Every Breath You Take (18 page)

Like putting a square peg in a round hole
.

“Joey, you’re hurting me,” she said, trying to extricate her finger from his grip.

“I just have to try harder,” he said as he gave the ring one last shove. It scraped across her skin, nicking her and leaving a drop of blood to wobble atop her knuckle. The ring was like a too-tight rubber band, strangling her circulation.

“There,” he sighed with relief. “Finally got things back the way they should be. Now.” He pulled her down to start kissing her again. She tried to avoid his slobbery, insistent tongue, but he forced his way inside, the rough, pebbly surface like sandpaper against her bottom lip.

“If you don’t start kissing me back, I’m gonna lock you in here with no lights.”

“Okay, Joey.”

He kissed her again and she forced her lips to comply with his.

“Touch me,” he whispered.

She wanted to laugh. It was like an open invitation. She took several deep breaths and slid her hand from underneath the covers, pointing the comb toward his torso.

She squeezed her eyes shut and jammed it into his side.

He screamed and reached for her hand, but she smashed it into him again, her heart leaping when she felt a warm slick of blood against her palm. He grabbed her wrist and they struggled for a few seconds as she tried to wrest her hand away from him. They tumbled off the bed, both of them grunting and sweaty, her legs flailing against him as he banged her wrist against the floor.

The slap he delivered stunned her into dropping the comb, and he grabbed it, heaving over her as she curled into a ball crying.

“What’d you do that for?” he said, his hands on his hips. He winced as his hand fell into his wound and he saw the blood smeared across his palm.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I ha—” she was hyperventilating, and he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. She banged her fists against his chest before realizing she could get in one last twist of the knife. She shoved her fingernail into his wound, which elicited another yelp from him as he dropped back away from her, cupping his hand over the blood soaking into the white tank top. He pointed at her, like he was going to say something, before he limped out, cursing under his breath.

Natalie slumped against the wall, relieved that he was gone, happy for one night alone.

A
comb. A goddang comb of all things.

He sucked in his breath as he pulled his hand around to examine the splotches of blood in his palm. He couldn’t help but chuckle a little as he remembered that pretty boy bastard doing the same thing just before the end.

Joey doused a cotton ball in peroxide and dabbed at his side, wincing a bit as he did so. He’d expected her to be mad, had even expected she would try to do something to him, though he hadn’t seen this one coming. A comb. Well, she wouldn’t be getting that back.

Worst of all was the way she looked at him, like she didn’t know who he was. Maybe it was all that weight he’d lost. The protruding cheek bones, now-flat nose, and smooth white snowcaps of his teeth. Yeah. That was it. It had to be a shock, of course, and even he had to admit that if it had been the other way around, he’d probably be a little surprised at first. He just had to try a little harder. Start trying to talk proper. She liked that. Pretty boys who talked proper. She just had to get used to the new him and then she’d calm down. She’d look deep into his eyes and remember the boy who used to walk her home from school every day and later would pick her up in his truck. She’d remember all those Sunday dinners at his house, where his mother showered her with platters of chicken, collards, macaroni and cheese, and fat chunks of homemade white cake with pink frosting. She’d remember all of their plans for the future.

He just had to be patient and forgive her once again for betraying him.

When he was ready.

R
adio silence.

How long had it been? A day? Two days? No, no. It couldn’t have been more than a day. Natalie ran her fingers through her hair, her bare feet sinking into the carpet. She made a mistake by attacking him. Now he was going to starve her. Or worse. Her scar tingled beneath her fingernails as she scratched at it, salty, insistent blood pooling in her mouth from the pain. A pulsating reminder of “the worse.”

Her eyes seemed to follow her across the room as she paced. Natalie looked down, still creeped out by all those photos mocking her. She moved left. The eyes moved left. She moved right. The eyes moved right. Watching her. Always watching her.

