Payback

"YOU CAN'T POSSIBLY IMAGINE HOW
psyched I am that you called," Ed Fargo told Gaia Moore as she stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of her apartment. "I escaped just when my dad was about to retell the retelling of Uncle Alan's story about how he and my mom mooned the nuns on her wedding day. It's like a fish story. Every time someone tells it, Sister Rose suffers a different fate. This time I think she would have had a stroke, and I don't think I could have handled it."

Gaia winced at the sunlight, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "Right."

Ed sighed. "You're going to have to bring your level of excitement down a notch, G.," he said, a hint of irritation in his voice. "I know you haven't seen me in three days, but your enthusiasm over my presence is making me blush."

"Sorry," Gaia said, stuffing one bare hand into her pocket as she started to walk. The other was clutching a small paper bag she'd picked up off the kitchen counter. "Weird weekend," she mumbled, not sure what, exactly, she should tell him. It had been hard enough when she'd admitted to Ed that she had feelings of, yes, a sexual nature for Sam Moon. Gaia wasn't exactly the heart-to-heart type, and letting anyone in on her secrets went against every fiber in her being. But this had now become more than just a crush. It was bordering on insanity. And Gaia wasn't sure whether telling Ed would help take the weight off her shoulders or merely confirm that she was a first-rate lunatic. Gaia didn't have that many friends to spare. In fact, she only had this one now that Mary was out of the picture. So how much was too much to tell?

It was Sunday morning, and ever since she'd left the hospital on Friday, all Gaia had done was mainline sugar and obsess. Obsess about Sam, think about Sam, dream about Sam. The dream involved kisses that had never really happened. Words that had never really been spoken. They couldn't have been real, no matter how much her muddled, confused brain kept trying to make her believe that they were. Her mind had been sifting random, incongruent images nonstop. Images Gaia couldn't possibly make sense of.

Part of her didn't want to try. What if the memory suddenly snapped into vivid Technicolor surround sound and it was nothing but a big fat . . . nothing? What if nothing at all had happened between her and Sam? Gaia was sure her heart couldn't handle it. As pathetic as it was, she'd rather hold on to the possibility of something perfect than be hit with the reality of nothing much.

Gaia sighed and pushed forward at her usual breakneck pace, forgetting for a moment that Ed was navigating his wheelchair through the crowd of babbling women surrounding them. She turned around long enough to notice one of the women inadvertently whack his arm with a J. Crew bag. The Christmas shopping rush had officially begun.

The hustle and bustle failed to draw Gaia out of her own confused thoughts as Ed struggled to keep up with her. There were only two things she knew for sure. First, she had been in Sam's room on Thanksgiving. She knew this only because when she was leaving the hospital, a bleary-eyed intern had handed her back her clothes. A T-shirt, a pair of boxers, and a robe. All men's. All with the distinct, musky Sam smell nestled within their folds.

All of which were stashed in a plastic bag, inside a backpack, which was zippered shut and locked with a minilock under her bed. Ella-proof packaging.

The second thing Gaia was completely sure of was that Ella knew something she wasn't telling. That was the part about this whole thing that ate at Gaia like acid through a tin can. Ella knowing more than her. It was just cosmically wrong.

"So what's up?" Ed huffed, catching up to her just before she stepped onto the street, ignoring a solid Don't Walk signal.

"Park," Gaia grunted, holding up the little white bag. "Doughnuts."

"Articulate," Ed commented. "You're quite the cave woman today."

Gaia ignored the comment and kept walking, leading the way into Washington Square Park and dropping onto the first bench she saw. Scowling, she immediately shoved three-quarters of a glazed chocolate doughnut into her mouth. The sticky dough gathered in a lump and lodged halfway down her throat. Where to start?

"Didn't you get enough turkey this weekend?" Ed asked, removing one of the doughnuts from the bag on her lap.

"No turkey," Gaia said while chewing.

"You have to be kidding." Ed picked off a piece of doughnut and popped it into his mouth. "Turkey is the only thing that makes the whole family-gathering debacle bearable."

Gaia shrugged. "I think I might have kissed Sam."

Ed suddenly let out a strangled, choking sound. Gaia turned to him in time to see his eyes fill with water before he doubled over.

