Cold-Blooded Beautiful (12 page)

“Whatever, Jen.  Now, she’s bloody running around, hiding, with the whole of her life probably packed in the trunk of her car.  Fucking alone.  Thank you for telling me she stabbed someone in the back.  Completely makes me understand how she could just walk out and leave me, too. Please get the fuck out.”

She broke down then, sobbing and whining.  “It’s just not fair to you. I just can’t believe she’d do this.”  I could see myself wrapping my hands around her little pathetic neck, and shaking her fucking brain against her skull until it looked like dull, pink, gelatinous Jell-O.

“Life’s not bloody fair, princess.  She did what she wanted to do.  The end,” I whispered, harshly.  Getting up, I walked out, slamming the door behind me and stormed into my room, locking the door. 
Fuck everybody
.

I ripped through my closets for brandy.  Found four motherfucking bottles and poured them straight down my throat.  Double-stuff-fuck-everybody.

I
think
two days blurred by, where I was sick with gut wrenching pains and fucking agonizing aches in my chest.  Gravely, I clung to my desolation, reveled in its bitter coldness.  But those fucking two arses that lived with me, were relentless in trying to ‘
get me to talk through my feelings
’ or ‘
put to practice my anger management strategies
.’  Which led me to theatrically cursing out my therapist and threatening to ‘
chain him to the back of my bloody truck and drag him around town until his flesh scraped itself to the bone
.’  I also somehow started a small fire in the master bedroom.  Who knew apple and cinnamon soap was so bloody flammable.  They should label that shit. I guessed Dylan and Jen were almost reaching their boiling point, when they invited their pussy of a friend, Francis, over to ‘talk to me.’

As soon as I saw
Fran’s
face at the door, I punched it.  I was left alone after that.

Obsessions grew.

My mind filled with ghosts.  The rooms in my house became haunted by her. Her phantom hand still held mine. All I saw was her apparition and nothing else.  The stone walls, the bed where we fucked, the counter, the bath, everything, everywhere was closing in on me, not one surface was free of her spirit’s possession. I fucking missed her.  I turned off every light in the house and locked myself in my bedroom, and in the darkness, I stayed.  It was comfortable and easy.  Yet, her specter still visited, making me remember every single touch, and each beautiful whisper.

I thought about what would have fucking happened if I’d never met her, if I never walked into my brother’s bar that night, if I never asked Dylan her name. 
What would I have been?
  Still alone, sitting in the den, fingers on the keyboard pretending I knew what the world was like on the outside. Drunk. Hiding.  Angry.  I’m better for knowing her.

Yet, this pain…this emptiness…this hole in my chest, not letting me gasp in enough air to breathe, was going to kill me.  Her being gone was going to kill me.  How do normal bloody people deal with heartache?  Because the way I felt, so bloody gutted, I was shocked that more people didn’t go on rampages daily.  The bloody way I felt, the bloody things I thought of doing, bloody hell, I was definitely going to Hell in every religion.

Another day blurred past when Dylan stood in front of me and said, “I just got off the phone with Mrs. Heldist.”

“Who’s that?”  I hadn’t showered.  Or changed my clothes.  I stunk.  I hoped it would offend him enough to leave ME ALONE.

“Your personal assistant,” he said, jerking his head back and pinching his thumb and index finger over the bridge of his nose.

“Oh,” I answered flatly.

“She’s worked for you for ten bloody years, so how can you not know who I was talking about?” he stammered, shaking his head.

“Never met her.  I just call her
Help Desk,
when we talk on the phone.”

“Bloody hell, you must have been a pleasure to work for.  She just booked you a flight to see Mum.  You need to get away from things that remind you of
her
.  You need to realize it’s over.  You need to accept this.”  His arms crossed over his chest, waiting for my retort.

“Sod off!  Psych 101.  There are five stages of grief and I’m owning that shit.  They ARE
my
bitches.”

“What are you…?”

