Quarantales: The Complete Contemporary Romance Box Set, page 55
I give in to the pull even though it feels like my legs are made of fucking lead. Just to please her. Just to get closer.
“Okay, okay…good…good…” she says as if I have done something award-worthy by climbing back onto my own balcony. “Let’s go inside. I do not think we need to be out here any longer.”
We…she says. Like we’re a team.
I let her lead me into my room, still marveling at the feel of her hands on my arm, somehow firm, warm, and gentle at the same time. I’m pretty sure the Fuck Cloud drug was a downer, but my heart is beating as fast as a Formula One engine. And as for my dick…
Earlier, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to get it up enough to have sex with one of Luca’s many female friends. But now…
“I wasn’t going to jump.” The words suddenly appear in the air between us, as if the relay between my thoughts and my speech have been delayed by several minutes.
“Oh, okay, then you will not mind if I close this door behind us then.”
She doesn’t believe me. I can tell. And I don’t care, as long as she is still here.
But then she lets go of my arm to close the French doors and I don’t like that. I reach out to her, but all my hand does is kind of knock against her arm as she moves away.
“Who are you?” Another brain delayed question slips out as I watch her slide the door closed and lock it.
“Oh, I am only a plus one,” she answers, her eyes casting about. “As you can probably tell, I was not invited.” She waves a hand in front of herself with a self-deprecating smile. “But I am glad you were not trying to jump, and I am sorry I interrupted you.”
I stare. Wondering about her accent. But this time my response comes a little faster. “I’m not.”
“You’re not…?” she repeats, her cute face screwing up in confusion.
“Not sorry you came in here,” I answer. “I’m glad. You…you make me feel…wanna fuck on a cloud?”
She visibly startles, then squints and tilts her head to the side as if she’s not hearing me correctly.
I clarify, “I’m glad you came in here. Wanna have sex with me on a cloud? I’ve got another pill I can crush up for you.”
“Um…no thank you,” she answers with a distressed look. “I do not take drugs, and you should lie down.”
“Where are you from? Like your accent,” I watch her walk over to my messy bed and start pulling the bedding straight, like it matters.
“Jamaica,” she answers, turning down the sheets on the bed she just made. “But I’ve lived in Hartford for many years. I have not lost my accent.”
“Hartford. I went to high school near Hartford.” Full seconds tick by as I pick through my brain fuzz for the name of the place. “Beaumont.”
“I know. I went there, too. After you. I was on a scholarship. I just graduated.”
“So that means you’re legal.”
I don’t realize I’ve said this aloud until she throws me another distressed look. “You should…please lie down. I must find my friend but I don’t want to leave you in this room with these bad thoughts in your head.”
I get into the bed. Because she wants me to—not because I am remotely ready for sleep.
But even after she pulls the covers up to my chest, she continues to look down at me, eyes worried. “I will get you some water before I go. Are you okay with tap from the bathroom?”
“Yeah,” I answer, my voice husky for a few reasons. “I’m okay with anything you get me.”
She throws me a disbelieving look before disappearing into the ensuite bathroom. A few minutes later, she returns with some water in a Solo cup that was probably filled with beer before she got to it. My suspicions are confirmed by the faint yeasty taste of the water. But I swear it’s the best fucking cup of water I’ve ever had. Because she got it for me.
She watches me drink every last drop, then disappears back into the bathroom to get more.
This time I drink it slow. I don’t like the way she’s eyeing the door. Like she plans to bolt as soon as she is sure I’m not going to pass out from dehydration.
“Do you know who I am?” I ask her.
She hesitates, a guilty look passing over her dark face. But then she bends down beside me, like we’re exchanging secrets as she says in a low voice, “Yes, I know who you are. But I will not tell anyone about any of this, okay?”
Her voice is like her eyes: soft…lilting…like a really good song I’ve never heard before.
