I shout the last part into her face. She falls still. For a moment there’s nothing, just the sound of my harsh breathing and the tremors of her body shaking the bed. Then she opens her eyes and looks up at me through the wild mess of her hair.
Her gaze is full of horror and darkness.
I say her name. She slowly blinks. For an awful, bottomless moment, I think she doesn’t have any idea who I am.
Then she whispers, “B-Brody?”
The relief that washes over me is so intense I’m momentarily speechless. I nod, trying not to let my panic show on my face. “You were dreaming. You had a bad dream.”
Her face is ashen. “I . . . the . . . blood . . . the blood was everywhere . . . and the fire . . . and the . . . parts . . .”
Hearing her describe her dream makes the tiny hairs on my body stand on end. My sense of déjà vu is crushing, as is my self-loathing.
I have to swallow several times before I can talk again.
“You’re safe. I’m here. Nothing can hurt you,” I vow. I release her wrists and drag her against me. She’s trembling so violently it shakes us both. The back of her dress is damp with sweat. Burrowing against me, she hides her face in my chest.
“Oh God. Oh God.”
Her voice is choked, a half whisper.
“I’m here,” I murmur, smoothing her hair and rocking her. I’ll always be here, I don’t say. I swear on my worthless life I’ll always do everything I can to make you feel safe.
After a while her trembling slows, and then stops. She lifts her head and looks at me. Damp strands of hair cling to her cheeks. Her eyes are huge, so dark gray they’re almost black.
“Usually I don’t give a woman nightmares until after she’s slept with me,” I say with a straight face.
She moistens her lips, swallows. The faintest of smiles curves her mouth. “Not during?”
I’m relieved to see a glimmer of humor. This is good. “I’ll have you know I’m told those thirty seconds are incredible. It’s everything else about me that sucks.”
Now her smile really comes on. She sits up straighter and pushes her hair off her face. “Thirty seconds, huh? You stud.”
Adopting a smug expression, I puff out my chest. “Oh yeah. I’m so studly I probably just got you pregnant from my hug. With twins.”
She chuckles. It’s a little shaky, but she’s definitely feeling better than she was just moments ago, which oddly makes me want to do a Tarzan-style chest thump.
“Yes, I think I can feel my uterus throwing a fertilization party. You’re very talented, Mr. Scott.”
“You know what it does to me when you call me Mr. Scott,” I tease, lowering my head and looking at her pointedly from beneath my brows. “The sexy librarian fantasy, remember?”
She laughs. The sound of it unspools something tight in my chest.
“How could I forget?” She glances around the room and muses, “Now if only I could find a ruler . . .”
Then we’re smiling at each other. Her eyes have brightened, and her face is no longer such a deathly shade of white.
I wonder if this is what Neil Armstrong felt like when he first stepped onto the moon. I feel slaphappy. I feel invincible. I feel like doing a crazy dance around the room, all because I helped, in some small way, to make her feel better.
I grab the water bottle on the nightstand and hand it to her. After she drinks half of it down, I ask, “How do you feel? You tied one on pretty good last night.”
She thinks for a moment, squinting her eyes. “You’re only a little bit fuzzy around the edges.”
“Are you hungry? I could make eggs.”
Her face turns faintly green.
“Right. No eggs. Drink more water.”
She obeys without hesitation, something that makes me feel like pounding my chest again.
I’ve seen sexy Grace, and fierce Grace, and confident, sophisticated Grace, but I’ve never seen obedient Grace.
I could get used to obedient Grace.
A startlingly vivid image of her, naked, bound at her wrists and ankles on my bed, pops into my mind. I achieve an instant erection.
Even when distraught, this woman makes me produce testosterone by the gallon. Think of something else, dickhead! Baseball. Baseball. Base—
I’m hit with inspiration. “You know what we need?”
“What?”
“We need to go to church.”
Grace stares at me as if I’ve just told her she has terminal cancer. “No. We definitely don’t.”
I arch a brow. “Not a big churchgoer, huh?”
