Sin With Me (Bad Habit)

by J. T. Geissinger

  Barney shoots Kenji a sour look. Kenji sticks his tongue out at Barney, and then flounces back to the bar to pour another shot.

  “My real name is Nasir,” replies Barney grudgingly. He glances at his Rolex as if counting the minutes until he can leave.

  Fascinated, I take the shot of tequila Kenji’s holding out to me but don’t drink it. “Really? Nasir? That’s beautiful. What’s the origin?”

  “It’s Lebanese.”

  “You’re from Lebanon? I thought you just said you were from Jersey?”

  “No, I didn’t. And I’m not from either one.”

  Judging by his terse tone, that’s as much as I’m getting from him about his origins, so I try another tack. “Does the name Nasir have a meaning?”

  Barney’s dark eyes flash up to meet mine. His voice thick, he says, “Protector.”

  From my peripheral vision, I see Kenji looking back and forth between us with raised brows. I quickly look away, mutter, “Interesting,” and then shoot my tequila.

  “How did I not know this?” asks Kat, peeved. She shoots Nico a pointed look, but he only shrugs.

  “This is the first I’m hearin’ about it, too, darlin’.” He stares at Barney, who sighs.

  “I got stuck with the nickname due to an unfortunate choice in costumes one Halloween a long time ago.” Barney smiles at Kenji, his perfect white teeth gleaming. “And Kenji’s the only one who knew. Just like I’m the only one who knows a few things about him.”

  Kenji blinks, hard. Beneath his layer of perfectly applied foundation, he goes pale. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

  “Then keep your pretty little mouth shut from now on, my friend, or everyone’s gonna hear all about that time in Bangkok—”

  With a banshee shriek, Kenji flies at Barney, arms waving, top hat sailing off his head.

  Barney jumps up from his chair and puts Kenji into a restraining hold. Quick as lightning, he pins Kenji’s arms to his sides in a bear hug from behind. As Kenji squirms and curses, Barney chuckles. He says, “Pipe down, princess, you’ll hurt yourself,” to which Kenji responds with another shriek.

  “I see the circus has started without me.”

  Brody strolls into the kitchen, hands shoved into the front pockets of his jeans. His untucked white dress shirt is rolled up his forearms, showing off his tan. He appears relaxed, he’s even smiling, but I sense all the fault lines waiting to crack.

  What a pair we are. Two peas in a fucked-up pod.

  The thought makes my stomach tighten.

  Barney releases Kenji, who slaps him on the arm and wags a warning finger in his face. Barney blows him a kiss. Brody greets everyone with a hug or a handshake, depending on the gender of the person, with the exception of Kenji, who gets a pinched cheek. Then he makes a beeline for me.

  He pulls me into his chest, kisses me on the temple, and whispers, “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself, rock star,” I whisper back.

  “Tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay.”

  His lips still hovering near my temple, he whispers, “Uh-huh. Now tell me something honest.”

  I drop my forehead to his chest and sigh. He winds his arms around me, so I’m enveloped in his strength and warmth, the subtle clean fragrance of his skin. Keeping my voice low so only he can hear, I say, “I’ll be okay, how’s that?”

  From behind us, A.J. booms, “What did I tell you about whispering, woman!”

  As if in agreement with her father, Abby squeals.

  Brody turns my face to his and gives me a gentle kiss on the lips. Looking into my eyes, he murmurs, “Better.” Then he heads to the bar and pours himself a big measure of vodka into a highball glass, which he proceeds to chug as if it’s water. He immediately pours himself another, and away that one goes, too.

  Watching him, I frown. I’ve never seen him drink like that before. He’s always been very controlled with his drinking, with the exception of the night he told me he thought he was a coward.

  Coward.

  It echoes in my head again now, like the tolling of a churchyard bell.

  “Pace yourself, brother,” says Nico with a shade of tension in his voice.

  “Yeah, we don’t want a repeat of last year,” mutters Kenji, sharing a look with Barney. His annoyance with Barney seemingly forgiven as quickly as it came, he flops into the chair next to him and accepts a plate of food from Magda with an excited “Ooo!”

