The Price Of Success (Fighting For Fireworks)

by Lee, Corri

  “Swept up in the moment, just say it.” He grabbed at my hands, wrapping his arm around my waist to pull my bare body against his, skin on skin. His eyes sparkled with excitement as he examined my naked form.

  I instantly stepped back, like he’d pulled me into flames and boxed him around the ears. “I meant make the most of it with your eyes, arsehole, not your hands!” I shook my head in exasperation and folded my arms over my stomach as an ineffective barrier. “I’m not even going to pretend to know why you’re so desperate to misbehave- maybe it’s just something you need to get out of your system before you settle down. But please don’t ruin your life over carnal instincts.” I looked at my pile of soaked clothes and sighed. “What am I going to wear?”

  Nathaniel scooped his shirt up from the floor, having collected it from the side of the pool en route to the wet-room. “Here.”

  “That’s going to look dodgy.”

  He shook his head and held the shirt out for me to shrug in to. “You can trust everyone who’s still here, Cecelia. I wouldn’t expose either of us to a situation like that. Just uh… keep your legs crossed?” I scowled and pursed my lips as I buttoned his shirt, which swamped me.

  “What about you? You can’t go topless all night.”

  “I’ll get my tail coat when we’re downstairs. I’ll be fine.” I averted my gaze as he yanked his wet underwear down and pulled his suit trousers over his legs. “You’ll strip but you won’t watch?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Cecelia.” He tucked his socks into his shoes and picked them up in one hand. “Relax. Nothing bad will come of tonight, I promise you that. You control your universe, remember?” I looked into his eyes doubtfully, uncertain that it would ever really be that simple. I had tasted the forbidden fruit- surely there were no loopholes that saved me from being exiled from the garden? But his reassurance meant everything. All I had to do was survive the next seven days, and then Nathaniel could become a distant memory.

  Isaac waved at us from the beaded doorway of a small room deep within the house. Smoke panned out from behind him in a mysterious plume. Nathaniel gave me a small smile and encouraged me to head in without him while he recovered his coat from the function room.

  The interior put me in mind of Arabian Nights. The walls were heavily draped in thick luxurious fabrics in oranges, pinks and reds and the floor was covered in oversized satin cushions and beanbags surrounding a large glass based hookah filled with green liquid, which I worried was absinthe. The remaining guests slouched dopily across the cushions and barely moved, and it was clear why. I recognised that smell and I knew those mindless chuckles that occasionally rose from their limp bodies. Something else was circulating the room too.

  “Nice swim?” I sneered at Isaac and pushed past him to take a seat on the floor, ensuring that Nathaniel’s shirt covered my modesty at all times.

  “I’ll never swim again.” I nodded my head towards the hookah and recalled some fond memories of my teen years. “I got some pretty good grades at the hands of one of these bad boys.”

  Isaac raised an eyebrow and slumped down next to me wearing an expression of genuine shock. “You’ve indulged?”

  “Hell,” I leaned back onto my hands, “hookahs, bongs, ecstasy, acid, sherm, my university professors- if it was bad for me, I did it when my parents died.” I pursed my lips and stared off into space as I replayed every reckless journies of self-discovery, or at least that’s what I claimed they were at the time. “I should probably be dead or writing songs for drug addicted rock stars in a seedy hotel shooting heroine right now, not sipping champagne with billionaires and writing love stories.”

  “Did you hear that?” Isaac looked up just as Nathaniel walked in and sat down on the other side of me, tail coat flapping around his back and chest still largely exposed. “If you thought this girl needed Bruno to teach her to cut loose, you were dead wrong. She’s got a rockier history than me.”

  I leaned my chin on my shoulder and smiled weakly at Nathaniel, who regarded me sceptically for a moment. “I doubt she made a sex tape with three women somehow.” I bit my lip and wrinkled my nose. “Cecelia?”

  “My lips are sealed.” He made a grab at the hem of my loaned shirt and moved to pull it up. “Ah bitch!” I crammed my hands down between my legs for protection and scowled. “I had a pretty diverse group of friends doing media studies who liked to recreate pornographic versions of horror films.”

