Drift (Lengths) (5 page)

Caro runs her fingers over the few ribbons of fabric and sighs. “Genevieve can pull of the sexiest styles. I just don’t have the confidence to wear a dress with cut-outs. And that color just makes me look even paler. And like more of a ginger. But
this
,” she breathes, pulling out a beaded black dress with flapper-style fringe. “I could wear this, couldn’t I?”

Cece takes the hanger and shakes the dress out, holding it against Caro’s slight frame. “You would look incredible in this. I love it.” Cece hands Caro the dress and starts shuffling through the options. “You know me. I’m more a cotton and paisley prints kind of girl, but I think we should all go freaking crazy tonight. Oh, holy shit,
look
at this, Lyd. What do you think?” It’s a deep plum dress with electric blue lacework over the top.

“Not many people could wear those colors. They’re going to look amazing on you,” I declare.

Cece and Caro shed their everyday clothes and shimmy into their sexy outfits, each one exclaiming over the other. I think they both look amazing and tell them so. But nothing in my sister’s collection makes sense for me. I don’t want to look too young. Or too sexy. Or too desperate.

Definitely not too desperate, and that’s what so many of them bring to mind. On my young, carefree sister they would look like the perfect accessory to her natural sexiness and confidence. On me? They would scream ‘
Trying too damn hard!
”

Just when I’m about to give up, a green sparkle catches my eye.

I tug on the sleeve and see that it’s a whole shimmer of emerald sequins. Long sleeves. A surplice neckline. A ruched pencil skirt. Barely thinking, I lay my jeans and tunic on the arm of the loveseat and pull the dress on. The room is completely quiet.

Caro finally lets out a little squeal. “Oh, Lydia! You look like you should be walking the red carpet. Seriously, you look amazing.”

“How does my ass look?” I ask, turning to look in the mirror as I hold the zipper closed.

Cece comes behind me, sighs, and tugs the zipper into place. “How many times have I told you that it’s not good to pick your body apart like that? But, if you want a true answer, your ass looks like some hot young buck will probably have his hands all over it tonight when we go dancing.” She slaps my ass and laughs. “Unless, of course, it’s all young, shy guys who aren’t ready for this jelly.”

“You’re such an ass, you know that?” I ask her, but I’m grinning at her. She hands me a pair of nude heels and points to the hall. “I have black eyeliner and that crazy mascara Mami buys off the back of the truck in that border town in the summer.”

“She gave you a tube?” I whine, rushing to try it out.

“I stole it!” she calls. “And some of that crazy red lipstick that’s probably ninety nine percent lead!”

“Can I try it?” I hear Caro ask.

“Sweetie, I’m sorry. You have to accept that you have gorgeous, milky skin and Celtic princess hair. No black and red for you. You’ll look like a vampire,” Cece answers.

I line my eyes, goop on generous amounts of Mam
á’s secret mascara, and do my lips up like a vixen. I tousle my hair a little and stand on my toes to try to get a better look of myself in the little bathroom vanity mirror, but I can only see bits and pieces.

Luckily, ever bit and piece looks pretty damn fine to me.

“Are we ready, girls?” I call.

Caro and Cece throw their hands over the mouths to squash back their squeals. “You look freaking amazing!” Caro yells.

“Sex. On. A. Stick!” Cece says, taking my hand and turning me in a slow circle. “You are so getting laid tonight.”

I roll my eyes. “I’ll be glad enough to get tipsy tonight.”

Cece shakes her hair, her curls bouncing all over. “This is so not women’s studies pc of me to say, but you know I can’t keep my mouth shut: you are getting dirty, down-low deliciously screwed left and right until your eyes cross tonight! I can feel it!” she cries. “I’m happy for you. I always imagined Richard as kind of a cold fish in bed.”

“Like frost-bitten fish sticks,” I mutter. Every part of this evening so far has been completely foreign to me. The clothes, the makeup, the sex-talk with my sister. But I have no other choice than to roll with it at this point. It’s that, or go back to my lonely apartment and sulk. I’m done doing that. “Well, let’s go out on the town, girls.”

The showroom is only a few blocks from Cece’s apartment, so we walk it. If I had any doubts about the possibility of taking a guy home, it evaporates after the half dozen cat calls, proposals, and sexual innuendos I have to ignore from guys hanging out their car windows.

“Who the hell thinks, ‘Hey, maybe that pretty girl will chase my car like a rabid dog if I yell, ‘Nice ass!’ out the window?’” Caro gripes.

