Con (Part II)

She stared at me. "That's...that's not what happened." Her voice was barely a whisper and her fingers fluttered, helpless,by her sides. "It's not what I meant."

My face was cold, but heat thrummed though me, forcing me forward. "Not what you meant?" I asked, incredulity warring with anger. "Beth, you had to call a fucking ambulance."

Somehow, impossibly, her eyes seemed even paler as did her skin and she shook her head. "It was...it was an accident, I swear to God."

The haze I'd felt earlier kicked back, a vicious buzz that now impelled me, my hands, my fingers curled around the cream and white lapels of the fashionable short trench coat she wore.

"Was it an accident that you fuckin' tripped me out, fucked me up, left me needing stitches? A fucking accident that happened almost three months after we broke up, I'd moved out?" The words came out an angry hiss, my eyes barely two inches from hers.

She blinked, flinched, under my hands, under the tone, and her face worked, tears in the corners of her eyes as I watched her struggle for control, something I knew because I'd known her so very fucking well. And then...the damn broke.

"You were mine, you were fucking mine, you didn't belong to her, with her," she said, her voice a harsh rasp. She covered my hands with hers, skin smooth as always, cool from the wind.

It was my turn to flinch, and I let go of her lapels, slipped my hands out from under hers. I stepped back again, I had to get away. Memories, no longer dull, sharpened by her voice, by her presence, flooded through me, as icy as the wind that had picked up off the river, of how much I'd been hers, of how it hadn't been enough.

At eighteen Beth fed me vitamins and pasta, cuddled me to her skin because she said I made her feel safe and loved, but except for the sensual, beautiful kisses, velvet soft touches of her body and mine, wouldn't touch me, because she said she was afraid she'd hurt me.

At nineteen, someone else--a beloved friend--had done what Beth had said she'd been afraid to, because she'd asked me to, because she wanted me to. It also infuriated her and since I lived one floor above her, two days later she came into my room with several bottles of wine, twined my body with hers and there we stayed for days following.

We matched, she said, we matched, and it was true, our hands were almost identical. I met her parents, her brother, her sister. When we made love that night, she wore my ring after. She came home with one for me the next afternoon.