I shake my head and get up. Grace and Ferdinand start talking about Versace's newest line again. I really don't belong in her world, and I'm grateful I only got a small stint in it. I got to experience it without all the hardship and the darker side, and for that I'm very, very grateful. Grace always talks about how I could do it, modeling, if I wanted to. And I've struggled ever since the photoshoot - no, ever since I hit puberty and everyone started getting boobs and I remained flat as a rock - to accept the fact that I'm pretty. Or, what passes for pretty in front of a camera, in front of other people.
I look over the shoulders of the men playing the poker game. They invite me in to play with loud French, but I laugh and decline. I move to the bar, watching the bartender work his magic. Felix catches my eye, and I catch his. A woman gets up from his right side, and I sit on the barstool she left behind. Felix swirls his drink around but doesn't look my way for a while, so I start the conversation instead.
"Sorry. About Lee."
Felix shrugs. "I probably deserved it somehow."
"What do you mean?"
"Somewhere along the line I probably made someone's life hell, and that punch somehow makes up for it. That's what I like to think, anyway, instead of the fact I'm getting socked because I'm an asshole."
"You're not," I say. "People just...misinterpret things. Lee's got a wedding coming up, so he's probably pretty stressed, and high-strung. Sorry."
Felix snorts into his beer and takes another sip. The bartender raises an eyebrow at me, as if asking if I'll have something to drink. Felix nods at him, then me.
"What do you like?"
"I'm not really a huge drinker -"
"C'mon, you've gotta learned to like something, you're almost done with college."
I chuckle. "Wine? I guess. Red."
The bartender whips out a glass and expertly pours me some, sliding it across the counter to me. I take a sip and can tell it's great wine - nothing like the five dollar bottles Grace and Jen like to get and polish off in one evening. It's sweet and rich and hardly burns going down at all. The bartender watches me, as if waiting for my reaction, and I smile. He gives a satisfied nod and moves on to the other customers. Felix sighs.
"Trouble at six o'clock."
I turn my head over my shoulder to look at the bar's entrance, where Kiera stands. She looks stunning, yet completely out of place in black leather and a blouse with modest gold jewelry. Everyone turns to look at her at least once. She moves through the bar crowd with elegance ingrained, and while she smiles none of the patrons return it. When she comes up to the bar to order a drink (a Cosmo) the bartender makes it with a slowness I haven't seen in his other drinks. He stares at Kiera the entire time he makes it, but she, perhaps rattled by his intensity, looks away, to Felix and I.
"Well, well, I didn't expect to see you here."
I can practically feel Grace bristling behind me. Felix's fingers go strangely white around his mug, and his leg tenses, even though his voice is deceptively casual.
"Hey. You decide to slum it with the dirty peasants tonight?"
She laughs and pats his cheek patronizingly. But there's something in it that's less patronizing than what I'm used to seeing from her, and it's weird. But her next words quickly make me forget all about the oddness.
"Good job, making him punch you. He got you good, didn't he?"
Making Lee punch him? I narrow my eyes. Felix gets shifty in his seat and in his eyes.
"Kiera, look -"
"Ah ah." She taps his lips with her finger, and takes the Cosmopolitan the bartender makes her. She takes a long sip, then another, and another. Felix clears his throat as if wanting to escape, and finally Kiera looks to me.
"Wine, Rose? Rose wine?" She laughs at her own joke, then frowns. "How boring and traditional of you."
I stay quiet, my hand balling into a fist around the wine glass as her taunts grow louder. Her cheeks are flushed.
"But that's how you operate, isn't it? Traditional and boring to the core. Do you think he actually enjoyed it? Lee? Enjoying sex with a prissy little inexperienced virgin like you? There's no chance."
The words sting, bite, stab. They're the same words I said to myself, over and over again, in the months after we broke up and even when we were still together. I doubted. I still doubt. Nothing changed that - and now nothing ever will.
"Kiera, lay off her," Felix murmurs. Kiera laughs at him, fully and in his face.
"You're one to talk."
