by Geneva Lee
By the time I arrive at the store, I already regret dropping so much money on coffee. There’s a couple hundred in my bank account—the result of a summer spent saving with Francie’s help—and once it’s gone…
I feel especially stupid since I’m already buying something else. Twenty-four hours on my own and I’m dipping into my account twice. There’s no choice, though. I think of Adair’s bare feet and the cold, tile floor. I head straight to the shoe section, find the cheapest, largest pair of flip flops, so they’ll be sure to fit, and buy them before I can pussy out.
At the hospital, Adair is tucked into a corner surrounded by even more people. It looks like she’s holding court. Felix the butler hovers nearby watching over them all like a shepherd tending a flock. There’s no way I’m walking up to an entire crowd to give their queen bee a two dollar pair of flip-flops. But even from here I can see her bare feet, and I already bought the damn things. It takes a second, but I manage to get Cyrus’s attention. He looks even worse than he had an hour ago. The hangover is clearly setting in.
He ambles over, bleary-eyed, and cranes to look out the glass doors. “Is something wrong? The car?”
The booze is wearing off and with it his laissez-faire attitude regarding his car. I can’t exactly blame him.
I shove the plastic bag in his hands, muttering, “Car’s fine. Give her these.”
“Give her what?” Adair asks, coming up behind him. She grabs the bag and peeks inside. She looks up at me, her face a mask of stone. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I want to crack her open. I want to study her pages, run my fingers down her spine, unravel her word by word. I think she could be my favorite book if I could only read her.
Her teeth sink into her lower lip like she doesn’t know what to say. She glances over her shoulder at her friends and back to me.
“You don’t have to thank me,” I say softly. Another day I’ll figure her out. For now, this is enough.
The puzzled indifference shifts not into the vulnerable, scared girl I expect but to an ice queen. Her green eyes glitter like cold emeralds as cold and beautiful as the icy look she now wears.
“You can go,” she dismisses me.
I give her a moment—a chance to be the girl in the car who told me to read Harry Potter, the girl who needed me to promise everything would be okay. She groans, rolling her eyes to Cyrus, who’s watching us without commentary.
“May I, Your Highness?” I bow to her, sweeping my arm at the waist and flashing her my middle finger.
“I don’t know why you think I want these.” She holds up the bag. “Or, for that matter, you.”
“Of course, you don’t,” I bite out, funneling my humiliation into rage. “You have a whole herd of sheep to admire and serve you.”
I was a means to an end. One she doesn’t need anymore. I’m a single-serving friend. She used me and now she’s throwing me away. It’s the story of my life.
Adair snorts, shrugging her delicate shoulders. She’s an illusion. There’s nothing weak or fragile about her. No warmth radiates from her. There’s no light in her smile now.
“Adair!” Someone calls her name. Neither of us turn to see who it is. We just glare at one another, an invisible, dividing line being drawn between us. Her name is called again and finally, she turns and my gaze follows. A doctor waits by Felix, stripping his gloves off, his eyes cast to the floor.
For a second, her act slips and fear flits across her face. That’s the girl whose smile felt like the sun shining on me. She’s two people, and I have no clue which one is the real Adair MacLaine. I get my answer when she squares her shoulders and marches toward the doctor without another word.
“Look, Sterling. She’s just—” Cyrus begins but I shake my head in disgust.
“Don’t apologize for her,” I warn him, mustering a weary smile. None of this is his fault. “I’ll get the car back to campus in one piece. See you later.”
He nods, looking relieved to be off the hook for her behavior. A startled cry rises across the room and Cyrus rushes away. It’s not my business what the doctor came to tell her. I resist the urge to even look. I’m not wanted here. Not anymore. She made that clear.
It’s a hard truth to learn. The sun never needed the earth.
7
Adair
Some days are diamonds. I can’t get that thought out of my head. I can hear her saying it. Sometimes in a bright, lift-me-up voice when I came home crying about whatever stupid thing had happened that day. Sometimes under her breath when she thought I couldn’t hear her. When I was younger I’d asked her what it meant.
