by Reid, Penny
“Fine.” He peered at me, big fat grin on his face, eyebrow raised in a challenge, looking arrogant and tremendously attractive and standing too close. “What do you trust?”
“Peer-reviewed publications,” I whisper-croaked, dropping my gaze to the glass case on my left and giving him just my profile.
Why couldn’t he just pick up his guitar so we could leave? And why was my throat so tight?
His eyes were on me, I felt them. Mine were studiously focused on the glass case, but I wasn’t looking within. A few seconds ticked by, during which I meditated on slowing my breathing and concentrated on pretending he wasn’t there, pushing his presence and the echoes of his laughter aside.
Swallowing against the tightness, I ventured to my happiest place, picturing the concave dome of a planetarium above me, a blanket of deceptive white dots overhead, planets and galaxies and solar systems masquerading as stars. And between the white dots? Black matter. What we could not see, what we did not yet understand.
The universe—in all its infinite complexity and beauty—struck me as an apt reverse allegory for human interaction. We are deceived by the white dots. We label them stars. Often, they’re so much more. Layered. Complex. Important. Surprising. Beautiful.
This was, I found, the opposite of people. In both cases, we label stars based on first impressions. The universe never disappoints or fails to inspire wonder, but people usually do.
Or maybe—maybe it wasn’t a reverse allegory. Maybe it was exactly correct. After all, the brightest object in earth’s night sky was usually our little moon. Whereas the majority of the dim, twinkling lights in the distance, the ones we barely noticed, were not only stars but something altogether more awe-inspiring once you took the time to investigate. To know.
“Hey.”
The softly spoken word pulled me out of my reflections and I glanced at Abram. He was standing close, like before. His face was still unreasonably handsome, his scent still captivating, and his eyes appeared warm and interested. He was no longer (outwardly) laughing at me.
“Pardon? Did you say something?” I felt none of the earlier chaos or discomfort. Both had been replaced with cool dispassion. Abram is a moon, most people are.
His eyebrows pulled together as his attention flickered over me. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. You?”
He blinked, like I’d blown dust in his eyes, and he seemed to rock back on his heels. Abram’s lips parted, perhaps intending to speak. But then he snapped his mouth shut, frowning like I’d done or said something to confuse him.
Giving him one more cursory glance, I twisted at the waist and called to the man in the corner, “This is Abram. He’s here for a bass guitar. I believe you’re holding it for him?”
* * *
As soon as we returned, I left Abram in the entranceway and reclaimed my seat in the mudroom by the back door. Picking up my book, I opened to the bookmark and stared at the words. I did not read them. My earlier cool dispassion hadn’t lasted long. During the silent march home, I’d felt increasingly . . .
Hot. And aggravated. A vicious recursive loop of being aggravated at being hot and getting hotter by being aggravated.
Huffing, I set my book down once more and left the reading cubby, heading for the kitchen stairs and Lisa’s room. I needed to cool down while also blowing off steam.
Conclusion: Swimming.
Opening and closing Lisa’s drawers, I searched for a bathing suit. My choices were slim, literally. She owned nothing but string bikinis. Huffing again, I selected a plain white one with the tags still on. If I was going to put on a string bikini, I might as well use one my sister had never worn. Undressing, dressing, and then covering myself in her oversized terry cloth bathrobe, I made my way to the back-garden pool.
We didn’t have a huge backyard, but the fact that we had one at all in this neighborhood was remarkable. My parents had bought a dilapidated brownstone on one side of theirs and torn it down, cleverly keeping the tall cast iron fence and the façade facing the street. From the sidewalk, one would never know a garden, a small shed, and a pool lay behind the wall instead of a house. The garden had been specifically designed to provide coverage and privacy from the neighbors while also allowing areas of sunshine for afternoon sunbathing.
Since it was just past three in the afternoon, the pool and its perimeter were dotted with sunlight peeking through the trees. That was fine. I’d never been a fan of spotlights.
