Tags: sookie is gap-toothed bitch, cigarettes and chocolate milk, eric northman is one hot piece, fangirling means srs bsns

Chapter 7

I don’t know why I’m still afraid
If you weren’t real I would make you up

Kathy’s breath came out in cloudy puffs as it hit the cold night air and her cheeks and nose were turning a bright red that clashed with the orange of her ridiculous hat. She kept swiping her yarn covered fingers across her cheeks, brushing away the snow that was coming down heavier with each step they took. He hoped it was just a freak snow shower and not something that would fuck with the train schedule in the morning. The last thing he needed was to be stranded in the city because of a blizzard.
His arm brushed against Kathy’s as they walked down the crowded sidewalk. His limp was getting worse and the guitar was growing heavier with each passing minute but he found himself hoping it was still a few blocks to her apartment. She was chattering away – about what, he wasn’t sure. But he must have nodded and smiled at all the right places because she just kept going. There was just something so relaxing and calming about her presence and he could think of no reason for it, none at all. She was quirky and awkward and the kind of shy that led to all sorts of bizarre things toppling out of her mouth as she tried to cover her unease with words. But he found himself curious about what would happen next, like he had to get to the end of the chapter before he could put the book down and move on.
“Hello, dear,” an old woman called out as Kathy walked past a newspaper stand.
“Hi, Mrs. C,” Kathy called back, waving cheerfully.
The old lady was paging through a tabloid. The guy running the place was leaning on the counter, looking over her shoulder, pointing out things as she turned the page. Jack had a feeling this was something of a ritual for the pair of them. He had something like that when he lived in New York. Every morning … okay, afternoon … he’d roll out of bed, find his pack of cigarettes, realize only one was left and it was crushed or broken in half. He’d pull on whatever clothes were lying on the floor next to his bed and then stumble out the door for the corner store, buying a pack of cigarettes, a Dr. Pepper, and whatever nondescript bread product sandwich-thing they had under the heat lamp next to the cash register. Sometimes it had bacon in it, sometimes it didn’t. He wasn’t picky as long as he had ketchup back in the apartment fridge to drown it in. It could be the worst thing he’d ever eaten … actually, Bobby’s cooking came to mind … as long as he had ketchup, he could stomach just about anything.
The guy at the counter – his shirt said Sal – would chat about every goddamn game that was played the night before, no matter what the sport - rattling off all the stats and plays and shit like that. Jack never had the heart to tell him that he had no fucking clue what he was talking about, that he hadn’t been much into sports since leaving Detroit. Sports were Bobby’s thing and he would have loved talking to Sal. He’d always planned on taking Bobby to that store so the two of them could shoot the shit and argue Michigan versus New York versus the world, but he’d given up on inviting Bobby to visit after a year of unanswered phone calls. You get ignored by your big brother long enough, you stop bothering and just say to hell with him.
Kathy and Jack stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to change so they could cross without getting pulverized by a cab. “Almost there,” Kathy said, pointing across the street to what Jack assumed was her building. “Then you can be on your way. Back to the land of Motown and Bobby Mercer, world record holder for … What was his record for?”
“Being an asshole?” Jack offered with a laugh.
“Close enough.”
The light changed and they moved with the crowd across the street, moving as fast as Jack’s leg would let them. Once back on the sidewalk, Kathy trudged forward, slowing when they were in front of a ramshackle looking bookstore, its windows covered by heavy metal shutters, the door covered in close to a dozen locks.
“You live here?” Jack asked, even though the answer was obvious.
She nodded as she pulled out a giant set of keys. “My apartment is above the store and I work here on weekends when they need help.” She stuck out her tongue and scrunched up her nose as she rifled through the keys, looking for the ones she needed. Jack bit back a laugh – she looked like she was about five, but there was just something so … he shook his head to clear it. He went for rocker chicks and groupies, maybe the occasional wannabe model or actress – cute and adorable had no place in his vocabulary when it came to girls.
She got the door open and she turned to him, a hesitant look on her face, her smile kind of sad. “Well …” she started.
“Well.” He adjusted his hold on his guitar case, suddenly not sure what to say.
“Two ships passing in the night?” she asked, fidgeting with the fringe on her scarf.
“Something like that.”
“I’d say keep in touch, but …” her voice trailed off.
“Yeah, I know.” He cleared his throat. “Merry Christmas, Kath.”
“Happy Holidays, Jack,” she said with a little wave, stepping back through the door as he took a step in the opposite direction, back into the world and the city and his plans to go home.
He turned to leave, wincing as his knee protested.
“Wait,” Kathy suddenly called out. “Um … if you want you can come up.”
He raised an eyebrow and a look of slow realization bloomed on her face, making it even more flushed than the cold managed. “To rest your leg,” she said in a rush. “Before you have to head back. It looks like cabs are going to be hard to come by tonight and well, you’re limping pretty badly.”
He didn’t answer. “I have ice,” she tacked on as though she were upping the ante.
He glanced behind him, down the street, weighing his options. She was right; even though he hated to admit it, his leg hurt like hell and he didn’t really feel up to crawling back to his friend’s place at the moment.
“Sure,” he finally said.
“Really?” she squeaked.
He laughed. “Really.”

