~ Déjà Vu ~

by

Salina Jivani

“You should have kicked his ass!” Kate Strathmore snapped.

“What? For staring at you? You’ve got to be kidding me, Kate! That’s not even practical! We were at a restaurant in front of a hundred people and just because some random guy wants to stare at you I’m supposed to go all Kung Fu on him?” her husband retorted.

“You’re not supposed to be practical where I’m concerned, Damien. Or are you one of those sicko husbands who get flattered when other people stare at their wives?”

Damien sputtered. “He was just looking! I mean, it’s not like he walked over and touched your ass or anything.”

Kate crossed her arms angrily over her chest and thrust out her chin, staring out the window as they drove past an expanse of well-manicured lawns.

Through her peripheral vision, she saw Damien rake an agitated hand through his hair as he pulled the car into the driveway of their ranch house. He cut the engine, then turned to glare at her. She refused to look in his direction.

“Don’t shut me out!” he growled.

“Well, what the heck am I supposed to do? It’s only been five years and you don’t even care about me the way you used to. Before, you used to pick fights with men if they so much as glanced at me and here this…this burly…dorky…psychopath was staring me down from across the room and you didn’t even bat an eye!”

“What…whe…ughh!” Damien howled, banging his head against the steering wheel.

“Stop howling like a banshee,” she admonished.

Damien turned his head sideways in mid bang and glared at her, his mouth agape. He looked so ridiculous with his hair out of place, head tilted sideways and eyes bugging out that Kate would have been tempted to laugh if she weren’t so mad.

“I even howl wrong?”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous.” She shoved open the car door and made her way toward the house.

“Me being ridiculous? Me?” Damien scrambled out after her. “Why can’t you ever think of anything positively? Why can’t you be flattered with the fact that a man was admiring your beauty?”

Kate stopped short to glare at her husband through narrowed eyes. “Admiring my beauty by staring at my boobs and winking at me in front of you? That should have been an insult to you,” she jabbed his chest with a finger, “not a compliment to me!”

Damien sputtered and threw his hands up again. Kate turned on her heel and continued walking. She gave an annoyed swipe at her frizzy hair as a bug buzzed over it.

This damned spring weather was getting on her last nerves. It was always rainy and the humidity in the air had her long strands of auburn locks sticking up in frizzy puffs no matter how much styling product she used. A beautiful ending to a beautiful night. She rolled her eyes in agitation.

She shuffled through her handbag and located the house key, then shoved it in the hole and jiggled until she felt the lock release. She’d pushed the door open a crack when she felt an insistent tap on her shoulders. Damien stood behind her, his arms crossed. It was obvious he wasn’t letting this drop.

“I’m still waiting. What exactly was it you wanted me to do about that big, ugly, psychopath staring at your tits? Something rational, please.”

“Why should I have to tell you what to do? You should have reacted. I can’t tell you how to react.”

“Oh, and that’s why you tell me what my facial reactions should look like during sex.”

“ Excuse me, I don’t tell you what your facial reactions should look like during sex. I just can tell that sometimes you’re not into it from the look on your face!”

Damien’s voice rose to a bellow. “It’s the same damned thing!”

“No. It’s. NOT!” Kate spun around and pushed the door open the rest of the way.

The living room lights flickered on automatically. “Surprise…?” a few uncoordinated voices called out with uncertainty.

Kate stopped short and Damien bumped into her.

They stood, staring flabbergasted at the crowd in the living room as the familiar faces of friends and family greeted them. The crowd of people gazed back at them, their expressions solid evidence of having heard every word of the squabble.

Amongst the group, Kate caught the expressions of her mother and father-in-law as well as her own parents. Her mother’s face took on a shade of beet red and her father studied his fingernails with deep interest. Her mother-in-law looked concerned and her father-in-law, unperturbed by the entire debacle, eyed the cake on the coffee table with hunger.

Kate didn’t move. She felt Damien breathing down her neck.

Her sister, Gabriela, pushed herself forward from the shell-shocked crowd and gave them a nervous smile. She cleared her throat before launching into an off pitch rendition of the birthday tune, Happy Anniversary toYou. She clapped her hands, urging everyone else to join in. The voices grew stronger as they all participated in clapping away the awkwardness.

The song came to an end and Kate and Damien were greeted with another overbearing silence. Their loved ones watched them with interest as though they half expected them to continue fighting and throw each other on the floor in a fit of punches and kicks.

Kate eyed her husband and suppressed another eye-roll as she cleared her throat. Obviously the idiot wasn’t going to say anything so it would be up to her to break the silence.

