Something Fierce

by Drayer, David

  Did this really tell him anything? Yes, she got the call but it didn’t prove that she got the other messages. It also proved that she didn’t answer when she saw who was calling. Of course, answering in a group of students would not only have been very uncomfortable for her, it would have been very foolish, almost as foolish as he’d been in placing the call in the first place.

  What it told him was yet to be revealed. Would she call back or was she playing some kind of bizarre game with him?

  Less than a minute later, she made a big show of looking at her watch, said a few words to Kat and waved goodbye to the boys. The kid that had hugged her, copped another quick one before she headed toward the student parking lots. She was barely ten feet away from them when the phone was out of her purse and Seth’s phone began to ring.

  He closed the door to the office and answered. “Hello?”

  “Did you just call me?”

  “If you have my number programmed into your phone, then you know I did. If you don’t, then that was a hell of a guess.”

  She was quiet for a moment. He could hear the click of her of boots on the sidewalk over the phone as he watched her disappear around the corner of the music building. “I don’t know why I’m returning this call,” she said, her voice tight. “You call me a week and a half late and then don’t leave a message. How flattering.”

  “What are you talking about? I called you the Sunday before last, exactly when I told you I would,” he said, relieved that it was a mix up of some sort and not a rejection. “I left a message and I texted you the following Tuesday night.”

  “Sure you did,” she said.

  “Excuse me?” he said, indignantly.

  “Then why,” her voice cracked, “didn’t I get them?” Recovering a strong, even tone, she added, “I’ve never had that problem with this phone before.”

  It was this quick recovery of her composure rather than the momentary loss of it that overrode his annoyance at her accusation and filled him with a desire to soothe her. She was so young; he should have known something was amiss and stepped up, confronted her earlier. “I don’t know why you didn’t get them,” he said in a gentler tone, “but I’m telling you the truth. I’ve been wondering why I never heard back.”

  There was another moment of silence. He imagined her trying to decide if he was telling the truth as she walked into the sea of student cars. “So,” she was still hesitant, “you didn’t blow me off?”

  “Of course not.” Knowing that he was telling the truth and that she was on her way to believing it, lightened his heart, made him feel a little playful. “You hurt my feelings, not calling me back.”

  “Come on, now.”

  “You did! I tried to reach you three times!”

  “Two and a half. And I didn’t get the first two.”

  “Well, I didn’t know that.”

  “So you really called me?” she said and he could hear her smile.

  “Well, yeah. After the night we had together, I’d be crazy not to.”

  “I see,” she said, the smile reverberating stronger now, “so it’s just sex for you?”

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “It’s kinky sex.”

  “Oh, honey,” she said, “we have not yet begun.”

  “Whoa!” he said. “Okay. Let’s try this second date thing again. So, do you have any plans this weekend?”

  “You tell me,” she said, assuming a role.

  Taking his cue, he said, “Friday night. Six o’clock. My place.”

  “Should I bring an overnight bag?”

  “Plan for the whole weekend…but you’ll be naked most of the time.”

  She made a low, soft sound. “You just made me wet.”

  “See you Friday.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  And just like that the loneliness was gone. He couldn’t stop smiling. “Hot damn.” He opened the office door, gathered his papers, shoved them into his backpack, and turned to leave when he saw her standing in the doorway.

  “Do you have a minute, Mr. Hardy?”

  His heart was going like a jackhammer. “I…ah… have class in fifteen minutes,” he said.

  “I caught you just in time!” She crossed the threshold and the office was instantly too small and very dangerous. “May I shut the door?” she asked, more to anyone that might be passing by than to Seth. “The matter I need to discuss is private.”

  “Of course,” he said, nonchalantly, also for the benefit of others, “come on in.”

  There was the heavy thud and click of the door. Her presence filled the room, obliterating the imaginary lines that separated teacher from student. He whispered, “What the holy hell are you trying to prove!?”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever get to kiss you again,” she said quietly, slipping off her book bag. “And I told you I couldn’t wait.”

  “This isn’t funny, Kerri.”

  “Just a taste to hold me until Friday. One taste.” And they were kissing.

  This is madness, he thought, backing her into the wall as the past eleven days of confusion and disappointment disappeared. “We can’t do this,” he murmured between kisses. “Not here.” His hand moved under her skirt.

  “I know,” she nodded in agreement, undoing his belt.

  Their mouths pressed together again, both breathing too loudly; her fingers gripping him, his yanking her underwear aside. If someone were on the other side of the door…if someone knocked… She opened her legs, he thrust inside of her and there were no more words or thoughts at all. The world disappeared then and it was just the two of them, pressing into each other, pouring into each other, all instinct now, hell-bent on release…

  8

  Kerri spent the following weekend at Seth’s place. And the next, and the next, and the next, and this Saturday afternoon found her easing out of a nap. They were on the floor in front of a crackling fire. Her head was on his chest, a blanket over them. She lightly kissed him and rose up on an elbow to watch him sleep. So this was happiness. This was love. This was what all the fuss was about. Made sense. Even when she wasn’t physically with him, the world was more than it was before. Songs had deeper meaning. Colors were brighter. Food tasted better. People were interesting.