XxXxXxXxXx

“Man, it looks like a bookstore exploded in here.”
“Jack, two bookcases is hardly an explosion of books,” Kathy said from the kitchen as she looked through the freezer.
“They are when they’ve got more books than I’ve read my entire life,” he said as he skimmed his fingers over the bindings. Most were old and yellowed, covers torn and curling and the authors were familiar – lots of dead guys. Lots of dead guys he pretended to read when he was in school. He still had no idea how he managed to graduate. “You can admit these are for show. I bet you’ve got a stash of trashy romances somewhere around here.”
She poked her head around the corner. “Romances aren’t trashy,” she protested. “And … um, no I don’t.”
He grinned slyly. “Right.”
She came into the room carrying two bags of vegetables. “I’m all out of ice.”
“Naturally.”
Holding out the two bags, she said, “I’ve got peas or brussel sprouts.”
“Seriously?”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, Jack.”
“No, I mean you seriously have brussel sprouts? I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who ate brussel sprouts.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do you know?”
“How do I know what?”
“Does brussel sprout consumption come up often during conversations you have?”
“Yes.” he said without missing a beat, taking her by surprise.
Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times as she struggled for a comeback. “Oh,” was all she managed and she tossed the bag of peas at him. At his head, to be exact. He caught them before they could inflict any real damage.
He limped over to the battered but comfortable looking, pillow-covered couch and … promptly sat on something that let out a high pitched yowl and sank its claws into his ass. “Ow. Son of a bitch!” He jumped back up, hopping awkwardly, rubbing his stinging butt.
The monster bolted from the couch, hissing and spitting at him. “What happened?” Kathy asked as she hurried into the room, glancing between Jack and the orange fiend eyeing him from the coffee table.
“That … that thing attacked me.” Jack pointed at the cat who tilted his head to the side and … Jack swore he wasn’t hallucinating … rolled his eyes.
“Horatio?” Kathy pointed to the cat who was now licking his paw, probably cleaning off the blood from Jack’s wounds.
Jack flopped back onto the couch. “Satan has a name?”
Kathy gave him a shocked look and the scooped up the cat into her arms, holding him against her shoulder she rocked back and forth, muttering cutesy endearments in his ear. “Horatio wouldn’t hurt a fly. Isn’t that right, Horatio-bear?”
“Right. Pretty sure I’m bleeding to death here.”
Horatio was rubbing his head on Kathy’s shoulder, purring loudly and giving Jack a smug grin.
“Stop being dramatic,” Kathy scolded.
“Are you talking to me or the cat?”

