by Watson, Meg
Trapped between outrage and the desire to not appear like a lunatic, I clawed my own wrist, hoping the sensation would ground me. I was dangerously close to sailing around the room like an untied balloon. I could have cried. I maybe should have. But everyone was smiling and nodding so enthusiastically, I struggled to control myself.
They’re sold; it’s done, I told myself. Get a grip. Be nice. And then get the fuck out.
My hand fluttered up to shoulder height and I sort of waved, hoping that looked like thank-you in Dutch.
“It’s genius, you know?” Peter said, suddenly at my side. “Your recent works? Especially these new ones? I couldn’t believe it when Declan had the men hang them, right in front of our eyes. Quite the unveiling. I had to fight for my favorites.”
I stared into his generous, paternal face, feeling like I had only the thinnest veneer left between my phony smile and the boiling rage behind it.
“I’m… honored, Peter,” I choked, hoping it looked like I was overcome with different emotions. “Thank you so much… for your support.”
“It’s a beautiful collection. So moving, so intense… I very much enjoy the juxtaposition of traditional and modern techniques,” he continued, glancing at the far end of the room.
“Yes, thank you,” I stammered, automatically following the direction of his gesture. There was another velvet rope on the other side of the doorway, a gathering of a dozen or so guests chatting and nodding in front of it.
Unconsciously, I began to walk toward them, Peter strolling slowly beside me. He was flushed with pride. Beaming, really.
My heart began to pound violently in my chest, my throat narrowing like I was half-caught in a swallow. White noise rushed loud in my ears as though the room was suddenly filling with water.
“No,” I heard myself say.
“Excuse me?” Peter asked politely, leaning his head toward mine to see what I saw.
“Something is wrong?” he asked.
“Ohhhhh no,” my voice said, all on its own.
Oh Bridget, I am so sorry, I moaned internally.
Peter straightened again, nodding, apparently interpreting my noises as some kind of understandable artist fit.
“Just sublimely provocative,” he enunciated, directing his comments to the confused guests that surrounded us.
I started to tremble, staring at the wall. Six more paintings were hung all in a row, framed robustly in carved mahogany. Bridget’s paintings. The ones I promised her weeks, even months ago.
Suddenly the room was loud. Too loud. I leaned away from Peter and aimed myself for the door.
“Won’t you… excuse me please,” I whispered hoarsely as I stumbled forward with my hands out, making my way through the crowd that parted, startled, in front of me.
Declan shot me a disgusted look as I hurried past him and back to the foyer, then up the stairs. The dress billowed behind me like a sail all the way up to the studio.
My legs and belly literally trembled with rage as I grabbed my bag from the closet and began to throw everything in it, ripping my clothes from hangers by the handful.
“What on earth are you doing?” Declan demanded, hurrying in after me. “We have a house full of people you need to meet!”
“What am I doing?” I shot back, a fistful of dresses in each hand. I stood there wishing I had something to throw, feeling my skin going slick and hot with anger.
“What… You just snuck in here to take them the second I was out of the room?? You had no right--”
“Well technically I had every right,” he shrugged.
“No!” I yelled. “Those weren’t… Those aren’t…”
I forced myself to stop, dropping the clothes on the bag and walking toward him deliberately, concealing as much of my uncontrollable fury as I could.
“The new paintings aren’t done,” I explained, impressing myself with the even tone of my voice.
“They’re sold,” he said simply.
“They can’t be sold because I didn’t authorize you… or anyone… to sell them.”
He gave me a wink. “Oh yes you did.”
“NO.”
“Well I hate to quibble, but I am your authorized agent. I have the right to sell anything you make.”
“And you stole those paintings from Bridget!”
“Oh please,” he rolled his eyes. “You never got around to even giving them to her.”
“They were promised to her, Declan! That means something!”
“It doesn’t mean anything, actually. If she never took possession of them--”
“I promised her!”
He sighed impatiently. “OK, listen, you really have to up your game, here. This isn’t Grandma’s County Art Show anymore. This is the big leagues. These are serious collectors. Giving them to Bridget would be… a step backward. I saved you that mistake.”
“You saved me!” I repeated, incredulous.
“Yes, and you should consider thanking me.”
I bark-laughed, the veneer that held back my emotions shredding into splinters all around me.
“Thanking you? For what? For tricking me? For lying to me… setting this whole thing up because you knew I would never say yes?”
“Well that’s true, right?” he shot back. “You would never have said yes. What choice did I have?”
My mouth opened and closed like a fish. I felt like I was fighting a ghost, a fog, pounding my fists against thin air.
“Oh my god, there is no way to make you understand,” I mumbled, shaking my head helplessly. What good was it to try to explain? “When is Jackson getting here?”
He shook his head. “Jackson’s gone.”
“What? Gone where?”
He held his hands out, palm up, as though it was obvious. “Gone. Defeated. Given up. On to new adventures. Asta la vista.”
“What? Why?”
He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “Because you made your decision. You picked this,” he waved his hand around the studio air.
I shook my head as though to clear it. “I didn’t pick this, exactly. I was just… I was working. Which he understood. We talked about it. I didn’t pick you. I didn’t pick you over him.”