  “So are we talking Blair Witch, Hostel or...” I glared at Isaac and sucked on my bottom lip.

  “The Human Centipede. In my defence, I was at the front of the queue.”

  “What I’d do for an internet connection right now.” I punched Nathaniel in the top of the arm with a laugh. Bethany had always considered my dip into self-degradation and rebellion to be something I should be ashamed of. I’d never laughed about my exploits before, much less had others laugh with me. I’d never felt quite so accepted for all my flaws and lapses of judgment.

  Cornelia poked her head through the beaded curtain and grinned at us, eyes glazed over and vacant. I was deeply impressed that she was as carefree as her brothers and thought that I might develop a girl crush. “They’re holding out on you. Here.” She threw me a suspicious looking hand rolled cigarette and winked. “Don’t share. That’s a victory spliff.”

  Isaac shook his head at her in disgust, clearly unimpressed that she wasn’t being completely liberal in ‘sharing the wealth’. “What happened to family loyalties?”

  “Fine.” Cornelia held out her hand, “you want to see what’s in that room you’ve been bugging me about for five years?” Isaac leapt up and scurried off through the house, his sister and I laughing in his wake. I felt so honoured to be included in their antics, so comfortable and happy.

  Nathaniel curled around me as I lit the joint and narrowed his eyes at me. “You know what she’s hiding in there, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, nothing.” I grinned and stuck my tongue out at him. “Really, nothing. She purposely keeps the room empty and locked to drive you two crazy.”

  He rolled his eyes at the revelation and nodded his head towards the smouldering reefer between my fingers. “Are you going to share that?”

  “Nope.” I blew a raspberry in his face before taking a deep drag of the toxic emissions. His lips sealed around mine and stole the smoke from my mouth. “Would you bloody behave?” I ran my fingers through my tangled and damp hair, and lay down to curl up across the pillows while I smoked. The ill effects of indulging so many vices in one night were starting to hit me- I was tired and remorseful but the drugs saw to making sure that I didn’t want to do anything about it. Nathaniel lay down next to me, one arm propping up his head, and swept away the hair that covered my face. “You asked me about my dreams.” His eyes glinted with interest but he remained silent. “I want to scatter my parents’ ashes in the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “That’s more like it.”

  “I thought you might approve.” My eyes began to droop uncontrollably. Nathaniel seduced me into surrendering to slumber with the promise of coffee and dry underwear when I woke. I drifted off to the sound of bubbling water in the hookah, the smell of cannabis, and Nathaniel’s hand resting on my thigh. Heaven.

  I woke up face down on a white leather couch, my head pounding and my mouth dry. My hand strayed to my back to make sure my modesty was protected, and I was surprised but grateful to find my underwear back in its place. I didn’t even want to think about who’d put it there.

  “Look who’s back in the land of the living.” I sat bolt upright expecting to see Adam grinning at me like he had the morning after my cherry bomb disasters. Had I dreamt the past week?

  My eyes scanned the room and found the three Alexander siblings sitting in various chairs and couches around me. Rather than being in my lounge like I’d expected, I was in a large sitting room with a solid brick fireplace, lavish traditional furniture and several large oil paintings hung on the walls. I frowned in bewilder
ment at Nathaniel, disorientated by the original feeling of déjà vu. “I have to stop waking up like this on Saturday mornings. Second week running now.” He nodded and laughed into his cup of coffee.

  “No pictures this time.” I sighed with relief and rubbed my gritty eyes, confident that I had committed no further sins. “Breakfast?” My eyebrow jerked up in interest. “Pancakes, fry up, muffins, omelette-…”

  I held up a hand to stop him talking. “You had me at ‘breakfast’.”

  Cornelia’s eyes flared with jealousy as I mercilessly devoured a bacon and egg sandwich on doorstop bread and washed it down with black coffee. The much needed sustenance made me feel human again and chased away every trace of a hangover. I suspected that I may have been subjected to hair of the dog- something about my coffee was amiss- but I didn’t care.

