Beautiful Beast

by Aubrey Irons

  Tyler snorts a laugh. “Maybe she’s just waiting for someone who actually knows what the hell he’s doing to show her how.”

  I hate this conversation - the reasons why as confusing as the rest of the feelings mentioning Anastasia brings up inside of me.

  Asher laughs, coughing on his whiskey and doubling over slightly before he comes back up, holding his side.

  “Shit, you mean you, you moron?”

  Ty grins. “Step aside, gentlemen, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  Dylan and Ash laugh and shake their heads. I fill my lungs with as much burning hot cigarette smoke as I can.

  “You?” Dylan waves Tyler and his infamous bravado off. “Bullshit. You couldn’t.”

  “The hell I couldn’t.”

  “Maybe after I showed you how,” Ash says with a grin.

  I’m just glowering in my silence, destroying my cigarette as fast as possible, the red Solo cup in my hand crinkling slightly as my hand grips it tighter and tighter.

  “What about you, Crown?” Tyler turns, nodding his stupid, handsome chin at me.

  I don’t really understand the anger I feel in that moment, at these other guys talking about fucking Anastasia. It’s rage. It’s something unhinged.

  And it’s confusing as shit.

  “This is fucking stupid,” I growl, sticking a fresh smoke in my mouth and lighting the tip of it with the cherry of the last one.

  “Hey, if you don’t want to play in the big leagues, you don’t have to.”

  He grins, knowing me well enough to understand he’s pissing me off, even if he might not fully know why.

  “We could make it interesting. You down?”

  I’m seething beneath the surface as I turn my forced smiled on Tyler. Dylan frowns, his eyes darting between us, sensing the friction here even if he too isn’t quite sure what’s gotten into me.

  “All right, why don’t we chill. I got an ounce of that Cali kush from my guy. I could roll us a nice—”

  “Fuck it,” I shrug as casually as I can. “I’m in. How interesting?”

  Ash laughs. “Oh, shit. Now it’s on.”

  Tyler’s lips pull back in a smile. Like I said, he knows me, and he knows the odds of me and my competitive streak stepping away from something when it turns into a bet is approximately a million to one.

  “A hundred bucks each? Whoever taps that first gets the pile.”

  The Solo cup crushes in my hand at my side. Beer drips from my fingertips.

  “What are you, poor, Van Der Haus?”

  Tyler grins even wider.

  “Make it a grand each.”

  Ash’s brows go up. “Four thousand dollar pot to whoever fucks Anastasia Bell first?” He nods as he slugs back another belt of whiskey. “Shit, I’m in.”

  This is stupid.

  “Trust me,” Ty grins as he snatches my pack of cigarettes off the balcony ledge and sticks one between his lips. “I’ll be in. Balls deep in.”

  For a second, I want to literally murder one of my best friends. I actually want to throw him off the balcony, and piss on his broken body. I find restraint, but I’m imagining it in gory detail as I pull on the cigarette, my eyes narrowed darkly at him

  Tyler’s laughing eyes dart to mine, and his brow furrows.

  “Jesus, Crown, it’s just a dare.” He laughs. “You wanna quit with the fucking beast-mode eyes?”

  I take one more pull of the smoke, filling my lungs and swallowing back the darkness.

  And then it’s gone. Well, then it’s back to being hidden. I force the usual mask of a smiling face back on as I shrug casually and grin. “I’m just fucking with you, man.”

  Tyler holds my gaze a second longer, frowning slightly as if trying to see past the mask.

  He won’t. No one does.

  He laughs, the sound tinged with just enough nervousness to let me know I’ve made a point, even if it’s subliminal.

  “Man, trying to get inside my head, huh?”

  He laughs again, and the sudden tenseness of our group on the balcony dissipates. The mood lightens. My head doesn’t.

  Dylan nods at Ash. “Hey, you still trying to get with that new girl, Liz?”

  “I was.” Ash shrugs, his face pulling into a grin. “Got a blowjob in the upstairs library after English yesterday.”

