Tethered

by L. D. Davis

  “When Felix finishes filming, he’ll be back in New York full time,” Emmet said, seeking confirmation.

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  “So, you will be, in essence, living with Felix.”

  I felt him looking at me as I picked up a purple stone and rolled it around in my hand.

  “Yes,” I said and finally looked at him. “But I will have my own space. I even have my own private entrance in addition to the entrance through the penthouse.”

  “I don’t think I like the idea of you living with him,” Emmet said, frowning.

  “Don’t think of it as me living with him. We’ll be more like neighbors than roommates, and mom will be there with me, too.”

  He pushed a hand through his hair as he looked at a group of surfers ahead of us.

  “Why is he going out of his way to help you so extensively?” he asked after a moment. “He gave you the dress; he paid for your flight and accommodations out here. He got you into the movie and now he wants to give you an apartment. What does he want out of it?”

  “Emmet,” I sighed. “Just because he’s being kind doesn’t mean that he wants something out of it.”

  “No man is going to give a woman all of that without expecting something in return, Donya. Don’t be naïve.”

  I stopped walking again and spun to face Emmet.

  “I am getting really tired of people thinking I’m some stupid little girl!”

  “I didn’t say that,” he argued. “But you have to admit that you are being stupid about this.”

  “I’m not being stupid about this,” I snapped. “I didn’t ask for everything he’s done, but he’s not going to come asking for his recompense later, Emmet. I know he’s a pig, but he’s not that kind of pig.”

  “Right,” he said with a humorless laugh. “You two are such great friends. You know him so well in so little time. You trust him one hundred percent.”

  “We are, I do, and I do,” I said, nodding stubbornly. “You should take some notes on trust and maybe then you’ll be able to trust me.”

  I walked away, but I was no longer walking at a leisurely pace. I walked to put some distance between Emmet and me before I swung my bag of rocks at his face.

  A hand closed around my wrist and yanked. I splashed in the water as I was pulled into Emmet’s body. I pushed at him, but he grabbed my other wrist and forced my arms down to my sides.

  “Stop,” he grunted. “Damn it, Donya, stop fighting me!”

  I stood still, but wouldn’t look at him. I looked at the Pacific on my left, scowling.

  “Hey, look at me,” he said, trying to meet my eyes. “Look at me,” he demanded.

  Reluctantly, I looked up at him.

  “I hate that Felix is helping you and not me,” he admitted angrily. “Maybe it is selfish and conceited, but I wanted to be your hero. I want to be the one that takes care of you and finds solutions for your problems. You belong to me and I haven’t been able to do shit for you. Not because I can’t, because I can. I have the means to help you, but Felix keeps swooping in and saving the damn day.”

  I tried to check my attitude and pissy mood before I spoke. I was still irritated, but I tried to speak gently.

  “I don’t need saving and I don’t need you to save the day, Emmet. I need you there at the end of the day. I need to know that whether the day was saved or not that you are there in the end.”

  He sighed heavily and rested his forehead on mine. He released my wrists and put his hands on my waist.

  “He keeps kicking me in the ego,” he said, pouting.

  I couldn’t help but to smile at his poked out lip. I tapped his boo-boo lip with my finger and put my hands on his chest.

  “Here’s an ego booster,” I said softly. “You have me, heart and soul, and he doesn’t. You and I are connected in ways that no one else will ever be able to touch or understand. How’s your ego now?”

  One corner of his mouth pulled up a little bit.

  “You might want to say something about my body and my looks. I’m no superstar,” he said as his thumbs stroked my stomach.

  “You’re my superstar,” I whispered. “And for the record, you’re the hottest guy that matters.”

  “You didn’t say I was the hottest guy you know,” he pointed out.

  “I don’t like to lie to you,” I teased.

  He slapped my ass hard enough to make it sting, but I laughed anyway and wrapped my arms around his neck.

  “I need to be kissed,” I said, looking at his perfect lips.

  “I better hurry up and do that before Felix sweeps in to save the day,” he said.