I reach out to touch her face, wondering if her skin is as soft as her deep brown eyes and melodic voice. But I never find out. Before my fingers can even graze her skin, she jerks back. “You are… very altered right now, Holt. You do not know what you are doing.”
But that’s just it, I do know what I am doing. Despite the drugs, I don’t feel numb at all. Not like I’m looking at another of the dozens of women who’ve come through this apartment since I moved in to attend Yale. I didn’t try to touch her because I’m “altered.” I tried to touch her because of her eyes and her voice and the way she laughed at herself when she admitted she hadn’t actually been invited to my stupid fucking party.
“Don’t laugh at yourself,” I mumble. “I would have invited you if I’d known you.”
Another disbelieving look is followed by a soft smile. “Get some sleep, please. I must go find my friend.”
“No, stay,” I tell her.
She shakes her head, eyes firm, yet soft and gentle like her touch. “I must find my friend, and I must return home. But truly, I am glad you did not jump. Your life is a blessing and you should treat it as such.”
Your life is a blessing. Seriously, it was like a Jamaican Hallmark card walked into my room. Nevertheless, her words warm me and fill me up with something I vaguely recognize as hope.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It really does not matter. I am only here for a friend.”
“It matters to me.”
“Because you are in an altered state. On drugs.”
This is a frustrating argument that I’m ironically too high to defend myself against. “So, you want me to call you Jamaica? Because that’s what I’ll have to call you if you don’t give me your name and number.”
“You don’t have to call me anything,” she points out.
“No, I don’t, but I want to,” I answer. “I want to fuck you on top of a cloud and feel your skin on mine while I’m calling you by your name.”
I’m not trying to scare her, really, but I can’t help what I’m saying. The drugs push the words out in a thoughtless jumble with no thought to how she might feel about them.
Her eyes widen and her mouth falls open in a way that makes me want to kiss it shut. I start to lean forward. But then a voice calls out, “There you are!”
We both look up to see another black girl in the open doorway. “I’ve been looking all over for…”
She trails off when she sees me on the bed with Jamaica bent down next to the mattress “…you,” she finishes, blinking at both of us.
Now this girl looks like a friend of Luca’s. She has a Jersey accent and she’s tall and thin with her hair pulled back into a slick puff that goes perfectly with her vintage dress. But unlike most of the girls Luca sends in here, she seems more concerned about her friend than the young billionaire on the bed next to her.
“Are you okay?” she asks Jamaica.
“Yes, I was just…” Jamaica rises to her feet. But instead of breaking her promise not to tell anyone what happened here, she asks her tall friend, “Are you okay? You look upset.”
“Yeah, I’m fine, I guess. I just…” Jersey Girl glances around angrily. “Can we go? I really don’t want to be here anymore and I’m your ride home.”
Before Jamaica can respond I say, “Stay here, and I’ll have a car drive you home.”
“No,” Jersey Girl answers before her friend can say a word. “You think I’m just going to leave her with you? She’s coming with me.”
I tilt my head. “Why are you at my party if you’re not comfortable leaving your friend with me?”
“I don’t know,” Jersey Girl answers with an irritated sigh. “I guess because I’m a idiot. A straight up idiot. But whatever…” She turns to Jamaica and says, “Let’s go.”
“No, wait,” I say, sitting up in bed. “You can stay. How about if I—?”
Jamaica cuts me off with an apologetic shake of her head. “I’m so sorry. But of course I must go with her. She is my friend.”
I pause, stymied because I’ve got nothing to counter that with but, “Yeah, she’s your friend, but I’m Holt Calson.”
I don’t realize I have said this aloud until Jamaica’s head jerks back and her friend says, “Oh wow, you did not just say that!”
After a beat of stunned silence Jamaica says, “I know who you are. But I really must go now.”
No, fuck that. This girl has no idea how long it’s been since I felt…well, anything for anyone. I’d been keeping myself more or less permanently numb since graduating from Yale in May. But there was something about this girl. Something that cut through the usual haze like a shot of adrenaline delivered straight to the heart.
