Chapter 8 Death Rattle
death rattle
Jaime stared at Olivia’s slumbering form way too long before she managed to tear herself out of the bed and dress. Wishing she’d worn something else, she slipped on her dress without panties.
She halted, her gaze once more finding Olivia, drawn to the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest.
There’s a toothbrush in the second drawer in the bathroom.
Those words in Olivia’s soft lilt echoed in her ears, much like her own stupid question about coffee. No. She never should have allowed their ridiculous dalliance to grow legs. It was beyond time to cut them off.
Shaking her head, Jaime turned and tiptoed out of the bedroom. She grasped her purse from the side table, and after a few more quick strides, she reached the door.
Here, she hesitated again, but squared her shoulders and pushed it open.
Damp, humid night air washed over her the moment she stepped outside. The high-pitched rattle of cicadas intermingled with the hum of Olivia’s AC cycling on. With a low sigh, Jaime unlocked her car, almost fell into her seat, and drove off.
Saturday had sped by in a blur. She’d been tired all day, which hadn’t helped her focus on her paperwork.
She’d been more or less successful at keeping her mind from lingering on Olivia, but as the evening approached, and with it, Sunday drew closer, she decided to leave town the next day to visit her mother instead.
The hour-long drive should place enough distance between her and Freedom Park to avoid temptation.
The irony of seeking out her mother to escape something did not escape Jaime, and on the drive there, she resisted the urge to turn around, head back home and just go to bed.
Sleep would help her flee, too. God, she was beyond pathetic.
She never should have followed Olivia home. She never should have allowed her to touch her again. Jaime could handle fucking Olivia and staying in control. The problem always seemed to arise when Olivia touched her.
She didn’t know what it was about her, but something short-circuited in her and she lost herself—worse, in those moments, she wanted nothing else.
She chewed on her lip and flipped the radio off. Her thoughts were more at peace without music, no matter which playlist she picked. Music had always been an outlet, a way to lean into emotions without having to live them. Right now, this habit failed her, miserably.
The hour-long drive passed too quickly, and with a sigh, she turned off the engine and left her car, gravel crunching under her shoes as she walked up the driveway to her mom’s house.
The doorbell chimed, and a moment later, her mother opened the door.
“Jaime, dear. What a nice surprise.” Her mom leaned in and kissed Jaime’s cheek.
“Hey, mom.”
“Come on in. Are you hungry?”
Jaime followed her inside, gritting her teeth at the familiar scent of lemon polish and old wood washing over her. Jaime warded off memories that would draw her in like quicksand if she let them.
“I can make you something to eat. If you had told me you’d stop by, I’d have already prepared it.”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, OK.” Her mother shuffled to a stop, her expression almost lost. What to do when you can’t serve anyone?
“Maybe eggs and toast?” Jaime relented.
“Sure. Coming right up. Go sit down, dear.”
Jaime dropped in the chair at the breakfast table. “How have you been?”
“Oh, you know. Same old.” Her mother opened the fridge to put the egg carton back.
“Good, good.”
“I got a package this morning, and of course the delivery man was a foreigner who didn’t speak a word of English.”
Jaime said nothing, bracing herself for the next few lines, and sure enough…
“Did you know that every fifth person in our country is now a foreigner? Imagine that! One day, we will be the minority and then they will chase us away from our own land! They get more money than our own citizens!”
Jaime suppressed a sigh. She didn’t know when this had started, and it wasn’t like her mother had been a ray of sunshine before, but for the last ten years, her mother loved and petted grievances. Not her own, no, the injustices she perceived to be happening in and around the country and the world.
“Now, I’m all for helping people who suffer! There are enough starving children in Africa no one cares about. But all these people who come here for economic reasons and end up costing us taxpayers? That’s just not right.”
“You realize most settlers also escaped economic hardship. It’s understandable to want a better life for yourself and your family,” Jaime said, though she knew it would be in vain, just like pointing out the irony of ‘foreigners’ chasing people from their own land.
Her mother waved her off. “That’s different.
Life was different then.” Her mother plated the eggs and toast and placed them in front of Jaime.
She settled into the chair across from Jaime and started talking about her neighbors—about Tammy, who couldn’t control her children, and John, whose dogs barked endlessly at all hours.
Jaime’s gaze drifted to the windowsill and the painted clown standing with a forever smile on his frozen face, collecting dust.
Her mother hadn’t always been like this.
Growing up, she’d had hobbies, like embroidery and ceramics—the blue and green clown, one of her creations.
Her mother used to have fun, and she had friends.
Or at least Jaime thought so, for this was her youth and perhaps she recalled what she wanted to.
People so often saw the past with rose-tinted glasses.
Now though, that person—imagined or real—was gone, and only this ranting and raving energy vampire remained.
Jaime didn’t really listen, or maybe she did, but it meant nothing because it was always the same.
Worse, now her mind sought refuge in contemplating Olivia, and Jaime couldn’t decide which was worse.
