Naomi & Bradley, It All Comes Down… (Vodka & Vice, the Series Book 1) (2 page)

I plan to leave the downstairs gym early this Wednesday night.  After hearing Chase recite his latest tidbits of
Molly drama
, I no longer enjoy the aerobics class, and I’m not in the mood to sweat to the oldies.  I jog the track slowly, cooling off, feeling each hit to my feet like a blow to my future.  My Skechers make a pounding sound on the fake surface.

Bradley and Molly.

Bradley and Molly.

Bradley and Molly.

The elevator is cold, and I rub my arms.  I go inside, letting myself in silently with my fingerprint scanner.  No jingling keys to alert anyone, and I almost walk right into them.

Bradley and Molly.

They are not making passionate love.  She isn’t spread-eagle on my countertop, naked.  Bradley is still dressed, but the mood is all wrong.  There is a familiarity between them and I know they’ve done this before, met in my kitchen, while I was gone.  They are sharing bottled waters, talking, and almost holding hands across the kitchen table, so intent in their close conversation that they don’t hear me at first.  Something about their body language, tight, secretive.  It hurts just to see them at my mother’s expensive white glass table, where I sit and pay all the bills, serve Bradley my specialty meals, and type my work reports.  It’s too personal.  Evasive.

I shift my feet and they jump.

They both look startled to see me.

Molly appears almost triumphant as if she’s planned the evening to happen just this way.

Bradley looks embarrassed, his face flushing an unbecoming red.

I blink, struggle to keep my voice under control, and I pull a tight smile.

“Here it comes,” I say inside my head as I widen my stance.  The body blow to the gut I always knew was coming.

I’ve caught him red-handed and still I can’t believe he’s cheating on me in my own loft.  The betrayal of it hollows out my chest, leaving only red cinders of pain.

I decide to throw them a curveball.  Anything to take that smirk off her pretty, young face.

“Hello Molly,” I toss out, as if I’ve known her for years.

They both freeze in surprise.  I smirk myself and turn to Bradley.

“Hi honey!” he says, big grin on his face.

“Bradley.  I see it’s all true.  You can move out tonight.”

“Wait, what are you talking about?”  Bradley asks.  I wonder why he is bothering.

“Chase, and practically the entire gym membership, told me all about you two lovebirds,” I exaggerate, trying to control my anger with reason.

Downtown Molly.

She’s in my home.

Mine.

The loft I inherited from my parents after they died early last year.

She’s sitting in
my
chair, next to
my
man.

“Who’s Chase?”  Bradley asks, always a master at changing the subject to something mundane.

I ignore him.

“Molly, go away.  You’re not welcome here.  Bradley, can you give your twisted girlfriend a ride, or flag down a cab for her, just get her out of my loft, okay honey?”

“You think—I mean—
her
and me?!  She’s just a—a friend.”  Bradley explains, standing and trying to take my hand.

“Friends?”  Molly squeals as if he’s stepping on her toes.  “We are
much
more than just friends.”

“Not now, Molly,” Bradly argues staring her down.

That’s unexpected.

It’s like witnessing a street fight, I don’t want to watch the quarrel, but their familiar byplay speaks volumes.  There’s an undercurrent from previous conversations, time spent together, I can see the exchange of thoughts running intensely in both pairs of eyes.

They are standing now.  Molly is giving him strange looks, I see her wink at Bradley, and he frowns.  What’s this?  Are they so well acquainted that they have secret signals already?  It pushes my pain to the back, and moves my anger to the forefront.

“I swear Bradley, if you had sex with this girl in
my
bed, everything you own is going into the downstairs dumpster right now.”

“SEX?  What the hell is wrong with you?  Do you have, you know, the first week of the month?”  He half whispers this last bit.  I feel like slapping him.

“Oh, tell her the truth Brad.  I don’t know why you’re lying.  We are lovers!  Hot and heavy lovers.”  Molly speaks with authority.  She looks me right in the eye and grins.

“She’s lying!”  Bradley looks from me to Molly.  “Stop lying! Shut up!”

That was new, Bradley raising his voice.  Was this their first lover’s spat?  So dramatic.  I know Bradley hates liars and drama, or he used to.

“Molly, get out of my loft, now.”  I order, making my voice deceptively soft.

“C’mon Brad, let’s go.  You can move into my parents’ townhouse with me.”

I guffaw in a hysterical wail until tears fill my eyes.

