Chapter 3

Katrina decided against going in to work. Even though she had slept through the night in a d***-induced, dreamless sleep, the past twenty-four hours had left her feeling emotionally exhausted. She still had not processed the fact that she could have died. It seemed like too much to handle, so she pushed that thought as far inside her mind as she possibly could and hoped it would stay there until she was ready to deal with it. 

Instead, she drove her car from Rose & Greg’s home to her own house, where she proceeded to clean the place from top to bottom while she waited for Joey to arrive on the school bus. Joey came through the door around three pm with a whole lot of noise and some serious mud on his worn sneakers. 

“Mom!” he yelled. “I’m hoooooome!!”

“So I hear!” Kat responded from the kitchen, where she was busy rubbing spices on a raw organic chicken. 

Joey walked in and went straight to the pantry to try and dig out some sort of snack.

“Hey man!” Kat scolded. “You see me standing here fixing dinner, don’t you?”

“Mom! I’m staaaaarving!” he groaned with his head still in the pantry. Joey was always starving. He could wake up from a dead sleep at three am and decide that he was starving.

“Yeah well, have an apple then.” Kat’svoice just stern enough to make him look up.

“Fine… oh Mom! What happened to you? That looks kinda cool!” 

Trust a ten-year-old boy to find stitches appealing. 

“Well I was helping a guy who had a car accident, and I got cut on some glass,” Kat explained, finding no need to tell him any more than he needed to know.

“Oh ok,” Joey shrugged. “It looks cool. We can call you Scar, like in Lion King!”

“Or Scarface!” Kat chuckled. 

“Scarface?” Joey frowned with a mouthful of apple. “What is a Scarface? That doesn’t sound cool at all.”

“Oh never mind.It’s from a movie, but I forgot it’s for grownups. Can I have a hug?”

Joey came over and hugged her with a content sigh. He was growing up so quickly, but he was still a mommy’s boy and loved his snuggle time. She kissed the top of his head before directing him to the kitchen table. 

“How was school?” she questioned while he chewed his apple loudly.

“It was ok.” He shrugged again. He was quite brilliant and had excellent grades, but every day when she asked what they did at school, the answer was “Nothing.”  It was really astounding that during the past six years of school, they had apparently learned absolutely nothing.

“Mom, can I watch cartoons?” Joey asked then and tossed the apple core into the trashcan.

“I suppose so. As long as your homework is done,” Kat agreed and slid the pan with the chicken into the oven.

“Yup. All done!” 

Joey got comfortable on the couch and turned on the TV, which happened to be on the local news channel. The voice of a female news anchor traveled into the kitchen where Kat was wiping down the counter.  

“…And our sources say that after the dramatic and daring rescue, where he was pulled out of his burning Ferrari by an unknown young lady, Washington Wolverines Tight End and four-time Pro Bowler Theo Collins is in stable, but serious condition...”

Joey changed the channel to Cartoon Network, and the sounds of Tom & Jerry took over.  Kat walked over to the kitchen table and sat down heavily on one of the wooden chairs. It couldn’t have been, could it? Kat was far from a sports person, and even though she enjoyed watching the odd game on TV, she was not very informed as far as what the players looked like without a helmet. The car he had been driving was definitely some sort of sports car, but she had been too panicked to notice exactly what kind of car it was.

Kat shook her head. It didn’t matter. Even if that was the guy, it wasn’t as if she would be going back to see him. She had done what any person would have, and now it was over with. That did explain the press at the hospital though she thought to herself, while she went upstairs to deal with the laundry. 

Tamara and Ana stopped by just as the chicken was ready, so Kat asked Joey to help set the table, which he did somewhat begrudgingly. He knew if he didn’t do the chores, he wouldn’t get his allowance. 

They were all chatting back and forth when they sat down to eat and then Tamara quietly said, “So I saw the news.”

Kat shot her a quick look and nodded her head toward Joey. This was definitely something he didn’t need to know. She loved her son, but something this exciting would be all over school the next day, and Kat thrived on her privacy. There was nothing she would hate more than having to tell people this story again. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even want to think about it. Tamara got the hint and swiftly changed the subject.  However, when Joey finished his chicken and was excused to go play; Tamara looked up at Kat and raised her eyebrow, waiting for Kat to spill the beans.

“Listen, Tam,” she started with a shrug. “I had no idea who he was. He was just a bloody mess stuck in a crumpled up car!”

“So you didn’t get to see him today?” Tamara asked and took another sip of her wine. 