Discarding the bathrobe, I walked to the water’s edge and incidentally into a swath of sunlight, but then hesitated.
I still had on makeup. I needed goggles from the pool shed to see underwater. And what about my hair? If I went swimming, I’d have to do it again. Makeup was one thing, but I wasn’t sure I could style my hair again on my own.
“Hmm.” I dipped my toe in the water. It felt nice. And I missed swimming. And it was hot outside. And I was hot inside. . .
“Lisa, wait!” a voice shouted.
I stiffened, looking toward the house and spotting Gabby walking quickly toward me. At first I thought she was also wearing a bathing suit, but upon closer inspection her outfit turned out to be short-shorts and a tube top.
“What are you doing?” She dropped her voice to a harsh whisper as soon as she was close enough to be heard, her eyes wide and questioning. Not waiting for me to answer, she glanced over her shoulder hastily and stepped closer. “Please tell me you’re not about to go swimming.”
Movement at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the house caught my attention and I spotted Abram coming to a stop at the end of the railing. As our gazes connected, he stood straighter. But then his attention swept down my body and he took a step back. His eyes seemed to grow rounder, his dark eyebrows inching up his forehead, his lips parting.
Not thinking too much about the instinct, I shrunk backward toward the shade, away from the pool, placing Gabby in front of me so I wouldn’t be as visible.
I wasn’t shy about my body. I was wary. About everything. There’s a difference.
For as long as I could recall, I lived with an ingrained undercurrent of discomfort in most social situations, including exposure of my façade. Did I wish I were more like Gabby and my sister? That I didn’t dislike people looking at my body? Sometimes. It would be one less thing to be weird and anxious about.
But my ingrained undercurrent of discomfort in most social situations also carried over to my area of study. It made me a meticulous researcher. It meant I checked and double-checked and triple-checked. It meant I was always certain before I challenged others, which meant I was always right, which had led to my reputation of being credible, listened to, and taken seriously.
Funny how the very weaknesses that cripple us in some situations are often the foundation for our greatest achievements.
“I am about to go swimming, but first I need to get goggles,” I whispered in answer to her objection. “By the way, how did you get in?”
“I have the gate code, and I ran past Abram when he opened the door.” She waved this away like it was a minor thing. “You can’t go swimming. You can’t get your hair wet. I had to call in two favors to get you the blowout yesterday with George on such short notice. This hair has to last you for the next week.”
“Would it really be a big deal if I wore my hair in a ponytail or a braid?” I split my attention between her and the bathrobe I’d placed on the chair.
“Yes. It would be a big deal. All the pictures in the house are of Mona with her hair back and Lisa with her hair down. What- what are you doing?” She followed my line of sight to where the bathrobe lay. “No, no. Do not put it on. Lisa would not cover herself. Do not put that bathrobe on.”
Releasing a hissing breath between my teeth, I glared at my sister’s friend, feeling increasingly antsy the closer Abram came. “Me putting a bathrobe on is not going to be a red flag for Abram.”
“Yes. It will.” An odd kind of urgency entered her voice. “The only time Abram an
d Lisa met, she was naked, okay? You covering up now would be weird.”
What? Naked? What? I sputtered, my mouth opening and closing.
Giving me no time to recover, Gabby pasted a smile on her face, glanced over her shoulder again, laughed a fake laugh that sounded real, and turned back to me just as her expression switched to stern. “Act like a hot girl who is proud of her hotness, he’s coming!”
6
Acceleration
“What do you mean she was naked?” I whisper-hissed.
“Shut up.”
“Gabby—”
She didn’t respond, instead looping her arm through mine and turning to face an approaching Abram. I flinched automatically and moved to withdraw. Gabby countered quickly, holding my arm in a tighter grip. My only excuse for not tempering my pulling-away instinct was that I remained stunned by her latest revelation. Indeed, my mind was still running through possible scenarios which might explain why Lisa would need to be naked in front of someone she didn’t know.
