Denial (2 page)

“He cheats on you.”
So you’ll go there.

My heart starts to race, heat flaring across my neck and cheeks as my stomach twists. “No, we just have flexible boundaries.” I
am never letting her see how much it bothers again.

“Obviously,” she laughs bitterly.

“I’m not going to talk about this with you again. Like I said, I do not have to explain myself.”

“How convenient.”

“Give me my bag. Now.” I shock her as much as myself when I rip it out of her hands. “
Move.
This is ridiculous.”

“You can’t go. This is crazy.
Please
,” her voice cracks. Could she actually be frightened as she sounds? Now I really feel guilty.

“Piper, I’ll probably be back tonight,” I reassure her. Her face contorts. “Are you seriously crying?”
Piper never cries. Dammit.

“I can’t help it,” she blubbers. “I have a horrible feeling about this.”

“I just want to check him out.” I have to get out of here. If listen to any more of this, I’ll chicken out.

“No!” She grabs my forearm with both of her hands, her nails digging into my skin.

“Piper, relax.”

“No!” she wails. “This is one of those defining, fork in the road moments that old people talk about. One that will still haunt you in 50 years, that you wish could come back to because you ignore your gut and make the wrong move right before something really horrible happens.”

“Nothing is going to happen. It’s Luke’s friend. I’ll be fine.”

“Maya—”
Her hands are shaking as much as her voice. Why did she have to come home?

“Listen, Piper, I’m even a little…. excited about it, okay. If you catch my drift,” I exaggerate, playing up this little sliver of arousal that cuts through the anxiety every so many random thoughts.

“Are you sure?”

“If he’s creepy, I’m out of there,” I say. She eyes me suspiciously. “Yes, even if he’s hot. And let’s face it, he’s probably going to be creepy so chances are this entire exhausting conversation is a waste of time and energy.” Time for Piper’s prolonged eye contact emotional pat down. One sniff of hesitation and she won’t believe me. Luckily, this is the kind of lying that I’m good at.

“I cannot believe that you’re doing this.” She releases her grip and throws her arms around me into a big bear hug. I hide my face into her shoulder for a moment. I always fall back on Piper’s superior intuition because mine is defective, but she has to be wrong this time. Luke wouldn’t do that to me.

“Okay, I’m making my exit now,” I laugh as we break apart. “Please don’t tackle me.”

“If this turns out to be fun, I want a full report.”

“Probably not a full report.”

“Steamy abridged version. If you don’t call me tonight, I’m calling the cops.”

No, you’ll call your father in the morning.
“I will. But I want until midnight and then you get nothing until I get home. I’m still going on a phone fast.”

“Your only means of contact with the outside world is going to be confiscated, isn’t it?”

“Surrendered,” I correct her.

“Great. If they don’t kill you, I’m going to when you get back.”

“If I get
lucky
and don’t come back tonight, have fun on vacation. Be nice to your mom.”

“That is like two weeks away! Do you
really think you’ll make it that long?”

“
Hopefully, yes.”

“I’d tell you to be careful, but why bother?” Obviously, she’s still a little pissed. I better go while I have chance.

“Right.” It doesn’t matter that things are tense between us because I probably will be back tonight. Still, it just feels wrong. “Love ya, Pipes.”

“Wait!” She bounds across the living room and nearly knocks me over in a hug. “Be careful. Really, really fucking careful. Ask a lot of questions, make him show his cards. And if you are even a little bit weirded out, get the hell out of there. Don’t forget how smart you are.”

“Okay,” I peep.

“You’d better come home in one piece, Maya.”

“I will.”

I manage to keep myself from crying until I’m at the end of the block because I know she’s watching me. It’s going to be a long drive.

2

The first step to going through with this is getting out of my car. Too bad I can’t make myself open the door. After at least a dozen attempts, I haven’t even gotten close to touching the handle because my stomach twists until I choke. I’m twenty minutes late, but I’ve been sitting in front of this house for a half an hour.

My hearing zeros in on this off key cricket that’s been annoying me since I got here. Am I going in or not? There is no point in pretending that I want to do this for myself anymore. It’s for him, like everything else
lately. But if I don’t get out of this car Luke will leave me, no matter what he says. It’s written all over his face whenever we’re together now.

A limo pulls up and a guy in a super c
reepy horse mask gets out. His hoof boots are impressively realistic. The woman that follows him is probably over six feet tall in those heels, clad from head to toe in red leather and more buckles than I can count. Is she seriously going to make that guy on a leash crawl the whole way to the door? Surely it will destroy the knees of those spectacular vinyl pants. Yeah, this is definitely the house. So much for low key.

“What exactly did you sign me up for,
Luke?” He can’t answer me because he isn’t here. It seems like he should be.

Another limo arrives. One of the women exiting is only wearing stripper heels, a thong, pasties, and an ornate masquerade mask. It’s starting to look like a photo shoot for a fetish wear catalog. He knew this would happen. What a creative way to break up.

I am so glad that I didn’t get out of my car. I should probably drive away now, but I’m transfixed by the unraveling scene. Luke comes to these sorts of parties all the time, at least I think he does. They all start cheering when a town car pulls up. Maybe he’s the guest of honor because the front door opens when he gets to it, allowing the entire freak show floods inside. Another limo pulls up. It’s time to get out of here.

My shaking hands are useless tonight. They couldn’t open the door and now they can’t turn the keys still dangling out of the ignition. Breathe. When I open my eyes, I take one last look at the house and
I’m just too curious to leave. What goes on in there? Would I like it?

Piper keeps asking me how this all started. The obvious answer would be the day I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that
Luke was cheating on me, but I couldn’t tell her.