  Dylan groans. “Motherfucker.”

  Ash just grins. “You want some?”

  “Not after you, Jesus.”

  In all of our fucked up glory as “kings” of the school, that’s a rule: we don’t touch a girl who one of the other one’s has been with. It’s us pretending we have standards I guess. It’s also a power thing because word is out on that. So if a girl is getting with you, it’s because she wants you over the other three, since getting with you means trying any of the others is off the table.

  Like I said, it’s stupid.

  “Yeah, fuck that,” Ty wrinkles his nose. “Unless you wanna kiss a girl who tastes like Ash’s dick.”

  The three of them crack up like I should be too. After all, we’re young, we’re the one percent of the one percent of the one percent, and we’ve got the whole school on their knees begging for us. Sometimes quite literally.

  But I ignore them as I turn back to the gardener’s cottage. She’s still out there on her little hedged-off patio, strumming a tune I can’t hear and mouthing words I can’t read.

  “Can’t” isn’t a word my brain is used to dealing with.

  17 years ago:

  “Does a king live here?”

  My father smiles, ruffling my messy hair as we stand on the stone steps of the mansion. I look up at the enormous iron and wood door, up higher at the impenetrable stone walls, covered in ivy and looking for all the world like a medieval fortress.

  “No, pumpkin, just a man and his family.”

  “But this is a castle.”

  My dad winks at me. “Is it?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Well then maybe I am working for a king, who knows.”

  I know he’s teasing me. But I’m at that perfect age in life where you’re still able to straddle that divide between fantasy and reality. And right now, I choose to believe we’re about to meet a king.

  In a sense, we do.

  Bennet Crown opens the door himself that day. They had house help, of course - Carl and Mrs. Tottingham were working there at the time. But Bennet liked opening his own front door.

  “Mr. Bell,” he reaches out and shakes my father’s hand, smiling warmly as he steps aside. “Please, come on in.”

  “Hank is fine, Mr. Crown,” my father says in that just shy of subservient way people without money tend to talk to people with money. It’s something I’ll resent him for later.

  “Only if it’s Ben instead of Mr. Crown, please,” Bennet smiles.

  He leads us through the enormous house, and my jaw practically drags across the floor.

  “Dad,” I hiss, tugging on his sleeve and looking up at the huge, vaulted ceiling of the rooms we walk through.

  He shakes his head in that “not now” way, but Bennet Crown smiles at me.

  “Trust me, it’s less impressive when one of the ceiling light bulbs goes out.” He winks at me before turning to my dad and gesturing with his chin. “The greenhouse is out this way.”

  “So what do you think?”

  My dad puts his hands on his hips, nodding slowly like he does when he’s surveying a new project - like he’s visualizing where everything will go in his head.

  “The space is great, and it gets the light, that’s for sure.”

  He nods at the piping running the length of the roof of the ornate, immaculate greenhouse, the fresh dirt perfectly laid out on both sides of the walkway down the middle.

  “Those have salt filtrations on them?”

  Bennet smiles, laughing quietly as he shakes his head. “See, this is why I hired you.”

  My dad shrugs, nodding. “It’s just, this close to the ocean, the sea air is
murder on roses.” He furrows his brow. “Mr. Cro- Ben, I know we’ve already spoken about this on the phone, but are you sure you don’t want to do something like Hydrangeas or Rugosas that’ll do a lot better in this-”

  “It has to be roses,” Mr. Crown’s voice is stern for the first time since he opened his door, before he softens, shaking his head.

  “It’s for Vanessa. They’re her favorite, and these ones…” He shrugs.

  “The Old Heritage and Ophelia blends,” my dad smiles. “That’s quite a rare old-growth flower.”

  “Hank, the whole of the grounds will be of course under your care. But this greenhouse and those roses?” Ben smiles. “Well, think of them as a priority. I know they’ll be in good hands with you.”

  “They’ll be in the best hands with my dad.”

  Ben chuckles as my dad shoots me a quick look and ruffles my hair again.

