//8// You and I Get So Damn Dysfunctional

Rain was beating against the tall windows of my apartment; thunder rolling overhead almost simultaneously with the flash of lightning I saw through the shades. It had been going like this for hours; if I hadn’t known better, I’d say that anymore of Mother Nature’s fury and my windows would shatter in on me. In the silence of my living room, I sat with a beer in one hand and a joint in the other, my eyes focused on the flames dancing in the fireplace. I was vaguely aware of the chime from the old grandfather clock that had been handed down to me from my grandmother years ago indicating night’s decent and on day and sighed.

While in the midst of contemplating what to do to occupy my time, there was an unexpected knock on the door. There were just a select few who had general clearance to my apartment, not needing me with them for the doorman to allow them access to the building; I was puzzled as to why any of them would have made the trip in this weather. My mind a little jumbled from alcohol and pot, I stubbed out the joint and wandered to the front door, not bothering to check the peephole before pulling it open.

Kate was standing on the other side, arms wrapped around her as she shivered, dripping wet, on the welcome mat. I blinked a couple of times, not sure I was seeing correctly. When the image before me hadn’t changed after the third blink, I stepped aside and silently invited her in. She walked briskly past me toward the bathroom, peeling her soaked jacket off as she went. I followed silently, watching as she wrung her jacket out over the tub and hung it over the curtain rod.

“What are you doing here, Kate?” I asked from the doorway.

She jumped a bit at the sound of my voice, then turned to me, a nervous smile playing across her lips. “I was in the neighborhood?” she offered.

I raised an eyebrow at her, crossing my arms over my chest and leaning against the door jam. “Try again.”

“Fine. I was worried about you, all alone over here. It’s getting pretty bad; they’re talking possibility of tornadoes and I just…needed to make sure you were OK.”

My first instinct was to scoff; with the way she had been acting lately, it appeared I was not just at the bottom of he priority list, but underneath it. Something in the tone of her voice made me reconsider my assumptions. Her words lacked the bite they recently held whenever speaking to me; they were soft and—dare I say—sounded sincere. Her body language seemed to corroborate this, her eyes dancing from mine to the floor, her weight shifting from foot to foot.

The tension in my body lifted a bit, and I stood up again. “A phone call would have sufficed,” I suggested.

“Cell service is out…I tried.”

“Well, as you can see, I’m fine, and I will be fine…speaking of being fine, where are the kids?” I asked, suddenly realizing she was by herself.

A flush washed over her face. “With Nat and Tay,” she replied quietly.

I wanted to be angry at her for dumping the kids off on my brother, but for some reason I wasn’t. Maybe it was because it was out of character for Kate to just drop the kids off somewhere, or the fact that Natalie had been the one person who actually seemed to be on my side in this whole mess. It could just have been the fact that Taylor was really starting to piss me off and I didn’t much care if having Shep and Junia put him out at all. Whatever the reason, I found myself relieved the kids were in good hands, even if I was still a bit confused as to why Kate was here in the first place.

The lights flickered and I heard Kate take in a sharp breath. She let it out slowly when the bulbs in the vanity mirror continued to provide illumination, her teeth chattering. It dawned on me that she was still standing in the middle of my bathroom, the rain soaked through her t-shirt. “Let me get you something to change in to,” I offered, walking toward my bedroom. I found a clean t-shirt and a pair of sweat pants and brought them back to her in the bathroom. She was toweling off her hair as I set the clothes down on the counter.

A genuine smile spread across her lips. “Thanks,”

“No problem. I’ll be in the living room if you need anything else.” I closed the door to the bathroom as I left, finding my way to the kitchen for a refill on my beer. I grabbed a second for Kate, then headed to the living room. I went to turn the television on only to find the cable, and thus also the internet, was out. I chucked the remote on to the coffee table, where it thudded loudly against the wood. A moment later, Kate was standing at the side of the couch, my Ramone’s t-shirt hanging loosely on her shoulders as she tugged the draw string for the sweat pants tighter. Once she was adjusted to her liking, she sat down, cross-legged, on the couch next to me. I offered her the beer, then sat back against the couch.

“How have you been?” Her voice startled me, and the only response I could give was a soft shrug. “I’m worried about you, Zac.”

