Naked

by Francine Pascal

  SAM LUNGED AT GAIA’S LEGS, hoping to tackle her, to cover her body with his own. He should have known better. She simply jumped headfirst in the opposite direction, somersaulting gracefully over him. He threw his arms around empty space and struck the hard dirt.

  Defeated

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Quiet!” Sam whispered, ignoring the pain of hitting the ground. His head spun in all directions as he surveyed the foliage for the gunman. There! Two men in camouflage jackets were kneeling in the bushes. One of them had a pistol. They were about twenty yards away. One of them lifted his head and—

  “Will you get up?” Gaia demanded.

  Two powerful hands clamped around Sam’s biceps and yanked him to his feet. God, she was strong. He struggled to keep looking at the gunmen, but Gaia spun him around so that they were face-to-face.

  “Why did you just try to tackle me?” she spat, breathing hard.

  Sam could only shake his head. There was no way he could answer. Terror had rendered him mute. But he was finally beginning to understand. They’d wanted him to see them. Sam knew it. They wanted him to know—two more minutes with her and you’re both dead. It was his final warning. It was a mandate, and Sam was too weak to fight it. He’d had enough chances to tell her the truth. And he’d screwed them up with indecision and jealousy and, most of all, cowardice. He was out of options.

  “I don’t know why,” he forced himself to say, overcome with nausea. He glanced over his shoulder—and to his momentary relief, found that the gunmen had vanished. “I think it’s because I’m so pissed at you. I mean, what are we really doing here, right? This will never work.”

  Gaia let him go. He nearly collapsed into the dirt.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

  But he could only scan her face for signs of that glowing red dot. It didn’t seem to be there. Maybe the assassins had repositioned themselves. Maybe they were aiming from behind now. Or more than likely, there was more than one pair. He barely even noticed as Gaia shook her head and withdrew from him, her features contorting in anger.

  “I think I better go,” Sam said shakily. No doubt they were watching his every movement. They could probably hear his every word. He bit his tongue, dreaming of shoving their faces in the dirt for what they’d done to him. If only he knew what their faces looked like.

  “Fine,” Gaia said. There was no sigh, no hint of resignation. Just a single, cold word. “You know, you should have just done this weeks ago, Sam. It could have saved us both a long nightmare.”

  Her harsh monotone was like a quick swipe from a jagged knife, all the more painful because she was absolutely right. He could have saved them both a long nightmare. He didn’t want to hear any more. He wanted the conversation to end. Before he lost it completely. Before he got them both shot.

  “You’re right,” Sam said, falling into a defeated, bitter tone of his own. He started backing away from her, his eyes darting to the left and right. Paul and his friends were closing in.

  “Who are you?” Gaia asked, her eyes brimming with tears. “I don’t even know you. What do I really know about you, Sam? I don’t even know where you are half the time. Because you won’t tell me. And you know what? That proves that you don’t know me very well. Because if you did know me at all, Sam, you’d know that whatever the hell is going on with you, I could handle it. If you really knew me, you’d know what I was. . .”

  Sam forced himself to turn and run before she could finish, leaping through the rocks and the grass in the direction of downtown. He found that he didn’t feel particularly sorrowful or even that angry. Instead he just felt. . . odd. It was a very disconcerting feeling to have nothing—not even to own your own life.

  But it was liberating, too. Because now he was certain that he had nothing left to lose.

  HEATHER STUMBLED ON HER WAY up the stairs, her legs wobbling with every step. Her shoulders had never felt so heavy. Maybe guilt could weigh a person down. If that was true, Heather wasn’t sure she would make it out the door.

  Fake a Seizure

  Just a few more minutes, she thought, trying to soothe herself. You’ll get through this.

  Coming to this brunch had been a stupid, stupid mistake. But Heather had hoped to prove something to Ed. She’d hoped to show him that they could hang out with her friends from the Hamptons and still be a strong couple. Her alliance would remain with him. That was the difference between then and now.