  “I miss bacon.” Nathaniel and Isaac snorted with laughter at their sister and goaded her with their greasy breakfasts. We ate informally from plates on our laps in the sitting room, another unexpected extension of normality from my billionaire hosts.

  “Go plus size.”

  “Are you mad? I’d look like a whale in a size twelve, let alone fourteen.” I looked down at my body and put the rest of my sandwich down on my plate, pushing it across the sitting room table. “Are you ok, Cecelia?”

  Nathaniel snickered and smiled at me in apology for the lack of tact. “She’s a twelve.”

  Cornelia’s mouth dropped open in horror and fascination. “She is not.” She stared at me and shook her head. “Where is it all?”

  “I’m back heavy.”

  “Stand up.” I obliged and furrowed my brow as she craned her neck to look at my behind. “Nate, make me fucking sandwich. Are you sure you’re five foot six?” I nodded with a frown and picked at my sandwich, my appetite for some reason waning. “And you’re a bar maid? No homo, but you’re in the wrong line of work. Your boyfriend must be dry-humping your leg like a horny puppy at every chance.” My nostrils flared in alarm. Not once since our first date had Cole complimented my appearance, even after the complete beauty overhaul, and then there had been the added insult of his falling asleep in my bed. “Oh jeez. Dump him.” Was I ever sick of hearing that?

  Cornelia stole a sausage from Isaac’s plate and rose from her seat hastily. “I have to make a call. Want me to phone Lobke?” Nathaniel nodded and cocked his head at me across the table. Lobke’s arrival would mean leaving Wonderland, and I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to.

  He turned to Isaac and cleared his throat. “Did Cornelia tell you if I’m clear for take-off?”

  “She said if you don’t board the plane on Monday she’s going to break your legs.”

  “You’re going away?” I raised my hand to my mouth, appalled that I’d blurted out my interruption. “Sorry, it’s just you said you wanted my final draft on Friday and there are still three sins you haven’t broached.”

  “I’m going to get my girl, Cecelia.” I rubbed my chest above my heart when it clenched painfully and pushed myself up from my seat to leave the room. The same nausea that had plagued me when I’d realised that I was in love with Nathaniel snuck back up on me at the realisation that he was really not mine. “Are you alright?”

  “Heartburn.” I muttered and wandered through the house, finding myself in the door way of the function room, which was mostly cleared of debris and empty glasses. I guessed that the twins had worked through the night when I was sleeping to uphold their side of our croquet bet. That all seemed so far away now.

  “Back to reality soon.” Cornelia crept up beside me and handed me the clutch bag I’d forgotten that I’d even brought with me. “You could always stay,” she joked.

  “Don’t tempt me.” Nothing would have pleased me more than staying in Wonderland where I could pamper my romantic fantasies forever. I pulled my phone from my bag and rolled my eyes- the battery was dead. If I’d had more sense, I would have turned it off knowing that it was redundant without a signal. “It’s been lovely meeting you and Isaac.”

  Her slender fingered hands reached out and gripped mine, clasped in a silent prayer around my phone. “You make it sound like we’ll never see each other again. You will- at the very least you’ll find us in the line at a book signing.”

  I laughed in disbelief and fought to keep a brave face. “Thank you for making me feel so welcome. Last night was unbelievable, I could write a book about it and they’d force me to market it as fiction.” My face froze for a moment as inspiration struck me. “Do you have a pen and some paper?” Cornelia grinned and nodded, pulling me back into the sitting room and pushing me down at a desk.

  She wagged a finger severely at Nathaniel and Isaac. “Don’t interrupt the girl unless there’s a fire. The dormant beast of creativity has awoken.”

  My hands moved furiously across the paper as I documented my journey over the past two weeks. Through the mess of spelling errors and scrunched up adjustments, I deeply craved my laptop, but there was something satisfying about writing by hand. The progress was slower and sometimes illegible, but what mattered was that the words were on paper, and if they were on paper, they weren’t burdening my thoughts. I considered it to be a highly effective form of therapy and recommended it to friends for years to follow.

