“Remember Shelly Baxter?”

I paused for a few seconds, feigning remembering. “Yeah, I think.”

Dave screamed into his radio for a second, then came back to the phone. “You better remember you used to go out with her.”

“Yeah yeah yeah.” I closed my eyes against the smell of her hair, strawberries and cream, shook away the image of her crooked smile. “What about her?”

“Well, she did it. Hold on a sec…” Dave screamed into his radio again, came back. “Hey, call me later on tonight. Some lady just got hit crossing Highway 73. Dumb bitch thought she could just run across during the busiest part of the day.”

“Later.” I closed my cell and stared at the computer screen in front of me. Filled with potential customers from the nationwide database, all the names and addresses blurred for a second. I blinked and everything looked normal again.

For a second, all of the names on the screen were Shelly’s.

#

Seven months ago, she knocked on my back door just as I was leaving to go out.

“Hey,” she said. Her blond hair was the same old style, yet different, longer maybe. The screen door made it a little difficult to see who was there, but her smile, turned up higher on her right cheek, gave her away real fast.

“Hey,” I said, opening the screen door, “what’s going on?”

“Just hanging out. Can I come in?”

I stepped aside. “How did you know I live here?”

She brushed past me, faint perfume hitting my nostrils. “I saw you coming home from work the other day. You still doing the insurance deal?”

“Yeah. You saw me. Where were you?”

“At the taco place. I can see your door from the drive-through.”

“And you knew it was me?”

“Yep. Hey, can I use your phone?”

“Well, I don’t have a land-line.”

“You got your cell?”

I nodded, reluctant. “I was about to leave.”

“Don’t worry, baby… I’ll tell them not to call the number back.”

I handed her my cell and stepped into the living room. One year, maybe longer, and she knocked on my door like no big deal and then she was in my apartment wearing her tight jeans and halter-top. Sandals on her feet with a toe ring. Really sexy.

And calm.

She talked quietly. Sitting on the couch, I tried to listen, but all I could make out is ‘Come on man’ and ‘Damn it’. Finally, she snapped my phone shut and pounded her fist on my counter. When I walked back into the kitchen, she was facing away from me, propped against my refrigerator. The muscles in her triceps clenched for a second, then released.

“Everything okay?”

She turned around, and for the briefest second, let her mask slip.

She smiled. “Sure. Boyfriend’s a little pissed I ran out on him, but he’ll get over it.”

I forced my hands into my pockets to keep myself from touching her arms. “You need a ride somewhere?”

She shook her head. “Can I just crash here?”

“Well…”

“Just jacking with you, man. He’s going to meet me back at the bar.”

“The bar?”

“Yeah, Shorty’s. You know, that place you hate.”

“Oh yeah. Well, at least let me give you a ride.”

“No. It’s just right there. And besides, you look like you’re about to go out.”

“It’s no problem. I—“

She was already out the door and halfway down the steps. “Thanks for letting me use your phone. See you around.”

I never saw her again.

*

My friend Waylon introduced me to Shelly. He had met her friend at the bowling alley the week before and set up a double date that I really didn’t want to go on. “Dude, I need a wingman,” he said.

“That’s really shitty of you, man.”

“I’d do it for you.”

Of course, he would have. When the night came around, he called me forty-five minutes before I was supposed to meet them. “They’re here.”

“At your house? Now?”

“Yes. I want your girl. She’s hotter than mine.”

It took me twelve minutes to drive twenty miles. He was right—I wanted my girl too.

Shelly’s hair was shorter then, with a slight curl. I’d seen her around before, usually hanging out with a lot of people I didn’t know, being loud and always having a blast. “I know you, dude,” she said, holding out her hand, “don’t know your name, but I’ve seen you around.”

I told her my name was Markus and she smiled. “You look like a Markus. Ready to party?”

Waylon drove his Tahoe, Shelly and I sat in the back. She leaned in close, whispered in my ear. “Why are you sitting so far away?”

“I don’t know.”

She wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “Loosen up a bit. You’re like way too tense.”

We played pool, ordering pitcher after pitcher of beer. She was a pretty good player, better than I was, and drank like a fish.

“Don’t go for that shot,” she said, snaking her arm through mine, guiding the cue stick. “Tap the four ball slightly on the right and it’ll sink in that corner pocket.” She lined up the shot, stood behind me, and guided my arms into the cue ball. It tapped the four ball and rolled into the pocket, just like she said.

“See,” she said. I looked into her brown eyes, letting them get closer and closer until our lips touched, very gently. She pulled back, crooked smile beaming. “Now really kiss me.”

