by Rissa Brahm
Preeya found a pencil-line smile for Dawn while Dawn just stared back at her and shrugged her leather-geared shoulders. “Okay, suit yourself. I have enough to deal with here, anyway.”
Josh grunted and swore not under his breath.
Skip the payback and call a cab, Preeya…then shower and get the hell gone already!
No. Preeya’s nostrils flared, eyes widened, throat thick.
Dawn kicked back through the beer cans and trash toward the door, seemingly done with the excitement of the grand water wake-up plan. “Come on.”
Still, no. Preeya patted the water bottle in her hand like a football, then tilted her head at Josh. She moved to the bedside and lifted the covers, exposing Josh’s naked midsection. As Preeya’s lips lifted into a shit-eating grin, her arm—with the crystal clear liquid—lifted, too. She could hear Dawn’s gasps of muted laughter as Preeya held the bottle over Josh’s limp dick and bare ass, all tucked in tight to himself.
A tingle of joy sprinted up her spine as she began to tip the bottle—slow at first, just to get the water to the neck then to the opening, anticipating the reaction she’d relish and remember forever. Dawn appeared at the corner of her view, camera phone in hand.
“Ready,” Dawn whispered, her shared zeal glowing.
Preeya inhaled, then flipped her wrist.
A fast flow of pure Washington State spring water splashed down on Josh’s naked, ultra-defined and sought-after body, while Preeya’s spirits soared.
*
Gasping, screaming, snarling, Josh Bolte bolted up and out of bed.
Finally, the king had risen.
Dawn rolled around on the putrid floor dying, camera phone still in hand, pointed up at a wet and naked Josh.
His eyes were wild, but thankfully focused on drying himself off, rather than finding the source of his rude awakening—Preeya, who cried harder now from hysterical laughter than she had from her earlier poor-me sulk-fest. And she just couldn’t stop, which made Dawn laugh harder.
Josh—growling, shivering—reached for the jeans Dawn had thrown at him earlier. At one leg in, he keeled over, held his gut with one hand, his mouth with the other, then he ran—hopped, really—to the bathroom. He slammed the door then retched his guts out.
“What, no guest room floor?” Preeya asked Dawn with a lift of her brow.
“Thank God,” Dawn blurted, patting Preeya on the arm, then made her way to the bathroom door and pounded it with her right fist. “Now get cleaned up, asshole!” she added for good measure while Preeya crushed the empty water bottle in her hands. The loud crinkling didn’t overshadow Josh’s cursing between heaves, but Preeya found him way easier to ignore now.
Dawn smiled. “Come on, Josh’s…old friend. You can use one of the other showers.”
“Thanks. God, do I need one—or five.” She felt her hair again and then looked down at herself, still wrapped in the sheet. “I just have to find the rest of my things.” She grimaced, then peeked under the bed.
“Right. I’ll grab you a clean towel from Otto’s room while you do that. Be right back.”
“By the way, my name’s Preeya. And…thanks.”
Dawn nodded then disappeared while Josh still swore-spewed-flushed-repeated and Preeya hunted for her roller bag in the never-to-be-forgotten guest room.
*
She found her purse and carry-on in the corner of the room behind the closet door.
“Preeya,” Dawn said as if to herself, standing in the doorway with a white fluffy towel. “Preeya?”
“Yeah. Preeya. It’s East Indian.”
Dawn studied her face, right eye squinting.
Preeya smiled, but she really didn’t have time for games. “Preeya Patel.” What?
“Are you the “Guest Room” Preeya? From the song?”
Preeya looked at Dawn, then lifted her unbelieving gaze to the ceiling. It seemed that Josh had, at some point in the past, spoken of her, of them—however, whenever, whatever. Preeya wanted to fall down on her knees laughing, but she was too tired and ill—and too late—to do anything but smirk. “Yes. That’s me…or should I say, that was me.”
“Well isn’t this ironic?” Dawn said, slamming the guest room door—most definitely for Josh’s benefit.
“Pretty ironic, yes.” Preeya hadn’t noted the déjà vu irony until now. The song inspired by their first night together in that very guest room seven years earlier.