“Good.” I took another swig of my beer, cringing a little as I realized it was getting warm already. I chugged the last third of it, then got up and grabbed a new one from the fridge before sitting back down. Kate hadn’t moved a muscle since I last spoke, save, perhaps, to blink a few times. She stood a moment later, clearing her throat. I just turned my head slightly.

“I should…I guess I should go.” She was stammering, a slight waver in her voice, and it made me pause for a moment and consider her.

She was rushing about the apartment, gathering her clothes from the bathroom, her bag from by the door. Her hair had dried some, and as she moved about it was flowing behind her like a comet’s tail. She was struggling in to her still-wet jacket when there was a loud clap of thunder, followed immediately by the lights flickering, and then going out. I held my breath for thirty seconds, thinking perhaps they would snap back to life, but there was no change to the darkness; the only light being cast by the dwindling flames across the living room.

I gave my eyes time to adjust to the dimness of the room and located Kate, standing stone-still in the middle of the kitchen, clutching her bag to her chest. I walked to her, softly touching her arm and guided her back to the couch. She sat down, shrugging out of her jacket again. “Finish your beer,” I instructed. “I don’t want it to go to waste.” To my surprise, Kate complied, taking a long swig from the bottle. “Why did you really come here, Kate?”

She sighed, taking another, smaller, sip from the bottle before turning to me in the darkness. “I told you—I was worried about you. Is that so hard to believe?”

“Yes.” My reply was matter-of-fact, and I was fairly convicted in this answer, only faltering due to the clear disappointment in her voice. I sighed, turning my gaze toward the ceiling. “You haven’t exactly been giving me the warm and fuzzies lately.”

“I’m sorry, Zac; I just found out you were using again. Then, in the middle of us trying to deal with that, I find out that the reason you were using again was because you were fucking cheating on me. So, excuse me for feeling some animosity,” she spat. I heard the bottle slosh as she took another sip from the bottle, and then heard it clack on the coffee table as she set down the empty.

Laughter bubbled up in my chest and I was powerless to stop it. Before I could form any words as a response, the laughs broke free from my lips and assaulted the air. “You’re such a fucking hypocrite!” I managed between giggles.

“Maybe I am,” her tone was no longer biting; it almost sounded genuinely remorseful. “Even if I deserved it, Zac, it still hurt. A lot. I thought we had moved on from that; that our relationship was stronger because of working together to rebuild. I should have known…how did I not know?”

The question wasn’t directed toward me, but I felt compelled to answer. “It couldn’t possibly have been that you were in denial, or racked with so much guilt you could only see yourself, could it?”

“You know I tried everything to make amends with you.” her voice was low and frustrated, laced with tears.

“Well, it wasn’t enough.” I set the now-empty beer bottle down on the table and quickly swooped in to the kitchen to grab another.  I took two for the sake of not wanting to get back up and chugged half the first one before I sat back down on the couch.  Kate was fidgeting next to me, sniffling softly.  I sighed heavily, knowing that she was looking for sympathy or even pity.  I couldn’t even say that I did pity her; she brought most of this on herself.  “Something like this though…no matter how hard you or the other person try—it’s burned on you, Kate.  You can forgive, but you can’t forget, and sometimes that’s the worst part about it.”

We sat in the dim firelight, silent, for what seemed like an eternity.  In reality it was probably only the better part of ten minutes, but it was enough time for me to finish both the beers I had brought in to the room and stand up—a bit too quickly—to go get another.  I wobbled a little on my feet, shaking my head to grasp my bearings, before I stumbled to the kitchen.  I grabbed what looked like the last of the beers before fished around the freezer for the bottle of tequila I had stashed there.  I flopped back on to the couch a few minutes later, offering the bottle of tequila to Kate.  She eyed it, then me, before grabbing it and taking a shot from it.  She handed it back.

“I’ve told you I’m sorry.”

Again, I laughed.  “And how is ‘I’m Sorry’ supposed to fix anything, Kate?” I demanded, standing up and walking the ten paces to the fireplace.  I picked up the poker and stabbed at the log, rolling it around and trying to rekindle the flames so we wouldn’t be cast into complete darkness.  When the log wouldn’t take new flame, I stuffed a fresh one in, using a long match to light fresh kindling.  Kate still hadn’t responded, so I whirled around, bracing myself against the mantle.  “That wasn’t a rhetorical question.”