She says emphatically, “No. Are you?”
I shrug. “Used to be when I was a kid. My parents went every Sunday, dragged me along. But not anymore. God and me . . . we have our differences.”
She cocks her head and considers me. “You can’t dangle such a juicy morsel out there like that and expect me not to bite.”
Our fingers are threaded together. I don’t know when that happened. “I . . . I was in an accident once, a long time ago. It pretty much changed the way I looked at everything else afterward.”
Grace falls still. “An accident?”
I nod.
“Was it bad?”
After a moment of letting my stomach settle from the onslaught of memories, I say quietly, “The worst kind of bad there is.”
We stare at each other. Finally she whispers, “I was in an accident, too.”
I’m not sure if I should tell her I already know, but decide to keep it to myself. “Was it bad?”
“The worst kind of bad there is.”
I stroke a stray lock of hair off her cheek. “Is that what the memory problems are from?”
She nods.
“And the nightmares?”
Her eyes briefly close. Then she nods again.
“I had them for years, too.”
Her eyes widen. “Really? Do you still have them?”
“Hardly ever anymore. I found something that really helps.”
Astonished, she blinks. “What is it?”
When I say, “Church,” she visibly deflates.
I reassuringly squeeze her hands. “No, Grace. This isn’t like any kind of church you’ve ever been to before. This is the kind of church where you really can see God.”
She says sarcastically, “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what Jim Jones told everyone before they moved to Jonestown. Next you’ll be asking me to drink poisoned Kool-Aid.”
I stand, gently pulling her up with me. When she’s on her feet I ask, “Do you know how to swim?”
She stares at me for a long time. “You’re a very strange person.”
I grin. “But super hot, right? I can tell you’re totally trying not to jump my bones because I’m so unbearably hot.”
“Oh, totally.” She looks at the ceiling and shakes her head.
Then I tuck her arm under mine and lead her toward salvation.
I’m digging through boxes in the garage, muttering to myself in frustration, when from behind me Grace says, “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“I can’t find it!” I tear through yet another cardboard box of clothes. Still not finding what I want, I lift my head and shout at the top of my lungs, “Magda!”
“The plot thickens,” muses Grace with a chuckle. “Is Magda your imaginary friend?”
“Ugh!” I throw down an armful of clothes in disgust. Why do I have so many still-packed clothes? More to the point, why do I have so many clothes in the first place?
Oh right. Because I’m a clothes whore. Hoarding clothes is what we do.
I stalk across the garage to the intercom on the wall next to the door that leads inside. I stab my finger on the round black button. “Magda! I need you in the garage!”
A loud crackle of static answers back.
“Magda! Magda!”
The crackle clears. A rough female voice answers with a flat “Si.”
Because I know her so well, I know the interpretation
of those two letters is basically “What the fuck do you want now, you spoiled, annoying, helpless child.”
I adore Magda, but I swear the woman makes the Grinch look like Mother Teresa.
I say into the intercom, “Where’s the box with the extra wetsuits?”
Grace says in surprise, “Wetsuits?”
Magda’s sigh sounds like she’s been waiting for a thousand years for the mother ship to come back to earth and rescue her from all the morons on this planet. Then there’s nothing but more static. She disconnected.
“Fuck.” I turn to Grace. “Well, I guess you can just wear mine and I’ll wear the spring suit—”
The garage door swings open with an ominous creak of metal hinges.
In the doorway that leads to the kitchen stands Magda, all four foot nine of her, hands on her stout hips, glowering at me from beneath thick brows that have never seen a strip of wax or made even a passing acquaintance with a pair of tweezers.
As always, she’s dressed entirely in black, with the exception of the spotless white apron tied at her waist. Her silver-threaded dark hair is scraped severely away from her scalp into two thick plaits and pinned to the top of her head in an elaborate coiled style that makes Princess Leia’s hairdo look amateur. If you put your hand into it, you’d never be able to get it out.
She has skin like leather, hands like a bricklayer’s, eyes like knives, and a heart the size of a Raisinette.