XxXxXxXxXx

Jack abandoned the bag of peas and limped slowly around the apartment, trying to process the overwhelming amount of stuff Kathy managed to cram into such a small place. It reminded him of that art project they worked on together, the collage of crap that somehow morphed into a picture that made sense and got them both an A. With a ton of books, artwork, photos, Broadway posters and just assorted stuff, Kathy had somehow transformed the typical grimy New York apartment, the kind that always seemed to be painted a dingy green even when it wasn’t, into cozy, funky home.
“I’ve never seen so much stuff,” Jack said loud enough for Kathy to hear in the kitchen. She was making hot chocolate because the only booze she had in the place was a bottle of wine she opened three months ago. He didn’t mind – he was still trying to warm up after the walk in the snow.
“When I left for school, I had to take everything with me,” she explained. He moved to the entrance to the tiny kitchen and leaned against the doorjamb, watching as she searched through pots and pans that were crammed into the ancient stove.
“You couldn’t leave some of it at home?”
“Aha!” she eed as she stood up, a sauce pan in her hand. “I knew I had one.” She put her hand on her hip and looked up at the cabinets above the sink. “Now I just have to remember where I put the chocolate.”
Jack was confused – the Kathy he remembered was so organized, everything had its place and there was never any clutter. Her house had looked like a museum compared to his.
“You didn’t answer the question,” he pointed out. She had his back to him, stirring the milk as it heated up and she shrugged.
“When I moved, I moved. I didn’t want to leave anything behind.”
He stepped into the kitchen and ran his finger over a ladybug sun catcher she had on the fridge. “Apparently,” he said as he studied the collection. There were at least a dozen sun catchers covering the appliance, each one bright and cheery, even beneath the gray tones cast by the ancient light in the ceiling.
She looked over at him. “Those were coming with me no matter what. My grandma gave me those every year for my birthday.”
“I remember them,” Jack said with a grin. “It was how I knew which window was yours.”
She blushed and turned her attention to the milk that was now on the verge of boiling over. “I still can’t believe you did that.”

XxXxXxXxXx

Kathy hugged her stuffed giraffe, Ichabod, tightly in her arms. She’d finally stopped crying, but now her eyes were swollen and her cheeks felt hot and itchy from the dried tears. The tears had threatened to come the moment her mother appeared in Steve’s garage, livid at her for lying about going to Hannah’s and for hanging around with kids who were a “bad influence.” Kathy found some comfort in the fact that she at least waited until they got in the car to start bawling like a baby.
Glancing out her bedroom window, she was surprised to see it was still sunny out. It felt like hours had passed since she’d wandered into Jack’s band practice, but the sun proved her wrong, its rays filtering through the myriad of sun catchers she had hanging on the panes of glass. She loved the way the light formed a colorful kaleidoscope of shapes on her walls and across her floor and bed. It made her forget how Detroit always seemed so gray and cold and brittle, like it was crumbling around her. Sometimes she would just sit in the middle of that rainbow and hold her hand up, twisting it back and forth, watching the colors flow over her skin like paint on a canvas.
Her grandmother started giving her sun catchers when she turned four – that was the year her mother got a job with a law firm in Detroit and uprooted the family, leaving behind their home in Maryland for the promise of bigger and better things in Michigan. Over the years, Kathy had witnessed many fights between her parents and she’d pieced together the fact that her dad was fed up with the city and wanted to move back to the place he loved. Detroit was just supposed to be a stop along the road, a place for her to gain respect and a name for herself so that she could have her pick of jobs at prestigious law firms across the country. Nine years later and it seemed like they were never leaving Detroit.
Kathy’s grandmother told her a couple of years ago that the sun catchers were to remind her that there was color and beauty everywhere, but sometimes the place you were in might needed a little nudge to reveal the secrets it kept hidden from the world. She liked that idea – that not everything was pretty on the surface, that sometimes it was worth chipping away at something to see what lay beneath.
Sighing, Kathy propped Ichabod on her knees, fidgeting with the threadbare ribbon tied around his neck. He’d been with her for as long as she could remember. His fur was patchy and worn away in places and she never did get the stuffing replaced in the one ear after her cousin had rudely pulled it out, but he was her most prized possession. “I wish we could just run away,” she whispered, touching her nose to his. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Suddenly, something pinged against her window, startling her and causing her to drop the stuffed animal. A second passed and then something else bounced off the glass. Tentatively, Kathy walked over to the window and peered out over the small backyard, looking for the source. A rock hit the window square in the middle of her forehead and she yelped, stumbling backward in shock. Catching her breath, she looked again, this time directing her attention right below the window.
Never in a million years did she think she’d gaze upon Jack Mercer, standing beneath her window like some modern day Romeo in a leather jacket and blue jeans. Shakespeare must have cut out the part where Juliet hid in her room, hugging a stuffed animal because her mom made her cry.
Jack bent down, picking a rock up off the ground and pulled his arm back, aiming squarely for her second floor window. Realizing he was going to cause some real damage if she didn’t make him stop, she threw open the window as quickly as she could. “Stop,” she whisper-yelled down at him.
He dropped the rock and squinted up at her. “Hey, Kathy.”
“Hey, Jack,” she answered, glancing behind her, half-expecting her mother to be standing in her doorway, ready for round two. The door was still firmly shut and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Her mom had left for the grocery store as soon as she’d yelled herself hoarse at Kathy and made it quite clear that her disappointment could only be cured with a grounding that might stretch into the next decade. She’d be gone for a while, but Kathy couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d just materialize out of nowhere, scowling and fuming and embarrassing the heck out of her.
“Can I come up?” Jack hitched his thumb in his belt loop and even from this height, Kathy could tell he had that cute puppy dog look on his face that he used whenever he was trying to get his own way.
“What? … No. My mom’ll kill me,” she said in a rush.
“She’ll never know.”
“Liar,” she hissed back.
“Trust me.”