“It’s from an old song, Dair-bear,” she told me. I could wrap myself up in the memory of her calling me that and feel safe for hours. “It means some days are wonderful.”
My lip jutted out as I crossed my arms defiantly over my flat chest, which was the current source of my sorrow. That day was clearly not a diamond. Not after what Cyrus Eaton had said in front of the whole class. We were discussing dimensions. The teacher told us the difference between two dimensions and three was that two dimensions were flat. Cyrus yelled out ‘like Adair’s chest.’ I wanted to die. “Today wasn’t a diamond! It was a black, dirty piece of coal. It was terrible and I hate school and Cyrus and everyone!”
“Some days are coal,” she admitted. “Some days are hard. But you know the difference between diamonds and coal? Pressure. Don’t let the day be coal. Turn it into a diamond.” The slight lines around her eyes softened as she gave me an understanding smile.
My mother was beautiful when she smiled. Daddy says it could run the world like a power generator if we could capture it. They say I look like her.
Or rather, looked like her.
Today was coal, and there was no changing it.
I wish they hadn’t bothered with the open-casket. I don’t need to see her one last time—not like this. Not dead. The funeral home tried to make her look natural in a pretty, floral dress she’d worn to garden parties last spring, her blond hair curled softly and pulled back at the ears like she always wore it. Her lips are painted with her favorite shade: Dolce Vita. I stole her tube from the vanity in her bathroom, but I’m not wearing it. I couldn’t even look at it.
Dolce Vita. The sweet life.
Not anymore.
It’s been a week since I got the call—a week since my life shattered into pieces so small I’ll never put it back together. I want to erase the night. I want to forget everything about it. I want it to have never happened at all. But I can’t erase the black dress I’m wearing or the memory of this morning’s open coffin.
Someone must have given them a photo to help the undertaker prepare her body. They’ve gotten everything right, except that smile—the one that could power the world. I know now that it was never the smile, but the light behind it. It’s missing. No, not missing. Gone. Extinguished, just like her.
The house is full of people, but, despite the lingering summer heat outside, I feel so cold I sneak off to find a jacket. And take a break from the well-wishing strangers, some of whom I’ve known my whole life. My room is in the east wing but at the top of the stairs, my feet carry me in the opposite direction. I find myself in her bedroom. Everything looks like it did that morning. The maids haven’t been cleaning in here. I would guess my father had warned them not to, and no one goes against Angus MacLaine’s wishes. That probably means I shouldn’t be in here either. If he found out…
Slipping into the closet, I tell myself she would have a more appropriate jacket than I do. Half my closet is still prep school uniforms from last year. The other half is haute couture. I had to borrow a black dress from my brother’s fiancée, because Dad said I couldn’t wear one of Mom’s. He’d kill me if he knew I was in here now. My fingers trail across the neatly hung clothes, rippling the fabrics and releasing the scent of her: lavender and vanilla and a hint of Chanel No. 5. It’s all color-coded, the clothes flowing like a rainbow in the large walk-in, ending in a pool of black. Mom own
ed black clothing, no doubt for events like this. But she never wore it daily, unlike most women. She preferred color, everything from muted creamy yellows to audacious scarlet red. You could always spot her in crowd of her peers, blooming like an exotic flower in the midst of their sophisticated neutrals. I bypass all those and focus on the darker stuff in the back. Coal black pieces that feel like my heart, except they’re still intact.
I grab a cashmere sweater and pull it over my shoulders as heat pricks my eyes. Swiping at it furiously with the sleeve, I catch her scent again and now there’s no stopping the tears. Part of me wants to sink to the floor, surrounded by her, and fall apart. But I don’t. Instead I force myself out of the closet. The sooner the reception is over, the sooner I’ll be one step closer to the end of the second-worst day of my life.
