Hidden Gem Short Story Collection (9781301405985)

by Lee, India

  “Okay,” she said, though suddenly, somehow, her heart knew that she wasn’t headed for the airport at all. Or perhaps it was the fact that the car in the driveway was a Ford truck with a motorcycle loaded into the back.

  Kissing Zoe goodbye on the cheek, Harper let him take her bag and toss it into the black truck. They were wordless as they got into the car, though their eyes were fixed on one another. Finally, Levi broke the silence.

  “We can go to the airport if you want to,” he said, smiling at the glimmer in Harper’s eye as she shook her head.

  “No. Take me wherever you’re going.”

  And so he did. For the next two weeks, they remained on the road.

  ~

  Staring at her phone, hearing but not processing Ron as he asked her if she was alright, Harper waited for Levi’s reply. She was too afraid to go into Agno. Levi was in there. She suddenly knew it. She’d always had the weird ability to sense him.

  Come inside

  Harper flattened her palm over her heart when she read Levi’s message. It was racing so fast she actually feared she might be on the verge of a medical emergency.

  “Harper,” Ron repeated himself. He was calling her by her first name now – that meant he was serious. Or scared. Looking into the rearview mirror, Harper caught her reflection. Her face was nearly paper white. “Harper, what’s wrong? Do you need to go to the hospital?”

  “No,” she managed to choke the word out. “Just drive me anywhere else. Fast.”

  The shiny, black F-150 was close to convincing Harper that her first car would be a pickup truck, too. She had always imagined she’d drive an Audi like her mother but as she and Levi cruised toward Sedona in his monster of a car, she was suddenly certain she was meant to be a Ford girl.

  After leaving Zoe’s house, their conversation had flowed as if nothing strange had happened between them the night before – as if they were simply two friends who had known each other for ages, which was nice.

  For the most part. It was also kind of torturous. Levi looked good. Somehow, despite being fully clothed, he looked better than he had the night before. Harper couldn’t help feeling occasionally breathless when she realized that it was really just the two of them, alone on the road, each other’s only company. The breathlessness only worsened when Harper let herself study him – his perfect jaw or tattooed forearm draped over the steering wheel. The adorable way his eyes crinkled when he noticed a dog in some other car’s passenger seat. More than the sights along their drive, Harper anticipated their first stop. She craved the prospect of drinking in a hotel room with him – and whatever would happen as a result of the drinking.

  But to her massive disappointment, their first night at a hotel consisted of separate, sober sleep.

  Tired from hiking among the red rocks in Sedona, they’d stopped at the first hotel they spotted, Levi accepting the first room the front desk offered – a suite with two queen-sized beds. That night, Harper had emerged from the bathroom to see Levi already sprawled out on one of them, asleep in just his jeans. Crawling into bed with him when there was another one made Harper feel totally creepy, so she didn’t do it.

  In Phoenix, she tried to dismiss their lack of hooking up to the fact that they’d gotten blackout drunk on the cheap liquor he’d purchased from a dilapidated roadside store.

  “Christ, woman,” Levi had laughed when he drunkenly walked in on her in the bathroom, as she peeled off the wet clothes she’d spilled vodka on. Rather than excuse himself though, he had leaned against the doorframe, his sleepy eyes watching her until he suddenly blinked, shaking his head. “Fuck,” he muttered before turning on his heel and hastily shutting the door for her. As had been the case in Phoenix, she had walked out of the bathroom to find him already passed out. But she’d passed out quickly that night too.

  It wasn’t until New Mexico that Harper realized that he had no intention of touching her. Not in that way, at least. He had touched her plenty when trying to get her comfortable on the back of their motorcycle, which he had used to ride Sandia Crest. Cruising the winding path below an indigo sky, they’d taken about an hour to reach the peak of the mountains, five thousand feet above Albuquerque. A city girl through and through, Harper wasn’t sure she had ever felt such adrenaline – between riding on the back of the chopper and being so elevated above the city, she could feel her heart pounding, close to bursting with excitement. It was probably that thrill that sparked her to suggest she drive the bike for their ride back down.

