Enemies & Lovers

by Christine Zolendz

  She definitely needs a drink. I walk over to the dry bar as she searches near the front door. I grab the expensive stuff and glance quickly out the front window. The snow is still coming down and the world outside is pure white. I’m going to need the biggest whiskey tumblers my father keeps here.

  “I found it, but guess what?” she thunders. “It’s all wet. It won’t work.” She’s cursing and wringing the phone in her fists like she trying to choke the life out of it.

  I finish pouring two enormous glasses of whiskey and offer her a trade for one of them. “Give me the phone and take this.”

  She still won’t look directly at me. “Why?”

  “Claire, stop being difficult. I’ll find some rice to dry the phone in while you take a sip. Nothing more,” I reason.

  “I bet they have golden spun rice here,” she mutters, pushing the phone at me. She takes the whiskey and brings it right to her lips and sips.

  And sips again.

  Then she blinks up toward my hairline, still refusing to make eye contact. “What is this?”

  “It’s a seventy-two-year-old single-malt Scotch Whiskey that’s way more expensive than this robe I’m wearing.”

  “I don’t even want to know how much, Vaughn. Please don’t tell me. It’ll just make me sick,” she huffs.

  I shrug and smile. “My lips are sealed,” I say as I start searching through the kitchen’s pantry closet for rice. My eyes land on it right away, and I rip open the bag and shove her ancient cell phone right inside. Rice spills out all over the floor. I walk over the mess, crunching through it uncomfortably with my bare feet, carrying the bag with me. I plop it on the rustic-style coffee table in front of the couch and go and grab my drink.

  It goes down smooth.

  Claire walks over to the window, shaking her head in disbelief. “How much snow do you think is out there?”

  “I don’t know. A lot.”

  We both sit on the couch and sip our drinks in silence.

  I know what she’s thinking. She wants to know how long she’ll be stuck here with me. Maybe she found the offshore accounts and wants to run out of here. At first I didn’t think so, but maybe they really exist. It didn’t occur to me until just now. My head swims with questions, and it still smarts from whatever the hell collided into me outside. “So, you’ve really never been here before?” I ask.

  “No,” she sighs.

  “Who are the texts from?” My tone sounds needling, too curious.

  “Apparently, my dead mother,” she whispers.

  “Wait what?” I know that because I read through them, but the way she says it sends chills down my spine.

  “Yeah,” she says, taking another sip of whiskey. “That was the last phone number I had as her contact. I don’t think I’ve talked to her in the past couple of months.”

  It had been a year, but I don’t say the words, she’s looking down at the bag of rice with a sad, far-off look in her eyes. “If you’re wondering…she is dead. I saw…the body.”

  I clear my throat, not knowing what to say. “That’s an old phone you have.”

  “Yeah, well, we all aren’t born with a silver spoon up our asses like you,” she says, glaring at me. It’s the first time since being in the bedroom she’s looking me dead in the eyes.

  “And you’re here to find money that isn’t yours and take it, aren’t you?” I seethe.

  She looks down at the floor and her voice cracks with emotion and shame. “I don’t want anything from your father. That’s dirty money to me. I want nothing to do with their affair, but that person texting me is threatening to send those pictures to my school.”

  “So?” I say, crossing my arms.

  “So? I work for a private school, all the parents and my principal, and the children? I’ll lose my job, my career.” Her nostrils flare. Her eyes turn glassy.

  “Why should I believe you?” I fight. “What if—"

  “Look,” she cries, clapping her hands together. “I don’t care what you think. I stopped caring about you and your family a long time ago.” She bolts up, body ramrod straight and looms over me. “Before I identified her body, I hadn’t seen my mother in five years—maybe more.” She plants her bottom on the coffee table meeting her knees to mine. Suddenly, her body seems to deflate like a worn-out balloon. “I never knew she was here or that she lived like this.”

