Close: A New Adult Thriller

It’s supposed to go like this. You’re out at a bar and your eyes meet the man of your dreams across a crowded room, and the connection is instant. Or, you’re driving along, minding your own business, when some asshole, who’s not looking where he’s going, runs into you. Except he’s not any regular asshole, in fact he’s your age, and cute as hell, and rich, and will do anything to make up for the inconvenience, including taking you out to dinner, or for a trip on his yacht. Or

Well, you get the picture. There are a thousand variations on the theme. It’s such a common device that movie people and screenwriters even have a name for it. They call it the “cute meet”; a random encounter that ends up seeming like it’s destiny, because once these two people have met, and even though there are a ton of obstacles that get in their way, they are meant for each other. And, of course, they live happily ever after.

And, it can happen. Maybe. To other people.

But what they don’t tell you when you’re growing up is that it can go the other way too. One night, one chance encounter can drag you under, ripping you away from the people you love, and leave you questioning everything you’ve ever believed in. It doesn’t just change your life, if you’re not careful, it changes you.

Can you get back from that place? I’m still trying to figure that out. Everyone keeps telling me that the only way I can do it is to learn to trust people again. I need, they tell me, to break down the walls I’ve built up to keep people out; the walls that I use to keep everyone at a distance.

The way they say it, makes it sound easy. It’s really not. You can’t just snap your fingers and the walls are gone. It’s a long, slow, painful process that’s prone to setbacks. That’s what my life is now.

I know they’re right. I want to get back to being the person I was, the old Laura. I really do. The only problem is that she’s gone.

One night, you see. That’s all it takes for your life to change completely.

Not that it’s all bleak. There’s Drew. Though that’s beyond complicated. You might think that you know complicated, but believe me, when it comes to me and Drew (sorry, mom,
Drew and I
), it’s off the chart.

If only I had met him that night, instead of the man who raped me.

Two

Four months earlier

Tonight, I was finally going to be able to let my hair down. My third year of college in California had gone by in a blur. I only had a month to go before I finished for the summer. Tonight was my one chance to let off some steam before all my papers and assignments had to be in.

A full schedule of classes, a not so part-time job as a waitress at the Palace Grill just off State Street, plus all the day-to-day hassles that I never really noticed until I was no longer living at home (laundry, cooking, buying groceries, and generally handling life on my own), had made for a frenetic but ultimately satisfying eight months, and a real sense of achievement. I had made it. Well, almost. Next year, I would be a senior. Then it was out into the big, bad world. Although I already felt like I was dealing with more than most adults had to. I mean how many people studied full-time and worked a job evenings and weekends?

I had finished the year with a less than stellar grade point average, but I had finished all the same. I was never going to be a star student. Not that I was dumb, but I still hadn’t found anything that really excited me yet. There was still time though, and my Mom had told me not to worry about it. She was good like that. Having to be Mom
and
Dad after my Dad had walked out on us when I was still a baby meant that all the usual jobs that might fall to a Dad to take care of, all fell to her. I wasn’t complaining, she always gave good advice, and, at times, we were more like sisters.

In fact, that had been my biggest worry about moving to Santa Barbara for college missing mom. But I had been too busy to think about home, never mind miss it. And, much as I loved her, I liked the independence, the feeling of being an adult, of being able to set my own schedule and of not being answerable to anyone although that wasn’t entirely true, I had a boss at work, and professors to satisfy. I also had, well not exactly a boyfriend, but a guy I’d been dating on and off.

There was a knock at my dorm room door. Fresh from the shower, with a towel still wrapped around me, I called out, “Who is it?” even though I knew it could only be one person.

“Like, duh, it’s a serial killer,” Kishani shouted from the other side of the door.

I had met Kishani on my first day, and we had pretty much become inseparable since then, although I wasn’t exactly sure why Kishani had made the decision to befriend me. Unlike me, Kishani didn’t have to work a job. Her father, who’d grown up in Sri Lanka but gone to college at Harvard and married into a pretty WASPY New England family, was some big-shot corporate attorney in LA. Not that Kishani’s life hadn’t been without its bumps. While Kish dripped money, and drove a brand new baby Beemer, she had confided to me that at her preppy private boarding school in Massachusetts, her mixed parentage had ensured she was still something of an outsider. No matter our differences, we had bonded. When I wasn’t working, or studying, I was with Kishani.

I opened the door, and Kishani swept in, waving a bottle of Jaegermeister and two shot glasses. “Party time, bitch!”

Like a lot of the rich kids I had met at UCSB, Kishani dropped more cuss words than a longshoreman. It was as if college was everyone’s chance to leave behind the person they’d been back at home and Kishani had embraced the opportunity with vigor.

Kishani immediately crossed to my IPod docking station, scrolled down to a playlist of party tunes, and cranked up the volume. She set down the two shot glasses, poured a double shot of Jaeger into each, handed one to me and took one for herself.

We clinked glasses. “I am
so
going to fuck some poor guy’s brains out tonight,” Kishani said.