At first, when her mother’s grievances came to life, Jaime had compiled evidence to the contrary, trying to show her mother that her sources were flawed. She’d been prepared to discuss how to make sure you get your information from reliable sources, but none of it mattered.
Her mother refused to listen, or acted like Jaime’s sources were the biased ones.
She’d sit on the couch with furrowed brows, her glasses resting on the tip of her nose, her cell phone hanging loosely in her hand. She didn’t trust public television or traditional news outlets—they were all lying.
Jaime wasn’t sure where she got her news, but she knew she’d never vetted a single one, only stalking information that confirmed what she already believed. Everything else was a lie.
After her failed attempts to combat her mother’s information, she’d told her she didn’t want to discuss politics, that she didn’t want to hear about her frustrations with the refugee crisis.
Yet, it never lasted. Her mother would find her way back there, and Jaime only offered scathing remarks in her head.
Meanwhile, her mother continued to sit on the couch, devouring tales of misery and malfunction, inhaling conspiracy theories while delighting in mocking the ones she considered responsible.
Sometimes, she’d shout into the room, yelling in indignation, bemoaning the wrongs and ills the government was forcing upon its people. Her face would turn crimson, while her self-righteous outrage climbed forever high.
Jaime stayed silent, at least most of the time, though sometimes she offered resistance, more a token protest than anything else.
After a decade of talking to a wall, there seemed to be nothing left.
She didn’t have the energy anymore to push this stone up the hill, only to watch it roll right back down.
Jaime knew her mother had lived a hard life and had suffered a lot.
She’d been abandoned more times than she could count, yet she persevered and, with support from her own mother, she’d made a life and given Jaime everything she could.
She loved Jaime so damn much, and although Jaime loved her mother, loving her was a chore.
Jaime had seen endless memes saying you should never let anyone tell you that you were hard to love. She wished these memes were a universal truth because the mere notion that loving someone could be difficult offended her soul. The idea should be nothing more than a vicious, mean-spirited lie.
But it wasn’t.
So Jaime sat here, nodding, eating her eggs and toast, which scraped her throat on the way down, much like her mother’s words were anchors tied around her. And with the weight of her current conundrum with Olivia added to the mix, Jaime worried she might drown.
Why had this visit been her solution? She must be going mad.
By the time she returned home, Jaime’s patience and mental energy were both running on fumes, and so she rushed to the bathroom to take a long shower.
On her drive back home, she had once more been unable to listen to music as her idle mind currently shaped up to be a toxic wasteland.
If left unattended, it spun and conjured one horror scenario after the other.
If not that, it bathed in regrets, failures, and disappointments, both perceived and actual.
Instead of an inspiration, a journey, an adventure, music had turned into the score to a dystopian hellscape.
Jaime hated how her mind told her the exact opposite of what her body urged her to do. She’d even had a moment where she wondered if allowing a sort of carnal connection with Olivia would really be such a bad thing.
Yes. It would, and not just for professional reasons. Jaime didn’t trust herself around Olivia, and this made Olivia the most dangerous person Jaime might ever have encountered.
The next week passed both in a blur and with an agonizing slowness. Her new cases were mundane enough, with some lawyers bordering on annoying, and mostly it followed a regular, familiar routine.
This, in turn, allowed her mind to drift to places she shouldn’t revisit, likely explaining what happened on Wednesday, when she had stopped talking mid-sentence in the hallway outside of her chamber because she’d seen a flash of dark hair and a shapely figure passing in her peripheral.
In her frustration, Jaime gritted her jaw so hard she worried she might need a dentist—and managed to scare Sara, her new judicial clerk, in the process.
Yet she didn’t see Olivia anywhere. Not just that, but she’d not seen anyone from her terrible law firm either. For an almost feverish second, Jaime wondered if she’d imagined everything, but no. That would be too easy, though also incredibly terrifying.
On Thursday, not even her regular visit to neverending pages, her favorite bookstore where she had spent many hours reviewing legal filings or keeping up with her correspondence with a cup of black coffee at her side, did any good.
Instead, she stared at her mug and the sugar container positioned in the center of the table.
One spoon of sugar.
Good Lord, Jaime was losing her mind. She sometimes wished they had exchanged phone numbers, though she had no idea what she’d even write. Besides, she was supposed to get her out of her system, not allowing her inside even further.
Of course, this thought chased her mind to the gutter, and she’d shifted restlessly in her seat, pulling at her shirt-collar at the sudden heat suffusing her body.
Perhaps she needed to sleep with someone else. Maybe that would get Olivia out of her head.
As soon as the thought sprouted, she yanked it out. She had no desire to connect with anyone, and the mere thought of going out and trying to meet up with another woman for sex exhausted her to the bone.
There was just nothing to it. She had to find a way to stop thinking of Olivia because nothing else was acceptable, and any stupid, no-good idea needed to die wherever temptation went to die.
Did temptation ever die or just act like it vacated the premises, only to jump you the moment you showed any weakness?
Jaime narrowed her eyes. No. She’d ward off such a death rattle. She was stronger than that and had weathered other storms and adversity. She’d not let Olivia Gray tear her from the life she’d built.