Pausing at the mirror, I take a moment to collect myself. But it’s my mother’s face staring back at me. We have the same wide forehead dusted with freckles no makeup will cover up. My light copper hair might be the same color, but it’s not nearly as well-behaved as hers. I had to shove it into a ponytail this morning when it wouldn’t cooperate. I got my green eyes from her. It hurts to look at myself. Because no matter how much I might see my mom looking at me from the reflection, I can see the truth. My cheeks are too round to be her high-angled, regal cheekbones. I’ve never gotten the hang of eyeliner. I’m a half-baked version of her at best. And now there’s no one around to help me finish growing up.
It takes effort to force myself out of the room, but as soon as I’m in the hall, I walk straight into someone snooping around.
“What are you doing up here?” My heart pounds against my rib cage like a bird trying to escape a snare. Inhaling deeply, I will it to calm, but before I can even hope to catch my breath, I realize I’ve made the same mistake twice. Why do I keep finding Sterling Ford where he doesn’t belong?
His eyes go wide, as if I’ve yanked him back in time to the moment we met, too. They’re no longer full of the casual arrogance that had burned in them the first time we met. He is still infuriatingly hot, though, even dressed in a borrowed black suit and tie. I can tell they aren’t his by the way the cut hugs his torso. His muscles strain the fabric a bit too much. The pants are a smidge too short. It’s far too expensive a suit to be poorly tailored. No, it doesn’t fit him any more than he fits in with the people downstairs. I like him better in jeans with a chip on his shoulder.
He has potential, though, beneath that hostile frown. Even full of poorly suppressed disdain, his eyes are brilliant blue, the color of the sky on a clear summer day. He’s tamed the black mop on his head into obedience, smoothing it behind his ears, so I can actually see his face. The transformation reveals the chiseled curve of his jawline, a long, straight nose, and a pair of full lips drawn into a cupid’s bow at the top. The night we met is a blur, but I realize my memories of him didn’t do him justice. He’d smirked at the party. Smiled at the hospital. He’d tempted me before. Now as he stands before me scowling, he’s irresistible.
He’s also the last person I want to see. I don’t want him to be part of this world. But he’s mixed up with that night and I don’t know who he is any better than I understand why any of this is happening.
“Looking for the bathroom.” It’s a reasonable excuse.
I’m just not feeling terribly reasonable. “Look at this place. There are bathrooms downstairs.”
I emphasize the plural.
“So sorry to intrude, Lucky.” I feel the hate in his words, and it’s both strange and good.
I’m sick of my body being one dull ache of nothing. Hate isn’t nothing. It seethes and twists and squeezes. It whispers all the secrets I try to hide. I want more. I want every bit of loathing he can feed me.
His mouth—that annoyingly perfect mouth—opens, but nothing comes out. There’s a battle raging in his eyes, turning the sky blue orbs into stormy seas. I don’t expect it when he says, “I’m sorry about your mom.”
He has leashed the hatred he displayed moments ago. It’s still there, tugging at its bonds, wanting to be freed. Instead of feeding my darkness, he’s offering me pity. I didn’t want it the last time I saw him. I don’t want it now.
“Why are you here?” I demand.
“I came with Cyrus.”
I forgot they’re roommates. Of course, Cyrus told him what happened. I wonder how many details Cyrus shared about the car crash that killed my mother and put my dad in a wheelchair. I know what my friends think. I heard them talking when they thought I was tuned out. Whispered rumors practically shout at you when you’re the source of the gossip.
“I’ve known Cyrus Eaton since we were in diapers,” I say, “but I can’t believe he brought a stranger to my mother’s funeral.”
A muscle ticks in his jaw when he finally speaks, his words are strained. “I asked to come.”
“Why?” I don’t know how I hope he’ll answer this question.
“Because I missed your perverted strain of bitchiness and thought I’d get a fix.” He spits the words at me.
I plant my hands on my hips, glad I’d worn my soon to be sister-in-law’s dress and my mother’s sweater because I don’t feel like some girl at a party being laughed at or some girl in a hospital begging to be coddled. Maybe it’s a borrowed sense of power, but it’s one that I’m not giving back. “Do you get off on funerals? Or just death? Is that why you stuck around the hospital?”
