Love and Chaos (27 page)

“Now we eat.”

So, somehow, we peel ourselves apart, take our grilled cheese sandwiches, and head back to the sofa. Then we eat, sitting sideways with our legs up and layered over each other like two inward-facing bookends. I’m sure he’s feeling as tingly with desire and excitement as I am. Wanting someone this much is the sweetest torture in the world.

All I can think is,
God, you’re gorgeous. You’re absolutely perfect and I love you and know you and trust you, inside and out.

And looking into his eyes, I know he’s thinking exactly the same thing.

I smile and take another bite of grilled cheese sandwich, as a crack of thunder makes the building shake again.

“This is the best thing I have ever tasted in my damn life.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Told ya.”

Suddenly, I have a flashback to eating grilled cheese sandwiches with a babysitter when I was a kid. My parents came home early from a party that night, fighting, and I heard my mother saying, “Angelique doesn’t need to know!” and my father replying, “You’re overreacting! She’s a tough little thing!” and my mother yelling, “No! I mean it!” She told me the next day about boarding school, so I figured the fight was about that.

But, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she found out I knew about his affair with his secretary. And didn’t want him to make me keep it a secret anymore.

When she told me about the divorce all those weeks ago, she said that I shouldn’t be surprised “given what he’s been up to over the years.” I figured he’d finally come clean about his affairs, or finally gotten busted. But maybe she always knew about them and was trying to protect me from having to know, too. Because a child shouldn’t have to keep secrets for—or from—her parents.

Boarding school was the first time I ran away from my problems. Though involuntary, it started a chain reaction of running away that never stopped. Something goes wrong, something’s not working, and I leave. Get out. Walk away. Run. Always.

And now I’m running away from Brooklyn.

Is it the right thing to do? Or is it just what I’ve programmed myself to do as a knee-jerk reaction to every situation? Do I even want to leave now that I’ve realized how I feel about Sam? And what does he want? All he’s talked about since I met him was getting out of here, getting on a yacht and sailing away. So what happens now? Are we a couple? I mean, we are, right? But I can’t ask him. We just said I love you, but we also only kissed for the first time like an hour ago. I don’t want to sound needy, or psycho, and most of all I don’t want to break the weird spell that seems to have been cast over us tonight. The we’re-the-only-people-in-the-universe spell.

I look back at Sam and find him staring at me, that familiar intense frown on his face.

“What are you thinking about?” I say.

“Just … happy we’re being open with each other, finally,” he says. “I feel like we have a lot to talk about. I need to tell you some things.”

“Sounds gnarly. Okay. I gotta take a leak.”

“Oh, wow. You are one classy lady.”

I flick him the bird, and he pulls me across the sofa and on top of him for more kisses, until we’re interrupted by another clap of thunder.

“Really. When you gotta go, you gotta go,” I say.

“Is that from
Annie
?”

“I love that you know that,” I say, and lean in to kiss him again before peeling myself off the sofa, as the apartment flashes white again and the walls practically shake with thunder. The storm must be nearly on top of us. Thank God we’re safe inside.

On my way back from the bathroom, I notice that my feet are cold. So I duck into the room Sam went into earlier to get me the T-shirt and sweatpants. It’s a large bedroom with a desk in one corner and a stack of clean clothes folded perfectly in a laundry basket on the bed. I pick a pair of socks from the top, and sit on the bed to put them on.

As I go to put the second sock on my foot, it drops to the floor, and when I bend down to pick it up I see a picture frame sticking out from under the bed. Probably a picture of Katie, his ex-girlfriend, I think to myself with a stab of jealousy.

I pull the frame out so I can take a good look at her, just as the thunder and lightning finally unite, shaking the entire building with their force.

You’ve gotta hand it to Mother Nature. She has a hell of a sense of timing.

Because it’s not Katie in the frame.

It’s a photo of Sam’s college graduation.

He’s standing next to an older couple who must be his parents. Sam looks younger, yet somehow tired and unhappy. His mom has a kind-but-sad face, very tan with a white-blond bob. And his dad has the same steady gray eyes as Sam, with silvery-white hair, and—

Wait a second.

