by Tara Sivec
“Excuse me, gentlemen . . . ?” Eric calls out to the deputies.
They all pause and look up at him, and I watch him give them a dazzling smile, which makes me roll my eyes. Seriously, does he think that’s actually going to work?
“If you guys don’t mind, I think we’ve got it from here. Ariel would like a few minutes alone to gather her belongings, and it would help relieve some of the stress from this situation if she could pack up what she needs without people crowding her,” he explains in a soft, kind voice.
“No problem. We’ll be right outside if you need any assistance. We’ll give you fifteen minutes,” one of the deputies replies with a nod.
And just like that, they all put down their clipboards and give me a wide berth as they walk past us and out the front door. My mouth is still dropped open in annoyed shock when a few seconds later, Eric and I are alone in the house, and I look up to find him smiling at me.
“See? You catch more flies with honey.”
“Fuck off,” I grumble, which makes him chuckle.
I turn away from him just so I don’t have to look at his annoying smile and those ridiculous dimples.
I walk through my living room, stopping in the doorway to my kitchen, wondering how in the hell I’m going to decide what “personal items” I can take with me. Everything in this house is personal to me. How am I supposed to just pack up my life in a few small boxes and leave and never see any of these things again?
“Don’t think about it. Just grab what you can. The most important things that you absolutely cannot live without for the next few days. We’ll make some calls and we’ll get this sorted out, I promise,” Eric says quietly from right behind me.
Why does this guy have to be the voice of reason right now? Why does his deep, raspy voice calm me down and make me immediately believe what he’s saying? I don’t like it when he’s being nice and sweet. He’s much easier for me to handle when he’s being a man whore, staring at my tits and making lewd comments.
While I’m busing wondering what the hell this guy is doing to me, he moves around me, his chest brushing against my arm as he goes, and a burst of warmth spreads through my body remembering how it felt when he was holding me in his arms.
Stop it right now, Ariel. Get your head in the fucking game!
I watch as Eric gingerly moves a tea service aside on my small kitchen table, grabbing something and turning to face me. I let out a groan, knowing exactly what he’s going to think that thing is.
“Is this important? A really, really important antique?” he asks, stressing the word as the corner of his mouth twitches like he’s trying to hold back a laugh.
“I don’t know, is your dick an antique?” I reply petulantly, taking a step towards him and lunging for the Hitachi Magic Wand.
He jerks it out of my reach and shakes his head at me.
“That was the worst burn ever.”
“Shut up! I’m stressed! And for your information, that is indeed an antique. It’s from the sixties, and it’s a back massager, you pervert,” I argue as I watch him take the damn phallic-shaped object over to the kitchen counter and plug it in.
He slides the button in the middle of the plastic handle up and within seconds, the stupid thing is roaring to life, the vibrations making his hand shake, and buzzing so loudly I’m pretty sure people two counties over can hear it.
“Jesus Christ, do you even have a clit anymore or did it melt off?” he mutters, staring down at the Magic Wand in horror.
Marching over to him, I grab the cord and yank it from the wall, silencing the massager as I snatch it out of his hand. I smack it back down on the kitchen table.
I hear Cindy shout from the front door that they’re back with the boxes, and just like that, my chest starts to physically ache, remembering what I have to do. I hurriedly walk out of the kitchen, leaving Eric and his stupid powers of making me momentarily forget my problems.
Chapter 4: NOOOOOOOOOOO, My Precious!
“Just go ahead and put the boxes out in my car.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Maybe we should ask her.”
“Ariel, can you hear us? Blink once for yes or give us the finger for no.”
“German scientists say a traumatic experience can be fatal. It causes the body to produce large amounts of stress hormones, including adrenaline, which narrows the main arteries that supply blood to the heart. This paralyses the heart’s main pumping chamber, causing a sudden change in rhythm similar to a heart attack.”
“For fuck’s sake, Belle, you’re not helping!”
“Maybe we should splash some cold water on her face.”
“Do you have a death wish? If you get her hair wet she will stab you in the throat.”
“She’s going to murder all of us, slowly, one-by-one if she’s not on board with this plan.”
Somewhere, in the far-off distance, I can hear people talking, but their voices are muffled, and I honestly don’t give a shit what they’re saying. People who’ve had near-death experiences always talk about this feeling of floating above your body, watching and listening to what’s going on but unable to do anything about it. I feel like that right now. Like for the last hour or so I’ve been hovering over my body, watching my friends pack up my clothes and shoes and anything they deem important enough to shove into boxes as fast as possible in the small amount of time they have before we’re dragged out of here by Barney Fife and his bumbling squad of idiot deputies. I know I should have helped them, but as soon as I saw PJ grab a laundry basket of clean clothes that was sitting on the floor in my living room and upend it into an empty box, I shut down.
My knees gave out and I collapsed onto the couch, staring blindly at one of the three antique curio cabinets against the far wall, which is filled with more than forty sets of vintage salt-and-pepper shakers, and doing what I did best: Ignoring my problems in the hopes that they’d go away all on their own.