  She wasn’t sure how she’d show it to him. All she knew was that she couldn’t live with the shame anymore—the shame of those hours and minutes leading up to the accident. Because she knew now that she’d viewed him the way that they viewed him, as somebody who didn’t quite measure up, for whatever reason. She’d bought into their foolish elitism so much that she’d ended up. . . doing what she did.

  Don’t think about that now. If you think about that now, you’ll never get through the next five minutes.

  Unfortunately, she nearly slammed headfirst into Chad when she reached the top of the stairwell.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I . . .” Heather swallowed. She could only nod. She was beginning to feel horribly dizzy. Brunch would have been so easy if Chad hadn’t shown up. How could he even show his face, knowing Heather would be there? He was such an insensitive, arrogant son of a bitch. He was actually about to confess their secret to Ed just to get it off his chest. It was probably just some pointless little guilty tidbit to him—just some speck on his conscience that he felt compelled to floss. He probably had no idea what his confession would do to her. And to her relationship with Ed. And to her reputation in general.

  “Well, I’m going to take a leak,” he muttered, brushing past her.

  Heather simply watched him go, her mouth hanging open. She wanted to scream at him to stop, but the words wouldn’t come. He was going to run into Ed. And she couldn’t let that happen. Not now, not ever. She’d cry if she had to—scream, fake stomach problems, fake a seizure, pull a fire alarm; she didn’t care if she never saw these people again. But Chad was not going to have the chance to finish his confession—

  The bathroom door closed behind him.

  Ping-Pong

  ED BALANCED HIS BODY AGAINST the rim of the sink and doused his face with cold water for the third time. Anything he could do to shake off the miserable tension Heather had created, to wash away the sight of Chad Carmel and this entire debacle that “normal” people called brunch. But when he raised his head for a view of his dripping face in the fluorescent blue of the mirror, he felt like he was being stalked. Chad’s reflected face was directly behind his shoulder, working his hair furiously to retrieve the perfect swoop and dangle.

  “Hey,” Chad mumbled. Somehow he was capable of making even one syllable offensive.

  “Hey,” Ed replied, opting for the simple response instead of the long version. Hey, asshole. Thanks for turning my girlfriend into a raving lunatic. Now, get away from me before I ram this crutch so far down your throat, you’ll have a permanent third leg.

  “Is Heather okay?” he asked.

  What do you care, you just-in-from-the-Hamptons piece of shit? No, Heather’s not okay. She’s lost in your shallow materialistic world, and when she’s around scum like you, she’s ashamed to be seen with me. Plus she’s on the verge of a total breakdown for no reason I can understand.

  “Yeah, she’s fine,” Ed said.

  “You sure? She doesn’t look so hot.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.”

  “I think I’m just going to take her home.”

  “Good idea.”

  The sound of their conversation reminded Ed of Ping-Pong. It had the same dull, repetitive tone. There was no real exchange. Words were just being swatted back and forth.

  Chad leaned a half inch from the mirror and examined his pearly smile from all possible angles. Then he splashed his entire face and head with water and began a complet
e redesign of the hair.

  “Have a nice day,” Ed muttered. He tossed his towel into the trash and repositioned himself on his crutches. Then he reached for the door.

  “Hold on,” Chad commanded. “I just. . . wanted to say something to you.”

  Ed frowned at him. He couldn’t imagine what kind of idiocy Chad would have to offer. He turned and faced the guy, expecting to see that painful hipster-wanna-be grin. But Chad looked unusually serious. Which was actually pretty comical, considering his head was dripping with water.

  “I just—I just...,” Chad stammered, looking down at the floor. “I mean. . . now that you’re going to be okay—you are going to be okay, right?”

  “I hope so,” Ed replied. “What are you talking about?”

  Chad hesitated before speaking again. “Well, now that I’ve run into you again. . . and you’re going to be okay. . . it just seemed like a chance to tell you. . . I’m sorry.”

  Oh, Jesus. Somehow this day had gotten even more surreal and agonizing. “Sorry for what?” Ed asked.

