Mr. North

by Callie Hart

  “It was a drone,” he calls out. “I heard it when we were together, but I didn’t think anything of it. There are always so many helicopters buzzing around the skies here that it didn’t even register at the time. I’ve shot down two of the fuckers since this morning. None of them have had markings on them, but I’m pretty sure they belong to the news crews.”

  My heart is a fist in the hollow of my throat. At his feet, I see it—the debris. Broken pieces of plastic and glass. Twisted pieces of metal. I heard the whir of blades the other day, too. I assumed the same as Raphael—that it was just another helicopter. I’ve always been kind of entertained by the idea of drones. The prospect of having goods delivered by them, anywhere, anytime, always seemed like such an amazing idea. Now, I hate them beyond measure. They should be outlawed, banned countrywide. Fucking perverts, using them like that to spy on unwilling, unwitting people. I suppose technology has already been used to spy on unwitting people for years now, but drones make it too fucking easy.

  My skin prickles, ice running through my veins. Raphael turns around, and the look on his face says it all. He’s ready to commit murder. He’s ready to tear someone limb from limb. He’s ready to go to motherfucking war. He lunges for me, taking three long strides, and then his arms are around me, holding onto me tight. I haven’t really given myself permission to think about how I might feel when I saw him again. I’ve purposefully stopped myself from even considering it, because when I left the Osiris yesterday evening, I felt light. Safe. Smitten, and so vulnerable. I kept thinking about the amazing, intense, private moment we shared, where he touched and caressed me, made me come alive under his hands. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way our bodies joined together and how perfect everything felt.

  As soon as I saw that footage on the news, though, all of that changed. Listening to those bastards on the screen tearing apart every touch, every look, every moment our bodies met, made me feel like I’d imagined it all. They made me feel like the emotion and the pleasure I experienced when I was with him wasn’t as perfect as I’d originally thought. That maybe Raph was as unimpressed by me as the gossip columns and the reporters were.

  Now that I’m standing here in his arms, feeling his heart beating out of his chest the same way mine is, I’m filled with anger for doubting myself. This is real. It was real yesterday, and it’s real now. I can feel the connection between us pulling taut, something physical, a tether that links us together. That can’t be seen on a television screen. And just because an entire city of people analyzed our interaction, doesn’t mean it’s no longer invaluable.

  It did mean something. It still does. One second, I’m trying to catch my breath, my face pressed into Raph’s torn Star Wars shirt, the next I’m clinging to him, my fingernails digging into his shoulder blades, and I’m sobbing. I can’t decide if I’m sad or relieved. All I know is that I am so glad to be in his arms right now, no matter the circumstances. Raphael runs his hand over my hair, whispering soothing things into my ear. “It’s okay. It’s okay, Beth. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. I won’t let it happen again, I swear it. I will never let them attack you like this again. Shhh. Shhh. It’s okay.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” I ask, leaning away from his chest. “Am I supposed to talk to them? Am I supposed take out a restraining order against the entire press? I can’t even go to the bathroom without someone being in there, glaring at me, ready to grill me about you. About…us . And there isn’t even really an us . I—”

  Raphael gently places his index finger over my lips, cutting me off. “There absolutely is an us. If you still want there to be. I understand if this is all too much and you don’t want to see me again. I do understand. I won’t like it, but I’ll accept your decision if you decide you don’t want to meet with me again. But let me follow that up with this: no one will ever love you like I can. No one will ever care for your heart the same way I will. And no one will ever light you on fire the way I swear I will for the rest of my fucking life, either, Beth. I’m a focused man. I’ve set my sights on making you the happiest woman on the face of the fucking planet. I know we’re not off to a very good start, but I swear to god and all things holy I will protect you, Beth. When I find out who sold that footage, I am going to rain down hell fire on them, the likes of which they have never known. They’re going to wish they’d never been born. And I will find out who was responsible. I have people working on it already. There won’t be a stone left unturned in this godforsaken city until I locate and punish the motherfucker who caused you pain, believe me.”

