The Price Of Success (Fighting For Fireworks)

by Lee, Corri

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bethany stared at me, wide eyed like a child who’d been caught with her hands in the cookie jar. She had always been the most loyal person I’d known, and I could barely recognise her through the roughed up hair and askew blouse. My heart broke for Adam as the only man to ever take a chance on her- to have been so willing to see beyond the brainless bimbo exterior to be met only by lies and infidelity.

  “Please don’t hate me, Cici.” She begged me, on the verge of tears.

  I stared down into my coffee, numb with shock and disappointment. “I could never hate you, Bethany. I just wish I knew what the hell you were thinking.”

  “I’m weak, is that what you want to hear?” She wiped a rogue tear from her cheek and knotted her fingers over her face. “Asbury was just so nice to me, I got swept up in the moment-…”

  “Hold it.” I held up a hand and shook my head in confusion and disbelief. “You cheated on your doting boyfriend with ass berries?” Bethany stifled a smile and curled her legs up underneath her body, trying to shy away from my interrogation by withdrawing back into the depths of the couch. “I don’t care what his name is, I just thought you had better morals and self-control.”

  “So did I. But sometimes it just happens.”

  “It does not ‘just happen’, Bethany!” I was horrified that she was trying to pin her infidelity on a wave of impulsiveness. “ You had the time it took to invite him here, walk home and take your clothes off to decide that it was a bad idea. Are you purposely trying to sabotage your relationship? Was it a case of seeing if the grass is greener on the other side? Please make me understand this lunacy!” Her face creased into the perfect image of pitiful regret and the tears began to fall. “Is this the first time?”

  “Of course it’s the first time!” Her voice cracked. “And the last.”

  “Would you feel bad about it if I hadn’t caught you?”

  She gasped at me, looking to move towards anger but thinking better of it. I was in a position of moral advantage and she was smart enough not to incriminate herself further. “Of course I would! Please don’t tell Adam.” I drew my knees up to my chest and rested my chin atop them. I was not the sort of person to cry witch, but I wouldn’t lie to cover an unforgivable misdeed I couldn’t condone either.

  “I’ll bend the truth for you, Bethy, but I won’t lie outright.” That was the best I could offer.

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll never forgive you if you do this again. I can’t even begin to comprehend how you could do it.” It seemed like she couldn’t really understand it either. Nobody could possibly be giving her a harder time than herself- unless of course she really wasn’t the person I thought I knew. But I was confident that she was. “I don’t suppose I can really make claims to being much better than you, having screwed Cole while a crowd of teenagers watched.” Bethany’s eyes widened and sparkled with the glee of newly acquired gossip. “Adam didn’t tell you.”

  “No, he didn’t. Did any of them have camera-phones?” I felt the colour drain from my face as, once again, the implications of my actions hit me. “You twat.” Bethany pulled her laptop up from the table and rolled her eyes. “Let’s survey the collateral damage, shall we?”

  The next two minutes were the longest of my life. She shook her head and shrugged, turning the laptop around to show a grainy ninety second clip of the classroom antics. As I’d planned, my coat had covered all areas of interest and, incidentally, my hair had acted as an efficient veil to cover my face. My anonymity was protected- it could have been anyone gyrating in that video. “Bullet dodged.”

  “Did you fake it again?” I raised an incredulous eyebrow and hauled myself up to make more coffee.

  “What do you think?”

  “Ouch. Poor Cole.” Like I needed to be made to feel worse.

  I shot her a look and inhaled sharply. “Don’t. I’m trying my best. But he was expecting me to welch on my plans with Nathaniel tonight to meet his friends. “

  Bethany hummed in disapproval and clicked the television on to a music channel, where Lana Del Ray sang a sombre dirge about being born to die- just the ray of light our humble home needed. Not. “Why are you home anyway?”

  “Nathaniel said I should get some sleep before tonight but-…” I glanced at the time and saw that it was two o’clock, “… yeah, that’s not going to happen. Fancy a stroll for Pro-Plus?”

  With our rift forgotten, Bethany and I set to replacing my blood with coffee in preparation for my night ahead. Nathaniel’s ‘magicians’ arrived promptly at three- a hair stylist named Rita who set to gluing waist length extensions into my hair and styling them into loose waves, and a makeup artist named Miguel who sat around chatting to Bethany until half past four, when he ably disguised my tell-tale signs of fatigue under several layers of concealer.

