Won't You Turn It Around

Smooth as silk and twice as slippery. Once upon a time she’d liked – loved – that about her husband. All easy charm, no rough edges to leave her raw after days spent trying to legally knock the sense into assholes who did that for fun. She hadn’t seen how slippery that had left him until she’d found him in their bed, slithering out of every vow that they’d made. The ring had come off easy then, those wounds raw and bleeding as she’d thrown it back at him. Kara remembered how her eyes had dropped to his hand as he’d stood in front of her, like he could now slither back out from under his rock, the snake back her life to try and spread that poison back through her. Her ring had been long gone but the shackle created by it that had been locked in place by the heart ache hadn’t disappeared as entirely as she’d hoped.

Tear it off. If it was still on her finger, burning down to the bone with that cold rage and burning grief, she’d have done just that, throwing it in Virgil’s face again. She couldn’t do it, not when she hadn’t gotten her shields entirely in place again.

Kara’s skin felt thin enough that the wound he’d left would tear wide open again at just the sight of him. Thin enough that the eyes on her burned straight through to her bones. A drink would thicken it up, slapping those shields back in place and holding them there until she woke up in that pit of a motel room. Sheets tangled around her limbs, the shag carpet feeling like it had crawled into her mouth while she’d been passed out, tasting twice as bad. The sour odour of whatever ended up slipping down her throat emerging from her pores until she scrubbed herself in the shower and emerged scalded red and raw again.

She could already imagine it as she sat at the bar. Too thin, each happy sound around her popping tiny holes in her tissue paper skin. Kara couldn’t muster up a smile for the bartender, just ordering her drink with manners only remembered at the end. She might as well not have bothered with the coke but there was something less sad with the soda hiding what she really wanted.

When it came she could have necked it in an instant. Throwing the glass down in one, eyes burning from the fumes rising up from the vodka, searing its way down her throat, burning that ache out of her chest. She forced herself to go slow though, reaching for the glass but not even getting it to her mouth before she noticed the guy next to her. His eyes were on the bottles behind the bar, that decision hanging in the air. In his place, thirst for oblivion building in her throat she’d gone for the quick and dirty.

Still she shared instead of clutching onto the drinks like a lifeline. Misery was meant to love company but maybe it was just a sandblasting of those shields she needed. Rough to scrape at those edges, to force them to bleed again and scar over or the unfamiliar providing a balm. Someone who didn’t know where all that fragility lay to blow it wide open again.

Kara shrugged, gesturing in the direction the bartender had gone with her own glass. ”You’re welcome. Figured she wasn’t gonna be back any time soon.” Her eyes looked past the man to where the blonde had disappeared all the same. Finally she raised her own glass as he did, shared sips burning their way down. Kara swallowed hard, would’ve taken a bigger gulp but that sandpaper rough voice slipped out on a quiet sigh.

One blonde brow rose, those scales tipping back and forth inside of her. Trust or not. Did she listen to her instincts and keep him at an arm’s length or do what she needed, who cared about the consequences. She’d cared with Virgil and look where it had gotten her, right back to square one in this tiny town, trapped until Frank showed up to take over. Reminded of the press of people around them, the eyes she could feel boring into her spine, Kara started to slip down off the stool. ”You took the words right out of my mouth,” she admitted. Jostling past the new flood of people pressing in, Kara left him space to follow as she slipped through.

There was a waiter on the other side, tall, bearded, probably the sort that had the bar filled with women on his night. She caught his arm as he went to weave around the women. ”Can we get the bottle? Some ice? We’ll be sitting at one of the booths. Thanks.” A wave of the glass under his nose, offering up a whiff of what was hidden in the dark depths of the soda. ”I hope that was OK with you. I didn’t ask.” An admission on her lips as she made her way to the booth, slipping in on one side. She propped her elbows on the edge of the table, dragged her hands over her face, back into the blonde waves as she studied him. ”You looked like you having a little trouble back there.” Kara tilted her head sideways, indicating the bar. This far away from it, with the walls of the booth shielding them those shackles for a little looser.

Tagged: MIKEY BUCKLEY * Word Count: 916

She hadn’t even had the balls to go back to the bars that had once been theirs after she’d walked out on him and their marriage. Years of warnings about needing to watch her back around Virgil and there hadn’t been a single sign of it. No wandering eye when they’d been together, no hint until … After all she’d been able to picture was being back there, having to watch as he moved on with impunity. Free of the ring now, free to sidle up to anybody, those blue eyes on hers while he … No. Those blue eyes had been on her today and there hadn’t been a single glance away. In the end she’d been the one to do that. Some part of her wanted him tortured with the same mental image now.

