by Fox, Kim
“Are there going to be a lot of people there?” he asked, looking nervous.
“Tons,” she said. “It’s going to be great.”
Grace’s Dad was walking towards them from down the hall. She didn’t want a repeat of dinner. He clearly didn’t approve of Edwin.
“Go look at the car collection,” she said, opening the garage door. “I’ll be there in a minute.” The garage was the size of half a football field and filled with new and old sports cars. All in mint condition. It was a car lovers’ wet dream.
Edwin walked into the garage and looked at the cars with a look of complete disinterest on his face.
“Going out?” Grace’s Dad asked. He was wearing his robe and holding a snifter of brandy.
“We’re going to Santorini Club,” she said.
“Will Devon be there?” he asked.
Grace looked at the wall behind him. “I don’t know.”
“Well tell him I said hi if he is.”
“Okay Daddy,” she said, turning to escape into the garage.
“Ci Ci,” he said. “Edwin seems like a very nice young man but I don’t think he’s a good fit for our family.”
A good fit for our family. He didn’t care if Edwin was a good fit for her. She turned towards him and sighed. Her whole life she always did what was right for her family. And never for herself.
“I think if you just-”
“We have the reporters coming tomorrow,” he said, interrupting her. He was always interrupting her. “It would be best if he stays off camera. For the good of the family.”
“But Daddy I-”
He pointed into the garage with his eyebrows raised. Grace held her breath and turned. Edwin was bent over on all fours sniffing the tires of a nineteen eighty six Mustang LX. He yanked the collar of his shirt and the top button flew off and rolled away on the floor.
Grace sighed. It looked like her Dad was right. He would never fit in.
four
Grace walked in the club holding Edwin’s hand. The bass was thumping so loud that her ears were ringing. She could feel the vibrations shaking every cell in her body.
She waved to the bartender, a hot Asian girl named Ting, who was pouring some fluorescent colored martinis. There were beautiful people everywhere.
Edwin pulled his hand away. Grace turned back and he was shaking his head. His lips were moving and his eyes were glossed over. He looked like he was about to have a nervous breakdown.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He stepped backwards and bumped a girl’s drink out of her hand. The crystal glass fell and shattered on the floor.
“Watch out asshole,” she said, giving him a dirty look.
Edwin’s face was getting darker. It was turning brown. God damn it! He’s phasing.
Grace leaped forward and planted her lips on his. His body was rigid and tense. She shoved her tongue into his mouth and moaned.
His body relaxed a bit under her hands. She pulled away and looked to see if he was a bear. His face was pink. Back to normal. His eyes were darting around the club.
“Follow me,” she said. She grabbed his hand and pulled him to the back corner of the club where there was less people. He was breathing easier already.
She stood on her toes and peered over the crowd at the roped off VIP section that was reserved for her friends. The white couches were empty.
“You can’t phase into a bear in here,” she said.
“There’s so many people,” he said, looking around. “It’s so loud.” He covered his ears with both hands.
Grace pulled his hands down as she looked around to see if anyone saw. She should have known better than to bring him here. She should have went out for a nice quiet dinner with her high school friends, Becca and Angie. Why did they even come?
“Just try to act normal,” she said into his ear.
His face dropped and he swallowed hard. “I don’t know how to act normal.”
She glanced back at the VIP section. Her friends still weren’t there.
“Okay,” she said. “Stand like this.” She stood in a natural pose, with her hand on her waist.
Edwin was standing as stiff as a board with his feet together. He shook out his body and copied her stance.
“Looser,” she said, shaking her arms.
He dropped down, like his limbs were made of jello.
“Too loose,” she said, laughing.
She glanced around. Nobody was paying attention to them. They were in the back corner of the club in a dark area.
“Yes like that!” She clapped her hands and kissed him on the cheek. “Now what do you do when someone says hi to you?”
His head darted around. “Is someone going to say hi to me?”
She snorted a laugh. “If someone says hi to you. Lean your head back like this and nod.”
He imitated her with all the grace of a wooden puppet.
She giggled. “Now say, what’s up?”
He nodded his head vigorously. “What’s up?”
She put her hands on his hard chest and laughed. “Close,” she said. “Maybe we skip the talking part. Let’s try dancing.”
Edwin glanced over at the dance floor and his face went pale. He stared at the gyrating bodies with wide eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asked, giggling.
“Can we go home?”
“Let’s try. Like this.” Grace was moving her hips and rolling her shoulders, trying to give him an easy move to start with.
He pumped his hips from side to side while jerking his shoulders back and forth. Grace covered her face with her hands as she burst out laughing. “You’re a natural.”
“Really?”
“No,” she said, barely able to contain herself. “Okay. Now try this. Put your hand out like this and move your head.”
He studied her movements as she repeated them. “Now you try.”
Edwin’s hand flew out and his fist crashed through the wall.
“Oh my God!” Grace said, throwing her head back and laughing. “You broke the-” she couldn’t finish. She was turning red.
