Naomi & Bradley, It All Comes Down… (Vodka & Vice, the Series Book 1)

by Angela Conrad

  “Oh, tell her the truth Brad. I don’t know why you’re lying. We are lovers! Hot and heavy lovers.” Molly speaks with authority. She looks me right in the eye and grins.

  “She’s lying!” Bradley looks from me to Molly. “Stop lying! Shut up!”

  That was new, Bradley raising his voice. Was this their first lover’s spat? So dramatic. I know Bradley hates liars and drama, or he used to.

  “Molly, get out of my loft, now.” I order, making my voice deceptively soft.

  “C’mon Brad, let’s go. You can move into my parents’ townhouse with me.”

  I guffaw in a hysterical wail until tears fill my eyes.

  “How old are you Molly?” I gasp between insane giggles.

  “Eighteen and legal, if it’s any of your business,” She hisses at me like a yard snake.

  Bradley is thirty-one and I’m twenty-seven. My downtown loft is expensive, and rent-free for Bradley. No wonder he isn’t running out the door to move into Molly’s townhouse, a building she shares with her parents. Does she sleep in their basement apartment?

  Then it hits me.

  How stupid am I anyway.

  Bradley, beautiful handsome Bradley, is with me for the free ride, the almost 3,000 square foot Tribeca loft, and the perks of no bills.

  I feel like a clown who has been hit over the head with a wooden mallet. The circus crowd has been laughing all along, and I’ve just now gotten the joke. It’s me.

  I cannot breathe. I think I’m going to be sick. One of my damn panic attacks is knocking.

  “Goodbye Bradley, don’t forget your posters and your Xbox. You’ll also want to decorate their basement with you sports collections and drinking mugs.”

  “This is ridiculous Naomi. I love you. I don’t want to move out.”

  He tries to hold me but I block him with my elbow.

  “Your key?” I demand, holding out my hand, palm up.

  “Baby…”

  “Oh, stop groveling lover boy, and take me home before I call my dad,” Molly snaps.

  Bradley shakes his head, stares at me, searching for something I can no longer give him.

  “When I get back, we are going to talk this out and you’re going to feel pretty stupid,” he promises.

  “No hurry. You have a lot to work out; the bunkbed arrangements, where to store your gym gear, and setting up the ping-pong table for your computer, take your time. All your things will be on the roof deck when you get back.”

  Bradley looks at me and I catch a glint of desperation in his eyes. I never knew my loft meant so much to him. It hurts. Was that what spurred his sudden interest in marriage? Was he after my parents’ loft?

  Still holding out my palm for his keycard, he sighs and drops it in my hand.

  “We’re not finished here.”

  Bradley almost threatens with his tight words as he takes Molly’s arm and pulls her out the front door.

  I don’t cry until I get down the long hallway and stand under the shower. Then I let everything go in one giant flood of, “I knew he was too good to be true.”

  Chapter Two

  How did we get here?

  BRADLEY

  Wednesday, February 3rd

  I never understood the lyric in that Talking Heads song that goes, “this is not my beautiful house; this is not my beautiful wife.” I never understood it until this evening, that is. Now I wish I didn’t.

  When I met Naomi, it was the craziest thing. I was recovering from a bad break up. Numbed and confused, I took a long weekend in New York City. I figured I’d catch a few plays, take in a museum or two, eat, drink too much. I needed to be alone. I know, why head to a city of millions if you want to be alone? Because there’s always going to be people, no matter where you go. At least in the city, they mind their business.

  So there I was, in the middle of a famous musical, regretting having paid prime cash for front and center seats. Settling in after intermission, Twizzlers in hand, I felt someone ooze into the seat next to me. First impression: what is that intoxicating scent? Roses? No, something from my mother’s garden, I think, mixed with a hint of wood, cedar maybe. I sneak a look. Bam! There is this girl, mid-twenties, I guess, long blond hair trailing over her shoulders, white tank top, skinny jeans, and that perfume. Jesus, she’s so hot, I can’t stop staring at her. Then she does this incredible thing. She leans her head toward mine and cups her hand over her mouth.