Before Kiera can say another word, there's a blur of motion behind her and a horrible clattering of barstools and glasses. Someone's shoved Kiera onto the floor, her blonde hair scattering and her gold jewelry clinking over her cry of pain. Kiera quickly staggers to her high-heeled feet, and the entire bar falls silent in an instant. Grace stands over her, face triumphant and gloriously furious.
"You!" Kiera snarls. Grace doesn't give her the chance to say more. She lunges at Kiera, and the two girls fall in a tangle of limbs, hair, and flying sawdust. The bar erupts in half-cheers, half-boos, crowding around the fight. The bartender, on the other hand, never stops polishing the glasses to perfection with quick, yet meticulous care, and doesn't once pause to look at the fight or interfere. I get jostled out of the inner circle, and I quickly retreat back to Ferdinand. Felix jumps in and tries to stop the fight more than once, but the burly French men making a ring around the fight stone wall him. Felix isn't a small guy, but he might as well be pushing a rock with a feather for the all the good he's doing against the backs of these guys. Ferdinand whoops appreciatively when a flash of Grace's angry face bobs above the heads of the crowd and goes back down again. By the sound of things, Grace is definitely winning - Kiera's yelps and screeches are a dead giveaway. Part of me wants to break it up, and the other part wants it to keep going. Kiera deserves a punch or two to the kidney, but if it's not me doing it, I'm not going stop the person who is.
Soon the fight leaks out onto the sidewalk, outside the bar, and by now everyone has a betting pool on who will come out on top. With a smaller crowd outside, Felix finally manages to get to the heart of the fight, and breaks the two girls up. He holds Kiera's arms behind her back as she lurches and screams at a satisfied-looking Grace. Kiera's make-up is smeared, one earring missing, and her hair is a mess.
"You'll regret ever touching me, you coke-sniffing whore!" Kiera screams.
Grace waves as Kiera limps way. She's considerably better off than Kiera, with more hair in place and a more intact make-up. I push off the barstool and dash up to her. Without a single word I throw my arms around her neck and hug her, and she laughs and hugs me back, and we know exactly what I'm trying to say; 'thank you', and 'kick-ass job'.
We go back inside, and Grace is greeted with a wave of applause. She bows, and the patrons offer to buy us drinks, but Grace and I just sip our wine and revel in the knowledge that, for once, the wicked witch got a house dropped on her pride.
And it must hurt like a bitch.
I’ve won. Well, Grace has won, technically. Someone has won against Kiera, at least. But it only lasts for a few minutes. After that, I get a new drink. Grace is busy being congratulated by the bar on her win, but Felix slips through the crowd and smiles apologetically at me.
“Sorry about Kiera.” He leans on the bar next to my drink. “Your friend can take care of herself though, huh?”
I search his blue eyes. His words might be light, but I can see what he’s feeling deep down. I know that look.
“You’re in love with Kiera, aren’t you?” I ask.
He freezes, every muscle in his body visibly going tense. There’s a long pause of clinking glasses and drunken Frenchmen laughter before he puts his head in his hand, mussing his bangs up and giving a hopeless sort of chuckle.
“That obvious, huh?”
“Can’t say I see what you see in her,” I say. “But you must have your reasons.”
“Like I said, she wasn’t always like this.”
“So you sti
ck around, hoping the old her will come back and realize she loves you, too.”
He flinches, but doesn’t refute it.
“I guess that makes two of us,” I say.
I turn back to my drink and down it quickly. It doesn’t take long. The world starts spinning violently. I feel light, drunker than I really was a moment ago. I stumble, and Felix catches me with his arm.
“Are you okay?” He asks. I laugh.
“No. But I’m getting better.” I look to Grace and motion to Felix over the heads of the crowd. Grace nods, and holds up her cellphone to let me know to text her when I get back. I grab Felix’s arm and start out the door.
“I think I need to lie down. Can you help me get back to the –”
There’s a bright yellow flash as I look directly at the lamppost, and I can’t feel my legs anymore. There’s the sensation of someone picking me up – Felix – and walking steadily to the hotel. Snow crunches under his feet. He stops to rest a few times. And then everything goes dark around the edges, and I fall into a deep pit of sleep.