  “Or every year before that,” Barney says under his breath, glancing at his watch again.

  With wide eyes, Kat and Chloe both look at me.

  “I’m fine,” says Brody loudly. He slams his empty glass down on the counter with a bang.

  Everyone goes silent. Even the baby, who looks around the room, startled at the noise.

  I swallow, my mouth suddenly desert dry. Something scratches on the inside of my skull with tiny, razor-sharp claws, an invisible rodent digging in the dirt for buried bones. On the distant horizon beyond the windows, a jagged flash of white lightning illuminates the dark, choppy sea.

  Brody spends every St. Patrick’s Day drunk.

  Scratch.

  Brody’s going to get drunk again this St. Patrick’s Day.

  Scratch.

  Brody had a nightmare last night, the worst one he can remember.

  Scratch.

  Brody asked me to marry him today.

  Scratch! Scratch! Scratch!

  Into the awkward silence Chloe says brightly, “So A.J. and I have good news!”

  I can tell from the frozen expression on Kat’s face that she thinks Chloe’s about to announce her second pregnancy, but I can’t give it too much attention because I’m staring hard at Brody, this person I thought I knew, who now seems as substantial as a mirage shimmering off in the distance.

  What’s happening? What am I missing? What have I been overlooking all along?

  Ants crawl over my nerve endings. I feel as if I’ve just bumped into an electrified fence. My mind darts all over the place, hunting for something but not quite deciding what it is.

  “What’s the news?” asks Nico.

  “Well, we finally got into the doctor this week,” Chloe says, “and they did a whole bunch of tests, and A.J.’s headaches . . .”

  I turn my full attention to her. She’s beaming at A.J., who sits smiling by her side.

  “What?” Leaning over the table, Kat grabs Chloe’s hand.

  “They’re from dehydration!”

  Through a mouthful of food, Kenji asks, “What headaches?”

  Magda sets down plates full of food in front of Nico and Kat. She looks at me, and I shake my head. She looks at Brody, glowering at his empty glass on the counter, and shakes her own head.

  Nico repeats, “Dehydration? What the fuck?”

  Chloe laughs. “I know, right? All the tests showed no new growth in the tumor, and no other abnormalities in his system, and they finally concluded that he was just exhausted and dehydrated because he’s been so focused on taking care of me and the baby that he wasn’t taking care of himself! All they did was give him a saline IV!”

  “Oh thank God! Honey, that’s amazing.” Kat rises, rounds the table, and engulfs Chloe in a hug from behind. Then she hugs A.J., who scoffs, “I told her I was fine!”

  I move woodenly from where I’m standing alone by the counter and sink into a chair, not certain my legs can support me much longer. “You guys, I’m so relieved.”

  Kenji is grousing to himself. “A.J. was having headaches? I didn’t hear about these headaches. Nobody thought to tell me he wasn’t feeling well, because obviously I’m as important as chopped liver around here!”

  During all of this, Barney looks back and forth between Brody and me with a slight, thoughtful furrow between his brows, as if he’s trying as hard as I am to figure something out.

  Magda places food in front of Chloe and A.J. Brody pours himself another vodka. A boom of thunder rolls through the clouds outside. A few erratic splatters of rain his
s against the windows.

  In an obvious effort to keep the conversation going and gloss over Brody’s weird mood and the even weirder vibe between us, Kat says to me, “Hey, sweetie, why don’t you show me that photo album Brody started for you? It sounded amazing when you were telling me about it.”

  When I hesitate, she adds with a laugh, “Unless it’s full of nudes!”

  “There’s one or two,” Brody says dully from his spot at the bar. He’s holding the glass of vodka in his hand, staring at it, or through it, like he might not even be seeing it at all. He glances up at her and forces a smile. “I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for getting me all those pictures of you girls, though.”

  She smiles back at him. “No thanks necessary. I thought it was a wonderful idea.” She looks at me. Her gaze is intense but her voice is casual when she says, “Well, if the photo album isn’t fit for public viewing, I’d love to see all the new clothes you’ve been buying.”