I tossed back my drink in a oner. Big mistake. I’d forgotten how much Jaeger tasted like cough medicine. Plus I’d skipped lunch. And dinner. What the hell, I thought. Even if I wasn’t a big drinker, I had no classes tomorrow, and no work until the evening. If I ended up with a hangover it would be mostly clear by then. I could feel the hot rush of the alcohol as it made its way into my stomach. I was already relaxing, loosening up, getting into party mode.

Kishani shook her head from side to side at the taste of the Jaeger as well. She slammed her shot glass down on the desk. “Another shot?”

“Shouldn’t we wait until we get inside the club?”

Kishani pouted. “Party pooper. But, yeah, you’re right. I’d be bummed if we got turned away at the door. You have your ID, right?”

“Of course,” I told her. Pretty much everyone we knew had a fake ID. Some of the clubs could be pretty strict about carding students, and if you couldn’t get into the clubs it made a serious dent in your social life. Plus, it was ridiculous that you could vote, and drive a car, and even get married, but you couldn’t legally buy a beer. I fished my ID from my purse and held it up in front of Kishani as proof.

“Cool,” she said, turning her attention to my wardrobe, opening it up, and flicking through the clothes hanging from the rail. “So what you gonna wear? Let’s see. I think tonight calls for something slutty,” Kishani grinned.

Three

“I can’t go out like this. Seriously, Kish, I can’t. I look like a hooker,” I protested, as Kishani put the final touches to my outfit.

“Oh. My. God. You sound like my Dad. That’s like one of his three favorite phrases in the world, except he says prostitute. It’s right up there with, ‘You must think I’m made of money,’ and ‘The world doesn’t owe you a living, young lady, and neither do I,” said Kishani, waving at my high heels. “Anyway, you need clear heels to get into the hooker’s union. Those are red.”

An outfit of skin-tight jeans, pink crop top, and four inch red heels, chosen, despite my protests, by Kishani, ensured us immediate entry into Divas nightclub on State Street. Divas was a fresh addition to the Santa Barbara club scene, and by the town’s slightly conservative standards, it was a bit more out there. The music was a mix of hardcore dance and hip hop, and beyond the massive double DJ booth, six giant steel columns rose steeply towards a double height corrugated iron ceiling. The columns were linked by cantilevered steel bridges which swayed above a five thousand square foot main dance floor. Three bars ran the full length of three walls. Each column sported a dancer atop it, all of them dressed in bondage gear and covered in body paint. Three of the dancers were female (one blonde, one brunette, and one with a shaved head), two were male, and one, judging by her large breasts and bulging crotch was either transexual or packing a full pack of tube socks down there. If I had been worried about my outfit earning me too much attention, the dancers, not to mention the other female clubgoers, put me at ease.

Kishani pulled me through the throngs of sweaty bodies on the dance floor to the nearest bar, where she secured us the last two remaining stools. “See, isn’t this fun?” she said without a hint of irony, waving a twenty at the bartender.

“I guess.”

In truth, I didn’t just not go clubbing because of school or work. The fact was that I had always, in some small way, felt like an old lady trapped in a girl’s body. I didn’t like music so loud that it gave you a headache, or places so packed with bodies that you worried about the oxygen running out. But, for Kish’s sake, if for no one else, I was going to make the effort to let go a little.

My cell phone flashed with a text. It was John, my on/off kind of boyfriend. He was a slightly dweeby junior, who played soccer, and was studying business. He was sweet, with a nice smile, and, well yeah, that was kind of it. Like Joan Didion had said about Los Angeles, ‘there’s no there, there.’ That makes me sound bitchy, but you can’t will yourself into falling in love with someone. I knew, because I’d really tried.

John was at the dorm and wondering where I was. I’d vaguely mentioned going out, but hadn’t said too much because I really wanted to hang with Kish, and she and him didn’t get on. He thought she was way too loud and obnoxious, and she thought he was boring.

I texted him back with an apology, gave him the name of the club and asked him to come over. He texted straight back.

“Divas? Really? OMW.”

I laughed and put my cell back in my purse. Despite her frantic waving of a twenty at the bartender, and squeezing her boobs together to maximize the cleavage on show, Kishani wasn’t having much luck getting us a drink. The press of bodies was so great that I doubted if he could even see us.

A man’s voice came from directly behind us, deep and commanding and loud enough to cut through the babble of the crowd at the bar and the wall-shudderingly loud dance music.

“Yo! Over here, bro!”

I half turned to see a tanned white guy with a thick mop of blonde hair, a little older than most of the crowd, with his arm around a young blonde coed, beckoning the bartender towards him. When he saw me looking at him he shot me a broad, friendly smile. He was hot. He would have been hotter if he hadn’t have known how hot he was.

The bartender walked down the bar, ignoring us, and leaning over to take the guy’s order. Kishani scowled at them both. “Who’s a girl gotta blow to get a freakin’ drink around here?”