“How old are you Molly?”  I gasp between insane giggles.

“Eighteen and legal, if it’s any of your business,” She hisses at me like a yard snake.

Bradley is thirty-one and I’m twenty-seven.  My downtown loft is expensive, and rent-free for Bradley.  No wonder he isn’t running out the door to move into Molly’s townhouse, a building she shares with her parents.  Does she sleep in their basement apartment?

Then it hits me.

How stupid am I anyway.

Bradley, beautiful handsome Bradley, is with me for the free ride, the almost 3,000 square foot Tribeca loft, and the perks of no bills.

I feel like a clown who has been hit over the head with a wooden mallet.  The circus crowd has been laughing all along, and I’ve just now gotten the joke.  It’s me.

I cannot breathe.  I think I’m going to be sick.  One of my damn panic attacks is knocking.

“Goodbye Bradley, don’t forget your posters and your Xbox.  You’ll also want to decorate their basement with you sports collections and drinking mugs.”

“This is ridiculous Naomi.  I love you.  I don’t want to move out.”

He tries to hold me but I block him with my elbow.

“Your key?”  I demand, holding out my hand, palm up.

“Baby…”

“Oh, stop groveling lover boy, and take me home before I call my dad,” Molly snaps.

Bradley shakes his head, stares at me, searching for something I can no longer give him.

“When I get back, we are going to talk this out and you’re going to feel pretty stupid,” he promises.

“No hurry.  You have a lot to work out; the bunkbed arrangements, where to store your gym gear, and setting up the ping-pong table for your computer, take your time.  All your things will be on the roof deck when you get back.”

Bradley looks at me and I catch a glint of desperation in his eyes.  I never knew my loft meant so much to him.  It hurts.  Was that what spurred his sudden interest in marriage?  Was he after my parents’ loft?

Still holding out my palm for his keycard, he sighs and drops it in my hand.

“We’re not finished here.”

Bradley almost threatens with his tight words as he takes Molly’s arm and pulls her out the front door.

I don’t cry until I get down the long hallway and stand under the shower.  Then I let everything go in one giant flood of, “I knew he was too good to be true.”

BRADLEY

Wednesday, February 3rd

I never understood the lyric in that Talking Heads song that goes, “this is not my beautiful house; this is not my beautiful wife.”  I never understood it until this evening, that is.  Now I wish I didn’t.

When I met Naomi, it was the craziest thing.  I was recovering from a bad break up.  Numbed and confused, I took a long weekend in New York City.  I figured I’d catch a few plays, take in a museum or two, eat, drink too much.  I needed to be alone.  I know, why head to a city of millions if you want to be alone?  Because there’s always going to be people, no matter where you go.  At least in the city, they mind their business. 

So there I was, in the middle of a famous musical, regretting having paid prime cash for front and center seats.  Settling in after intermission, Twizzlers in hand, I felt someone ooze into the seat next to me.  First impression:  what is that intoxicating scent?  Roses?  No, something from my mother’s garden, I think, mixed with a hint of wood, cedar maybe.  I sneak a look.  Bam!  There is this girl, mid-twenties, I guess, long blond hair trailing over her shoulders, white tank top, skinny jeans, and that perfume.  Jesus, she’s so hot, I can’t stop staring at her.  Then she does this incredible thing.  She leans her head toward mine and cups her hand over her mouth.

“Hey,” she whispers, breath scented with chocolate, “don’t tell anyone, but I’m on the lam from the nosebleed seats.  If you keep your mouth shut, I can hook you up with all the M&M’s you could ever eat.”

She opens her purse up, and sure enough, it holds the largest bag of chocolate candies I’ve ever seen.  It makes me laugh for some reason and the old couple in front of us shush me.  On stage, Carrie is going to her prom and the mean kids are singing and hoisting up the bucket of pig’s blood that’s going to ruin everyone’s night, but next to me is a girl who smells like Heaven and looks like an angel with a bag full of chocolate, so…

I lean in a little closer and say, “I’ll do better than that.  I will smuggle you out of this rotten musical and buy you a drink.  I could sure use one right now.”  There is more shushing from the little couple, so I say, very loudly, “If Stephen King were here right now, he’d set this theatre on fire!”  Then this girl whose name I don’t know yet, stands up, grabs my hand, and runs for the exit. 

