Awake (11 page)

-20-

When Wade was little he visited Mexico with his mother. He met his grandfather Josue on that trip and one day walking through the main plaza of Villa Hidalgo hand-in-hand with his beloved
abuelito
, they came across a man who had killed himself only moments before.

Grandpa Josue covered Wade’s young eyes as the blood pooled around the right wrist of the poor departed soul. Wade asked his grandfather what had happened to the man on the way home. Josue did not know what had happened but he wanted to answer his grandson.

“Errores fatales,” Josue answered him.

Our weekend in Las Vegas has been full of much more than a passion for physical connection. Passions for food and conversation have been equal parts of our time here.

“My grandfather’s words kept coming back to me at different times in my life,” Wade explains. “Errores Fatales. Even as a boy of ten I did not need a translation from my mother. The dead man had made fatal errors that had ruined his life.”

“That last one was kind of a tough one to come back from,” I point out as I pull his arms around me like a blanket.

“Since the day I met you I was changed,” he glances shyly down to me in our Vegas bed. “I could feel myself changing and as the days and weeks crawled by I kept hearing my grandfather’s words haunting me.”

“Do you think it was his ghost or just a memory?” I say.

“A ghost, Erin? You sound like my mother now.”

“Errores fatales,” I say not quite pronouncing it right.

“I just knew. That night at the theater, I tried hard to keep my eyes off of you, but your beauty overwhelmed me even just catching glimpses of you in my peripheral.”

“What happened to your feelings about Tori?” I dare to ask.

“They changed too. I began noticing things,” he says.

“Such as?”

“Her obsession with texting her friends,” he says. “She even did it during Vivi’s play.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed that,” I lie.

“Multiple times,” he added.

“That does suck,” I say trying to be nonchalant.

“I know you don’t like Tori, Erin. You don’t have to hide it, but you’re wrong. There’s a real sweet girl in there.”

“Yeah, in there buried beneath layers of boobs and vile classist pettiness.”

He pushes me away so he can stare at me. “Wow, that was a little vicious. Maybe go back to hiding it.”

“My bad,” I say with a wink. “It kind of slipped out.”

“She does have that side to her,” he agrees, “but that is honestly more of an insecurity of hers than her true self.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I say. On the subject of Tori, Wade is absolutely wrong and ill prepared to even pass judgment. Of course every girl on Earth would show Wade potentially wonderful aspects of their souls just to be close to him.

“I broke it off with Tori because I knew if I stayed with her it would be a fatal error. Not telling you and showing how deeply I felt would be another fatal error.” He kisses my lips once and then twice. “A man kills himself with such errors. Maybe not with a knife in the town plaza, but his heart can die even if he does not.”

I kiss him once, twice and three times. “You silly, silly boy.”

“Can we go to the pool today?” he asks eagerly. “It’s our last day.”

“I don’t have a bikini,” I tell him.

“Good. I want to buy you the tiniest one they have in the shops.”

“Now why would you want to do that?” I say.

“I want to watch other men struggle to keep their eyes off of you.”

“You are definitely walking the line between creepy and more creepy,” I tell him.

“I’m messing with you,” he says. He slides his hand down my belly to cover and massage sweetly my girl parts.

“Calling it a joke doesn’t excuse everything,” I say fighting back the urge to moan from his masterful touch. “Careful or I’m getting a one piece.”

“Shush now,” he whispers. He presses his fingertips just right and they find a slow spinning rhythm I’ll never be able to live without.

* * *

Wade swims laps like a god and it’s actually me that ends up enjoying the endless women I catch biting their lips as they watch my man move through water and air like a lean, muscled sex machine.

Back off, ladies! That dream lives in my bed only.

I receive a text. That’s at least three today. I haven’t checked any of them because I don’t want Wade to think I am obsessed like Tori. He seems busy making every woman at the pool happy with his display of aquatic stamina. I take the opportunity to catch up.

Kat texted,
hit any key if u r alive
.

I answer by hitting six keys,
idiot!

My stepmother texted,
need 2 talk
.

Tori texted,
how long do I wait?

Now I know why I haven’t been checking texts this weekend. The last two I do not answer. Vegas was amazing, but it has solved nothing.

Our lives back in Los Angeles are going to be nothing but messy.

We have to rush to get out of the room by late checkout. We don’t shower. We get in the car with the smell of chlorine in our hair.

The journey home is a quiet one. The Las Vegas hangover everyone feels driving back to Los Angeles is about far more than alcohol. We did not drink a drop and yet the long desert drive feels as if the part inside of you that is free and wild slips away more with each dusty mile.

“It’s going to be okay,” Wade says just outside of Barstow. “We’ll figure it out.”

I can’t answer. We had agreed not to lie. All I can do is hold his hand because that’s honest. I never knew what love felt like until now. That will never change. No matter what the future holds Wade will be in my heart forever.

Sunday night we fall asleep in each other’s arms. He kisses my forehead like we’ve been married a thousand years and we just let our bodies close down and crossover into the quiet of the universe.

Monday morning I leave him in bed and slide out of my apartment without showering. I can still smell the Paris pool on my skin as I sit down for my first exam. My only studying for the test was for twenty minutes this morning at Peet’s over a morning latte.

No problem. At this point I know this stuff. My time at UCLA is coming to an end. My father and stepmother are planning a big graduation party. Gloria refused my request for another understated celebration. She said my father insists on
pulling out all the stops
.