  “Hey,” she whispers, breath scented with chocolate, “don’t tell anyone, but I’m on the lam from the nosebleed seats. If you keep your mouth shut, I can hook you up with all the M&M’s you could ever eat.”

  She opens her purse up, and sure enough, it holds the largest bag of chocolate candies I’ve ever seen. It makes me laugh for some reason and the old couple in front of us shush me. On stage, Carrie is going to her prom and the mean kids are singing and hoisting up the bucket of pig’s blood that’s going to ruin everyone’s night, but next to me is a girl who smells like Heaven and looks like an angel with a bag full of chocolate, so…

  I lean in a little closer and say, “I’ll do better than that. I will smuggle you out of this rotten musical and buy you a drink. I could sure use one right now.” There is more shushing from the little couple, so I say, very loudly, “If Stephen King were here right now, he’d set this theatre on fire!” Then this girl whose name I don’t know yet, stands up, grabs my hand, and runs for the exit.

  Outside, we blink in the glare of midday sun refracting off midtown windows. She checks me out. I see ‘the look.’ Yeah, I’m a model. Mother hated it. What was her word? Vulgar? She couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to be a doctor or go into finance like my dad. Well, he wasn’t exactly a walking billboard for how great that life could be. He seemed to be living under a constant gray cloud, unable to enjoy family dinners, vacations, his own wife. They divorced when I was ten, their lone child, the only symbol of whatever love must have brought them together in the first place.

  I’m used to ‘the look.’ It’s usually followed by something like, “I feel like I’ve met you before?” You have. I’ve been on the cover of over seventy books. I’m the guy, shirt open, ripped abs, holding some gorgeous lady in a provocative pose. I wait for this girl to say it but, as I would find out over the next eighteen months, she rarely does the expected.

  She sticks her hand out and says, “That was fun, thanks.” Then she drops my hand, winks, and turns toward Ninth Avenue. Before I can say anything, she disappears into a bar. I’m standing there, breathing the fetid August air, throngs of tourists bustling around me, feeling that if I don't go and get that girl, I will never be happy again. When I get inside, there she is, perched on a stool, sipping a margarita and sharing a basket of chips with the bartender, chatting away.

  I sit down a few stools away. The bartender takes my order, leaves to make it. Without looking, M&M girl says, “I was wondering how long it would take you.”

  “How long?” I ask.

  “To figure out I’m not the girl for you.”

  “What? I just wanted to buy you a drink to thank you for rescuing me from that awful play.” I say, unconvincingly, I guess, because she turns to face me full on, her brows knitting together.

  “Yeah, right. Listen, I appreciate the fact that you’re bored and maybe looking for something, or someone to do on a hot summer afternoon in the big city, but I can’t help you with that. You’re not my type. Too damned pretty.”

  Jesus. Did she say I was pretty?

  “Listen, I’m not, I mean, I don’t. You know what? Never mind.” I get up to leave, but she slips over to the stool next to me, puts her hand on my arm, and looks right through my eyes, into my soul.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” she says, grinning. “We fugitives have to stick together.” She puts out her hand. “Naomi Swanson, nice to meet you.”

  I shake her hand, feeling a little weird; it's so formal. “Bradley, Bradley Dobrov.”

  She smiles like sun after rain. “We
ll, Bradley Bradley Dobrov, what do you want to do now?”

  Eighteen months later, I’m living in her beautiful Tribeca loft, spending most of my energy trying to get her to marry me. She keeps saying no. It’s getting pretty frustrating. I got the idea a few weeks ago that the reason is that she’s just not that attracted to me anymore. I have put on a few pounds--Naomi is a great cook. In desperation, I joined a gym and started working out. Even gave up the fries and beer for kale salads and protein shakes. But she still seemed, I don’t know, distant? I know she’s really busy at work, but I do try to help out around the house. She always wants to cook when she gets home. Says it relaxes her. We still have sex. I don’t know what she wants from me.

  Last week, we lay in bed, tangled and sweaty, and I stroked her hair. “I miss you, baby. Why don’t you come to my gym? I know it’s a little farther, but we could work out together, you know? Grab a juice afterward. Talk?”