And I love her as if she were my own mother.
Who I also love, by the way. That wasn’t sarcasm, just an accurate comparison.
I say brightly, “Good morning, sunshine!”
Magda answers back in aggrieved Spanish, punctuating every other word with a stabby gesture of her finger pointed toward my chest.
I smile broadly at her. “I love you, too. And may I say you look especially beautiful today. Done something new with your hair?”
More irritated Spanish. I have no idea what she’s saying because I don’t speak the language, but I think the gist of it is that I’m lazy, stupid, and an embarrassment to all people with testicles everywhere.
Grumbling, she walks past me, waving me out of the way. She makes a beeline toward one of the three or four dozen unmarked boxes I still haven’t unpacked since moving in last month. She drags it away from its companions, turns to me, points to it, and says with withering disdain, “Aquí.”
“Oh, great! Thanks!”
Then she notices Grace and freezes.
“Oh, sorry. Magda, this is my friend Grace. Grace, Magda. My housekeeper. She basically runs my life. Like a jail warden. Only not as cuddly.”
Grace says pleasantly, “Hello, Magda. It’s nice to meet you.”
With slitted eyes, Magda gives Grace a searing once-over.
“Uh, Magda. This is my guest. Don’t bite.”
“It’s okay, Brody,” says Grace, smiling. Then she says something to Magda—in Spanish.
“Hahaha!” cackles Magda loudly. Her leathery face creases into a grin.
“Wait—was that a laugh?” I’m astonished because in over a decade of knowing her, I’ve never heard her make that particular sound.
Magda fires something back at Grace, who answers with an equally rapid-fire response, and then the two of them are cackling like they’ve been besties since forever.
I have no idea what the fuck is going on.
Magda walks past me again, bumping me out of her way with her shoulder. She goes to Grace, takes her hand, and gently pats it. Then she turns it over and inspects her palm. After a moment she pronounces in perfect English, “Don’t take the coast highway at night.”
She turns and exits the garage.
“Are you kidding me?” I shout after her. “You speak ENGLISH? All these years you’ve been speaking only Spanish to me but you speak ENGLISH?”
A faint cackle comes from inside the house.
Grace says warmly, “What a darling woman. Except that last bit was a little cryptic, don’t you think?”
I turn and stare at her. “Did we smoke a bowl that I forgot about or something?”
Grace’s smile is angelic.
“No, seriously. I’ve gotta be on drugs. Magda speaks English!”
“Did she say she didn’t?”
“No, but it’s not like I could ask her—I don’t speak Spanish!”
“Why on earth would you hire a Spanish-only housekeeper if you can’t speak the language?”
“She was my family’s housekeeper from when I was a kid. She moved with me when I came to California to pursue a career in music after high school.”
Grace’s brows lift. “Mommy and Daddy didn’t trust their baby boy to survive on his own?”
“It’s a long story. Never mind.” I turn back to the box with the wetsuits in it.
Grace says sharply, “Stop.”
Arrested by the tone of her voice, I glance at her over my shoulder. “What?”
Her expression is severe. Fraught, even. Surprised, I turn all the way around. “What’s wrong?”
Slowly, holding my gaze, she says, “I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to tell me the complete truth. Everything depends on you being totally honest.”
This sounds bad. I’m scared already. “Uh . . . okay?”
She drills me with those steely eyes of hers. “Do you have a terrible secret?”
My blood crystallizes to ice. “A secret?”
Grace takes a threatening step toward me. “Yeah. A secret. Like, the person everyone thinks is your girlfriend is really your sister, or you have a brain tumor and only have so long to live?”
She’s referring to Nico and A.J., respectively, and the whoppers they were hiding from Kat and Chloe. I only have seconds to decide on an answer, but I already know there’s no force in the world that could ever convince me to hurt this woman, so really it’s no decision at all.
“Oh. A secret secret. No, I don’t.”
Grace narrows her eyes at me. They were a nice dove gray a second ago, soft as a cashmere sweater, but now they’re stormy. “So you have no secrets.”