  With my eyes heavily plastered in shimmering pale silver, thick black kohl and thick fake eyelashes, I looked some sort of horrendous porcelain doll ready to murder its owner. Dark red lips dulled the impact to ‘scary mermaid’, as Bethany put it, but the final layer of glitter softened me drastically. I struggled to adjust to the additional weight on my head and fussed incessantly over needless fears that the extensions would come loose. They were stuck fast, I was assured, but a compromise was reached in that my hair was styled into a half up-do so I felt that the extensions were better supported. I feared that I was becoming a diva.

  Lobke arrived at quarter to six with a suit bag and shoe box. I was urged to dress quickly as Nathaniel lay in wait in the car. Between my caffeine buzz and the fear of the unknown, my usual reluctance to allow people to assist me in dressing was dispelled, and the company of four helped me step into my conundrum of an outfit.

  The dress was a short strapless silver ball gown with a thick layer of netting to make it fan out around my legs. The silver skirt was heavily ruched and cascaded in luscious ripples from the waist down. A thick black ribbon covered the majority of the body and tied into a large bow at the back, which was enforced with wire to keep the shape. Two thin strips of diamantes decorated the bust of the dress to add a touch of simple but expensive elegance.

  What befuddled me the most was the short black fingerless kid gloves, black shawl and the stiletto heeled Victorian spats that accompanied the outfit. Bethany laced up the boots wearing an expression of confusion to match mine. We were certainly baffled.

  The door knocked at five to six and Nathaniel strolled in bold as brass and looking magnificent. He wore a smart black brocade tuxedo with a tailed coat and carried a walking cane, brandishing it like a sceptre. His outfit would not have been spectacular if not for the quirky top hat he swept from his crown to take a bow. The top hat seemed more suited to a Tim Burton movie, tapered from the base and slanted rather than flat. What a poser, I thought, but felt secretly smug that I looked so much better than him.

  “You look amazing, but you’re missing something.” Nathaniel pulled the Tiffany box I’d left in his office from the inside of the top hat and laid it on top of the couch cushions to pull the chain from its housing.

  “Don’t magicians usually pull rabbits from hats?”

  “I’m not a magician.” He paced around behind me and swept my hair to one side before wrapping the chain around my neck- the key pendant falling at the centre of my chest. “There. Now you’re almost perfect.”

  I scoffed and scooped up my readily prepared black clutch bag. “What do you mean ‘almost’?” He grinned and waved a hand towards the door with the intention of me taking my leave. I gave Bethany a quick hug and encouraged her not to wait up for me. She returned my sentiment with bribery to take photographs, lots of photographs. Lobke insisted on a snapshot of Nathaniel and I on the steps to our front door to prove that we’d started the night sober. I looked at the preview and barely recognised myself. To this day, I can’t decide if that was a good thing or not.

  I settled into my seat in the car, overly conscious of flattening the many layer
s of netting under my dress. Nathaniel climbed in next to me, stowing his top hat on the seat between us, and Lobke climbed into the driver’s seat.

  She glanced up into the rear view mirror, “what album pushes your buttons right now?”

  I raised an eyebrow and pulled a face. “Riot but-…”

  “Paramore it is.” I was stunned into silence and stifled the urge to sing along to the tracks. I had an awful habit of singing along to music no matter who I was with or how public the setting- it was probably best that I saved them from my tuneless warble. “Nice sex tape by the way. Would have been better if you weren’t faking it.” My jaw dropped in horror and I raised my hand to cover my face. It seemed like every time I sat in that damned Chrysler I was subject to excruciating humiliation.

  Nathaniel drummed his fingers across the top of his hat and hummed along to the music, shifting after a moment to pull two bottles of champagne from the side compartment of the door. He popped the cork on one and passed it to me. “I don’t have any glasses in the car and it’s going to be a couple of hours drive, so-…”

  I snatched the bottle from his hand and took a swig from its neck. The absence of flutes made the appeal greater. “What do you mean ‘a couple of hours’? Where are we going?”

