Pretty Scars

by CD Reiss

  “The Fischer, and it was my pleasure.”

  They shook hands, and Daddy put his hand on the doorknob. I ran down the hall, away from the party, and flattened my back against the wall.

  “You helped make sure she’s known as more than a pretty face,” Daddy said as they walked in the opposite direction. “That goes a long way.”

  The sounds of the party got louder when the door swung open, then were silenced again.

  What had I witnessed?

  It couldn’t be that obvious. Could it?

  Everything I’d achieved had been bought and paid for. Not just the nomination, but the respect of the head of the department.

  It gave me peace of mind knowing you had your eyes on her.

  Was that why Gannon had been across campus, tires screeching as he missed a musician running across the street with a hundred-dollar bill? Was that why he’d made himself my point of contact for any boy problems that came up?

  And speaking of boy problems… did my father know about Gabriel?

  Was that why he’d shown up at the recital, insisting on dinner with him and Peter?

  And Peter.

  Don’t get sold, Carrie. Margie’s words haunted me like a piece of advice I’d thought I was taking.

  I don’t know how long I stood against that wall, fingernails scratching the wallpaper, staring at the hall table with its pot of rare orchids.

  The party got loud as a faraway door opened. Voices. Something about the hors d'oeuvres trays being warm. Some professional agreement was reached, then the music and voices were shut out again.

  I had to go. I couldn’t stay there in a frozen knot. Taking a deep breath, I stood straight, armed with information I didn’t know how to use. A loaded gun with a trigger I felt too worthless to pull.

  As soon as I got back out into the party, a silver tray was under my nose.

  “Hors d'oeuvres, madam?”

  I didn’t look at the food because I’d recognized the voice. “Gabriel!”

  “Rumaki,” he said with a glint in his dark eyes. His black bowtie was crooked and his jacket was two sizes too big.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Liver and pineapple.” He held out a pile of burgundy napkins with the letters USC stamped in gold. “Counterintuitive, but I hear it’s delicious.”

  I took a napkin. “How did you get this gig?”

  “Shelley’s in the quartet.” He smirked, eyes sparkling like the sky on the Fourth of July. “She pulled some strings, so to speak.”

  “You can’t be here.” I took another hors d'oeuvre.

  “I have news, little bird,” he whispered, sending a shiver up my spine.

  “Tell me.” I put a third rumaki on my napkin, moving slowly. “Then go.”

  “I got the Caruso Fellowship.”

  My lungs sucked in air as if I’d been drowning.

  Gabriel deserved it, but I had to wonder if Daddy had arranged it to get him away from me. I hated myself for thinking that could even be true—he was so talented—but I’d never trust anything again.

  And like that, I knew what to do.

  “You’re going to Venice?” I confirmed.

  His eyes glinted as they took in the length of my body, undressing me for him and him alone. “I’m going to Venice.”

  “Carrie,” a man’s voice came from behind me.

  I spun to find Gannon next to a curvy woman with curly black hair parted in the middle. The manila envelope stuck out of her bag.

  “Professor Gannon,” I said.

  “It’s Kevin now.” The familiarity of his first name bred nothing but contempt. “I wanted you to meet Terry.”

  The woman he was with smiled and held out her hand. I took it, looking back to find Gabriel gone.

  “So nice to meet you,” Terry said. “Thank you for inviting us.”

  “It’s my pleasure. Profess—Kevin’s meant a lot to me this past year.”

  More than I knew, and not just to me.

  Uncomfortable with everything unsaid, I couldn’t help but scan the room for Gabriel.

  “Like the rumaki much?” Gannon asked.

  “Oh.” I’d forgotten about the handful of meaty chunks I’d piled onto the napkin. “No one wanted them and I felt bad.”

  “Compassion for the hors d'oeuvres,” Gannon said, putting an affectionate arm around Terry. “Delightfully typical for you.”

  I smiled warmly. Stop pretending you like me.