“Do you have any more moves I can try?” he asked, wiping the powder from the drywall off of his knuckles.
“I do but I don’t want you to hurt anyone.” He furrowed his brow. “Come here,” she said, wrapping her arms over his shoulders. She stepped on her toes and kissed him on the lips.
“I’m really glad you’re here,” she said. “Even though you’re not.”
He kissed her back. “I’m just happy that I’m with you. You’re my mate.”
She pulled her body off him. “Please don’t say that word around my friends.”
He looked hurt. “You can say that you’re my boyfriend,” she explained. “But please don’t say mate. It sounds weird.”
She glanced over at the couches and her friends were sitting down. Two waitresses were opening bottles of Cristal Champagne. Samantha, Todd, Madison, Britney, Mike and Devon were there.
“Come,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him back into the crowd. “I’ll introduce you.”
Edwin watched as Grace squealed and hugged her friends. He had never felt so uncomfortable in his life. His bear was pacing around inside him, agitated and pissed off. The music was deafening and the smell of all of the perfume and cologne was too much to handle.
He had to try really hard not to phase. His bear kept bounding towards the surface trying to get out. It was only Grace’s calming effect on him that allowed him to stay in his human form.
One guy with sweat stains under his shirt and a shaved head, hollered, stood up on the couch and drank the champagne straight from the bottle. The girls cheered him on.
Edwin wanted to go home.
He was only here because Grace wanted to be here.
Grace grabbed his arm and pulled him forward. “This is Edwin,” she said. The girls on the couch looked him up and down with smiles on their faces. Their perfect white teeth were shining.
“This is Madison and Samantha,” she said, pointing to the first two girls.
Edwin replayed in his head what Grace had taught him. “What’s up?” he asked nodding.
“This is Britney and Todd,” she said, moving on.
Edwin kept nodding. “What’s up?”
Grace laughed nervously and pointed to the two guys standing up. “That is Mike and Devon.”
“What’s up?” Edwin asked nodding. He was proud of himself. He did exactly as Grace had told him. So far it was going great.
She squeezed his arm and whispered into his ear. “Stop nodding your head.”
The girls slid over on the couch and Grace sat down beside them.
The big, muscular guy, Devon, with the sweat stains and shaved head walked over to him. His breath stunk of cigars. He wrapped his arm around Edwin’s neck and squeezed it, putting him into a hug-like headlock.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, spitting on the side of Edwin’s cheek as he spoke. “A friend of Grace’s is a friend of mine.”
Edwin didn’t believe that for a second. He could feel him trying to display his authority. There was no need for a pissing contest though. A werebear didn’t have to prove himself tough to a simple human as much as a wolf didn’t have to prove his dominance over a chipmunk. They weren’t in the same league. They weren’t even in the same sport.
Edwin tried to remember what Sidney had told him as he untangled Devon’s arm from around his shoulders. Guys love to talk about sports.
“So how about that sports team?” he asked.
The two other guys approached him smiling. Great. His sports talk was working.
“Wasn’t it awesome how the sports team won the game?”
The guy with the blue, loose tie around his neck, Todd was it?, leaned in. “What sports team?”
Edwin slipped his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat. “The red team?” It came out like a question.
The three guys laughed. Edwin shifted his weight away from them. He didn’t like it here. The guys reeked of the chemically smell of cologne.
“What school did you go to?” Devon asked with a mischievous grin on his face.
Why did everybody keep asking him that?
He felt a flush of heat and he felt the urge to rip off his clothes and let his bear burst through his surface. He took a deep breath and glanced at Grace. She looked like an angel sitting on the white couch with her legs crossed, speaking to the girl with the black hair and ugly make-up caked onto her face. He wished that he could be the kind of normal guy that she deserved.
He exhaled long and slow, and calmed his bear down. He couldn’t phase here. It would embarrass Grace. He turned back to the guys and tried desperately to fit in.
For her.
“He’s so hot,” Madison said, leaning in Grace’s ear. “Who are his parents?”
Grace took a sip of the champagne that Todd had poured for her. The tiny bubbles tickled her tongue. These people were all about family names. They didn’t like to associate with the ‘little people’ as they called them. “Nobody you would know.”
Madison sucked in her breath. “Well I’m sure he’s nice. Where does he work?”
Samantha and Britney were listening as well, craning their necks so they could hear her over the heavy bass that was making the couch vibrate.
Grace hesitated. She cursed herself for hesitating. Edwin was a great guy and a good catch but these ‘friends’ only cared about two things. Power and money.
“He’s a kayaking instructor,” she said.
Britney snickered and Samantha took a sip of her drink, her mouth twitching on the straw.
Madison smiled, a fake smile. “Well it’s always nice to have a summer fling with a hot guy.”
Grace bit her lip. Why do I hang out with these people?
But she knew why.