  Picking up the thread of Kat’s train of thought, Chloe says, “Oh, me, too! Why don’t the three of us pop over to the guest house real quick before it starts to rain too hard?”

  Kenji rolls his eyes. “Chopped liver, what did I tell you.”

  His attention turned back to his glass of vodka, Brody continues on as if there wasn’t a break in their conversation. “The hardest part was finding anything about her before college for the Look Back section. It was kinda like . . . she didn’t even exist.”

  “That’s because I didn’t.”

  Everyone looks at me.

  It’s one of those things I’ll wonder about for years afterward, why I choose this particular moment to disclose that particular piece of my past. Maybe it’s because everything’s already so strange, and adding one more strange thing seems to fit. Maybe it’s because of what Barney had revealed about his name. Maybe it’s because of the gathering storm, or the marriage proposal, or all the unanswered questions I’d lived with for so long.

  Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because some part of me already knows.

  “What do you mean?” asks Chloe, puzzled.

  I look at her, and then at each person at the table in turn. Even Kenji has stopped eating to stare at me in silence.

  “I mean I go by Grace Stanton, but it’s not the name people knew me by when I was growing up.”

  From the corner of my eye, I see Brody’s head lift.

  Confused, Kat says, “What? Why?”

  For something so long unspoken, it comes out effortlessly.

  “The attorneys advised me to change it after the accident, after I received the settlement from my parents’ life insurance, to avoid scammers and predators. You know, because I was a teenager, alone. And I was determined to start a new life without that notoriety hanging over my head. I didn’t want to be what everyone saw me as, the sad orphan amnesia victim whose parents died in a tragic hit-and-run. I wanted to be anonymous, so a new name made complete sense. And because of the circumstances, a judge granted my name change under sealed order, so if anyone tried to find me from my old name, they couldn’t.”

  A moment of shocked silence follows. Then, in a tight voice, Brody asks, “What name did you go by growing up?”

  I turn my head and meet his eyes.

  “Diana Van der Pool.”

  All the blood drains from Brody’s face. The glass of vodka slips from his hand and shatters against the floor like a bomb.

  BRODY

  The sound of the rain on the roof of the rental car is like a hail of bullets. It’s dark, so dark and wet the headlights are nearly useless on the black ribbon of the winding canyon road ahead. We’re going too fast, because my father always drives too fast, taking the next curve in the road with a reckless speed that makes the tires spin against the pavement. For one long, terrifying moment we float on the layer of water on the asphalt before the tires find their grip again and the car comes back under my father’s control with a hard jolt that slams my teeth together.

  In the passenger seat, I clutch the armrest and silently start to pray.

  “Fucking rain!” my father mutters, peering through the windshield as the wipers slide back and forth over the glass. “I thought it never rained in California!”

  His breath reeks of Scotch.

  My audition for the UCLA music program went well today. One of the faculty members said he’d never seen an undergraduate perform contrasting Bach suite movements in addition to a Boccherini concerto on the classical guitar, that it wasn’t until the master’s program that that level of proficiency was usually achieved. I’m almost positive I’ll make it in as a freshman like I’m hoping.

  We flew in last night from Topeka, just my father and me, while Mom stayed home to look after my brother and sister. I watched her face from the taxi window as she stood in the doorway of our house and waved good-bye.

  I didn’t take it personally that she looked relieved we were leaving for a few days.

  I knew it had nothing to do with me.

  When my father dropped me off at the audition with the excuse he was going to visit an old friend, I knew the condition he’d be in when he came back to pick me up. This “old friend” he visited in between bouts of sobriety always returned him much worse for wear.

  And today being St. Patrick’s Day, with every bar around campus advertising specials on drinks, I knew the wear would be far worse than usual.

  When we fly over a rise in the road and I see what’s ahead, my heart jumps into my throat.

  “Dad!” I holler. “There’s a car! Slow down! Slow down!”

