Summer Attractions

by Beth Bolden

  Jemma was pensive as she gathered her things and Gabe bustled Kimber off into the cab he’d called for her. They met back at the front of the café, Jemma mostly lost in thought as she mentally started organizing her notes and information into an outline structure. In fact, she was so lost in thought she almost didn’t notice the enormous crowd queuing in front of the Olympic Festival entrance.

  “That looks dangerous,” Gabe observed. Jemma glanced up and nearly stopped in shock. They were several hundred yards down the boardwalk of Copacabana, but the entrance gates were already beginning to give away under the pressure of so many people trying to get in. They stopped and watched as security attempted to stem the tide but couldn’t quite get ahold of the large, but mostly calm crowd.

  Gabe stopped someone, holding a hand out and asking them a few questions in Portuguese. Nodding, he listened to their answer and then turned back to Jemma.

  “They’re giving away tickets for the footie finals today. They opened up some extra sections today, I guess and there’s a ton of demand.”

  The soccer tournament at the Olympics that year was particularly fierce, with both the men’s and women’s side having some of the best matches of the Games. They’d made it to one match, early on, but Jemma had struck out getting tickets as each successive game grew more suspenseful. She knew how much Gabe wanted to go, though, and had tried anyway, to no success.

  “Do you think we could . . .” Jemma didn’t even get the words out before Gabe shook his head emphatically no.

  “We’re not going anywhere near that mess,” he reiterated firmly.

  “It doesn’t look so bad,” Jemma protested. She wasn’t really lying; it was all very peaceful, just a lot of people in one place. Maybe not the safest situation, but hardly as dangerous as Gabe was making it out to be.

  Jemma hadn’t even known how much she wanted those tickets—for Gabe, because Jemma was done with lying to herself—until she was faced with an actual possibility to get them.

  She turned to Gabe, ready to plead for the chance. “You don’t even have to come. There’s so much security around, it’ll be plenty safe. I just want the chance to get these tickets. Even as a member of the press, it’s useless. This is my only chance.”

  He was staring at her like she’d grown a third arm. “I can’t believe,” he said slowly, “that you’re even attempting to convince me to do this.”

  “Not convince you to come,” Jemma insisted, “more like convince you that it’s perfectly fine for me to go and meet you at the hotel after. It’ll only take me an hour or so.”

  The crowd was still growing. Gabe looked over at it, an excessively dubious expression on his face. “That’s not going to take you an hour to wade through,” he said.

  Jemma threw her hands up, annoyed for the first time since the day she’d arrived that he was being so insistent on his protection. “I don’t care,” she said bluntly, “it’s my decision and I’m going to try it.” She shot him her best I’m not fucking around look and started walking toward what could generously be called a line. It more resembled a sort of wildly multiplying amoeba, and Jemma felt a flash of fear as she walked determinedly toward it, but she tamped it down. She was a new person now, not afraid of a little crowd. Defiantly, she didn’t even glance back toward Gabe, because she was sure what she’d see: him glowering, almost certainly contemplating how he could throw her over his shoulder and forcibly cart her back to the safety of the hotel. Well, Jemma thought, that isn’t happening today.

  And even though she expected it every moment, she did actually reach the main bulk of the crowd, weaving carefully but quickly through the crowd outliers, without a heavy hand on her back to stop her.

  Everything was fine, perfectly dandy, even. Jemma stood calmly and quietly around lots of other excited but mostly calm people, when she began to hear a bit of rumbling and rustling, like a wind rolling through a field of dry grass.

  Jemma had never before cursed her height so much as when she knew things were happening far ahead of her and she couldn’t see them. And then suddenly it didn’t matter that she couldn’t see, she could hear. She could very clearly hear the loud exclamations as a rumor, broken down and re-translated into a dozen different languages like the Tower of Babel’s version of Telephone, began to trickle through the crowd. Jemma could only catch bits and pieces of English, but from the growing agitation of the crowd, whatever they’d discovered wasn’t a good thing. The rumblings grew in volume and density, rolling through the crowd like thunder, and with each growing moment, Jemma felt apprehension rise in her chest.