That sounds like Dad.

Wade is gone when I get back to my apartment around noon. The Vegas weekend is finally over. I am alone again. I feel paranoid. The lustful way our relationship started never sits well with me.

Too greedy. Too desperate. Too selfish.

Together it always feels right, but apart it feels sickly somehow. Wounded. Isolated. Our love makes us the sad heroes of an apocalypse where all other things fade away and lose meaning.

The way we met was not ideal. The Sun will not shine down us so the world can see us hand-in-happy-hand. In the lonely dimension where our love exists it’s always raining.

My stepmother’s last text came through during my exam. I have avoided reading it until after showering. I scrub the magic of Vegas off my tired body. I want to be free of that beautiful memory before I deal with whatever unwanted reality she will deliver.

Come see me ASAP
, she texted.

4pm
, I answer and hit send.

After my second exam I drive to the Palisades with something like butterflies in my belly. My stepmother has something she needs to discuss in person and that’s never good. The fact that she never tried calling me for the last three days and instead settled for vague texts tells me that this is not her normal intrusiveness coming.

The front door is slightly open when I get there. I walk down the entry corridor. I don’t know if it is graduation or what but for the first time I feel like this is no longer my home. I’m a burglar trespassing on tiptoes through a stranger’s living space.

Gloria steps sideways into the corridor holding an embroidered kerchief that I have never seen before.

“I’m here,” I say impolitely. “What’s the big emergency?”

Her eyes shoot familiar daggers at me, but I sense there is something extra in them. She walks to me and pulls me in for a half hug. “Not now,” she whispers. “We have company.”

Tori and her mother sit in the drawing room. Fanning out around them are more kerchiefs and other various fineries of all types.

“Isn’t it great, Erin?” Tori says smiling sweetly.

I have a sudden fear the wedding is back on. How could that be? Wade just left my bed this morning. “Yeah, great,” I say glancing desperately to my stepmother for some clarity.

“Joyce and I agreed we will combine the graduation parties,” my stepmother explains.

“Our guest lists were so similar,” Joyce adds giving me a peck on my cheek. “We felt it an undue inconvenience to ask our friends to attend two identical events in the same week.”

“This will give us the best turnout,” my stepmother says as she ushers me to the seat next to Tori.

“Hey, girl,” Tori says with, at best, a broken smile.

I reach out like the world’s most evil girl that I am and touch the top of her hand. “How are you doing?”

“Hanging in,” she responds halfheartedly.

Worst idea ever, combining our graduation parties. My stepmother should have never allowed this. I am surprised she did. She might be a total pain, but she wanted my party to be special. And she knows full well allowing Tori to be co-headliner at my graduation party is not cool.

Something is up.

The next ninety minutes of pleasant banter and party choices crawls by before we hug the Wexlers goodbye and express oh-so-sincere enthusiasm for the big Sunday shindig we are devising.

The door closes behind them. I grab my stepmother’s hand violently and pull her back down the corridor and into the drawing room. “Mother, what the fuck?” I say.

“Erin, your language!” she says put off.

“I thought you wanted my graduation party to be special?” I say turning my back and walking away disgusted.

“What was I supposed to do? The poor girl is devastated and it makes sense. We’re inviting all the same friends and friends of the company.”

“Friends of the company?” I say glaring at her. “What does that even mean? It sounds like we’re some kind of cult.”

“I might have refused if not for—” she says before stopping short.

Her incomplete thought surprises me. She has never held any punches ever before. “If not for what?” I demand.

“If not,” she begins uncertainly, “if not for Tori’s situation.”

I study her, which makes her uncomfortable. I didn’t know she could even feel such an imprecise emotion. “What are you not telling me?” I say walking closer to her to peer into her nervous eyes.

“What does it matter?” she says. “You’ll do what you want anyway. You always do.”

This vulnerable side of her throws me off. She starts to pick up and stack the various serving accessories for the party. “Why did you text me all weekend? Why didn’t you call? It wasn’t about the party, was it?”

She stops folding a napkin to stare vacantly at it in her hand.

“You might as well spit it out,” I urge her. “If you’re ever going to.”

I reach out so that she hands me the napkin. I fold it as I watch her walk over to the fireplace and retrieve her phone from the mantel. She hits a few buttons and then slides a few frames on her screen.

She sighs and walks over to hand me her phone. I set the folded napkin down on a stack of others and take the phone.

The image on the screen is from the Paris Las Vegas swimming pool. Among the scattered people in the pool, a slim blonde in a barely there white bikini piggy back rides the broad back of her boyfriend as he stands in the middle of the pool. It’s Wade and me.

“You had me followed?” I say quietly.

“It’s not like that,” she says.

“What’s it like exactly?” I say still unable to look her in the eyes.

“Erin,” she says reaching out to touch me.

I move quickly away from her. “Don’t ever touch me,” I say lifting my eyes angrily to her.

“Your father did not want to move you to Los Angeles,” she explains. “The Wexlers made it a necessity. The majority of the board of directors are based in Southern California. After the company went public your father would forever need the favor of the board to retain control of operations.”

“This is relevant to me being spied on somehow?” I ask on the verge of walking the hell out.

“He did not want to tear you away from your friends and family and then worried about you every second out here in the big city.”

“How fucking sweet,” I say impatiently. “Get to the point or I’m walking right now.”

“Your father has had a man following you since the very first day you arrived out here,” she says. “For your protection.”