “Huh?”

  “For the love of God, Riley. The date. How did it go?”

  “Oh.” I looked down at the stopwatch in my hand. We were midway through our second training session, and up until that moment, Mae had been doing really well. She was quiet, focused, driven. And now I knew why; the woman tried to wait me out.

  I knew it was pointless trying to keep any details from her and to be honest, I had a really good time with Robin—for the most part—so I didn’t mind talking about that section of the evening. I just didn’t want to go into Dominic’s random appearance—what shitty timing—and my subsequent reaction afterward. I mean, once he disappeared like a goddamn ghost through an impenetrable black wall, the evening grew … strange.

  I bit back a groan.

  The remainder of it was spent trying to appear upbeat and carefree without quite pulling it off. Robin looked at me strangely a few times, probably because my laughter was too high-pitched, my gestures too grand and my smile too wide, but he didn’t say anything. Anyway, I couldn’t keep up the pretense for long and gave up entirely during the car ride back. I fell into a fitful silence instead, inwardly sorting through my conflicting feelings of remorse, defiance, and anger without ever coming to a resolution.

  Reckon I’ll leave that part out.

  So, glancing back at Mae, I bargained, “After another set, I’ll tell you.”

  “You’re evil, you know that?”

  I grinned.

  “Fine.” Once Mae completed her set of alternate lunges and I stopped the timer, she collapsed on the sand. “Okay, I want details.” She paused, collecting her breath. “What car does he drive?”

  “Ah, why does it matter?”

  Mae looked at me, exasperated. “It matters, Riley. The type of car and the way it’s driven tells a woman what her date is like in bed.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “It does?”

  She nodded. “It does. So?”

  “Oh, um…” I thought back. “Robin owns a silver Mercedes.” Mae nodded. “Last year’s model, I think.” She hummed. “And he drives…” I shrugged my shoulders. “I dunno, smoothly?”

  She grinned wickedly. “I bet he does.”

  I rolled my eyes and readied the stopwatch. “Next set.”

  Mae groaned but got to work. As she did, I reminisced about Dominic’s car and the way he drove. If Robin was smooth, then Dominic was unrestrained, wild even. I shook my head and internally stamped on any butterflies that dared flutter their excitable wings in my stomach. Not that it mattered, after the way last night ended between us, I’d never see him or his Ford Thunderbird again—butterflies or no butterflies. I gritted my teeth. It wasn’t as though I did anything wrong by going on a date with Robin. What the heck was Dominic’s problem? He knew we could never be anything more than friends, so why did he act like such an ass?

  And why did I feel so guilty?

  “Done,” Mae gasped. She bent over, her hands gripping her bent knees for a moment. After straightening up again, she demanded, “More details.”

  My eyes lit up. “Well, the food was am
azing, we ordered this awesome—”

  But she held up one hand, stopping me. “Jesus, Riley, I don’t give two shits about what you ate, I wanna know what happened between you and Robin.”

  “But the chocolate,” I whined.

  Mae placed fisted hands on her hips. “Would you forget about chocolate for one second, please? Now, give me some dirt before you punish me with more lunges.”

  I threw up my hands. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

  “Did you talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about?”

  “Work.”

  “Did you fuck?”

  “No.”

  “Kiss?”

  I blushed.

  She clapped her hands together. “I knew it. Tell me everything.”

  I raised my stopwatch. “Can’t, time’s up. Last set.”

  “What?”

  “Do it.”

  “It was fucking easier toilet training Annabelle than it is getting gossip out of you,” she grumbled before once again completing the exercise.

  When we were finally sitting in the sand and stretching, I decided to offer up some information without any bribery attached. Mae had worked hard, after all.

  “Robin wants to take me out again.”

  “Yeah?” She smiled. “You must be a good kisser.”

  I glanced down, playing with grains of sand.

  “What about Dominic?”

  My hands froze. “What about him?”

  “Have you seen him?”

  After standing and brushing the sand off my shorts, I began packing away the equipment I brought with me. “We saw each other yesterday.” Out the corner of my eye, I could see Mae watching me. “And that was the first time I’d seen him since last Sunday.”

  “Is he meeting you for a run after Annabelle and I leave, like last week?”

  “Probably not.” I sighed and then bent to collect more gear.

  “How come?”

  “Mae, I thought you wanted me to concentrate on Robin.”

  “I do.”

  “Then why are we still discussing Dominic?” I hastily blinked back the tears that threatened to spill.

  She shook her head sadly. “Oh, babe.”

  “Enough. Just help me lug this stuff to the car, will you?”

  “Okay, okay.” She crouched down next to her daughter who was in the process of chewing the leg off a Transformer. “What are you bringing home today, gorgeous girl?”

  Annabelle spat out the appendage and held up a stuffed giraffe with the sand encrusted fingers of her other hand. “This one.”

  Smiling, Mae helped Annabelle and her new acquisition to their feet. “C’mon, let’s help Auntie Riley pack up.”

  I raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “What? It’s not as though I’ve got any family who’ll actually talk to me.” She grinned. “You’re it.”

  “Great.”

  Mae smiled at my less-than-impressed expression before turning toward the car park with a pile of toys in one hand and Annabelle in the other. “Let’s get this crap back to your car then, sis,” she called over her shoulder before striding off.

  ****

  Dominic didn’t show. And it was strange because all week I craved solitude and freedom, I wanted nothing more than to be able to take off at a sprint along the shoreline and leave the rest of the world behind me. But when I finally got my space, when at last I was surrounded by silence, I wanted to fill up the empty void with him.

  Bloody hell.

