The Thunderproof Sky

by Loretta Lost

  Rodriguez’s jaw falls open. “You have mad game.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you absolutely sure? Fucking Tiffany’s, Cole? Aren’t they really overpriced?”

  “I’m trying to help you out, here, man.”

  “Is there an upper limit to what I can spend?”

  “Just make it seem somewhat reasonable that you would be able to afford it,” I suggest. “Something sweet and meaningful, if possible.”

  When the girls exit the store, still laughing and chattering about the items they have purchased, Rodriguez quickly shoves the remaining bit of his ice cream cone into his face, and swallows. I have to cough to restrain a laugh. Not a great start.

  “What did you girls buy?” I ask.

  “Oh, Lucy got this amazing purse,” Scarlett gushes. “It’s going to be perfect for the office. But you know, it’s large enough to fit a gun or a taser in there too, if she needs to step into the field.”

  “I probably wouldn’t risk wearing this in a dangerous situation,” Luciana says with a laugh. “Not with this price tag. If someone tried to shoot me, I would probably dive on the purse and try to protect it from harm before I thought of saving my own ass.”

  “You do have a very nice ass,” Rodriguez says, and then he clears his throat in embarrassment, turning red as we all look at him. “What I meant to say—actually—was that there’s a gift I need to get for someone at Tiffany’s. I could really use a female opinion. Do you think you can help me, Agent Lopez? You have pretty good taste.”

  Not a horrible recovery.

  “What do you need to get at Tiffany’s?” Luciana asks curiously. “Is it your mom’s birthday or something?”

  “Nope. Also, my mom is a crack whore,” Rodriguez says.

  I want to slap myself in the forehead. He’s crashing and burning so hard.

  “Not to say that crack whores don’t deserve fine jewelry,” Rodriguez stutters. “She’s retired now, and I pay her bills, since her previous employment didn’t offer a great pension plan. But anyway, there’s just this girl I really like, and I’m super awkward and bad at all this romance-y stuff. I was thinking maybe a necklace or a bracelet? I don’t know. I just want to have what they have,” he says, gesturing to me and Scarlett. “You guys are so cute that it’s annoying. How do you manage to look this great together after nearly endless amounts of life-altering trauma? I want to find my own crazy, fireproof, bulletproof, shatterproof love that lasts a lifetime. I guess it’s ridiculous to think that there’s anything at Tiffany’s that can get a girl to love me like that.”

  “What are you talking about?” Luciana asks. “Have you seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s? That was one of my favorite movies, growing up. C’mon, I’ll help you pick out something that no girl on earth could resist.”

  We watch them leave.

  Scarlett looks at me suspiciously. “Did you tell him to say all that?” she asks.

  “Not the part about his mom being a crack whore.”

  “I don’t know, I think it added some character. Made him more sympathetic.” She moves closer and slides her fingers into the belt loops of my pants. “You’re pretty good at picking up chicks, Cole—that was solid advice.”

  “I’ve never really tried to pick up any chicks who weren’t you,” I tell her, offering her a lick of my ice cream cone.

  She takes a generous bite, and closes her eyes at the delicious taste. “You never had to try, because all the girls wanted you. They were falling over themselves trying to impress you.”

  “Mostly because I didn’t care,” I explain. “They knew I only had eyes for you—”

  “And architecture.”

  “Yes. I guess the fact that I was focused on other things and not chasing after them made me less intimidating? It made me seem more trustworthy? That’s why I gave Roddy advice to make it seem like he cares a little less, and has other options. Take the pressure off her.”

  Scarlett shakes her head, as she enjoys more of my ice cream cone. “You’re selling yourself short, Cole Hunter. You don’t even realize just how fine you are. That’s why I had to lock that shit down ASAP and put a ring on it,” she jokes, tugging on my pants to bring my hips closer to hers, and standing on her toes to give me a kiss that tastes like ice cream. She giggles.

  “Well, you definitely claimed me as yours,” I respond. “I should have done the same to you.”