His eyes close for a second and he takes a deep breath. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”
“Really? You don’t say.” I have no idea why he feels the need to make amends. Doesn’t he feel alive letting this out? “I don’t really care. Just don’t sneak around my house.”
There’s a flash of something different across his features. I don’t have the word for it, but I know it. I’ve felt it. Before my anger-hungry glee can morph to embarrassment, it vanishes from him and the restraint I’d sensed in him evaporates, freeing the brute under the surface. His beautiful mouth curls into a mocking sneer and his words drip with cruelty. “Afraid I’m going to steal your shit? What’s that painting worth?”
“More than you.” I’ll push every button until I find the right one.
“I can’t be bought.” I hear it in the final word as his raging ocean eyes sweep past me and down the hall. The hate is back. It’s contempt, really. Not aimed at me exactly but rather at all of it. The thick Persian rugs beneath our feet, the sparkling crystal lights overhead, my mother’s beloved paintings hanging on the wall. “Did you think I came for you? Maybe I was just going to rifle through your mom’s drawers. It’s not like she’ll be needing any of this.”
The truth knocks the air out of me and I gasp no longer fueled by venom. He’s right. She won’t.
Mom could have hung those paintings anywhere in the house. She could have shown them off to guests. Bragged about how much she paid for them. I’d seen enough of my friends’ parents engage in artistic pissing contests to know that’s how it was supposed to work. But art wasn’t about status to her. She hung them there because she loved them and wanted to start and end her day with beauty.
And all that was gone now. In its place is a void, and Sterling Ford just knocked me right back into it.
“Screw you.” I can’t get my voice to rise louder than a whisper. It’s physically painful to speak. How dare he come in here and judge her? All he sees is money, but I know the truth.
“Wouldn’t you like to?” There’s the arrogance again. Mixed with the cruelty, he’s less man than Molotov cocktail.
I can sense it radiating off him. He’s not like the guys in my circle. He’s not like his new friend Cyrus. There’s no practiced civility for the sake of a future trust fund. No expectation of good behavior so daddy won’t take away his Porsche. He’s different. Find the right button, give the right code, pull the pin—he’ll detonate. I bet he’s destroyed other girls. I know he could destroy me. Part of me wishes he would. The part of me that wants to feel
anything other than this bone-deep throb in my soul.
“I don’t kiss frogs.” I take a step closer. “And I definitely don’t fuck dogs.”
It hits the mark. He takes a step toward me and I freeze, wondering what someone like him will do to me. I know cockiness. You can’t grow up with the heirs to the thrones of a half-dozen global brands without enduring it. That arrogance comes from entitlement. It’s hereditary. Passed down from father to son like a perverse family heirloom.
Violence shades his arrogance. He won that pride, and I don’t want to know how. Except that I do. Is that why he’s all sharp edges and hewn muscle? Where did he come from, and why is he here? What made him into this walking grenade of a man?
If things had gone differently, I might have asked him all of this. But I don’t need a knight in shining armor, I need a sword.
“Look, you don’t fucking know me. You’ve never met anyone like me.” Venom coats each word. “You can say whatever you want.”
He moves toward me, and I back away instinctively. I found the button. I pressed it. Something tells me I’m not ready for the fallout. Now I’m the one at war, wondering what it would feel like to collide into him even as my brain orders me to run far and fast. Anxiety strips away my confidence. I don’t know who I’m playing with—I have no clue who Sterling Ford really is.
“I can see it. Right here.” A rough-tipped finger jabs the bridge of my nose before trailing down and tapping its tip. “Fuck or flight. What’s it going to be?”
“Don’t you mean fight or flight?” I say coolly, hoping I’m the only one to catch the tremble in my voice.
“I said what I meant.” He steps back and shoves his hands in his borrowed suit’s pockets.
Relief washes over me but when it’s cleansed the anxiety, I’m surprised to discover it’s left something behind. Something raw that claws at its cage. My hand closes over my stomach as though I can trap it there before it escapes. I don’t want to know what monster he’s awoken. I don’t want to admit that part of me responds to someone like him.