Sam said he never graduated, he said his dad was dead. But that’s clearly his father; the similarity is undeniable.

Suddenly, I realize I know that guy. It’s the rich old guy that Cornelia was with at Minetta Tavern just a few hours ago. Roger Rutherford.

What the hell?

Then I look at the T-shirt Sam gave me to wear. It says Rutherford. It’s his team T-shirt. Sam’s last name is Rutherford. His dad isn’t dead and buried in Ohio; Cornelia said he’s one of the richest men in New York. This is Sam’s penthouse apartment, not some mythical roommate, and Sam isn’t a poor college dropout from Ohio slumming it as a boat boy, borrowing clothes from his roommate and trying to get to Europe on the cheap. He’s another fucking spoiled New York rich kid with no sense of right or wrong.

And he’s been lying to me. Ever since we met.

CHAPTER
34

I walk out of the bedroom, still holding the picture, my hands shaking, my heart beating painfully, my chest aching with a pain that I know is only just beginning.

“Sam Rutherford.” My voice sounds surprisingly strong and calm.

Sam looks over and I hold up the picture, just as the entire building shakes again. Outside the wind is shrieking and the rain is violently hammering against the window. But all I can see is Sam.

Our eyes meet.

And I know it’s all true.

He lied. He lied about who he is, where he was from. He lied about everything.

After everything that’s happened to me, you’d think I’d have learned that what you see is almost never what you get. That when it comes to instincts, mine can’t be trusted. That I’m always,
always
wrong.

But I haven’t. And realizing it again breaks me.

“LIAR!”

I throw the picture frame as hard as I can so it breaks, splaying across the floor in pieces.

Sam leaps up from the sofa. “No, Angie—”

I need to get out of here. For once, running away is the right thing to do.

Tears running down my face, I grab my purse, pull on my cardigan, coat, and shoes over the sweatpants and T-shirt, and stuff my dress and scarf in my coat pockets. I feel so hot and sick, I might pass out. Sam is now standing in front of me, desperately trying to explain.

“Angie, wait, I didn’t, Angie! No, listen, you’re overreacting, please look at me, I didn’t want to talk about that stuff, about my family—”

“Fuck you!” I push past him. “I told you things I’ve never told anyone. Ever. I was so fucking honest with you! And you just … you lied and lied and lied!” My voice breaks.

“But no, Angie, I didn’t lie. My parents are divorced, my mom is in New Mexico—”

“And your dad? He’s dead, is he? How was it, dropping out of college?” I say, jabbing the button for the elevator. “Sam
Carter
! You even lied about your name!”

“No, Angie, it’s my middle name—”

“And you pretended you didn’t know New York. You grew up here! You probably know it better than anyone! You’re not living on your buddy’s floor; this is
your
apartment! That was
your
car service! And all that time we spent, counting our pennies, talking about how broke we were, what we’d buy if we could only get jobs—for what? All just to get laid? Just to trick me into bed? Or do you just like fucking with people?”

“No! Angie, it’s not like that—”

“Bullshit!” I stab at the elevator button again violently. “More bullshit!”

“This is my brother’s apartment, really, it is, I swear, but yeah, I do sort of live here, now, but I haven’t lived in the city in a long time and my dad and I haven’t spoken in years, I never—”

“Stop fucking talking!” I scream, putting my hands over my ears. “I trusted you! I am so sick of people lying and bullshitting me and just using me to get what they want!”

Sam looks like he’s about to cry. “No, darling, no—”

Finally, the elevator arrives. I step in, ignoring Sam’s pleas, and press the button for the first floor a dozen times. He tries to get in with me, but I shove him out of the elevator as hard as I can.

“Fuck off! Just fuck off and leave me alone! I never want to see you again.”

As the elevator doors close, I see Sam’s face crumple with misery. But I don’t care. I mean it.

I will never see him again.

Then I collapse against the elevator wall, sobbing. If this is heartbreak, it’s not a figure of speech: I’m in real, physical pain. Something inside me has broken and will never heal. My heart, no, my whole
body
hurts.

