Dark Intentions, #1

by Charlotte Byrd

“Oh, c’mon,” she pleads. “It'll be a lot more fun than simply going to a bar and picking up some stranger. And if you don’t want to do anything, you don’t have to. We can just go to the lounge for a little bit, feel the room out."

  I tap my fingers on the table thinking, popping another French fry into my mouth.

  "Besides, you know you want to come. I mean, what if Dante shows up?" Allison says, raising an eyebrow.

  My heart skips a beat.

  I lick my lips.

  As soon as our eyes meet again, she giggles and says, "Yeah, you'll be there."

  When I sent back an email to Cassandra telling her that I’d be there, she replied "Yes" with a smiling emoji.

  I'm tempted to ask if Dante will be there as well. I put my fingers on the keys to try to write her about it but I can’t bring myself to do it.

  My nerves get the best of me as I sit with my laptop on the couch while my mom sleeps in the other room.

  I know that this is going to be fun. I deserve this. There's going to be days and days of waiting in a hospital room, and then just holding my breath to see whether the treatment works, and I need something good in my life to excite me.

  In the beginning, the first time that I went to Redemption, it was a way to put my brother's death behind me, but now it's something different.

  It's a way to celebrate. But it’s also about possibly seeing him again. I feel like a fool, but I need to know whether our connection was real. Not in the sense that I'm expecting it to go any further, but in the sense that I didn't just dream Dante up. I didn't just imagine this guy that swept me off my feet and showed me what real chemistry in the bedroom feels like.

  Afternoon rain rolls in and I grab a blanket from the cubby in the corner and wrap myself in it. I love times like this when you have nowhere to go and nothing to do. The problem is that I've allowed the rain and all the mourning of my brother to throw me off course.

  What do I do now if my mom recovers? No, when she recovers?

  Where do I go?

  What do I do?

  I have to make some decisions about my life and I don’t know where to start.

  I pull out my Kindle, find one of my favorite authors, and start to read. I haven't been able to focus on anything, let alone fiction for a long time, but now the words sweep me away.

  Two hours later when Mom wakes up and wobbles into the living room, I look up and finish reading the last page of the book that I started before Michael's death.

  "I actually read this whole thing," I tell her. "I tried so many times since before ..."

  My words trail off. I don't want to say his name. I don't want to mention his death or funeral out loud, but she gets the point.

  "And now that was the first time I got really engrossed and just lost myself in the story."

  "Good," Mom says, walking over and kissing me on the top of my head. "That's what you want. Time heals all things." And suddenly I want to cry. "No, it doesn't mean that you're going to forget him," Mom says, shaking her head. "None of us will, but you have to live your life and you can't just be perpetually stuck in this loop of mourning and sadness."

  "Yeah, I know," I mumble, swallowing back the lump in my throat that is just about to pull the tears all the way to the surface. "I'm just so happy you got this approval for the treatment, and we're going there on Monday."

  "Yeah, me, too. Tell me. I know I asked you this before, but did you get yourself in trouble doing something like this?"

  I shake my head no quickly.

  "You can tell me."

  "No, not at all. I didn't do anything. I have no idea who even gave the money."

  "I'm not going to be mad at you," Mom says. "The thing is that after all that time and all those years with your father, I'm used to the deception. I know that just like him, you did it for a greater good. So was it Blackjack? Poker? Something else?”

  "No, it was none of that."

  "Okay, fine. Keep your secrets to yourself, but if I do get sicker and I'm on my death bed, I expect you to tell me the truth."

  She's joking. This is her idea of a dark sense of humor.

  "Come on, don't talk like that. The treatment's going to work."

  "Let's hope so," Mom says, squeezing my cheek a little too tightly between her index finger and thumb.

  "Listen, I'm going to go out tonight with Allison to a club. I'm meeting her at ten."

  "Okay. I don't know how you can stay out so late, but have a good time. You deserve it. Celebrate for both of us."

  I nod. "I will."

  Later that evening after regretfully eating some macaroni and cheese and getting little bit too bloated as a result, I consider canceling the whole endeavor altogether.

  My dress doesn't fit well. I feel like I'm retaining water, and suddenly I look like I'm twenty pounds heavier than I used to be, and I wasn't particularly thin to start with.

  "I can't go.” I shake my head when I call Allison at nine.

  "What are you talking about, you can't go? Of course, you're going."

  She turns on video chat and she rolls her eyes when she sees my face on the other end.

  "Haven't you even washed your hair?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "So why does it look like that?"

  I glance at my reflection in the phone.

  “Well, it dried and I didn't dry it with the blow dryer."

  "Get a flat iron and fix it. It's all frizzy and curly in weird spots."

  "Look, I don't need to do that because I'm not going. I’ve changed my mind."

  "I know you're just freaking out. I know that you're this huge introvert who loves nothing better than canceling plans."

  "What are you talking about?" I ask, pulling the phone away from my face and scrunching up my eyebrows.

  "I read about you. There was like a whole article about it on Apple News. You're one of those people that, you know, loves the idea of making plans, loves the idea of going somewhere, but then flakes out. You do that all the time. Apparently, it's a whole introvert thing."

