Old Habits

by ChristopherWaltz

“You have to give the money back,” Fuchsia said, her voice calm, but her face showing the true level of concern she was feeling. She was draped across her bed, wearing an oversized sweater and a pair of leggings. She looked like she belonged in an Urban Outfitters ad.

  After mailing my latest letter to Kip, I had returned to Fuchsia’s apartment instead of the one I shared with Gabe. I was nervous about seeing him again (I had tried to strangle him, after all.), and I wanted him to be just as nervous about if and when I would return to the apartment. A larger part of me than I’d like to admit found joy in the thought of him watching the front door, jumping at any small sound he heard until I actually came back.

  Gabe Malvado deserved the pangs of fear he was undoubtedly feeling after our altercation.

  Fuchsia’s apartment was a mirror image of mine and Gabe’s, but was admittedly a lot messier than ours. I was a neat freak, and Fuchsia was more “live in the moment.” I moved a pile of dirty laundry from the armchair across from her bed before throwing myself into it and propping my feet up on her dresser.

  “Believe me, I would love to,” I began. “But some things are easier said than done.”

  “What do you mean?” Fuchsia asked, rolling onto her back and staring at the ceiling.

  I watched her movements, trying to force myself to see her as sexy, but truth be told, Gabe’s words had struck home with me. I wanted to love Fuchsia, but there was a part of me, deep down, that knew I would never feel that way for her. She was beautiful, kind, outgoing, and just the right amount of eccentric, but in Gabe’s own words, she wasn’t Riley.

  I shook the thought from my head saying, “Well, Gabe has the money.”

  Fuchsia let out a troubled sigh, but didn’t say anything to me. I wanted her opinion about this, because I honestly didn’t know what to do. I had made my opinion about killing Harrison perfectly clear to Gabe, and he had reacted in about the worst way imaginable. Of course, I hadn’t thought about the fact Gabe had been keeping the money we’d been hoarding from Harrison under his mattress. I had left the apartment, but not taken the money with me. He had it, and he was in control of what happened to it. For now.

  “Say something?” I asked her.

  “Well, that’s probably about the worst thing that could happen. If Gabe has the money, he’s not going to give it back without a fight, right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  Fuchsia thought about this for a minute. Part of me was hoping she was coming up with some kind of miraculous solution to my problem, but another part of me wanted her to have nothing to do with it. She had been dragged into mine and Gabe’s problems without being asked; I didn’t want her becoming a key player in something that could potentially get her killed.

  “Well, what are you thinking?” she asked.

  I mulled the thought over in my mind, trying to come up with something, anything that might help me get the money back. In Gabe’s eyes, keeping the money from Geet and Harrison was an act of rebellion, a way to show them he was in control. In my eyes, keeping the money from them meant basically signing a death warrant. Harrison knew the money was gone, which meant he knew we were likely planning something. If we gave it back now, we’d have some ass-kissing to do, but we may eventually be able to earn our way back into Harrison’s good graces.

  “I could go to Harrison,” I began. “I could explain to him I didn’t have anything to do with taking the money. You know, blame it all on Gabe.”

  “So you mean lie?” Fuchsia asked, saying what I hadn’t wanted to.

  “If you really want to look at it that way…”

  Fuchsia frowned, sitting up on the bed and staring at me. “Gabe’s a bad guy, and I don’t like him, never really did, but if you lie about your involvement with taking the money, you’ll get him killed. In my eyes, that’s just as bad as following through with the plan to kill Harrison.”

  “Are you saying we should kill him?”

  “Of course not,” Fuchsia said, sneering at me. “You have to find a way to give the money back. It’s the only way.”

  I turned to look away from her; I couldn’t stand the thought of her being upset with me. I’d put her through a lot ever since abandoning her when Gabe and I left Weed, and the last thing I wanted was her thinking I was going to make a decision that would put all of us in even more danger.

  “I don’t think I can do that,” I said honestly.