“Ariel, sweetie, we’re finished. Do you want to take a quick look around and make sure we got everything you’ll need for right now?” Cindy asks softly, her body moving into my line of sight and blocking my view of my shakers.
She squats down in front of me, and my eyes move to her hand as it rests on my knee.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Belle come across the room and take a seat next to me on the couch, wrapping her arm around my waist and giving it a comforting squeeze.
Except it’s anything but comforting. It makes me want to scream.
“We’re here for you, Ariel. Whatever you need. We love you and we’re going to help you get through this, okay?” Belle whispers.
I hate that she’s being so nice to me. I hate that they’re all being so quiet and sweet and nice. The one thing that bonded Cindy, Belle, and me was the fact that we didn’t take shit from one another. We didn’t coddle each other, and we sure as shit didn’t baby each other. I know they’re trying to be supportive and good friends, but that’s not what I need right now. I need to be angry, and I need to yell, and I need to do anything other than sit here like a loser who just lost her home and everything she loves, biting down so hard on my bottom lip I’m pretty sure I taste blood because each word out of their mouths just makes me want to cry.
“All right, can we be done with the pity-party shit now? This meeting of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is adjourned. Get your asses moving and let’s go.”
My head whips up from staring at Cindy’s hand on my knee, and I glare at Eric as he crosses his arms over his chest and sighs.
“Hey, show her a little compassion!” Cindy scolds him as she pushes up from her squatting position and turns to face him.
“Sorry, I’m all out of compassion,” he deadpans, his eyes moving away from Cindy to give me a wink. “Can I offer you a vulgar comment instead? Your tits look amazing in that tank top. They’d look much better out of—”
“Oh, my God, you’re a pig!” I shout, jumping up from the couch and crossing my arms over my chest to try and
cover up the goods he’s blatantly staring at.
“PJ, kick his ass!” Cindy orders, pointing at Eric.
“Not my circus, not my monkeys,” PJ mutters, slowly walking backwards across the room with a box in his hands, pausing by the front door. “I’ll just go put this in the car with the others.”
He quickly turns around and heads outside as Belle stands up next to me.
“Vincent?” she asks pointedly, nodding her head in Eric’s direction.
“Uh, what he said,” Vincent mutters, pointing towards the front door where PJ just exited as he looks over at Eric. “May the force be with you.”
He too quickly turns and walks across the room and out the door, leaving Eric alone with the three of us.
“Chop-chop. I’ve got places to go and things to do,” Eric states, clapping his hands together twice.
“Don’t you mean places to go and women to do?” I reply snidely.
“Is that an offer? We don’t have a lot of time, but I’m sure I could get the job done in five minutes or less.”
“Five minutes or less?” I laugh. “So, are you just selfish or is this a medical problem? You know, they make a pill for that now. There’s no need to be ashamed.”
“Nothing to be ashamed of, sweetheart. I’m not selfish and I definitely don’t need a pill. Give me three hundred seconds and I’ll have you screaming my name.”
His voice is low and he stares down at me, not even bothering to hide the desire in his eyes. I blink up at him in confusion, wondering when in the hell my feet took me across the room to stand a few inches away from him. I can smell his cologne and feel the heat from his body, and my traitorous skin breaks out in goose bumps, which just pisses me off.
“You wish,” I mutter.
“Every single second I’m within ten feet of you.”
I can’t really tell if he’s joking right now, since he’s looking at me so seriously. Obviously he’s just doing this to get a rise out of me, and it’s working.
Pulling my head out of my ass, I finally look away from Eric and scan the room, realizing Cindy and Belle are nowhere to be seen.
“They walked out a few minutes ago. The sexual tension must have been too much for them,” Eric states.
“Oh, my God, will you shut up already,” I complain with a roll of my eyes.
“Are you pissed off?” he asks.
“Does a bear shit in the woods?” I reply.
“Do you have the sudden urge to scream and punch me in the face?”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Good.”
My mouth drops open in indignation and my hands smack down onto my hips.
“Good? Seriously? You’re happy I’m pissed off? You are a menace to society.”
He closes the distance until we’re toe-to-toe, and instead of moving away, my entire body locks down and I hold my breath when his hand comes up between us, his fingers going under my chin and gently tipping it up until his eyes are locked on mine.
“Your sarcasm and attitude is fun to watch. Honestly, it’s the highlight of my day, wondering what the hell will come out of that mouth of yours next.”
The smirk on his face suddenly disappears and the seriousness that replaces it makes my heart stutter.
“Seeing you broken and hurting and sad is like having someone stick a fucking knife in my chest. I don’t like it. So, if pissing you off removes that look from your face like your entire world is imploding and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, good. Get your ass moving, and let’s go. We got all the important stuff packed up. Time’s a-wasting.”
His fingers drop from my chin and I stare in a daze as he starts walking away from me towards the front door.
What in the shit just happened here?
I shake my head and clear my thoughts, refusing to think about the things Eric just said to me. Or the way he completely understood exactly what I needed when I was in the middle of my comatose breakdown on the couch.