“Hey, listen, when you’re sick of dealing with disappointing dickheads,” the petite drill sergeant said, examining Preeya up and down with no subtle appetite, then nodded with approval, “I’d be honored, Ms. Preeya ‘Guest Room’ Patel, to show you the other side. There are no flaccid cocks in my toy drawer, I can promise you that.”
And with that invitation to lesbianism, Preeya crossed the threshold of the clean and pristine hallway bathroom with her roller bag in tow and her uniform bundled under her arm. She nodded her thanks and smiled. “I’m pretty sure, Dawn, that I’m stuck on men. What type of man? Hell if I know anymore…if I ever knew.” Because from Wildfire Josh to Safe-and-Secure Evan—and every guy in between—she couldn’t for the life of her say what the man of her wildest dreams looked like, who he’d turn out to be. Hell, she couldn’t even say she knew who she was at this point. Preeya rolled her eyes. She only knew that she needed to make that flight to Puerto Vallarta. To that destination wedding. She’d have to figure the rest out from there.
Dawn nodded, accepting the gently put rejection. “Well, the offer stands if you change your mind.”
Preeya smiled and blinked, then put her stuff on the counter—and got an unwelcome first glimpse of herself in the bathroom mirror. Not good. And being out of that guest room, she got an objective whiff of her hair. God, she needed a scour, not a shower. She glanced at her phone to see how much time she had for her hair and makeup before—oh crap. “The cab!” She hadn’t even called for one yet.
“Already called one for you.” Dawn winked as she reached for the doorknob.
Preeya’s chest decompressed. “You’re a lifesaver.” Preeya could have kissed the woman.
“Nope. Just a band manager slash doormat.” Dawn snorted. “I’ll give you that privacy now.”
The door closed, leaving Preeya alone in the new space with new sound—the streaming shower. The contrast lulled her…and agitated her at the same time. Quiet and alone was a thing. Not a good thing.
Relax, Pree.
She took a moment to adjust her breathing then dropped the sheet and kicked it into the corner.
Focus on moving your ass.
Right. She stepped into the steaming-hot shower and washed off, scrubbed off the past hours of regret and shame and embarrassment and disappointment—and all the past delusions, too. In a matter of hours, no more Seattle clouds—hello Vallarta sunshine.
*
Preeya sat on the front stoop, her knee bouncing as the next cab-less minute passed. Anxiety pinched the nerves in her neck. She just needed a distraction, company, something, someone—always. Short or long stints of solitary time, it didn’t matter. Being on her own just freaked her the hell out. Ever since she could remember, Gigi had been the only solution. When her chest got tight to the point of panic, she’d call her best friend and Gigi’s voice would carry her through.
Monophobia. Geej had looked it up. One remedy besides therapy she’d never tried: take ten slow, full breaths. Since she didn’t have the balls to call Gigi yet, and the tightness in her chest was tightening, she began to count out her breaths and hoped like hell for the cab to appear.
But nothing. No cab, tighter chest.
And through the stupid breathing exercise she’d caught the lingering stench from the guest bedroom on her clothes, damn it. She reached into her purse for her 3.4-ounce bottle of coconut-lime body spray. Good scent, good distraction. She applied two squirts of faux freshness to her uniform, then slipped the sweet-scented spray back in her purse.
Back to solitary silence, she swallo
wed, sighed, then sat up straighter. Maybe her chest would fill if she threw her shoulders back and expanded her rib cage. But, no. Shit. Mildly frantic, she glanced at her phone for the time. She growled then chucked the phone back in her purse between her book and her zippered pouch of personal keepsakes.
Hmm. She knew one thing inside that pouch could distract her from her locked-up lungs, the late cab, the shadow of nausea from Josh-night, her job’s possible end, and the real likelihood that she’d miss more than one wedding this weekend.
She smacked her lips and unzipped the plastic case. An essential scrapbook at her fingertips, with boarding pass stubs of international firsts, ticket stubs from favorite concerts—Carnal Knowledge not among them—smashed pennies, drawings from her kid sister, Prana, and photos. Gigi, Prana, Amy, Amanda. Ah, and the only pic of her and her mother—at the Free Tibet Fest when Preeya was six. She paused her fingers and closed her eyes. The recollected scent of sandalwood incense and fried dough drifted through her mind. Her lungs filled with one full intake of relief. Not the item she’d been focused on finding, but she already felt better.
