Love and Chaos: A Brooklyn Girls Novel

by Burgess, Gemma

  Five, or maybe ten minutes later—I can’t tell—I hear a voice.

  “Hey you!”

  I turn around. It’s that fucking boat boy again, the clean-cut one who was watching me all day. He’s in a tiny blow-up dinghy. They’ve sent him to collect me.

  “Go the fuck away,” I shout. “I’m not going back there.”

  “I’m not going to take you back to the Hamartia,” he calls. “I’ll take you to shore. I promise.”

  For a split second I consider it. But then reality hits: how many times do I have to be screwed over before I realize that everyone lies?

  “I’m not going to trust some boat boy from a fucking superyacht,” I say. “Go back and tell them I’ve drowned.”

  He laughs. “They don’t know I’m here.”

  “Why the hell should I believe you?” I say. “I’m flying back to New York tonight. Leave me alone.”

  “There is no flight to New York tonight.”

  “Then I’ll fly to Chicago and catch a fucking bus.”

  Before he can reply, I take a deep breath and keep swimming. Talking is making me breathless, and it’s a waste of time.

  A few minutes later I glance back again. He’s still behind me. Just floating in that stupid little dinghy, using the oars to keep pace.

  Whatever.

  My arms and legs ache, but I don’t stop. I figure this pain is my punishment for being such a moron. For trusting a guy with the morals of a vulture. For not realizing there’s no such thing as a free lunch. (Or dress. Or trip to Aspen. Or charge card at Bergdorfs. Or … anything.) At one point, thinking about everything I’ve done, by accident and on purpose, but always with total stupidity, tears build up behind my eyes.

  The last three men I slept with—Mani, Jessop, and whoever I was with at the Soho Grand—thought I was a hooker. Or something close to it.

  But I thought they liked me. I really did. I thought I was just unlucky in love.

  What would my parents think? What if my dad knew? How could I be so stupid?

  I start sobbing, and my mouth fills with water, so I have to tread water for a second, making dramatic strangled choking sounds.

  The boat boy stalker is right behind me. “Listen, it’s Angie, right? My name is Sam, and I—”

  “Please fuck off, Sam!” I am trying as hard as I can to sound normal and tough.

  Stop crying, I tell myself sternly. You can get through this. Just get away. Keep swimming.

  And so that’s what I do. I swim, and breathe, and force every other thought out of my head.

  “Angie?” Sam the boat boy calls out again. “Are you okay?”

  “What are you going to do about it if I’m not, Sam?” I call over my shoulder. “Save me? I don’t need to be saved. I just need to get home.”

  About two hundred feet from shore, just as the sun has finally set, swimming suddenly gets easier. It feels like the tide is helping me. I’m aiming for one of the smaller hotels, which I’m hoping will mean it’s an exclusive luxury-type place, where everyone keeps to themselves and you tend to not know the other guests. My arms and legs are almost cramping now, and I am exhausted, but I won’t stop. I’m determined to make it.

  Finally, my feet hit sand. I turn around and see Sam, the boat boy, still twenty feet behind me in his stupid dinghy. God, what is he going for, some kind of Mr. Perfect medal or something?

  “You can go now, Sam,” I call. “I’m safe and sound.”

  “I don’t think you’re ever safe.”

  Ignoring him, I keep swimming until I can easily stand up, my body more than half out of the water. Then I walk out of the sea. When I’m on the beach, I look back. Sam has finally left, already halfway back to the Hamartia. Sayonara, annoying boat boy.

  It’s at that moment that I remember my passport, clothes, shoes, and money—the three thousand dollars—are in my cabin on the yacht. Oh shit, my phone! How could I have left everything behind without a second thought?

  Fuck it. I’ll manage. I can’t go back now. I’ll figure something out.

  With as much dignity as I can fake, I walk across the sand toward the hotel. I’m wearing my white bikini and nothing else, but it’s a beach resort, so it’s not like I’m out of place, right?