  Why hadn’t she listened to Gabe? She was stuck now, surrounded at least fifteen people deep on all sides, and unless she wanted to start elbowing and creating a panic situation, there was nothing to do except take deep breaths, try to stay calm and hope everyone else would stay calm too.

  The calm only lasted five breaths and then all hell broke loose.

  Gabe knew how to follow someone without being seen. He’d done it plenty of times, shadowing suspects in LA and in training. Some of his supervisors had even suggested that maybe one day he might want to make a bid for Quantico, as he had a talent for disappearing when he didn’t want to be seen. But following Jemma? It was the easiest thing he’d ever done. She didn’t take one casual glance in his direction. Not even one. He was annoyed that she’d put them in this situation—her, specifically, and then him by extension, because of course, he had to follow her—and incredibly pissed that she had the nerve to think he’d just leave her and go flouncing off to the hotel like he could’ve given a shit.

  He was bigger than she was, and should’ve had more trouble wading through the crowd to get in line, but again, he knew what he was doing, and he knew just the path to take to not be seen and to cause the least problems.

  They’d been standing in line for only five minutes when it started. Gabe wondered, as he stood there, staring at the back of her head, probably 50 yards away, how long it would take her to realize what was happening.

  It took her about a minute less than he’d anticipated, and about thirty seconds before he started elbowing people out of the way to get to her. But by that point, things had devolved, pushing and shoving and worse, and he couldn’t get to her.

  His pulse spiked. He could see her, hair caught up in a ponytail, the dark sheen of it shining in the sun, could see her neck tense, could see her brace herself and try to ride out the growing agitation of the crowd. But Jemma hadn’t had crowd control training like Gabe had had; she couldn’t possibly know that the first rule of these sort of things was that they always got worse, not better.

  His palms began to sweat, and he made the executive decision that enough was enough. He couldn’t stand by one moment longer and watch her try to hold her own in an increasingly volatile crowd.

  Gabe took an elbow to the face and a full body to the back. He didn’t retreat, just kept moving, thrusting people out of the way, his eyes focused solely on that dark ponytail. He watched with painful clarity as her arms came up and she started using her hands to push back, to try to keep herself from being tossed like a bottle on the ocean waves. He wanted to yell at her, keep upright, just keep upright, but the dull roar of the crowd was at such a peak, he didn’t think there was a chance in hell that she’d hear him.

  His heart pounded. He felt the pulse of adrenaline through his veins. Felt the inevitable shot of panic as it reached his system and bloomed. He shoved faster, plowing through people like a hot knife through butter, his only grip on rationality that dark ponytail.

  He saw her go down. He saw her scream. He could only plow through the crowd and pray, through a red haze, that he would reach her in time.

  The last ten feet were agony. Gabe had been in standoffs, shootouts, two hostage situations, countless dangerous moments when life or death was a dicey prospect. He’d held Nick in his arms and been covered in his blood only a few weeks ago. But he’d never been as afraid as he was in that moment, heart pumping wil
dly, her name a single driving thought.

  When he reached her, he didn’t even hesitate. She’d curled into a defensive ball, which he vaguely thought he would praise her for later, when he was done screaming at her for the stupidity of her decision, and he just scooped her right off the ground. Holding her protectively, he battled through the crowd to the edge and didn’t look back until they were clear of the mess.

  He could feel her shaking, taste the fear bitter on his tongue. Setting her down carefully onto an empty concrete bench, he stepped back even though the last thing he wanted was to physically let go of her. His entire brain was one long cautionary tale that he’d never be stupid enough to let her run wild again.