She tried to ignore her, this other woman. This happy, laughing, working, living-her-quiet-little-life woman. The pull was too strong. Her eye settled on one of the photos. Last summer. She was having lunch outside with a former co-worker. She had an intense look on her face. What were they talking about? Wait—the girl had quit. That was it. She had jumped to a rival company and was telling Natalie about how everything went down when she quit.

Her gaze flicked to another picture. Walking to work, eyes trained straight ahead, oblivious. Her eyes shifted again. Sitting on a bench at the beach with Brandy. Wait. This was a few days—no, a few weeks ago. Had she really been gone a few weeks? Natalie pounded the wall in frustration. She and Brandy, walking down the beach on a Saturday afternoon, headed to a late lunch. It was one of those cold but sunny March days that depressed you because it was March and the sun was shining, but your breath still plumed out in front of you. And Brandy—wearing flip-flops. Brandy did stupid shit like that all the time. Like wearing flats in the dead of winter and pooh-poohing anyone who asked where her socks were. Natalie always chalked it up to the girl being from Florida, and God knows they were strange. A bad date. They’d been talking about the bad date Brandy had been on the night before. The wedding. Then they’d been talking about the wedding. Brandy wouldn’t be throwing any showers. Natalie laughing that Christine would be pissed if she did. Brandy. Chuckling. She was in charge of bachelorette parties. Natalie. Giggling. She wouldn’t have it any other way.

Natalie shook her head as the well of tears began to fill up. She wanted it back. She wanted her life back. She wanted out of this cage, as far away from Joey as she could get. Farther. He hated her. He’d hated her since she broke up with him. He was making her pay all over again. She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t live like this. She wouldn’t live like this.

That picture of her and Brandy was peeling away from the wall. Natalie tugged at it until it gave way. Methodically, she ripped it to pieces, turning her palm over and watching the slices flutter to the floor. She pulled another photo away and another and another until she was sobbing and shrieking as she attacked the wall, grasping at the glossy strips of paper, jerking them down in huge chunks.

“I hate you,” Natalie whispered to that other woman as she continued to shred the pictures, ignoring the stinging in her hands as she tore at the pictures, squashing what she couldn’t shred. She swept around the room, yanking her likeness from every corner. Sobbing, she collapsed amid the remnants of her destruction. She heard the beeping and Joey swept in bearing a carton of milk and a muffin swathed in plastic.

“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled, staring around the room in disbelief as he dropped the muffin and milk to the floor. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What is it, Joey? Are you mad that I’ve ruined your shrine? Huh? What are you going to do about it?”

He snatched her up off the floor, and she writhed against his grip. “You had no right,” he said, shaking her. “Those were mine! You know how long it took me to get those? To get them just the way I wanted?”

“Do you think I care, Joey?” she laughed. “Do you think I give a
shit
?”

His fingers dug into her arms, rage bubbling in his eyes. “You just ruin everything. You ain’t nothing but a spoiled little bitch. Don’t appreciate anything anybody does for you.”

“Oh, I’m supposed to appreciate this? Being locked up, stalked—I’m supposed to be grateful?”

“You’re damn right, you are! I saved you from that . . . that
bastard
. From that life, that empty life. I’ve done everything for you, and for what? You just spit on it. Well, how’d you like it if somebody spit on you, huh? Huh?”

And there it was—a hawk and a glob of spit sliding down her face. She gasped as he pushed her down to the floor and stalked out of the room. She sat there for a moment, stunned, before wiping her slimy cheek against her shoulder.

The muffin and milk. Natalie stopped, staring at it and then the door, wondering if he’d come barreling through it to snatch this sliver of sustenance away from her.

She pounced on the muffin, the plastic pouch exploding in her hand. She clawed at it, shoving the dry, crumbly chunks of blueberry into her mouth as fast as she could. She tore open the milk carton, not caring that the cold, creamy liquid was drooling down her chin and soaking her shirt. She wet her finger and dotted the carpet with it, licking the errant crumbs while pulling pink fibers out of her mouth.

H
e had to calm down. He had to calm down. He was heaving, taking huge swallows of air. He was angry. He was sad. He couldn’t let her see him cry.

