Chapter Nine
The next morningI 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 walked 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.
