Cold Fingers

Prologue Love is the feel of cold fingers. I remembered the words as well as if I had said them myself. The imagery of them had haunted me, had kept me awake at night. “And how do you feel about him now? Was seeing him again a disappointment?” Dr. Anthony’s question brought me back to my surroundings and away from my memories of damp grass and the smell of freshly turned earth. “Disappointment?” I asked, unable to imagine why she thought seeing the man again could ever leave me disappointed. “Yes. You know. Did he live up to all your memories? Or did those two years give him a rosy tint?” I thought about that; Dr. Anthony watched quietly from the chair across from me. She was a pretty woman. Not young, or at least older than myself, but wasn’t youth relative? Wasn’t everything? When I was ten, I distinctly remembered thinking my mother was practically at death’s door. She was thirty-two: the same age I was now. “No,” I answered, grabbing a tissue to shred from the box placed strategically on the coffee table between us. Placed no closer to me than to her, as if at any moment either one of us could break down. “No?” “No. He was as perfect as I remembered.” And seeing him again had caused a weight that had been pressing down on me to disappear. It was as if I had been holding my breath since the moment Vic disappeared from my life. Dr. Anthony tapped her pen against her notebook, studying me as if trying to read something in my face. “But you didn’t always feel that way, did you, Christopher?” She tilted her head slightly, eyes still watching me. “You were the one who broke it off.” “I know,” I snapped and then laughed, giving her a guilty smile. “I know I was the one who ended it. And I remember why.” “So do I.” Her perpetually calm voice was beginning to grate on my nerves. It didn’t normally. “But I’d like you to explain it to me again. Why did you feel the need to end it?” I dragged my hands through my hair, pulling a little and concentrating on the sting. “I thought he was a necrophiliac.” “Yes. So, you no longer think that’s true?” I thought about it. I played those old memories through my mind, the ones I had revisited and revisited a million times before, and the ones from the last few weeks. “No.” I fought the smile I felt tugging at my lips. “Now I’m positive.”