  I swallow hard and listen, because seeing her with the light in her eyes dimming, I think she deserves to be listened to.

  “Vaughn,” she blinks up at me, and a single tear escapes the corner of her eye. “I was sent to a convent to finish high school. I sold my eggs and plasma to pay for my first apartment when I graduated at eighteen. I worked my way through college with two jobs and made a life for myself when everyone thought I was nothing. Told me I was nothing. My father couldn’t stand to be in the same room as me because I looked just like her. He just pushed me out of a car that night and found a whole new family to replace us. I haven’t seen him since.”

  Damn.

  More tears race down her cheeks. “I have lived in the shadow of our parents’ affair since I was fifteen years old. I have been called the worst names because of what my mother did, not me.”

  I lean forward and slide my whiskey on the table. Listening attentively.

  “I have been followed and treated like shit in every relationship, because of what your mother and sister said about me. Even what you said about me.” She sniffles and wipes the back of her hand under her nose. “You were my family,” her voice cracks, “and you threw me away for things I had no control over. Vaughn, I walked into the same room as you that night, and I was just as shocked as you.” Her eyes, shiny and wet, dart up to one of their pictures that hang on the wall, both of them smiling and laughing as the sun sets behind them.

  She licks her lips and sits up straighter. “I just can’t believe they kept it up this whole time.” She’s quiet for a moment, contemplating. “Do you think they loved each other?”

  “What they did wasn’t love,” I say quietly.

  Her breath catches. It’s barely an audible sound, but I hear it well. “Then what was it?” she asks, with a short sob. “You think my mother had some golden vagina and your father showered her with this lifestyle for nothing?” The tone of her voice gets higher. “You think my mother gave up everything in her life just for your father’s average-sized penis?”

  “What they did tore my family apart, how could you stand there and stand up for their actions and ask if it was love?”

  “Stand up for them?” she screeches. “No fucking way! I hated what they did, what both of them did. But goddamn, Vaughn, I have to believe in something other than it being some magical Montgomery sex as the reason she would leave me for him!”

  Leave her for him?

  She felt abandoned.

  And it’s the truth, isn’t it? They absolutely deserted her and went on with their lives like she never existed. I ball my hands into tight hard fists. That’s what she’s saying, that’s how she’s felt all this time. Her mother and father abandoned her for their own selfish needs.

  And so did my family.

  Especially me and Chloe.

  “I needed her, and she told me she couldn’t help with anything. It didn’t have to be money, Vaughn. I just needed a mom.” Her shoulders tremble as she talks. “Just someone to help me find my way. I’ve been so fucking lost.” Her face drains of color and her eyes lock on mine. “And all the while, she lived here. With a rotisserie oven. Thousand-dollar robes. Some very old, expensive whiskey. And worst of all…a Montgomery.”

  I shift on the couch, dreading where this conversation is going. She has every right to hate me and my family. “I didn’t know, Claire…I can’t believe you had to go through that.”

  One side of her lip lifts and I can physically see her strength. “One thing I’ve learned by going through it is that you can keep on surviving long after you think you can’t.”

  “But every
one has an emotional stake in this story, don’t they?” I ask, scooting forward, touching my knees back to hers. I bring my hand up and trace my fingers along the tops of her legs, just because I feel this overwhelming need to be close to her. “I don’t want to believe they loved each other because that means he must not have loved my mother. Or me and Chloe. It’s stupid, I guess. I’m not a child anymore. I need to let it go. I just always thought your mom, and you, were in it for the money.”

  Her head tilts down and her eyes follow the slow movements of my fingers across her skin. “Maybe it was the money for her, Vaughn. I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth.” Her eyes lift and meet mine, with a sad, pleading expression. “But how could any woman give up their only child just to be someone’s mistress? And if it was all for money, how much was it worth to her to throw me away and forget about me?”

  I shake my head, because there’s nothing I could possibly say as a justifiable answer. Nothing at all.