  Cursing, my father slams his foot on the brake.

  Too late.

  The brakes lock. With the road so wet, the car goes into a long, uncontrolled slide, drifting aimlessly as my father fails to turn the steering wheel because he’s frozen stiff in horror by the realization of what’s about to happen. His hands are gripped so hard around the steering wheel his knuckles are white.

  I’ll remember that vividly later, his white knuckles.

  That and all the other body parts.

  As if the person driving is looking for an address or trying to see the road more clearly, a small white Honda is creeping forward on the road ahead of us. We’re headed toward it at top speed, the night flying past in an inky blur.

  One hundred feet.

  Sixty feet.

  Thirty feet.

  Ten.

  I scream just before the impact rips the sound from my throat and sends my head smashing into the passenger window.

  The sounds of shattering glass and metal grating against metal pierce my eardrums with a terrible, inhuman roar. There’s a moment of weightlessness, and then my head snaps sideways from the sudden velocity of our car changing direction. The awful grinding noise stops, and then somehow we’re going straight on the rocky shoulder of the road, losing speed.

  Miraculously, my father recovers enough of his senses to guide the car to a coasting stop.

  Stunned, we sit in silence for seconds that feel like eons, listening to the sound of the rain on the roof. My heart is a jackhammer. I’m shaking violently. I can’t catch my breath. A high-pitched buzzing echoes in my ears. Something is dripping into my eyes.

  When I reach up to touch my face, I realize it’s my own blood. My head hit the window so hard it split open.

  “What . . . what happened?” asks my father, dazed.

  He looks over at me. His gaze is unfocused and his face is slack, like he’s awakening in confusion from a dream.

  I look over his shoulder to the road behind us. The hot, acid bite of bile rises in my throat.

  The Honda is upside down, smashed against a telephone pole on the opposite shoulder of the road, the front end crumpled up like an accordion. The wheels are still spinning. One headlight flickers erratically. Smoke rises in billowing gray plumes from the destroyed engine compartment, and, in spite of the rain, small licks of orange flame dance merrily inside.

  I’m shaking so hard my fingers are alm
ost useless, but I manage after a few fumbling attempts to open my door. I stagger out into the cold March air, my breath frosting in front of my face. I smell gasoline and smoke, sharp and stinging, and cough.

  Then I see the foot.

  It’s lying alone in the middle of the road, a human foot sheared off just above the ankle, impossibly clad in a red high-heeled shoe.

  A woman’s foot.

  I lean over and vomit, retching violently until there’s nothing left.

  Crying now, my breath leaving my body in raw, hacking sobs, I wipe my mouth on my sleeve. I stagger into the road, headed toward the Honda, terrified of what else I’m going to find, terrified even more of doing nothing.

  When I’m a few feet away, the engine erupts into flames with a blood-curdling POP!

  Shocked badly by the sound, I stumble and fall. I start to crawl to the car on my hands and knees, panic eating my insides. The smell of gasoline is choking me. Smoke billows into my face, burning my eyes.

  From somewhere far away, I hear the sound of a siren, and then my father urgently calling my name.

  There’s a man inside the car, still buckled into the driver’s seat. Even upside down, it’s obvious he’s dead. No one’s head can be at that angle.

  Beside him, crumpled into a mangled heap, is his wife.

  I stop and retch, but nothing comes up. When I lift my head again, I see a flash of red in the backseat. My first thought is that it’s blood, but as I force myself to crawl closer I realize it’s not.

  It’s hair. A long, gleaming sheet of hair, falling from the head of the girl strapped into the backseat.

  Her eyes are closed. One of her pale arms hangs lifelessly over her head, resting on the inside of the roof, and the other is pinned between her side and the door, folded into a dent. I think she must be dead, too, but then she lets out a soft moan of pain.

  I almost faint from the relief that floods my body when I hear that sound.

  Then the fire in the engine exhales a sudden burst of heat.

  I know what’s about to happen. I start to scream frantically at the girl.

  “You have to get out! I have to get you out! You need to release your belt buckle now!”