It was a little over six months ago. I was standing in his kitchen waiting for him to finish getting ready when I saw his phone just lying there on the counter. He’d never left it unattended and if this was some sort of test, I was about to fail. I still don’t know why I looked. I knew better. When you decide that it’s best to stay in the dark about something you shouldn’t start feeling around on the walls for a light switch. Plus it was rude and technically spying, a big relationship no-no in general. Especially with a guy like
Luke.

Curiosity got the better of me and I snooped, fully aware that I would probably see something that I wouldn’t be able to unsee. Did I ever. So many texts from so many girls, nearly every one of them beyond inappropriate. And the pictures. Was he in some sort of a contest for who could get the most chicks to send him a pic of their boobs? Things seemed to be way too serious with
Christina, whoever that was. She was a lot prettier than me. They text nearly every day.

I wasn’t stupid. I knew he was being unfaithful, but didn’t think there were so many other women in his life. Nor did I fully anticipate my reaction, which was physically painful. My ears were ringing as I forced myself to put the phone down. There was a black hole in my stomach and I was relatively certain at least one of my lungs had collapsed because it was so difficult to breathe.

That might have been the last day that I was able to keep myself from crying if I needed to. What a shitty moment to lose that ability. I was fighting back the tears, struggling against the impulse to run out of the door when it happened.

I have an excellent memory, but this was new. At first I thought it was a hallucination because it was frighteningly vivid. I could still see a fuzzy version of
Luke’s place with my eyes but in my mind I was standing in the kitchen at my Aunt Tanya’s house. It was the middle of the night and I wasn’t sure what I was doing there, but I vaguely remembered my mother picking me up out of bed and carrying me to the car.

My little bare feet were cold as I stood motionless on the faded yellow linoleum kitchen floor. A lot of the corners were chipped away and some tiles were cracked in half, exposing the black glue and wood below them. It felt like I was standing on sand because Tanya never cleaned and the floor was so disgusting. The orange flecks of dirt were easily identified as generic cheese puff residue, but some of it was a beautiful bright turquoise and made me wonder what kind of candy my cousins were getting that I wasn’t.

Mom was sitting at the table with her face in her hands, sobbing louder and harder than I thought it was possible for grownups to cry. My aunt was whispering to someone on the phone, but her face was extremely red and it looked like she was yelling when her bright blue eyes locked with mine. She told whoever it was to go fuck themselves and slammed down the receiver, sending an echo of a ring that got quieter as my mother’s crying started to get a little more hysterical. It scared me.

Tanya flashed me a big smile, the fake kind that an adult uses to make you feel better but you just end up feeling worse because you know they want you to think everything is okay when it obviously is not. I had only just breached the doorway and my distracted mother hadn’t seen me yet. My aunt glanced in her direction and then back at me, bringing her shaking hand up to her mouth and biting one of her fingernails. She padded over to me and scooped me into her arms as I cringed because she smelled so strongly of cigarettes. I still hate that smell.

Aside from the kitchen, the house was dark and shadowy as we walked down the hallway to her bedroom where my sister was sleeping. Tanya laid me down next to her and closed the door. There was something about the way Laurel was breathing that told me she’d been crying really hard before she fell asleep, but I couldn’t remember why. I could hear the trucks on the expressway as I wondered what was going on for a while before I finally fell asleep.

My earlier panic had turned to a familiar numbness as the memory faded away.
Luke was walking out of his bedroom, talking about whatever expensive restaurant he was taking me to and his cell phone went off just as he started to notice that I wasn’t responding to him. His hand immediately flew to his pocket and he ran over to the counter. Eyebrows raising, he chuckled under his breath and texted back. I never asked him who was on the phone because deep down I didn’t want to know but now I did and things were never going to be the same. Before he looked up, I was running to the bathroom, absolutely positive that I was going to puke which is exactly what happened.

I gave him some line about running a fever earlier and being worried about catching something from school. He had this flabbergasted look on his face as I ran out the door. Once inside my car I was expecting to cry but instead I started laughing at myself for being so
frigging stupid that I just had to test my limits to see if I could really handle it. As I was driving home, I could hear my mother’s sobbing so clearly. That was the first time I’d had that memory, which might technically be my first memory ever because until that moment it had been watching my biological father’s car back out of the driveway for the last time. This had to be earlier though because I didn’t see Tanya again until I was around 12. Mom found out she was one of several women sleeping with my dad.

This first memory is ironically making me think of another thread in my brain I stopped tracing back a long time ago. I’ve always known that monogamy is fairytale bullshit, which is part of the reason that I’m here. Or maybe if I get right down to it, the only reason that I’m here. Which would mean that moment where I’m standing in the doorway of my home wrecking aunt’s kitchen is the actual event that led me to be sitting in the dark in my car right now next to this off key cricket.

Unfortunately I do not have time to fully experience this realization because that extremely attractive guy wearing a well-tailored black suit with no tie that just walked out from behind this house I’m supposed to be inside totally sees me. And he appears to be striding confidently in this direction. Crap. I can’t just tear out of here. He’s close enough now that I can see he doesn’t look particularly menacing. Actually, he’s getting cuter with every step he takes. Nobody’s eyes are naturally that green and whoever cuts his hair doesn’t get paid enough regardless of how much they make because they are doing the entire world a favor.

He’s got this look on his face that’s not quite cocky enough to be irritating but pretty damn close, with a tilted smile edging on a smirk. My breath catches in my throat and my heart is trying to migrate to a different location in my chest. Why are my cheeks so warm?
He is seriously gorgeous and he so knows it. Is that making him even hotter? If this is the guy I’m supposed to meet here maybe I can do this.