XxXxXxXxXx

“Trees are much easier to climb when homicidal poodles aren’t hanging around,” Jack joked as he climbed through her window.
Kathy was pacing back and forth as he struggled to get his foot over the windowsill without falling on his face. “What are you doing here, Jack?” she asked.
“Trying not to break my neck,” he muttered, stumbling forward a little, catching himself on the edge of her desk, sending shooting pains down his hip.
“I’m serious.” She sat down gingerly on the edge of her bed, twisting the hem of her sweater as she looked up at him, her eyes wide behind her glasses. He could tell she’d been crying. He knew the signs – her eyes were puffy and her nose was red and raw and she kept taking deep breaths like she was trying to calm herself down.
“So am I. I’m always serious,” he said, trying to keep his voice light as he scanned the room. It looked so different from his house – Evelyn was always trying to get him and his brothers to clean up after themselves; she’d be in nirvana if she ever saw this place. Everything was neat and orderly and dust free – Jack suddenly had an urge to push a book or two out of place just to see what it would look like. Kathy was the only thing in the room that didn’t seem polished and pressed and perfect. She looked sad and worried and he felt his gut clench.
Her mom was so pissed when she found Kathy hanging with them. Thinking about the way her eyes flashed and her fists clenched and her neck turned a livid red – it was like traveling through time and finding himself cornered in the kitchen by a foster mom, being yelled at and kicked because he’d forgotten to put the milk back in the refrigerator. He could still feel the way her high heels had dug into his thigh, leaving triangle shaped bruises that his gym shorts couldn’t hide. Bruises that got him out of that house and dumped into another – just one more random stop in the game of musical chairs that had been Jack’s life before being adopted.
Just the thought that someone could hurt Kathy like that made him want to hit something as hard as he could. Glancing at her as he pretended to be interested in the history book on her desk, he didn’t see any bruises, but her sleeves were long and the real pros knew not to hit the face or any other spot that clothes couldn’t hide. “Are you okay?” he asked quietly, trying not to scare her.
She nodded. “I’m fine.”
“Fine for real or fine just because you think that’s what you should say?”
“What?” She gave him a confused look, pulling some stuffed giraffe off her bed and clutching it to her chest.
He started pacing, running his fingers through his hair as he searched for the right words. “I just wanted to make sure … I mean …” he faltered, realizing he really wasn’t very good at this interrogation stuff. He should have taken notes when Evelyn made him go see that shrink because of his nightmares – she’d tricked him into saying all sorts of shit.
He stopped in his tracks and took a step toward her. “Look, it’s just that your mom seemed really upset.” There, he’d said it. Now that ball was in her basket, or whatever the hell that saying was.
“She gets mad sometimes,” Kathy said, trailing a finger over the nose of the giraffe.
“I figured.”
“She’s got a lot of stuff going on,” Kathy explained and Jack almost winced at the excuse. “Her job is important.”
Instead of answering, he took a seat on the bed, perched on the edge just like Kathy was, trying not to disturb the carefully arranged quilt and pillows. Kathy swallowed heavily and looked down at her lap, her hair falling forward and covering her face. “I shouldn’t cause problems.” Her voice was small.
“Evelyn could help,” he said. “She’s awesome at helping out kids who need um, help.”
Kathy jumped up from the bed, the giraffe falling off her lap and onto the floor. “What? No, it’s not like that …” Her face was pale, making the red blotches from crying standout even more.
“It’s not your fault if it is like that.” Now he was starting to sound like that shrink and he mentally patted himself on the back.
“No, really, she just yells a lot.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Kathy sat back on the bed, sighing heavily. “I don’t think she likes me very much.”
Jack looked at her, his gaze steady and unwavering. “Well, she’s an idiot and she doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

