“Huh?” he responded, glancing to his right. He was surprised to see Velez standing there.
“I've been saying your name for five minutes,” the other man said. “What are you daydreaming about?”
Landon didn't answer. Just smiled and turned back to what he'd been looking at before he'd been interrupted.
Tori was on the beach, maybe a hundred yards or so in front of them. She was wearing a yellow bikini that day – the white bikini was long gone. The top had been used to tie her hands together and was still knotted to their headboard. The bottoms had gone over the railing right after her shorts had.
She was also wearing a pair of denim cut offs. They were long enough to mostly hide the angry scratch marks at the top of her thigh. He'd felt a little guilty when he'd noticed them that morning. However, he then found he had multiple matching sets going down the whole length of his back, so he didn't feel too bad. Plus, she'd laughed when she'd caught him looking at them, so clearly she wasn't upset.
Which he was glad. Things had gotten a little crazy on the balcony. He wasn't sure what had come over him. Dark thoughts and a beautiful girl, they were a lethal combination. He'd wanted to hurt himself, hurt her, hurt something. Had wanted to feel alive.
She'd trusted him. She'd said she'd do anything, and throughout the whole night, she'd proved it over and over again. He couldn't get over it. Why was she single? She had a body that didn't quit and a pussy that could probably win a world war. She was quite possibly the best fuck he'd ever had, which was really saying something.
Beyond that, and he hated to admit it because normally he didn't pay attention to that kind of shit, she was nice. Kind. If he'd woken up in the middle of the night and found her sulking on the balcony, he wouldn't have said anything. Would've gone back to bed. But she'd come outside, had tried to talk to him. Been decent to him. She didn't put pressure on him and she didn't tip toe around him. It was almost refreshing in a way.
It also didn't hurt that she would do absolutely anything he told her to do in bed.
“Man, you've got it bad for that chick, don't you?” Velez chuckled, following his gaze. “You sure you want to do this?”
Landon blinked in surprise and glanced at his friend.
“What? Why wouldn't I?” he asked.
“Because you're staring at her like you're in love with her.”
Landon burst out laughing.
“I'm staring at her like I've spent the last ten hours fucking her, that's all,” he replied. “I still think the plan is perfect, no one will suspect someone like her of smuggling drugs.”
“I don't know, man. She seems like a nice girl. And what if she finds the drugs before you can hide them in her shit?” Velez asked. Landon shrugged.
“It'll be fine, she'll go along with it if I tell her to.”
“You so sure about that?”
He wasn't, actually. While she was shockingly compliant in bed, he knew Tori had a very willful streak in her. He'd seen her deal with drunks, aggressive men, Brighton Stone – she wasn't scared to speak her mind. Or to throw a punch. He was confident he could hide them without her finding them, so it was all a moot point, really.
He wasn't confident about the plan anymore, though. He wouldn't admit it to Velez, and would barely even whisper it to himself, but he almost – almost – felt bad about dragging her into it all. Before last night, she'd just been some chick he'd fucked. Sometime between her finding him on the balcony and this morning, though, that had changed. She'd given him a small piece of herself, and he wasn't worthy of it, not at all.
Silly, ridiculous sentiment. Landon wasn't sentimental, and he hadn't shared shit, nor had he asked for anything. Sex was just sex, and that's all there was to it. He'd come to Bali to accomplish something, and he was going to do it. He was going to help his real friend, his only friend, and he was going to do something exciting. Was going to feel alive again.
Kinda like how you felt last night ...
“Look, if you're having second thoughts, then just say so,” Landon barked, turning away from the beach and facing his friend.
“Hey, don't get attitudey with me,” Velez cautioned him. “I don't need to do this, I have other ways of getting this shit to America. I'm doing this because you said you wanted an adventure.”
“Exactly, so stop talking about the girl and tell me what all I need to do.”
They went over everything. Velez worked as a sort of mid-rank drug runner for a cartel in Indonesia, supplying a lot of the resorts in the island nation. He would bring his boss with him to Bali to meet Landon. If the boss-man approved, he would hand over ten grams of cocaine for Landon to transport back to a distributor in America. If he could do so undetected, then he would be given a bigger amount to come back with, and eventually might get a real job running drugs.
He might just get to lead an exciting life, after all.
“I'll let you know what date we decide to come over on,” Velez wrapped everything up. “You should make sure she's not at the hotel.”
“Yeah, of course. So what happens if I get caught? Or I lose the drugs? Or steal them?” Landon was curious. Velez laughed and clapped him on the back.
“Then they kill you. You wanted excitement, man!”
“What if they can't find me?”
Velez's laughter died down to just a wicked looking smile.
“Then they try to kill me,” he replied. “But don't worry about that – worry about the fact that I know where your family lives.”
Sobering thought. Landon wasn't particularly close to his family, other than his brother Liam, but he didn't want any harm to befall them, either.
“Don't worry, I'll get them to your guy in L.A.,” he assured his friend.
“Good.”
They both fell silent as they realized Tori was heading back up the beach towards them.
“You should go,” Landon suggested.
“Why?”