She held up the photo and sighed, then put it back to continue the hunt while the image of her mom lingered. She hiccupped a laugh. Jenny Patel was the exact opposite of Preeya in appearance—too many times had people assumed that her mother was the nanny—until people noticed their eyes. The same color, shape, angle, depth, and placement. Otherwise, her father’s East Indian genetics overrode all. But nothing more of her father would take hold in Preeya. No goddamn way.
“Still no cab?”
Preeya’s hand flew to her chest as she turned to find Dawn standing behind her on the screened-in porch.
“Not yet.” Back teeth gnashed, Preeya forced herself to keep calm. At least she was no longer alone, right?
“Memory lane while you wait, eh?” Dawn opened the screen door and plopped down next to Preeya on the porch steps. “What’s that?” Dawn reached for the folded sheet of paper, the next item in the pouch, but Preeya grabbed it and grinned semi-politely.
“Uh, a picture my little sister drew for me.” From the last time Preeya was down at SafeHaven. She pulled out the page and opened it, sensing Dawn would hover there until Preeya showed her. Staring up from the page, two stick figures on a rainbow holding hands. Preeya let out a laugh—her sister, Prana, loved drawing Preeya with a humongous heart near her stick-figure chest, always far bigger than Preeya’s head.
“Are those wings on your legs?”
Preeya chuckled. “Full-body wings, I guess. She only understands that I fly for my job.” She swallowed back the knot moving up her throat. “She’s in a special needs facility in Northern Cali. She’s pretty literal, delayed processes and all. She’s seventeen now, but on a first-grade level…” And declining. Preeya smiled with her mouth, not her eyes, outlining the wings with her index finger. Funny, her sister had drawn Preeya with wings well before she’d begun flying for a living.
“Wings like an angel,” Dawn said, eyes on the page.
“Hmm.” Strange, from a stranger.
Weirder was the knot in Preeya’s throat. It morphed into a fast surge of guilt that cascaded down to Preeya’s stomach. She’d been anything but an angel lately, anything but worthy of the brand of pure, unconditional love her sweet sister gifted her with. Since leaving Berkeley, leaving med school, becoming an FA, Preeya’s visits to her sister were less and less frequent. And with their mother gone, their father self-absorbed, her sister was truly alone down there.
“Sweet picture.” Dawn nodded, then pulled out a cigarette and offered Preeya one.
“No, thanks. I don’t smoke and, uh, if you don’t mind…the uniform already smells…interesting.”
“Right, sorry.” Dawn put the cigarette behind her ear and the pack in her pocket. “Your sis—”
Buzz. Preeya’s cell phone. “Sorry.” She glanced at the screen. Her father. She hit Decline without a thought. Nothing would deter her from Amy’s wedding. Not a word, not a guilt trip. Nothing. Her father replacing her mother with one of his superficial, cosmetically enhanced gold diggers—she meant patients—God, it made her feel more nauseous than she’d been in the guest room.
“Ignoring someone?”
“Yeah, er, no.”
“Sorry. Not my business.”
“It’s not that.” Well, yes it is. “I just don’t want to think about anything except for catching my flight.”
Silence. Dawn sighed as Preeya pinched the bridge of her nose to relieve the headache between her eyes.
“So, who was that pretty lady in the Free Tibet pic?”
What happened to none of your business? “Uh…”
“Sorry, too personal?”
Preeya narrowed her eyes at the woman. “Dawn, how long had you been standing behind me?”
“Not long, and I actually wasn’t standing. I was sitting in the porch swing—needed a breather from the fumes inside.”
Preeya couldn’t blame the woman on that count. But, wow, weird vibes, no boundary lines. But it seems the norm of the day?
Preeya could be a bitch, rake the woman over for, well, kind of snooping and sort of hitting on her despite Preeya’s man-only proclamation—or she could just go with it. “My mother. It was my mother.”
“Was? So when did she skip out on you?”
“What?”
“Your mom…when did she ditch you?”
Preeya choked on a gulp of air stuck in her parched throat. “How do you know she left? What if she’d…died?”
“Nah, she didn’t die. Hating your dad for marrying someone new when you’re, you know, an adult…you would want your dad to move on if she’d died. But you’re pissed. You feel he’s betraying her and, therefore, he’s betraying you. Yeah, I’m pretty sure she’s alive and well…somewhere?”