  I do believe him. There’s a dangerous, mad glint in his eye that tells me he wants to deal with this issue personally. He wants to use his fists to teach the person who invaded our privacy a lesson. A severe beating isn’t going to be enough. He wants them fucking dead . I do, too, but Raphael looks furious enough that he’d be willing to commit the act himself.

  “I don’t care who did it,” I whisper. “I just want to be able to walk down the street without being judged. I didn’t know about the farm. I didn’t have a clue Mom was on the brink of foreclosure. Now that the public knows every single little dirty secret about my family’s financial issues, they’re all coming to the same conclusion. I’m fucking you for your money. I can’t bear it.” My tears chase down my cheeks even faster. This is the first time I’ve allowed myself to fall apart. I’ve been so intent and determined to hold everything together since David showed up at my place last night that it’s been hard to release the steel grip I have on my own pain. Now that I’m giving in to it, it feels like it’s taking me out at the knees.

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of it,” Raphael tells me. He uses his thumb to wipe away my tears. Leaning down, he stoops so that our eyes are level.

  “I’m going to take care of everything. You don’t need to worry about a thing from now on, okay? I swear it.”

  I shouldn’t take him at his word. Not because I don’t believe he means it, but because it’s going to be virtually impossible for him to achieve what he’s talking about. Freedom of the press is taken care of under the First Amendment. The law does not bend or break to Raphael North’s will, no matter how many decimal places his bank balance goes to. He can’t force them to leave me alone simply because he wants them to. That’s not the way the world works.

  “It’s not just that,” I say, doing my best to fight back my tears. “I lost my job at the library today. They fired me.”

  Raphael growls in the back of his throat. “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds that the library is a place of study and relaxation, and should be quiet at all times, not filled with camera crews, looking to question me or harass my colleagues about me.”

  “They can’t do that.”

  “Well, they did.”

  “I’ll cover whatever salary you’ve lost then. It’s the least I can do.”

  “No!” I shove away from him, reeling back, out of his arms. “You can’t give me a cent. Not ever. I’ve told you, Raph. I don’t want your money.”

  His body tenses, a hard edge to his voice when he speaks. “You lost your job because of me. It’s my fault.”

  “No, Raphael. I mean it.”

  He clenches his jaw. “I have plenty of money. Might as well put it to good use.”

  “I can’t believe you’d even think that right now. Not after all the hateful things they’re saying about me in the papers. I refuse to continue with this conversation.”

  He folds his arms across his chest, visibly riled and unhappy. “What do you want to talk about then?”

  I stare at him for a moment. He’s not going to let the money thing drop, I can tell. I get why he feels like he needs to give me cash to cover my lost salary, but I’m not going to back down on this one either. I’ll feel like a fraud if I do. I need to change the subject. I need to change it, and fast.

  “Who is Chloe?” I fire the question at him like a bullet from a gun. For all intents and purp
oses it might as well have been a bullet, too, because Raphael jumps, his entire body jolting. A look of horror settles on his face.

  “Where did you hear that name?”

  “Thalia mentioned her before. She said Chloe made her promise to watch out for you.”

  “She was drunk,” Raphael fires back. “She doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about.”

  “She seemed pretty clear about it to me. And I don’t think she’d just randomly make a name up on the spot like that. So who is Chloe, Raphael? And why don’t you want to talk about her?”

  I watch as the wall comes crashing down: a double reinforced, steel riveted door, eight inches thick. God knows how long Raphael has been throwing up this wall whenever he’s faced with a hard question, but right now it stands between us, impregnable and impossible to climb. I don’t even try. I know it would be futile.

  “Forget it. It doesn’t even matter. I’m going home.”

  The mask Raph’s wearing slips a little. “Don’t. You just got here. We haven’t spoken properly yet.”

  I shrug, turning around, walking back to the stairway. “How can we when there are so many things you won’t even talk about, Raphael? Maybe one of these days you’ll be ready for a conversation. When you are ready, why don’t you come to me for once? Oh. And if you need my address, you can always ask Nate .”

