Christine Zolendz - Brutally Beautiful

The parking lot of the store was unusually crowded. I pulled into the only empty spot, stomped out of the truck and slammed the door as if I was throwing a tantrum. “We will finish this fucking conversation!” I snapped.

“Oh, wonderful. I can’t wait to continue. You’re so lovely to talk to about all my secrets. Just a real sensitive being, you are,” she snapped back, storming into the store.

Pushing the cart through the store, she was like a NASCAR driver, and you know it has that one fucking wheel that spins around in madness on its own accord, tripping her up and calling attention to itself with its whines. But she was determined. She was determined to get all the fucking shit she needed to change her appearance and leave me.

Hair dye. Men’s clothing. Baseball caps. Make-up. I wanted to vomit.

The one, yes one, check out line was at least 25 people long, all of them staring menacingly at the elderly woman holding up the line with a thick wad of coupons for her cat food and asking the cashier to read aloud to her about its nutritional value. A crying, wailing, screeching something-month old baby was in the arms of a harried snot-nosed teenager who bounced quickly back and forth on her flip-flops, even though it was not even twenty degrees outside.

“Why the fuck do you need this shit for?” I picked through the clothing and boots, and other crap in the cart. “This line is impossible. This is insane. Look at these people. They’re all pathetic trash. I can’t stay here anymore.”

“Shut up, Kade!” She hissed poking her finger hard into my chest. “Maybe, maybe this is more about something other than you! Those walls you built up for yourself. You should have installed windows in them, just to get a chance to see there are other people in this world besides you! Maybe that woman needs the nutritional value for herself and not her damn cats because her fucking social security checks don’t cover what she needs it to…that baby and that teenager? Well, you think she wants to be strapped with that crying kid, when babydaddy is out with his friends after he promised to make it all up to her? That kid is sick, Kade. Look in that baby’s eyes, she has a very high fever…look how limp her body is, look at her nose flaring and listen to her wheezing breaths. She shows signs of pneumonia, Kade, and look how tired the mother is. God, she’s just a baby herself.” Again, she poked me with her finger, harder this time. “You think they’re all here just to get in your way? Look at me…Kade…I’m here because I need to change the fucking way I look because there is someone who wants to see nothing more than me die, and I won’t let him…you don’t know these people’s stories. They are not less important than you are. They have there own issues, Kade, everybody does and you can’t know what these people’s stories are, even though in your head you think you can automatically tell who and what people are. Are you absolutely 100% sure that your reality is the fucking real one? In your gloriously disordered mind, I was nothing but a stripper.”

“I automatically hate. That’s all I know…” I mumbled.

She leaned closer to me, smooth skin against my neck, “Last night, you told me you were falling in love with me…love doesn’t grow well when it’s surrounded by such hate. Stop hating everyone because of the fucked up choices Thomas made. Thomas was Thomas, nobody else is Thomas.”

“But they could be. They could turn into a Thomas!” I barked.

She spun me around, tore the sleeve of my coat down, and lifted my shirt harshly up my back. “No, Kade! No! They could be a Leslie, a Gemma, a Henry, a Cory…” she listed the names of my friends who were killed, while gently touching their names with cool fingertips. “You’re forgetting the innocent people and always remembering the wicked one.”

I yanked my arm away from her, and shrugged my coat back on my shoulder. By now, the whole of the store was watching our fight. “My freedom was taken from me that day!”

“No, Kade, it wasn’t. Your security was taken from you that day. Your freedom is the choice to let it happen every day since then. This is your life. You don’t even watch it fly by. You closed your fucking eyes to it, until you saw some waitress with a nice rack. You want to love, Kade, so give up the shit that weighs you down and makes you hate. Let it go. I will fucking meet you half way. I let go of my baggage, if you let go of yours or we’re going to hit each other with the heavy packages for the rest of our lives.”

My fucking head started buzzing like a cloud of killer bees was circling me. The voices of the people around me sounded too loud, they moved around too strangely, and they watched me too cautiously. “That’s a bloody joke, right? For the rest of our lives? You’re leaving here; you’re leaving me. So there’s no meeting anyone half way, is there?” I shifted angrily away from her as the line moved and I started slamming down the items on the conveyer belt at the register.

She scrunched her eyebrows together and lay her hand on my chest, “You’re angry because I’m leaving?” The question was asked with pure innocent astonishment. Fuck, she really didn’t get it, did she?

“I told you. You’re going to destroy me,” I hissed behind clenched teeth, as the items beeped past the electronic register in the hands of the cashier.

Instantly, she closed the distance between our angry, coiled bodies, curled her hands tightly around the back of my neck and pulled me down to her lips. Like a lamb to its slaughter, I went.

“Kade…” she whispered against my lips.

“I know I’m being so fucking selfish right now, but Sam, I fucking need you in my life. Stay here with me. I swear I will never let him hurt you again. I’ll help you get a job at the hospital here, we’ll…”

“I‘m not a surgeon anymore, I can’t be ; he made sure to take that away from me. You don’t know.” Her eyes filled will tears, but they didn’t spill. She held them in, I knew not to waste any more on him.

“That will be $286.31,” the cashier yelled between us.

I never thought about staying. My only clear realistic thoughts were getting away from where David knew I was; the very place where he sent someone to kill me. Sloppily, I might add. David usually did things methodically and cleverly, planned everything out perfectly. He must be getting desperate .

Kade wanted to know all about David. Nothing could beat the insane, head bashing, crapslapping experience that was David . He had left enough marks on my flesh, but what he did to my insides was damage that was beyond repairable, and telling Kade wouldn’t change anything. If anything, it would get him angrier than he already was, and the man was a ticking time bomb. Detonating him would only get him hurt, really hurt. Me staying in this town would get him killed, because if David knew I had feelings for someone, it would be an invitation to annihilate him.

Taking my purchases into his master bathroom, I sealed my lips shut. The last thing I wanted was to see Kade hurt, and the last thing I wanted was Kade in trouble, and honestly, the very last thing I wanted was to leave him. I would have loved to see where this thing between us was going, because I had never felt this drawn to a person before. However, I had no choice.

With trembling fingers, I emptied my boxes of hair dye onto the counter and took a deep breath. I had never been a blonde before. Lifting my shirt over my arms and head, unclasping my bra and sliding off my jeans, I stayed in only underwear, not wanting to dye what little clothing I had left.