  “Yup. You should have,” she responds with a cheerful nod. “Because I’m fine as hell, too. And highly in demand, just like every female member of any species in her reproductive prime, I suppose. By the way—Breakfast at Tiffany’s was an awful movie. The main character really bugged me, always wanting to marry men for money instead of just getting a damn job. Although I guess she had a job, which was being a call girl—which is fine, but geez! Manage your money properly. And then there was that scene where she tossed her cat out in the rain. I didn’t find it romantic at all. It was horrifying. Poor kitty cat. The kind of people who would toss a cat out of their car… are definitely the kind of people who would leave a baby on the side of the road.”

  Her tirade against the movie takes me by surprise, but I can understand why. I seem to recall her watching it with me on the couch one day when we were kids, and I was studying, and only somewhat paying attention to the important parts. “It struck me as odd that Jim Larson said your mother was crying a lot when Liam mentioned abandoning the baby. Maybe she cared—maybe she had a good reason, if we talk to her…”

  “Not now, Cole,” she whispers, stealing my ice cream cone and moving to the window of Tiffany & Co.. She looks inside with a haunted expression on her face, almost exactly like the first scene of the movie. “Just let me be here and enjoy this day—please don’t make me think about that. Let’s just watch our friends possibly fall in love as they browse diamonds. Let’s pretend things are good.”

  I move to her side, chewing on my lip. I don’t know how to tell her that I can’t relax. I’m afraid that Rodriguez and Luciana have awful things they intend to tell us, and they are just working up the courage. I am afraid of what happens next. But as I look into the jewelry store on Fifth Avenue, I do find the hustle and bustle of wealthy shoppers to be calming to watch.

  It would only be better if it were Christmas—imagining that all those people were shopping for their loved ones. Imagining the nervous young men buying engagement rings for their lovers, excited to stage grand proposals and open those boxes. I think about the fact that Scarlett has not yet put on the ring I got for her, and has brushed me off every time I tried to mention it. Maybe I also need to think of some epic, grand proposal, since I never got the opportunity to do one when we were younger.

  But maybe she’s still not in a place where she could really appreciate that.

  She just seems so happy today.

  I can’t figure her out.

  Moving to her side, I clear my throat. “It was pretty awful when Audrey Hepburn shoved the cat out of the car. But she went back for it and gave it lots of hugs and kisses and apologized. I forgave her,” I say softly. “The characters were definitely weak and flawed… but that could have easily been us, Scar. We got a few lucky breaks along the way. If you couldn’t hack, if I couldn’t design—if we had been so emotionally damaged that we couldn’t function intellectually in the world. If we hadn’t found each other, and taken care of each other. If we didn’t kill Professor Brown and get away from him—I mean, just look at how his other kids turned out, just from living with him a little longer than we did. If you didn’t get me—and Little Ricky—out of juvie, heck, that tiny boy you saved from the system became that amazing detective who is standing in front of us, trying and failing to impress the girl. That’s all you, Scar. He wasn’t built for prison back then, and he could have gotten killed in that place. But if I didn’t have that inheritance from my parents to help us go to MIT, and if we didn’t manage to pull that marriage scam to access it…”

  She looks thoughtful as she stares
at the diamonds. “I guess, like the characters in the movie, we have both traded sex for money at some point in our lives. You did it with older women to get me that laptop.”

  “You did it to blackmail that developer into giving me my first job.”

  “No—I did it so that he would pay you what you deserved for your first job instead of ripping you off. But that’s the difference—we did it all for each other, and they did it for themselves. She was an actor who couldn’t act, and he was a writer who couldn’t write. They were lazy. We worked our asses off.”

  I open my mouth to speak, but I quickly clamp my lips shut. I want to tell her what Mr. Bishop said about how we had been under the protection of the mob. About how we were able to grow the company thanks primarily to their intervention. It still makes me so angry, and I don’t want to believe it. We did work ourselves to the bone. We worked day and night, for years.