  “You’re kidding, right? I was hoping to get back down there alive,” Levi said, plucking her helmet off her head. As put off as he was by her suggestion, he couldn’t seem to help laughing as he watched her grin so brilliantly, still breathless with excitement.

  “I bet I can do it,” Harper panted, biting her lower lip when Levi ran his fingers through her tousled hair.

  “I’m glad you think you can,” he laughed, brushing a windblown lock from her face. She swatted his hand away.

  “Don’t patronize me, I know I can do it. I just need you to teach me the basics.”

  “Of riding a bike? It’s not a fucking tricycle, Harper, it’s a custom chopper that I don’t want you to crash.”

  Much to Levi’s amusement, Harper wound up settling for sitting on the bike alone for a minute, an almost goofy grin on her face as she wrapped her fingers around the handlebars. For her own entertainment, she imagined zooming away without Levi. She imagined taking the bike somewhere and starting some life as another girl without a famous family or even a dollar to her name. It was fun to just think about it for a second. She’d never have to see her fake classmates from The Cabot School or force another smile at some Upper East Side mom who’d probably been trash talking her family a second ago. She could do what one of the crazy fortunetellers in Sedona had told her she was destined for – spiritual healing.

  Harper laughed, only snapped out of her fantasy by the strong arms wrapping around her waist.

  “Was that a giggle I just heard?” Levi’s chuckle was close to her right ear. She felt the front of his body press against her back as he took the seat behind her, his breath warm on the skin of her neck. She exhaled, closing her eyes when she felt his lips brush against her ear. Staring out at the purple sky and the mountains over Albuquerque, Harper let her adrenaline rush dictate her body. Swinging her legs, she brought herself to sit backwards on the chopper, facing Levi, their chest and lips inches apart.

  Levi’s surprise took less than a second to turn into delight. “What were you thinking about?”

  “Hm?”

  “What made you giggle like that?” he asked softly, a smile on his face. Harper felt her heart race when her palms flattened below his collar bones, Levi watching her as she ran her hands down his chest and to his abs.

  “Being free. Living not with my parents,” she said.

  “You wanna do that?” Levi asked curiously, touching the sides of her thighs.

  “Obviously.”

  His lips turned up. The answer seemed to please him. “Then why don’t you? Move to L.A. Live with Zoe.”

  Harper laughed. “I totally would.”

  “Fuck ‘would.’ Do it.”

  Harper chewed her lip, frowning. “I will. Eventually. I just need to figure things out. I have a lot of things left in New York. I have to go back there before I move anywhere. At least finish high school.”

  Perhaps it was her Upper East Side upbringing, but Harper couldn’t reconcile the idea of a being a high school dropout. Not unless she had an ultra-glamorous reason like a few of her classmates – like getting signed to walk the hottest five runways at Fashion Week or going to film some Academy Award-winning movie. But she wasn’t five-foot-ten or an actress, so an ultra-glam reason probably wouldn’t happen.

  “Since when did you care about school? You’re about to miss the first week of junior year,” Levi pointed out. He wasn’t wrong. If they stayed on their schedule, Harper would miss the first four days of the sch
ool year. But she didn’t anticipate it being a huge problem – she had missed that much school before. Hudson had always found her a way out of trouble, generally with doctor’s notes from various friends in the medical field.

  “I thought you said I should try to be good,” Harper murmured, cocking her head. Levi’s brows knit tightly together. Gently removing her hands from his chest, he nodded.

  “Yeah,” was all he said. Harper frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” He blinked, looking up at her with bright, green eyes again. “Come on. Get on the back of the bike so we can go back to the hotel.”

  At the hotel, they finished a bottle of gin straight. Levi was out of the sudden mood he’d fallen into and Harper was glad for not only that, but the room that she had chosen for them – it had only one king-size bed with a plush mattress that Harper pulled Levi onto, running her hands up his chest so he lay flat on his back.