Cece sighs. “It’s pathetic. I hope it’s a sign that all the brainless assholes are going in the opposite direction we are. It’s right up here.” She points, and I see a gathering of nicely dressed men and glitzed up women standing near bistro tables set up with glasses of wine in a small, fenced-in outdoor garden. Twinkle lights sparkle from the trees, and I can hear the slow glide of a sultry jazz singer from inside.

Caro and Cece see their theater friends and rush over. And then I think I might see Samantha’s lustrous gold mane and panic. Cece knows about me and Richard, but she doesn’t know the whole sordid story of how I fucked up at the law offices. I guess I could tell her that I’m just taking a night class, but she knows everyone and everything.

Shit.

The mezcal and shiny dresses made me lose my mind for a few minutes.

I consider my options and decide that tonight, for once, I’m going to put my brain on auto-pilot and deal with things as they come.
If
they come. I’ve done enough worrying for three lifetimes already. Time for something new.

I stroll, sipping a light, bubbly champagne with a little bite and enjoying the sexy height of my heels. The bubbles go right to my head, and I love the weightless feel of my limbs as I glide from painting to sculpture to installation piece. I catch the video Cece and Caro are in, both of them dressed in heavy black robes, their faces chalked ghostly white with only a bright heart of red marked on their mouths like a geisha’s lipstick.

I feel a swell of pride for my intelligent, free-spirited sister who is always so willing to do new things, try new ways to express herself. I wonder if I would I have been happier as a professor. Or a lawyer in a different branch of law. Or running a startup. Or taking a few years off to travel.

Am I happy now?

I think about what happy means, and, like it’s answering me, my body fills with a solid, blissful warmth that seems to radiate from my spine like heat from a radiator. I close my eyes and let my stiff shoulders relax, drinking in the moment.

“You look beautiful tonight,” a soft voice whispers against my ear.

6 LYDIA

I don’t startle. I don’t jerk or try to run away. I turn around. And am staring into the green eyes of Professor Ortiz.

“Isaac,” I say, my voice heavy and sweet as a ripe berry on my tongue. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“I hoped you would,” he admits. Over his shoulder, I see Samantha shake her head and stalk away, arms crossed tight over her chest. “I didn’t realize your sister worked on campus.”

I take a sip of the champagne, letting it trickle down my throat slowly. “That’s because you and I don’t know each other very well. There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“I heard you didn’t like many people knowing you had a sister who worked for the university.” He chooses each word cautiously, and my mind connects the dots from him to Samantha, the only one who I told I’d rather not let Cece know about my enrollment.

Not that I gave her reasons as we chatted idly back and forth in class. But some people know how to twist information.

“How about this? If there’s something you want to know about me, you come on over and get your information firsthand.” Heat waves ripple over my skin as I imagine him acting out on my bold words and asking me things I’ve only dared to imagine men I’ve been with asking me. I turn back to the screen, then decide to move to another piece.

I’m standing in front of a sculpture of a half-horse, half-octopus when I feel his heat against my back. “I always like firsthand information best. But, on the off chance that I’m told ‘no,’ I’ll throw my morals to the wind and dig out what I need to know from any source I can find.”

I smile at the statue’s tentacles, coiling over the horse’s strong hind quarters and make it a point not to look back at Isaac. “You must have a pretty low moral threshold then. Unless you don’t hear ‘no’ all that often?”

“I’m not bragging, but not many people—not many
women
in particular—tell me ‘no.’” He leans closer. I can feel the warmth of his breath at the side of my neck, and the movement prickles goose bumps to life up and down my arms. “Not that I mind being told ‘no.’ I respect it, always, but I do love a challenge.”

“I think I realized that the second we met,” I confess, my voice higher than I want it to be. I grab the horizontal railing in front of me and hold on for dear life. “Maybe it’s why I keep saying ‘no’ to you.”

“There has to be a line, though?” He angles his body close to my side. I can see his profile and the neat knot of his tie, hiding all that caramel skin under its precisely wrapped silk.

I swallow hard, and remember the glass in my hand, almost empty. There’s just enough to wet my suddenly parched throat. “A line?”

“A line between how much you like telling me ‘no’ and how much you want to say ‘yes,’” he explains, his low voice cradling my nerves and rocking them from side to side. “I’m nowhere near tired of hearing you say ‘no,’ but I think you’d enjoy yourself so much more if you said ‘yes.’ Even once.”

I turn slowly, my eyes focused on satiny black of his tie because I know that face, those eyes, could change my mind in half a second. I’m not that good at
resisting temptation though, so I flash my eyes up and back down, hardly more than a wink, and it’s almost more than my defenses can stand.