  “And why not?” Her tone had changed dramatically. She was no longer worried, but angry.

  It was tough to come up with an answer. I felt like any decision I made about the money, and Gabe, and Harrison was going to be a huge gamble. My goal was to take the gamble with the lowest risk, and finding a way to steal the stolen money back from Gabe in order to return it to Harrison seemed like one of the riskier ideas.

  “It’s too dangerous,” I said flatly.

  Fuchsia stood up from the bed and walked to her closet, immediately pulling several shirts from the hanger and tossing them where she had just been laying moments before. As if she had been planning on something like this happening, she dragged a duffel bag across the floor and began piling the shirts inside it.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She looked at me darkly. “I had a feeling it would come to this, Jamie. I was terrified when we left California on that plane, but once we got here and I realized we weren’t going to be shot in the head, I started feeling better about things. I tried to tell myself not to get too comfortable, but I guess hindsight is twenty-twenty, isn’t it?”

  I tried to decode her message, but was having trouble.

  “You’re leaving?” I asked.

  She turned to me, tears in her eyes. “The choices you make, they’re cataclysmic. I adore you, I swear I do, but I have to keep my own life in my mind. You’re going to do something big, and you’re going to bring death down on all of us.”

  I was in shock, but was having trouble finding the right words to say, as was becoming normal for me. “Where are you going?” I managed to ask, my voice cracking.

  “I haven’t decided yet, not for sure. I’ve missed being Madame Serena, so maybe I’ll find somewhere to get that started back up. I mean, I’m obviously not very good at telling my own future, but maybe I can still manage to do it for strangers.”

  “You can’t go,” I said, angry at myself for not being able to say something more profound, something that might actually stop her.

  “I have to go, Jamie! And if you’re not going to do something to stop Gabe, then you should too. When Harrison doesn’t get his money back, bodies are going to start piling up, and let’s be honest, I’m expendable.” She said it so matter-of-factly, it took a moment for the words to register with me, but deep down, I knew she was right. If Harrison or Geet was going to try to get to me, they would start with Fuchsia. She was the only connection I had other than Gabe at this point.

  I paused for a moment, but opened my mouth as she continued piling clothes into her bag. “Can I come with you?” I asked.

  She pursed her lips, more tears welling up in her eyes but never spilling down her cheeks. “No,” she said. “I’ll never be safe with you. I never was. After everything you told me, I’m surprised it took me so long to realize it.”

  “To realize what?” I asked.

  “You’re death, Jamie.”

  My eyes widened and my heart sank. Fuchsia had just told me the one thing about myself I had been fearing for over a year. I didn’t want her to continue, but she did. “Everywhere you go, no matter what you do, someone always dies.”

  “Fuchsia…”

  “It can’t be me this time.”

  I didn’t have anything else to say, and even if I did, the words wouldn’t have found their way out of my mouth. I couldn’t argue with her, because I had no argument against her. Instead of drawing the situation out longer, I stood from the chair, nodded a last goodbye to her, and walked out of the room without a word.

>   Though I half expected her to follow me, try to keep me from leaving, perhaps even apologize to me, none of these things happened. Instead, I continued walking through her apartment, walked through the front door, and entered my own. Gabe or no Gabe, I couldn’t stay with Fuchsia any longer. Perhaps if she left soon enough, I would be able to stay in her apartment, but until then, I was stuck with Gabe.

  Luckily, as I looked around the dark room in front of me, it was obvious Gabe wasn’t home. He had likely left trying to avoid me, but I decided I would have to be there when he got back. I had to talk to him about the money and the plan to kill Harrison one more time. I had to try to stop him, because if he didn’t, I was out of options. We were both as good as dead.

  But at least Fuchsia would be safe. And as much as it pained me to admit it, that was really the only thing I had going for me.