  And now we could probably afford to buy everything in this Tiffany’s store. Not that we would, because Scarlett has a completely different taste in jewelry.

  But what if there were other people who were also working day and night, just as hard as we were? Just as intelligent as we were? What if we really did just get lucky, and have things nudged in our direction? I am afraid to think of how much more of a struggle it would have been without that luck, because it was already a huge struggle.

  I definitely wouldn’t be able to retire right now (not that I want to)—and I probably wouldn’t be able to give Roddy a credit card for a diamond shopping spree. Glancing over at Scarlett’s face as she finishes the ice cream cone, I wish I could tell her some of these thoughts swirling around in my mind.

  She is usually the person I confide in for everything so it is very uncomfortable keeping secrets from her. I normally wouldn’t even consider holding information back from her, but with recent events…

  I don’t want to tell her that there’s a possibility our accomplishments could be less than they are. But it is driving me crazy. The only good thing is that it does make me want to try again, to accomplish new, incredible things, so that no one could ever tell me I didn’t deserve what I achieved. It makes me want to live. It makes me want to leave an even bigger legacy.

  As I stare at Scarlett, I see her watching Agent Lopez curiously through the store window, with a little half-smile.

  “This is a really beautiful city,” she admits. “I never allowed myself to enjoy New York, because of all the power Benjamin had here. But now that he’s gone, I’m letting myself fall in love with it for the very first time. Maybe that’s even better than meeting my parents—meeting the place where I came from, the incredible place where I was supposed to grow up. And maybe the movie got one thing right. Nothing bad could ever happen here at Tiffany’s.” She presses a hand flat against the window of the store, near the display of diamond bracelets. “Do you think she’ll give him a chance?”

  “I hope so. They both seem lonely.”

  “At least one good thing would come of all this. If all the horrors I faced somehow brought them together.”

  Her eyes are tortured and filled with shadows that dance even in the daylight. But there is a slight smile on her lips. She has been so unpredictable lately—so sweet and gentle one second, and so violent and angry in the next. I suppose that she has always been like that—but she was also usually so quiet and reserved, and she hardly ever smiled. I have never seen her so happy—I have never seen anything like this crazy shopping euphoria.

  “Scarlett,” I ask softly, and she looks at me. “Who are you?”

  She visibly flinches.

  She turns back to the store, and sighs. “I thought you knew.”

  Chapter Seven

  I rotate a glass of wine in my hand, feeling like a fancy lady as I wait for dinner to arrive at our table.

  Luciana and I managed to squeeze in manicures and pedicures, which she suggested when she heard I would be attending a wedding in a few days. Owen purchased our plane tickets, and we will be heading to JFK tomorrow to leave for Switzerland. To save time, we opted to go to a nice restaurant close to the hotel, since there were so many amazing options within walking distance.

  Sitting in my gorgeous new dress and shoes, all done up with makeup from Sephora, I have to admit that it’s been the best day of my life. I mean, if you ignore what happened with meeting my father, and I certainly can.

  I have never gone shopping before. I have never gotten a manicure in my life. I have never been able to sit down for a fancy dinner with wine, my boyfriend, and some friends. I’ve watched Serena do all these things from a distance—although it was rare, even for her—and sometimes I secretly wished it could be me. But I was only there to fight the fights. I never got to have fun, other than pinch hitting for sex, or murdering bad guys—so I learned to have lots of fun doing those things.

  Now, I’m actually getting a chance to live.

  Maybe it’s because she trusts me more, after we were able to communicate. Maybe this is my reward for killing Benjamin and saving her life. Maybe she knows that I love her, and would never do anything to hurt our body—so she’s letting me have full rein. Maybe it’s some kind of graduation present.

  I don’t know how long it will last, me being alive and whole, like a real person. I just know that I don’t want to waste it, and I want to do all the things I’ve never done. It feels so glamorous, sitting here in our gorgeous sequined dresses. I’ve never seen Luciana so dressed up before, and I can see that she is enjoying it. All those years that she asked me to have a drink with her after work, hang out and be her friend—I wanted to so desperately.