I wake up off and on, pieces and fragments of reality seeping into my senses. Kiera. Darkness. Felix. Arguing. Darkness. The sound of tearing foil. Darkness.
And then there’s no more darkness. It’s morning.
And then there’s Lee’s face, pale and furious but relieved and tender beneath it all, staring back at me.
***
LEE
***
When I wake up the next morning, Kiera's got a black eye.
I quirk a brow as she comes out of the shower. I didn't hear her get in last night, so she must've come back late. Not that I care - her out of the bed means I get it to myself without her grabby hands all over me. I spent the night in other ways - more self-satisfying ways without her tainted, warped version of love spread over it. It was the nicest night I've had in weeks.
"Did you get punched out?" I ask. Kiera towels off her hair and throws a glower my way.
"What does it look like?"
"It looks like you finally got what was coming to you," I say evenly. I expect Kiera to internalize it in her deadly calm, bitter way. She does, but something about her smile is wrong. Something is wrong with the way she looks at me, and it's sending chills down my spine in all the worst ways. She slowly dresses, always thinking it somehow turns me on to see her go from naked to clothed. Vain. She's Vain and self-conceited but I still don't like this new turn of emotion. I've never seen her with a black-eye, or this gloatingly happy.
"You'll get what's coming to you too, Lee. Today, actually. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did."
With that cryptic statement, she grabs her purse, one of her ridiculously puffy jackets, and leaves. The hotel door clinks closed heavily behind her, and I'm left with the silence, the snow outside my window, and the looming sense of dread rapidly ballooning in my stomach. She'd planned something. She'd executed it. And all she had left was to see my response, no, my pain. That's what she lives for. She feeds on it like a succubus, and that satiated smile she gave me can only mean one thing - she recently fed very, very well.
I quickly get out of bed and throw on some clothes. I have to check on Rose. As long as she's alright -
When I throw open the door, I see the envelope lying in front of it. Someone must've just dropped it here. It just says one word on the front in plain black text; Lee.
Warily, I pick it up and take it back inside. I tear it open, and the sight of what's inside leaves me cold down to my fingertips almost instantly.
Rose.
Except she has no clothes on – she’s completely naked, and tangled up in bed sheets that look very familiar. A cold and deadly calm seeps into me. My rage is so hot it instantly cools over into white fire, and I quickly switch from anger to calculated revenge. What sick son of a bitch took these of her, and how fast can I find him and, most importantly, tear his balls from between his legs?
She's sleeping in the picture. The bed sheets are exactly the same ones we have in our room, the same every room in this hotel has. But it's not her room - Grace said they have two twin beds, and the one she's in is a queen. And the most incriminating evidence of all is the condom wrappers spread about the sheet. Each one is burned into my cornea, into the back of my eyelids so that I see it when I blink and when I open my eyes. My hands are shaking violently as I flip through the pictures, trying to find some hint of where these were taken. On the back of one picture is a tiny set of numbers – 228. No one would write them here on accident.
It takes all I've got not to throw up a little in my mouth. All my worst nightmares have come true. Who the fuck would take pictures of her like this? Who the hell is close enough to her - no, who is she sleeping with in this hotel? Did she even agree to sleep with them? This is Kiera's doing and I know it. The coldness in my blood is melted by instant rage, hot and boiling. In the pictures Rose looks so innocent, so completely and totally trusting. Kiera's doing everything in her power to ruin that part of her, and she's succeeded.
I pray to God she hasn't succeeded.
I’ve never run faster in my life. I jump down half a flight and my kneecaps almost give way but I keep running, shoes pounding over carpet. The bellboys shoot me strange looks, the hotel desk clerk opens her mouth in the beginnings of a ‘can I help you’, but I glare at her and she backs off instantly. An overweight German man is in my way, a muffin dangling out of his pudgy hand, and I duck around him with a snarl.
