by India Lee
“I feel the same way, Damian, of course I do,” Gemma said. “You’re the person I lean on for everything. I trust you with every part of me, I have since I was sixteen.” He stared at her for a beat before looking away. “How could you ever doubt that?”
“Should we be doing this?” he asked, leaving her question unanswered. He pulled her from the altar and lowered his voice. “Gemma, we’ve both had… a lot to drink.”
“It doesn’t change anything,” she insisted, gripping his hand in hers. “Damian, I care about you more than anything. And this stupid piece of paper, this stupid ceremony means nothing in the long run because we are who we are for each other and we will always just be that. Who cares if we have it or not? It’s meaningless compared to everything between us, everything that got us here to this moment. We’re us. No one else can ever be us.”
“Okay,” Damian said, eyes gleaming. He kissed her, lifting her into his arms. They fell back against a wall, unsteady on their feet, laughing. “So? What do you want to do?”
“Let’s do it,” Gemma replied. “I don’t have the words to express how I feel about you, Damian, so let that stupid piece of paper be it. Let that be what you need to never doubt for a moment how much I love you.”
Chapter 16
GEMMA HUNTER CANCELS LAUNCH PARTY FOR FLAGSHIP STORE, POSTPONES OPENING
The Manhattan Local
March 6th
After facing harsh criticism for her attempt at the fashion industry, Gemma Hunter is disappointing people once again – this time, her fans.
After garnering much more positive attention since her work with the famous Burke Faust, many were looking forward to the launching of her new line and opening of her Meatpacking District store, The Court. Hundreds were on the guest list and no doubt already had their outfits laid out for the event when Hunter released the following statement:
“It is with much regret that I must postpone a day that I had been looking forward to for so long. Please know how grateful I am to all that were planning to attend. I hope to see you when I am able to reschedule The Court’s launch. Though I do not want to go into detail as to why I have to cancel on such short notice, understand that I wouldn’t have done so if I didn’t deem it absolutely necessary.”
SURPRISE, SURPRISE
Betsy S. for Fleur Magazine
March 6th
What true professional manages to capture the attention of New York tastemakers and trendsetters, makes them pencil an event into their very tight, very busy schedules, only to cancel on everyone at the last minute?
Should we even be surprised that Gemma Hunter would pull another one of these stunts?
I don’t care what everyone seems to be saying about Burke Faust’s weird obsession with her – no amount of praise can keep me from calling out the fact that this is just further proof that Gemma Hunter knows nothing more than tabloid stunts. Who else would be so okay with canceling a major event with major attendees and not even have the guilt or decency to explain why?
Keeping things cryptic doesn’t make you cool or mysterious, sweetheart. You just look like a sociopath.
Gemma pounded on the door of Damian’s townhouse until her fists felt raw. She leaned her forehead against the door, resting as she inhaled deeply. She had repeated the fruitless motion twice now, both times to no answer. What am I doing? she asked herself. He hadn’t been there the night he waited with Aubrey. He hadn’t shown up at all. And from the look of things on the outside, there was no sign he had ever returned.
She turned, sitting on the top step of his stoop. Everyone was right. What kind of friend had Gemma been if she couldn’t even figure out where he was? He should have known him enough to at least make an educated guess of where to start. And yet all she could think of was this townhouse.
Suddenly, she heard the sound of a doorknob turning. Gemma jumped to her feet, her heart in her throat as she faced the door. But it remained closed. The sound of shuffling slippers seeped out the doorway to her left. Gemma looked over to see Mr. Baker stepping out of the house.
“What’s all this noise?” he asked. He was wearing a knitted sweater over his slacks, dressed surprisingly neatly for someone who spent all this time at home.
“Hi, Mr. Baker, right?” Gemma said, running down the stairs and up towards his door. She held out her hand to shake his. He looked at her with suspicious eyes before returning her handshake.
“You’re Damian’s girl,” he replied, nodding at her.
“Oh, well,” Gemma shook her head. “I guess I used to be.”
“He hasn’t been home,” Mr. Baker said. “He said he’ll be away for awhile. To clear his head.”
“Wait, he said something to you?” Gemma said, feeling her grip tighten on Mr. Baker’s poor hand. She let go quickly, embarrassed, even though he seemed fine with it. “When did you last talk to him?”
“New Year’s Day,” he gestured for Gemma to follow him into the house. “He brought me a cheesecake.”
“Oh?” Gemma asked, finding it strange. It was the same day as the morning he had left her behind at the shore house. Buying his neighbor a cheesecake seemed like an odd thing to do after making the drive home from the shore.
“It was my wife and my favorite holiday. I told him that early on when he asked about her. She passed years ago but we would stay up and watch the countdown and then sleep in late. Then the next day, we would buy ourselves a wheel of Junior’s cheesecake and stuff ourselves silly.” Mr. Baker laughed at the memory, shuffling down his neatly kept foyer. “My favorite flavor was the original but she liked strawberry. We had to flip a coin every year. To see which flavor we were getting,” he groaned, pretending to be grouchy though Gemma could hear the amusement in his voice. “And every year that I won, she made us get that strawberry flavor anyway. Said I could just scrape off the topping. But you know, even when you did, it left a little something behind. It was never just plain.”