The guy with the smile glanced back over at us. “Is your friend always so direct?” he said to me, laughing as he said it. “You know a comment like that could get a girl into trouble in a place like this.”

He re-directed the bartender with a nod of his head. “Do me a favour and serve these two first, before this one starts handing out blow jobs and we get shut down.”

The bartender came over and took Kishani’s order before heading back to the guy with the smile. I leaned over towards him.

“What did you mean you get shut down? Is this your club?” I asked, figuring the guy was playing at being a big shot for the blonde girl currently draped all over him.

He shrugged. “My family owns the building. We don’t run the club. But they do pay us way more than if we had another tenant.” His chest brushed Kishani’s back as he got up and leaned over with his hand out. “I’m Bentley.”

“Laura. And the girl with the potty mouth is Kishani.”

Bentley seemed to suddenly remember his female companion. “Oh, and this is...”

“Tori,” Tori filled in, oblivious to the fact that Bentley clearly couldn’t remember her name.

“So what’s the deal? You students here?” Bentley asked us.

“Just graduating,” said Kish.

“Juniors,” I said, correcting her.

He gave me that big, broad grin again. There was a warmth to his eyes I hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t trying to creep on us. “Well, make sure to enjoy it. It goes fast.”

“Did you study here?” I asked him

He laughed but it was a laugh directed more at himself than me. I noticed Tori’s hand slip territorially around his waist. “I’m not really the academic type. Plus,” he waved his arms up at the ceiling, then brought them down, sweeping the whole place up with his gesture, “I’ve really not had much of an incentive to excel at anything, if you know what I mean.”

I felt myself harden towards him a little. “That your way of you telling me you’re rich. Pretty smooth.”

His brow furrowed. “I didn’t mean it like that. I wasn’t showing off. Honestly.”

Kishani took our drinks from the bartender. She grabbed me by the elbow and began to haul me away from the guy with the smile. “Let’s go dance.”

“Guess I’ll see you around,” I said as I was hauled away.

Bentley raised his bottle of beer in a salute. “Have fun.”

After an hour on the dance floor, I headed back to the bar with Kishani. The guy with the smile and the blonde girl, Tori, were gone. John had got here and he had drinks lined up for us. Eyes dilated, face flushed, he greeted us both with a hug.

“Hey,” he slurred.

I had never seem him drunk before. It was kind of funny. He was usually so in-control. “Have you been drinking?”

“Maybe a couple,” he said, a goofy smile plastered over his face.

He handed us each a shot glass. As he raised his to his lips, a beefy football player type walked past, bumping into him and knocking the contents of the shot glass all over his shirt. John spun round, angry.

“Hey, look what you did.”

The football player eyed him in a way that told me the bump hadn’t been entirely accidental. The guy was about twice John’s size and looking for trouble.

“Get a life, asshole,” the football player said.

John raised his hand and shoved the guy in the chest. “Screw you.” It had about as much effect as trying to move a cliff face. The football player’s right hand bunched into a fist. I took that as my cue to move between them.

“Look, forget it, okay?” I said.

“Fuck you, bitch,” the football player said, shoving me hard in the chest. The force of the push sent me spinning backwards. I toppled into Kishani and fell, my head glancing off the metal lip of the bar as I went down.

All hell broke loose as John took a swing at the guy, connecting with his face. The football player grabbed John around the throat with one hand. I tried to get back onto my feet, and get between them before the big, dumb jock killed him. Kishani screamed and people began to look around.

The football player drew back his hand and let go with a jab. John managed to break free in time and the punch caught him in the shoulder.

Security staff were moving through the crowd towards them us. Not fast enough for my liking.

Next thing I knew, a guy’s hand appeared from nowhere and grabbed me by the arm, pulling me back onto my feet. I looked up to see the guy I had spoken to earlier, the older guy with the smile, Bentley. He stepped in between John and the football player. The football player was still bigger than him but it was much more of an even match.

The older guy held up open palms. “Let’s call it a tie.”

The football player stared blankly at him, but his hands fell back to his side. With a parting shot of “asshole”, he melted back into the crowd as two heavy security staff arrived on the scene. The older guy must have known them because he spoke to them for a few minutes as they eyed John, and then they left.

Bentley patted John on the shoulder. “You okay, bro?”

John nodded.

Bentley turned to us. “That guy,” he said, nodding in the direction of the retreating football player, “has his buddies with him. You might want to think about getting out of here, like now. He comes back with them and I’m not going to be able to stop them again.”

Kishani blew a stray lock of hair from her eyes. “That’s just great.”

“Party doesn’t have to be over,” the older guy said.

Kishani shot John a poisonous look, like the whole thing had been his fault. “Yeah, it kind of does. We won’t get into another club this late.”

Bentley smiled. “If you all want to hang out, I have a place up the coast. Right on the beach.”

We all traded looks. None of us wanted the night to end on this bum note. And if Bentley hadn’t shown up, John would have had his ass kicked.

“Why not?” Kishani said. “I mean, what the fuck, right?”