Betrayed

by Francine Pascal

  Finally they were close. Close like they were supposed to be. Close enough to hear each other breathing in the sudden quiet. Close enough to push their overly active brains out of the equation.

  There was the faintest bit of dim yellow light coming from a dying bulb in a gray metal casing on the ceiling. Just enough light to bring the cluttered steel shelves surrounding them out of the shadow. Just enough light to see the mop and two rolling buckets on the floor that left them nowhere else to step. And just enough light to trace her eyes and her nose and the perfect outline of her mouth.

  “Ed,” she complained. Her voice sounded tight and strained. She kept her arms glued against the door.

  “Shhh.” Ed placed his finger against his lips. “If you’re that worried about them seeing us, I know you don’t want them to hear us, either.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she whispered harshly. “Ed, I can’t stay in here.”

  “Gaia, can we just tell the truth in here? Let’s stick with the truth.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Who’s lying?”

  “God, I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you’re the one who’s scared here. Does that make any sense? That makes no sense. If your uncle’s coming after everyone you know, shouldn’t I be the one freaking out right now? But I’m not, Gaia. I’m not scared of him. Jesus, the psycho has already tried to blow holes in my head, and I’m still not scared. And I have no idea why I’m not scared, but honestly, right now I’m much more freaked out by the fact that you are.”

  “I am not scared,” she insisted, raising her volume above a whisper as she pummeled him with her eyes. “I just don’t want to be cramped in a freaking janitor’s closet with you. Fear’s got nothing to do with it. I already told you, we can’t be this close. I don’t want to be this close to you—”

  “Gaia, stop it,” Ed whispered, leaning his face even closer just to shut her up. “You don’t need to do this anymore. You don’t need to lie to protect me. I know.”

  “Know what?” Gaia scoffed.

  “I know. I know what I heard in there. I know what I saw. I know what your uncle is capable of. I know what he’s trying to do. I know he tried to kill me once and he’ll probably try again. But more important than that, I know what I saw when you looked at me in that room.

  “This is all a load of crap you’re giving me—this attitude, this avoiding-me-like-the-plague thing, it’s a lie. And it started the moment you saw me get shot at. You don’t hate my guts. What we did together wasn’t a mistake. You love me, Gaia. You love me just as much as I love you. So why don’t you stop going for the Oscar here and admit it so I can stop leaning against this goddamned door and touch you.”

  Gaia huffed out a loud, disgusted grunt and crossed her arms firmly. “You presumptuous freak!”

  “Shhhhh,” Ed warned.

  “You presumptuous freak,” she whispered. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m…I’m sorry to interfere with your delusions, but…but this has nothing to do with my uncle. I just can’t be with you like that, okay?”

  “Gaia, you’re not hearing me. I know you’re lying. Don’t ask me why I’m so sure—I just am. I know you still love me. And I know what you’re trying to do, but I’m telling you, it’s a mistake.”

  “Please, just—,” Gaia started.

  But Ed wouldn’t let her speak. “No one is safe either way, don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter if he sees us together or not. Look at Heather. Either he gets us or he doesn’t. That’s true whether you and I are together or not. And if you keep pulling this crap with me, then we’re going to end up without a stitch of happiness in this whole scenario.”

  “Ed—”

  “Gaia,” he snapped. “Listen to me now. I’m going to let my hands go from this door. I’m going to wrap them around your waist, and I am going to kiss you.”

  “Ed, goddammit, please just listen—”

  “No. Listening to you is what messed us up in the first place. We should be holding each other and touching each other and kissing each other. Do you know how many days of the best kissing and touching we’ve missed here? The beginning-of-a-relationship kissing? I mean, Jesus. No one has the right to steal that from us. No one.”

  Ed took a deep breath, swallowed hard, dropped his hands from the door, and wrapped them around Gaia’s waist. By now his eyes had adjusted to the dim light, and he was beginning to be able to see Gaia’s eyes completely. He could see that at least they were no longer darting from side to side with worry but simply fixed on his.

  “Gaia, please,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to play anymore. I’m all out of psychotic. You have to let me know now. ’Cause the real truth…I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about here. Maybe you really do hate my guts, and your stalker ex-boyfriend just trapped you in a closet for two minutes, and you’ll need years of extensive therapy to recover. If that’s true, then I am so sorry. But if that’s not true…if your entire body is buzzing from being next to me in this closet the way mine is buzzing from finally being this close to you again…then please, please tell me the truth. We can go back out there right now and face all those freaking horrors and death traps alone, or we can stay in here for a few more minutes and…I don’t know…just…be together. So just tell me the truth now and I will never ask you again. Do you want to be together? Do you want—”

  Gaia shut Ed’s mouth with her own. She clasped both her hands firmly around the back of his neck, pressed her lips to his lips, pressed her body to his body, and answered his question, clinging to him so strongly, it was almost as if she were afraid she might lose him again. They fell against the door as he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, reaching his hands all the way around her back and grabbing onto her. His hands weren’t really within his control at this point as they swept forcefully up to her back and then to the back of her head, pressing her to him, breathing her in with the desperation of a man who’d been slowly suffocating for days. And in all honesty, he had been.