XxXxXxXxXx

“That was very sweet of you,” Kathy said as she sat down on the couch.
Jack laughed, remembering his less than graceful exit from her room, the one where he missed a branch and fell out of his second tree in as many weeks. “Yeah, very chivalrous of me - coming to your rescue and all.”
“Like a knight in shining armor.” She grinned, blowing on her hot chocolate.
“Or a loser in a leather jacket.” He laughed, petting Horatio on the back of his neck, ruffling his fur - the two of them had come to an understanding and called a truce and now the cat wouldn’t leave him alone. Jack’s leg was propped up on the coffee table, both the peas and brussel sprouts defrosting on his knee because Kathy insisted one wasn’t enough.
“It was sweet.”
“Yeah, you said that.” He looked the white twinkle lights draped across the ceiling, casting a warm glow over the room. A tiny tree was on top of the TV, decked out in miniature ornaments. There was a stack of presents on the floor next to the coffee table, some wrapped, some not and Jack also noticed some shipping boxes stacked in the corner, already addressed and waiting to go out.
“So, what are your plans for Christmas?” he asked, even though he had a feeling he knew the answer.
She looked down, suddenly very interested in counting the marshmallows in her cup. “I think I need more marshmallows,” she announced, jumping up from her seat. “How about you? Need more?” He opened his mouth to answer, but she just kept talking, barely pausing for a breath. “I should just bring the bag out here. One of the benefits of being an adult – you can put as many marshmallows in your hot chocolate as you want.”
Anchored by a swollen knee and frozen produce, Jack watched from the couch as she hurried back into the kitchen. “Kath,” he called after her, “marshmallows aren’t going to save you from answering the question.”
She returned with the bag and an overflowing mug. “I was going to answer it.”
“Uh huh.”
“Nothing earth shattering. I’m spending it here with my cat. It’s my little gift to myself.” She smiled but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Jack was finding it surprisingly easy to read her – just like when they were kids. “I don’t have to deal with the drama and disappointment of my mother or the tantrums of my dad’s kids. Just me, my cat and the turkey I’m going to cook to perfection because I say so.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“I don’t do exciting.”
“You could try. Come home with me. Hell, bring the turkey. Bobby probably forgot to buy one anyway.” He had no idea where that came from – but once he said it, he realized just how right it sounded. Kathy shouldn’t be alone for Christmas anymore than he belonged with his ex-bandmates in a shitty apartment in New York City for the holidays. She was running just like he was, but she didn’t realize it.
Kathy smiled a sad smile. “I’m a big girl, Jack. I don’t need rescuing anymore.”


Komentari (1) On/Off