  “For the whole master-bedroom thing,” Chad said.

  Ed stared at him with a slightly bemused smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The master-bedroom thing,” Chad repeated. “The dare.”

  A strange sensation suddenly gripped Ed’s stomach. He felt like his intestines were slowly being squeezed with a pair of tongs. And he wasn’t even sure why. But his instincts were telling him that this was very, very bad. That it was going to hurt. And that it had something to do with Heather.

  “You’re going to have to be more specific,” Ed stated. His voice quavered.

  “Heather didn’t tell you?”

  Obviously not, you idiot. Ed shook his head.

  Chad seemed confused. He scratched his chin. “Well, I didn’t really know you, you know? When you came up to my house that weekend . . .”

  “Uh-huh?” Ed prompted him.

  “Yeah, so. . . I thought you were, you know. . . just kind of this skater dude or something. . . and I had to figure out which bedroom everyone was going to stay in, you know? So, since I really didn’t know you, I was going to have you and Heather sleep in the tent.”

  Ed blinked. “The tent?” he repeated. He almost laughed. Each word out of Chad’s mouth was more offensive than the next. He might as well have said “the servants’ quarters” or “the doghouse” or “the dungeon.” The guy never failed to outdo himself.

  “Don’t worry, it had a heater,” Chad added.

  “Thank you,” Ed said dryly. “Okay, so a tent. I love camping out. You’re forgiven. I’m glad we had this talk, Chad.” He took another hobbling step toward the door.

  “No, wait, but that’s the thing,” Chad insisted.

  Ed paused and hung his head, dropping between his two crutches. “What’s the thing?” he said with a groan.

  “Heather didn’t love camping out,” Chad said. “She was all like, ‘Heather Gannis does not sleep in a tent. Just for that. . . I want the master bedroom.’ So I was like, there’s no way you and the skater dude are getting the master bedroom. But she was like, what do I have to do to get the master bedroom? And I kept telling her to forget it, but I swear, man, she would not leave it alone....”

  The more Chad spoke, the more Ed felt like his brain had begun to swell. He couldn’t stand it anymore; the pressure was too intense. But at the same time he didn’t want Chad to stop, either. Ed’s heart began to pound. His lungs heaved. He was curiously fascinated, though—much the way Chad and all the others must have been when they saw Ed’s twisted body on the side of the road. Talk about sadomasochism at its finest. Why didn’t he just open the door and get the hell out of here? They were in a goddamn bathroom, no less.

  “She would not let it go,” Chad continued, “no matter how many times I told her she couldn’t have it. I swear, it was like she couldn’t live unless she got that master bedroom. So finally I told her . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Ed waited. “Told her what?” he pushed, turning to glare at Chad.

  “I told her . . .” Chad looked stricken. “I told her if her skater dude could take Bannon’s Hill, then she could have the master bedroom.”

  All at once the pressure vanished. Just like that. Ed blinked at Chad, but he didn’t feel a thing. Nada. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He was supposed to fly off in a fit of rage. To bash Chad’s head in. To find Heather and smack her in the face. Someone had to pay. Someone should pay. (Somebody besides the skateboard company, that was.) Right? But Ed only felt numb. Maybe there were too many emotions at the same time, and they’d all melded into the same dull feeling. It was like what happened when too many colors mixed together. They all became brown. Shit colored.

  “But I was just kidding,” Chad went on. “I didn’t think she could possibly take me up on it. I mean, Bannon’s Hill on a skateboard? Come on.”

  “Yeah,” Ed said faintly. “You gotta be nuts.”

  Chad’s face whitened. He threw his hand up on his head. “Oh, God. I didn’t mean it like that, dude. I’m sorry—”

  “It’s okay,” Ed interrupted. He turned back toward the door and pushed it open with his crutch.

