No Small Thing

Kat, Chapter 1 * A Midnight Crush

Kat felt a sweat begin on the small of her back.

3:21 am. Goddammit. There was a noise in the house. She heard it. It wasn't a sound that was familiar. It wasn't a creak, or a crank, or even ice cubes falling into the bin in the freezer. Those were familiar. It sounded like a footstep. Just one. She lifted her head off the pillow and strained to hear any other sounds that shouldn't be made at that hour of the night.

She heard the soft snore of Toby, the dog, who could never be more than two feet from her at any given time. He was especially protective of her now that Mark was no longer in the house. Allie, the cat, was asleep at the foot of her bed and threw Kat a dirty look at being lightly kicked in the side when Kat moved.

Kat kept her head up until she felt the strain on her tired neck. No other noises had emanated from the house. No additional footsteps, if in fact that's what the sound was. A one-footed person wasn't in her house, and if there was, well, come and get me, one-footed person, she thought. I'm yours for the taking. Watching this go down will be worth the laugh. I'll take all the excitement I can get.

It's nothing, she thought to herself, rubbing her eyes. For Christ sake, the house alarm was on, all the doors were locked, having been checked by her twice before hitting the sheets. No one got in. No one's trying to get in. Go back to sleep.

She rolled over onto the cool part of the mattress, stuffing the other pillow under her head. The guest room mattress was seductively comfortable, a firm foundation, yet with a super soft padding that cradled her curves. She stretched her legs around on the cool sheets, then crossed her right leg and hip over, bending them luxuriously. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and tried to will herself back to sleep.

Just fall back in, she told herself. You can do it.

Kat hadn't slept in her own bed since Mark left. She started sleeping in the guest bedroom three months before they separated, and their divorce was made final eight months ago. When she left their bed after The Final Straw, she realized that she was sleeping like a baby for the first time in years. The bed they once shared wasn't a comfortable place for her and hadn't been for a long time. She had always slept in a tight ball, as close as she could get to her edge of the bed without falling off. Tolerating even an accidental touch from Mark in the middle of the night filled her with dread. Prior to the divorce, Kat often wondered if she would need a new mattress, or a new bedroom, or a new house – and life - altogether.

Kat's cocooning in the guest bedroom began with when Mark began to shove her around roughly two years prior to his leaving. Mark had issues with his anger. He always had. He struggled to control his anger with the simplest of things; the old adage about who in a marriage can handle untangling the Christmas lights often came to Kat's mind, because Mark genuinely couldn't handle even that. It was a joke for years, the two of them knowing who could handle what in their home, their strengths and weaknesses. Kat always thought that was healthy in their marriage, any marriage; the ability to understand who was good at what helped to balance each other out. So many of her good friends fought constantly with their spouses over the trivial things. They never seemed to be able to work it out. There was a time Kat felt both proud and relieved that she and her husband were able to come to terms with each other's idiosyncrasies.

But as their marriage moved through the decades, and Mark's career became more challenging as he moved up the executive ranks of his company, things began to change. What seemed to erode for the both of them was the easy way in which they could work out their issues. Kat tended to shut down if they had a disagreement; Mark tended to goad, bully, yell, even. She learned over time that if she truly wanted or needed something from him, what she had to do was state her case clearly and get the hell out of dodge. The stress of his job, the issues they had with their daughter, Alexandra, as well as the physical and emotional changes that come naturally with age, snuck up on them both.