“No, I did,” Kat confessed. “I mean I saw him briefly before I left. Tam, his face is nothing but bruises and cuts. Even if I knew what the man looked like before the accident, I wouldn’t have been able to tell. No one would!”

“Wow,” Tamara said. “It was that bad, huh?” 

“Yeah, it was really bad,” Kat responded, and just the thought of his banged-up body gave her the chills. “I didn’t think he was going to make it.”

“Was he awake today?” Ana asked, always the sweet and concerned friend.

“Yeah, he was,” Kat admitted. “We spoke for a little bit. He thanked me, and I told him everything was fine, and that’s about it.”

“Are you going to visit him again?” Tamara asked. 

“No. I don’t know the guy. I just want to forget about it.”

“I can understand that,” Ana chimed in. “That must have been so scary. “

“Yeah,” Kat agreed and nodded. “It really was.” 

“Well, I watched TMZ or whatever, and there is all this talk that he and his wife separated a while back, and now she had taken the kids to her parents in Canada or something, and she won’t let him see the kids. The rumor is that he was s***-f**** and ran off the road.”

Kat looked up, horrified. 

“Oh my God, that’s terrible! Who would say something like that?”

“Was he drunk?” Tam questioned with a raised eyebrow. 

“I don’t know. If he was, I couldn’t tell. I didn’t smell any alcohol as far as I remember,” Kat replied.   

Kat wracked her brain trying to remember if he had been wearing a ring but realized she had no idea. Everything had been so chaotic no little details had stuck. To her, it was just a whole lot of blood, smoke, and fire. She shrugged off the feelings of discomfort again and started to put the dishes in the dishwasher. 

“Whatever happened to him, he doesn’t seem to remember it either. At least that is what he said.”

“At this point, I think people are just upset that he is missing the rest of the season,” Tamara said and carried a couple of the glasses to the dishwasher.

“I guess he is good?” Kat asked. 

“Yeah,” Tamara concurred. “He is one of their best players.”

“Poor guy,” Ana noted. 

“He’s got a long way to go,” Kat concluded. 

Tamara and Ana left after dinner, satisfied that Kat seemed ok. Tamara was also secretly pleased about getting the juicy stuff straight from the source, but she had promised not to talk about it, so she wouldn’t. As much as she loved good gossip, she loved Kat more, and that was all there was to it.

That evening, Katrina insisted to herself that she would forget all about the incident and continue her life as it had always been. After Joey's shower, she walked into the bathroom and handed him clean pajamas. 

“Did you clean your ears, honey?”

“Mom, I need the ear wax to protect my brain from bacteria!” Joey sounded completely serious. 

Kat looked at her son incredulously. Sometimes he said things that she just couldn't find an appropriate response to. 

“Ummm, yes ok. Well, can you at least use your towel to dry them?”

“Yes, I guess so.” Joey vigorously rubbed his ears with the towel. 

After he had brushed his teeth, gotten out of cleaning his ears and was tucked into bed, Katrina did something that was quite unusual for her. She got her laptop and googled Theo Collins. 

“Oh man, I'm an internet stalker,” she mumbled to herself and felt immensely happy that none of her friends were around to witness this obvious flaw of her character. 

After her first and only marriage, Kat had promised herself that she would never again put herself through any unnecessary drama and unhappiness. This was probably why she had been single ever since her divorce when Joey was five. Five years of being single. Tamara and Ana found the whole thing crazy and had attempted to set her up with men, women, and everything in between, but Kat was just not into it. She had been happy just being a mom and hanging out with her friends.

 Joey's father, Patrick, traveled extensively with work but saw his son whenever he was home. The first couple of years following the divorce had been difficult and tension-filled, but now they had settled into a routine and had a good parent relationship, which she valued highly for Joey's sake. She had learned early on that picking your battles was the way to go, so she had stopped arguing over every little thing that bugged her, and only spoke up when it was something that truly mattered.

Theo's name pulled up so many pages on Google; she realized she would have to be more specific if she wanted to find something in particular. She started by clicking on the tab for images and rolled her eyes at herself. Why she was bothering to look at this was beyond her. 

The computer loaded a selection of pictures of Washington Wolverines tight end Theo Collins. Kat stopped rolling her eyes and zoomed in on one of the pictures until the whole screen was filled up with his eyes. Her heart seemed to beat just a little bit faster as she recognized the intense hazel eyes staring at her through the screen. It was him alright. Her throat suddenly felt a bit tight, and she zoomed the picture back out to normal size.