  But I was lying dormant, never able to take charge, never able to agree.

  I was in the backseat, while the car drove in directions I didn’t want to go.

  Sometimes, I was even locked in the trunk.

  I don’t think I can possibly describe the repressed feeling of being trapped in my own body for so long. Now, I just want to explode out of myself with excitement, and run around sampling everything that life has to offer. For the first few days of being me with zero interruption, waking up as me, I couldn’t really process what was happening. I mainly used the time to have sex with Cole. It was sort of all I knew how to do—all I existed for. I couldn’t never really attempt to do the things I wanted to do, because I knew it was temporary.

  How could I learn to play the drums, or try roller derby, if Serena would wake up and take that away from me? I would be crushed. So, I just played my role, and appreciated the bits and pieces of her life I could steal. I hungrily, greedily ate the leftover scraps from her table, like a starving dog desperate for steak instead of kibble.

  And now, here I am. Sitting at the table, like a real, live woman.

  Ordering the steak and lobster like I do it all the time.

  I’ve never had steak or lobster before, and I’m so excited to taste it for the first time.

  There was also an appetizer of some kind of creamy bisque that was just delicious. I can’t believe how pleasurable all this is for the senses.

  Food is definitely better than sex. But this is coming from someone who has only had a few meals in her life, and endless amounts of sex. I’m sure that most people feel the opposite.

  Also, I think I’ve discovered something kind of cool about myself. Don’t get me wrong, I love Cole and I am completely obsessed with him, and I have been since the first moment I laid eyes on him. When Serena touched his hand, there was an earthquake, and her momentary fear allowed me to feel his hand, too. It’s kind of hard to forget that moment. It was only a second, that I was able to touch him, but I felt the electricity pierce me to my core. It was the first good feeling I had ever experienced in my life, as every time she had felt fear before that, and I had taken over the body—well, the situations I found myself in were usually not pleasant. Then, finally, when it was pleasant, and there was nothing to fear, I had barely a moment. A whisper of a moment.

  I always wondered if I’d ever ge
t a chance to touch him all by myself.

  Shortly after that, I did. After getting choked and burned, and watching Cole get stabbed. Fighting for his life, him fighting for mine. I’ve been hopelessly in love since the first time I kissed him, while he bleeding to death and the house was burning down all around us. Our magical first kiss happened in the process of beating a man to death, together.

  A girl never forgets a romantic first date like that. He’s always been my hero.

  But today, when I was helping Luciana into that dress in the changeroom, I realized that I think I also like girls. She was just so beautiful, and it gave me butterflies in my stomach, zipping up her dress.

  Actually—I don’t know if I like girls, or if that’s just the first time I’ve ever been close to one.

  It felt so strange and different, when my hand accidentally brushed her shoulder. Have I only ever touched men? Have I never touched a woman? I felt so mesmerized by her soft skin and slender body. I felt myself becoming just as embarrassed and shy as Detective Rodriguez. There’s something so hypnotizing about just staring at her—her smoky dark eyes, her full lips, so angry, serious, and intense.

  Yet, when she smiles, she really smiles.

  I think I became addicted to watching her smile today, and it made me smile.

  Is this what it’s like to have a friend? Or do I actually find women attractive?

  I have no clue. I’ll probably never have an answer. I would never cheat on Cole, but it is nice to feel all these new, good feelings, I never thought I’d get to feel. The idea of being with a woman just seems a lot safer, and softer—somehow less violent than being with a man. Plus, no risk of pregnancy, something that has terrified me for most of my life. I doubt I’ll ever get to see what it’s like, because my time in this body is so limited, and so controlled by Serena. I don’t think she has ever considered being with a girl, and she seems to have a general disdain and distrust for them. That’s why she never even agreed to have a glass of wine after work with Luciana.