Burn (7 page)

I threw a fastball, straight and hard. I coiled the power from my hips, up my back, and to my shoulder, pivoting my arm like a catapult. The ball landed right where I aimed: between Ed’s ear and eye.

He didn’t just fall. He spun around from the impact and landed on his back.

Fuck. I glanced at the speed clock. 91. That’s about what it had felt like as it left my fingers. I ran up to Eddie and kneeled beside him. He was unconscious.

God damn, what the
fuck
was on your mind?

Nothing. That was the problem.

A crowd rushed over just as Eddie opened his eyes. I got him to his feet. A pretty doctor had been at the pool, and she took a look at him. He was well enough to flirt with her. It was too late to have a gentlemanly conversation about Monica and her place in the musical lexicon, of course. I could hardly say, “Listen, Ed, take the BDSM shit down a notch, and she’ll sign with you.”

I had to go to plan B.

                                                  
CHAPTER 12.
 

MONICA

I almost didn’t answer Kevin. Three days passed in a heat of songwriting and waitressing. When I realized I’d let the time pass, I thought that maybe I was doing the same thing I’d always done: turn my back on someone until it was too late to go back.

Kev,

I want you to know I got this, but I don’t know how to answer it right now.

See you on the plane.

Mon

The day before I left for Vancouver, I stood at my locker, shoving my work shoes in and stepping into my street shoes, when Jonathan appeared like a shiny new penny.

“Your eye healed up nice.”

I jumped. “Jesus, stop that. I thought you were leaving me alone until I got back.”

He leaned on the locker bank, crossing his ankles. “Take my plane. Seriously.”

“You came here to convince me to take a private jet to my art opening? Talk about a nice problem to have.” I slammed the locker shut and locked it. He smiled at me, then for half a beat, too quickly for anyone to notice, he dropped his eyes and drank me in. I felt as though he was stroking me from toes to shoulders, and a tingle went through me.

“Great, I’ll make sure it’s ready.”

“I didn’t say I’d take it.”

I brushed past him. Not because I wanted to make a threatening gesture, but because my desire to be near him made the hallway too narrow. He walked beside me as if he belonged there. As if I’d agreed to a discussion about our relationship before the appointed time, which I hadn’t
.

“So, what’s keeping you going to LAX in traffic and getting on a coach flight with three hundred other people?”

The employee exit spit out into the parking lot, which was crowded with staff arriving, leaving, and greeting each other with laughs and short conversations.

I had to walk close to him or talk loud enough to be heard by everyone. “Look, I’ll have the conversation if you think it will change something, but if I start accepting favors and gifts beforehand, it’s tainted.”

I approached my Honda with my key out, but as I went for it, he put his hand on the car, covering the seam between the door and the roof. That hand was right in front of me, with its spray of copper hair and fingers shaped to please. All I could think about was it running over my body, flat first, then curving to my shape. It would stop to hold and grab the parts it found, tightening on my skin, bruising me with badges of agonizing pleasure.

He said into my ear, “I admire your nobility, but the conversation’s already tainted by a few dozen orgasms.”

He still wasn’t touching me, and he pulled his face away enough so I’d have to do just a little more than lean into him to steal a kiss. I craved the warmth of his breath and his touch. God, his touch. His body was arched and I stood straight, though the desire to fit into him like a spoon in a drawer was an almost chemical impulse.

Kiss me kiss me kiss me
…

But he stood still. “You don’t want to be on a flight with Kevin Wainwright any more than I want you on it.”

I could have mentioned Kevin’s email as proof that our encounter was a misunderstanding, but I wouldn’t be an excuse maker for a guy who didn’t understand the word “no.” He’d ended up with a bleeding shoulder and bashed-in face for the trouble, but that was hardly the point.

“We’ve done everything wrong,” I said. “Me, mostly. So I’m not going to walk into a conversation with you all sexed up from your money.”

His smile spread, and his eyes closed a little. He bowed his head as if he didn’t want me to see his amusement, but I saw his shoulders shake a little with laughter.