  “Shut up and do it already.”

  Emmet complied. The sun set as we kissed. It was a movie moment for the books.

  Chapter Thirty

  Emmy waved herself with a magazine.

  “You had movie sex with Felix Hunter,” she said breathlessly.

  I laughed and nudged her. “Stop saying that. It wasn’t sex. There wasn’t any penetration or oral activity.”

  “But you were pelvis to pelvis in a bed half naked with his hands on you and his tongue in your mouth. That’s pretty damn close if you ask me. Just let me have the illusion in my head.”

  “The fact that you want to imagine me banging Felix is a little disturbing.”

  “I don’t care,” she said dreamily. “I can’t wait for you to move in with him.”

  “I’m not moving in with him,” I said. “We’ll be like neighbors.”

  “Whatever. The chances of ‘accidentally’ finding him naked are high.”

  I laughed. “Please, when you visit me, don’t stalk my landlord.”

  “I make you no promises,” she grinned.

  We had been lying in her bed, reading magazines, eating junk food, and chatting for hours. I was going to have to work my ass off to lose all of the calories I was ingesting with Emmy, but it would be worth it. She was worth the calories and the days of starvation that would most likely follow.

  “How did Emmet end up in California?” she asked a little while later.

  “I asked him to join us,” I said with disinterest. I pretended an article in Elle was beyond interesting, but truly I had no idea what I was reading.

  “Why? When you could have asked me? The better, hotter sibling.”

  “You had school and he didn’t,” I told her, though that wasn’t really an explanation at all.

  Emmet had said that eventually Emmy and the rest of the family would have to deal with our relationship, but I honestly didn’t want to have to deal with them trying to deal with our relationship with everything I had lying before me. In addition to moving forward with my career, my mother’s death was inevitable, and I wasn’t sure where my life would go after that, if I would have to fight for my independence or if I would be allowed to stand on my own.

  As if to solidify my decision to remain quiet about it, Emmy followed up with “Whatever. As long as you’re not screwing our brother like the tabloids think.” She shuddered in disgust.

  “Wouldn’t be the worst choice,” I heard myself mutter and then bit the inside of my cheek to shut myself up.

  “No,” she said and then paused thoughtfully. “It wouldn’t be the worst choice, but ew.”

  “How are Mayson and Tack?” I asked, ready to shut that subject down.

  Emmy sat up and I sat up with her. I crossed my legs and dropped the magazine on the bed between us and looked at Em. The topic clearly pained her, but she was trying to play it cool.

  “Mayson walked out of rehab. She’s dodging her parents and the police, on the run with that stupid asshole,” she said, staring down at her hands. Right before Felix’s party, Emmy had called me, crying and terribly upset. Mayson had gone into a drug fueled rage and beat the crap out of her own mother. She was put into a court mandated rehab center, but this was the first real update I had.

  “What about Tack?”

  “On a steady downward spiral. I tried talking to Tabi
tha about him, but she doesn’t really seem to want to talk about it – or to me for that matter.”

  “Well, it must be hard on her,” I said, trying to comfort her.

  She shrugged and then nodded. “I guess I would feel the same way if it was Emmet.” She looked at me with a guilty expression. “Is it terrible that I’m more worried about Mayson than Tack?” she whispered.

  I shook my head gently. “You were always much closer to Mayson than Tabitha and Tack,” I told her, and it was true. Mayson and Emmy were probably just as close as Emmy and me. Tack and Emmet had been kind of close, but they had started to drift apart before the drugs, and Tabitha was always a little stand offish.

  “I feel really bad for Tack, I do,” Emmy said as if she had to convince me. “But what Mayson is going through is killing me. She’s one of the few people that I need to exist in this world.”

  “I understand,” I said, rubbing her back. I had people I needed to exist in the world, too. I almost gasped when I realized that my mother, sadly, was not one of them. All of the years of emotional separation had made her impending death acceptable. Her death was acceptable, but I still knew that I would never be able to get used to her not being in the world.