  In front of the hotel is a faux-shabby beach bar, with reggae playing quietly. It’s a chill scene that stinks of money. The guests are predictably self-satisfied: the men are a little bit too sunburned, with the ubiquitous fat guy ostentatiously smoking an expensive cigar. The women are all wearing quasi-Ibizan tunic tops and deep conditioning their sea-and-chlorine-fried hair, pretending they’re going for the slicked-back look.

  And they’re all gazing out, with restless boredom, at the ocean, at the pale twilight sky and the only yacht in sight. The Hamartia. It’s so weird looking back at it, like it’s a toy. A tiny, stupid toy.

  Trying to look like I know exactly what I’m doing, I walk up to the bar. “I’ll have a Coke, uh, a Coca-Cola, please,” I say. “And I’ll start a tab.”

  “Room number?”

  “Um, I forgot!” I laugh gaily, trying to look dumb and charming. “My boyfriend will be down any second.”

  The bartender nods, and serves it up in a huge chilled plastic cup.

  Taking big frantic gulps—ah, sweet sugar rush!—I glance around, hoping I look like I belong. I need Internet access so I can e-mail Pia, beg her to get me on a flight home, maybe help me get an emergency passport.… God, I wish I’d talked to her more lately. She’s my best friend, but I never tell her what’s going on with me. I don’t even know why. I just always keep everything secret.

  “Hey, can I buy you a drink?”

  I turn around. Older guy, early thirties, accent. South American, maybe Spanish. Supermacho, in that almost pretty way Spanish guys often are, with dark brown eyes, ridiculously thick eyelashes, and perma-stubble.

  “All good here.” I hold up my drink.

  “Shame,” he says. “All I’ve wanted to do since I got here was meet a blond girl in a white bikini, and buy her a drink.” He makes a sad puppy face.

  “Oh, okay. I’ll have another Coca-Cola.” And maybe he’ll pick up my tab.

  “I’ll have the same.” The guy nods at the bartender. “I’m Gabriel,” he says.

  “Angie.”

  “I’d love to ask you out for dinner, Angie. But I have to go back to New York tonight. My sisters have to be back in the city for some school thing.”

  I turn around. Two petulant-looking teenage girls are sitting on the sofas behind us. Both have long, swishy brown hair, deeply tanned skin, and are texting furiously.

  Then I remember something.

  “I thought there were no flights to New York tonight?”

  “Ah,” he says, picking up his drink. “Well, I have my own airplane.”

  CHAPTER 9

  A few hours later, I’m sitting on board a Gulfstream, halfway back to New York.

  For some reason, taking a stowaway back to New York isn’t fazing this family at all. I borrowed a pair of jeans and a sweater from Gabriel and a pair of fluffy slippers from his sister Lucia. I look baggy and weird, but it’ll keep me from freezing until I get back to Rookhaven. Gabriel has been on the phone for the past half hour, and his sisters and I are tucked up in the corner under blankets, all cozy with gossip magazines, herbal tea, and plates of peanut butter cookies. Being around the girls, and listening to their chatter, has put me at ease for the first time all day. It’s almost like being at Rookhaven.

  “I am completely over Bieber,” says Amada. She’s twelve, wears braces, and though she says things with total self-importance, her eyes dart around nervously when she talks. It’s adorable.

  “Bullcrap. Bieber was practically your first word! You cried at his concerts!” says Lucia, who’s fourteen. She’s incredibly shy, and talks to Gabriel and Amada loudly and sarcastically to, I think, impress me. I admired her customized jean jacket earlier—she layered a vintage Jordache sleeveless denim vest over a
leather jacket, and the result is unbelievably stylish—and she blushed for about ten minutes. God, I would not go back to being a teenager for anything.

  Then again, being twenty-two isn’t exactly working out that great for me, either. My birthday is coming up way too soon. I really thought I’d have a real career and a serious boyfriend by now. A life, in other words. A life that didn’t include being invited to parties and paid to sleep with the host.

  Ugh. Don’t think about it.

  “Where are your things?” asks Gabriel, coming over to talk to me for the first time since takeoff. “How can anyone travel in just a swimsuit?”

  If you ever get the chance to hear someone from Madrid say “swimsuit,” I highly recommend it. I shrug and try to act nonchalant.

  “I’m just that kind of girl, I guess.”

  “Cool, calm, and collected.”

