19. Black Ice #2
“Tomorrow, Arch. I gotta’ go bed and get my bra and panties back. I’m sorry I messed up Christmas. There’s not going to be a winter wonderland, and trust me, best friend, when I say, baby it’s cold outside.” My cheek meets the couch, and I fall asleep to the rhythm of Archer’s drunk snoring.
Pounding at the door alters my state. I turn my head to put my opposite cheek in a pool of drool while the pounding continues. I can’t even sit up straight before Helen barges in with her keys.
“Oh my God, Erika! Are you okay?” Helen races toward me. She’s in jeans and a T-shirt but her pixie haircut and makeup are as flawless as when she’s dressed in a suit skirt. “Get up. This is all my fault, I never should have forced you two together in the first place.”
I feel tugging at my arm pulling me up right.
“Oh my God. Tell me you only had one bottle, and there wasn’t a Percocet involved.
If there was, I’d like one please. You know, I generally love to rock the boat, but this time I truly thought I was helping.
I couldn’t have known this would end with you both wasted after only one night together and apparently, he left you in a cave? ”
“What? Oh. No. He got a call for that fire—”
“The electrical spark at the machine shop on Sixth Street. Yes, I know. It was out before he got there. Just a spark. No biggie. But I then find him as plastered as you are in his pajamas with a half-eaten Dairy burger on his coffee table, and another warm in the bag.”
“No one can eat that many burgers.” My head drops back and hits the hard frame of the couch.
“Erika. Focus. Did he leave you at the cave? He kept mumbling on and on in slurred speech that he just left you standing there and couldn’t forget it.” Helen’s face is full of alarm.
I sit up and look around. My head is pounding. “What time is it?”
“A little after midnight. Why, how long did he leave you there?”
“Helen. He didn’t leave me anywhere. He left me with Walter so he could go to the fire, and Walter drove me home. What’s the matter with you?” I finally make real eye contact. For the first time since she arrived, she’s only got one head, not two.
“So what’s this about you getting stuck in a cave? I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me, and don’t you dare defend him. One night with him does not justify his behavior.”
“What?” Now Helen sounds drunk.
“I’m just saying, I know he’s charming and all, but just because you two slept together doesn’t mean you have to—”
“Slept together?” Archer’s voice chimes in from my laptop as we say it in unison.
“Go back to sleep, Arch” I hiss as I close my laptop. He’s like having a gremlin in your purse, and someone’s always giving it too much water.
“Who’s Archer?” Helen inspects my closed laptop.
“Later.” I sit up straight and give Helen my undivided attention. “What, in all of Blitzen, and by the power of an old-fashioned Christmases invested in me, are you possibly referring to?”
My eyes are so big I can feel them about to pop out of my head, and I have never sobered so quickly in my life.
“You don’t need to cover for him, Erika. I know him. He’s my best friend. That, and I saw your bra and panties.”
I look down at my tee shirt as if I forgot it and I’m sitting here in my underwear, and then it hits me. I take a breath to calm my racing heart.
“Erika. I saw the bag on his entry table. It had a light blue bra and underwear set, and when I asked what it was, Kourt slurred out that it was yours.”
“First of all, your best friend has been a perfect gentlemen as much as he’s been a perfect ass.
Apart from me forcing us into a freezing lake and having to get naked under a blanket next to him.
He left his jeans on and nearly froze. I got the blanket and left my underwear in his truck.
But your best friend did not try anything. Not on me anyway.”
God. Do the hits just keep coming?
Somehow, it’s more humiliating that he didn’t try anything.
“Ugh. Helen. Why didn’t you tell me she died?”
Helen rises off the couch. “She’s not dead, and she told me not to tell—”
“Ah ha! I caught you.” I jump from the couch with my finger pointing after her. “I wasn’t talking about Great Aunt Josie, although now I suppose I know where the Range Rover went. I’m talking about your best friend’s wife .”
Helen ignores my tirade and sinks back down onto the couch, defeated.
“I’m sorry, Erika. There was just a lot with your great aunt, and you came fresh off bad luck at work, and then you took to Blitzen and Christmas here so quickly, it never felt like the right time.
I had no way of knowing Kourt would become so significant. ” Helen’s eyes plead with mine.
“He’s not. There’s zero significance, there’s just me running about Blitzen making a complete holiday horror show of a total ass of myself because I didn’t know!” I scream and drop my head into my hands.
“It all makes sense now. Why you came here. I wondered what a high-powered attorney such as yourself was doing hiding out in small town USA. I thought it was just one of those quirky Aunt Josie things that you two were also best friends, but putting two and two together… you grew up here. You came back for him when she died.”
Pain strikes on Helen’s face.
“Let me guess. You were the maid of honor at their wedding.”
“Best man,” Helen corrects.
I throw myself into a mistletoe embroidered couch pillow and wish for a moment I could suffocate.
“Look. All is right as rain. He didn’t leave you in a cave. You didn’t sleep together, and you just found out, without any other details, as I refuse to let the entire cat out of the bag, that dear Aunt Josie is, in fact, alive.”
“Yeah, but Kourt’s wife isn’t.”
“Angie.” Helen makes it even more real. “Erika, things happen. Tragedy strikes a lot of people. Don’t treat this like one because you just found out about it.
This isn’t happening to you. It already happened.
A while ago now. Kourt and Blitzen have moved on, and we’ve got an old-fashioned Christmas to plan.
” Helen’s harsh words are true. I recognize it more clearly as her voice returns to its natural chirp.
Maybe I’m overreacting. I took Kourt’s distance from me right after the cave and packed this onto it. His abrupt exit tonight had nothing to do with his deceased wife and everything to do with me.
He’s not after me in any way other than helping with the festival, and I made things weird and inappropriate in the cave.
That’s got to be it. My stomach flips remembering how warm it felt when he held me.
How his strong arms found me in the dark, wrapping so tightly around me in a way they never had before.
He embraced all of me as if he was lucky to get to. His scent behind me . The relief that washed over me once he found me…
That’s it. That’s what it was. Relief. That’s all. It was the cave and the dark, and now everything is back to normal.
“Hey. Glad you’re okay. I’ve got to go. Got an early morning.” Helen grabs her keys.
“Helen?” I call after her. “When you were so convinced we’d slept together—I know you don’t know me like you know Kourt, but what made that so believable? What made you even consider it?”
“Easy. You just said it yourself. I know Kourt.”
As the door shuts behind Helen, the stark realization hits me that I must not know him at all. That, or I don’t know myself very well. He’s definitely not made what is obvious about himself to Helen and the rest of town available to me.