He watches me, his eyes racing over my curves and drinking in my face. The dress shimmers, tight on my body. My breath is champagne-dipped and carried on the remnants of all those heady bubbles. “You sound sure of yourself.”

“I’m a risk worth taking,” he assures me.

One of his hands reaches out to where my hand trembles at my side. He pulls his index finger from the delicate bone of my wrist, down the back of my hand, over the bump of my knuckle, along my finger to the tip of my fingernail, and, by the time he gets there, my blood is already racing.

Before I can answer, my sister bursts next to me and throws an arm around my shoulders. “Lydia! Did you see me? I’m famous!” She giggles, and I realize she has a champagne flute in each hand.

My sister is a notorious lightweight when it comes to alcohol, and she definitely doesn’t need to wind up drunk at a party with peers and students all around.

“You’re a star, sweetie. No more drinking, though, or you’ll go from Oscar-nominee to washed-up celeb in rehab over the course of a single night.”

Cece doesn’t respond to my gentle scold because her attention is already harnessed to a pair of intoxicating green eyes.

I get it. I
so
get it.

“Isaac Ortiz? I’m Cece Rodriguez,” she says, handing me her empty champagne glasses. I put them on a passing tray, my heart thumping as I watch my sister and my
—what
is
Isaac to me, exactly? Professor? Lust interest? Friend? Nothing feels quite right—shake hands. “Of course you’d be here. Is any of your work on display tonight?”

“It’s so nice to meet you, Cece. Thank you for asking, but my work won’t be displayed until the fourth rotation,” he answers, so polite, it’s almost hysterical. And very appealing. Definitely. “It’s wonderful to have all that extra time, but it is a little hard to keep morale up in the face of all this brilliant work.” He gestures around, but Cece doesn’t look at the other pieces.

She looks at me.

Then back at Isaac.

Then back at me.

Her eyes go wide. Her lips curve into a smile, which she reigns in quickly.

“Are you kidding?” She slaps Isaac on the arm like they’re old pals. “No one in the art department talks about anything but you and your new works. All I hear is that your architecture series is going to blow the art world up. The chapels in particular. That’s the rumor, anyway.”

“I’m very flattered, but I’m afraid your friends may have misled you. My work is still emerging, and I have much to learn before I’ll be at a level where I can make any difference in this current art world,” he says and we all stand and blink while my dopey sister smiles like an idiot.

“What the hell is
with you
, Cece?” I hiss too low for anyone else to hear clearly, feeling exactly the way I did when Jimmie Salomas came to ask me on a date in seventh grade and Cece just stood there, rocking back and forth on her Minnie Mouse sneakers, smiling like the damn Cheshire Cat.

“Nothing. At all,” she answers in her normal booming voice. “Oh, hey Caro, how rude of me. I never made introductions. You must have heard about Isaac Ortiz. The artist from Spain.” She holds her hands out, like she’s presenting a buffet to a starving woman.

Caro’s big eyes go cartoonishly wide. “Mr. Ortiz. What an
honor
! I saw an exhibit of your father’s when I was just a kid with my father in Chicago. I was just...so overwhelmed. It was gritty and real and...like you could just feel the passion pulsing off the canvas.” Caro is moving her arms and hands while she talks, so it looks more like interpretive dance than conversation.

Isaac’s smile is suddenly tight as a drum. “Of course. I remember that show. My mother and I were so glad to be able to live in Chicago for a few months while my father did some work at the art institute. It was a beautiful time.”

I look at the tight line of his jaw and the muscle bunched up high on his cheek. His expression doesn’t match his words at all.

“You know, I heard reports that there were cougars prowling this area,” Cece announces in
—what I can only pray—is the evening’s weirdest segue.

We all stare at her. Caro blinks hard, still caught in some dizzying world of modern art memories, I guess.

“Cougars? Don’t you mean mountain lions?” I correct like I’m talking to a preschooler. Sometimes, with Cece, it feels that way. “And the last attack was months ago, wasn’t it? Has something happened on campus?”

She shakes her head, her eyes gleaming impishly. “No. It was
definitely
cougars. And they’ve been spotted. With prey in their sites. They haven’t pounced yet, but I think everyone is pretty sure it’s only a matter of time.”

I see the moment Caro gets the inside reference that’s gone totally over my head and bites back a giggle. I glare at the two of them, acting like fools drunk off a little cheap champagne. Isaac’s eyebrows are knotted low on his forehead, I’m sure wondering if something has been lost in interpretation.