“Oh, well that sounds like a lovely tradition,” Gemma said, watching as Mr. Baker walked into the kitchen. He took out two small plates, his hands just a little bit shaky, before opening the refrigerator.
“Damian remembered and got me one, it was very kind of him,” Mr. Baker said. “I hadn’t had one in years. Junior’s isn’t too far from here, but it’s not the easiest walk for me. Not anymore. And since my wife passed, the trek just didn’t seem worth the trouble.” He pulled out a box, placing it on the old kitchen table before untying it slowly and opening the lid. Gemma looked down at the strawberry covered cheesecake. A single slice had already been eaten.
“He got you strawberry!” Gemma exclaimed. “But you said your favorite was the original one.” Mr. Baker let out a quick laugh.
“I know,” he nodded. “He said he got it mixed up but I think he did it on purpose. So my wife could enjoy it with me.” He pressed his thin lips together, looking at the cake and nodding at the two empty plates. “You’ll have some with me, right?” he asked, turning the box so he could cut a slice. “There’s no chance I could finish this alone.”
“Of course,” Gemma said, helping Mr. Baker hold the box still as he cut at the cake. “Did Damian say anything else to you? About where he was going?”
“No,” he replied. “I just kind of figured he’d changed his mind about taking a trip. When I watched the games, he was still playing.”
“He didn’t stop showing up to games until after Allstar Weekend,” Gemma replied. “So I know he was at least playing up until then.”
“Everyone seems pretty angry,” Mr. Baker said. “But they didn’t see him that day. I knew the boy needed a vacation the moment I laid eyes on him. They don’t really allow that in the NBA though. Not with their schedule. Not with who he is.”
Gemma nodded, helping Mr. Baker plate the slices. “I’ve known him for a very long time and it’s unlike him,” she said. “The fact that he’s been gone this long or behaving the way he has is… shocking. His own parents don’t recognize this in him.
There’s no way to tell if he’s safe or, I don’t know…”
“How long could you have possibly known him?” Mr. Baker chuckled. “You yourself can’t be more than twenty years old.”
“I’m twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two years ago, I was already eligible for retirement,” he laughed. “It’s nothing. I know it feels plenty long for you, being alive a little over two decades, knowing Damian for however long you’ve known him, the fact that no one’s known his whereabouts in… what… has it been three weeks now? He just needs some time to figure things out.”
“Everywhere I go, everyone I’ve asked – they’re giving me mixed advice on what I should do. Some think he’s fine and he’ll figure it out and some think I need to go after him and some think that someone needs to go after him, but it shouldn’t be me because I come with baggage.”
“Well,” Mr. Baker tilted his head slightly from side to side, poking at a strawberry on his plate. “Do you want to find him for his sake or do you want to find him for yours?”
“His,” Gemma replied without a beat. She had figured out that much on her ride home from Vermont, after she had awoken from her flashback. All she wanted to do was make sure he was okay and get him back to his team, on court. His career depended on it and whatever he was going through was probably not worth allowing to destroy everything he had worked so hard for. Even if the thing he was going through had to do with her. Mr. Baker nodded, looking at the strawberries on his cake.
“Then tell me, young lady,” Mr. Baker said. “How I can help you?”
“I need to get into his house,” Gemma replied. “To find clues or something, maybe. He didn’t leave a copy of his keys with anyone. Would you happen to have a pair?”
“I don’t,” he shook his head. “But I have a ladder.”
~
At the top of the ladder, Gemma could see how big of a jump it was Mr. Baker’s side of the fence to Damian’s lawn. She realized how easily she could break an ankle if she tried. She could feel herself trembling as she perched atop it.
“I’m wondering if this is maybe a terrible idea,” Mr. Baker called at the base of the ladder. “I never thought these fences were high enough and now I’m thinking maybe they are.”
“I’ve done worse,” Gemma said, reminding herself that she was more than capable of jumping if she really wanted to. But without the safety of deep waters beneath her, it was markedly different. She steadied herself on a nearby branch of a tree on Damian’s side of the yard, stepping her feet up onto the fence. She gasped as the ladder slipped from beneath her, watching as Mr. Baker jumped back to avoid it. “Are you okay?” she called.
“I got it, I got it,” he said, taking the ladder and propping it back up. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” she said, holding onto the branch with her feet balanced on the fence. Without another thought, she pushed herself forward, letting go of the branch and tumbling to the snowy lawn beneath her. It was icier than she had hoped, scratching at her bare hands as she landed.
“Are you okay now?” Mr. Baker’s voice rang out.
“Yes!”
She ran out to the French doors, trying the doorknobs only to find that they were locked. She wasn’t sure why she expected otherwise. She peered in through the glass, looking for signs that Damian perhaps left behind. All she could see were the unpacked boxes that sat stacked against the wall. The place was still pretty unfurnished.
Gemma realized she was gripping a rock in her hand, running her finger over a sharp edge of it. Her consciousness hadn’t caught up with her intentions and before she knew it, she had smashed the glass and reached in, unlocking the French doors from the inside.