  Through the crowd, I found Gabriel taking his tray toward the kitchen.

  “Let me just… um… get rid of these. I’ll be right back.”

  Cutting a path through the room, I pushed through a set of double doors to a water station and dumped the rumaki in the trash. A waiter burst through a second set of swinging doors with a silver tray. Another door cracked open.

  “Psst.”

  I was pulled into the closet by the elbow. In the moment before the door closed, Gabriel’s face was in the light, then we were blanketed in darkness. His lips were on mine, his tongue exploring, his body pushing mine against the wall.

  “Gabriel,” I groaned as he kissed my neck, picking up my skirt. I twisted away. “Stop.”

  “Are you all right?” His brow knotted in the dim light. “I thought—”

  “Stop,” I interrupted.

  I had to tell him, but if he knew I was a shoddy person whose father had to buy her awards and respect, whose looks were traded for approval and favors, he’d leave me. Or worse, he’d stay. But he’d never trust me. Not with his heart. Doubt would eat away at his confidence.

  And even if it didn’t eat away at his, it would eat away at mine.

  “When are you leaving?” I asked.

  “Monday, but I’m coming back in December.”

  “I’ll be gone.”

  His nose touched mine. “It’s what we agreed, isn’t it?”

  “We agreed we were forever.”

  “We have two days until forever then.”

  We didn’t. Not even close. There were too many events. Parties. Ceremonies. We had back-slapping to do and tearful goodbyes to savor.

  “I’m scared.”

  “About what?”

  “That we’re going to drift apart. For whatever reason. And I’m going to forget what it feels like to be loved by you. To be really loved. I never want to forget it and I never, ever want to live without it.”

  He pulled away a few inches to take in my full face. “What makes you think I’ll let you forget?”

  I pushed him away. “Think, Gabriel. Distance. Time apart. You think you have control over this, but you don’t. Neither one of us do. We promised forever and we can’t deliver it.”

  “Carrie.” He was trying to soothe me and I wouldn’t be soothed.

  “Don’t ‘Carrie’ me. We have to do something. Like, make a plan. Because…” I gathered the courage to tell the truth and the mindfulness to tell it completely. “Because otherwise the plan’s made for me. All I can see is me never deciding to do another thing this good. I’m just so scared all the time now and I can’t do it this way.”

  His eyes fluttered closed for a moment and he put his hands up as if he needed to slow me down for a second.

  “I can’t,” I whispered one last time.

  “Then you shouldn’t.” He took my hands. “You shouldn’t be scared.”

  “What are we going to do then? Tell me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want things to be different.”

  “Then we have to make them different.”

  I knew that. We had to tell our families we were in love, and our families would have to deal with it. But a deep, silent terror accompanied that option. If Daddy would pay off my professor and ruin Gabriel’s father to the point of suicide, how would he react to us loving each other?

  As long as I was under their control, the best option wasn’t an option at all.

  “We can’t,” I said. “Not yet. I’m not ready.”
r />   “When will you be ready?”

  A deadline was almost like a plan. The wall behind me was the only thing that kept me from collapsing in relief.

  “After summer. We’ll both be away. We’ll be grown up. We can tell them how it is.”

  “You and me. Forever.”

  “It’ll be fine. Right?”

  “It will be. It already is.”

  Bad news slid off me as he picked up my legs and wrapped them around his waist, leveraging me against the wall. My skirt hung away, leaving a slip of underwear between the rod of his erection and me. We kissed again, pushing our hips together, circling and grinding.

  “God,” he said, pulling only his face away so he could hold me tight. “I can’t believe you’re mine.”

  “I’m yours. Just don’t forget to love me.”

  He laughed as if I’d cracked a joke, then stopped when he realized I wasn’t trying to be funny.

  “How could I forget this?” He ran his finger along the neckline of my dress, pushing the fabric aside and exposing my breast before he covered it with his hand, taking the hard nipple between his thumb and finger.