228 is an unassuming door. It looks like every other, painted white with brass lettering and a fancy knob. My hand hovers above it as uncertainty takes over. But the urge to make sure she’s alright pushes all that out of my mind, and I wrench on the knob. It’s locked. I knock on the door with my fist, insistently and constantly.
“Rose? Rose! Are you in there? Open the door!”
No response. I bang on the door harder.
“Rose! Please, open the door!”
“Pleading won’t get you anywhere.” The voice is cool and collected. I turn to face my father, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
“Where did you come from? Are you the one –”
“Don’t be stupid, boy,” Farlon sneers. His hair is grayer than ever in the weak morning sunlight, his Spanish tan pale and uneven. He looks tired, sharp, hungry. He looks terrible and decrepit. I almost feel sorry for him, but then I remember exactly who he is.
“Are you involved in this at all?” I snap. “I swear to god, I will fucking kill you if –”
“Tsk. What a mouth. Your mother’s rolling over in her grave at the words coming from you right now.”
“Mom’s dead,” I say. “So don’t bring her into this. Where is Rose? Who took her? If one of you or Kiera’s pawns touched her I’ll -”
“You have to consider the following,” He switches to Spanish. “See it from her perspective; a boy dumps her to become the fiancé of a richer, prettier girl. She has been heartbroken, yes. But women are resilient, admirable, and often stupid. They learn to love again, and again. They pick themselves up and put themselves back together from true heartbreak far quicker than any man.”
I clench my fist in warning, but Farlon just keeps yammering.
“She is young. She has her life ahead of her. She has a promising, budding degree in her dream career – due in no small part to you, but she doesn’t know that, of course – and she is, by American standards, quite pretty with a little makeup. But she is not the independent sort of creature, is she? You showed her love, and then left her. She will crave it again, and if she cannot get it from you, she will turn to another. Perhaps she already has.”
“You piece of –”
“Ah ah, if you’re going to insult me, do it in English. It sounds so much more sincere.” He smiles.
“Fuck you,” I snap. “You don’t know anything.”
“Don’t I?” He sighs. “Is that why I saw who she went home with? You can ask the village if you don’t believe me – everyone at the pub saw her walk ou
t with that blonde American boy.”
My stomach does Olympic flips in its own juices. I feel like puking. I pound on the door even harder.
“Rose! Goddamnit Rose, open the door!”
“She won’t answer you. From what I heard that boy say, she was completely ‘worn out’.”
The urge to punch his smug face is so strong I have to grip the doorknob with both hands and yank frantically on it. If I keep my hands busy I won’t sock the living daylights out of my own slimeball father. Farlon sighs behind me.
“If you’re going to be stubborn, at least be sensible. Do you think when your mother left me, I foolishly kept throwing myself at her door? No. I left with some pride still intact. I suggest you do the same.”
His receding footsteps don’t make me turn around. Nothing does. I’m laser-focused on the door, on seeing Rose’s face, on asking her if it’s true, if she really did sleep with Kiera’s pawn. The mistake slams into me with more force now than ever. Farlon is an asshole. I’m an asshole. But the difference between Farlon and I is that he’s right. I left her. I left Rose. That hurt. And now she’s leaving me.
That hurts more.
That hurts the most.
That hurts in places it shouldn’t – places I never thought could feel. It aches in my spine, in my ribs, in my lungs. I can barely make out the sound of my own shouts above the loud pumping of my blood in my ears. I’m yelling for her. Can she hear me?
Does she even want to hear me anymore?
His receding footsteps don’t make me turn around. Nothing does. I’m laser-focused on the door, on seeing Rose’s face, on asking her if it’s true, if she really did sleep with Kiera’s pawn. The mistake slams into me with more force now than ever. Farlon is an asshole. I’m an asshole. But the difference between Farlon and I is that he’s right. I left her. I left Rose. That hurt. And now she’s leaving me.
That hurts more.
That hurts the most.
That hurts in places it shouldn’t – places I never thought could feel. It aches in my spine, in my ribs, in the space between my lungs. I can barely make out the sound of my own shouts above the loud pumping of the blood in my ears. I’m yelling for her. Can she hear me?