  I smiled at Emmy to hide the guilt I felt. Guilt, and then sadness, because as close as she and I were, she was unable to see past whatever face I gave her. While I could read her like a Dr. Seuss book, she only saw in me what I wanted her to see. I liked having that control, to be hidden behind my face, but at the same time, I sometimes wished that she could figure me out and just as easily as I could figure her out. Sometimes I wished that I was wide the hell open for her and that there were no secrets between us.

  “Anyway,” Emmy sighed and wiped at a few stray tears. “How are you handling things with your mom?”

  “Okay, I guess,” I said with a small shrug. “I’m sad about it, but…I’ve accepted it. Is that bad?”

  Emmy shrugged, too. “I don’t know the right way to feel in your situation.”

  “Maybe there is no right or wrong way.”

  “Maybe not,” she agreed. “Are you going to take more time off of work to be with her?”

  “I want to, but you know time is of the essence in this business.”

  “So, true,” Emmy agreed. “You’re considered ‘old’ in your mid-twenties.”

  “And between you and me, I think I want to go to Europe soon,” I said. “I met a designer at Felix’s party. Alberi Durand,” I said regally in a French accent.

  “Ohhhh,” Emmy breathed. “I’ve seen his designs. You didn’t tell me about him!”

  “You didn’t care about designers,” I laughed, dodging a playful punch. “You only wanted to know about movie stars and rock stars.”

  “God, I want your life,” she said wistfully. “So, what about Alberi Durand?” She asked in her own French accent.

  “He likes me. He said if I was interested in coming to work in Europe to let him know. He emailed me recently and told me he hadn’t forgotten about me. Isn’t that cool?”

  “Cool,” Emmy agreed, and then “But creepy. Old weird guy is still thinking about you.”

  “He’s like thirty.”

  “Yeah, like I said, old weird guy. I can’t even imagine thirty,” she said, getting out of the bed. “Let’s go do something instead of laying here getting fat.”

  We left the magazines and junk food on her bed and left her room. I followed Emmy downstairs and into the family room which is exactly where my body would have lead me anyway. Emmet was sitting on the couch with a soda flipping through channels on the television.

  “You poor loser,” Emmy teased, moving to the other side of the room where all of the music and movies were shelved. “No friends, brother?”

  “I’m going to a party later tonight,” he said, ignoring her jibe.

  “Can I go with you two?” Emmy asked in a tone that was laced with jealousy.

  “Who two?” I asked her back. She was rooting through the CDs.

  “You two,” she said over her shoulder. “Please. You two are like two damn peas in a pod lately.” She spun around and glared at Emmet. “You’re stealing my best friend! Go find your own best friend.”

  Emmet looked amused. “I can’t help if I’m more fun than you.”

  “You wish,” she snarled. “She probably only keeps you around because you’re nice to look at.”

  Emmet looked at me with that amused grin. “Is that why you keep me around, Donya?”

  “Is there any other reason?” I asked with a blank expression on my face.

  “Ha!” Emmy said triumphantly. She turned back to looking through her CDs.

  Emmet raised an eyebrow at me and I gave him a little shrug, trying to hide the smirk on my face before joining Emmy at the bookshelf.

  An hour later, the three of us were bouncing around the living room to Rob Base’s It Takes Two. Emmet had on a backward baseball cap as he rapped into a wooden spoon. Emmy and I did back up singing as we danced around him. We were all laughing and smiling and carefree. We listened to early nineties music for the rest of the afternoon, acted goofy and ridiculous and earned several shouts from Sam to shut the hell up. It was an afternoon that will always stand out in my head, because it was the last afternoon I really remember feeling my age. The road before me was going to be a rough one, but dancing, singing, and laughing with the two people I loved most in the world, I thought that I could handle anything as long as I always had them. I knew I would be okay.