  I groaned a coherent thought diluted by pleasure. “Italy’s so far away.”

  “It’s only a few months.”

  Months were nothing in the face of eternity, and a few thousand miles was nothing to a girl with a free summer.

  It hit me that I could solve this, and excitement crowded out fear.

  “I’m meeting you there,” I said before I lost my nerve and ability to speak.

  “What?” His hand went still on my breast.

  “Shh.” I pressed two fingers to his lips. “I’ll leave on a different flight and meet you in front of St. Mark’s on Tuesday. In the square at high noon. There’s a monument. A pillar with a lion on top.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just. Like. That. I want you to take me, all of me. In Venice, I want you to…”

  “What?”

  “Fuck me.”

  He sucked in a breath as if I’d said the most arousing thing in the world. And maybe I had, because my body had its own reaction.

  “You’re going to love it.” Leaning down, he sucked my nipple with a brute ferocity that merged pain and pleasure. “I’m going to make it so good for you.”

  Easing one of my feet to the floor, he got on his knees and put one leg over his shoulder.

  “Someone’s going to come,” I said, eyes on the door.

  “You’re right about that.” He slid my underwear aside and kissed the swelled nub of nerves. It felt so good he had to hold me up for a second.

  My mouth opened in an O as his tongue ran along the head of my clit, pushing gently past the hood, flicking sweetly, filling my body with a pressure so heavy, I felt as if the bowl of my hips was a water balloon under a faucet. Expanding as the membrane thinned. The bulbous and warm weight of it.

  He put his mouth between my legs and his free hand spread me apart, entering me again. I couldn’t hold it. I feared the explosion. The watery mess. The rubbery shrapnel of my body breaking.

  The fear gave way to acceptance, not just of the coming orgasm but of my decision. I was a whole person with forward direction. The balloon broke in a hundred explosions.

  I was my own woman, and I had the power to choose him.

  Chapter 17

  NEW YORK - 1995

  Margie was supposed to be in surgery that Monday, but I was on a street corner nowhere near a hospital, with no excuse to be that far west. At all. But once I’d called Aiden Klerk and told him I needed to know about a meeting between Adam Brate and the stage director, there was no going back.

  The black coat the limo driver had given me covered me to the tops of my feet. My breath was damp against the heavy scarf I’d wrapped around the bottom of my face, and the wooly cap Margie had loaned me bordered the top half of my vision in shadow. I was almost fully and—once the snow started—quite reasonably masked. He might know me from my eyes, or he might not know me at all.

  Aiden Klerk was good at his job. Anyone driving into the staff lot had to register their license plate with security, and of course he knew someone willing to reveal the number associated with Monday’s eleven o’clock meeting.

  He had me memorize it—Z1C-136—and told me the location of Lincoln Center’s Amsterdam Ave staff entrance. The corner where 63rd Street made a T into Amsterdam was the only place I could wait.

  I stood at a bus stop with my hands in my pockets, feet stamping as I watched cars turn onto Amsterdam from Sixty-Third. My heart pounded hard enough to keep me warm. The bus came and went.

  I was nobody. Neither rich nor beautiful. I was nameless, faceless. No baggage and no privilege. Free to live, to love, to choose a dangerous path. Follow her own heart or break it. Just a cold woman in a New York snowstorm, waiting for a man who didn’t want to be seen.

  I repeated the license plate number, singing it in my head to the melody of Ballad of Blades.

  Z1C-136

  Z1C-136

  Z1C-136

  The snow was sticking. Slow-moving vehicles compressed it into a frozen crust. A long car approached in the right lane, close to the curb. It was the right make and model, but white dust hid the license plate. One stroke of my hand would brush it away. It came alongside me and idled at the red light, its right blinker flashing. Snow gathered in the corner of the tinted back window. It was inches from me, and even then I couldn’t tell if anyone was in there.

  He could be right there.

  The answer to everything.

