Cherry Pie: Part 2

"Wild Cherry...," Kate whispered to herself while reminiscing on past memories. She took a drag of her Newport and remembered what he used to taste like. It had been about 11 years since the last time she saw him and she could remember how his blood matched the paint on his Mustang the night of the accident.

The front door opened and Kate shook her head as if to wake herself up. With a large but rather fake smile she stood up, cigarette in hand and walked over to Jake to give him a kiss. Again he turned away leaving her feeling ugly and unwanted.

She took a long, drawn out drag from her Newport and rolled her eyes so he could see. Feeling guilty he softly mumbled, "Sorry, it was a long day. I'm just not in the mood."

"Piss off," Kate grunted back. "I'm going to the store for more cigarettes."

Kate flicked the butt into the trash and watched the smoke settle in the air. She grabbed her forest green petticoat, Moroccan scarf and brown boots and headed out into the chilly Nebraskan wind. Jake's house stood by itself on a lonesome hill surrounded by snow during this time of year. From the bottom of the valley it looked like an old French cottage sitting upon a bed of sparkling diamonds, but Kate knew better then to think of that house as something beautiful in the world.

She stood at the bottom of the hill and reached into her wallet and pulled out a picture of a man with thick, black curly hair. She closed her eyes and tried to remember how it felt to run her fingers through his hair and how the back of his neck was always a little clammy. She looked up at the kitchen window and saw Jake's shadow walking past. If looks could kill, this one would have been to genocidal proportions.

Jake's mind was racing once more. He sat down backward on the love seat and hung his head and back off of the front of it. He let the blood rush to his head until he had a headache and closed his eyes. Once his face was nice a red he started violently doing push ups. This was an anger exercise but had nothing to do about Kate. He was remembering again. Behind his closed lids all he saw was red. He remembered not being about to tell the difference between the blood and the ground - everything colliding together and turning black in the end. And then in a flash he remembered something new he thought he had forgotten. There has been words carved into the flesh of the man he had hit - Wild Cherry.