“Wait…wait. Just wait,” I say, fighting the covers to get out of the bed.
But it’s too late. Her friend pulls her out of the room, leaving me tangled up in bedsheets that I’m too messed up to get out of.
“Fuck!” I yell when the door closes behind them. I have no idea who either of those girls were. Or how to find Jamaica if she leaves before I can stop her.
When I finally disengage myself from the bedding, I stumble out to the party, searching for Jamaica. But I can’t find her or her friend anywhere.
And I must be really gone over this girl because for a minute I forget why I haven’t left this apartment building since graduation. Why I threw this party in the first place instead of just going out.
I make it three steps outside the apartment before the pins and needles attack my body. A piercing wind fills my head and I break out in a sweat so sudden, I can feel it cold and dripping down my head. Choking, I rush back inside, slamming the door closed behind me before my muscles start contracting and eventually give out.
“Heya, Holt. You alright?” someone asks behind me.
I look over my shoulder. It’s Luca, and he’s got some hot blonde with him who he says wants to try out the stuff he brought back from his trip to Ibiza. The trip I was supposed to go on with him and our former suitemates. The trip I opted out of because of this, because of what’s been happening every time I try to leave this apartment.
I can breathe again…but I don’t respond. Instead, I push past them and return to my room where I search for my phone to call down to Javon. But when I do, he tells me the girls are long gone.
“Everything okay?” he asks, voice suspicious. “Did they steal something?”
In a sudden rage, I throw my blackberry against the nearest wall instead of answering. But I don’t get any satisfaction from watching it smash into pieces.
A few minutes later, I’m back on the balcony. Still not planning to jump. I just need some air. And ever since graduation when I turned into the second coming of Howard Hughes, going out on my balcony is the only way I can breathe natural air these days.
But the air doesn’t help. The numbness begins to set in again, pushing at the memory of her like she never happened at all. Time to go back inside, I decide. Go out to the party and invite Luca’s friend to come to my room and suck me off, take my mind off the one who literally got away.
But when I turn around, I see it, lying just inside the open French doors. And it makes me stop. Stop…and grin, because like a Jamaican Cinderella, she’s left something very important behind.
SYLVIE
“How was that talk you just had to go to?” Mommy asks when I walk through the door almost an hour earlier than I said I would.
She is in the front room, seated sideways on a folding chair next to Daddy’s recliner. She pushes a spoon loaded with applesauce and crushed up nighttime pills into my father’s mouth. “Not too good if you be home this early,” she answers before I can.
Prin and I planned out every detail of my lie on our way down to New Haven, but now I find myself simply saying, “No, he was a good speaker.” And I leave it there without going into the carefully composed list of observations I’d made after watching his Ted Talk online. Because I do not want to lie. Because I do not want to think any more about tonight. About the drug-addled boy who stared at me so intensely. Or how upset Prin had been on the drive back to Hartford. Luckily she only had to drive a few miles east to Beaumont tonight, since seniors we’re given a week to move out of their dorm rooms after graduation. She was so very upset, I don’t think I could have trusted her to get home by herself if she was going all the way back to New Jersey.
“What did you say his name was again?” Mommy asks while using a cloth napkin to wipe away some applesauce that has dribbled out of Daddy’s mouth.
My heart catches because for a moment I think she is asking about Holt Calson, that she’s somehow found out. But then I realize she is still gathering information about the pretend version of where I went tonight.
“Malcolm Gladwell,” I answer, scanning all the medical equipment beside Daddy’s chair.
I don’t like the level on his catheter, so I go into the kitchen and fish a new drainage bag and a plastic bedpan out of the bottom cabinet where we keep all his medical supplies in a tidy plastic organizer. One I am pretty sure Mommy bought from Cal-Mart. Without warning, my skin warms with the memory of how the Cal-Mart heir had looked at me. Hungrily, like he wanted to gulp me down the way he gulped down that first glass of water I brought him.
Boys never look at me like that. Not ever.