I finally get to the lobby and look through the glass doors. The storm is raging wildly, the wind howling, the rain coming down so hard and fast that I can hardly see out of the building, let alone across the street. I’ve never seen a storm like this.

But I have to get home.

So I take a deep breath and push the doors open.

The moment I leave the building the ice-cold rain hits me, like a solid wall of water.

The trees are whipping back and forth, almost touching the ground, and above the screams and moans of the storm, I can hear sirens and strange cracking sounds. Half the streetlamps are out, giving the whole street an eerie gap-toothed look, and the night sky has changed from gray-purple to a scary green-gray. There are no cabs, not a person in sight.…

Oh God, I don’t think it’s safe to be outside. But I need to get home to Rookhaven.

I need my friends.

I start running. The wind makes it feel like I’m being held back by invisible hands, and the wall of rain is sleeting down so hard it actually hurts.

At the corner I hear a strange squealing sound, turn and look behind me, and—in a split second so surreal that it’s almost like I’m dreaming—I see an enormous tree fall over, with an agonizing lurch, across the street, crushing a car. Holy shit.

My heart beating with fear and adrenaline, I push on, ignoring the instinct that’s telling me to get the fuck to shelter, listening only to the crazed voice inside me screaming,
Run away, run away.
…

Then the hail starts. Chunks of ice smashing down to the ground, but also hitting me sideways, and whipping straight from left to right, like pebbles in a blender, pinging off cars with an audible cracking sound. What the hell?

The sky is now flashing yellow and gray, debris whipping in circles, and the wind is shrieking all around me.…

Oh, my God. I’m in a tornado.

CHAPTER
35

I saw a documentary once about tornadoes in big cities. Everyone thinks they only happen in the Midwest, with old farmhouses getting ripped up and landing on witches, cows whipping around looking mildly surprised, all that sort of thing. But they can happen anywhere. And the tornadoes in a city like New York are, in a way, the most dangerous. Because everything—
everything
—becomes a weapon of destruction. Street signs, garbage cans, trees, cars … You name it, and the tornado will use it to kill you.

So I do the only thing I can think of: I run right back up the street to Sam’s apartment building, around the side, and down a driveway ramp slick with rainwater to the underground garage. It’s inch-deep in water already, freezing cold and pitch-black, but it feels about as safe as I can imagine.

I climb on top of a Hummer—a car I’ve been known to climb on before, funnily enough—and sit there shivering, listening to the storm rage outside.

My cell has no reception, so I’ll just stay here until it’s over. I lie back, staring at the concrete ceiling as tears stream down my face. They haven’t stopped since I left the apartment.
Sam lied
.

I hear cracks and creaks and shrieks and thuds. My imagination quickly goes wild picturing all of Manhattan and Brooklyn flattened, every building smashed to smithereens, every tree uprooted, like something out of a movie—something that matches how I feel inside.
Sam lied to me. He lied and lied and lied.…

I think back to every conversation we ever had, every chance he had to tell me he was a rich boy just like Stef’s gang. Instead he said he was from Ohio, that he’d dropped out of college, that his dad was dead.… Why?
Why?

Then, just like that, everything goes quiet. The storm is over. The rain has stopped. But the ramp leading down here has become a fast-flowing river of water and leaves and garbage and—

Holy shit! I’m moving. The Hummer is floating across the garage. I look around wildly. The garage is flooding! Then again, of course it’s flooding. It’s a fucking basement. It’s the first thing that floods. Thank God my bedroom is on the third—

Oh no.

Vic.

The moment I realize Vic could be in danger I climb down from the car, splash my way through the dirty storm water, trudge up the ramp to the street, and run as fast as I can toward Union Street.

Brooklyn is battered. Every single tree has been stripped of any early spring leaves, some ripped out of the earth and thrown across sidewalks and cars; skylights and chunks of roofs and iron gates are lying, bent and twisted, in the middle of the road; car windows are smashed in by hail … It’s like a war zone.

It takes me forever to reach Carroll Gardens, but I don’t even notice the wet sweatpants flapping around my shoes, or how numb with cold my hands are, or the storm-created chaos I pass along the way. I don’t think about Sam, or my life, or my problems.

All I think about is Vic.