by Elle Berlin
I pull out my phone and text my brother.
Connor: Is there something you need to talk to me about?
Ned: Why? Did you quit your job?
Connor: No.
Ned: Then no.
I stare at my phone. That was cold. Yes, taking this job has wadded his panties in all the wrong directions, but jeez. Maybe I shouldn’t have left him an invitation. Maybe I shouldn’t poke the beast. Let him live in his happy lawyer world and me in mine. Still, he’s my brother …
Connor: I left something with Judy just now. Let me know when you get it.
Ned: Sure. I gotta go.
No, What is it? or How are you? Just the same old, cold, distant brother. I should be used to that by now. I don’t know why I expected more.
My phone buzzes and I lift it up, surprised. Only it isn’t Ned this time.
It’s Arie.
Arie: We need to talk.
Connor: Worst four words in the English language.
Arie: Sorry. We need to fuck. Typo.
Connor: Really?
Arie: No.
Connor: The latter is definitely a better opener.
Arie: Where are you?
Connor: Must be bad if you need to see me right away.
Arie: Will you shut up for ten seconds and tell me where you’re at?
Connor: Boardwalk near 8th.
Arie: Meet me by the dolphin statue in twenty minutes.
Connor: What if I don’t and decide to avoid you instead?
Arie: Don’t be a child.
Connor: What’s this about?
Arie: Twenty minutes!
Connor: What if I send you a dick pic and we call it even.
Arie: How pissed do you want me to be?
Connor: Just thought a dick pic might remind you that at least it was worth it before you fire me.
She doesn’t answer.
Connor: Shit, are you firing me.
Arie: Twenty.
Connor: Arie?
Again, she doesn’t answer.
I toss my phone in my back pocket and turn in the direction of that cheesy-as-hell dolphin statue. I pick up my pace as the shadow of my brother’s firm looms behind me, silently taunting: you reap what you sow.
33
Connor
Arie’s late.
Some women make you wait for good reasons, but this feels like another punch in the face, exactly like when she had me hike all those damn chairs up to her patio. Thirty-two flights of ‘I’m the boss of you.’
Then I see her—all in red. She’s a streak of ruby paint on a canvas of beach beige, a rockabilly princess strutting toward me in a plunging polka-dot dress that hugs her tits and flares at the waist. Red heels, red dress, red lipstick. Full Arie. She has just as much presence in the daylight as she does in the shadows of Flambé. I’ve seen this woman cook. I’ve seen her snarl, and beg, and succumb under me, and none of that dulls her vibrancy. She just takes your breath away. Every. Damn. Time.
“So?” I hook a finger in the belt loop of my jeans as she clomps up, the dull echo of her heels reverberating against the boardwalk. “Are you firing me?”
Arie stops abruptly right in front of me, the flap of her skirt slapping my legs. There’s a flush of breath in her stillness, and in the sunlight the ghost of freckles dot across her chest. She’s perfect, gorgeous and honey-touched like last night, catching her breath after I took her against the wall, our skin tacky as she sat in my lap, breathing against my skin. Her blue eyes flicker with a hint of hesitation, the storm of her approach wavering into a false crest as a silence hangs between us. That damn pull and heat bleats, not just from need—but from something else, something unspoken. It covers every inch of air between her and me.
“You wanted to talk?” I say, inching into this conversation as I soften my tone, not sure if she’s about to slap me across the face for ravaging her so perfectly last night, or if this is a false calm to get me to let my guard down.
I lean in. I do it against my better judgement, against all things that are rational and ruled by logic. But there’s gravity between us; like two objects trapped by the laws of physics, we just can’t help but crash into each other.
My hand fists in her hair. Her mouth parts a quarter of an inch, and that red, perfect lipstick is mine, waxy and viscous and smeared against my own need to devour. We fuse together, unabashed and wild as birds bursting into flight.
Her lipstick is tarnished when we pull apart, that perfect put-together quality of Arie always crumbling in my presence. Her walls of control collapsing and leaving me with the evidence against my mouth. I kiss her again and she laughs as I do it, because I can’t not. I can’t help but keep on kissing her.
It’s raw and sloppy and a little too hot for public, but that still doesn’t stop us. When the sun starts to burn, I pull back and that seductive angry dragon seems to have been replaced by someone softer, more tender, yet somehow just as vibrant.
“This isn’t exactly talking,” I say, attempting to untangle my fingers from her hair. Her mouth curls beneath her bruised lipstick as she reaches up to wipe the testimony of my indulgence from my chin.
“It gives you a reason to start talking,” she says cryptically, cupping my face as she cleans the lipstick away. I don’t return the favor. I like seeing her smudged and colored outside the lines. I like seeing how undone I make her.
“Is this about Simon?”
She shakes her head. “Not exactly.”
I snatch her wrist, smelling the skin as I brush my lips against a vein. “Is it about how you want to apologize—” She tries to pull away, but I slide my hand around her waist and pull her against me. “You know, apologize for suggesting that wall banging just wasn’t your thing? But now you’ve come to see the light?”