She hadn’t come looking strictly for it though. She could’ve done that at the club, steeping herself in the booze that would numb it all for a while before she’d pulled someone off of the dance floor. Kara knew she could’ve found it at Campbell’s too, although there’d have been less of the numb before she left. Not wanting to lower herself to Virgil’s level she hadn’t even done that. You’re better than him. Maybe Roberto had been right about it, or maybe she was just a coward.

If she was yellow bellied at least that would erased by the drink as well, and maybe enough company to get her mind off of it and him. Talk hadn’t been on the cards, but as she’d clutched the glass the guy next to her had caught her eye, just as focused on the bottles perhaps, although indecisive enough that she’d cracked a throat tight enough that it had only yielded words reluctantly tonight to make an offer. He might’ve looked rough around the edges but he’d accepted it and she’d … pushed to her feet to follow him away from the clamouring press of the bar to the bubble of one of the booths.

Kara propped her elbows on the edge of the table, fingers still caught in her hair as she watched him. A smile, a little crack in what she imagined could’ve been a foreboding exterior. There were granite edges to it, dark eyes that could probably go as hard as Virgil’s could in an instant. They weren’t that way now though. ”Youngsters?” she asked, her lips quirking. ”You make it sound like you’re about ninety-three. You’re not are you?” She’d never come across a real life Benjamin Button but if there was one thing the job had taught her, it was to not scoff at anything that sounded ludicrous. It was when you did that the universe decided to slap you down and she’d had more than enough of that.

She looked up at the waiter as he reappeared, her hand already going to her hip for the wallet she’d shoved away. He was getting there before her though, pulling out his own to retrieve his card. ”You didn’t have to. I ordered it,” she countered. Kara’s blue eyes fixed on him for a minute. A tab, not just a single bottle. ”Thank you,” she eventually managed on a sigh. ”I was gonna say I’ll at least get the next but you were right in there.” And not in the flash way Virgil once had been when impressing her seemed like the only important thing to him. God, she’d been so blind.

Head dipping for a moment, Kara tried to force the thought out of her head. Each flash of him that flickered in her mind just stoked her temper and it would take more alcohol than she could possibly drink to shove a jackal mouthed jack back into that box. She gripped the top of her glass, stared down into it for a moment before she looked up at him from under her lashes. ”This,” she admitted, her shoulders shrugging before they loosened slightly. ”I had something in my head I needed to burn out and I’d say this as good a way as any. Cheaper than therapy and just as likely to work, right?” The smell hit her, astringent enough to start burning through her system like an anaesthetic. ”What about you? Just here to dodge the teenagers?” It wasn’t the usual reason people came to a place like this, although there did seem to be enough of them in the place to choke anybody within six feet of them with hormones and that moodiness that seemed to hit with puberty, and in some cases, never went away again.

Tagged: MIKEY BUCKLEY * Word Count: 769

What did it say about her that this guy out of all the people in the bar was the one she’d fallen in with?

The cop in her should’ve sat up and taken notice, picking up on the little red flags that she once would’ve leapt straight on. Psychologists would’ve scoffed at the idea, called it pseudoscience but there was a type. Detective Cameron would have done. The woman who hadn’t seen them bristling like porcupine quills from her own husband was blind – willingly perhaps. Kara twisting her fingers into hair shorter than it had been during her marriage, letting the waves snarl around her fingers as she studied him. Worn around the edges – not a bit like Virgil – maybe that was the appeal after all.

Her lips curled, a low hum going up as she tilted her head for a moment. Not as old as he looked on the outside despite the joke knocked back and forth between them with those mirrored smiles. ”You’re looking good for it,” she assured him. Eyes dropped to the bulk of muscle beneath his clothes. More bulk than Virgil’s lank. No more comparisons, she didn’t want him in her head, despite his presence in town, looming in her life like the spirit of Christmas past, back to convince her to change her ways again. Like he had.

Saved him. Kara wanted to snort at that. She didn’t like she could feel anybody most days. She nodded at him though, still grateful. He was taking the burden of the mood Virgil had put her in. A freaking saint. This didn’t mean she was gonna burden him with her sad story, being one of those women, bitching about her ex-husband like the way she had the last time she’d met someone here. Then it had been her offering a drink in apology for an outburst, not that she should have bothered.

Tonight’s company chuckled at least. Kara eased back in the bench seat, toying with her glass with her fingertips for a moment before she took a belt. Her eyes watered faintly from its rush of heat but settled back at him. ”A couple of drinks have gotta beat out just about everything except Jersey Shore,” she quipped dryly. ”If the motel got more than five channels I might just have gone with something from the mini-bar and that trash. What’s your poison? Reality TV? Bad movies? Sports?” Wouldn’t have been the first time but before Virgil hadn’t been sneaking around town. He could call a motel reception just as well as any cop, ready to toss out a story that would have the manager yapping about exactly which room she was in.