  But nothing compared to these weekends. They were beyond anything she’d ever imagined. When she and Seth were not exploring each other’s bodies, they were talking and laughing, sharing music, watching movies, cooking and eating. They even read books together, cuddled up on the couch, taking turns reading aloud. They never ran out of things to talk about. They discussed everything.

  This terrified her sometimes because it made her aware of the fact that outside of these weekends she was covered in lies and secrets. This thought got her mind babbling and her feeling of contentment began to dissolve. Once Seth got to know her better, got to see her for who she truly was, he’d be gone.

  But—she argued with herself—he already knew her better than anyone. Bits of her lewd, self-destructive past naturally floated to the surface during their conversations. Things she’d never told anyone. He even knew that she’d orchestrated their original hookup by researching him on the Internet throughout last semester, studying him in class, making sure that they liked many of the same books and movies. He’d figured this out and when he called her out on it, she’d told him the truth—something very new and scary for her—and then she ran! She smiled at the memory of him chasing her through the house, putting her over his knee and spanking her, both of them laughing as she screamed and tried to break free.

  She really did like those books and movies now. His favorites became hers. And he’d since introduced her to a world of great books and films she’d never heard of and she’d done her best to repay him by introducing him to music and new bands that he didn’t know.

  There was, however, one sizable part of her life she’d kept from him. She didn’t think of it as a secret exactly, but as something she wasn’t ready to tell him yet. Besides, it was ludicrous and
unfounded. Even thinking about it pissed her off.

  It had begun over five years ago. Her parents were still together but only truly united in their dedication to maintaining appearances. To keep their problem daughter from punching a hole in their “happy family” façade, they’d staged an all out campaign. Kerri had been fifteen and some part of her had wanted to be a good girl then, to be normal and make them proud of her. So without protest, she went to a long line of psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists. The general consensus—though she couldn’t be officially diagnosed until she was eighteen—was that she suffered from a personality disorder.

  A lot of disorders were thrown around in the blind hope that one might stick: bipolar, borderline, narcissistic. Borderline ended up being the most popular choice. Here was a brand of crackers some therapists refused to treat because borderlines were known to be extremely manipulative and volatile. And, oh yeah, there was no cure. At least, not last she’d heard. Borderlines never really “got better.” The best that could be hoped for is that they would have some measure of control over the emotional ups and downs, the identity issues, the compulsions, the rages, the tendency to dissociate, blah, blah, blah.

  At the time, she’d gone along with the mind-numbing prescriptions and therapy sessions where she would sit in a little room and try to say the right thing, try to impress the therapist with her willingness to change, to grow, to be whole.

  Then one day she was sitting across from a young doctor named Donald Ostrom and realized that it was all a load of horseshit. Not just the unofficial diagnosis, but the whole charade, including all the other signs and symptoms of mental illness on her rap sheet: “bulimic tendencies,” “various degrees of depression,” “unstable interpersonal relationships,” and “intense mood swings.” She was a little fucked up, sure, but who wasn’t? To be human was to be fucked up. People were crazy and most were a hell of a lot more so than she’d ever be. She knew how to maintain control, at least.

  “All I needed was someone to understand me, someone I could love,” she whispered, caressing Seth’s check. “All I needed was you.”

  Her touch woke him. He opened his eyes. He smiled at her. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “You look deep in thought.”

  “I was just wishing that these escapes from reality would never end.”

  “Escapes from reality?” he said. “Is that what these weekends are?”

  “Of course. Our own little Garden of Eden. Like a dream I wish I never had to wake up from. What else would they be?”

  “Hyper-reality.” He stretched and settled into a gratifying yawn. “Life lived fully. The essence of being alive.”

  “You call being secret lovers in a borrowed house reality? I don’t think you could handle the reality of us, Mr. Hardy.”

  “Oh, really. And why’s that, Ms. Engel?”

  Here was a chance to tell that part of her past that he didn’t know. But what if he believed there might be some truth in it? What if he wanted to talk about it (which she certainly did not)? What if he asked her why she hadn’t mentioned it before? She had to accept that this couldn’t last forever, but why say something that might end it sooner than it had to, especially when he wasn’t directly asking? “Because you are afraid of commitment.”

  “Here we go,” he said. “Just because I’ve never been married, I get slapped with noncommittal?”

  “If the shoe fits…”

  He interlaced his fingers behind his head and gazed up at the skylight between the beams of the high ceiling as if he were really thinking about it. “I’m not so sure that it does fit or that it ever did.”

  “So you’re ready to meet my mother, who’s not that much older than you?”

  “Yowl. Thanks for the reminder.”

  “Or my friends who are half your age?”

