by Cosette Hale
“Is this right?” I found myself saying. Why was I talking? “Should we be doing this?” I asked in between labored breaths. He kissed my neck again and whispered in my ear.
“Probably not,” he said, now reaching for my breast with his left hand. I was still fully clothed but had never felt so naked.
“Wait,” I said in a panic, and he froze. What was I doing? He sat back and looked down at me. I said nothing, and he stood away from me. I sat up, trying to figure out why I’d ruined the moment. Harvey ran his hands through his hair, letting out a long breath, and walked around the room.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You don’t have to be sorry. I’m sorry. I should have known this would be too much too soon. It’s been a hell of a week, and just because I’m feeling it doesn’t mean you are,” he said, still walking back and forth.
“You’re ‘feeling it’?” I asked, unsure what that even meant.
“Of course. Look at you!” he said, throwing his hand in the air towards me. I was amazed and flattered by his words, but he had to be kidding. He’d been married to Natalie for god-sakes.
“Harvey… I’m so confused. I mean… it was good. Really good,” I said, sure that I was blushing bright red, but I wanted him to know I had enjoyed the kissing. He walked over and sat by me.
“So then,” he said. “What’s the confusion?”
“You just said yourself, it’s been a hell of a week. What if we don’t know what we want?” I asked, wondering what I was saying. Hadn’t I told myself earlier that I was a free woman and could do whatever?
“And you told me just now that you want me,” he said getting closer to me, his hand caressing my face. “I want you too. These past few days have been torture sleeping in the same room with you, tempted to touch you every time we’re close but afraid to even look at you. Torture,” he said, holding my hand up to his now. I watched as they touched in midair, his significantly larger than mine. He grabbed my hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing the top ever so lightly. It tickled. The sensation reverberated throughout my entire body, and I gave a deep sigh.
“Harvey, I felt it too,” I said putting my forehead to his and closing my eyes, “But I think I should go before we do something stupid.” He let go of my hand and stood up again. He wasn’t angry, but I saw the disappointment in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said, going for my suitcase, which I now spotted in the corner.
“Don’t be sorry, darlin’,” he said, reaching past me and carried the suitcase out to my car.
“I, um, hope this doesn’t interfere with our friendship,” I said, closing the trunk after he’d put the suitcase in.
“No way. We’re better than that. I’ve got to go home tomorrow to get back to work, though, so we’ll talk sometime. When do you go home?” he asked.
“I haven’t decided when I’ll leave yet. I can take some more days off, and I’ll probably do that to stay with my dad,” I said.
“I’ll be seeing you, I guess,” he said, running his hand through his hair and then crossing his arms.
“Thanks for everything, Harvey. I mean it,” I said, and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. He smiled, and I walked to the other side of the car. I watched him standing in the same spot as I drove down the block and turned the corner. The smell of him lingered with me. Ugh! Why couldn’t I have freaking shut my mouth and stayed?
Chapter Nine
The next morning I woke up after a dream that left me as hot and bothered as the previous night’s make-out session. I stayed in bed for some time reliving the experience— how his hands had roamed over me, touched me, held me with need. His lips, working their magic in perfect unison with mine. And those fiery eyes of his expressing every bit of his hunger with that look he gave me. It was so sensual it was almost unreal, the kind of heat you think exists only in stories and movies but doesn’t happen in real life. Except it happened to me… well almost. If only I hadn’t been such a chicken and stopped to worry about every little thing.
I wondered if he’d lain awake thinking about last night like I had. Probably not, since men were more likely to forget these kinds of things rather quickly, right? Look how fast Greg forgot about me and then Natalie when it didn’t suit him. I went downstairs to scrounge up some breakfast and found a note on the kitchen table from my mom. They’d gone to the cardiologist’s office for a follow-up and wanted me to meet up with them for lunch at a salad bar in town. I looked at the kitchen clock and saw it was time for me to go. I guessed I was skipping breakfast and going straight to lunch, I’d slept so long. Rummaging through the few clean clothes I had in my suitcase, I settled on a bright, flowy dress and decided I had to go shopping if I was staying any longer.
My parents were already sitting at a table when I met up with them.
“What did the doctor say?” I asked as I took a seat with them.
“He gave your dad strict instructions on diet and exercise, which he has to start next week. Then he went over the medications he has to take daily, like 5 or 6 of them,” my mom said.
“That doctor wants to save my heart by killing my liver,” my dad complained.
“Elton, the doctors know what they’re doing. It’s what they do all day,” she said, standing up. “Now let’s get some food.”
We each piled on the ingredients, me adding a spoonful of bacon bits with guilt. Maybe I should pick them off, I thought afterward. I added a creamy dressing, and the guilt returned. My poor dad was slopped olive oil and vinegar on his pile of greens and vegetables. My mom put several slices of chicken breast on his plate and her own. By the time we finished our lunch I was stuffed. Who’d have thought salad could fill you up so well? Maybe I should start eating a tad healthier, I thought as I watched my mom meticulously study the way my dad was chewing his food.
“We’re going home to rest,” my mom said, winking and then nodding towards my dad.