“Err…thank you all so much for…this,” she said lamely, waving her hands around the living room at the anniversary decorations and balloons. “It was truly a surprise,” she bit out the last word as she shot Gabriela a dagger. It was obvious this had been her sister’s doing. She was the celebration queen and probably the only person in their combined families who remembered Kate and Damien’s anniversary.

Only Gabriela would be stupid enough to throw a surprise party for someone at their own house! Couldn’t she have at least given a heads-up to see if they’d even be in town? What if they were out of state, or they were in the middle of sex or perhaps, just maybe out of the blue, they were in a fight!

“Yeah,” Damien chimed in hesitantly from behind her, “A big surprise…thanks.”

Her sister gave them a sheepish look and a weak smile. “Ok everyone,” she clapped her hands together “Let’s eat some cake!” Gabriela must have sensed that she would be on the receiving end of some wrath from Kate, because she turned around quickly and signaled her latest boy toy, Mike, to turn on some music before disappearing into the crowd. Within a few minutes, a group of dessert mongers had gathered around the scrumptious chocolate cake, seemingly dismissive of being witness to the earlier quarrel. Kate breathed a silent sigh of relief.

The relief was short-lived because Damien looked over at her and threw her a tight smile. “Look out here comes your mother,” he sang.

Damien greeted his mother-in-law. “Oh, hello Mrs. McAlister. I was just going to get some cake, would you like some?”

“No dear, no time for cake.” Shari eyed Kate with raised eyebrows.

“Ok. Catch you later.” Damien hurried off.

“What exactly was that all about, Katherine? Do you not have any manners to be squabbling with your husband about such things, especially in front of a crowd on your anniversary?”

Kate blew out an exasperated breath. Her still frizzy bangs flew wildly in front of her face. “Mom,” she replied while biting down her anger “I didn’t know there was a crowd because this was a sur…”

“Kate, honey, is everything okay?” Stacey Strathmore, Damien’s mother, walked up to Kate wearing the same concerned expression as earlier.

Why doesn’t she ask her son that? Kate felt her frustration mount. Why was everyone ganging up on her while he stuffed his face with cake?

Kate forced a smile. “Everything is perfectly fine. You know, just a tiny old argument,” she pinched her fingers together and put on what she hoped to be a bright smile. Stacey looked unconvinced.

Kate’s irritation flared. “Oh, come on, surely you and Mr. Strathmore have squabbles?” she asked, feeling desperate.

“Grown-ups work through their problems, not yell and fight like two-year olds,” her mother cut in sharply.

“Mom, I don’t need a lect…”

Stacey interrupted. “Have you kids tried counseling? A friend of mine…“

“I think they should learn how to solve their differences on their…”

“Stop it! Stop it both of you!” Kate yelled. The room fell silent.

“We’re okay, everything’s fine. Enjoy the party.” She waved frantically for everyone to carry on.

As the earlier buzz of conversation returned, Kate turned to her mom and mother-in-law and spoke through clenched teeth, “I don’t need to be lectured or counseled because I know it’s perfectly normal to have these sorts of arguments,” she declared with a show of confidence. “So if you’ll just excuse me, I’ll…”

“Oh, no you don’t,” her mother chided and grabbed hold of her arm before she could walk away. “An argument is fine. But this, young lady, is unacceptable. You guys fight all the time.”

“No we don’t.” Kate cried out and shot a helpless look at her mother-in-law.

Stacey bit her lip and drew her face into an apologetic expression. “I’m sorry dear, on this one I’ll have to agree with your mother.”

Kate stared at them aghast. What the heck did they mean she and Damien fought all the time? Sure they had the occasional quarrel just like any normal couple. And she probably couldn’t even remember the last time they’d fought. Except for yesterday. Yesterday had been all Damien’s fault. She’d told him so many times not to leave that damned X-Box of his out on the living room floor and he refused to listen, so of course, she had stepped on it and dug a hole in her foot from its sharp edge and it had stopped working. And he’d blamed it on her for not watching where she stepped! What thirty-year-old man played X-box anyway?

But that had been the last time they’d fought…if you didn’t count the night before when he’d left the laundry in the washer too long and all the clothes had come out stinking. Or the day before when…oh, gosh. Did they really fight that much? But they were happy, weren’t they? It was normal to fight every now and then, right? Every article she’d ever read in any magazine said that fighting was healthy for a relationship, so they must have a healthy relationship. Kate winced— a very healthy one judging from the way they’d been going at it lately.