  I softly wipe away her tears, for a moment it makes them come faster, I’m not sure why, maybe I’m doing things all wrong. I’m sure there’s a lot she can think of, but she’s here right now in front of me and I want to take her hurt away.

  “Vaughn? Why would you ever think I lived here with them? And why, please be honest, why did you hate me so much that you never wanted to see me again?” Her eyes are so blue I’m lost in them. “You never called me back or answered my letters. You all just disappeared.”

  “I remember thinking you must have known. All the times they met, how could have not known. My father was always away on business and he was with your mother. How could you not have realized? Chloe said you needed to talk to her about something that night, something serious. Important. She thought you knew too.”

  “I never knew, I swear it.” She laughs a bitter laugh and says, “And the important thing I had to tell Chloe that night was that I was absolutely, unconditionally in love with her stupid asshole of a brother. I wanted to make sure it was okay with her; I wanted her blessing. I was a stupid kid, and I thought I meant more to you than I actually did.”

  My heart hammers with a kind of thought that has never entered my mind: Claire and I should have been married now with a family of our own. The picture is clear in my head, me and her, a white picket fence, two kids, even one of those little yapping dogs. I jerk back and shift uncomfortably. It’s the most unnerving feeling, the most unsettling thought.

  Claire doesn’t understand my reaction. I can read it in her expression, her cheeks flush and a vein twinges in the middle of her forehead. “Here’s the thing, Vaughn. I don’t care if you believe me,” she snaps. “I know the truth. I know what I knew and what I didn’t. And I know that your father lied, and while my parents went through a horribly public divorce, then abandoned me, your father was the one who still chose to stay with your mother and mine.”

  “Claire, stop, don’t. I believe you.” I feel fifteen again. To think I could blame her for something she had no part in. I always thought she helped to keep their secret. And it’s unbearable to think that she suffered for their sins every day since. I was so hurt by what our parents did, I never stopped to think she was as innocent as me.

  But what good is knowing all this now, though? It’s all too late for us.

  My mother would never forgive her, neither would her clone Chloe. Claire and I could never be anything more than what our parents were, secrets to each other. It’s not like I could ever take her home to meet my family, right?

  I wanted her again, sure. I should cut my own nuts off for the thought. But I can’t hurt her any more than she’s already been hurt. She deserves better than anything I could ever offer her.

  Absentmindedly, I run my hand over my hair and cringe in pain.

  “There’s a bit of dried blood there. Here,” she says standing up and bending over me. “Let me take a look.”

  She leans a knee on the couch between my legs and I’m hit with such lust for her, I flinch and shift away from her hands. “What? Are you a nurse now?”

  Her eyes widen. “No, but—”

  I climb off the couch and back away from her. “Maybe we should keep our distance from each other. You and your long, smooth silky legs go stay over there.”

  “Okay then,” she says, taking her drink and whirling away. “You and that monster cock of yours can just stay over there.”

  I can’t help but smile.

  It might just kill me trying to stay away from Claire Radcliffe.

  Chapter 15

  Claire

  I feel a wave of relief when I slip back into my own dry clothes, but my stomach is a tangle of bubbling nerves. I still need to find those accounts. I don’t have a choice.

  The bedroom door is closed and this might be the only chance I have to search through everything in this room again, alone. Vaughn listened to me vent before, and that’s all well and fine, but I’m not sure he understands what’s really at stake for me. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have nothing—no money, no family, no one to count on. And I’m not one hundred percent positive he believes anything I’ve told him.

  My fingers tremble as I flit through the dresser drawers that Silas and my mother shared. Clothes. Books. Jewelry. Bits and pieces of their life together.

  “What are you doing?” Vaughn’s voice asks from behind me.