“Nothing; it fixes nothing,” she sobbed.  “I can’t take it back, Zac.  I can’t go back in time and change what I did to you.  I can only try to make things right now, for the future.  I’ve been fighting this fight for seven years, through two beautiful babies, and a miscarriage, and I—“ she stopped mid-sentence, her voice breaking in to sobs.  At some point during the last few minutes she had stood from the couch as well, her hands covering her face as she shook in to them, crying.  “I’m a horrible person,” she whispered.  “But at least I had the decency to tell you about it.  You kept this from me for how long, exactly?  And I didn’t even find out from you; I had to find out from Isaac, and that was on top of the discovery that you were using again.”

My blood ran cold; I hadn’t really questioned how Kate had found out about my infidelity.  The drugs, well—that was something anyone who was paying attention would have noticed.  The affair, on the other hand…I think only those closest to Ryland and I, those who spent the most time with us, had any clue.  I was honestly surprised she hadn’t figured it out on her own; but Isaac was the last person I had expected to confess, especially after telling me he was happy to see me back to my old self.

I pressed my hand against my abdomen, actively fighting back vomit.  “Isaac?” my voice squeaked out, much tighter and higher than I would have liked.

“Yes, Isaac.  And even he waited!  He told me he knew about it all along but didn’t know how to tell me.  I really wish he would have.  I wish you would have, you coward.”

“I was trying my damndest to figure out what the hell to do.  The way I saw it, I had limited options:  I could have ended it with her and not have told you at all, I could have ended with her and then told you everything, I could have ended it with you to be with her, or I could have fucking ended it with both of you.  None of them seemed to have a perfectly happy ending, but you want to know something?  I was going with option two, Kate.  I had ended it with her; I was trying with you, but I couldn’t stand the way you always looked at me like you wished I was someone else.”  The beer bottle I had been holding smashed against the opposite wall, having been thrown without my consent.

Kate jumped at the shattering of the glass, backing away from me in to the kitchen.  “I never wished you were anybody but yourself, Zac,” her voice was shaky, her hand reaching across the coffee table to rest on my bicep.  “I only wanted you to be you again.”

I roughly pulled my arm from her grasp, the alcohol making me angrier that she had dared to touch me than the fact that she was lying to me.  “You may not have wanted me to be someone else, but you certainly wished you had married someone else,” I could hear the venom in my voice, and yet could not bring myself to even care.  “I never should have married you.  I should never have even considered forgiving you.  Whores don’t deserve second chances.”

I regretted saying the words before they were finished leaving my lips, but once they started tumbling out I couldn’t stop myself.  There was a moment of silence before a loud crack filled the space between us, a searing pain erupting in the spot where her hand made contact with my cheek.  “Don’t you ever speak to me like that again.”

“Or what, Kate?  You’ll to slap me again?”

I could see a small smirk curve across her lips through the shadows cast by the fireplace.  “I’ve already got enough on you to prevent you from seeing your children for the rest of your life; do you really want me to request sole custody with no visitation in the divorce settlement?”

“You wouldn’t dare.”  If there was one thing I knew about Kate, it was that no matter how bad things got between the two of us, she would never put the kids in the middle.

“Fucking try me.”   She spun away from me, determined to gather her things and leave the apartment.  I took two steps and closed the distance between us enough to grab her wrist and spin her around to face me.  “Ow, Zac; you’re hurting me.”  She tugged and twisted her wrist, but my hand wrapped easily and tightly around her, preventing her escape.   When she realized her attempts were in vain, the anger slowly faded from her face, her eyes clouding with panic as she used her free hand to push and punch against my chest.  “Let me go,” she begged.

I loosened my grip on her, and she took the opportunity to shove me away, hard, so my legs slammed in to the coffee table.  The jolt from my body weight sent all the beer bottles tumbling over, smashing against the hardwood on the floor.  The sound caused us both to paused, our eyes finding one another’s slowly.  “You’re insane.  You’ve actually lost your damn fool mind,” she swallowed hard, her body visibly shaking.  “You’re never seeing the kids again, you realize that, don’t you?”

“You won’t,” The smirk on my face felt foreign; it felt maniacal.

“Oh, but I will.  There is no way in hell I am letting you near either one of them.  Not until you get professional help.”

My feet moved of their own volition, moving me closer to Kate until we were standing so close our noses nearly touched.  “You can’t take my kids away,” I told her.  “They’re all I have left.”

“Well now you have nothing.”  Her tone was even now, the acidic words repeating in my mind as she stared me down, daring me to do something.