  “I’m good,” she answered. That’s it. That was her WHOLE answer. I figured she still wants me to prove myself, so that’s when I got this idea. I found this engagement planner online. Her name is Molly and she’s pretty young, but she got a lot of experience in high school when she started her ‘promposal’ business. Yeah, that’s a thing: these elaborate, staged moments where kids ask someone to the prom. Anyway, now she’s expanding her business to planning marriage proposals. According to her website, she has a 100% success rate. Her latest plan: make Naomi think I’m cheating on her. Huh? She says it will make the moment all the more dramatic if Naomi thinks she’s losing me, then finds the complete opposite is true. I’m not sure about that, but I do like the proposal plan.

  On Saturday, we are supposed to be going to this little off-off-off Broadway production of “Our Town,” in a warehouse in Bed Stuy, but Molly has arranged for the troupe to perform the scene from Carrie, that was happening when we met. Then I’m going to bring her on stage, where a bucket of M&M’s is going to pour over her as the cast sings our song: In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel. While they sing, I get down on my knee and pop open the ring box which contains my great-grandmother’s Tiffany three-carat ring in a platinum setting. There’s no way she could say no to that. I mean, that’s fireworks.

  There were fireworks of a different kind here tonight. Naomi walked in and Molly and I were sitting there at the table. I was panicking because I didn’t want to spoil the surprise—we’ve come so far. I did what I normally do when I’m caught in the act of deceit: deer-in-the-headlights stare, stammer, stammer, blush of shame. It was not very manly. Then she just went crazy, demanding my house keys and telling me I’d have to live in Molly’s basement. If she hadn’t been so upset, I would have laughed out loud.

  Molly wasn’t helping, either. She decided to implement her jealousy plan and pretend we were having an affair. I don’t know who was acting crazier. She’s only eighteen and I’m thirty-one. That’s like one inch from being illegal. Naomi didn’t seem to think it was crazy. I did what she asked and left. I am still a gentleman. I fired Molly and dropped her off at her house. It’s funny; I could have sworn I saw this weird guy from my gym standing in one of the windows of her townhouse.

  I know I told Naomi I’d be back, but something tells me she could use some space right now. In fact, I’m thinking I’ll wait for her to call me so I can be sure she’s cooled off. So, I spend the night on my friend Manny’s couch, surrounded by pizza boxes and beer cans. My stomach is tied up like a garden hose and my heart pounds so loudly I can’t hear anything, not even Manny banging some girl from the club. I gotta get her back, gotta get her back. I don’t want to end up like Manny. I love him, but, geez, look at this place. It smells like a frat house. No, I need my Naomi with her Freesia and cedar scent, her rocking body, her crazy sense of humor that always cracks me up. I fall asleep to the rhythm of her beautiful name in my head like an incantation: Naomi, Naomi, Naomi.

  Chapter Three

  Cold hard facts

  NAOMI

  Wednesday, February 3rd

  I stay in the shower until the water turns cold, like my heart. When I come out, soaked and sad, I laugh a grizzly sound, remembering how my real estate, mogul-minded mother always described the master bathroom to her friends: “The bedroom features a spacious closet, built-in shelves, and an immaculate en-suite bathroom with a double vanity sink, a walk-in rain shower, and a separate bathtub.” Mother, a walking ad of self-promotion, always dolling up the truth, she had a minor in exaggeration with a master’s degree in bragging.

  I hate this loft. The only thing I value here is the location. “A rare for Tribeca loft living—that is flooded with northern and southern light and is anchored by immense windows that boast views of One WTC, the Empire State Building, and the Hudson River.” I parrot my mother with a sneer.

  Even expecting Bradley to leave me one day, practically predicting it as if I lived inside a crystal ball, I still feel stunned. Maybe that’s why my head is drowning in motherly flashbacks.

  Bradley’s face, that guilty stare he gave me, the deep swallow, the glancing out the window as if a studio prompter would be there dangling from a wire, holding up a sign of safe words to say.