  “The middle of nowhere!” He laughed maniacally and wriggled his fingers for the added effect of an evil genius. “But no, really, it’s out in the countryside. There’s still going to be a lot of media types out there though so behave yourself.” I raised an eyebrow and took another swig of champagne. It was Nathaniel who was the clown between us, not me.

  Fast forward an hour and a half, and the champagne had kicked in- the three of us were screaming the lyrics to Misery Business as Lobke sped through the dark country lanes. Several pictures of Nathaniel and I posing crudely with the champagne bottles were sent via text to Bethany before we were too far out into the wilderness for our signals to tolerate.

  Nathaniel pulled my pocket watch from my bag and pulled a face. “We still have half an hour to go- why don’t you tell me about why Bethany didn’t come back to work?” I picked at the label on my bottle and sighed. “You know what that’s a sign of, don’t you?”

  My hand dropped down into my lap. Sexually frustrated for all the wrong reasons. “I got home and Bethany was screwing one of your publishing staff.” I shrugged helplessly and emptied the last drops of champagne into my mouth.

  “Wow. What about Adam- will you tell him?”

  “If he asks me outright. But she’s crazy about him, so I won’t go out of my way to ruin their relationship. She said it ‘just happened’.”

  Nathaniel shifted himself in his seat to face more towards me. “And you don’t believe her?”

  “No,” I scoffed, “it’s a crap excuse for cheating on someone.” Not that was ever a ‘good’ excuse. Other than rape, but I wasn’t entirely sure that it still counted as cheating in that incidence.

  “You’ve never just gotten swept up in the moment?” I pursed my lips- I would never dream of telling him that getting swept up in the moment was exactly how I ended up underneath my English Literature professor, and that never was a pretty tale to tell.

  “It was hardly getting swept up, Nathaniel- it’s a fifteen minute walk home from the publishing house.” I rolled my eyes and stuffed my hands into my bag to fiddle with my house keys. I needed to keep my fingers busy when there was no laptop or beer pumps to occupy them. “Yes, I know how it feels to get swept up in the moment, but Bethany was just being a fool and she knows it. She likes to pretend that she’s high end fashion and Cristal but really she’s eBay bargains and Carlsberg.” I clapped my hand to my mouth, eyes wide. “Don’t you dare tell her I said that!”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. What’s her ringtone?”

  “What?” I glanced down at my phone and laughed. “Material Girl.”

  “And mine?”

  “Uh, no.” Nathaniel’s ringtone had certain connotations that I wasn’t willing to share. He lunged to snatch my phone from my bag and I raised it above my head. “I said no.”

  He cast a wary eye to the road ahead and unclipped his seatbelt, leaping across the car to grab at my phone. It was an abhorrent disregard of safety. My immediate impulse led me to shove the handset down the front of my dress. “You think I won’t go after that?”

  “I’m hoping that you wouldn’t dare to with your romantic investment in another woman.” He narrowed his eyes at me and went for the kill anyway. “Oh whoa, dinner and a movie before second base, Alexander!”

  “Cherry bombs. This isn’t new territory, Cecelia.” He sat up straight and smirked. “Wow, you really don’t remember a thing.” He knew I didn’t, and I didn’t appreciate how he sowed seeds of concern over what hadn’t been caught on camera.

  “This is different. You didn’t have fireworks then. Think of the moral implications.”

  His hand shot out and plunged down the front of my dress into my cleavage. “It’s worth it.” I was utterly mortified and left to nurse my embarrassment while he flicked through my phone. Hands. A billionaire’s hands. On my tits. Fucking hell. “Make Me Wanna Die? Ouch, Cecelia.”

  “It’s not a slur on you.”

  “We’ll see. Lobke?” I slunk down into my seat with a moody pout while the music switched over to The Pretty Reckless. The lyrics cut into me like daggers and reminded me of how inadequate I tended to feel in wake of Nathaniel’s grand mentoring gestures. He turned to me with a sigh and furrowed his brow. “Do you really think you’re not good enough?” I wasn’t willing to get into it.

  “Haven’t you spent an obscene amount of money on ironing out my many kinks because I’m not?”