  "I wouldn't know anything about it." I roll my eyes.

  “I'm going to come to your house, help you get ready, and then we're going to go to Redemption and find Dante."

  "He's not even going to be there,” I say, moping.

  "You don't know that. This is a big party."

  I shake my head.

  "I'm going to be there in ten minutes. I expect you to open the door."

  19

  Jacqueline

  I'm still on the fence about whether or not I want to go to this party tonight. I have a simple cocktail dress, no gown, and no mask.

  I looked at the Party City store, but everything looked pretty cheap and not particularly alluring, almost comical in design.

  I should have ordered one online, but I had no plans of coming until recently. Still, Allison is right.

  I do have a tendency to cancel on plans at the very last minute. It's like I just have this anxiety about going and I don't want to.

  I always think that I will have a great time and plan on going, but when the time actually comes, I want to stay home.

  It was like that the first time I went there.

  It was like that the second, but going there with Allison tonight?

  I don't know.

  The doorbell rings and she looks stunning.

  High heels, floor-length gown, hair in thick, flowing curls down her long neck.

  Her makeup is flawless. Her face is contoured and the winged eyeliner around her eyes brings out their green color.

  "You look amazing," I say, looking at my own sweats and my pasty complexion.

  “You will look great, too. C’mon.” She grabs my hand and pulls me toward my bedroom. “It'll be like the good old days."

  The ceilings of the room are abnormally low and waterlogged in parts from a recent flooding. But luckily, everything in the overstuffed closet wasn’t affected.

  Allison looks through my clothes, pushing aside eac
h item with great force before spotting the cocktail dress that I was thinking of wearing. "This will be perfect."

  "Okay. What about the fact that everyone's going to be in gowns?"

  "You can never go wrong with a short black dress. You know that."

  "I'm going to be really underdressed."

  "No, you're not. Besides, it’s better to be underdressed than overdressed. What if everyone there is wearing short dresses like yours and I’m dressed like Miss America?”

  "Yeah. It would be really embarrassing to look like Miss America." I say, my voice steeped in sarcasm.

  "Sit down.” She pushes me down to the floor, taking off her heels, and gets on her knees behind me.

  This is the way that she would always do my hair and makeup back at Dartmouth. I was like her doll. I never liked to do it myself, and she loved to do mine.

  On this occasion, just like before, she even came prepared with a little bag of her own tools, including the hairdryer and some of her favorite makeup brushes.

  "Look, I don't know if I really want to go to this thing," I say, as she lines my eyes after applying foundation to my face.

  "It's going to be fun.” She gestures for me to pucker my lips.

  "Why can’t we just go to a regular club?"

  "What is it that you don't like about this place?"

  "I don't know. It's just stupid. I guess it's the expectation, you know? It's like everyone you meet, there's like a point to go into the back room. You can't just chat and get a number and that's it."

  "I thought that's what you liked about it.” She furrows her brows.

  "I did, but ..."

  "Man, this Dante guy really got in your head, didn't he?” She pulls the brush away from my face and peers into my eyes.

  "No." I shake my head, but feel myself blushing.

  "Yes, he did. I mean, look at how you're acting."

  "I just don't think that place is for me."

  I tell her to turn around so that I can put on the dress, and when I look at myself in the mirror with the way that she has styled my hair and done my makeup, I'm shocked.

  I look so different and yet the same, but it's almost like different features have been highlighted.

  My cheekbones are suddenly pronounced, my lips are thicker, my eyes are bigger, but yet at the same time I look thinner and more toned.

  "How did you do this?" I gasp.

  "Contouring goes a long way.” Allison smiles, proud of her work. "So are we going to Redemption or what?”

  "I don't have a mask.” I shake my head.

  "You're in luck. I have two."

  “Of course, you do.” I let out a deep sigh of exasperation. “Fine. But I'm just going to hang out in the lounge area. I don’t want any pressure."

  We take a ride share car over to the club and drop our coats off upfront. Cassandra's there and flashes a smile of approval.

  "You ladies look beautiful tonight," she says in the smooth voice of a late night radio disc jockey. "And those masks, exquisite."

  "I got them in Venice,” Allison announces.

  "You did?" Cassandra gushes, dressed in a floor-length, shimmery silver gown. Moving fluidly back and forth, she reminds me of a snowflake falling from the sky.

  I'm again tempted to ask her about Dante, but I bite my tongue.

  Allison grabs our drinks and we find a comfortable spot in the corner of the lounge area near the big purple velvet chairs. From here, we can survey the whole room, including the bar area, the entrance, and the dance floor and see if anyone interesting comes around.

  Being back here makes us also a bit difficult to approach since we aren’t sitting anywhere prominent like the bar.

  That's fine by me, but Allison looks frustrated.

  "No one's going to talk to us here."

  "Listen, I'm here. I said I would come. What more do you want?”

  Allison twirls her bangles around her wrist and taps her foot on the floor.

  "I wasn't going to tell you this, but I was going to try something new tonight,” she says, tucking a thick curl of hair behind her ear.