Declan shrugged, smirking maddeningly.
“I didn’t pick you, Declan.”
“Whatever. In any case... you’re here, and he’s gone.”
My hands flapped at my sides. It really was a blessing I didn’t have a handful of knives at that particular moment. “For how long?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed, obviously wanting this to be done with. “Forever? That’s my guess.”
“Not possible,” I retorted defensively. “He’ll be back.”
“Hah,” he scoffed. “For what?”
“For me.”
“Not likely,” he chuckled, his fingers scraping at an invisible dimple on the plaster wall. “Jackson’s never fought for anything in his life. He just gives up. The guy’s just… terminally apathetic. He floats. Our father even held him back in school for a year so I could be next to him to kick his ass into caring about something. Anything. But it never took. Things don’t really matter to him the way they matter to people like us.”
“I am nothing like you,” I hissed, my eyes wide with shock.
“Oh, aren’t you…” he chuckled, cocking his head to the side. “Don’t you just love the way people look at us? Doesn’t that energy just… whoosh… fill you with a thrill?”
“No idea what you mean,” I lied.
“Oh yeah, right,” he drawled. “Like it or not, you and I are very much alike. You think I am ruthless? I think you’re ruthless. It’s one of your most adorable qualities.”
“I am no such thing!”
“Oh aren’t you? I seem to remember you trotting Jack and I around your living room just to humiliate that Kevin guy. Tsk tsk tsk. That was brutal, Mar.”
I turned away, hiding the pain that must have flashed across my face. There was truth in what he was saying. I knew it
.
“Listen, come back downstairs,” he said, his voice softening. “I know you’re mad, but you still have business to work through, downstairs. We can sort the rest of this tomorrow.”
I squinted and hesitated, then nodded.
“Yes?” he said, his voice brightening with relief. “That’s my girl. I knew you could take it.”
I heard him standing tall, straightening his beautiful suit.
“So I’ll see you down there?”
“OK, Dec. Just give me a minute,” I said softly.
“See?” he said sweetly, walking over to me and embracing me from behind. “I knew you would do it my way. We’re going to have a blast, kiddo.”
Slapping me lightly on the shoulder like I was a teammate in a locker room, he left the studio. As soon as he closed the door, I pulled the beaded belt from my waist and threw it on the bed, then the dress after it.
I could only get my clothes and makeup in my bag, but that was fine. I couldn’t even care anymore. Let it all sink to the bottom of the canal. Let it burn in the fireplace. What did it matter.
Snatching the wad of unspent cash Declan had given me days earlier I opened the envelope Jackson left me. Inside was a single airplane ticket to LA, open-ended. Choking back a fist of emotion, I glanced around the studio at everything I was leaving behind with just a bag of clothes and mascara, then snapped off the light for the last time.
I kept the shoes though, because... well, you know. Gucci shoes.
CHAPTER 6
SOMEHOW HOME SEEMED STRANGE and unfamiliar. It took two days to get there via three different commercial airplanes and by the time I arrived, it all looked manufacture, like a movie set.
“Hello, house,” I whispered when I walked in, breathing deeply, trying to trigger a sensation of belonging. But nothing came.
I dropped my bag on the slate tiles and unbuckled my thoroughly broken-in Gucci sandals, leaving them where they fell. My feet on the cool tiles felt deliciously unfettered and I walked deeper into the house, feeling an inkling of change, a small sense that I did in fact belong here.
Skimming the photos on the mantlepiece, Aunt Winnie and my mother beamed out at me from years and years ago, frozen mid-laugh among friends. I tried to feel them here, the way people say you can. This would have been the exact right time to have a maternal ghost figure around. Someone I could turn to for comfort.
Someone I could confess to.
“Mom, I fucked up so bad,” I whispered into the dusty, dark air.
But she didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say. What would I even tell her? That I screwed over my best friend? That I burned bridges on two sides of the world I would probably never be able to rebuild? That I had apparently given up something real to snatch after a shiny object when some douchebag dangled it in front of my face?
Could I tell her I was that girl? No. It was better she would never know.
I had left the Netherlands with a single bag and nothing else, and that seemed appropriate. My work was gone, my clothes… even my paint materials were in a studio halfway around the world that I would never see again, hopefully.
Well, I guess this is as good a time as any to start over, then.
Sliding open the glass doors, I was grateful to see that Roger had kept the garden and pool from going wild while I was gone. I flipped on the pool light and flopped onto a deck chair, sinking wearily into the cold, fluffy cushion.
The night sky was a smear of grey. No stars at all. With a frustrated groan, I realized I had never even looked up while in Amsterdam. Another chance just wasted. Frittered away.
Deliberately relaxing my muscles, I pushed away any thoughts of what I needed to do. Just for a moment, I wanted to float without feeling. I knew I had to turn everything in my life around, and it was going to be like diverting the Titanic. But just for a few minutes, I wanted to not think.
The sound of the doorbell punched through like a klaxon horn. I sat up straight and immediately began to swear.