  “We had this conversation last Monday.” I stared down at my hands, eyes wide. It had seemed like I’d known him for an eternity- so much had happened in such a short amount of time, so much had changed, including myself. I was a far cry from the woman who slept in until noon every day and stayed up until the early hours serving drinks and writing cheesy romance novels. Or novel- singular.

  “Have we really only known each other two weeks?” He nodded, his face failing to hide that he was surprised too. “Shouldn’t you have invited your significant woman to this event instead of your pet project?”

  “I did.” Nathaniel shuffled in his place for a moment, his expressive suddenly solemn and reflective. It was a side of him I saw so rarely, but probably far more frequently than anyone else. Maybe that was down to my uncanny ability to see beyond the suit and stern stare, but it never failed to shake me to my core. He was tormented, but was either too rattled or didn’t trust me enough to divulge the reason why. “Look, Cecelia…” He scrubbed his hand over his face in a momentarily lapse of his usually bold and antagonistic persona, delving his hand into the inside pocket of his tail coat and producing a small red box, “… there’s something I want you to have.”

  I reluctantly took the box from his hand, growing constantly wearier of his gifts, and unsheathed the contents with a frown. “A claddagh ring?”

  “It’s a promise that whatever happens, you will always have my friendship. It would mean a lot to me if you’d accept it without argument.” His drawn out retired sigh was a firm suggestion that debating my acceptance was certainly not an option. The privilege- or burden- of seeing him look so lost and vulnerable was not something to be abused.

  I pulled the ring from the box and pushed it over the knuckle of the middle finger of my right hand. The short cut off fingers of the lace gloves covered the white gold design up beyond the crown, but I felt it there, entombing my finger like a leash- though the feeling was not entirely oppressive. “It’s lovely, Nathaniel, but I’m not going to pretend that I understand why you’d offer me something like this.

  “Because I want to know that I’ll always have you in my life, Cecelia. Beyond mentoring and beyond your novel being published. I don’t want to part ways with you after you hand me your final draft next Friday.” My heart froze and splintered.
Far from my original claim of not wishing to be subjected to prolonged association with him, three weeks of Nathaniel just wasn’t enough. I had grown fond of him and he felt like as much as a part of life as Bethany.

  My voice broke. “I certainly want to maintain a friendship but-…” Nathaniel was a major obstruction in my relationship with Cole. They couldn’t coexist in my life. If locked in a battle to the death, I really didn’t know who would triumph. Nathaniel’s claim to knowing my mind better was certainly true, and he emitted a strange sense of security that meant I could confide in him and be my true neurotic self. But Cole’s love was something I had always craved so deeply and wanted to return. And I could maybe learn to in time. I wished that there was a collaboration of both men so I didn’t have to compromise on either love or friendship.

  “But nothing, Cecelia. I’ll be in your life for as long as you’ll have me. Wild dogs couldn’t keep me away.” Nathaniel grabbed his cane and tapped the window. “We’re here. Always arrive fifteen minutes early.”

  I didn’t have chance to enquire before Lobke turned up into the driveway of a large stately home that looked almost more like a castle than a manor. Large playing card banners hung from the walls outside and the property was lined with white rose bushes. She jumped out to open the doors and moved around to the rear of the vehicle, removing a large round box from the boot of the Chrysler. Nathaniel opened it and pulled out a fantastical silver top hat cut in the same jaunty manner as his own. A black satin ribbon knotted around its base and trailed down over its brim, and one single white rose was tucked into the sash as decoration. He placed it on top of my head and stepped back, nodding with his bottom lip jutted out. “Yes. Now you’re perfect.” He pulled his own hat from the back seat and tucked the cane under one arm, offering the elbow of the other to me. “Miss Douglas.”

  We strolled up to the front of the house and were immediately met by a flurry of flashes from photographers and shouts from gossip columnists and web bloggers. As though my fear was palpable, Nathaniel slid his hand down to mine and gripped it hard, threading his fingers between mine with a comforting squeeze. My stomach jumped up into my throat and made my mouth dry. “Don’t worry, only preapproved photographers are inside. These vultures are just looking to critique your appearance.” I smiled weakly and nodded, resolving to swallow my apprehension and embrace the moment. There appeared to be a collective gasp when people got a good view of my eyes, but I was used to that.