Noble Sun Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Alicia has always thought that completing what one has set herself (or himself) to do brings peace of mind. She is now absorbed in finding out why her mind is full, not with the recent case they are handling (she placed second chair to Will in defending a woman running a website for cheating spouses), but with what has transpired between her and her best friend. Her EX best friend, Kalinda.
Inside the cab (and thank goodness she took a cab, if not, she wouldn’t have noticed a cyclist zooming past them, the handle bar of the bike barely an inch away from the window), she allowed her mind to drift to what it decided to be most pressing.
She read somewhere - or was that from a meditation workshop she had attended after she gave birth to Grace - anyway, she read somewhere that the best way to handle an obsessive thought is to allow it to be in the space it is in.
Immediately, her mind drifts to Friday night’s almost way-past afternoon delight.
“Oh God,” she didn’t mean to let those words come out of her mouth, but her body, agreeing with the reflexive utterance of an almost-blasphemous slang, jerks, hands flying to cover her eyes.
The cab driver looks at her curiously for a few seconds, shakes his head then ignores her.
Lately, she has been losing control of her bodily functions. It seems that it is inclined on doing the opposite of what she has resolved to initially do.
It started last Friday - and like a Pavlovian twitch, her face scrunches up at the thought of that supposedly harmless and meaningless day of the week. That day, her scheme was laid out. A blueprint that mapped out her course of action was completed the night before.
Alicia was going to ask her out for their usual drinks. The woman would be clueless at first, but she will flirt mercilessly to pave the way for her sweet, sweet revenge.
Everything went according to plan. She surprised herself for being able to flirt without stuttering, all thanks to her pre-loaded tequila shots. Kalinda also surprised her. She was counting on someone who’d be a good sport and play with her. Instead, the girl just drank herself almost to death, speaking only to talk about the case. Maybe it was guilt for putting Kalinda in an awkward situation, but she allowed herself to get sidetracked by their conversations about work.
The kiss outside the bar was foreplay - the prelude to the culmination of her revenge. Blood wasn’t supposed to rush to her head like that. Her heart was to remain at a steady and predictable pace - instead, it started hammering as soon as their lips met. The paragon of control that was Alicia shattered beneath the touch and gentle coaxing of Kalinda.
Maybe it was a cosmic, karmic working - she was losing her battle with her rational self. She chose to abandon her plan.
She was supposed to be on top of it, to be above the inevitable carnal call of intimacy - but because her body took over and her mind temporarily crashed, she had to fall back.
She also knew that she must take the necessary steps to ensure that she didn’t lose it ever again. To avoid the risk, she pulled the plug on her plan, and consequently, their friendship.
Like an insidious disease, memories of Kalinda and her masterful kissing creep into her senses. Her eyes become clouded with something she denies with all her might.
At that instant, the cab pulls over at her apartment complex, fortuitously bringing her back to present.
-o-
The feeling is disturbing: two bodies behaving differently from one another.
Somewhere, a superficially calm and collected Alicia is talking to Kalinda, telling her “no,” and a post script that can be summarized as an open agreement to maintain a strictly professional relationship.
In a parallel universe, Alicia is tossing and turning, sweat breaking in uneven bursts.
The calm quakes and shatters as Alicia violently hiccups the accusation: “You slept with my husband.” Kalinda, unfazed, shrugs and turns away.
The bodies still disagree - the sleeping making up for the dreaming’s absence of sweat.
“Come back! Come back here, this instant, I’m not done with you,” her whispers turn into hysterical cries. Kalinda turns around and grins at her, teeth giving off a sinister glint. She regards the panting, visibly upset woman with one eyebrow cocked, turns around and throws back her head in raucous laughter.
Alicia screams at the top of her lungs, fury piercing ears and studding them with stainless bolts. Kalinda hears nothing of this, despite the agonizing sound waves enveloping the entire Lockhart-Gardner floor. Alicia chases after Kalinda, rage refusing to be ignored. She runs continuously, laboriously, at times almost catching the woman cackling in sickening glee.
A pop, and Alicia is falling, falling hard.
The two bodies break out in unified sweats, soaking the sheets in consequence.
Alicia’s eyes open. She sees the ceiling blanketed with sleep. She gets up and staggers towards the bathroom, sobs accompanying her.
It meant nothing to her. The ki-our friendship, she corrects herself.
She looks at herself in the mirror and reminds herself that it was all a bad dream. She comforts (and secretly blames) herself for the death of their friendship.
When it is all over, she washes her face. She opens her medicine cabinet and pops a Valium into her mouth, drowning it with one determined gulp. She goes back to bed with fresh tears trickling down her face.
A few minutes later, she collapses into a dreamless sleep.
-o-
The next few weeks were something to be thankful for. It wasn’t because the nightmares stopped, there was just very little time for it. Last week, the case she second-chaired resulted in a win, albeit it didn’t turn out the way they had hoped.