“I’m going to head over to the mall, if you don’t need your car?”
“Go ahead,” my mom said, and we headed our separate ways.
This might’ve been a good time to reach out to my old hometown friends who were always nagging to come visit, but honestly, I needed my alone time right now. When I was with my parents, I had to be happy and talkative. I had to be “on”. With Harvey I was always confused and subject to a whirlwind of emotions. I needed to be by myself for a while, thinking only about me. And so I drove to the mall, walking in and out of stores with more and more bags.
I realized something wonderful as I was trying on the first pair of jeans I fell in love with. Greg was the main person on our credit cards, and I had come into this marriage with nothing more than the money my parents gave me for the wedding. If I came out of it with anything, including alimony, I would be the financial winner. Not that I wanted to steal Greg’s money, but I had worked hard throughout these years to keep our house clean, properly decorated, and maintained. And then I started working and had contributed my own small amount. He was the one who decided I wasn’t worth keeping our vows intact over.
I racked up the charges, getting a call at one point from the card company to verify I was authorizing these charges. I told them I was and continued on uninterrupted. Needing a little of everything, I stepped into Victoria’s Secret with every intention of getting the sensible everyday panties, yet I found myself eyeing all kinds of bra and panty combinations in silks and laces. I walked around touching the teddies and chiffon robes.
Let’s just say I planned my sexual awakening right then and there. I knew I had been too naïve in that department, and my lustful encounter with Harvey proved just how starved I was in my sex life. So I bought a few things for the possibility I might meet someone who’d want to fool around with me. I was disappointed that it wouldn’t be with Harvey. He must have left already, and besides, it was too messy. If we had continued last night things would have gotten much messier.
My arms so full I was giving myself blisters on my hands, I wal
ked back to my car and dumped it the bags in the trunk.
“Audrey?” a female voice called to me. I turned to find that two parking spaces away was my high school friend, Laurie. We both shrieked and ran to hug one another.
“How are you? How long are you in town for?” she asked, a big genuine smile on her face. Her short black hair was just as she’d worn it in high school. Laurie had always been a trusted friend, and I was glad I ran into her, though I felt guilty for not keeping in touch the way I should have. I told her about my dad and how I wasn’t sure how long I’d be home.
“Well, Mikey’s first birthday is this Saturday, and we’re having a barbecue so you and Greg can stop on by anytime after one o’clock if you can make it. Well, that’s if the hurricane doesn’t come, of course,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“What hurricane?” I asked. I’d just been reading the news to my dad yesterday and there was no mention of a hurricane nearby.
“It’s still far, but it became a hurricane overnight, and there’s a chance it could come this way,” she said looking at her phone. “Shoot, I gotta go, but tell me you guys will come.”
“I’ll be there,” I said, not mentioning Greg. We gave each other a hug goodbye, and I drove straight home. The next couple of days I kept on eye on the weather system, telling my parents I thought this time it might hit. After years of false alarms and sensationalized news, they had become apathetic to the forecast tracks of hurricanes. But this one was big, and it was a Category 2 out of 5, forecasted to become a 3 if it came this way. By Thursday the news was going ramping up again, telling everyone what they should stock up on, and my dad was watching the forecast more intently now.
“Maybe we should buy a few gallons of water, just in case,” he said, as the news showed we were two days away from landfall. Though we were in the lower probability area of getting hit, it couldn’t hurt to stock up.
“I’ll go,” I said. The last thing my dad needed was to stand in a crazy line full of the paranoid people clearing out the shelves. Which is exactly what was happening when I walked into the neighborhood market. I said hello to a few people I recognized. When asked how I was doing, I said I was fine. What else could I have said? Also, I told them my dad was doing better, and at least that part was true.
I finally made it to the front of the line with the last packages of bottled water, some batteries, and a few canned foods. There was a TV in the corner playing the local news, and it sure looked like the storm was headed our way, even if they kept predicting that the eye would likely hit a hundred miles north of us. And then the latest update broke with news that it was a Category 3. Around me, people spread the news to one another, and I got out of there as quick as I could to go home.
“Mom!” I called as I brought the first bags in the house.
“Did you see? It’s already a Category 3, and they say it can be Category 4,” she said, and I noticed her eyebrows furrowed. It had been a good 18 years since we had a real hurricane hit us head-on. There wasn’t a high chance of that this time, but our memories of that time were enough to make anyone nervous. I was young, but I remembered well the strangeness that was that evening when a Category 3 hurricane flooded our entire town. We lost all of our furniture and ended up on the second story of our house because of the water that had seeped in knee deep. We were lucky compared to our neighbors in lower-lying neighborhoods whose whole houses were engulfed and had to be rescued.
“I’m going to pay Nick from next door to put up our shutters. He offered to do it for free, but that’s tiring work, especially if he’s doing his own too,” my dad said, walking in the room.
“Oh dad, that’s great. I didn’t know who was going to put them up,” I said. My dad was in no condition to be doing any manual labor. We had a lot of windows and three sliding glass doors. It would be a large amount of work for our neighbor, but hey, he offered.