“Oh, you’re hilarious,” she jabs, allowing me to keep that excellent body snug at my side.
“Well…” I dip my head and start to graze her neck, nibbling the sun from her throat. “You’d better start talking before I decide that text was indeed a typo and I need to come up with a place I can fuck you in the daylight.”
Her body shivers as my lips roll across her throat.
“Who’s Zariah?”
Her question turns me to stone.
I pull away and glower, red thorns of anger raking over me. I hate that Arie even knows Zariah’s name. I hate that Mason said it last night, dangling it in front of her like a toy she can snatch up and—
“She must have broken your heart, from the way you’re looking at me,” Arie says, not bothering to pull her body away.
“This is what you wanted to talk about?” I practically snarl. “You want to have a little chit chat about my ex? Like this is a fun game we get to play?”
“No,” she says carefully, but I’m already on edge. “I want to know exactly how damaged you are and if this—” she motions between us “—is just a hot fuck, or something—”
“Something?” I snarl, letting go of her and stepping away. “Am I going to be your little pet project now?”
“Jesus!” she curses, grabbing my shirt and yanking me back against her. “Do I look like the kind of woman who wants a fucking project? That I’m supposed to want to change you? Fix you? You think I’m made of that kind of cliché bullshit?”
The dragon is back.
“God!” She hisses. “If that’s what you think, then you don’t know anything about me. We may as well chalk this up to wall-banging for exercise.”
“When did this stop being exercise?” I snap back, and the dragon deflates. Wings and fire and glimmering scales all diffuse back to a regular girl, a beautiful, luminous girl who avoids my eyes and drags the back of her hand across her mouth to wipe me away.
“Shit, I don’t know, Connor. I just …” She stares at the ground, ringlets hiding her face, fingers rubbing at the lipstick on the back of her hand. She trembles, not wanting to admit that this is something, but also not denying it.
Suddenly, it hits m
e that I have all the power right now. I could make a joke and belittle this moment. I could tell her she’s my boss and to get over it. Or, I could do the thing she wants me to do. Open up. Tell her about the girl who hurt me.
Explain Zariah.
“Take your shoes off.” I say it plainly and she looks up with daggers in her eyes like I’ve betrayed her vulnerability. “Look, you can’t walk in the sand with those damn things on. Take ‘em off.”
Her brows narrow, but I bend over and take my own shoes off as a peace gesture. Instead of saying something snide, she follows suit and removes her red power heels. I take her hand and walk her onto the beach toward the ocean, hot sand covering our bare feet. I walk us all the way into the water and into the waves lapping at our ankles. I take our shoes and toss them on the shore before walking us in deeper.
“You ever feel like you’re going to drown?” I ask. “Like everyone around you has made every decision in your life for you?”
“Not really,” she says quietly, and I look over at her. Of course not. Arie’s the kind of woman who grabs life by the balls and says I’m going to do it my way.
I love that about her.
“Yeah, well …” I let go of her hand and look out at the horizon. “I used to work for my parents. They’re lawyers on the mainland. Ever since my brother and I were kids, that’s all we ever wanted. Or it’s all my parents said we’d ever want. All we needed. Yes, you were right, I went to law school. I passed the bar and I used to work for my parents on the mainland. Ned—my brother—his branch of our parents’ firm is out here.”
I wade deeper into the waves, letting the legs of my pants get soaked. She follows me in, her skirt slapping into the surf and floating like a jellyfish.
“I hated it. But, not at first. At first, I just wanted my parents’ approval, to make them proud. But it was never enough. There was always another hoop, another stepping stone for their love. And it wasn’t me they cared about, it was some person they’d created and put in a suit and dressed up. They cared that I was a clone of them. Don’t get me wrong, my parents aren’t bad people. They aren’t crooked lawyers or anything. I just wasn’t like them. I tried, but I never really fit. Of course, I didn’t know who I was, either. Not really. I only knew I didn’t want the life they had planned for me. That probably sounds stupid and childish, but—”
“No, it isn’t,” she says quietly at my side. “Every child has to leave their parents’ world at some point.”
I nod. “I guess that’s what Zariah was, something different. She wasn’t polite, she wasn’t uptight, she didn’t care about politics or rules or being bound by the world. She was wild.” I turn to Arie. “She was kind of like you, in a way, she was going to blaze her own trail in this world, and it was utterly intoxicating.”
I look down at the water swallowing my legs. Arie’s close enough to me that the tide and currents pull at the fabric of her dress, twisting the red polka dots toward the shore then out to the horizon, back and forth, and back and forth.
“Only, part of Zariah’s world was breaking the law. I’m not going to lie, it was a thrill. My parents were the law and Zariah knew exactly how to say ‘fuck you’ to it. It wasn’t anything big at first. Stupid kid stuff, shoplifting, eating at a restaurant and leaving. I just liked breaking the rules. Breaking out of myself. When somebody opens up a new part of you, it feels like a revelation, like they know some truth inside you that you couldn’t see. It’s powerful. It makes that person seem important, more important than everyone else.”