  "What are you talking about?” I narrow my eyes.

  "I am going to kiss a girl."

  "Wow." I pull my mask away from my face and lean closer to her. "What do you mean?"

  "Well, I've never kissed one before, so I thought that I would here. You see all these couples and their friends. It looks… nice."

  "You want to be the guest star in someone else's relationship?" I ask with a tinge of sarcasm.

  She shrugs her shoulders, tilting her head from one side to another. "Yeah, maybe. What's wrong with that?"

  "No, nothing. I mean, I guess everyone here likes that."

  "Look, you could be a little bit less judgmental."

  "No, I'm not. Sorry. I'm just in a bad mood. I'm not judging you at all. Obviously, I want you to have fun and do whatever you want."

  "I know what's going on here.” Allison narrows her eyes. "You're jealous."

  "I'm jealous?" This takes me by surprise. I sit back in my chair and take a sip of my martini. "What would I be jealous of?"

  "Maybe you want my first time kissing a girl to be with you. I mean, we have been friends since college. We've seen many of our roommates make out with each other at parties."

  "Yeah, to impress some guys in fraternities. That's pathetic,” I say, making a face.

  “Of course, it’s pathetic, but still. They got to experience something interesting. Haven't you ever thought about it?"

  "Um, frankly, no, not really. I mean, girls are hot, sexy, curvy, but I'm not sexually attracted to them. Or to you."

  "Fine," Allison says exasperated. "I'm going to go find me a date."

  She lifts her hands, wrapping her thin, manicured fingers around the sides of the couch, pulling herself up to her feet.

  "Boy or girl?" I yell off to her.

  She flips her hair back and stares me down, and then we both crack up laughing.

  Allison and I have known each other for a long time.

  We met in Hanover, New Hampshire, and we were inseparable for four years.

  We like to stream the same shows, we laugh at the same jokes. Still, there are parts of her that I don't understand, and of course there are parts of me that she doesn't either.

  When my mom first got sick, I didn't hear from Allison for a while. I was angry, upset. I wished she would have at least texted, let alone sent me something.

  I felt like I was forgotten, but then we talked about it and she apologized. She told me that she just had a hard time dealing with trauma like that.

  She wanted to be there for me, but she couldn't deal with hospitals, and she didn't even want to talk to me about it.

  I didn't understand.

  There were months when we didn't talk, but after a while, I realized that it would be more important for me to have a friend on whatever terms and to have her in my life instead of judging her for not being there for me.

  Some things are hard for some people, and I was willing to understand that.

  But when Michael died, things changed.

  Allison sent flowers. She wrote me a poignant card.

  She cried with me at the funeral and she held my hand. She cried so much, and her tears were so heartfelt, and I felt like we were united by our grief.

  I didn't realize that she would be that emotional, and my heart suddenly went out to her. She wasn't lying when she said that she couldn't deal with death.

  She was telling me the truth.

  I sit in the back and nurse my drink and watch the couples pair off and flirt and run their hands casually around each other's waists.

  It’s not just couples either; some break up into threesomes and foursomes. It's a mixture of gowns and cocktail attire, but everyone's wearing a mask. The suits look expensive, the watches even more so, and the hair and the dresses are flawless.

  After a few minutes and I get a jolt of liquid courage from my martini, I start to feel a
little peppier.

  The last time I came here, I sat front and center available to talk to anyone. But out here in the corner as a wallflower, it feels so much more safe.

  I can observe, I can be here, but I'm not bound to participate.

  It's true what Allison said. For anyone to talk to me, they'd have to break away from their group, walk all the way over here to the darkness, and have something to say.

  No one has done that, and hopefully no one will, and, frankly, that's perfectly fine with me.

  “Jacqueline?” he says and shivers run down my spine.

  20

  Dante

  It's a crisp April day. The air is just turning a little bit warm, but the darkness is still hanging around.

  I love coming back to New York. The trees are naked, waiting for the green buds to sprout, but the streets are busy full of life.

  I have an apartment here that waits for me as my home base. I arrived early and immediately traveled to Manhattan for work.

  The meeting went well. The CEO was prepared. He gave a good presentation and all of his financials seemed to be in order.

  The wine starts to flow as soon as I arrive. My brother and I work a lot of hours. We don't get to spend too much time together and when we do get a little bit of one-on-one without our mom or Marguerite, I revel in it. I don't have a problem with his wife, but with three people the dynamic is a little bit different.

  My brother and I were never particularly close growing up. He was a lot more into video games. I was a lot more into the stock market and sports, but as we got older, we appreciated each other a little bit more.

  I'm four years older than he is and when we were kids, it felt like a lifetime. I was graduating from high school when he was just entering, and I was already in ninth grade when he was just leaving elementary school.

  But after college, we took a trip to South Africa together. We went on a safari, not to shoot any animals, but to look at them, and marvel at the wild. I was going through a photography phase, and I still have some of the photographs from that trip framed in my somewhat abandoned New York apartment.

  "Thanks for meeting up with me," Lincoln says, giving me a smile.