That was when the convulsions started.

Ed began to cough like she'd never seen him cough before. He sat gasping, doubled over in his chair, clutching the remaining piece of doughnut so hard, it crumbled into sad little bits and toppled to the ground.

"Ed?"

Gaia started to slap him on the back.

"Ed?"

"I'm okay. I'm okay," Ed said, sitting up and pounding on his chest with his fist. "It just went down the wrong pipe."

Gaia pulled away her arm. Yes, she knew Sam had a girlfriend. And she knew that girlfriend was probably pure evil and her archnemesis to boot. But did that really make the news choke worthy? She hadn't even told Ed the part she'd
really
been worried about. The part about not remembering. The part about not knowing whether she'd really kissed Sam or whether she'd just raved outside his dorm like a semi-concussive psychopath, like Ella had told her she had.

Glancing back at Ed, Gaia noticed he'd finally recovered and was gathering himself to ask her something. By the look on his face, it was probably something she didn't want to answer.

"Okay, okay, spit it out," she snapped. Patience wasn't one of her strengths.

Ed blushed and looked at his feet. "So, uh, did you and Sam . . . do -- do anything else?" he stammered.

Gaia could feel herself turning bright red.

"Um. Um. Well, maybe . . . I don't know," she blurted out.

"You don't know," Ed repeated.

"It's a long story," Gaia said, sucking the sticky sugar off her index finger. "I'd had a fight earlier. A bad one. And I kind of passed out, and I don't remember much. Ella's trying to make me think nothing happened."

"Oh."

Gaia looked down at her whiter-than-white hands and picked at her nonexistent fingernails.

"I haven't heard from him, though," she said, fiddling with a cuticle. "So I guess . . . I guess that means that maybe he doesn't . . . want me."

The look of sadness on Ed's face made her angry. She wasn't telling him this stuff so he could throw her a pity party. She just needed to tell someone she could trust. And she needed to let out the anger. The anger that she couldn't remember. The anger that Ella could. The anger at the idiots who'd beaten her up and made her hit her head so hard that the whole thing was a blur.

"You haven't talked to him at all?" Ed interrupted her thoughts.

Gaia sighed and looked out across the nearly deserted park. People were hurrying through it, their scarves pulled up against the cold. She and Ed were two of only a very few psychos who had stopped to enjoy the frigidity.

"I went to his dorm, but I didn't go in," she said. She didn't go on to say she had stood outside the door of Sam's building for two hours, willing him to come down and find her but never finding the courage to find him.

Ed nodded and followed her gaze to the empty fountain at the center of the park. Suddenly everything looked gray. Everything felt even colder than it was. She wanted Ed to tell her that everything was going to be okay. That Sam would get in touch with her. That it would all work out.

But Ed seemed lost in his own thoughts. Maybe she had really freaked him out for the last time. Maybe he had finally realized what kind of lunatic he was dealing with.

As they sat munching on their remaining doughnuts, the one thing that never happened, happened. Ed was silent.

SAM MOON ROLLED OVER ONTO
his back, kicked his flannel sheets away from his legs, and realized he was smiling. It felt
really
odd. He blinked open his eyes and looked around his room, confused in his half-asleep haze.

Sam never woke up smiling. He usually woke up gritting his teeth -- something his dentist said was due to an excess amount of anxiety. Sam never felt stressed enough during his waking hours to grind down his teeth, but apparently the normally relaxing act of sleep made him tense up.

There was, however, a very good reason for this anomaly. And her name was Gaia Moore.

The grin widened just at the thought of her name. It grew almost painful when he remembered the kiss.

He couldn't believe he'd finally done it. Finally felt those perfect lips on his. She'd been so tentative. Careful. Almost as if she'd never been kissed before. But that wasn't possible. Not a girl like her. He only wished he might have stood out among the dozens of guys she'd probably had throwing themselves at her her entire life.

Stood out, that was, if she even happened to remember the kiss at all. When she'd passed out in his arms due to severe head trauma, the chances of her recalling the most important moment of his entire life seemed pretty slim.

Sam ran a hand over his wavy, brownish red hair and squeezed his eyes shut. He'd called the hospital to find out if Gaia was okay on Friday, and they'd told him she'd been released that afternoon. So she was fine. Living. Breathing. Out there somewhere, smelling perfect and looking like a goddess in faded cargo pants and a rumpled sweatshirt.