  “Those aren’t exactly commitment issues, but you win. I couldn’t handle it.”

  “That’s not winning,” she said, feeling a sudden, deep sorrow. “That’s losing.”

  “And you could handle it, huh? You and me, a real couple in the real world?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t even need to think about it?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’m not convinced.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You’ve never gone legit before.”

  He was right. Though there’d always been a guy or two in the picture, she had never been serious about or faithful to any of them. Some of them had said they loved her, but she never loved them back. Not really. She got bored quickly and would start sleeping with one of her male friends or some random guy that she let pick her up at a dance club, fulfilling an urge or breaking up the monotony of an evening. The “boyfriend” would eventually find out and be gone after some high drama of one form or another. It never really mattered all that much to her. There was always someone else waiting in the wings to take his place. Her former therapists had a field day with this, calling her behavior “impulsive” and “reckless” which sounded better than what she would have called it: “slutty” and “whorish.”

  “I’ve never met anyone until you,” she said, “that I’ve ever wanted to be legit with.”

  “Wow.”

  “That surprises you?”

  “A little. I mean, you’ve…met...a lot of guys for a girl your age.”

  “How sweet of you to bring that up.”

  He grinned. “If the shoe fits…”

  Seth didn’t know all the details, thank God, but he knew she started having sex regularly at a young age—thirteen, though she’d told him fourteen and a half—and that she’d been a bad girl and a lousy girlfriend. He’d asked her why she’d lived like that and at the time, she didn’t really know. Now, she thought she was beginning to figure it out. There was the attention—something all the women in her family seemed to have an insatiable hunger for—and sometimes it was the sex, but mostly it was to cut the loneliness she felt inside and to make her feel as if she existed. She would take shape around boys or men trying to seduce her. She’d begin to fade if they started losing interest, come into full living color only when they were in hot pursuit of her, and disappear the moment they came…and went. “I understand. You don’t want to officially be with a slut. Even a reformed one.”

  “Whoa, I never called you that. Nor would I.”

  “I was one. I fully admit it. That was the only way I could feel good about myself so I did it without even thinking about it. I think about things now. I think before I act.”

  “What brought about the change?”

  He did, of course, but she’d been through enough therapists to know that was the wrong answer. “I was just tired of the life I was living. The damage I was doing to myself and to those around me. I wanted to be different, to be better than that. That was about six or seven months before I walked into your class. Until I’d slept with you, I hadn’t been with anyone in over a year.”

  “Over a year, huh?”

  “Yep. Not exactly a world record, but it was a big deal for a little tramp like me. I could go legit now. With you I could. No question.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “I’m just saying that I could.”

  “And I’m asking you if that’s what you want? A commitment?”

  “No.”

  He studied her. “Your pants are on fire.”

  She laughed. “I’m not wearing any pants.”

  He peeked under the blanket. “By gosh, you aren’t.” He leaned up and pulled her in for a kiss.

  She stopped him before it went any further. “What do you see in me?”

  “You know what I see in you.”

  He was free with complements and had told her many times, in many different contexts what he saw: beauty, intelligence, depth, humor, innocence, even innocence. She was asking because she needed to be reminded. She could understand her appeal to losers like Rant and Kyle or to all the other faceless men that had b
een gaga over a girl who almost always put out, but she couldn’t get her mind around Seth Hardy. “What happens when you get bored with me?”

  “You’re expecting that?”

  “Men need mystery and you already know just about everything there is to know about me.”

  “‘Men need mystery?’ Sounds like the wisdom of a Sex and the City rerun.”

  “I’m being serious here. What if you’re just…I don’t know, going through a midlife crisis?”

  “Do I look like I am in a crisis?”

  “No. But that’s the point, isn’t it? To avoid it?”

  “I see. I can’t afford a Porsche so I went with a hot, young girl?”

  “It happens all the time.”

  He laid back and pulled the blanket over his head. “I’m a cliché. Common. Run-of-the-mill.”

  She yanked the cover off of his face. “Will you quit it? I’m being serious here.”

  He looked at her. “First of all, I am not ‘men.’ I’m me. I’m Seth, remember. And what the hell ever happened to ‘love at first sight?’”

  “That was me. You were ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘off-kilter,’ remember?”

  He smiled. “Touché.” He sighed and looked away for a moment, then he continued, “The truth is that I’m still overwhelmed. But it feels good. I am drawn to you in a way that I have never been drawn to anyone ever before. I have to believe there is a reason for that.”

  “But you don’t know what it is?”

  “It’s a hundred little things. The mystery of a person isn’t just in their history. It’s inside them and it’s always unfolding. Every day. Every minute.”

  While she loved this about him, the way he looked closely and beneath the surface, it was exactly the thing that frightened her. She wasn’t really worried about his getting bored, as she’d said earlier, but about his being disappointed or worse, disgusted with who he found her to be. “What if you don’t like what unfolds?”