  “Once we get the salt filtration going, the sea air won’t be a problem.”

  “Are we near the ocean?”

  Here’s the fun thing about the Hamptons: you can drive for miles less than a thousand feet from the Atlantic Ocean and never see it, because it’s been walled off by manicured hedges, ivy-covered walls, and the sprawling, lavish mansions of the rich.

  Dad laughs. “Yes, Ana, we talked about this.”

  We’re still in the side yard of the house, surrounded by the gorgeous trees and hedges of the Crown Estate, but I’m looking around anyway like I’ve somehow missed an ocean.

  “It’s just past those weeping willows, actually,” Ben Crown gestures with a smile. “If you’d like, and if it’s okay with your dad, you can go check it out. My son, Sebastian is down there now.”

  “This is private property, you know.”

  I blink, startled by the dark, piercing eyes of the boy standing with his hands on his hips, blocking my path. Beyond him, a wooden dock stretches past a sandy beach out into the grey-blue Atlantic Ocean.

  “I- I know.”

  I’m instantly thrown off by him. I’m instantly backpedaling and feeling like I need to apologize for something even if I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong.

  “Who are you?” he says sharply.

  “Now, Sebastian, let’s be sure that we mind our mann—”

  He holds up a hand, silencing the young woman behind him who looks to be a nanny of some sort - the woman who does stop talking when the ten-year-old tells her to.

  “You,” he points to me. “I asked you.”

  “I’m Anastasia.”

  He says nothing, his face flickering with that look that I’ll come to know, and fear, and hate, and love - the one that’s half a triumphant grin and half a defensive scowl at the same time.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “My dad’s going to work here. He’s going to make sure the trees and flowers and stuff grow.”

  “The sun makes trees grow, not your dad.”

  I scowl, eyeing the fierce-eyed, dark-haired boy. And I want to tell him to get lost or to stop being such a jerk, but I know this is important to my dad, and I know he always says that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

  “You have a really nice house,” I venture instead.

  “I know.”

  I frown once more but brush it off once again.

  “I thought it was a castle when we first—”

  “It’s not.”

  I bite my tongue, glaring at the mean little boy.

  ““Your dad’s going to work here?”

  I nod.

  “So you’re both going to live here?”

  I nod again, slower.

  “Well, the house is off limits to the help.”

  “Now, Sebastian—”

  He holds up his hand again, silencing his nanny once more without even turning towards her.

  “So don’t try and come inside.”

  “I don’t want to anyways,” I snap. “You’re right, this isn’t a castle at all.”

  He smirks. “And what gave it away.”

  “Because you are not a prince.”

  Present:

  It’s the smell of pie-crust, and whatever vaguely orange and lavender scented cleaner she’s been using to clean the Crown Mansion for thirty years now that envelopes me as Emily Tottingham pulls away from the bear-hug she’s just given me.

  It’s the smell of a home forgotten.

  We’re out in the main foyer of the house now, the doors to the study and that dark, shadowed hallway that leads towards wherever Bastian’s slunk back to thankfully shut.

  “It’s so lovely to see you here again, dear.”

  The drawn and rounded vowels of her English accent are like another hug - another reminder of memories from this place. And she means the words, even if there’s a tightness on her face that doesn’t quite convey the message as much as it might have years ago. I muster about as much of a convincing smile back as I can, her hands still on my arms after the hug.

  I could lie like I did to Carl. I could say it’s “lovely to be back here, too,” or something equally as fake, but I don’t. I’ll save the lies for myself, for when I’m convincing myself I’m going to survive being here.

  Lies like “it won’t be that bad,” or “he’s not that bad.” Because it will be that bad, and Bastian Crown is every bit as bad as he always was.

  Actually, no, he’s not.

  He’s worse.

  “You’re upstairs, in the east wing,” Mrs. Tottingham goes for one of my bags, but I shake my head as I shoulder one and grab the handles of my rolling suitcase and guitar. She gives me a sharp look, and I immediately smile, genuinely this time.

  “I can carry them, really.”