This time last week, Alicia was preparing to cross-examine the plaintiff, a woman who claimed to believe in her husband unequivocally. Her questioning successfully brought doubt in the minds of the jurors, though she knew it wasn’t even half the battle.
That same day, she took on the task of preparing her client to be placed on the stand. It was poor judgment on her part, as it began the rousing of her (nightmarish) desires. She would kick herself for allowing the client’s speech to affect her - but the images evoked in her mind were clear as day. She would continue to stifle the bubbling images until she found a plausible distraction.
“I don’t get it,” Alicia began exasperatedly.
The conversation was meant to understand the polygamous nature of men. She wasn’t even close to reaching an internal compromise to begin listening to the idea, when the client switches something on.
“Aren’t there men you look at?”
I used to… but now, there’s just a wo ---
“And you just watch them? In a Starbucks line, opening a door, tying their shoes… and you just wanna grab their hand then slide it up to the small of your back…”
It was a command, she knew. Almost like a spell, it activated images she had been struggling to strangle. Without reason or control, images of Kalinda (once again) flash by. Sensual images of her hand lightly holding a shot glass… the same hand wiping the corners of her mouth after a rapid and almost careless swig… the hand touching her own while laughing at a shared joke - it was all it took for the memory of the kiss to emerge. The kiss, the rush of breath (of whose, it was indeterminable), the mixture of air, heat and moisture that no one and yet both of them radiated; goose bumps started crawling in sensual awakening.
The oxygen in the room was Kalinda’s fingers and mouth and tongue assailing her to extreme helplessness.
“Or feel the touch of someone else’s lips on your skin? The taste of someone else’s tongue…? The pleasure of someone else’s orgasm…? Don’t you want that?”
Alicia looked down, fear and excitement creeping - the client might see the lust in her eyes as fabricated memories of that night came in. And it was all of Kalinda - her naked body pressing onto Alicia as both of them ride each other out, rocking to the beat of their breaths, sweat making each other wetter, and more in need of each other, moans harmoniously coming together like an unknown songbird of the night.
It was at that moment that she forced herself to pull herself together and find a distraction - quickly. She should have planned carefully, this unforeseeable complication needed to be harnessed and soon.
As she arrived home, she pulled out the magazine she kept for the sole purpose of teasing him. She purposely turned the page to most eligible bachelor number 16 - in front of her was an 8.5” x 11” representation of a viable distraction.
-o-
The next day, she allowed herself the possibility of starting something with Will. From across the room, she studied him with the intensity reserved for willing to be caught, for a romantic moment, for an eye contact that would hopefully cause a spark in a place currently occupied by one Kalinda Sharma.
He was oblivious to her: stapled sheets of testimonies that would rival the Iliad and the Odyssey combined preoccupied him.
But she was persistent, bargaining for something, anything that would change the course of her wayward leanings.
Her eyes refocused anew, pupils dilated to clearly communicate a command to be noticed. For a few seconds, her mind drifted to her own moment of abandon with the woman who expertly turned her buttons and switches on. She distilled the stirrings in her belly so that only the feeling remained; her eyes flashed, feral ferocity fanning her lashes, giving them the extra curl and weight for flirtation.
It didn’t fail her.
He looked up, eyes choosing to convey a neutral, innocent stance. His lips followed, a whisper of the letters associated to being alright escaped from his mouth.
A smile.
A nod.
A look.
And nostalgia cracked the egg of day.
-o-
A single fissure brought about by the diversion known as Will Gardner wasn’t enough to make Alicia at ease in the presence of Kalinda. The few feet that separated them still pulsed with desire left unfulfilled.
Kalinda remained cool, and she, defensive - after all, anger was the easiest emotion to access given the innumerable incidents of the past year, and the icing-on-the-cake incident that involved her husband and her ex-best friend. This line of feeling also made avoiding Kalinda’s eye justifiable and integral to the act.
This didn’t mean that she was unaware of Kalinda’s eye bags growing and drooping by the day. At a few unannounced minutes of each day, her heart softens at the thought of the investigator losing sleep over her. But because she had to keep her distance, she made a mountain of righteousness out of what really was a molehill of hurt for being betrayed. The thoughts of her turning soft stop as fear of the unfamiliar feelings she has for Kalinda travels through her whole body, settling in two of the places that perturbed her most: her chest (directly where her heart lay) and her groin.
Thankfully, she could always count on Jackie to provide her plate full. A conversation with her, and afterwards, with Will quieted her thoughts. He was always thoughtful. Maybe they could hang out more often - to effectively fill the space Kalinda left.
“I am here,” he assures Alicia.
The door opening announces the interruption.
“Oh, Kalinda, good. I want you to prep Alicia for the questioning of Dana tomorrow. Thanks.” And with that, Will leaves her to her own ghost(s).
So much for being here.
She switches what has become her auto pilot anger on.