Outside, we blink in the glare of midday sun refracting off midtown windows.  She checks me out.  I see ‘the look.’  Yeah, I’m a model.  Mother hated it.  What was her word?  Vulgar?  She couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to be a doctor or go into finance like my dad.  Well, he wasn’t exactly a walking billboard for how great that life could be.  He seemed to be living under a constant gray cloud, unable to enjoy family dinners, vacations, his own wife.  They divorced when I was ten, their lone child, the only symbol of whatever love must have brought them together in the first place.

I’m used to ‘the look.’  It’s usually followed by something like, “I feel like I’ve met you before?”  You have.  I’ve been on the cover of over seventy books.  I’m the guy, shirt open, ripped abs, holding some gorgeous lady in a provocative pose.  I wait for this girl to say it but, as I would find out over the next eighteen months, she rarely does the expected.

She sticks her hand out and says, “That was fun, thanks.”  Then she drops my hand, winks, and turns toward Ninth Avenue.  Before I can say anything, she disappears into a bar.  I’m standing there, breathing the fetid August air, throngs of tourists bustling around me, feeling that if I don't go and get that girl, I will never be happy again.  When I get inside, there she is, perched on a stool, sipping a margarita and sharing a basket of chips with the bartender, chatting away.

I sit down a few stools away.  The bartender takes my order, leaves to make it.  Without looking, M&M girl says, “I was wondering how long it would take you.”

“How long?” I ask.

“To figure out I’m not the girl for you.”

“What?  I just wanted to buy you a drink to thank you for rescuing me from that awful play.”  I say, unconvincingly, I guess, because she turns to face me full on, her brows knitting together.

“Yeah, right.  Listen, I appreciate the fact that you’re bored and maybe looking for something, or someone to do on a hot summer afternoon in the big city, but I can’t help you with that.  You’re not my type.  Too damned pretty.”

Jesus.  Did she say I was pretty? 

“Listen, I’m not, I mean, I don’t.  You know what?  Never mind.”  I get up to leave, but she slips over to the stool next to me, puts her hand on my arm, and looks right through my eyes, into my soul. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” she says, grinning.  “We fugitives have to stick together.”  She puts out her hand.  “Naomi Swanson, nice to meet you.” 

I shake her hand, feeling a little weird; it's so formal.  “Bradley, Bradley Dobrov.”

She smiles like sun after rain.  “Well, Bradley Bradley Dobrov, what do you want to do now?”

Eighteen months later, I’m living in her beautiful Tribeca loft, spending most of my energy trying to get her to marry me.  She keeps saying no.  It’s getting pretty frustrating.  I got the idea a few weeks ago that the reason is that she’s just not that attracted to me anymore.  I have put on a few pounds--Naomi is a great cook.  In desperation, I joined a gym and started working out.  Even gave up the fries and beer for kale salads and protein shakes.  But she still seemed, I don’t know, distant?  I know she’s really busy at work, but I do try to help out around the house.  She always wants to cook when she gets home.  Says it relaxes her.  We still have sex.  I don’t know what she wants from me. 

Last week, we lay in bed, tangled and sweaty, and I stroked her hair.  “I miss you, baby.  Why don’t you come to my gym?  I know it’s a little farther, but we could work out together, you know?  Grab a juice afterward.  Talk?”

“I’m good,” she answered.  That’s it.  That was her WHOLE answer.  I figured she still wants me to prove myself, so that’s when I got this idea.  I found this engagement planner online.  Her name is Molly and she’s pretty young, but she got a lot of experience in high school when she started her ‘promposal’ business.  Yeah, that’s a thing: these elaborate, staged moments where kids ask someone to the prom.  Anyway, now she’s expanding her business to planning marriage proposals.  According to her website, she has a 100% success rate.  Her latest plan:  make Naomi think I’m cheating on her.  Huh?  She says it will make the moment all the more dramatic if Naomi thinks she’s losing me, then finds the complete opposite is true.  I’m not sure about that, but I do like the proposal plan.

On Saturday, we are supposed to be going to this little off-off-off Broadway production of “Our Town,” in a warehouse in Bed Stuy, but Molly has arranged for the troupe to perform the scene from Carrie, that was happening when we met.  Then I’m going to bring her on stage, where a bucket of M&M’s is going to pour over her as the cast sings our song:  In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel.  While they sing, I get down on my knee and pop open the ring box which contains my great-grandmother’s Tiffany three-carat ring in a platinum setting.  There’s no way she could say no to that.  I mean, that’s fireworks.