I close the cabinet and stand with the new bag before I can delve too deeply into that thought. I wonder how long it will be before I forget or can even stop thinking about my brief meeting with Holt Calson.
“And you say he a Jamaican?” Mommy asks when I return to the living room. Still on the subject of Malcolm Gladwell.
I can feel both sets of my parents’ eyes on me as I bend down on the other side of Daddy’s recliner. They’ve been like this since they put Lydia on that plane: suspicious bordering on distrustful. And asking more questions than necessary about anything I tell them.
“His mama is,” I answer, setting down the plastic container under the catheter bag clipped to the side of Daddy’s recliner.
“He only wanted a few sips of water with dinner. The bag is most likely fine,” Mommy says.
“Just in case,” I answer as I change the bag, grateful for the excuse not to look her in the eye.
“Alright, you are the smarter one than me when it comes to these things. And you say this man gets paid to talk to young people? About what exactly?”
“Ideas,” I answer. I can feel Daddy’s eyes on me, as interested in my answers as my mother even if ALS has taken away his ability to speak.
“Ideas,” Mommy says with a harrumph of a laugh as if she’d never heard of such a thing. “Daddy and me was talking about it. We could understand if it be a singer like Mr. Belafonte. Or maybe even that runner Usain Bolt. But imagine you girls driving all the way down to New Haven to hear a man with a Jamaican mumma talk about ideas. Probably none of them even close to godly!”
I don’t answer, don’t argue with her about the value of ideas that aren’t regurgitated from a pulpit every Sunday morning. I’ve learned Lydia’s lesson and I don’t want to be put on the next plane to Jamaica. So, I finish changing out the catheter bag in silence. Then I help my mom get my father out of the recliner and into his wheelchair, and then into the bed they still share.
While Mommy readies herself for bed in the bathroom, I take Daddy through his nighttime routine. Uncurling his painfully thin body on the bed and slipping an oxygen mask over his mouth to help him breathe at night.
He doesn’t communicate to me as clearly as he can with my mother, but I can feel his thoughts. Grateful, embarrassed, sad, resigned…
His hair used to be jet black. Not 1B like my mother and sister, but jet black, same as mine. However, three years after receiving his ALS diagnosis, Daddy’s hair is more salt than pepper. He is either aging faster than a one-term president, or he was dyeing his hair before. Either way, it feels like ALS has taken everything from him along with the privacy he enjoyed before I started helping Mommy take care of his every need.
He can’t weigh more than 100 pounds now, I think, stroking a hand over his wiry hair. I wonder how his life would have turned out if he’d never been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. But I no longer wish for it like I used to. ALS has been a kind disease in that way. It took our hope away, flare up by flare up until one day, all I wanted was for my father to die in peace knowing he was loved during his time on this earth.
But tonight is different. After I put his breathing apparatus on, I look at him and he looks at me, and I wonder if he knows I lied to him and Mommy. Lied to save Prin like I couldn’t save Lydia.
Strangely, I want to tell him about what happened. How I’d met Holt Calson, the sad little boy we’d read about in the newspaper when his mother killed herself in the dead of night. How he wasn’t at all as I’d expected. Neither completely sad, nor standard Beaumont issue.
How I’d recognized him, but just barely. Because the clean-cut boy who cut the ribbon on the Calson Center, had been buried beneath a tangle of long blond hair and a scraggly beard, patchy and resentful—like even it knew it had no business at all covering his beautiful face. How his eyes had been…mesmerizing. A perfect classic blue, but pained like he was bleeding out from a wound no one else could see.
I should have felt sorry for him. Under the influence of God knew what. Confused about what he wanted from the girl who’d shown up on his balcony and told him to come inside. But instead of pity, I felt something else. Especially when he said he wanted to have sex on a cloud with me….
But of course, I don’t tell my father any of this. I don’t say anything but, “Good night, Daddy,” as I lean over and kiss him on his forehead. It’s dry and still smooth, despite the gray hair.
