WAW June assignment
Ten years. Surely it was no more than, say five or six, right? She looked down at her left hand, brushing the scar lightly with her finger. Where had the years gone?
Ten years earlier
“Do you really have to leave?” Kate asked, reaching across the bed to touch Andrew’s back, attempting seduction with her fingertips.
“Katie, stop. You know I have to get home.” Andrew smiled as he glanced back at her. She continued her seductive fingertip dance across the elastic of his briefs.
“I said, STOP!” This time Andrew’s voice was stern…cold…devoid of intimacy. Kate recoiled, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them as she tucked her head in close to her chest, familiar with his Jekyll/Hyde mood swings. “You know the routine,” he continued, robotically. “This is the way things will always be. You need to remember that, Kate.”
She searched his eyes, looking for the gentle longing she was so familiar with. He was right. She had to remember the routine. The wife. The dog and kids. The minivan and soccer practice.
“You are nothing more than a distraction for him, Kate,” her best friend, Angela, often said.
“I’m sorry.” Her apology was nearly inaudible.
“Excuse me?” Andrew panned as his face contorted into something unrecognizable. “You’re sorry? Miss Katie Always Together Never Wrong is sorry? Well, whatta ya know? Indeed wonders never…”
“I said I was sorry, okay. I know the rules. Just leave, okay?”
“Now she wants me to leave. What if I don’t want to Miss Katie? What if I decide to spend the night? What then?’
“What do you mean?” Kate was clearly confused. She started to tremble as she pulled the sheet up around her naked body.
“It’s about time you covered up. You disgust me,” Andrew spat. “You dis-gust me, do you know that?”
Katie was silent, wrinkling the white bamboo top sheet between her clenched fists.
“I asked you a question, Katie. What are you, deaf and dumb?”
“I heard the question, Andrew. I just don’t know what you want me to say. I’m sorry I disgust you. But it didn’t seem that way a half hour...”
“Bitch!” The back of his left hand made contact with her right cheek.
“Stop,” Kate cried out. “Andrew, stop it right now. I want you to leave.” She was crying now.
“Ahhh, issa baby kwying? Poor wittle Katie.”
“I told you to leave,” she repeated.
“You told me? You told ME? And who the hell do you think you are?”
Andrew grabbed her by the wrists and dragged her off the bed, onto the Berber carpet and across the room. Opening the second story window, he picked her up, attempting to push her through it. Her fingernails dug into his wrist.
“Shit!” he yelled, as he pried her hand away. With one swift move, he hurled her body out the window. A huge bush blocked her fall and she screamed as a leafless branch pierced through her left hand.
“Oh I hate that stupid rhododendron,” was the last thing she heard her once gentle lover say, as she faded away into a blackout.
***
Kate stopped rubbing her scar when her cell phone started to chirp.
“Yeah?” It was Angela.
“Just checking to make sure you’re okay.” The concern in her friend’s voice was apparent. “I talked to Gerry at the station this morning.”
“Yeah,” Katie repeated, this time as a statement.
"I can’t believe that pig is getting out today… Are you scared?”
“Umm, yeah, I guess I….”
She felt the thrust of a fist pounding into her spine as she went hurling across the room.
“Hello, Katie. I’m so glad I didn’t miss the blooming of the rhododendron this
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