  *

  T hree days pass . I hear nothing from Raphael. I’d hoped things would become more manageable with the press, that their interest would fade after a few days with no comment from either myself or from North Industries, but if anything, things get worse. Gareth, my doorman, finds people going through the trash in the alley behind the building. Mom has to email me in order to get a message to me since my mailbox is absolutely full of messages from talk show hosts and lifestyle magazines, all offering me vast amounts of money to sell them my story, each one promising to outbid the other. On my way to class, I get stared at, whispered about, sneered over, and, once, actually spat on. I start to rethink taking the subway to school. I’ve never felt unsafe in New York City, but now I feel like something bad might happen. Like someone might attack me, or I’ll get cornered by a bunch of frenzied paparazzi and I’ll end up injured when they take things too far. A part of me refuses to let this affect me, though. I wouldn’t let Raphael talk me out of taking the subway when he wanted Nate to drive me to and from the Osiris Building. It felt like an infringement on my free will then, and it definitely feels that way now, too. So I keep on taking the train. I keep on walking the streets, and I keep my damn head held high.

  I constantly think about Raphael. I can’t stop. He’s there, at the forefront of my mind every morning when I open my eyes, and he’s there the second I close them to sleep, too. At night, those vivid, cool green eyes of his stalk me through my dreams. We writhe, naked and covered in sweat, our mouths locked together, our bodies joined, him thrusting into me over and over again until eventually I wake, tangled in the bed sheets, drenched, my hair plastered to my forehead, my heart racing away from me. I have other dreams of Raphael, too. Dreams where he’s in pain, suffering, lost somewhere and I can’t find him. Can’t reach him to help him. I run through an old stone maze, turning one way and then another, constantly searching, and yet I never make it to him.

  Thalia doesn’t show up to class. She hasn’t messaged me. Hasn’t come by the apartment to see if I’m okay. Honestly, I don’t think she’s okay. I’m pulled in opposing directions, angry that she seems to have abandoned me during the most difficult moment of my life—a moment she technically caused to happen in the first place—and sad she doesn’t appear to be coping with the pain she’s suffering through, either.

  I wake up on Friday and I consider going over to her place and checking in with her. However, by the time I’m ready and out of the door, I’m running late and I don’t have time. On the train, the guy across from me is reading The New York Times , shooting furtive, disapproving looks at me every few seconds over the top of the broadsheet. I’m so used to people gawking at me now that I almost don’t even bother to look at the front page of the paper. Not until the guy clears his throat, shaking it out, and the bold text catches my eye:

  Elizabeth Dreymon Sold Virginity To North

  And then, underneath, in smaller letters:

  Raphael North’s sordid love affair with broke student causes major family rift.

  I sold my what ? I sold my virginity to Raphael? Where the hell did they get that idea from? And a family rift? I thought Raphael was the only North left. His parents are long dead and he was an only child, so who the fuck are they claiming he’s fallen out with? I get to my feet and I snatch the paper out of the man’s hands.

  “Hey! That’s my paper!” he snaps. “You can’t just take—”

  “Taking from me is all anyone’s done for the past four days,” I volley back. “I have a right to know what’s being said about me. Don’t worry. I’ll give it back in a second.”

  He must have been expecting me to cow down and hand the paper back right away. His eyes grow round with surprise when I stomp back to my seat and I sit myself down, my eyes scanning over the black text as quickly as I can.

  ‘…b rother of Beth , David Dreymon, says things have been tense between Beth and their mother for years. When Margo Dreymon, of Hopestanton, KS, saw evidence of her daughter’s antics all over the news, she reportedly collapsed from shock. Elizabeth and Margo fought on the telephone for well over an hour on the night the news of Elizabeth’s sexual relationship with Raphael North went public. The two women have not spoken again since, with Margo Dreymon blocking her daughter’s calls and messages. When asked about the divide that now separates the Dreymon household, David said that his mother was experiencing anxiety and a ‘great deal of stress’ because of the matter, and that he didn’t know if Elizabeth and Margo would ever be able to repair their once close relationship.’