Except there was no stopping them. Those heated, violent tears broke inside of him like a thunderstorm. Sheets of salt soaked his face, dripped from his nose, fell into his mouth. He drove the heels of his hands into his eyes, the sobs racking his body. All his work. All that time. Gone. Just like that.

Now she was just playing games with him. He couldn’t have that. No. This wouldn’t do at all.

He picked up his scissors, gripping the heavy metal handle, not seeing anything but the shards scattered on the floor, the long ribbons hanging from the wall. He let out a scream and charged for the wall, stabbing it with the scissors. Over and over and over. Stabbing her face. Hearing her laugh at him.

Okay, so she wanted to play games?

He could do that.

And he would win.

She had nightmares about walking into her dorm room to find him hanging from the ceiling, one of her pink cotton-polyester blend twin sheets knotted around his neck. Or of finding him huddled in her bed, rivers of blood dripping from the ragged, self-inflicted rips on his wrists.

Listening to him cry on the phone night after night about how she was breaking his heart and how he wouldn’t be able to go on without her made her tremble with fear that that was exactly what he would do unless she met his demands: drop out of school, return to Arkansas immediately, marry him, and live happily ever after.

That was his happily ever after. Not hers.

She just couldn’t spend her life with him. She’d be miserable, and she’d been miserable enough for most of her eighteen years.

Finally, she was happy. She was home. She was no longer ostracized for her intellect: an outcast because she liked to read, because she was intrigued by culture and art and literature, not who was seen kissing who in the Dairy Queen parking lot. She was no longer the valedictorian, holding the load all on her own. She was surrounded by ambition and wit and brilliance. Her new peers were striving for more than working in a factory for $6.25 an hour or hauling boxes at the Piggly Wiggly for a quarter more. They wanted to be writers, lawyers, humanitarians.

This was where she belonged. This is what she’d always wanted.

He couldn’t have it.

Dina told her the threats were empty, that he was just trying to m
anipulate her into doing what he wanted. She had to stand firm or she
’
d never be free of him.

Weeks of his wails and moans pervaded every waking hour and every sleepless night. Dina was right. She couldn’t let him dictate her life. She had to cut the cord, however much it might hurt.

“
It
’
s over, Joey,
” she said on their last phone call. “
No more phone calls. No more e-mail
s. We
’
re done. If you call me, I
’
ll hang up. If you e-mail me, I
’
ll delete it without answering.
”

“Don’t do this, Nat. Don’t, please, I’m begging you.”

“Goodbye, Joey.”

“All right, Nat, fine, you really mean that? Really? Okay, then you just remember you brought everything on yourself. Everything.”

He slammed down the phone before she could say anything. The relief she hoped she would feel after this final conversation would not have its chance to revel.

Instead, cold, raw fear banged against her heart.

S
he dreamt about hamburgers.

She would have begged, borrowed, or bought a hamburger. Stolen. She would have
stolen
a hamburger at this point. A monstrous hamburger she couldn’t get her mouth around, with trails of juices sluicing down her hands, a crunchy leaf of iceberg lettuce poking her in the face, and a squishy tomato weaseling its way from beneath the crusty, buttery bun and plopping down onto the plate as she bit into it. And a milkshake. Strawberry. A cold, thick strawberry milkshake that stopped up the straw, and when an icy sliver of milk and cream finally did make it through the tiny holes, she would get brain freeze.

Natalie opened her eyes, feeling her tongue poke against the charred, salty meat as she bit down. She could feel the crunch of sesame seeds between her teeth, imagined picking the limp corner of orange cheese drooping over the side of the patty to nibble on before biting into the big, beautiful, greasy burger. She turned over for what was probably the thousandth time, the gurgling of her stomach having kept her awake for the better part of what she thought was the night. A few times, she went into the bathroom and stuck her mouth under the faucet for gulps of lukewarm water in a vain effort to quell her hunger, but it did little to stave off the squirming pangs.