Perhaps she’d stepped in an ant pile and they’d crawled under her clothes and she’d needed to rip them off? Or someone poured anthrax down the back of her shirt? Or . . . what the heck?
I was so entirely in my own head that it took me a few moments to realize that Abram and Gabby were speaking.
“I found her. You can go away Abram unless you’re planning to join us by the pool.” Gabby’s tone was light and playful.
“You’re not staying.” His voice was like granite.
Distractedly, I glanced at Abram, found him examining me with wary eyes, like he half expected me to pounce on him. He was also a good ten feet away, pointedly keeping his distance. Even so, his gaze did move over me—legs, hips, stomach, and so forth—with the scarcest visible glimmer of appreciation, giving me the impression he was irritated with himself for noticing at all.
I had to wrestle with the impulse to step fully behind Gabby or otherwise use her to block myself from view.
“I can’t stay long, I have to be somewhere,” Gabby said, obviously pretending to misinterpret his meaning. “But if you put on a bathing suit, I’ll cancel my other plans.”
Abram crossed his arms, his wary gaze returning to mine. It seemed to soften. Or . . . maybe it didn’t? Or maybe some plotting, rebellious part of me wanted irrelevantly attractive Abram to look at me differently than he looked at Gabby?
Yes. That’s probably it. It’s all in my imagination.
But then he asked “Lisa, are you going swimming?” and the tone he used was undeniably softer than the one he’d used with Gabby.
Oh.
So I croaked “Yes” and hated that the majority of my insides melted at the irrefutable evidence: Abram’s expression and voice had gentled as he addressed me. Fact.
Gabby squeezed my arm.
I quickly put an end to the internal organ melting and came back to myself, adding firmly, “Preferably alone. Don’t feel like you need to stay, Gabby.”
She gave me the side-eye and a saccharine sweet smile. “You’re funny. I do have to be someplace, but we have so much to talk about. I wouldn’t think of leaving quite yet. Plus, I brought you dry shampoo. For your hair. You know you can’t get your hair wet or else Abram will have to take you back to George.”
“Who is George?” Abram took a step forward, glancing between us.
“George is Lisa’s stylist in Chicago. Her stylist in New York is also George, but it’s spelled G-O-R-G,” Gabby answered, like it was the most natural thing in the world for a person to have a stylist with a name pronounced George in every city.
My upbringing meant I hadn’t truly understood until undergrad how unusual it was for a person to have a stylist in every city, or even one in one city. My superstar mother was followed by a beauty and health entourage everywhere she went. When she and my father had taken Leo and I to movie premieres, or award shows, or wherever they’d be photographed with their two prized prodigy pedigrees, her life had been my initial baseline.
I’d spent the last four years readjusting my expectations of normal. Even so, since my Ivy League past and living with Dr. Steward were now my secondary baseline, I knew I was still hugely out of touch about many, many realities of the typical, normal, or average experience.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but I was working on it.
Abram lifted an eyebrow at Gabby’s explanation. It looked judgmental. “You can’t do your own hair?”
“Apparently, not in Chicago or New York,” I said dryly, unable to help the note of sarcasm given my level of frustration. I just wanted to go swimming and cool down! Was that too much to ask?
Gabby shot me a dirty look, her elbow digging into my side.
But Abram’s judgy single-eyebrow lift became a double rise of surprise, his gaze moving over me, his mouth curving into another of his reluctant grins.
“Given how much Abram loves your company, I’m sure he won’t have any problem taking you to George to get your hair done.” Gabby met my sarcasm and raised me a dose of mockery.
“Or maybe Abram could just change his name to George?” I appealed to Abram, pulling my arm from her grip.
“Sure. I can do that.” He nodded, surprising me by playing along.
“There we go. I have my George. I can go swimming. Gabby, you can rest easy about my hair. And now you can both leave.”
Gabby’s mouth dropped open, and I could feel the squawking protest building inside her.