“The things you say,” he said when he finally picked up his head.

“The things you
do
,” I replied. “Can I get in, please? I have to pack.”

He took his hand off the door. “You should wear that thing you wore to the Eclipse show. I know you won’t let me buy you something new.”

“Forget that, Drazen.”

“The shoes at least.” He stepped backward twice, and I couldn’t help but give him the same type of look he’d given me earlier. I drank him in. His neck, his shoulders, the dark blue suit covering the body I imagined. The chest pressed against mine. The arms stretched over me, holding my hands down. The hips thrusting into me cruelly. He took another step back, and I felt as though I was being pulled forward.

Stunning creature. I wondered, like he said, God had made him for me as much as I’d been made for him. Of course, God then spitefully created a world where we couldn’t be together without being puppets of other people’s imaginations.

                                                  
CHAPTER 13.
 

MONICA

I stood on my front porch, shaking. I looked only at my keys as they slid into the lock and only at the knob as I turned it. My gaze zoomed no wider than the door as it opened. I hated acting like a toddler playing peek-a-boo, believing if I couldn’t see Mommy, she couldn’t see me.

The house already smelled musty. I put my head down and walked to my room. I shut out my peripheral vision because I couldn’t be sure there weren’t eyes in the corners. I focused on my feet as they traversed my living room rug. My kitchen floor. The wood floor of the hall.

My room.

I threw the duffel on my bed.

The closet. The dress, still in a dry cleaning bag.

The shoes, clumped on the floor.

The bathroom. My fancy makeup.

The dresser.

The top drawer.

I only had the Bordelle underwear left.

Under a manila envelope.

The bed.

The duffel bag.

The objects pushed inside.

Shoes. Dress. Underwear. Makeup. Envelope.

The zipper.

My feet on the floors. The rug.

The porch.

The door.

The key.

Click.

My breath.

Exhaled.

                                                  
CHAPTER 14.
 

MONICA

I dried my hair with the bathroom door open. When Darren’s screen door opened, I jumped. He was on his way to Canada with Adam, and I wasn’t expecting anyone. I half hoped it was Jonathan but knew it wasn’t. Peeking out to the living room, I saw Darren shuffle in. I pulled a dress out of the hamper and wiggled into it so I could get to him quickly.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Men.”

“Men? What’s that mean?”

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and cracked it. “I mean, how the fuck do you deal with us?”

“You’re cute and you have these nice dangling bits. So?”

“So, well. Adam.”

“I’ve met him.”

He rubbed the label on his bottle. “Really nice guy. Really.”

“Really. So? Why aren’t you at the airport?”

“I kind of freaked out on him.”

I threw myself on the couch and patted the seat next to me. “Go on.”

He plopped onto the chair. Somehow, the couch had become my territory. “As we were loading up a cart, I just… I don’t know. There was this reflective metal panel in the wall, and I was standing next to him. I saw us in the metal panel. Foggy, but it was us. He was looking at his phone, and I was looking at the panel thinking, ‘Oh fuck. This is what other people see. Is this who I am? Did I decide this? And when?’ I care about him. I love being with him, but when do I start calling myself bisexual, or gay, or…who the fuck am I, Monica?”

I had plenty of platitudes. I had advice I couldn’t even pretend to take myself about just being who you are and letting the world see what they wanted. Uttering those words without hurtful irony would have been obscene. “I don’t think any of us know ourselves.”

He rubbed his lips together, a gesture I remembered from our early days. Darren was trying not to cry. It was painful to watch.

“I’ve been trying not to worry about it,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out if I care whether people think less of me or not, and honestly, I don’t think it’s that. I mean, fuck, I’m a drummer. I’m always the one standing in the back. It’s just… I feel like I never had the chance to work it out and say, ‘All right. This is what I’ll be to the world.’ I got all wrapped up in him, especially after Gabby. Am I gay without him? Or am I back to who I was? Because I never thought about it before him, so now I’m taking on this whole identity without ever deciding on it. Am I making any sense?”