  Straddling him, she placed his hands on her hips, sliding them up and under the hem of her T-shirt, feeling his warm palms on her tingling skin, continuing to glide up on their own to tug on the cups of her bra.

  But suddenly, with a rumbling groan, Levi snatched his hands back, pulling her off of him by the hips.

  “Goddamnit,” was all he said before bringing himself to a seat at the edge of the bed. Eyes wild with confusion, Harper stared at him from behind, his broad shoulders expanding as he leaned forward, his elbows on his bare knees.

  “What the hell?” Harper exhaled, pushing Levi off the bed from behind. Irritated, he stood up and turned around to face her.

  “Calm down,” he said through his teeth. “I told you. It’s all or nothing with me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If I can’t have all of it, I don’t want any. You’re going to be back in New York soon. I want you more than anyone, Harper, but I’m not going to torture myself by being with you for a week-and-a-half and then saying goodbye.”

  Harper blinked as her tongue tried to form a coherent sentence. “But we’re having fun right now. We like each other.” Wow, that sounded breathtakingly stupid. Alcohol – 1. Harper – 0.

  “We’re having fun, yes. But let’s keep it platonic fun. We’ve been doing that for three days now. I’m sure we can keep it up till New York.”

  In her drunkenness, Harper agreed. Outwardly, at least. If she had to seduce him, she would.

  After sweating throughout the Rockies-Giants game at Coors Field the next day, Harper hopped immediately into the shower in their hotel room. After drying herself with her towel, she’d left it in the bathroom, emerging from the bathroom in just her boy shorts. His head shaking, Levi had watched her walk around for a good two minutes before getting up and leaving the room.

  That night, he had gotten out of bed to climb into hers, staying over the covers as he held her.

  In Saint Louis, after watching her talk and laugh with a mesmerized twenty-something about his chopper, Levi had pulled Harper away by a handful of her shirt, both he and the twenty-something staring at her bare, exposed shoulder as he stretched her top.

  They booked one bed at their hotel that night. In the middle of the night, they both turned on their sides at the same time, finding themselves awake, their faces just inches apart. Flopping onto his back, Levi groaned – but only to return to his side, his rough hand bringing Harper’s forehead to his lips so he could give her a kiss despite his frown.

  But on their last night before New York, Harper found herself in an upscale Presidential suite in a swanky downtown Chicago hotel, alone in their one bed. She stayed up all night in hopes of hearing Levi come in from wherever he’d be. It was around 9AM that she fell asleep, still alone in the big room. She awoke at noon, to the alarm she had set in order to check out.

  Levi was in bed with her, holding her tight against his chest. She felt him stir at the sound of the alarm. Groggy, he had mumbled something in her ear and kissed her hair before suddenly jerking awake.

  “Shit. Checkout,” he said before popping out of bed and straight into the shower. While he took forever in the bathroom, Harper sat at the edge of the bed, confused, wondering if she had imagined the words he’d whispered in his half-slumber – “I miss you.” They made either total sense or none at all. She wasn’t sure which.

  Not until New York, at least, when she decided that they did in fact make complete sense, especially as she watched Levi’s giant Ford pickup stick out like a sore thumb as it drove down Fifth Avenue and forever away from her apartment.

  Despite having been delivered quickly by Ron to the comfort of her apartment, Harper couldn’t help feeling panicked, out of control. If she had felt inexplicably tipsy before, she felt flat-out drunk now.

  She texted Zoe, even Gemma. They were both working but she needed someone to come over – somebody to stop her from seeing Levi. She had worked so hard to rid him from her system. It had been no easy task considering the life they had built together.

  Harper had tried to finish high school. She really had. At least she felt like she had. But she missed Los Angeles way too much. She missed Zoe and even more, she missed Levi. In hopes of forgetting him, she dragged Joie out to The Green Room nearly every night. She tried coke and then some more, convincing herself that it wasn’t for Levi.