-o-
The awkwardness in the room is so palpable that the usually warm glow of the incandescent pin lights in the boardroom is replaced by an overcast of thoughts unprocessed.
More affected is Kalinda, or at least it seems that way to Alicia. She knows that she has blown the anger out of proportion. She now admits that she is hurt that Kalinda kept the secret that long. But a part of her understands the fear of unleashing the fierceness of truth. She is hurt, but she is also infatuated - her truth she fears to unleash.
From the look of defeat issued by Kalinda, she knows that her secret can die with her. But it was the same look that is piercing her heart, making her slip, so many times, into rushing to Kalinda’s side for an embrace that will lock the past in an empty chest to be kept alongside treasures that have been discovered before. Tears tickle the corners of her eyes as she stubbornly wielded the longing for Kalinda so as to transform it into a weapon that will further her self-preservation.
Everything from that point on is a contribution to the inflatable balloon of hurt she works on to keep afloat.
That and her ceaseless scribbling work to her advantage.
Kalinda notices her lack of attention and asks her, “You want me to get somebody else to brief you?” The investigator tries to maintain an impassive demeanor, but the slight crack in her voice betrays her.
Conversations were inevitable, and Alicia has plenty of ammunition to deny the conversation they should be having.
Therefore, “You mean someone who hasn’t slept with my husband?”
Kalinda’s expression quakes, her eyes sparkle even more with tears she doesn’t try to hold.
A crushing pain in Alicia’s heart makes her squeeze her pen tighter.
“Yes, you’re in pain, Alicia. I hurt you. Now do you wanna know the facts?”
“Of what?”
“I slept with him once. Now, I do that, it means nothing to me… but I do that…”
Alicia blinks rapidly, eyes moving away from the speaker, her heart being crushed by a different kind of hurt.
How could I forget? This is Kalinda. If Friday night happened, it would have perhaps been special to me. But for her…
Kalinda’s words echo in her mind: I do that.
Alicia huffs absently, the rest of Kalinda’s words drown in bitter conclusion that she would’ve been just another… that.
Until -
“I liked you…”
Alicia looks up, (foolish) hope softening her face. Once more, Kalinda’s words disappear behind the curtain of dreaming taking over Alicia’s mind.
Could I have been different?
But before she answers her own question, she shakes it off, her fear giving her the courage to stand her ground.
“Every step of the way you just looked at me… and you knew…”
Alicia no longer knows what she is talking about and where the words are coming from. It was that Friday. She knew I could’ve just been a casual dalliance. That she started it because of her desire to get even doesn’t matter. Now she is more than just infatuated, the hurt deepens.
“Yes.”
A knife slices through her chest. She aches to stab and slice as well.
“And I am an idiot. I never once thought you were my friend out of some guilt, out of some guilty welfare for poor little me.”
They were after all, originally, friends - and the use of that word seems to be a good choice to hurt.
But -
“That’s not why…”
A sliver of hope, then,
“I don’t have a… friends. You were a friend”
Alicia lets out a sarcastic sigh.
So that’s what’s it’s going to be?
“And you lied to me. You said that’s not true about being with him”
“Yes… I’m sorry.”
Alicia lets out an exasperated sigh. An apology isn’t enough. An apology isn’t what she expected.
“Oh, okay, thanks… Now that we’ve cleared that up…”
It isn’t what she wanted!
Hurt overtakes her system. It is coming from geysers inside her heart that are her own doing. That she schemed about someone she potentially had feelings for; That Kalinda is, was such an experienced lover, she lost at her own game; That she is more than infatuated over someone who could have hurt her more because of her regard for intimacy; That Kalinda did that to her husband and she is left wanting.
Whatever accusation, argument she can use, she grabs.
She grabs and stabs and slices, willing to hurt more than she is hurting.
“I’m… I found another job and I’m leaving next week.”
“Good,” she hisses, mouth sizzling with caustic fury.
She has to hurt.
She has to.
-o-
Sleep doesn’t come to her until her now-nightly Valium kicks in.
Her waking hours are torturous, Kalinda-infested clockwork, their latest conversation playing with increasing regularity.
That Kalinda is leaving adds to the list of stimuli that disquiets her mind.
That a new case has come in is a relief. That this new case is the first case without Kalinda is a tragedy.
That morning the whole of Lockhart Gardner congregated in the boardroom for the briefing is unassuming. The case is high-profile and it requires everyone to devote whatever time they could spare into helping out with the case.
Seeing her makes Alicia jump out of her own skin, but she meets Kalinda’s challenging stare squarely. She breaks off the eye contact and summons a reaction that will not come.
It is trouble -
-- but a trouble necessary for her survival, nonetheless.
It will take so much more, but Alicia will never admit to the fact that her heart pounded so violently at the site of its master.
No, she hadn’t admitted to infatuation.
Why now, should she admit to love?