“Wait.” Preeya’s eyes narrowed, darting. “How do you know I’m pissed at my father? How do you know anything about…anything? Me?”
Her chest heaved, her pulse raced. What the hell?
She was accustomed to Gigi’s sixth-sense intuition, but it was too rare to expect from anyone else. So that meant this chick had been—what?—digging in her stuff? She’d already barged in on her and Josh—a good thing in the end, but still—then snuck up on her, looking over her shoulder for who-knows-how-long from the porch swing, and finger-diving into her zipper pouch of keepsakes. Why would the woman be above, well, anything sleazy? After all, she was an acquaintance of Josh’s, right?
“Sorry. I’m a nosy bitch,” Dawn said, laughing. “But if you’ll just cool your tits for a second—”
“Excuse me?”
“Listen, I’m a band manager of five very dysfunctional men. I don’t have a line anymore when it comes to…you know—”
“Privacy? Etiquette? Manners? Hell, aren’t you Canadian?”
“Yes to all of the above.” Dawn just shrugged as her laughter faded. “Hey, I’ve saved the band more times than I can count with my alternative methods.” She cracked up again. “Talk to me when you’ve seen a six-foot-five tattooed monster cry like a baby because of my digging—Otto…abandonment issues. But if it gets them up onstage, it’s gotta be done.”
Preeya gritted her back teeth and tried to chill. This woman had backed her up with Josh, called her a cab—wherever the hell it was—and when it came right down to it, Dawn’s unsolicited analysis of Preeya’s family matters was, well…right.
Right. On. Point.
Damn it. Was she that transparent?
Preeya swallowed in surrender. “How did you do that?”
“Two and two, dude, two and two. The ‘weddings, plural’ and the way you got all emotional over your mother’s picture…then you declined a call from a Dr. Indra Patel. His tiny screen icon clued me in—he’s definitely your father.”
Preeya grimaced.
“Except for the eyes, of course. Those are obviously your mom’s and they’re out of this world. Unbelievable, really. Violet, like in the s
ong.” The woman looked closer, harder, almost like…like Dawn wanted to kiss her. Preeya pulled away to put some space between them because, yes, the vibe had definitely gone there.
While ignoring the compliment and Dawn’s second attempt at sexual-preference conversion, Preeya lifted a brow at the woman. “Seriously?”
Dawn cracked up. “Just fucking with you.”
“You can stop then. Not much for jokes right now.” She grabbed a frustration-clearing breath. “And they’re not violet. They’re near violet. Deep blue, really.” Preeya never liked the attention she got for her eyes, the stares.
“Okay…well, while I don’t look deep into those near-violet eyes of yours, tell me, am I right? About your mom? I usually am. It’s a thing.”
Preeya stared at Dawn for a long moment then sighed. She hated talking about her mother, but here she was, stuck on this porch step waiting for the slowest cab in history. “She left to live on an ashram in India when I was seven. Gave up her name, her possessions, everything for—”
“Wait. You’re fucking with me. She gave up her possessions, like, her CDs and her clothes, and…her fucking kids?”
Preeya rolled her eyes, but before she could get a word in edgewise—
“That’s from some movie. No mom leaves her family to feed the starving children of—”
“That’s exactly what she did.”
“That shit’s fucked. Totally fucked-to-the-wall fucked. I mean, she pulled a Mother Teresa with a family-abandonment twist?”
Preeya scoffed. The standard reaction, though she thought or hoped that a near-midget lesbian might have a broader perspective than most. “I get that you, well, don’t get it.” Gigi was maybe the only one in the world who didn’t make her defend her mother. “But my mom’s, like, a saint. And I’m proud of her. For her to leave us, my sister and me and my dad…it’s what she felt she had to do. She’s helping hundreds of children, mothers, people every day.”
“Still…it’s crazy! As strange as it goddamn gets.” Dawn squinted at Preeya then searched her face.
Preeya met her eyes with apathy.
Dawn tilted her head. “Well, I guess…just because I haven’t heard of anyone in my entire life doing something so insane doesn’t mean it’s not…a good…selfless thing. A pretty huge thing, I guess? A humanitarian thing?”