My fingers catch Arie’s skirt, the wet fabric twisting over my knuckles, the ocean rushing in and out.
“I don’t know if I was in love,” I admit, coughing, feeling the weight of what Zariah was on the back of my neck—a foot pressing down. “I mean, yes, I thought I was in love at the time. Ned warned me that she was bad news. Hell, he says the same thing about you.”
“Ned? That’s your brother, right?” Arie turns to face me, stepping closer and causing my fingers to graze against her legs.
“He just doesn’t want me to get into trouble again.”
A wave crashes up against us, soaking us as the splash covers our waists.
“And … I’m trouble?” she asks honestly. “Like Zariah?”
I look down at the current swirling between us, not sure what to say. My instinct is to say she’s been trouble since the second I met her. After all, she wakes all the parts inside me that can’t help but walk into the flames, wanting the danger and the thrill of the game.
“To Ned,” I clarify, “anyone who isn’t country-club material is trouble. He grew up drinking all the Kool-Aid my parents preached. There’s a type of woman who’s acceptable, and everyone else will bring you to ruin. End of story. Which is what Zariah did. She was the perfect example of what my parents were afraid of. Ned doesn’t have any good reasons to think otherwise.”
Arie nods, understanding. “So what did she do?” she asks carefully. “Why aren’t you two Bonnie and Clyde, racing across the country in outlaw bliss?”
I laugh at the irony in that comment. We almost did.
“I stole a car,” I explain. “Kind of like Bonnie and Clyde, but without the murdering part. It was a short-lived, two-day flight across the desert: speeding, running, feeling free. That sort of intensity can’t last long. It feels perfect at the time. Intense. Exciting. But short lived.” One of my fingers finds a ringlet hanging in her face and I wrap my finger around it. Part of me doesn’t want to let go of this vixen yet—this dragon that burns so bright. Our eyes catch and maybe she can see that sadness there, the inevitability of whatever we have, burning hot then snuffing out in the exact same way.
I push on and finish the story, ignoring that pang of fear, that piece of me that wants to believe she’s different than Zariah, but doesn’t want to be a fool again. “The cops caught us,” I continue. “Or, they caught me. The last I saw of Zariah was her running away when the officers were cuffing me. You’d think she’d run toward the danger, toward someone she loved. You’d think she’d try to find me afterwards, or at least call and leave me a message, check in, text, but—nothing.” I shake my head, dropping the strand of Arie’s hair. “To this day, I have no idea what happened to Zariah. Never heard from her again. Vanished. She didn’t fit my parents’ world, but I guess not mine either. She had different rules, and those applied to me too.”
“That’s awful,” Arie says, closing the space between us. The waves divert themselves around our closed frame. “Did you go to jail? Simon never said anything about you having a record.”
My hands snake around her waist. “My family are lawyers, remember. Damn good ones. My brother in particular. I got disbarred, lost my license, and I’m not allowed to practice law. But the inside of a jail cell? My brother made sure I never saw another night in the slammer after that first one.”
“Cause of Ned?”
“Yes.” I nod. “The big brother with a savior complex.”
“Or, he just loves you,” Arie suggests, and I remember that she has a twin, someone she would probably give her kidney to without her asking.
“He’s probably the only one in the family that does,” I admit. “I shattered my parents’ perfect image of me and suddenly they didn’t know who I was. Dishonor. Disgrace. They disowned me. I put their firm in the news, but in all the wrong ways. It’s only slander if it isn’t true.” I shake my head. “That’s why I’m here in Hawaii. That apartment you’ve been to, Ned owns that. Not me. I’m just hanging on to the last scraps of his generosity before he gives up like the rest of the family.”
“I’m sure he won’t do that.”
“You’re wrong.” I run my hand up her spine, making her shiver. “Basically, the second you or Simon decide to fire me, I have to go work for him again. You and Flambé are just another big Zariah-stunt he’s waiting to go down in flames.”
“Is that what you think is going to happen?” Arie asks quietly, her arms bent at the elbow and her
hands on my chest.
I shrug, honestly. “You’re unpredictable. You burn far hotter than Zariah ever did. You hate me one day, then can’t keep your hands off me the next. I don’t know what to think about you. I just … couldn’t resist.”
She kisses me softly. It isn’t hot like before, it’s more of an apology than anything, but I don’t dare trust it either. “I’m not going to fire you,” she says after.
“Good,” I say, our feet finding each other under water. “Does this make you my girlfriend or something?”
“No,” she says sharply, her nails digging into my shoulders. “I mean, I don’t know what we are.”
“Of course not,” I say. “Unpredictable. You hate me one day, then can’t keep your hands off me the next.”
“I don’t hate you!”
“No,” I agree. “You hate that you can’t control me.”
“Okay, that’s true.” She nods, not bothering to deny it.