Friday I woke up to a pitch-black room and wasn’t sure what had happened until I realized that the shutters must be up. I rubbed my eyes and turned on my phone to check the latest weather update, but an alert that said 32 new text messages sidetracked me. Worried that something awful had happened to someone, I sat up in bed and saw that every one of those messages was from Greg. They were a long string of incoherent babble that started off with “I miss yous”, then turned into “I’m sorrys”, and finally into “Are you theres?”
I ignored them and went to my weather app, which blasted red on the entire screen alerting me to a Hurricane warning in the area. I went out to the living room where my father was sitting watching the news anchor interview people who were outside putting on their shutters and grabbing sandbags and plywood. Footage showed empty supermarket aisles where there used to be water and canned foods.
“It looks like it might come,” my dad said, his eyes glued to the TV.
“Do you have enough of your medicines?” I asked him.
“Oh, yes. They gave me enough for a month the other day,” he said. Relieved I went to the kitchen. My mom was filling pitchers with water.
“We’ll need this to brush our teeth if the water gets contaminated,” she said. “I’m going to fill the tubs tonight after we take our showers.”
“Good idea,” I said, remembering that even doing that we had to make due with whatever was left of store-bought water gallons to flush the toilet because the water was turned off for quite some time. I went around collecting our flashlights and candles, replacing the batteries and searching for lighters. Finally, I put everything within easy reach on the kitchen counter.
“Are we missing anything?” I asked.
“Well, besides praying it goes somewhere else, I believe we’re ready. I brought in the potted plants from outside, and your dad put the cars in the garage. It’s supposed to start raining today, so I don’t think we’ll be going anywhere.”
“I don’t have any plans,” I said, at which point we decided we’d have a movie day. By the early afternoon, after Back to the Future Part II, it started to rain. It was nothing out of the ordinary, though. Greg called me twice and sent more texts, all of which I ignored. He was worried about me being in the hurricane, one text read. That’s nice. Was he worried how I’d feel to be cheated on?
I hated to admit it, but secretly I was hoping Harvey would call. A text… anything. Even if it was just to tell me to stay safe. But my phone was silent on that end. Then the rain began in earnest, and it did not stop. Sometimes there were gusts that looked as if they could rip every leaf off the trees, but they passed quickly enough. My dad peeked outside often. After the third Back to the Future, we had enough of films, and the news stayed on the rest of the night. The storm was just offshore, and the next update was due in three minutes.
The three of us were watching it, passing around popcorn, when my phone rang again. I wanted to throw it out into the storm and let it drown, but then I saw it wasn’t Greg. Harvey was calling. My heart sped up, and I pressed the green button as I walked to my room.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Audrey,” Harvey said.
“Hi, Harvey.” I was smiling. I couldn’t help it. Hearing his voice reminded me of the way he’d whispered in my ear or when he groaned with pleasure.
“I have a huge favor to ask of you.” His tone was serious. My mind shifted gears.
He went on, “I missed my flight, and then when I was waiting for the next one, my mom called me at the airport yesterday afternoon to tell me about this hurricane. I called work and told them I’d be back next week so I could ride it out here with my ma. Anyways, this rain is coming down fast and hard, and it’s creeping up to the front steps already. We were in the voluntary evacuation zone, but they bumped it up to mandatory, and my ma refuses to bother any of her friends. I told her I’d call them to ask, but she says she’d rather go to the shelter than bother them.”
“You can come here,” I said without skipping a beat.
“I think I’m gonna have to trick her. Don’t know why she’s so goddam
n adamant about not staying at anyone’s house, but your house is on the way to the shelter. If your parents don’t mind...”
“Absolutely they won’t. Come over now before it gets worse,” I said, walking to the living room to tell my parents.
“Sure, I’m just going to finish getting as much stuff up to the second floor as possible. I’ve already done the pictures and electronics, but maybe I can get at least some of the furniture up there.”
“They’re just things, Harvey. What’s important is you guys are safe and can drive out of there before the roads are washed out.” I was worried for him and Mrs. Garrett.
“That’s another thing, she can’t leave without saving as much as possible. I might have to carry her out kicking and screaming,” he said. I giggled (Mrs. Garrett is a large woman), and we hung up. When I told my parents, my mom jumped into hostess mode and took out fresh linens for the guest bedroom and the sofa bed in the living room. Then I saw her filling up even more containers with water.
“Just in case,” she said when she saw I was watching her. I looked out the window, and, while it was still raining, there was no accumulation of water up this way. Passing the hallway in the mirror, I saw I was in my too-big pajamas, and my hair was up in a disastrous puff of a bun.
“I’m going to shower now!” I yelled out and ran to my room to grab my new clothes. I ripped off the tags and heard my mom convince my dad to go bathe as well.
After my quick shower, I applied mascara and powder to my face, trying to look as natural as possible while wearing my new jeans with casual sandals and a white t-shirt. I hoped I didn’t look like I had just dolled up to see Harvey. Which I had, but he didn’t need to know that. I spritzed light perfume and applied a tinted chapstick.