But Abram spoke before she had the chance. “Oh no, George can’t leave. George has to go swimming.”
Those statements earned him an intense eye-squint. “Why does George have to go swimming?”
“Don’t you want a George nearby? Just in case there’s a hair emergency?” He was grinning. Apparently he’d decided to stop hiding his smiles, just this once.
“No.” I frowned, confused by the smile he was sending me. “Never mind. You’re Ahab again.”
Abram dropped his chin to his chest and covered his mouth with a hand, clearly trying to hide the fact that he was laughing. The maneuver didn’t work because his shaking shoulders gave him away.
I sensed Gabby glance between the two of us, I also sensed her incredulity, but I didn’t give her any of my direct attention. I was too busy battling warm feelings because Abram was laughing at my Ahab joke, which meant he was laughing with me. Which meant I was melting again.
It felt . . . good.
Eventually, he shrugged, his arms falling to his sides. When he lifted his head, his eyes were glowing, and he’d pressed his lips together as though to erase his grin. It didn’t work, his dimples betrayed him.
“Too bad, Liza. George will be right back.”
Scowling to hide this burgeoning warmth in my stomach and chest, I shouted at his back as he jogged away, “Where are you going?”
He turned and walked backward, looking very pleased. “To change into my swimsuit.”
“Well take your time!” I crossed my arms, raging against some new, hotter emotion I didn’t dare identify.
“I won’t!” he yelled in return, giving us his back again as he climbed the stairs. “See you in a second.”
I grunted, grinding my teeth, and not understanding why I wasn’t more irritated. I should have been. My pool plans had been disrupted. Cooling down while blowing off steam would be impossible with Abram around.
The combination of Gabby’s ill-timed text and his superfluously handsome man parts were responsible for making me hot!
Yeah, but now you’ll see Abram shirtless. Worth it.
ARG!
Dammit, internal monologue. STFU.
“Well, well, well, Lisa.”
I moved my eyes to Gabby. Something about her tone made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. She sounded . . . pleased. That can’t be good.
“Pardon?”
“You don’t waste any time, do you?” Yes. She was pleased. Her gaze moved over me appraisingly and she nodded, as though agreeing with unspoken th
oughts.
“What are you talking about?”
Gabby leaned close, her green eyes sparkling. “Abram.”
“What about him?”
“What did you do?” She wagged her eyebrows.
“What are we talking about?”
“Look at you! He’s vibing on you.” Grabbing my wrist, she forced me to give her a high five before I could react. “Get it, girl!”
We were clearly having two different conversations. “I’m so lost. I know you’re speaking, because your mouth is moving and sounds are coming out, but I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”
She rubbed her hands together. “Oh, this is so good. I can’t wait to tell your sister you got him in his swimsuit.” Her eyes moved down and then up my body. “Or his birthday suit.”
I flinched. “Gabby!”
“What? Did you see how he was looking at you?”
“Gabby.”
“Maybe you will be sitting on his face after all.”
“Gabby!” I covered my ears with my hands and shut my eyes. It was no good. Again, the sexy images, the spark, the flame, the fire. “Keep your power of suggestion to yourself.”
She pulled my wrists away from my head. “I’m just saying, I’ve seen Abram work it before when he’s surrounded by his harem, but a boy don’t flirt like that unless he’s thirsty for a girl’s milkshake.”
Harem? Flirt? Milkshake? What?
My eyes flew open and it took several seconds for me to decide which of her statements to contradict first. “He wasn’t flirting with me.”
She gave me a snort of disbelief and an eye roll. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Why would he flirt with me? It would be completely inappropriate.”
“Oh my god, Mary Sue, try to keep up. He wants your baa-day!”
“He shouldn’t.” I glanced at the back door to the house, dreading his return.
“Why the hell not? Have you seen him? Have you seen yourself in this bikini? I mean, yeah. You need a wax, but you two would be hot.” She shrugged with her entire body. “I would kind of want to watch, to be honest.”