  Because Gabe wasn’t home, I immediately made my way to his bedroom, throwing back the covers and lifting the edge of his mattress. Though the hiding spot was predictable, the money had been hidden there since we began skimming off the top from Harrison. Maybe he had chosen under the mattress because sometimes a predictable hiding spot was the perfect place to put something you didn’t want found.

  But the money wasn’t there.

  I slid my hand from side to side, wondering if Gabe had put the cash closer to the middle of the mattress, but I found nothing. Angry, I grabbed with both hands and flipped the mattress off the bed completely. There was nothing underneath.

  I moved through the room, checking under anything and everything that stuck out to me as a possible hiding place. I emptied drawers and decimated his closet, but the money wasn’t there.

  “Always one step ahead,” I mumbled as I left the room, not bothering to put things back the way I had found them. It was a bold move, making it completely obvious I had rummaged through his belongings, but the moment I had attacked Gabe, a switched had flipped inside of me; I didn’t care anymore.

  Though I had no idea if or when Gabe would return, I decided to wait. I wanted to ultimately get him back on my side long enough to return the stolen money. I also wanted him to know I had no intentions of becoming his bitch again. As far as I knew, he was afraid of me, and I wanted it to stay that way. I had almost killed him, after all.

  It was almost three hours later when he finally, slowly, walked through the front door into the dark apartment, but I sat in an armchair, waiting for him to appear the entire time.

  “Welcome home,” I said in a sinister tone. Gabe didn’t bother turning on the lights. Maybe he was too startled. Maybe he didn’t want to see my face.

  “Is this you trying to be scary?” he asked. “Because if it is, you really need some practice.”

  I smirked, though he couldn’t see it. “I figured nearly choking you to death was scary enough. I didn’t want you drop dead of a heart attack before I had the money back.”

  “You’re not getting the money back,” he sneered.

  He stayed near the front door, not bothering to come further into the apartment. Reading Gabe’s emotions was one of the most impossible tasks, but I had a feeling he was more frightened of me than he wanted to let on. Of course, there was a small possibility he wasn’t, but it flattered me to think the tables had turned for once.

  “Let’s talk about this,” I said.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. We had a plan, and I’m sticking with it, with or without you.”

  I ran my hands through my hair, a sign of frustration and exhaustion, but I wasn’t going to let Gabe win this one so easily. He was used to always having his way, and I had a feeling if I refused to let up on him, I might actually be able to break him.

  “There’s too much that could go wrong,” I said bluntly. “If we try to kill Harrison, we’re as good as dead.”

  “Nothing can go wrong. I planned this out. I’ve been planning it since we got here, Jamie.”

  I laughed. “If you think nothing can go wrong, then you’re completely delusional. Something always goes wrong.”

  “Not this time.”

  “Why do you want this so badly?” I asked. Gabe was a determined individual, but there was something about this plan that was one step further than determination. Gabe didn’t want to kill Harrison, he needed to.

  He leaned against the door, still not coming further into the apartment, and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve already explained it to you. I’m no one’s slave, and if we stay with Harrison, that’s exactly what we’ll be for the rest of our very, very short lives.”

  I contemplated different ways to convince him this was a bad idea, but I knew nothing I was going to say would work. I stood from my chair, and Gabe immediately tensed up, uncrossing his arms as if ready to fight if he had to.

  “So it comes to this,” I said.

  “I guess so.”

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because next time, I’m going to have to make sure my errand boy doesn’t grow a pair of balls,” Gabe said. He was trying to sound hard, but I knew he was still scared.

  I shook my head in amusement at him. “Whose idea was all this? How easily we forget.”

  “I was always in charge.”

  I knew this was pointless. I hated cat and mouse games, and I knew every word I said only gave Gabe what he wanted. He knew I was pissed, and that made him feel more powerful. I crossed the apartment, opening the door into his shoulder to get him to move out of my way.

  I stared directly into his eyes as I started to walk out the door.

  “Was,” I said.

  (Robert Shank)