“Sod off!” I roared baring my teeth at him.  My face heated, fists pounded against the tabletop, and my chest tightened and panged sharply.  “You don’t get to tell me I have to accept shit! You and Jen, won’t even fucking allow me to deal with stage one!  Leave me the fuck alone. I don’t want to believe she would gut me like this, because that shitty thought makes me go to the next fucking stage.  And now I’m at stage fucking
two
. ANGER.  I’m livid.  I’m outraged!  I’m so bloody fucking angry, I want to kill someone!” I screamed in his face.  Visions of explosions and burning walls appeared in rapid moving slide shows through my mind.  I gritted my teeth trying to make them disappear, heat flushed through my chest, I wanted to hurt something, someone.  “I
can’t
believe she would do this to me.”

“I know, mate.  I know,” he murmured.  His eyes were soft and gentle.  I wished he wasn’t my brother, so I could have punched him.

God, this storyline of a life you wrote for me is a sick twisted fucking joke
.

Pulling out my phone, I checked for messages,
again
.  My chest ached when I saw not even one.  My once loud and obnoxious phone was heartbreakingly silent.  No whispered messages with her perfect voice, no more funny texts, and no more silly selfies.  I leaned my head against the wall and slid down the coolness of it, crumpling down until my arse hit the floor. 
Somewhere out there in the world, was my Samantha, erasing me.  Forgetting me.  Writing me off.  Deleting my chapter. 

I pressed my hand to my chest, trying to rub away the ache. 

Without another word, Dylan pulled out one of my small suitcases and packed it with an armful of clothing. 

I could hear my own breathing, heavy and harsh.  The anger took a toll on my body.  My mind.  I squeezed my eyes tightly against the flashbacks and violent images that always took over.  I didn’t want to go back to the way I was, I didn’t want to only feel how brutal and savage life was, so I fought to clear my head of the violence.  It was much easier to face my demons with Samantha. She always had this calm tender way to redirect them.  Maybe it was her voice, or the warm feel of her skin, I didn’t know.  Maybe if I didn’t push her to talk to me, she would still be here.

Oh, look.  Psych-central, I’m making my way to stage
three
, bargaining.  Whoever it was that made this theory, got it down perfectly.  If I could just get her to answer her phone, I could tell her how sorry I was.

If only I never told her about the shootings and about Thomas…

If I could have just kept my mouth shut about David and her father…

If I got the chance to tell her that they were both in custody…

Still bargaining and negotiating with my demons, I found myself packed, showered, and seated on a small jet bound for England that was taxiing down a private runway.  I had been sent home like I was expelled from school. 

This sucks
.

Twenty bucks says my plane will crash.  Scratch that, wouldn’t matter. I’d be the only poor sap to survive, and everybody would blame me for not having my phone set on airplane mode
.

Digging into my pockets, I switched my cell to airplane mode.  There still were no messages from her, and I couldn’t send her any more, since her voice-box was full.

I sat on the plane for precisely seven hours, twenty-nine minutes, and forty seconds, staring out the window, watching the earth spin far beneath me.  How fucking insignificant does that make a person feel?  A small crumb of stone sliding away from the base of an enormous mountain. Never having been part of the whole or its foundation.  Just tumbling over the dirt and rubble, alone.

Every time the flight attendants tried to shove liquor down my throat, I growled at them.  A weasel-eyed, greasy haired, oil faced man sat somewhere in front of me, and complained incessantly that the warming blankets weren’t warm enough, and that his sherry wasn’t dry enough.  I screamed into that air that if he didn’t shut up, I’d experiment with how far a human being could shove their foot up another human’s arse.  After that, nobody spoke to me. I didn’t need to go visit my mother, I needed to find a damn cave far away from civilization and just be left ALONE.

I landed at Heathrow, and winced at its vast whiteness.  There were too many stark lights.  Too many bloody people milling around, getting in my way and stopping abruptly, just to have me slam into the back of them.  I toyed with the idea of screaming the word BOMB, until my throat bled, but thought better of it, knowing it would then take me forever to get back to the states, or get my voice back.   Grumbling to myself, I trudged all the way to the luggage pickup, and waited
years
for the piece of shit to start spinning and spitting out the bags.

You know
mine came out last, right?  With a loud sigh, I lifted up my bag and trudged alongside the crowds of people living their happy little existences.

