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07th
November 2009
If Only
She Could
She
was walking through the mall past rows and rows
of stores to meet B3 at the food court when
. . .
“Hi Ari!!”
Ari turned to see a stumpy girl with rotund
thighs that narrowed into stick thin legs below
her knees, wave at her from across the tiled
floor.
What the fig did she want? Ari stared blankly
at the girl for a moment. Her entire being began
to tense.
“Hi Ari,” the girl said again, waving
excitedly but the enthusiasm contained in her
second greeting waned slightly from her first.
“Look, I don’t want to talk to you,”
Ari said quietly, coldly as she took in the
girl’s asymmetrical, waved bob of a haircut
that frankly, looked unwashed and untamable.
“Alright, suit yourself,” the girl
said snidely, sarcastically, and it was that
sarcasm that set Ari off.
“You need to keep your grimy little hands
off of others, witch. What is it, you take pride
in doing everything that walks?”
Ari walked toward the girl quickly, menacingly,
and before she knew it, she was slamming her
into a store window her fingers wrapped tightly
around the girl’s throat. “Look
at you, such a slut. How do you feel to know
that you’re practically worthless? Pathetic,”
Ari hissed.
She imagined punching the girl’s face
in, to a bloody pulp when, just then B3 came
around the corner. His presence forced Ari to
release the girl and move away. She excused
herself to the bathroom. But outside, she could
hear them speaking.
“What was that all about?” he asked
sounding surprised.
“You told her we had sex?” Trina
shot back.
“Well . . .yeah . . .” B3 was cornered.
I had to. She’s my girlfriend.
“Well now you’ve gone and done it!”
Ari was just about to barge out of the bathroom
when . . . she woke up, jaw clenched, muscles
tensed, still reeling with anger. She looked
over at B3, sleeping peacefully and prodded
him.
“I had a bad dream,” she said.
“Really, what was it about?” he
answered in that heavy guttural tone in which
sleep veils one’s voice.
Ari paused, thought for a moment, and shrugged.
“I, I can’t remember.”
With every bone in her body, though, she wished
the dream was real. If only she could choke
the life out of her like that, she really would.
But Ari really didn’t have it in her.
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B3 snaked an arm around Ari’s waist, pulled
her closer.
She hated dreams like this especially when there
was no obvious trigger.
Last night couldn’t have been calmer.
B3 had come over for dinner, and everything
went as normal.
“Good evening,” he’d said
in his usual cheerful manner as he walked through
the door, pausing briefly to bend over and tickle
Boomer’s belly, Ari’s pet pug.
He was dressed just the way Ari liked, wearing
a white tank top and black and white beach shorts
that showed his leanness and length, and his
bicep and calf muscles.
Ari took him in long and hard while his attention
was on the pug. But as he straightened up and
moved towards her, she averted her gaze.
“Hi,” she replied, looking up haltingly
from her laptop as if his presence, even after
all these years didn’t disarm her. “Dinner’s
in the microwave. Help yourself.”
Her words were deliberate. B3 loved being spoiled
when he came over to her place, especially as
he more than returned the favor at his.
“That’s fine,” B3 said playfully.
“I’ve already resigned myself to
the idea of not being treated like an extra
special houseguest when I’m over here.”
It started to rain when he rejoined her in the
bedroom, settling on the striped sofa and tuning
the television to ESPN for the playoffs. Ari’d
fallen asleep then.
“Those crazy shrinks,” she thought,
recoiling from B3’s embrace. She wanted
to choke him too, because even if it was a dream,
it felt all too real. “I guess they’re
right what they say about coming to terms with
a problem before you move on.”
But B3 wouldn’t let her come to terms
with it. He never wanted to talk about it, hated
when she brought it up, saying she liked to
dwell on things past, create drama where none
existed.
Truthfully, she was over drama. What she wanted
was closure.
Discuss
Story
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