Stay cool, Brody. Don’t blink. Don’t look away. What happened to you has nothing to do with what happened to her. You’ve already realized there’s no need for a confession.
I spread my hands in the air. “I mean, I guess technically speaking, how many times a day I masturbate to the thought of you is a secret.”
Now her eyes narrow to slits. A hurricane is brewing.
She asks, “Are your parents related by blood?”
I blink in surprise. “What?”
“Are you actually a woman?”
That one makes me laugh out loud. “I wish! I’d spend all day fondling myself! By the way, you’re lucky I’m secure in my manhood because that little doozy could really fuck a guy up.”
“I’m being serious, Brody. Are you bankrupt?”
“No.”
“Do you have twelve illegitimate children?”
“Twelve? Why, thank you! Such confidence in my fertility! No. And before you ask, I don’t even have one.”
“Are you addicted to porn?”
“Define ‘addicted.’” When she glares at me, I laugh again, shaking my head. “That would also be a no, Slick.”
“To drugs?”
“No.”
“To the shopping network?”
“No.”
“Food? Alcohol? Sex with anonymous strangers you met on Snapchat?”
“No, no, and no. This is getting a little depressing, by the way.”
She crosses her arms over her chest and taps her toe against the floor. “I’m trying to discover your awful, dark, hidden side! Help me out!”
My dark, hidden side taps me on my shoulder, but I push him back and plaster a fake grin on my face.
“I’m normal,” I insist, my arms now wrapped around her. “I mean, as normal as a guy who plays guitar for one of the most famous rock bands on the planet could possibly be.”
She gives m
e a really wicked stinky side-eye. “You don’t seem very normal.”
“Are you calling me abnormal?”
“Abby Normal,” she quips drily.
“Oh my God, did you just make a Young Frankenstein reference?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“Why? Because it’s only, like, my all-time favorite fucking movie, that’s why!”
“Really?” she asks, blinking rapidly. “That’s my all-time favorite movie! I think Mel Brooks is a—”
“Genius!” I finish before she can. “Me, too!”
After we stare at each other for a while, starry-eyed and breathless, Grace laughs. “I think we should probably go do something else before my twins turn into triplets.”
I give her a quick, hard kiss. “Oh, sweetheart, you’ve already got quintuplets goin’ on up in that bun factory.”
She grimaces. “Bun factory? Jesus. How do you ever get a date?”
I whisper into her ear, “Those thirty seconds are legendary.”
Grace laughs, pulls away, and smacks me on the arm. “Yeah, I bet. Let’s hope this church of yours is as legendary or this affair will be over before it’s even started.”
Affair.
Be still my fucking beating heart.
How have I achieved the ripe old age of twenty-nine without ever feeling this alive?
GRACE
As it turns out, Brody was right. This church of his is amazing.
Straddling a longboard bobbing gently up and down with each swell headed for shore, I’ve got my legs dangling in the ocean, my face turned to the sun, and my ears filled with the sharp, lonesome cries of seagulls. Waves crash onto wet sand far behind me. The fresh sea breeze teases my hair into floating tendrils around my face. The sun is warm, the water is cold, my heart is as wide open as the endless blue horizon. I don’t even feel hungover anymore. I feel . . .
Peaceful.
For the first time in a long time, I feel totally at ease.
“I could really get used to this,” I say, smiling. “I wonder if I should prescribe water therapy for my patients?”
Brody chuckles. “Any time you want to tell me what a genius I am, I’m all ears.”
He’s straddling his own board a few feet away and grinning at me.
A water baby for sure, he’s as confident on his surfboard as he is on dry land. He showed me how to paddle out through the breakers, how to balance my body, trusting the buoyancy of the board to keep me afloat without fighting it, how to cut through the top of a cresting wave by throwing all my weight forward onto my chest. He even showed me how to leap onto my feet in one swift motion so I could try to catch a wave, but I ended up nose-diving into the water every time, so we took a break from that.
Sin With Me (Bad Habit) Page 11