In the middle of the bright lobby stood my mother, holding an enormous handwritten sign that read: WAYWARD SON!

Bloody hell.

My life was already a nightmare;
this was a horrible thing to do to me
.  I hated my brother for it.  Most of all, after that long plane ride and thinking; I was starting to hate Samantha for it, too.

Mum’s hair was a lot grayer than I remembered, yet it suited her beautifully.  She had lost some stones too, which made her look somehow older and grandmotherly.  Tears filled her soft gray eyes, and her smile widened when she noticed me walking towards her. 

“Oh, Kade, look at you,” she whispered softly, dropping the sign and holding me at arms length.  Then she dragged me into a hug, and smacked me on the back of the head, “You need to visit me more.  Dylan told me you needed an intervention, how are you really, love?”

“I’m fine, Mum, just bitter and angry, as always.  Come on, I need to get away from all these people.” 

Mum hooked her arm in mine and nodded quietly, wiping away her tears with her free hand.  “Sure, love.  My car is in the
Meet and Greet
.”

In the car,
it began
. 

The queries.  She all but held an interrogation light up to my face, trying to get me to tell her everything.  I ran my hands down my face, doing my best to ignore the dramatic meddling. 
This was supposed to help me?  I tried to stay calm, I tried to focus on things that Sam would say or do when my thoughts got too violent. I tried. So fucking hard.

“Did you love this woman?”  She asked as she pulled into her driveway.

Joy.  A question that was easy to answer, but would open up a universe of hell for me.  “Yes,” I muttered.

She froze, like I knew she would, and held her fingers up to her lips as if someone had told her the Queen was coming to tea.

“Don’t bloody act like that,” I snapped, climbing out of her car.  Grabbing my bag from the back seat, I fixed my gaze on her, “I do get it, you know.  I get how every-bloody-one sees me.  I just wish that everyone would leave me alone.  I’m a grown man, and yes, I bloody well loved her, and I still do.  Let me deal with it on my own.”  God, with everything that I had ever put my mum through, I didn’t want to fight with her about this.  I didn’t want to hurt her any more than I already had, but she needed to let me be.

“You keep up with your ways, Kade Charles, and very soon, doctors are going to be able to place the bloody word
syndrome
, after our family name!” She yelled, storming into the house.  I followed after her, a heavy yeasty scent of fresh baked bread filling my senses.  Slamming her keys down on the hallway table, she spun around and jammed her hands on her hips.  Her eyes narrowed at me and
I knew
the mother of all
shame-on-you
-tornadoes was about to sweep through the house.  “Those doctors did not encourage me, Kade. They had me planning your funeral.  They had me burying my son at sixteen.  Look at you, now.  Dylan says you’re finally getting help and healing…what this has done to our family…”

She was revving the engine for the guilt trip, her one-way ride into my already stress-filled-damaged-guilty-as-hell-self-condemned-soul, when a strange man walked up next to her.  He was wearing what looked like a pair of silk pajamas.

Okay. 

Does she see the strange man?

The one standing next to her in his
pajamas
?
 

Strange man put his arm around my mother’s shoulders. 
Hmm.  She didn’t scream bloody murder.  What the bloody hell was I missing?
     

Was he the dog walker?  Gardener? Mail carrier?

He bloody well better be something of the like, because he was way too young to be anything else I was thinking about, standing in my childhood home in his bloody silk I-just-shagged-your-mum-pajamas.

“Kade, love,” she said when she finished her guilt flavored monologue,  “this is Henry Moors, my significant other.”

“Your
significant other what
?” I demanded.  I pointed a finger at him, “He bloody better well be the dog walker!”

“Kade!”  She huffed.  “I haven’t had a dog in five years.”  She turned to Henry, and patted him on the cheek lovingly.  “Ignore him, dear, my eldest son has less personality than our bath towels.”

Our
bath towels? 
What the fuck were these people trying to do to me? 
“That’s it, I need air.  Nice to meet you, Henry.  Have fun with shagging my mum.  Mum, later.”  I walked out her front door, slamming it so hard that the windows rattled back an angry response.

Without a clear thought in my head, I just walked.