She stepped into the house. It was freezing, lacking any sign that it had been inhabited anytime recently. Gemma ran up to his bedroom, swinging open the door to find his bed neatly made with a half packed suitcase sitting at the foot of it. She walked over, touching the clothes, willing herself not to bury her face in it and smell his familiar scent.
There was a cardboard box sitting the corner that hadn’t been there when she was last in the house. It sat open and looked empty from where she stood, though there were big letters written on its side reading, “Beauford.” For a second, she wondered if it was possible that he had been there the whole time, but she knew there was nowhere for him to go there without someone finding out.
Kneeling beside the box, she saw that there were a couple items inside. She could see now that the box wasn’t on its way to Beauford as it was shipped from Beauford. Inside were old sweatshirts and jerseys, yearbooks. There were old class pictures that Gemma had never seen of Damian as a freshman, looking younger than she could imagine him looking at any point in high school. She smiled, looking at a fourteen-year-old Damian smiling back at her.
Within the box was another smaller box. It was wrapped in bubble wrap and Gemma could see that it was made of some sort of ceramic. She unwrapped it, feeling its surprising weight. She lifted the lid, causing its contents to tumble out onto her lap and the floor.
She picked up the first thing that caught her eye, a dried lavender-colored rose that she recognized to be the boutonnièr that was made to match her corsage at his prom. Gemma held the flower to her heart, feeling herself tear up as she looked at the contents of the box scattered about her. They were mostly photos of the two of them together, looking younger than she had ever remembered them to be. She realized in her many moves back and forth across the country, she had lost most of their old photos. She was surprised he had kept so many.
Gemma had initially suspected that Damian had packed up the box and left it in Beauford before he made that cross-country trip with his parents when he decided to go to UCLA. But then she noticed what seemed like a page torn from a magazine, folded into fours. She knew what it was before she unfolded it, fully expecting to see a picture of their New Orleans shoot for Thierry Marc, when the crazy photography team, Lourdes and Cai, had stirred up jealousy in their respective significant others. But instead, it turned out to be the one from their last shoot together, dressed in white and wrapped in silks, set against the blue sky. A key dropped out from the folded paper, attached to a paper tag. Gemma turned the tag in her hands, looking for text to explain what it was. On it was a typewritten sticker with his old Oakland address.
In his handwriting were the beginnings of what looked to be a note. There was a date scribbled on it, set three years back and about a month before she moved back to New York. But there were only two words.
Dear Gemma
~
When she stepped off the plane and into Oakland International, she realized how crazy she was to fly across the country on a hunch. In the cab on the way to Damian’s old building, she searched her brain for mention of having sold the apartment. She realized he never really said anything about it but she never asked either. Gemma hoped she hadn’t gone all that way only to find new tenants in the building.
In the lobby of his building, she went up to the doorman who stood there smiling at her, expectantly. His expression was so chipper that Gemma found herself smiling back.
“How may I help you?” he asked.
“I’m here to see apartment 30C,” Gemma replied.
“Oh,” the doorman said, shaking his head. “No one lives there. Are you sure you got the apartment number right?”
“Yes, I’m positive.”
“The old tenant moved out months ago.”
“I’m here to see the new tenant,” Gemma said.
“There is no new tenant,” the doorman continued, frowning. “I’m really sorry, I think you’ve made a mistake. Are you sure you’re in the right building?”
“No new tenant?” Gemma repeated, forcing her face to look confused when she was in fact delighted. “Oh, I suppose it could be another building then, all these high-rises downtown look alike.” She waved a thank you to the doorman, stepping out of the apartment and onto the chilly sidewalk where she pretended to make a phone call.
Gemma paced in front of the building, watching the doorman as he greeted incoming residents.
When an older woman stepped in, her arms full of grocery bags while holding a leash for a dog that was much larger than she was, the smiley doorman came rushing to her aid. He nodded again at Gemma as she continued to pretend to be on the phone, holding the door open for the old woman as he took her bags.
As the stack of bags grew tall enough to cover the doorman’s face, she backed away towards the revolving doors, pushing backwards until she was back in the building. Gemma ran on her tiptoes, keeping her footsteps light as she made her way to the elevator bank.
Alone in the elevator, she heaved a sigh of relief. As it ascended the thirty floors, Gemma pressed herself up against the corner, trying to calm herself before the doors opened again. When they finally did, she hardly felt ready. She stood there, breathing heavily as the doors began to shut again.
Her hand shot out, stopping the door from closing completely before slipping out and down the hall towards Damian’s apartment. She stood in front of the closed door as she had at his Brooklyn townhouse. She considered pounding on it as she had there. But she knew whether or not he was inside, it would be pointless. Gemma put her hand in the pocket of Damian’s black cargo jacket. She had taken it from his house, throwing it on before went to the airport. She could feel the ridges of the key.
It wouldn’t be the first time that day that she had broken and entered into Damian’s house. She pulled out the key, the tag still attached to it. As the stiff piece of paper twirled, she watched her name dance in his handwriting. She put the key to the lock, wondering if it was still considered breaking and entering if her name was on the key. Just because he had never given it to her didn’t make it any less hers, right?