“Because right now you're just some dude I know here that she's met once,” he explained. “But if you keep hanging around and she gets to know you, and then we get caught, you'll be the first person she suspects had something to do with it. I can keep my mouth shut, but I have no doubts she'll blab your name the first chance she gets.”
“Shit, good point.”
They didn't talk about it anymore, then, because she finally reached the bar.
“Hey!” she said, smiling big. “I didn't expect to see you again so soon.”
“Yeah,” Velez smiled big right back at her. Landon frowned at both of them. “I just came to say goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” she repeated.
“Yup. Your vacation is just getting started, but mine's ending. Good seeing you again, Landon,” Velez said, laying it on thick by leaning in and hugging his friend. Landon rolled his eyes and shoved him away.
“Well, it was nice meeting you. Thanks for dinner last night,” she said, leaning forward and hugging Velez as well.
“Oh, no problem. Any time, Tori. And I'm serious,” he started as he pulled back from her a little. “Really, any time you want to ditch this loser and have some real fun, you call me.”
Then he punctuated his offer by grabbing her ass. She laughed loudly, but Landon stepped forward and shoved him away.
“Goodbye, Velez,” he growled.
“Bye, kiddos! Have fun in Bali! Don't do anything I wouldn't do!”
Finally, the drug dealer disappeared around the corner of the bar.
“That was kind of abrupt,” Tori commented as she stared after him. “Did I interrupt something?”
“No. Let's go get lunch.”
She followed behind him as he led the way to a cafe at the edge of a pool. As they walked, he was surprised to hear her call greetings to several people. It seemed she hadn't been idle while down on the beach, but had been making friends the whole time.
“You're popular,” he commented after they'd been seated and a waiter had taken their orders.
“It
's because I have a winning personality,” she said with a smile.
“That or your amazing rack.”
She nodded and glanced around the pool.
“It helps. So what do you want to do today?”
“Huh?” he was completely caught off guard by her question.
“Today,” she tried again. “We didn't do anything yesterday, you spent the whole time with Velez. Want to go on a tour? I think there's a zip line nearby.”
“Do I look like the kind of fucking guy who zip lines?” he snapped.
“No, but I'm the kind of fucking girl who does, so we should go,” she replied simply.
“I'm not going to a zip line, Tori. Go by yourself.”
“This is your vacation,” she said, reminding him that she had no clue as to the real reason he was there. “All you want to do is hang out here at the resort?”
“Yes.”
“That's it?”
“And have sex.”
“You're boring.”
“You didn't seem to think that last night,” he pointed out. She smirked and looked away from him.
“Okay, fine, you're exciting in bed. The other sixteen hours of the day, you're boring as shit. Fine, I will go zip lining by myself. And I'm gonna do a jungle trek, and I want to do a bus tour,” she informed him. He shrugged and leaned back as the waiter delivered her an orange juice and him a beer.
“As long as you're back by 'bed time' I don't give a fuck what you do.”
“You're so annoying.”
“You just now noticed?” he asked, then he took a long pull on his beer before belching loudly.
They sat in silence for a while. Landon sipped at his beer while she pretended to be busy on her phone. But when food arrived, she had to set her cell down.
“So I'm curious about something,” she started.
“Oh god. I'm terrified.”
“Why on earth did you become a doctor?” she asked.
“Because I'm good at it,” he replied.
“C'mon, that's not an answer. You don't just wake up knowing how to be a doctor. You had to go to school for it, take years and years of classes, a whole bunch of bullshit. That's a lot of decision making along the way, and you don't even seem to like it,” she pointed out.
“Who said I didn't like it?”
“You haven't practiced in something like a year, right? Seems to me like you don't like it.”
Landon sighed and leaned back in his seat, staring out over the pool.
“My grandpa was a doctor,” he finally said. “He always wanted another one in the family. I liked him, and when we were in Mexico visiting him, he would take me to work with him. I thought it was neat. He taught me shit, gave me books. When he died, he left most of his money to me, in a trust fund for college. I started taking college courses when I was in high school, working towards pre-med.”
“Liam said that's when you started doing drugs.”
He cut his eyes back to her, but she wasn't even looking at him. She was focusing on shoving a huge club sandwich in her mouth. She could say statements like that and not seem to even care. Like she was commenting about his time playing basketball or the weather or anything.
It was one of the things he liked best about her, he decided.
“Yeah. I guess I was around sixteen? Weed, at first, to help me sleep. That stopped working, so I moved to my mom's prescription sleeping pills. Then I needed something to bring me back up in the morning. A friend gave me some coke one day.”
“Jesus, at sixteen?”
“Not all of us went to private school, princess,” he shot at her. “Besides, I bet most of your classmates were on all kinds of drugs.”
“Good point. Continue.”
“That's it. No exciting story. Drugs to get me down, drugs to bring me up. Then when I started getting really good at the shit, bringing home all these great grades, I needed drugs just to make me feel normal. My family ... they're great, don't get me wrong, but suddenly I was like their messiah. Do you know what kind of pressure that is? Being on top means a long way to fall down. Liam bitches that they like me better, he should try it from my end. I never got to choose my own path – once you hear your own mother bragging to her church members about her son, the future doctor, that's it.”