She could hear her Dad’s voice: “For the good of the family.” Grace was strongly encouraged to make friends with these people. Their parents were some of the most powerful people in the country and her Dad needed the connections. So she went clubbing with them, went on exotic trips, the modern day equivalent of a king marrying off his daughter to cement an alliance with another powerful family. But she never liked them. They stank of entitlement and self righteousness. People who were convinced they had hit a homerun when they started life on third base.
In her early twenties her Dad had threatened to cut off her allowance and take away her car when she was spending more time with Angie and Becca. “Their families bring no value to the table,” he told her. “Rebecca’s Dad works at Home Depot for God’s sake.”
It didn’t matter to him that they were the only people that she liked and who liked her. The only people that she could be herself around. To him it was a waste of time.
He didn’t care about her happiness. He only wanted “What was for the good of the family.”
But it was all bullshit. A tag line. A campaign promise that was thrown out as soon as the politician took office. Something they laughed about behind closed doors.
Her Dad was all about what was good for his political career.
A shiver shot through Grace’s body. “Where’s Edwin?” she asked, perking up on the couch. Her eyes darted around the club, looking for people screaming and running away in terror, looking for a brown bear in the middle of an empty dance floor. She exhaled in relief when all she could see was sweaty, grinding bodies draped in the tiniest pieces of fabric that sold for the most outlandish prices.
He was probably just in the bathroom. Let’s hope.
Devon sat on the arm of the sofa beside her with a smug look on his face. The kind of look that only a guy who grew up with butlers could give.
“Only an elementary school education Grace?” he asked, snorting out a laugh before he took a sip of his scotch. Grace could smell it on his breath.
Madison leaned in, “Really?” she asked, with a devilish smile on her face.
Samantha and Britney leaned in, unable to hear over the music. “What did he say?”
“I went to Harvard,” Devon said, the edges of his voice starting to slur.
“I guess they didn’t have any classes on how not to be a douchebag?”
He snorted a laugh. “You’re allowed to be a douchebag when you make seven figures a year.”
Ugh. The attitude of her Dad’s social circles summed up into one line. He didn’t mention how it was at his father’s company.
“Aren’t you a little too old to be rebelling against your Dad?” Madison asked.
“I’m not rebelling,” Grace said, already on the defense. “I think I l-” No. It was too soon for love. Was it?
“I really like him,” Grace said, fidgeting with her hands.
Madison sipped on her champagne. “I would really like him too with those looks.”
Grace shook her head. “It’s not that.” A naked Edwin, walking around the campfire, cooking a fish that he caught with his bare hands flashed into her mind. It’s not just that.
“He lives in the moment,” Grace explained. “He’s happy with nothing. He does what he wants. He lives his life so wild, so free.” She looked at her fidgeting hands in her lap. “I wish I had the courage to live life like that.”
Devon slid his heavy arm around her, his sweaty skin sticking to her shoulders. She squirmed under his unwelcome touch.
“I know you like to play the difficult, rich girl role,” he said, leaning into her ear. “But your looks are going to fade and I won’t be interested anymore. This is your last chance to hook up with me.”
“Wow,” she said, wiping the spit off her cheek. “That’s so romantic.”
“Cut the shit,” he said. “My Dad owns three companies and he’s a Senator.”
Grace crawled out from under his nauseating touch. “I alrea
dy have one too many Senators in my family.”
She stood up from the couch. Edwin still wasn’t back and she was getting worried. Plus she didn’t want to spend one more second with these people when she could be spending it with him.
“I can’t believe you’re choosing him when you can have me,” Devon said, taking a sip of his empty glass. “He’s out of our class.”
Grace whipped around, her cheeks hot. “At least he has class.”
She looked at the girls snickering on the sofa. “I can’t believe you guys wrote him off just because he didn’t go to a fancy college.” She shook her head. “Don’t call me anymore.”
She stormed down the steps into the crowd. A hand grabbed her elbow. She turned ready to throw a roundhouse to Devon’s silver-spooned mouth. It was Madison.
“I’m sorry,” Madison said. “That didn’t come out right.”
Grace bit her lip.
Madison pulled her to the nearest wall, where they could hear each other better. “It’s just, we’re worried about you. You’re approaching your mid-thirties. It’s time to stop your fling and settle down.”
This from a girl who gave a hand job to a bartender in a stockroom two weeks ago.
“Your Dad is going to be running for President,” Madison continued. “You need to set the right image.”
Grace slammed her drink onto a nearby shelf. “I’m so sick of hearing that. When do I get to live my life for me and not for my father? When do I get to make life decisions for me? When do I get to be happy and not have to follow a path that fits into my father’s career aspirations?”
“Is this about your art school again?” Madison asked. “Painters don’t make any money.”
“It’s about me getting to live my life the way I want to,” Grace snapped. She shook her head. “I’m so sick of it.”
Madison touched Grace’s arm. “If your Dad becomes President we can do whatever we want. We’ll be set.”
And there it was.
We.
The only reason that they were ‘friends.’
Madison and the others weren’t friends with her for her. They only hung out with her because of who her Dad was. Who he was going to become. All they cared about was what they could get out of it. They didn’t care about her happiness.