  She uncurled herself and looked up at him, dusty and grateful, her mouth trembling, her eyes wide with panic. “Oh thank god,” she said, surprisingly put together. Unlike him, who wanted to tear everything down, Hulk-style, for daring to come down on her. “Oh, Gabe, I got the tickets! I had to go to the ground to grab them, but I got them!”

  Holding up two worn, dirty, creased pieces of paper, her smile broke through the remaining panic on her face, and he just stood there, staring at her, emotions draining out of him until he was just an empty shell.

  “Gabe?” she asked, more hesitantly. “Are you okay?”

  If she’d asked him that two minutes ago, his response would have been a brusque yes, followed by a very long lecture with sparks of temper about how stupid she had been. Now he just felt hollow, with nothing much to say.

  He finally managed to find his voice, his mouth feeling strange and foreign to him, the words thick and graceless on his tongue. “Let’s go back to the hotel,” he said, like this was a normal day and everything was fine and he hadn’t almost just lost her over footie tickets.

  Jemma looked at him carefully, like she was aware of the bizarreness of his behavior, like she was searching for an explanation. But he wasn’t going to give her one because he still didn’t know what to say. It was too much to process, much too fast.

  “Okay,” she finally said softly. “Let’s go back to the hotel. I have a story to write, after all.”

  As soon as they reached their rooms, Jemma announced her intention to take a long, hot shower.

  Gabe followed her into her room, even though most days he typically showered in his room. Before, it had seemed like a prudent exercise, though possibly a meaningless one, as he still ended up in her bed every night. But now, he regretted it because to follow his normal pattern, he’d have to leave Jemma and return to his own room, possibly for the rest of the afternoon, since after her shower she’d almost certainly begin working on the article.

  He hovered awkwardly near the bed, pretending to be smoothing the hastily thrown together covers, as she headed straight to the bathroom.

  At first he thought he might have escaped her notice, as she seemed so uber-focused on the concept of hot water, but then after flipping the water on, she turned back and registered that he was still there.

  He flushed as she raised an eyebrow.

  “Not going to take a shower?” she asked.

  He knew she didn’t know; knew she couldn’t possibly understand what it had felt like to watch her be knocked over and know he was too far away to get to her. He wasn’t sure he’d ever felt such icy fear as he had in that moment, and the truth was, he still felt frozen, like he was perpetually stuck in that split second.

  She didn’t know that he couldn’t leave her alone now.

  “I’ll just shower after you,” he said, trying for casual and failing.

  He might not have gotten away with it, but she still had a flush of victory on her cheeks after finding those tickets on the ground and the absent look in her eyes that meant she was already mentally writing.

  “Sure, whatever you want,” she said, moving out of sight and shedding her clothes, stepping into the shower.

  His own clothes felt gross with a night of dancing and then sleeping in them, but mostly he needed to get the dampness of the panic sweat off his skin, so he shed them. He had no interest in TV, but he couldn’t very well just sit here and not do anything, so he flipped it on. Even if it hadn’t been turned down low, he would’ve ignored it, because he was still felt lost in that moment, like he’d been paralyzed there.

  It took him fighting every instinct he had not to go into the bathroom and stand there, watching her shower, not because of how good she looked wet, but because he needed a constant loop of verification that she wasn’t lying still and bloody on the Copacabana sand.

  It was messing him up, and even making an effort to focus on the television screen didn’t help. It wasn’t like him to give in to his baser needs, but finally he couldn’t take the itching under his skin anymore, so he approached the bathroom as casually as he could. The water turned off right as he reached the doorway, and when he saw her, she was wrapping a big white towel around her body.

  Jemma shot him a scrutinizing look. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  During the horrifying buildup and then that one, paralyzing moment when she’d fallen, he’d been so sure that this was the question that he was going to have ask her. That she would be the one terrified and a little scarred from her first encounter with a mob scene. But when he’d asked on their walk back to the hotel, she’d brushed it off, with something about how her college campus was a wellspring of badly organized protests.