  “Mm-hmm.” If he only knew the chaos inside me. I turn back to my magazine. “Wow, does anyone actually like Angelina Jolie? Because I just do not get that whole thing.”

  “She is a goddess, a statue,” says Gabriel, looking over my shoulder. “For worshipping. Not for loving.”

  How can Spanish guys get away with saying stuff like that?

  Oh, here’s the downlow on Gabriel. I got it all before we left the hotel. He’s thirty-four, Spanish, never married, no kids of his own, sold his first tech company when he was twenty-five, works between New York and Silicon Valley, and has an apartment on Columbus Circle. Basically, he’s your average run-of-the-mill very rich guy. The girls are his half sisters from his dad’s second marriage to an American woman. I get the feeling they’re growing up with wealth, and he had to make his own.

  Gabriel sits down and picks up Us magazine and, for a few minutes, we all read quietly.

  “Are you hungry?” he asks.

  “Almost always.”

  “The hotel made me these. Not quite as nice as the avocado and prawn salad I usually get to go when I’m at Eden Rock on St. Barts, but not bad.”

  Gabriel pulls out some sandwiches that the hotel must have made for him. Freshly cooked fish sandwiches on soft, buttered white bread. Like the ones I ate just a few hours ago on the Hamartia.

  Suddenly, I’ve lost my appetite. But I take a sandwich anyway and force myself to eat it. The girls are chattering away.

  “St. Barts is boring. I like Turks way more.”

  “I liked Antigua the best.”

  “No way!”

  Eventually, they calm down and go back to their magazines, and Gabriel turns to me with a little grin. I smile back. His hair is still messy, probably from being on the beach all day, and he has a nice face, if a little pouty-pretty for my taste.

  “So, we have to work out what you owe me for this trip.”

  A cold fear spikes through me. “What?”

  “I fly you to New York, smuggle you through passport control, and you think it’s all for free?”

  My heart is beating in my mouth. Holy shit, not again.…

  “In return, you have to buy me dinner sometime.”

  Oh. That’s all he meant.

  I smile glassily up at Gabriel, trying to look composed, my mind racing.

  What was I doing, really, walking into a hotel bar in a bikini like a goddamn Bond Girl, confident that somehow, I’d find a way home? I’d just swum God knows how far, all the while thinking how stupid I was for walking into such a horrific situation, how clever I was to not trust that goddamn boat boy who followed me … but how stupid was it to trust the next total stranger I met? Just because Gabriel had his sisters with him, just because he seemed nice and polite, I decided to get on his private jet? What the fuck is wrong with me?

  I keep making the same mistakes. That’s why I’m stuck in this ridiculous, destructive holding pattern. I make the wrong choice. Every single time.

  I glance up at Gabriel. If it was this time a week ago, I’d date him until he dumped me. I know I would. But that’s not what I want anymore. And it’s definitely not what I need.

  “I’m sorry, Gabriel. I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression. I’m not … looking for anything. Uh, romantic.” Interesting choice of words.

  “Okay,” he says, with an “easy come, easy go” shrug. “So you just want to get back to New York and say good-bye, is that it?”

  I feel bad. Why do I feel bad? Like I owe him dinner. Like he gets to be with me in exchange for giving me a ride home. Why the fuck am I thinking like that? Sex in exchange for what I want. That’s what Stef said. Is that how I think? It’s not, it’s really not. I accepted those gifts because I never had much spending money and the guys always did. Because I like clothes and nice things, and they liked buying them for me. Because I thought they liked me and I really, really liked them, especially Mani. And most of all, because I thought that when they gave me something, it meant that I was worth being with.

  I was wrong.

  That’s it. My life has been all about guys for far too long.

  I want my life to be about me.

  I want to be single. I want my home. I want a real job. I want my friends.

  And by the time I turn twenty-three, I want to be doing something that means something. Either I have a life that I can be proud of, that I earned on my own merits, or … or … or I don’t know what.

  Twenty-three is my deadline.

  “You sure that’s what you want?” repeats Gabriel.

  I look up. “I am.”