Only the fact that my sister is a damn tipsy half-wit.

“I thought your big plan was to stand in front of the monitor,” I nudge, pointing where there’s a crowd lined up. A huge crowd. Watching with a buzz of excited interest.

It’s just the same video on a loop. Right? I wonder what the sudden intense fascination is.

I stand on my toes, just in time to see my sister’s naked ass smack in the center of the screen.

“Cece!” I cry, lunging for her like if I can cover her here, no one will see her nude on the screen.

She bats my hands away, laughing. “Lydia, calm down. It’s art!” She points and I see the small screen version of her, naked as a crazy ass jaybird, twirling around in circles, her dark curls bobbing around her shoulders.

I cover my eyes with my hand, and Caro and Isaac laugh. I don’t mean for my temper to snap, but it does. I grab Cece by the elbow and drag her away from the crowd.

“You are a damn
professor
, Cece. This kind of crap might have flown when you were a student, but now? It’s embarrassing,” I snarl, extra hot because she’s giving me those sad
‘Lydia is just too uptight to get it’
eyes the youngest Rodriguez siblings throw my way constantly.

“It’s
art
, Cece. This piece is being considered for a traveling exhibit sponsored by the Getty. How could I not agree?” She shakes her head like she feels sorry for
me.

My sister,
whose ass is on display for the entire university to see is feeling bad for
me
.

“How could you never, ever consider how what you do, how the mistakes you make can haunt you forever, Cece? One slip-up, one minute of lost focus, and every fucking thing you worked so hard for is gone. In an instant.” My eyes well up with tears that I
refuse
to shed in the middle of this gallery.

“You are blowing this hugely out of proportion, as usual,” Cece slams back, pointing at me. “You’re so busy making sure every single thing you do is so perfect and controlled, you never give yourself the chance to just live!”

“You know what? I’ve ‘lived,’ and you know what I got for it?” I look right at her, begging her to understand without my having to spill my biggest embarrassment to date. How can I tell her that my huge failure, the one I may never come back from, all happened over an affair that was never any good to start with? “I got nothing. I got screwed over.”

Cece snorts and crosses her arms tight over her chest. Over her shoulder, I can see her image, lying nude on rocks as waves splash up and around her. It’s very ethereal. Goddess-like. Gorgeous. But it’s also vulnerable.

And vulnerability doesn’t scare her nearly as much as it should.

I guess because she’s never felt the stripped pain that hits when your vulnerability double crosses you and smacks you behind the knees, shrieking with laughter as you nosedive into the dirt.

“Stop projecting your life onto me.” Cece balls her fists and squeezes her eyes shut. When she opens them, there’s nothing but sadness, deep and wet, pulling me under like the cool, still waters of a bottomless lake. “You know the saddest part? I almost didn’t invite you out tonight, because I was so afraid of how you’d judge me. But we had this
moment
with Mami and Papi, and I thought
, ‘Ah, here’s that time everyone talks about, when sisters stop fighting all the time and finally become friends.’
I’m honestly sorry I was so wrong.”

Before I can explain, before I can tell her that I’d been hoping for and working toward exactly what she just described
—friendship, deep and true, with my sisters—she stalks over to Caro, and they disappear into the crush, where whoops of congratulations soar up to the industrial ceilings.

I’m shivering.

I feel gutted and alone, but I shouldn’t. I’m so used to this. To being labeled an interfering asshole when I try to help. To have my sister think I’m looking down on her, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. The problem is, I have no idea how to tell her I love her and want to protect her from the stupid, shameful mistakes I’ve made. Whenever I open my mouth, I wind up offending someone I love.

My parents love to brag about how smart I am, but I would trade a solid handful of IQ points for a little dose of the kind of social skills other women seem to have naturally.

I turn when I hear a throat being cleared. Isaac is standing, his suit fitted to his body like a perfect, gorgeous dark grey glove. “Are you alright, Lydia?” he asks softly.

I wipe the tears that burn the sides of my eyes with my wrist. “Ugh. Fine. You know, sibling stuff.”

He shakes his head. “I’m afraid I don’t. I was a lonely only child. Though I wanted siblings badly.”

I snort. “They’re kind of like that nursery rhyme about the little girl with the curl. When they’re good, it’s wonderful. When they’re bad?” I look at him, but those clear green eyes are clouded with confusion. I’m sure he doesn’t know anything about American nursery rhymes or the labyrinth of complications that come from having beautifully naive sisters. “It doesn’t matter. You know what would be great? Some air. I definitely need some
air. Would you care to join me?”