But did she remember that he'd said he loved her? Did she even care?

Sam's stomach clenched, and he turned over onto his side. All he wanted to do was contact Gaia and make her answer his questions. And a moment later all he wanted to do was avoid her for the rest of his life so that he could save that one perfect kiss in his heart. So that he wouldn't be open to rejection. Ridicule. Laughter. From the one girl he'd ever loved.

It was, after all, very possible that she'd only kissed him back
because
of the severe head trauma. She'd probably thought she was kissing Joshua Jackson or something.

The self-deprecation train came to a grinding halt when a loud pounding sounded at Sam's dorm-room door. He sat up straight in bed, startled by the sudden noise.

"Yeah," Sam said.

The door flew open, and Keon Walters, Sam's physics lab partner, came storming into the room, his arms overflowing with books.

"What the --"

"Glad you got your beauty rest, Moon," Keon said, dropping the books on the floor with an ominous thud. "Did you forget the mandatory review session we had this morning?"

Sam's stomach dropped. "Uh, kind of," he said.

Keon hovered over the bed, his arms crossed over his nylon jacket as he eyed Sam with barely veiled disdain. "You better thank your lucky ass that you've got me for a partner," he said. "I told Krause your mother was at Mount Sinai with a colon thing. I laid it on so thick, I think he's sending flowers."

Sam rubbed his forehead, still trying to fully wake up. "Thanks, man," he said, eyeing the strewn books and papers lying next to his bed. They didn't look fun. "What is all that stuff?"

They both stared at the pile for a moment as apprehension seeped into Sam's veins. He had a bad feeling about this. Finally Keon sighed and lowered himself onto the end of Sam's bed. He took off his little round glasses and rubbed at his eyes. "That, my friend, would be required reading for the final."

"Please tell me you're kidding," Sam said. There was no way he could absorb that much information on top of everything they'd already learned this semester. What was Krause thinking? He was an undergrad, not a Ph.D. candidate.

Keon leveled him with a glare. "Do I look like I'm kidding?" He crouched and started to neaten the load into two piles. "I figure if we split up the work and take notes, we
might
finish about five seconds before the exam."

Sam leaned back on his pillow, marveling at how one's outlook on life could shift so drastically in the space of about five minutes.

Gaia. Kiss. Love. Happiness.

Rejection. Loneliness. Regret. Misery.

Krause. Study. Death. Hell.

"Are you coming or what?" Keon said, picking up one of the stacks of books and raising his eyebrows at Sam. He was already halfway to the door.

"Where?" Sam asked, trying in vain to clear the soft Gaia images out of his head and replace them with velocity equations.

Keon clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes as if he were talking to a petulant five-year-old. "Library," he said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. When Sam didn't move, Keon let out an exasperated breath. "Fine. If you're going to make me be the mommy here, I'll do it."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Keon--"

"Do you or do you not have to maintain a three-point-seven to keep your scholarship?" Keon interrupted. "Because if
I
had a full ride, and I had disappeared for two days before midterms and missed about ten classes for no apparent reason, I know I'd be scared shitless enough to handcuff myself to a reading-room cubicle."

Sam just blinked at Keon, a sudden pressure squeezing his chest. He hadn't missed those classes for no reason. He'd missed them for Gaia. And he'd disappeared before midterms because he was kidnapped, which also had something to do with Gaia, though he still didn't know what. Sam had been arrested for Gaia; he'd gotten his ass kicked for Gaia; he'd almost lost his girlfriend on several occasions.

He'd almost lost his life.

Sam dropped his head into his hands. God, he was pathetic. Physics was only the worst of a long list of problems. If he lost his scholarship, his future was toast. And for what? For a girl who might or might not know he loved her. Who might or might not care. This had to stop. Or at least be put on hold.

"Get your scrawny white ass out of bed and let's go," Keon said.

"Right behind you, man," Sam said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He eyed his designated workload and sighed. It wouldn't be
that
bad. And if he held off on seeing Gaia until it was all over, it would make the studying that much easier. It would give him a goal to work for. An some room to concentrate.

Right now he needed all the help he could get.