Kara swallowed another belt of the liquor. Maybe it was time to pack up. Call Frank in, let him deal with the mess while she got herself reassigned somewhere her ex-husband wasn’t. Her gaze settled on the guy in front of her as he offered up his name. The niceties she’d skipped right past. Well shit. She offered her other hand, her lips curving, albeit faintly wryly. ”Kara,” she offered up. ”Are you Italian, Mikey? Just asking. My pop he’s … about four generations outta there now. Moretti. I got off lightly on the names, Roberto – my brother – not so much.” Not that he’d let it bother him. Roberto had been happy enough to play on it as a teenager, crooning at the ladies like he was a full Italian stallion, not some kid whose DNA had been firmly watered down by the Scandinavians who were thick on the ground in freeze your ass off Minnesota. She’d gotten her looks straight from her mother, clichéd blonde hair, high cheek bones and those Nordic blue eyes – just like Virgil’s. Shit.

Tagged: MIKEY BUCKLEY * Word Count: 627

It had been what she’d needed at first. An empty bed, no arguments over how insane going out into the park was, even after the thing that had been dropping bodies had been handled, no nausea ripping up through her as she walked in and saw those long legs tangled around somebody else. Surrounded by those four unfamiliar walls she could scream her heart out and nobody would give a damn why. It was the sort of thing that happened in motels, the sort of thing people turned a blind eye to and Kara was fine with that. Having somebody there through it all hadn’t worked out and she needed to learn from that mistake. Don’t trust in the overconfident, don’t fall for those eyes that could be warm as a summer sky, don’t believe the lies a silvered tongue could tell.

Months had passed before that emptiness had started to sink in, hollowing her out too as the anger faded to leave the hurt behind. Conversations with Frank and her family were few and far between, just enough to sustain her until she could get home for a time and for a few weeks fill back up, pretending there was nothing wrong. Kara Moretti shrugging off that marriage as though it hadn’t left its scars carved deep. Ignore it happened, ignore the fact that her husband was probably out there celebrating his new found freedom with every woman he could coax into his bed.

So what if she’d done the same from time to time? Virgil had no say in her life anymore and healthy coping mechanisms hadn’t lasted past a single guilt trip from her parents. She’d slipped into clubs, into bars, in towns where nobody knew her as anything more than ‘that agent poking around’. Kara wasn’t sure she could count the number she’d tried to erase that skin deep numbness with, faces blurring, their touch on her skin fading before she’d reached the town limits. None of the stops had been long enough for real connection and she’d been glad of it. Til now.

Mystic Falls had started to abrade her skin, leaving it thin again, long before Virgil had even shown back up here. Talking to some guy who gave off those vibes that should’ve had the alarm bells ringing in the back of her head like she needed that top-up early. Just some normal conversation had whatever she’d been missing spilling into that ravaged pit of her belly like the liquor. The laughter he wrung out of her turning the flow on fuller. ”The worst of them,” Kara said with a nod. ”Enough fake tan to pass for wood stain, a weekly game of musical beds.” She didn’t need to see people imploding their lives on TV, she saw enough of that on a daily basis. ”A man with a taste for the fictional. Wise choice.” Except for the horror. She’d lost her taste for it the moment her life had turned into one of those horror movies. If there was anything that could drive her to drink before her shit show of a marriage and that dead body that definitely hadn’t been a fucking wolf in that cave.

Blue eyes narrowing to sweep over his dark hair, the dark eyes and the olive skin, Kara gave a considering hum. She’d have called it on the Italian, Mediterranean at least. Her dad had hair like that and Roberto had taken right after him. It was like their gene pool had cut right down the middle of the family, with her taking straight after her mom’s Scandinavian side of the family, Roberto their dad’s Italian side, Mia right in the middle – dark hair, eyes as blue as hers. ”I’d have laid money on it,” Kara admitted, letting her gaze drop back to her glass before it felt like she’d been staring. ”Yah, visiting, for work. You couldn’t tell from the accent?” She winged a blonde brow as she let the Minnesota drag into her voice. Kara huffed a breath out through her nose, lifting her glass to drain it. ”It’s been a couple of months though and the job’s still dragging on. I guess maybe it’s time to start considering something more than the motel, huh? You local, Mikey?” She probably would’ve put money on no, but it’d been a long time before she could trust her gut.

A group of college students spilled in through the door, voices cracking the air to make it obvious they’d already started their party elsewhere. There was a crackle of static in her head in response, unease rushing in to squeeze at her chest. Kara’s fingers tightened on the glass, not tonight. She didn’t want to be anywhere near that tonight. Feeling the shiver start to roll through her, she tried to smile. ”You wanna get out of here, finish this somewhere else?” she asked, managing to keep the desperation out of her voice. This was meant to be filling that scooped out void inside of her, not losing more of herself to that thing that had tormented her since she was a teenager.

Tagged: MIKEY BUCKLEY * Word Count: 865