“Fuck, I need a new bell. OK, that is job one,” I muttered as I slapped barefoot through the house. Who the hell would be ringing that? If Bridget thought she could have me murdered, she should have hired someone less courteous.
I opened the door, then before I knew I’d done it, threw myself at Jackson and wrapped my arms around his neck. Sudden, choking sobs shook my body.
“Whoa, hey!” he said, his voice pitched with concern. “Baby, hey… No don’t cry!”
But I couldn’t help it. He held me just as tight as I needed on the dark steps in front of my house, squeezing me still while my sobs tried to shake me apart.
I wanted to tell him and couldn’t. I was positively wretched. In his arms the fragile scaffolding that held me together melted away and I could see it. Everything had been ruined. Everything I had built was at risk, yet again. I felt selfish and mean, ashamed at how I had acted.
Knowing he would hold me up, I succumbed to the urge to just crumble. I let wave after wave of sorrow and regret shudder through me, not even trying to hold them back anymore.
“Oh, Margot… Margot… Shhhh baby it’s alright.”
“It’s not!” I choked, a mucousy, wet retort. “Everything… I ruined everything.”
“No, everything’s fine.”
“No,” I whimpered.
Then I pulled back and looked up at him. Had he ever been this handsome? I couldn’t remember it.
“Wait… How did you know I was here?”
He chuckled shyly. “Oh, I saw your pool light go on. Raul and I were in the garden.”
“And you… came over?”
“I had to be where you are,” he said softly.
“Declan said I would never see you again.”
“Ha! Oh he did, did he? Well that shows what he knows. Say… why are we still out here?”
He dipped down and slid his hand behind my knees, picking me up effortlessly and carrying me back to the living room.
“Declan says you never fight for anything,” I admitted, feeling a little like a gossip.
“Jackson wants to fight over everything. I want to be more judicious.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I never had anything worth fighting for.”
I shook my head in confusion. Was he really saying this?
“But… Declan said he won. That I stayed and he won.”
Jackson sighed and pushed me back on the sofa, hovering over me on one elbow. “I can’t believe you would listen to anything he says.”
“Well… but you left.”
“I told you I would be here,” he replied, as though it was obvious.
Oh man, he totally did. How did I miss that?
I squinted at him in the dark room. The proof was undeniable: here he was. Really here. No matter what I had feared, the real and present truth was that he was here with me. The sound of that thought boomed through my mind. There was one solid thing, like the first post of a pier. One solid thing to hold onto.
“You look beautiful, by the way,” he murmured, his lips gliding over my collarbones, his voice tinged with a smile.
“I think I look like I’ve been on an airplane for six weeks.”
“That long? It suits you,” he whispered. My skin puckered into goosebumps under his breath.
“It felt like forever,” I said, letting his kisses restore me. Each one was like a tiny ray of hope. Everything wasn’t ruined. If he was here, it seemed impossible to believe everything was really ruined.
“But you never answered me,” he said, his voice suddenly wary between kisses. I wriggled beneath him, wanting more, hungry for each hope-giving touch.
“Answered you?”
“Stay with me,” he said.
I pushed him back so I could look into his unblinking, sky-blue stare. I couldn’t quite believe what he was implying.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… stay with me.”
How many times had I heard him
say that, or some version of it that mean the same thing? A dozen? More?
“OK, yeah, you’ve said that but… I-- I didn’t know that was a question.”
“That’s always been the question, Margot,” he said earnestly, diving back to cover my shoulders with kisses. “Ever since the beginning.”
“Since the… Wait now. The beginning-beginning? Like, since Zac Efron?” I teased.
He chuckled modestly. “Well if I’m being honest… Part of me knew even then. But it’s only gotten more intense as time went on. There’s something about you… You do things to me. You finish parts of me I didn’t even know I was missing, Margot,” he whispered.
“So will you?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to keep my face from bursting into an uncontrollable grin, and leaned in close to his ear. Inhaling him deeply, trying to get his scent as deep as possible into my lungs, I whispered, “Say it again.”
He pushed himself and hovered over me, drawing so deliciously close I was sure we were exchanging electrons.
“Stay,” he whispered, then covered my mouth. His lips sucked gently at mine, plucking them individually with his lips, rolling them softly.
“With,” he breathed into my mouth. His tongue pushed at my teeth, opening my hungry mouth for him.
“Me,” he said, then plunged his tongue against mine, drawing lazy circles across the roof of my mouth with the tender tip of his tongue, reminding me of all the pleasures his body had shown my body.
“Yes,” I sighed.
“Yes?” he asked, drawing back with a smile.
“Will you, Margot? Stay with me?”
“Well…” I quirked an eyebrow, trying to look like I was seriously negotiating. “Will you fight for me? If you ever have to?”
“I think I just did,” he whispered in the darkness.
“Will you show me the stars?”
He nodded vigorously. “Every single one,” he promised.
“And you’ll…”
“Love you, Margot,” he finished, as though he’d heard what I didn’t want to ask. “I’ll love you, Margot. Yes. I will.”
“I love you too, Jackson,” I said all in a rush, the words tumbling out of my mouth like water. As I heard each one it echoed back inside of me, flipping through every cell, changing me forever.