“Yeah.” My throat was dry. “Did you leave him at the airport? Did he get on the plane?”

“No. He followed me to the parking lot. I mean, the poor guy was so baffled. He’s asking me if there’s someone else, or if I’m upset about Gabs and that’s causing the freak out.”

“The thing about a freak out is you don’t know why you’re freaking out,” I said, opening the fridge. “How do you feel about him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ah.” I cracked a beer for myself.

“I do know how I feel about missing that flight.”

“How?”

“Fifteen hundred in the hole. Non-returnable flight. Whole new last minute ticket. I have seven hundred in the bank and two maxed out credit cards. I could take the car, but even if I start driving now, I’ll miss the show.”

I swallowed my beer, thought for a second, and said, “I think I have a solution to that part of the dilemma.”

                                                  
CHAPTER 15.
 

MONICA

Darren had taken some convincing. He was obviously uncomfortable with using Jonathan’s money, but he needed it. He was swayed when I assured him it would be just him and me. Jonathan wasn’t coming, and I wouldn’t let the plane ride color my decision to stay with him or not.

We took the bus to Santa Monica Airport to avoid parking fees. I’d explained as much of the situation to Jonathan as I thought appropriate. I left out Darren’s freak out and replaced it with “he missed his flight.” Jonathan didn’t seem smug about winning the Great Private Jet Battle, only irritated that I insisted on taking the bus.

“It’s just a waste of time,” he said. I heard him tapping computer keys. Multitasking again.

“I have nothing else to do. And I like the bus. It reminds me of when I was a kid.”

“Were you this worried about tainting conversations when you were a kid?”

“My spankings weren’t undertaken so willingly back then.”

He sighed and let it go.

Darren and I sat with our bags between our feet. He got up for women with children twice during the hour-and-a-quarter long ride. By the time we got to Sepulveda, the crowd had thinned, and he and I had stopped the seat-flip.

“Did you tell Kevin you wouldn’t be on the flight?” he asked.

“Texted him.”

“He told me his side of what happened the other night.”

I shook my head. “I bet he did.”

“Really, Monica, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I think you should give Kevin another chance.”

I twisted around to look at him. “Are you serious? Is your mind totally poisoned?”

“He’s not the same.”

“No, he’s worse. Let me ask you something: Were you the one who told him about me and Jonathan? Maybe you mentioned the bruises on my wrists?”

Darren pursed his lips and looked down. “He had an idea already. Geraldine Stark spent a couple of nights with Drazen and came back with some stories. To Kev, it was like a lightning bolt.”

Geraldine fucking Stark. Of course. The artist who put the trompe l’oeil on the side of Kevin’s building had to have been with Jonathan. She told Kevin, probably post-coital, and then Kevin went ahead and told Darren. Together, they’d strategized how to get us back together.

“It bothers me that we worked together so many hours at a stretch to make this thing, and the whole time, you and Kevin are planning a reconciliation I don’t want.”

“What do you want?”

“Right now? To be left alone by anyone with a dick. You’re all trouble. I want to never again hear who Jonathan fucked before I met him. Even if it was the first lady or Brad Pitt, I don’t want to know.”

“Why not?” His tone was confrontational, as if he was daring me to give him the truth.

“You know God damn well everything about this
hurts.
So stop being a prick.” I turned toward the window, shutting out further argument. We travelled in the fold of time between day and night, when headlights got turned on and the streetlights went from dead cold to humming half light.

“Did you open the envelope I left?” he asked.

“No, did you?”

“No. Is it still in the house?”

I turned away from the window to reengage our conversation. “I left it at your place.”

“Not even curious?”

“It’s probably a family tree.”

“Then why not open it?”

“I haven’t had time.” I could see, from his expression, he didn’t believe me. “I need to talk to him. And I need it to be clean. About us. No external shit. If there’s nothing in there, it’s nothing. If it’s external shit, then it’s not fair for me to know it.”