  I read on , not really seeing the words that are clearly staring back at me in print. The article goes on forever. It paints a picture of a very rocky past between me and Mom, and in a number of places David is quoted as saying that I had an, ‘intense, kind of odd relationship’ with Dad. What is that supposed to mean? I feel like I’m about to throw up every time the train rocks from side to side. I can’t believe what they’re insinuating. What David is insinuating. He wants people to think I was abused by Dad or something? He wants the public to believe there was something untoward going on behind our family’s closed doors? It makes no sense whatsoever. I…I just can’t believe he would talk to anyone about this. There’s no way he would have. No way in a million years. They have to be lying. My mind is racing, speeding through everything I know about the liable and slander cases that have taken place in the past fifty years. I throw the paper into the guy’s lap, and I bolt from the train the moment the doors open.

  Up on street level, I call David, horror slamming through me with every breath I take. He picks up almost immediately, like he was staring at his phone, waiting for someone to call. “Before you get mad, I want you to know, they twisted what I said.”

  I stumble over my own feet, nearly falling flat on my face. He…he did speak to the media? David’s a jerk. He’s thoughtless and a total asshole most of the time, but he’s my brother. He’s not evil. I didn’t for a second really think he’d actually gone ahead and sold his story. My story. Whatever. I didn’t think he’d really done it. His defensive words coupled with his equally defensive tone tell me otherwise, however. I screw my eyes shut, trying not to explode in public. It’s a good thing I’m not alone right now. If I was, I’d probably be screaming and using every single curse word under the sun. Even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones.

  “I can’t fucking believe you,” I hiss into the phone. “You knew I didn’t want this dragged through the press any further than it already has been. You knew I didn’t want to comment or feed the story in any way, and yet you went ahead and threw in your own two cents, regardless. What’s w
rong with you?”

  He scoffs, the same annoying way he used to when we were kids and he was caught doing something that made him look stupid in front of his friends. “I was being realistic, Beth. You think one of your old school friends wasn’t going to start blabbing about you the moment they were offered a paycheck? Hmm? You think one of your friends from Columbia wasn’t going to give them every single detail they know about you in return for a fucking whale of a paycheck? It was better that we benefitted from the information making its way into the papers. Our family’s the one suffering right now, after all. No one should profit from that suffering but us.”

  “Suffering? How the hell are you suffering, David? You’ve probably been prancing around Brooklyn, telling anyone who’ll listen that you’re the brother of the famous slut who slept with Raphael North. You’re a disgusting pig!”

  David grunts. He does that whenever he knows he’s done something wrong, and yet he doesn’t want to back down. “You’re the one who got herself filmed by a drone fucking a dude up against a window, Beth. The whole nation’s seen your pussy but none of them know a single thing about you. Sue me if I told them you were a brainiac in high school, for fuck’s sake. Sue me if I told them your favorite fucking flavor of ice cream and your favorite candy bar, okay?”

  “You told them Dad abused me, David!”

  “I never said that. Not in so many words.”

  “Not in so many words? God…” I shake my head, covering my eyes with my free hand. I’ve stepped off the sidewalk and into the gutter, right alongside my reputation, in order to avoid the people on their way home from or on their way to work. The world feels like it’s seesawing, tilting to the right and then to the left. “Mom’s never going to speak to you again, you realize that, right?”

  The line is quiet for a moment, and then, “She’ll get over it. Especially when I use some of the money to pay off the debt we owe on the farm.”

  Some of the money. Some of it. So he got paid more than two hundred and fifty grand for his hateful words. Unbelievable. “You haven’t even spoken to Mom, have you?” I whisper. “She doesn’t care about the farm. She doesn’t want to keep it. She wants a fresh start. She’s not going to let you use that money to save the business.”