  By the end of junior year, it made sense for her to drop out. She hadn’t passed more than two classes and she would be forced to repeat the year if she didn’t leave.

  So she began living with him at seventeen, the day she’d moved to L.A. He had greeted her on the tarmac when the private charter he had sent for her touched down. In just a year, he had grown two inches in height. He was even broader. The roman numerals on his arm had become a full sleeve. Before speaking a single word, Levi had pulled Harper in for a kiss, his tongue somehow numbing hers in a strange, pleasant way. Harper was fairly certain that some form of addiction had started from the moment they had locked lips.

  And after a year of romantic texts, emails, three hour-long calls and desperate waiting, their first time together wound up in the backseat of the car that took them from the airport to Levi’s new house. It was indicative of their relationship to come – everything they did was for the pleasure of the moment. There was no thinking ahead. They lived in the now.

  They shared a four-bedroom home together in Los Feliz, neither of them with any sort of job aside from going out and having fun – or staying in and having fun. They spent every waking moment together and often, Harper was convinced, their sleeping moments together since they so often dreamt the same exact thing. Every day, they tried something new – a restaurant, a movie, a drink or a drug. They tried it as long as they could do it together because nothing sounded, felt or tasted as good if they weren’t with one another.

  Levi was as much her drug as the alcohol or coke. She needed to start and end her days with him. She became dependent on smelling his scent. She told herself that benders were okay because he still functioned at a higher level than most sober people she knew. She introduced him to every boyfriend of Zoe’s, desperate for them to become the best of friends.

  And she found out way too late about his tendency to go missing for a day or two at a time.

  Standing at her glass fridge, Harper gathered an armful of vegetables despite shaking hands, hoping to prepare herself her favorite salad. That would lift her mood – put her mind on something else while she waited for Zoe or Gemma to respond. Plus, it would remind her. Remind her that despite the fact that she’d gotten her interest in cooking from Levi – from when he’d make her dinner at night in the outdoor kitchen on their terrace – food was still her thing. What put her mind at peace. She was successful now, a respected restaurateur, not the tabloid princess, not the girl whose days bled into each other because she began upping her usage to overlook the trouble Levi began getting into. Not the girl who spent two years flirting with death, all the while convinced that she was still in love with the boy who grew darker as
the months went by, whom she realized had left out details of his childhood – namely the many fistfights he’d lost to his father. They explained the blackout nights that returned him to Harper in the back of a squad car, his face black, blue and bleeding from a brawl that she pretended to believe he didn’t start because she still loved him. She was still completely addicted to him – up until the day he went to jail.

  “Shit!” Harper breathed when her phone vibrated against the glass counter. Her heart pounding, she peered over at it, overwhelmed with relief to see Zoe’s name on her screen.

  Harper. I’m on my way. Stay at your apartment. Don’t text him back.

  Her mind scattered, Harper responded.

  I’m just going to tell him that I’m not going to see him. I don’t want to be rude.

  Zoe’s reply came quickly.

  Since when do you care about being rude or not!??! Do NOT respond to him. You do not want to throw away four years of hard work for one day with Levi. That’s all it’ll take for him to suck you back into his toxic life. think about how hard you had to work after rehab. you don’t want to go through that shit again. I will not let you.

  Harper stared at the text. She could only vaguely recall life after rehab. Her mind was really too scattered. She had been broken and lonely and she needed her mother’s company at all times. She did know that. But it wasn’t that bad. Was it? She couldn’t really remember. To stay sane, she had kept a diary the year after her release but on the day that Agno was reviewed by the New York Times, she’d permanently deleted it from her laptop, too proud to let proof of such weakness exist. She wanted to believe that her transformation had reached the point of being relapse-free, which meant no need for reminders of her old self. She had been convinced that she no longer needed the hundred thousand-word diary chronicling her every last struggle, doubt and humiliation after rehab, all the reminders that would inspire her to never regress and repeat the torturous first year after being released.