  Once I finished my run, I sipped from a bottle of water in my car as I checked my phone for any new notifications. Okay, so I may have been secretly hoping Dominic had called or left a message explaining why he didn’t come to meet me, and to be fair I did receive a message, just not from him.

  Grace was heading to Melbourne.

  I checked the time on my phone. Actually, she was probably already there—with Levi. Apparently, they were both representing G’s school at a weeklong educational conference being held there. I tried to feel happy for her, truly I did. After all, this was an excellent opportunity, both professionally and romantically. But I needed her. Badly. And the morose part of me hated the fact that she had left when I wanted her most.

  How selfish is that?

  Over the past week, we had intermittently messaged each other, asking how things were going; however, it was nothing compared to the way we usually interacted. Before I visited Hell on Earth, we saw each other every day and I missed the way Grace cut through other people’s bullshit. She had this uncanny knack of being able to plow through the emotional minefield I always found myself stranded in. I needed her here to help me. I needed her to say if I was acting like a fool, God only knew she would.

  Clearly, that was not an option, so I tried something different. When I got home, showered and dressed, I decided to take the Doctor Powell approach. I mean, it always worked really well during my sessions with her so what could go wrong now? I took a deep breath. It was decided, I was going to deconstruct my emotions objectively and without catastrophizing my current predicament. I was going to think logically and methodically. In other words, I was going to sort this crap out.

  It didn’t work.

  Two boxes of Kleenex, a block of chocolate and countless cups of peppermint tea later, I gave up. It was probably for the best, unlocking Pandora’s Box and eyeballing the contents should only be done under professional guidance anyway. Unsurprisingly, I tended to react irrationally toward my own feelings. So, until my next appointment with the good doctor, I decided to revert back to what I knew best—The Distraction Method. Only this time with less alcohol.

  I called Brea, and we organized a girls’ night out for later that evening. She was working at The Hole but would finish up relatively early, so I was going to head in and have a few drinks with her—only a few, mind you. Once that was planned, I thought I would feel better, but I didn’t. I still felt … off. Sighing, I made a momentous decision. It was time to bring out the big guns.

  I was going to clean.

  Everything.

  And I did.

  From the cook top stove, to behind the washing machine, from the carpets, to the curtains. For hours, I sparkled the shit out of the apartment. I scrubbed until my hands were raw, vacuumed until my back hurt, and polished until I could see my own bedraggled reflection in every reflective surface.

  But it still didn’t help.

  After taking yet another shower and then collapsing on the couch in black yoga pants and a pink fitted tank top, I decided enough was enough. I needed my best friend.

  It took her ages to answer the phone but at last I heard that familiar voice. “Hey, Riley.”

  She sounded strange, but I was too caught up in my own emotional turmoil to comment on it. Instead, I cried, “Finally, I thought you were never going to answer.” Granted, not the most welcoming hello, but I was desperate.

  “Sorry, what’s up?”

  I let out a long breath, wanting to tell her everything about Dominic. I wanted to tell her about the time we spent together and how I was already missing him. I wanted to explain how his touch made my skin come alive and his voice made my body tingle. I wanted to articulate how he comforted me when I truly needed it and how his anger felt like a knife wound in my side. I wanted to tell her I was in too deep. So deep, I couldn’t see my way out anymore and I needed her here to guide me.

  But I didn’t.

  I couldn’t get the words out.

  So, when Grace asked, “Riley, what is it?”

  I pathetically replied with, “I miss you, G. It’s been a shitty week,” and my heart tore a little because I wasn’t being entirely truthful.

  After that, we spoke about my mum for a while and I mentioned how Brea and I were hanging out later. Only, the more I spoke around the topic pulsing at the forefront of my mind, the more upset I became. Grace seemed to sense this change and after an exceptionally long pause where neither of us spoke, murmured,
“Riley, love, that’s not all, is it?”

  Her kindness broke me. Sobbing, I choked out, “No.” However, before I could offload my emotional baggage, there was a knock at the front door so I quickly ended the call by promising to ring her back. Scrubbing my face with my hands, I attempted to wipe away any evidence of tears but soon gave up after spying my disheveled reflection in the window—it was a lost cause.

  Once the door opened, all thoughts of my abysmal appearance immediately vanished.

  What the fuck?

  I was inundated with what was surely the largest bouquet of roses in the history of horticulture. I mean, they took up the entirety of the entryway.

  Wow.

  They were beautiful. There was a decadent assortment of colors and varieties, each of them striking. My eyes traveled over the petals. Some were ruby, pink, auburn, white, cerulean, mauve, and my absolute favorite, the color of golden sand. From behind them peeked a modest-looking Robin. “Hey.”

  I stared open-mouthed at him but after a short pause, managed to imaginarily thwack myself on the upside of the head so closed it again. “Hey.”

  We looked at each other for a while before I realized he was shifting uncomfortably under the weight of the flowers.

  I opened the door wider. “Shit, I’m sorry. Please, come in.”

  “Thanks.” He moved past me and placed the extravagant gift on the countertop in the kitchen. I kid you not, the vase took up most of it. The small room filled with the sweet fragrance of the blooms and I breathed in deeply. Robin turned to face me. “I didn’t know which ones you liked so—”

  “You hedged your bets and bought all of them?”

  He smiled. “Yeah.”

  I took in the bouquet and then the man who had given them to me. Both looked … damn fine. Robin wore casual blue jeans and a white t-shirt, it hung off his lean frame in a way which made me want to pull up the cotton material and glimpse the naked body underneath.

  I’m such a pervert.

  I had never noticed before, but Robin was fit, really fit. Not bulging muscles and ripped torso fit, more like well-defined and proportioned physique fit. It was nice.