  Gabe grabbed the doorframe so she wouldn’t see the way his hands trembled still. “I’m fine,” he lied. “Just gonna grab a shower.”

  She didn’t press further, though it was clear she thought he was lying. Her face was an open book, and he read the emotions flitting across it. Mostly confusion though, and no anger or annoyance, and for that he would’ve been grateful if he had the emotional capital to care about anything else except her being safe.

  As he took his shower, Gabe realized that while he’d been upset and thrown by Nick’s attack, he’d not been nearly this upset. When he’d put Nick on that flight, right before he met Jemma’s plane, there’d been an understandable worry, despite the fact that his status had stabilized. But there hadn’t been this agonizing, clawing need to make sure Nick didn’t leave his sight; not like Jemma.

  But then, he reasoned with himself as he toweled off, he didn’t have the same sort of feelings for Nick that he did for Jemma.

  He hadn’t spent a lot of time cataloging the differences in his feelings, besides their obvious physical relationship. But the truth was, even during the week he and Nick had been in Rio before he’d gotten hurt, they’d spent some time apart. Whereas he didn’t want to do anything without Jemma. Even the thought of finding something to do while Jemma worked on her article wasn’t an appealing one.

  When he exited the bathroom, Jemma was already deep in her work, tapping away on her laptop as she transcribed the recordings she’d made of Kimber.

  “Good news,” Jemma said, not even looking up from her keyboard, “I got the go ahead from Duncan. He’s really excited I got her on the record. He’s going to work his US Olympic Team contacts and try to get a statement from someone.”

  “You’re going to change her life,” Gabe said because all he could think was, you’ve changed my life.

  “For the better,” Jemma said firmly.

  Gabe leaned against the door jamb. “She won’t be able to go to the store without being recognized.”

  Jemma glanced up. “Kimber did that part herself,” she said. “Gold medals will do that.” She went to duck her head back down, but then it snapped back up. “Are you going to your room like that?” she asked, gesturing to the towel wrapped precariously around his hips.

  He’d just been regretting the lack of a connecting door between their rooms. “It’s five feet,” Gabe said, even though he knew it was stupid. If he’d showered in his own room, it wouldn’t have even been an issue. He’d have gotten dressed and stayed out of Jemma’s hair so she could write her article. The problem was he didn’t really want to leave, and
he also didn’t want her to realize that.

  So he was stuck, stupidly leaning against the door frame, trying to play it cool like waltzing around the corridors of the Belmond Copacabana in only a towel was something he did every day.

  He knew he hadn’t been very convincing because at his words, she shut off the recorder decisively and stood up, her hair hanging wetly around her shoulders. She hadn’t even waited to dry her hair to start working, but here he was, delaying her. Gabe felt a pulse of guilt rocket through him. If only he could bear the thought of leaving her presence.

  If only he could stop seeing her still and bloody, trampled to death.

  He didn’t know what she was going to do until she took his hand and gently led him to the bed. His towel pooled around his hips when they sat down at the edge. She didn’t let go of his hand and didn’t look down, wouldn’t look anywhere but straight into his eyes.

  “You’re not okay,” she stated, like it wasn’t even a question.

  He pressed his lips together. He didn’t get what was wrong with himself so he could hardly explain it to her.

  “You had . . . you had sort of an episode back there,” she said softly. “I know you did, you don’t have to hide it. We can talk about it. Like we talked about my issues with Colin. It helps to get it out, at least it helped me.”

  He clenched his hands together, because he desperately wanted to tell her, and that wasn’t his normal MO. Something was different with her, and he didn’t know if he was ready to admit it, especially to her.

  Jemma waited a long moment, and when he didn’t respond still, she gave a little nod of acceptance. “Okay, that’s fine. But I’m here if you want to talk.”

  She stood, but before she went back to the desk, she fished around by the other side of the bed and emerged with a pair of his sweatpants he must have left in there a few days before. “To prevent you from shocking the maids,” she said wryly, and tossed them his direction.