  Philosophical Questions

  GAIA LET HERSELF GIVE IN. SHE just did. It was entirely beyond her control. And she didn’t care. Finally, for at least two whole minutes, she didn’t care about all the watchful eyes and impending doom. She didn’t care about her enemies. She didn’t care who her father was. She didn’t care about what joylessly heroic thing she was supposed to do next. All those things were surely waiting for her down on the ground somewhere. But as long as she had Ed’s lips, as long she had his body pressing her against that door, she could hover just slightly above all of it, feeling weightless and resurrected in this cold cement janitor’s closet.

  Resurrected. That was honestly the feeling coursing through her veins. Being brought back from the dead. At least for two minutes. His kiss was just like oxygen, or food, or water. And Gaia had been starving, parched, and holding her breath without him. All these days of zombifying self-enforced deprivation, and here at last was a moment of critical relief.

  She knew she had just broken about twenty different promises by kissing him. Promises she’d made to herself, pacts she’d made with her uncle, and her father, and even Satan.

  But Ed was just making too much sense. What was the use of being fearless if she was going to live what basically amounted to a fearful life? Peering around every corner, tiptoeing on Loki’s stupid tightrope all day and all night? Denying herself everything and giving him complete control?

  No, it wasn’t even that. That’s not why she was wrapped in Ed’s arms. It was nothing that philosophical or profound. It was so much simpler.

  It was just wanting him so much. That’s all it was. Wanting him so much that it crossed over into that very pesky category of “need.” So much that standing next to him in the dark had been screwing up her breathing. So much that the simple act of being tugged into a cold, wet closet felt like some kind of irresistible foreplay.

  She’d given it every bit of resistance she had left. She’d li
ed through her teeth again and again. She’d glued her hands to that door. She’d barked endless orders to her body to stay cold and stiff—to ignore her racing heart. To stop pumping all that blood through her chest and up to her face. To avoid the electrical sparks she felt just from having his hands on either side of her, pressed against that door.

  But none of that was going to do any good. Not in a small, dark room alone with him. Not after resisting him for such a painfully long time. Not after everything he’d said in that remarkably insistent, thoroughly desperate, and beautifully Ed-like monologue. It had been worth kissing him just to shut his verbose ass up, but still, every word had rung true. And as per usual, Ed’s uncanny ability to speak the truth had pretty much blown her mangled line of thinking to smithereens.

  Ed probably didn’t even know how right he was. All this time, Gaia had believed that honoring Loki’s clear-cut message to stay away from Ed would somehow keep Ed safe. But Loki was obviously way past honoring any deals, and that included an unspoken deal to leave Ed alone. He’d thrown all of his deranged diplomacy out the window and replaced it with nothing but brute violence and terrorism. So if they were in fact headed toward Loki’s version of World War III, why the hell was Gaia wasting time denying herself the only truly good thing still standing in the ruins of her war-torn life?

  So she pulled Ed closer. As close as she could bring him with his clothes still on. That still wasn’t close enough. And two minutes wasn’t enough time. Why should she have to stop at two minutes? If she was through lying to Ed, then why in fact would she ever need or want to leave this room again? If Loki was starting World War III right outside that door, then here was the perfect fallout shelter. They could simply stay together in this closet and wait out the war. All they needed were some cans of beans, plenty of bottled water, and a set of those purple sheets.

  Right now, she would have settled for just the sheets.

  Ed’s hands ignored her clothes completely, sliding urgently under her jacket and her T-shirt and caressing her bare skin. His right hand traveled the length of her spine, lifting the back of her shirt with it, until she could feel her naked shoulders pressed against the metal door. His left hand slid down the base of her back and grabbed on firmly to the waistband of her jeans.

  Maybe they didn’t even need the sheets.

  Gaia was so deeply engrosseed with his lips and his palms and his fingertips, she’d barely even noticed her own hands reaching under his long-sleeved shirt and grasping onto his white undershirt, tugging it out from his jeans, hiking both shirts farther and farther up his chest….

  And then, almost simultaneously, they let go of each other.

  What’s wrong with you, Gaia? What about Heather? And Tatiana, and Natasha, and Dad…

  Ed must have felt it, too. He must have felt just as ridiculously guilty.

  All of them suffering, or missing, or mourning. That was the reality outside this closet. That was what mattered right now. That was surely where Gaia and Ed’s minds should have been. But standing here with him, the actual universe had fallen so wondrously far away just for a second. They’d flashed back so completely to the last time they’d been this close that they were ready to take things…as far as they could go. Here. Now. In a hospital closet. And that, of course, felt beyond wrong. This was not the time. Not here. Not now. No matter how much they wanted it.

  “Okay…,”Ed uttered between short, shallow breaths, staring down at the floor, “we were just…We can’t—”

  “No,” Gaia agreed, staring straight ahead as she tried to catch her breath. “I didn’t even realize I was—”

  “Me neither,” Ed agreed. “I mean…well…maybe I knew I was…but not here.”

  “No. Not here,” Gaia agreed.