  “Is that the next best seller?” Lobke peered over my shoulder and scanned the page. “Based on a true story?”

  “Sort of. But I won’t submit this for publishing.” I gathered the pages together and rolled them up, securing them with two bobby pins from my hair. “This is more like an extensive memorandum.”

  I stepped out into the garden and stared across the pool wistfully as the Alexander’s had a last minute gossip session and impromptu business meeting. I longed to be back in those crystal waters where my fireworks were allowed to screech through the sky. I had never considered that the realisation of that obsession would be so painful and unreciprocated. Maybe Cole felt this way too, but I thought that maybe he was too blissfully ignorant to realise that I wasn’t really his. Still, at least if I couldn’t find it where I wanted it, I did have love in my life. And for that I was grateful.

  I stood at the door of the Chrysler and clasped my hands to my face as I bid a silent and miserable farewell to Wonderland. The banners and card guards had gone, but this would always be the place that my dreams came true for one night only.

  Cornelia pulled me into a brief hug and smiled at me warmly. “You’ll see me before you know it, Cecelia- don’t think that beautiful face of yours can escape me.” I hugged her back with probably too much enthusiasm before I held out a hand to Isaac. Rather than a handshake, I had a flyer slapped into my palm and was wrenched forward into a bear hug.

  “You’re coming to The Duplicate next Saturday. No arguments. Bring hot friends.” I scoffed, knowing that he and Bethany would get on like a house on fire.

  Stepping back, I chewed on the side of my mouth while I stole a sideways glance at Nathaniel. The next two hours were going to be a hot ride into Hell before I was thrust into its centre to do battle with Satan himself- Satan being my own misplaced affections and the consequences of falling for another woman’s man. Somehow it seemed like a just contrapasso for making a man love me while I fell in love with another.

  Cornelia and Isaac waved as the door shut behind me and confined me with Nathaniel. He turned and smiled slyly. “One last kiss before we leave Wonderland and head back to reality?”

  I glared at him contemptuously and drew my legs up to my body to make myself as small as possible. “No, Nathaniel. What the hell? Don’t screw up your romance with one last weekend of deviance and idiocy. I’ll never forgive you if you fuck this up.” Lobke announced her surprise at my outburst with a curse up front and slowly but surely I withdrew from my surroundings.

  “We’ll be back in London around noon, do you want to get lunch before you go home?”

  “Okay.”

  “McDonalds? Subway?”

  “Okay.”

  “
Something more substantial?”

  “Okay.”

  “Score some crack?”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not paying any attention, are you?”

  “Okay.”

  “I had sex with Bethany.”

  “O-… what?!” I turned to Nathaniel with my mouth agape. “You did not.”

  “No, but it got your attention.” He shifted around so one leg was up on the seat between us. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” I turned back to my previous task of staring out of the window at nothing in particular. Keeping my gaze outside created the illusion of further distance from what was inside, and the further away I could get, the further away my problems would be. That was the working theory.

  “I may have never been in a relationship, Cecelia, but I know enough about women to know that ‘nothing’ means ‘you’re in the dog house’.” My eyes screwed up for a moment in confusion before I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose. The mind boggled.

  “Never been in a relationship? That explains a lot, but how the hell have you avoided relationships for twenty-three years?”

  “I don’t compromise.”

  My laugh forced out in a cough. “We can’t get lunch. I’m wearing your shirt. This would look terrible.”

  “Drive through.” I nodded silently and looked back out of the window. “You’re not allowed to withdraw from me, Cecelia. I won’t let you. If you don’t stop we’ll just go back to Cornelia’s and I’ll throw you in the pool again.” I rolled my eyes at him and sighed, maintaining my silence. “Lobke, turn around.”

  She looked up into the rear view mirror and furrowed her brow. “Don’t be stupid, Nate. You have an appointment with John Rembrandt at two.”