“WAIT!” I suddenly shout, deciding to focus on something else at this moment in time instead of standing here like an idiot analyzing why in the hell this guy who barely knows me, knows me and gets me. “I need Flounder. I can’t leave without Flounder.”
Racing across the room and into the kitchen, I stop in the doorway and look frantically around at my ten fish tanks set up on the counters.
“Which one is Flounder?” Eric asks from right behind me.
“All of them,” I state, moving farther into the room and bending down to stare into one of the tanks.
“Uh, what?” he asks.
I sigh and point at one of the blue-and-yellow fish swimming right by the front of the glass, with a few more lookalikes swimming right behind him.
“That’s Flounder One, that’s Flounder Two, that’s Flounder Three, that’s—”
“Ariel, you can’t take ten fish tanks with you,” he interjects.
I wrap my arms around the tank and wail at the top of my lungs.
“NOOOOOOOOOOO, my precious!”
Eric laughs and presses his hand to the small of my back.
“All right, Gollum. We’ll put them all in one of the smaller tanks and take that, all right?”
“Get your hand off of me before I saw it off with a rusty steak knife,” I growl, looking back over my shoulder at him.
“There she is. There’s little miss sunshine,” he says with smile.
I reluctantly drop my arms from around the tank and take a step back, watching Eric quickly get to work. He carefully scoops each and every teeny-tiny fish from all ten tanks using my aquarium net, transferring them into the smallest, one-and-a-half gallon, octagon-shaped one. When he’s finished, I lift the tank from the counter and hug it to my chest, quietly apologizing to the Flounders and promising I’ll get them better living conditions as soon as possible.
I move through my house towards the front door, ignoring the water that sloshes out of the top of the tank and down the front of me as my feet stutter. I start to feel tears prickling the backs of my eyes, knowing that I’m walking out of my home, leaving behind so many of my beautiful things, and that I might never be able to step foot in here again.
“Would now be a bad time to ask if I can touch your ass?” Eric suddenly says as he stops next to me. “Nothing crazy or anything, just a little squeeze to see if feels as amazing as it looks.”
My tears immediately subside and I lift my chin.
“Eat. Shit.”
I hear him chuckle as I stomp away from him and out the front door, pausing on the front porch when I find all four deputies standing there waiting for me.
“This won’t be the last you see of me, dicknose. I will find you and I will rip your—”
“Okay, we’re leaving now!” Eric says in a chipper voice, resting his hands on my shoulders and gently pushing me to move down the steps and towards my friends and their boyfriends, all huddled together in the driveway, waiting for us.
“Will you stop fucking interrupting me?!” I complain as we walk.
“Did you really want to be tased when you’re holding a two-gallon tank of water that has splashed all down your shirt?”
He has a point, but still.
Asshole.
He continues steering me down the driveway with his hands on my shoulders until we stop next to a white Chevy Tahoe that was backed in. He opens the passenger door.
“What are you doing? Whose car is this?” I ask as Cindy and Belle move up next to me, both of them sharing a worried look.
“I told you this was a bad idea. She’s going to kill us,” Cindy mutters under her breath.
“Did you know that you’re more likely to be murdered by someone you know?” Belle asks her. “Out of the fourteen thousand nine hundred and thirty-one murders in the last year, over sixty percent of those people were killed by someone like a friend or a relative.”
“Not. Helping,” Cindy says in an annoyed voice.
&nb
sp; “Will someone please tell me what the shit is going on?” I demand as Eric moves away from us, walks around the front of the vehicle, and gets in on the driver’s side.
“Well, with Cindy in the middle of moving in with PJ today, and me and Vincent trying to plan our wedding, there’s kind of a lot going on right now,” Belle explains. “You know we love you and we actually had a huge argument about which one of us you’d stay with until this whole situation gets cleared up.”
Belle pauses, and she shares another worried look with Cindy.
“Will someone please just fucking spit it out!” I shout.
“We spent so much time fighting about it that the guys got sick of it and broke up the fight and Eric stepped in and said he had a place you could stay so he’s going to take you home with him and please don’t kill us,” Cindy says rapidly, without taking a breath.
No. No, no, no, this is not happening right now.
“Are you gonna get your ass in the car or stand out there yapping all day?” Eric shouts, leaning across the center console, winking at me as he pats the passenger seat with his palm.
“Run,” I whisper.
“Huh? What did you say?” Cindy asks.
I take a deep, calming breath and decide to use my words instead of my fists. Not because I would feel bad about punching my friends in the face, but because I don’t want to drop the Flounders.
“I said, run you motherfuckers. Run before I find a sharp object and shove it up both your asses,” I reply in a smooth, cheerful voice, even though I’m seriously considering adding myself to Belle’s statistic of murdering people you know.
My so-called friends both tell me they love me and hurriedly move away to the safety of their men, telling me to call them as soon as I get settled.
“Wipe that smile off of your face right now,” I inform Eric as I hold onto the fish tank with one arm and grab to the handle inside the doorframe to pull myself into the passenger seat, slamming the door closed behind me once I get situated. “This is only temporary.”
I choose to ignore Eric’s laugh as he starts up the engine and pulls out of the driveway.