I went in gentle again, then felt her arms wrap around my back. I touched her face and slowly ground my lips into hers, letting her warm tongue slide against mine.

She tasted so good.

*

Her hair was damp against her brow and she smelled like smoke. “Thanks for coming to pick me up. I feel like I’m going crazy.” She was wearing a long sleeved t-shirt and baggy shorts, her feet wrapped in a pair of dirty sneakers with no socks.

“What’s wrong?”

“Take me to my Mom’s, okay? I’ll tell you everything, but I have to get out of here.”

I pulled out of the Wal-Mart parking lot, watching her and driving all at once. Shelly dug around in her purse, pulled out a prescription bottle and read the label. “Damn,” she said, throwing it back into her purse.

She stared out the window the whole ride. When I pulled into her Mom’s, she jumped out of the car before it stopped rolling. “I’ll be right back,” she said, already on the front porch. She returned seconds later with a black garbage bag overflowing with shirts and jeans and a giant pillow in a pink pillowcase. She threw everything in the back, jumped in the front and grabbed my arm. “It’s okay… right?”

“What?”

Her eyes brimmed over. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

*

Our second date started pretty wild and crazy. I picked her up at her Mom’s house and she immediately wanted to go to the mall because she didn’t like what she was wearing. “It’ll take me about five seconds to buy this dress I saw the other day, change into it, and then we are hitting the road.”

“Want me to come inside?”

“Just keep the engine running, ‘kay? It’s hot tonight.”

Images of her shoplifting the dress, and no telling what else, kept sifting through my mind. Any second, the police would be pulling up to the front of the store, and they were going to drag her out, and then she’d point at me and scream, “That’s him, he made me do it.”

As soon as she walked out of the store, I knew she paid for the dress. It was too pretty to steal. Short and sleeveless, chocolate brown and snug, the color turned her tanned skin a shade darker, her blond hair a little brighter.

She wanted to go to Hampton’s for a drink, then to Shorty’s for more drinks. “Why don’t we just stay at Hampton’s?” I asked.

“They close too early. You don’t have to work tomorrow or anything like that, huh?”

“No.”

“Then I got you all night long. Unless you’re tired, or a wuss.”

“Definitely not a wuss. And I’m not tired.”

She stopped in front of a curtained window outside of Hampton’s, checking her reflection. “Damn it,” she said. I watched as she reached underneath her dress and removed her panties. She smoothed the dress down her hips, turned and smiled at me. “That’s much better.” She tossed the panties into a nearby trashcan and linked her arm through mine. “Let’s get to drinking.”

*

“My pulse is over one hundred and my pressure is one hundred sixty over ninety-eight. Well, that’s according to the Wal-Mart thing you sit in and it tells you your pressure for free. I don’t think it’s too accurate, but that’s still too high.” Shelly sipped her water, then sighed deeply. She was plopped on my sofa, dirty sneakers kicked off, breathing slow through her nose.

“Hungry?” There wasn’t much food in the icebox, but if she said the word, I’d order a pizza.

“Can’t eat. Heart’s beating too fast.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.”

“You go to the doctor?”

She shook her head.

“Want to go to the hospital?”

“No.”

Later on, I came out of my bedroom and sunk into the recliner. After hitting the channel button on the remote for twenty minutes, I settled on a South Park rerun on Comedy Central. Shelly slept soundlessly for a while, then woke up, coughing and checking her pulse. She stood up very slow and went to the bathroom. When she came back to the couch, she hooked her finger at me, inviting me over.

The first thing I noticed when I wrapped my arms around her was how hot she was.

“It’s my blood pressure.”

We touched and kissed a little, remembering how we liked each other’s body. When my hand slid down her stomach close to her shorts, she stopped me.

“I can’t,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

“My heart. Something’s not right. I’m scared to do anything, especially that.”

My fingers felt for her pulse, instead encountered a mass of scar tissue around her wrist. I turned her arm so I could see. There was one scar around her wrist, white and raised. Funny, I had never seen it before. Along the inside of her arm was a longer scar, pink and angry.

“What’s this?”

Shelly shook her head. When she realized I wasn’t going to break my stare, she gave me a weak crooked smile. “I had some problems… okay?”

“And this is how you tried to fix them?”

“No.”

“These are recent.”

“No, the long one is. The one across my wrist is from years ago.”

“I never noticed it before.”

“You never bothered to look.”

I stared at her arm. “What kind of problems?”

She didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, she coughed and whispered. “It’s okay. My problems are not bugging me right now.”

“What do you call this?” I said, running my fingers down the long scar.

“Practice.”