  CHAPTER 10

  When we land, Gabriel offers me a ride home in their car. He gives me his business card, though I have no intention of calling him, and I thank him and his sisters profusely for being such Good Samaritans. They drop me at the corner of Smith and Union before continuing on to his apartment on Columbus Circle and, shivering from the cold, I walk down the street to Rookhaven.

  It’s past midnight. Everyone is asleep, and for a moment, as I walk up the stoop of my house in the darker than dark, freezing-cold February night, it feels like the whole sun-filled superyacht experience was just a dream. Or a nightmare.

  With the hidden spare key, I open the front door and inhale the warm, comforting Rookhaven smell. Vanilla and cinnamon from the kitchen, the wood polish Coco uses on the furniture, all mixed with everyone’s shampoo and perfumes and a sort of papery scent that I always think of as old wallpaper.

  I have never been as happy to be in Rookhaven as I am right this second.

  Minutes later, I’m tearing through my bedroom like that Tasmanian devil cartoon. Wrenching dresses off hangers, taking jewelry out of drawers, grabbing shoes and underwear, every gift from an ex-boyfriend, ex-flings, ex … whatevers. All my labels, all my most expensive clothes … Touching them, knowing now why I got them, gives me a cold, scared feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  I’m so stupid. How could I have ever thought they actually liked me for me?

  I will never trust a man again. Ever. They all lie. They lie and lie and lie. My father lies, Stef lies, Mani and Jessop and Marc and, oh God, all of them. Liars.

  Now all that’s left in my closet is stuff from H&M and Urban Outfitters and other cheapish places, stuff I borrowed from Annabel and never gave back, and secondhand pieces found in vintage stores and flea markets that I customized to suit just me. I bundle all the designer clothing in a bag to take to Goodwill tomorrow.

  But I can’t even bear to have the white dress from the Soho Grand night in the house anymore. It was from Mani, the guy I really thought I might be in love with, the guy who took me out for dinner and talked to me like he cared.… The dress was bought with bullshit.

  So I grab it, head downstairs, out the front door, down the stoop, and throw the dress in the garbage.

  “Watch out there, girlie, you’ll break the lid,” says a voice. I turn around. It’s Vic, the old guy who lives in the downstairs apartment. I haven’t seen him in ages.

  “Vic! Hey! What are you doing out here so late?”

  “Just sitting.” He’s all bundled
up in an old coat and scarf and hat, perched comfortably on the chair outside his apartment. I can hardly see him, his voice is just rumbling out of the darkness as though it came from Rookhaven itself. “Sometimes I like to get some air. What about you?”

  “Um, yeah, air.” I don’t even know why, but suddenly, I want to tell him everything. “I’ve made a mistake, Vic. A few actually, really huge mistakes, and I, um, I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself.”

  God, I sound dramatic. Pia would be proud.

  “What mistakes?”

  “I don’t…” I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to talk about them. Ever. To anyone. But I don’t know if I can deal with them alone, either.”

  “I understand that.” Vic and I both sigh into the silence. My breath is coming out all misty, and I’m not even smoking. I’m so tired of being cold. I’m so tired of winter.

  Then Vic pipes up again. “Regret … it’ll kill you. Out of all the negative emotions, regret is the one that will get its claws into your soul.”

  My throat suddenly aches with the desire to sob, and tears well up behind my eyes. I blink them away quickly. I never cry in front of people. Ever.

  “You tried talking to your friends? Your parents?”

  “No,” I say. “No way.”

  “You gotta let it go, girlie. Otherwise you’ll spend your whole life thinking about it. Trust me. I know. And it’s much easier to let go of problems when you share them with the people you love.”

  “But what if they judge me? What if they hate me for it?”

  “Friends don’t judge. Friends just listen.”

  The crying feeling threatens to engulf me again. “But I feel like … like this thing … this will never leave me. Like there’s a permanent mark on my record. A stain on my soul.”

  “Nothing is permanent. Everything changes. You can choose to let that comfort you, or depress you. Once an event is in the past, it’s just a memory.”

  “A bad memory.”

  “Sure, sometimes it’s a bad memory. You can choose to remember it and hold on to it forever, or you can forget it, and it’s like it never happened. You’re in control.”