Being that close to her, breathing in the scent of her perfume—the perfume she wore because I liked it—my thoughts began to jumble.  Combined with the alcohol I had consumed, and the joint I had smoked two thirds of earlier, I was really not myself.  “Please don’t take my babies away,” I whispered.

“You brought this on yourself, Zac,” she explained nonchalantly, as if she were explaining to the kids that it was no because she said so.

The anger began to rise in my stomach again, and my hands moved to her upper arms; my grip wasn’t tight, but it was firm.  “I need them, Kate.  I…I’ll die without them,”

“Let go, Zac,” she wiggled against my hands, bending her arms at the elbow to try and push me away again.  I was stronger, though, and the more she struggled, the more I needed to hold on.  “Zac, let me go!” there were tears springing at the corners of her eyes, from fear or pain I wasn’t sure, but the sight only served to make me angry at myself.  I released her, shoving her slightly as I did so.  The force sent her stumbling backward, her back colliding with the wall with a loud thud.

As she struggled to catch her breath, holding her arm across her stomach, I saw her other hand reach out and grab the stapler off my desk.  She hurled it in my general direction and it clipped me in my side as I tried to dodge it.  “The hell!” I shouted at her.

“Fuck you, Zac.  Just…fuck you!” she shouted back.  In the next moment, she had hurled herself at me, her hands punching at my chest frantically.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” she screamed.  “What happened to my husband?” she was sobbing again, her punches growing weaker until she pushed me away—hard—and stood there sobbing.

What happened next was probably the worst thing I could have done.

Seeing her standing in front of me, sobbing like that, broke me.  I let out a loud growl, reaching out for her again.  She flinched as my hands grasped her by the hips, dragging her toward me.  I crushed my lips against hers, and her punching of my chest resumed as she tried to get away.  I moved my hands so that I could steady hers by the wrist, lightly, as my tongue darted out and ran across her lower lip.  She groaned loudly in response, her body relaxing against me as the kiss deepened, her lips parting and our tongues tangling.

I pushed her up against the wall, but she used the momentum and my own body weight to flip us around so my back hit the drywall instead of hers.  Her hands tangled tightly in my hair, pulling roughly as I slid my hands just under the curve of her ass and lifted her, carrying her toward the bedroom.  Her legs snacked around my waist, the kiss breaking only so I could make sure we didn’t run in to anything along the way.  I sat down on the bed, she in my lap, and began to forcefully pull at the t-shirt.

Somehow we had managed to remove all articles of clothing in what seemed like seconds.  I was still sitting on the edge of the bed, so hard it hurt, as Kate straddled me on her knees.  She leaned forward, burying her face in my neck as my hands forcefully pulled her hips down toward mine.  She let out a sharp cry as I filled her, trying to lift her hips away.  I held her in place, my hands traveling up her back, my fingers tangling in her hair and using it to pull her head back to expose her neck.  I ran my free hand up her sides, cupping her breast and running my thumb over her nipple, circling until it hardened against my actions.  Kate had started to rock her hips, grinding hard down against me in a circular motion; I pulled her hair a little harder, moving my hand up a bit more until I could circle it around her neck.

Her eyes shot open as I squeezed a little, the panic I saw earlier flashing across her features again, her body tensing.  I dropped my hand from her hair and neck, wrapping my arms around her waist so that I could turn around, lying her down on her back on the bed without breaking contact.  I thrust in to her from the edge of the bed, guiding her legs around my waist before returning my hands to her hips; the position required me to hold her hips off the bed slightly, using them to help me gain deeper access and eliciting a loud purr from Kate.

I felt her muscles start to tighten and release around me, a sign she was close to climax, and the sensation caused my knees to buckle.  I dropped on to the mattress, my arms on either side of her shoulders as she rocked her hips toward me, her legs wrapping around me and pulling me in to her.  We fell in to a hard, fast, rhythm over the next few minutes until I felt the blood rushing in my ears; stars began to explode behind my eyes and I felt her nails digging in to my shoulder blades as we both came, our bodies slick with sweat.  I bucked my hips toward her once more, my forehead resting against her shoulder as I finished, taking a moment to catch my breath before carefully untangling our bodies.

We lie in the dark of the bedroom for a while, not speaking, until drifting off in to sleep.  When I awoke the next morning, the lights were back on and Kate was gone.

 

 

 

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