  Startled, I reel away, dropping everything in my hands. I didn’t even hear him open the door. My palms start to tingle and sweat. I wipe them down the sides of my jeans and stare at him. I’m positive there must be a bright neon guilty sign flashing on my cheeks. I shouldn’t feel guilty. I’m just trying to save myself and I can’t see any other way out of this situation. Even if I call the administration, even if I explain, if those pictures get sent, no one will be able to unsee them.

  “What. Are. You. Doing?” he repeats slower. Louder.

  I throw my hands in the air, “Those messages are serious, Vaughn. Do you think this is all some sort of a joke? Whoever it is wants to destroy my life. And they can. I’m scared. Please help me find the accounts.” I open and close my mouth trying to say more, but words slip and slide along my tongue. “Please,” I beg.

  “No,” he growls. “No blackmailing asshole is getting my father’s accounts. I don’t care if your pussy gets plastered all over Times Square. It isn’t happening.”

  My pulse pounds loud in my ears, making them pop. “You son-of-a—”

  “Go right to the police, Claire. I’ll even go with you if you want, but you’re not handing over money that’s not yours to someone just because they demand it.” His face turns a funny shade of red.

  He needs to understand. He needs to know how frantic, how terrified I am. “If those pictures get out—”

  “Why did you even take them in the first place?” he roars, taking a step closer to me.

  My stomach drops. I can’t believe his audacity. Has he completely lost his damn mind? “Why do you think?” I can’t keep the sharp bite out of my voice.

  Vaughn glares at me.

  I glare right back.

  “Maybe you like getting your picture taken,” he says icily, folding his arms across his chest. “By the quick peek I had of them, it sure looked like you were enjoying yourself. And it sure as hell looked like you did it a lot.” He laughs bitterly, manically. “You must really get around.”

  As soon as the words leave his lips, I truly hate him. I take one deep breath, then another. It doesn’t help stop the vice grip that squeezes at my chest. “Those…” My voice cracks, and I stop, taking a deeper gulp of air. I clear my throat and hold back the slap my palms are itching to land on his stupid, arrogant face. “Those pictures look like I get around? I look like I’m enjoying myself? That’s what you just said?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Did I stutter?” he rasps. “Who are all those guys anyway?

  “Guysssss?” I yelp, stretching the s. “You think there was more than one guy?”

  “Why are you acting all surpri
sed by my questions? From the way it looked to me, you were having orgies daily, with multiple partners.” His expression turns sullen, his lips pressing into a flat line across his face.

  Oh my God, he’s jealous.

  He thinks it’s really me, that I really did all that.

  I step forward, closer to him, toe to toe—because I want him to hear me loud and clear right now. “Number one—” I bark, holding my index finger uncomfortably close to his face. “Stop slut shaming me when I’ve heard you’re a whore yourself, and number two—" I hold a second finger up. “I’m not in any of those pictures, you stupid, stupid asshole.”

  His entire body freezes.

  “What do you mean you’re not in any of those pictures?”

  “This is exactly why I need to find those accounts,” I whine. “Everyone who sees those pictures will just assume since I’m that Radcliffe whore’s daughter, it must be me.” I shake my head and move away. I’m so angry I can’t even think straight. I stuff everything that fell back into the drawers and slam them closed. The dresser rocks back and forth and the frames and bullshit that decorate the top of it crash down. I spin on my heel and jab him in the chest with my finger. “For the last ten years I have lived in the shadow of their affair. No matter how good and kind of a person I was, everyone just pegged me as a slut—because obviously that’s some sort of a biological gene, passed down for generations from one whore to another. I got a reputation without ever having any of the fun. You know, the first summer I came back, I couldn’t get a job for a long time, those country club people of yours remembered my mother’s sins and cast them right on to me. Whores can’t wait tables. Did you know that? They can’t stock shelves in grocery stores either, we’ll get our tramp germs all over everything, it’ll spread like the plague. But your father?” I laugh bitterly. “Your father was instantly forgiven, wasn’t he? He didn’t do a damn thing wrong. Even though it was his dick that started the whole ordeal.”