There were a bunch more random pictures on display. Theo in uniform. Theo working out on the field in shorts and t-shirt. Theo in a suit at a charity event. Theo with no shirt on, sweat dripping from his forehead as he was leaning over to pick up a water bottle. Kat got stuck inspecting this picture a bit longer than she cared to admit. He certainly was athletic. 

She cleared her throat and fanned her face with a tissue, which did absolutely nothing to help her heated cheeks. Time to move on. She kept looking. There was Theo accepting some sort of award. And then Theo and his wife with two little girls in pigtails. His wife was stunning. She was petite and slender with dark brown hair in perfect waves around her perfect face. Basically, she was everything Kat wasn't. 

Katrina was a solid five-foot-ten with a size ten shoe. There was nothing petite about her. She had long honey blond hair that hung straight down her back reaching nearly to her waist. Since she rarely had time to do anything with it, she usually just kept it in a simple braid. Tamara insisted she was gorgeous when she actually made an effort, but Tam was her friend and would obviously say that even if she looked like the elephant man. 

She exercised when she had time, ate semi-healthy and indulged in a few glasses of wine here and there. Or bottles. Whatever. She was no Cameron Diaz, but she wasn’t about to be on the show “My 600lb life” either.  

Glancing down at the laptop screen with the impossibly beautiful and perfect family smiling into the camera, Kat shook her head at herself and laughed with a little snort. She clicked on the picture which brought up an article about the Collins and their rumored separation. 

According to “sources” the marriage had started to crumble when Vienna (yes, that was really her name), had agreed to join a reality show about athletes’ wives against the will of her husband. Constantly surrounded by cameras, Theo had started to withdraw more and more from both the house and his wife, often taking his two girls on outings without cameras trailing their every move. The same sources went on to disclose how Vienna had been furious when he refused to join her to the MTV awards to accept a 'Best Reality Show' award and she had stormed out of their mansion and left for her mother’s house with the two girls.

There were a few more articles, more rumors and more “sources.” Pictures of a sparkly Vienna seen with different celebrity men out to lunches and events. No recent ones of Vienna with her husband Kat noticed before she focused on the news about Theo's current condition. 

He had lost an incredible amount of blood, of which Kat was fully aware, he had four broken ribs, and the shard of glass had caused some additional internal damage and kept Theo in surgery for six hours. He was listed as critical but stable. Questions were being tossed around about both alcohol and d****, and there were several mentions of a woman who had risked her own life to pull the star player from the burning car, and now “sources” were hinting that the mystery woman was, in fact, his wife. 

Katrina snorted again and rolled her eyes with a smile. The whole Mrs. Collins thing warmed her heart, and she was glad that she had been able to be there to provide him with a little bit of comfort during both the accident and at the hospital. She kept reading the comments under the article where several of the readers had commented that Vienna had been photographed in New York City with a famous designer the same afternoon, and it seemed highly unlikely that she was the mystery woman. Katrina wasn't one to judge people but looking at the glamorous woman in her designer dresses made it difficult to imagine her during a situation like the one that had occurred. It was hard to imagine her under duress of any kind. 

Katrina sighed and closed the laptop. The Collins family life was as different from Kat’s as could be. Truthfully, Kat had NO desire to ever live like that.  She placed the laptop on an antique solid cherry wood dresser which seemed to take up most of her small bedroom.

The Collins family lived in a huge modern mansion according to one of the decorating magazines, where Vienna was proudly showing them around several fancy rooms full of modern art, and sculptures. 

Katrina’s house was a small stone house with three small bedrooms, a large country kitchen, and a decent sized living room with a huge stone fireplace. The kitchen had French doors leading out to a stone patio, overlooking a nice sized backyard with a small pond Kat had stocked with a couple of Koi fish. Koi were supposed to be lucky according to some cultures, and after the divorce, Kat had felt she needed all the luck she could get.

A couple of years ago, Kat had bought an old garden bench at a yard sale and placed it by the pond so she could sit there and listen to the water bubbling while she enjoyed her morning coffee on lazy weekend mornings. 

They were happy in their little house. There were no direct neighbors crowding her, and she loved her privacy. If she chose to step outside naked, no one would see her. Not that she ever did, but she valued the fact that she could if she ever wanted to. 

Ready to call it a night, Kat shrugged off all thoughts of Theo and his wife as she slid under the comfy down comforter. Maybe she should agree to that blind- date Tamara was trying to set her up on, she thought as she drifted off to sleep. It was time to get back to normal life.