  The choice between my future and my past on the other side of a piece of glass.

  The light was going to change. After that, it would take three seconds for the car to either continue up Amsterdam and make a right onto 65th Street or make an immediate right and disappear into a parking lot.

  I bent forward, peering in as if I had a right to know who was in there.

  Which I didn’t. But being a little rude made going all the way a little cheaper.

  I knocked on the window, my mitten making a dull puh-puh on the glass. In the shadows, I saw a silhouette. A person who had paid for privacy, and there I was, knocking on the window as if I wanted to ask for spare change.

  Maybe it wasn’t him.

  But it was.

  He was that close. I was convinced.

  I had nothing but a feeling to go on, but the feeling held me tight. If he could see me…

  As I moved the scarf and hood away, I realized the odds that I knew this wealthy person in this limousine. They were extraordinarily good. If it wasn’t Gabriel or Adam Brate, there was a good chance they could have been a friend of my family, or Peter, or a classmate from private school. Showing my face would expose my whereabouts. The news would get to Peter.

  He’d figure it out.

  And the beat of a hairbrush on my ass would be a mild prelude to what he would do.

  I pulled down the hood. My red hair flew in the wind and snow bit my cheeks as I put my face as close to the window as I could.

  See me.

  The shadowy figure in the back didn’t move. I couldn’t tell if they were looking in my direction or studiously ignoring me.

  “Gabriel?” I said.

  Hear me.

  “Gabriel!”

  The car moved. I flattened my hands against the window, desperate for an answer.

  But none came. The limo turned right into the lot, back license plate cleaner than the front. Blue on white. Readable.

  Z1C-136

  The limo pulled all the way into the parking lot entrance, disappearing into the warm belly of Lincoln Center.

  Chapter 18

  LOS ANGELES - 1993

  Having access to as much money as I wanted granted me just enough freedom to blind me to the fact that I was a captive to it. Legally, I was a grown woman. Realistically, I was a ward of the Drazen family. In particular, my father, who couldn’t have planned a more perfect way to delay the onset of mature
self-determination.

  “Your card won’t go through,” Lindsay said, pushing up her glasses. She worked in one of my father’s offices and had booked first-class plane tickets for me a dozen times. “I’ll use the corporate Amex.”

  “No.”

  Lindsay tilted her head curiously, her blown-out bangs a ruler-straight line across her forehead. “It’s not a problem.”

  It was a problem. If I put the trip to Venice on my card, I could tell my parents I’d gone to Paris with my friends. Lindsay wouldn’t mention the destination in the swell of the organization’s business travel. But accounting went through the corporate expenses with a fine-tooth comb. I found that out when I was twelve, after Daddy’s personal assistant had signed off on my shopping trip to Bendel’s. She’d gotten fired for being “sloppy” and I’d gotten my own card. Which no one would check and which wouldn’t work. Meanwhile, if he found out I went to Venice and put two and two together… well, I didn’t want him to know about Gabriel. He was separate. Uninfluenced by manila envelopes or business dealings. He was mine, and he was going to stay that way as long as I could manage it.

  So I called the credit card company.

  Travel expenses had been restricted by the card owner.

  That was my parents.

  I found my mother at the tennis club. She was sitting with her friends at a table, having post-match drinks.

  “Mom,” I said. “Can I talk to you?”

  We went to the patio overlooking the pool. The waiter brought her drink out and gave me a menu I put to the side.

  “What’s wrong, Carrie?”

  “I tried to book a trip and my card got rejected? You said I could go away with my friends after graduation.”

  “Oh, we were going to tell you this weekend.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Well.” She downed the last of her gin and tonic. “I was going to surprise you with a trip and I didn’t want you booking anything else before I told you.” She smiled slyly. “We’re going on an African safari! Just you and me.”

  “When?”

  “Next week. June first.” She put her hands on mine. “Four weeks. Mindy Callihan did it last year and said it was—”