Out of breath, her mother stepped back, pulled her knit top down from where it had ridden up over her thin hips, and brushed her perfectly styled hair out of her face, daring Keira with a stare to say something smart again. The girl knew better. “Mistakes,” her mother intoned coolly, for emphasis, in order to have the last word, “can last a lifetime, especially the ones you make when you’re young.”
Keira wondered if her mother was talking about her own mistakes. She wondered if loving her father felt like the biggest mistake of the woman’s life. If it did, that didn’t say much about Keira. If it did, that meant her mother had regretted having her as much as she regretted falling in love with a man who struggled to live out his passion. “Are you taking your birth control pills? Making sure you’re not missing?” When Keira nodded, her mother walked to the door, holding it open in one hand as she looked over her shoulder. “I know you think I’m backwards and stupid, Keira, but I really am looking out for you.”
Somehow, Keira doubted that her mother looked out for anyone but herself.
By three that afternoon, Keira was finally alone and her face had stopped throbbing. Steven and her mother swarmed out of the house, brief waves and longer warnings falling behind them as they loaded their car and headed for the airport. It was only then that Keira could breathe.
That is, until four o’clock when her mother was already on a plane and the heater broke. The weather had turned chilly, colder than it had been at the game the weekend before but it wasn’t the cold she had to deal with. The heater managed to get stuck on high, at least 80 degrees, and Keira didn’t know how to turn it off.
So she spent much of the afternoon on her balcony, guitar on her lap as she tried to find that elusive hook. She poured all her thoughts, all those bitter, angry emotions she felt toward Kona into each chord, every word she wove together. But then, as if even nature were against her, dark clouds emerged, the skies opened up, and Keira was stuck in the sauna-like house while a cold rain fell outside.
The shower Keira took should have left icicles on her skin it was so cold, but as soon as she left the bathroom and dug in her dresser, her cold skin warmed and sweat began to pool down her back. She plucked an old Black Crowes tee that was grey and slightly threadbare from her drawer and decided she’d forgo any sleep shorts. She knew she’d likely be naked before the end of the night anyway. The room was stifling and Keira needed a distraction, so she turned on her stereo, skipping through the CDs already loaded and stopped when she came across a worn, overplayed track.
Dave Matthews. “Crash Into Me.” Keira loved the quick tap of the cymbals, right on the bell top and the slow rap against the low register of the guitar. It was a song that haunted, seduced in such an intense way, and most of the time she jumped the track back to the beginning to hear that intro again and again. But Dave Matthew’s lyrics, his hypnotizing voice also filtered into her skin, had the hairs on her arms rising. She’d always wanted someone to crash into her like that, to pay tribute to her body, to touch her with that much passion. Now she did. Or she had, past tense. Her chest felt tight, emotion clotting in her throat at the thought of anyone else but Kona touching her like that.
Keira felt the tears burn against her lids and cursed herself for being weak. Crying was something she thought she couldn’t do anymore. Not since her father’s cowardly retreat. But those past few months with Kona had reawakened emotions long buried and she hated and loved him for that. With her head down on her dresser, Keira felt the vibration from the speakers and she rubbed her face against her arm, feeling weak, feeling pathetic and supremely stupid since she was the reason he wasn’t with her now. She wouldn’t second guess her decision to leave him, but that didn’t mean she didn’t hurt, that she wasn’t wounded by having to walk away from him.
Outside, rain slapped against the French doors that led out to her balcony and the lights above flickered, the erratic electrical current skipping the track on her stereo. Keira looked up, watching as the feeble quake of the bulbs in her chandelier flickered and when they glowed, she pushed play again, setting the song on repeat before she turned off the overhead light and switched on her bedside lamp.
There was a huge clap of thunder outside, followed by the bright strike of lightening and Keira jumped in fright. She turned to look through the door onto the balcony to see if anything had been struck, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw Kona standing on the other side.
“Shit!”
He was soaked, hair flat against his head, white t-shirt sticking to him like oil, looking like some feral god, and Keira had to force her eyes away from the outline of his body, from the hard contours of his chest and ripped stomach so she could make it across the room.