“I'm gonna say something, and please try not to be offended,” Tori said around the food in her mouth.
“Oh god.”
“You're kind of a pussy.”
“Excuse me?” Landon shot upright in his seat and pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head. She nodded.
“Yeah. Do you really think your parents would actually care if you'd decided you didn't want to be a doctor anymore? No. Maybe they'd be bummed for a second, but what are they going to do, stop loving you? Should've just manned up and told them it was too much pressure for you.”
“Easy to say, privileged white woman from a wealthy family,” he snarled. “Have you seen my mother's house? Who do you think put the down payment on it? Think of that and then tell me there's no pressure.”
“I didn't say there wasn't any pressure,” she said in a soft voice. “I'm just saying I think they would've been more understanding than you're giving them credit for.”
“Well, try explaining that to a teenager with a drug habit who was on a fast track to medical glory.”
“I wish I could've.”
He glared at her for a moment longer, then pulled his glasses back down.
“Look, why do you even want to know any of this? I was good at it, okay. From the get go. I got better at it as I went along. I don't know anything else, it's what I've done, all I've studied, for almost half my life,” he snapped. She held up her hands.
“Calm down, Ms. Sensitive,” she teased. “I'm just asking questions. Not like you care what I think, right?”
She had him there. Why was he getting upset if he didn't care?
Because if she gets to know me, if I open up, then she might get inside. And then I'm screwed.
“Excellent point. Let's talk about you then, Victoria,” he suggested. She shook her head.
“No way. I'm boring. You're a doctor. You're a messiah,” she laughed. “Why don't you work in a regular hospital? Why didn't you get a job somewhere in San Francisco?”
“Long story,” he grumbled, rubbing at the back of his neck.
“Good thing I've got time.”
Liam was the only person who knew the story. Despite growing apart during high school and going their separate ways, Liam was still – and always would be – Landon's other half.
So he was shocked when he opened his mouth and out came the truth.
“I got caught using at work,” he said. Tori's eyebrows shot up, but only for a moment.
“Were you with a patient?” she asked, poking at her fries. He shook his head.
“No. I was done for the day. It was fucking stupid. A guy in the clinic where I was working, he used all the fucking time while on the job. He'd hooked me up with some coke, and we were going out that night, so I just decided to do some right then. Some chick from H.R. walked in on me. Not a very exciting story, but there it is.”
Not exciting, but humiliating. Embarrassing. Ridiculous. But he felt better, saying it all to her. Relieved when her facial expression didn't change at all.
“So you got fired?”
“Yeah. I could've gotten my medical license pulled, but she liked me. Knew I was a good doctor. I'll probably never be able to work in a hospital or a regular clinic again, so she should've just reported me. If I tried to work anywhere else and anyone called to check my references, she'd tell them the truth. I basically can't work anywhere in the U.S.”
“That's why you volunteer!” Tori exclaimed. “I'd always wondered why someone who seems to hate helping people volunteered so much.”
Landon nodded, but she was wrong. It was originally why he'd started volunteering. He got to still practice medicine, still do what he'd been trained to do, and he got to do it i
n a much looser environment. Nobody's giving drug tests in the middle of Ethiopia, or Haiti, or Syria.
Somewhere along the way, though, it had become a much bigger deal to him. Too much of a big deal. It consumed him much the same way his schooling had. Though they saved lots of lives, it was never enough. There were always too many for the tiny band of doctors to deal with, too much to do and not enough hands. He couldn't possibly save everyone, and it killed him.
So when it became too depressing, he ran away. Not home, though. Never home. Being a doctor had been a big enough deal on its own, but a doctor who traveled to third world countries and risked his own life to save others? His mother had literally built a shrine to him. He couldn't handle it, not when he was hiding in her bathroom to do more blow. So he ran to his one true safe space.
He always ran to his brother.
“You okay?”
He'd almost forgotten she was there. Tori was staring at him from across the table, frowning slightly. He cleared his throat and nodded.
“Fine. Super duper.”
She kept frowning and staring. It made his skin crawl. They really didn't know each other that well, technically. Why was he telling her all this bullshit? Just because she'd asked? Because she was good in bed? Because he felt guilty?
Because maybe I actually do want someone else to know me.
“I'm not rich,” she suddenly blurted out.
“Excuse me?”
“I'm not rich,” she repeated herself. “I may be a 'privileged white woman' but we weren't wealthy. I got into my high school on a scholarship.”
“You?” he was shocked. She threw her napkin at him.
“What, you don't think I'm smart?”
“No.”
Her fork was launched at him next.
“Fuck you, you junkie.”
“I mean,” he chuckled, putting the cutlery back on the table, “no more so than average. I don't think you're dumb.”
“Really?” she asked, leaning back in her seat and putting her hands on her hips.
“Well ... I don't tell you how dumb I think you are,” he amended his statement, but he grinned while he spoke.
“Whatever, at least I never got caught doing drugs at work,” she rolled her eyes. “I got a scholarship for gymnastics.”
Neighborhood Watch Page 7