  “Okay.” Ed slowly began to breathe more regularly.

  “Okay,” Gaia echoed.

  It was official. They could breathe freely. They had made it out of that very sudden and unexpected “situation” without doing anything too shamefully sinful. No, they weren’t bad people—they had just found this one bright match-light of relief in all this oppressive darkness, and those little match-lights were getting harder and harder to come by. But it was time to move on to the next moment, and Gaia knew it.

  “I think we need to leave this closet,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Ed replied. “Yeah, we need to leave this closet.”

  They didn’t budge.

  “I don’t want to leave this closet,” Ed stated plainly.

  “Yeah, I’d kind of rather we stay here in the closet,” Gaia agreed.

  They stood in comfortable silence for a few moments, catching their breath and enjoying the quiet pause from all the nightmares outside. And with each breath Gaia realized just how deeply relieved she was. Ed had been the only person left in the world with whom she could breathe freely and easily. And she’d been without those breaths for too long.

  Ed, being Ed, was the first to speak again.

  “So…just…to be clear here…”

  Gaia felt her chest tighten. Why did actual words make her feel more naked than…well, than actually being naked?

  “Yeah…?” she asked, trying not to flinch with discomfort.

  “That kiss…,”he went on. “Does that kiss mean—?”

  “Yes,” Gaia assured him, fixing her eyes on a bottle of pine cleaning fluid. Why she needed to stay focused on the cleaning fluid when she felt like proposing marriage.…That would probably take her years to understand. Thankfully, Ed seemed to be getting better and better at knowing what she was feeling without any assistance from her. No, that still wasn’t giving him the credit he deserved. Ed was beginning to know what she was feeling in spite of her.

  “Yes…,”Ed echoed. “So…everything I said to you before was right?”

  “What is this, debate team?”

  “Gaia.” Ed grabbed Gaia’s shoulders and turned her to him. Face-to-face. No hospital rooms to peek into, no cleaning fluids to stare at. Just his eyes. He obviously wouldn’t be satisfied until he got a straight answer. “Everything I said…,”he stated quietly. “That night…our night…that was not a mistake…?”

  Gaia took a deep breath and forced her eyes to stay firmly fixed to his. “No,” she told him, feeling a two-hundred-pound weight fall from her shoulders and crash at her feet. “That was just about the only right choice I’ve made in the last five years.”

  Ed hunched forward, dropping his forehead on her shoulder and smiling as he breathed a huge sigh of relief. “I knew I couldn’t be completely crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy,” she assured him. “You’re completely sane, and I, apparently, am still an idiot.”

  Finally Gaia breathed her very own long sigh of relief. The truth was finally making its way up from her heart, where she’d been burying it for days, and out of her mouth. And this time, she wanted to be sure she didn’t do a damn thing to stop it. Heather had already made her confession. It was time for Gaia to make hers. She took Ed’s head in both of her hands and zeroed in on his eyes.

  “I doubt you’ll ever hear me say this again…but you’re right, Ed,” she told him. “Everything you said. I’ve been lying through my teeth to you, and…that was the mistake. Not our night together. And Ed, I…”

  No, don’t freeze up again. Not now. Come on, Gaia, for God’s sake, say it. Three little words and you’ve said it….

  “And I…,” she went on hopelessly. “Well, when I said that I didn’t love you…I was lying.” Not exactly the three words she was trying to say. But it was a good start. “Okay?” she asked, hoping her statement would suffice. Hoping he understood, in spite of her pathetically uncomfortable stammering, that her point was that she was done pretending—that they were together now. No matter what happened.

  “Okay,” Ed said placing his hand on her cheek. He understood. Of course he understood. “I don’t…not love you, too, Gaia,” he said, smiling a wide, comfortable smile. He leaned down and kissed her softly. And
Gaia kissed him back. And she could have stayed in that kiss for the next…

  “Okay,” she announced, throwing her body back against the door.

  “Right,” Ed agreed, pulling back as well. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “No, I started it.”

  “No, I—”

  “Okay, here’s the thing,” Gaia stated. “We really need to leave this closet now, and we need to go home and not get together until tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” Ed agreed, nodding.

  “Yes. Because if we don’t leave this closet and go our separate ways at least tonight, then we’re just going to start kissing again, and Heather’s going be down the hall in that room and…”

  “We’ll end up feeling like the scum of the earth—”

  “Right.”

  “Okay,” Ed concurred. “I’m going to go home.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I think I’m going to just…take a little time in this closet here.”

  “Okay…” Ed stood up straight and placed his hand on the knob. “So…no kiss,”he confirmed, inches from her face.

  “No kiss,” she confirmed, willing her hands to her sides.

  “Right.” Ed quickly cracked open the door and slipped out through the sudden blinding shaft of light. But she could still feel him behind the door. “Gaia…”

  “Yeah?” she called back.

  “We’re going to be okay,” he said. “Just don’t be afraid. I mean, I know you’re never afraid, but…we’re all going to be all right. Okay?”

  “Don’t worry,”she said, “I’m not afraid, Ed. Believe me.”

  “Good. Bye,” he whispered.

  “Bye.”