  “And I’m not some frail little old biddy yet, you know,” she says with a sharply raised brow.

  I grin, still not letting go of my bags, and she eyes me again before shaking her head in that tsking way she’s always done.

  “How’s your father doing, dear?”

  The grin fades as my eyes drop to the floor.

  “He’s good. He’s still asleep, but they took him out of intensive care yesterday, and now they’re just keeping him in the burn unit to monitor some of the healing. I just wish—”

  My voice breaks as I look away.

  “Oh, deary,” Mrs. Tottingham pulls me into a big hug, stroking my back. “There, there.”

  “I just wish I could talk to him,” I say quietly.

  Due to the smoke damage to his throat and lungs, the doctors have him in an induced sleep. Not a coma, but a sort of medicated rest so he doesn’t strain anything.

  Not being able to talk to him, or tell him I’m here, or that I love him is maybe worse than seeing him so weak like that, behind the clear plastic “clean room” barrier of the recovery room.

  “Terrible,” Mrs. Tottingham’s brow knits as she sighs heavily and pulls away from me, shaking her head. “Just a terrible accident.”

  There’s that word again: accident. In the rest of the civilized world, an “accident” on the job like my dad’s would mean understanding, and help, and probably some paperwork, not to mention financial compensation. The Crown Estate, however, is very much removed from the rest of the civilized world.

  It wasn’t always, of course. When Bastian’s father hired my dad, having an accident like the one that happened earlier this week would have meant all those things - time off, sympathy, worker’s compensation, job security. But those days are long gone. In fact, I barely ever knew those days. These days, it’s Bastian’s world here at the house. Bastian who views his help as servants he unfortunately has to pay, and who views accidents like my dad’s as “willful negligence.”

  It’s the fire - sorry, the “act of willful negligence” - that’s brought me back here. “Here” being Crown Manor, or hell, even back on Long Island at all, despite promising myself I’d never set foot here again. People pay an insane amount of money to come “out East” to visit the Hamptons for vacation - infinitely more to
live here. It’s the playground for New York’s elite, with picturesque, charming, Martha-Stewart-esque towns with the shopping of Madison Avenue and the wealth of the Upper West Side.

  South Neck, home to the Crown family estate, and the Bell family gardener’s cottage is the crown jewel of the whole thing, with an average home price hovering around $24 million. I haven’t been back here since the summer after high school when I moved to New York City. Not once. I might have, I guess, if my dad had ever pushed it. But he didn’t. That, and he was always more than happy to come to the city to visit me, instead of the opposite, which suited me just fine. After the way things ended so abruptly, the night when Bastian and I—

  Well, like I said - I never once planned to come back here.

  That was before the fire. That was before I got the three phone calls in a row from Carl while I sat in the waiting area of the Luminous Records talent office in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, to let me know my father was on his way to the hospital with third-degree burns and smoke inhalation.

  They say it started with a clogged duct in the temperature and air filtration system of the greenhouse - the old glass and wrought iron structure that stood next to the gardener’s cottage I grew up in on the Crown Estate. The greenhouse which was home to the prized, award-winning rose garden that was Vanessa Crown’s favorite thing in the world, next to her only son.

  Bastian.

  He’s never been a forgiving person, but he seems to have taken the destruction as a personal affront to the memory of his late mother. Hence the charge of “willful negligence” and the threat of termination of my dad’s contract.

  Fifteen years of service and that asshole decides an accident that could have killed my father was grounds for letting him go.

  The second phone call I got that day as I frantically shoved my life into suitcases was from Bastian’s “estate manager,” Brent, who wanted to let me know that “in good faith of his service, Mr. Crown was prepared to continue my father’s contract, so long as someone was prepared to continue with the work.”

  …It’s easy to daydream about telling the estate manager to please pass on a “go fuck yourself” to Bastian, until you take into account the state of my father’s and I’s finances. My dad with the enormous bills from the accident, and me with my college debt. Not to mention the small fortune in credit card advances I’ve wracked up recently to finance the demo record.