  “I just didn’t think you’d really do it,” Chad insisted, pleading with him. “I mean. . . I didn’t think she’d really ask you to do it. I mean, just so she could have the stupid bedroom—”

  The door swung shut, cutting Chad off in mid-sentence. The silence was sweet, welcome relief. But the nightmare wasn’t over. Far from it. Because once again Ed found himself face-to-face with Heather in the little foyer. Right back where he started. She looked at him with a desperate, almost crazed glint in her eye. And now, at last, he understood why.

  “Hi,” he said politely.

  Heather smiled, but this time the veneer was just too thin. It couldn’t mask the lies, the self-absorbed panic. “Hi. I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. What’s going on?”

  “We were just talking,” Ed said. “It wasn’t—”

  The door crashed open behind him, slamming into his back and nearly sending him toppling to the floor. He fell against Heather, who somehow managed to support his weight. After a few grunts he regained his balance. She held on to his arm, but he shook free of her loose grip. Her hand fell away. Chad stood there, breathing heavily. He glanced at her.

  “What were you talking about?” Heather murmured.

  Ed just shook his head. He couldn’t even bear to look at her anymore. It wasn’t that he blamed her. He knew very well that she didn’t deserve his blame. Not all of it, anyway. The bottom line remained the same: the accident was his fault. After all, he had agreed to go along with the stupid dare when he could have put his foot down. He could have said no. What was the worst that could have happened? He would look like a wimp to a bunch of stuck-up brats? They had already labeled him. No stunt, no matter how crazy or stupid, would have changed their opinion. It didn’t. To them, he was still just a “skater dude.”

  But he couldn’t forgive two years of deception. He couldn’t forgive the fact that Heather had kept this terrible secret from him all this time, when he deserved her honesty. He deserved the raw, unadulterated truth. No matter how much it hurt. Because he couldn’t love her if he didn’t trust her. He couldn’t even like her. Trust and love were inextricably bound together. One couldn’t exist without the other. They were like water and oxygen. Without them, a relationship would die. Period.

  “What were you talking about?” Heather repeated. The question was barely a whisper.

  “About the fact that you had to have the master bedroom,” Ed said.

  Heather swallowed. Her eyes began to well with tears. “You know, I figured Chad would say something to you. And I wanted to stop him. . . I wanted to stop him so badly.” Her voice broke. “But I think, on some level, I also wanted you to hear the truth, so I let him go in there—”

  “Shhh.” Ed placed his finger over his lips. She didn’t
seem to be able to move. She blinked. Tears fell from her cheeks. There was no more to be said. Ed hobbled toward the stairs, then paused and glanced over his shoulder at the two of them. “Just so you know, for the record, I hate khakis,” he announced. “No matter what may happen to me in this life, I will never again, for as long as I live, wear a pair of khakis. Thank you.”

  With that, Ed forced his way up the steps and walked out of Sarabeth’s. He wondered what he’d do first in his life without Heather. It was very sunny out.

  sanctuary

  The mere sight of the man standing before her had the exact same effect as being thrown into the middle of deadly combat. Without warning.

  GAIA SAT ON THE DEEP WINDOWSILL, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, staring from Mary’s bedroom down at the Manhattan night. With the overload of thoughts in her head, she’d somehow missed the moment when it turned from day to night. In the daylight Central Park had looked like a vibrant green forest in the middle of the gray city. Now it looked more like a gaping black hole in the center of civilization. How appropriate.

  Shut Up, Move On

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Huh?” Gaia turned and saw Paul standing in the doorway. She hadn’t even noticed he was there. For all she knew, he could have been standing there for hours, just looking at her. “I. . . ,” she began, but then she bowed her head. A deep sigh flowed from her lungs.

  Did she want to talk about it?

  Actually, no. She didn’t. Not now, not ever. Her honest hope was never to talk about Sam Moon again. In fact, she was aiming for something deeper and more profound than that. Her ultimate goal was never to think about Sam Moon again. Wouldn’t that just be a dream come true? Sam who? Sam Moon? Oh, yeah, you mean that beautiful guy I went out with for about a day? Man, didn’t he turn out to be a complete asshole? I can barely remember him!