  *~*~*

  When I walked into the party and promptly spotted Stella, I almost turned and left, but Emmet was directly behind me. His hand was firm on the small of my back. I glared at him over my shoulder, but he simply raised an eyebrow as if to say “Seriously, Donya? Like you weren’t just humping Felix in front of a hundred people a couple of days ago?”

  He didn’t say it out loud, but I knew Emmet and I knew that’s what he was saying in his head. I could practically hear the words echoing down the cord that bound us together.

  “Hey, look, Emmet has a piece of ass for the night,” Emmy said cheerfully in my ear.

  I scowled as she laced her fingers with mine. “Come on, let’s go find some tequila.”

  I shook my head as I let her lead me away from where Stella stood, waving Emmet on. I felt Emmet’s fingers on my shirt, but Emmy didn’t know that her brother was trying to stop me and pulled me through the crowd, making Emmet lose his grasp.

  “You really need to lay off the tequila,” I told Emmy twenty minutes later as she downed her fourth shot.

  “But I love it!” she said happily and then offered me a shot. I put my hand up and shook my head.

  “That shit is disgusting,” I said. “And it’s not good for you. Seriously, you’re turning into a real alcoholic.”

  “Better than being high as a kite and beating up my own mother,” she muttered and then took another shot.

  “Hey,” someone said in my ear.

  I turned my head to see who it was. It was Benny, the same kid who used to enjoy knocking me off of Emmet’s skateboard when I was little. I had not seen him in years. His parents had divorced and he had moved away with his father. He was just about to hit puberty the last time I saw him, and now he was tall, well-built instead of just brawny, and well…kind of cute.

  “Are you here to push me around?” I asked him, smiling a little bit.

  He laughed and put a hand to his heart and looked at me with sincerity. “I’m really sorry for all of those times I bullied you, but to be honest, I liked getting a rise out of you.”

  “Well, don’t expect to get a rise out of me now,” I said loftily.

  “I wouldn’t want to antagonize the superstar,” he teased.

  “What superstar where?” I asked.

  “The one standing right in front of me,” he grinned. “Traipsing through New York with Felix Hunter for fuck’s sake.”

  “It’s just Felix,” I shrugged. “What have you been doing wit
h yourself, Benny?” I asked, taking the attention off of me.

  “I just moved back to my mom’s from Maryland. I’m going to go to U-Penn in the fall.”

  “Impressive,” I said, smiling.

  “Hard to believe the neighborhood bully could make something out of his life, huh?”

  “I had my doubts,” I teased. I did a visual check on Emmy and sighed when I saw her taking another shot. “So, what is your major, Benny?”

  Benny and I talked for a long time as I stood watch over Emmy. We talked about his future plans of becoming a doctor and we talked about his time in Maryland. He was funny and easy to talk to, so unlike the brat he was many years ago. I told him how I got discovered by Max on the boardwalk and gave him some vague details about my life to keep the conversation light.

  I don’t know how long we talked, but when Emmy could no longer stand up without stumbling, I had to end the conversation and go help her. I knew she had been to a number of parties since I had been gone, and I wondered if she always got this drunk or worse and if anyone helped her. The idea that someone could have possibly taken advantage of her while she was like this and she not even remember terrified me. I was going to give her an earful when she was sober.

  “Can you stay with her while I go find Emmet?” I asked Benny as he supported the blabbering, drunken idiot around her waist. It probably wasn’t a good idea to leave her with someone I hardly knew, but I would find Emmet faster than Benny.

  “Sure, go ahead,” he said, pushing Emmy’s hand off of his face.

  I rolled my eyes at her and went to find Emmet.

  It wasn’t really a big party. There were clusters of people here and there. The music was loud and the alcohol was flowing, but it was otherwise a toned down party in comparison to some I had been to over the years.

  I followed that internal mapping system that seemed to always lead me to Emmet and found him in a game room with another cluster of people. He and Stella were standing close together, heads bent close, talking. He was holding a pool stick in one hand and a beer in the other hand. Her hand was on his arm and he seemed okay with it. Suddenly, he looked away from her and right at me.