  “I just knew it,” I spout to my empty bedroom. “Too damn attractive for his own good, I knew he’d have to beat them off with a club, always competition, pretty boy, why did I accept his first invitation, dammit.”

  I glance at our shared king-sized bed and know I can’t sleep there.

  Has Molly been in-between my Bloomingdale’s sheets?

  Did Bradley hold Molly tightly and whisper in her ear, tell her she was his everything? Could he repeat the same phrases he said to me, so easily without a drop of conscience?

  Where was he now?

  I imagine Bradley, entwined in Molly’s Barbie sheets, nestled on a sleeper sofa next to the furnace. A teddy bear under his arm.

  Didn’t Bradley say he would be back, to talk?

  I glance at my black alarm clock and see it’s 2 a.m., not tonight, too damn busy with his teenage girlfriend to explain anything to me.

  How long has their affair been going on? Did they meet at the gym, or before? Was the gym story only their cover? No, Bradley’s body had improved, he probably held her ankles while she did setups, then she laid in his arms as he used her for a barbell.

  I was going to be sick.

  I crave a bottle of brandy and a giant bag of M&M’s. I go into the kitchen, “which features marble countertops and backsplash, a sleek eat-in island with a built-in butcher block, a wall of white cabinetry, a built-in wine cooler, and modern stainless steel appliances. There is also a brand new Miele washer/dryer.”

  I know I’m crazy upset. I haven’t heard my mother’s voice so sharply in my ears for over two years.

  I dry my long blond hair, letting it trail over my shoulders in soft waves and drag a blanket out to the living room sofa. I’ll sleep in the open, in case Bradley comes back so I can hear his knock. He won’t, but if he does, I’ll know.

  The liquor and chocolate cause crazy dreams. In it, Chase is studying my face, watching me as I run on the treadmill. I keep running towards Bradley but I can’t get anywhere, I slide further away from his arms until I’m right back with Chase.

  I don’t know much about Chase. Not even his last name. He wears Nike and Under Armour and all the trendy new styles of workout gear. He’s covered in navy spandex, it complements his blonde hair. I’ve caught him watching me many times. Was it over Molly’s desertion?

  Who cares?

  I want Bradley.

  I don’t want to cry again, but I do.

  I miss him already.

  Damn asshat.

  Thursday, February 4th

  Enough sniveling.

  I wake up disappointed and rebellious. Bradley never returned.

  How was that possible? He acted so contrite, as if he was being noble and I was the guilty one.

  He lied; he never came back. And here I am stuck in limbo with all of his belongings
cluttering up my place, crowding the corners with eighteen months of man gear and memories.

  Oh hell, I’m also late for work. I scramble around, knotting my hair high, decorating my eyes with heavy blue to hide the redness, and twisting my ass into a black pencil skirt. I’d like to get my hands on the designer who decided tight fabric, stretched across your ass was a good idea for office wear. Black heels, making me nearly 5’11”, and I toss in my power walk just because I can.

  I’m rapidly approaching thirty, living alone like my cousin Betty, with one pet named Bradley, a big, black Russian alley cat who likes to stray.

  I hop in and out of cabs like a maniac, dodging snow, dogs who have tangled themselves in their leashes, and burly men with heavy briefcases and weighty frowns.

  Wall Street, home of dead hopes, tremulous dreams, financial disasters, and the hedge fund McMaster Swartz, my employer.

  I ride the long elevator ride, ignoring my reflection in the many-mirrored walls. What’s with mirrors in an elevator anyway? Some decorator trick from the 50’s that’s supposed to make a tiny cage look bigger? Make you forget you were hanging a few hundred feet in the air by a thread? It doesn’t work. It never worked. Oh, I’m in a fine fit this morning.

  I rush past Carl’s desk but he catches me and whistles.

  “Hey hot stuff, where’s the fire?”

  Like I haven’t heard that crack every morning for the last five years.

  “Just in a hurry.” You old bastard.

  “Come into my office at ten, I want to give you another client to handle.”

  And look at my legs, and peek inside my blouse, and rub against me as much as possible.

  “Yes Sir, see you at ten.”