Fearless: No. 2 - Sam (Fearless) (3 page)

He smiled at her. This time it was sweet, open, real.

"THAT STUPID PUNK WILL NOT KILL Gaia!" he thundered. "Do you understand?"

He strode to the far end of the loft apartment and kicked over a side table laden with coffee mugs. Most rolled;
one shattered.
One of the two bodyguards who hovered in the background came forward to clean them up.

He spun on Ella. He hated her face at moments like this.
"Do you understand?"

"Of course I understand," she said sullenly. "I wasn't expecting her to climb out the window," she added in a scornful mumble.

"Learn
to
expect
it!" he bellowed. "Gaia is
not
an ordinary girl! Haven't you figured that
out?"

Ella's eyes darted with reptilian alertness, but she wisely kept her mouth shut.

"Gaia is no use to me dead. I will not let it happen. I don't care how crazy the girl is. I don't care if she throws herself in the path of a bus. I will
not
let it happen!" He was ranting now. He couldn't stop now if he wanted to. He'd always had a bad temper.

"Show me the pictures," he demanded of Ella.

Reluctantly Ella came near and put the pile in his hands.

He studied the first one for a long time. It was Gaia sitting alone on a park bench. Her face was tipped down, partly obscured by long, pale hair. Her gray sweatshirt was sagging off one shoulder. Her long legs were crossed, and a little burst of light erupted from the reflective patch on her running shoe. A box of doughnuts sat open on the bench next to her.

Her gesture and manner were so familiar to him, he felt an odd stirring in his chest. Though Gaia was undeniably beautiful with her graceful, angular face, she didn't resemble Katia. Katia had dark glossy hair, brown eyes flecked with orange, and a smaller, more voluptuous build.

In the next picture Gaia's head was raised, and in the shadow behind her was the boy pointing the gun at her head. The boy looked agitated, his eyes wild. Yet Gaia's face was impossibly calm. He brought the picture close. Remarkable.
Utterly fascinating.
There was no fear in those wide-set blue eyes. He would know. He had a great gift for detecting fear.

Gaia was indeed everything he had heard about her. All the more reason why he could not accept another ridiculous close call like this one.

He glanced at the next picture. The boy was leaning in closer, his face clenched as he prepared to pull the trigger.

"Keep that boy and his stupid friends away from her," he barked at Ella.

"Yes," she mumbled.

"He will not get that gun anywhere near Gaia!"

"Yes, sir."

He glared at Ella with withering eyes. "Hear me now, Ella. If
anyone
kills Gaia Moore, it will be me."

Ella's gaze was cast to the ground.

He studied the next picture in the pile. This one showed Gaia standing in all her ferocious glory, flipping that pitiful boy over her shoulder. Her face was wonderfully alert, intense. She was magnificent. More than he could have hoped for.

No, Gaia didn't resemble Katia, he decided as he studied the lovely face in the picture.
Gaia resembled him.

SHE PROBABLY WOULDN'T EVEN BE
there. Why would she? She'd be avoiding him if she had any sense.

Sam Moon hurried into Washington Square Park with his physics textbook tucked under his arm. Then again, if
he
had any sense, he'd be avoiding
her
. Instead he was darting around the park at all hours like some kind of timid stalker, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

He approached the shaded area where the chess tables sat, surveying them almost hungrily. No. She wasn't there. It verged on ridiculous, the physical feeling of disappointment that radiated through his abdomen.

He kept his distance, reviewing his options. He didn't want to plunge right into chess world because then all his cohorts would see him and he'd be stuck for at least a game or two. And he'd found out the hard way that when
Gaia was on his mind
(and when wasn't she?), he was a lot worse at chess.

Maybe she had come and gone already. Maybe she'd caught sight of him from a distance and taken off. Maybe she really did hate him --

"Moon?"

Sam practically leaped right out of his clothes. He spun around. "Jesus, Renny, you scared the crap out of me."

Renny smiled in his open, friendly way. He was a wiry-looking, barely adolescent Puerto Rican kid who was quickly becoming a
lethal
chess player. "You looking for Gaia?"

Sam's face fell. Was his head made of glass? Was his romantic torment, which he believed to be totally private and unique, available for public display? Was everybody who knew him talking and snickering about it? Even the chess nerds, who wouldn't ordinarily notice if you'd had
one of your legs amputated?

"No," Sam lied defensively. "Why?"

"I figure you're getting tired of whipping the rest of us. Gaia could probably get a game off you, huh?"

Sam studied Renny's face for signs of cleverness or mockery. No. Renny wasn't being a wise guy. He wasn't suddenly Miss Lonely Hearts. Renny was thinking the same way he always thought, like a chess player.

Sam let out a breath. He tried to relax the crackling nerve synapses in his neck and shoulders. There was a word for this:
paranoia
.

"Yeah," Sam said in a way he hoped was nonchalant. "Maybe one or two. If she was on her game."

"Yeah," Renny said, "she's unbelievable." Renny's eyes got a little glassy, but Sam could tell he was fantasizing about Gaia's stunning end play, not about her lips or her eyes.

Unlike Sam.

"Yeah," Sam repeated awkwardly.

"See you." Renny clapped him on the back agreeably and waded into chess world. Sam watched Renny take the first open seat across from Mr. Haq, whose taxicab was predictably parked (illegally) at the nearest curb. That was the downside of playing Mr. Haq. If the cops came, he abandoned the game and put his cab back into action. And no matter how badly you were creaming him, Mr. Haq would always refer to it afterward as "an undecided match."

Sam found his way to a nearby bench with a good view of the chess area. He opened his physics book, lame prop that it was.

What had happened to his resolution to forget about Gaia? He'd decided to put her out of his mind for good and focus all of his romantic energy on Heather, but Gaia was like a drug. She was in his blood, and he couldn't get her out. He was a junkie, an addict. He knew Gaia was bad for him. He knew she'd undermine his commitments and basically ruin his life. But he obsessed about her, anyway. Was there a twelve-step program for an addiction like this?
Gaia Worshipers Anonymous?

He remembered that antidrug slogan that had scared him as a kid.
This is your brain.
He pictured the sizzling egg.
This is your brain thinking of Gaia.

Clearly his decisions, vows, determinations, and oaths to forget Gaia weren't enough. Maybe it was time to try a different tack.

What if he attempted to relate to her as a normal person? Just talk to her about everyday things like school and extracurricular activities and stuff like that? Maybe he could
demystify
the whole relationship.

Maybe he and Gaia could even have a meal together. You couldn't easily idolize a girl while she was stuffing her face. She would probably order something he hated like lox or coleslaw. She would chew too loudly or maybe wear a bit of red cabbage on her front tooth for a while.
Maybe she would spit a little when she talked.
Afterward she would have bad breath or maybe a grease spot on her pants, and voilà. Obsession over.

Yes. This was a practical idea. Demystification.

Because after all, although Gaia came off as a pretty extraordinary person on the outside, on the inside she was just the same as anybody else.

. . . right?

SHE WAS A MESS.

She was a nightmare.

She should have her license to be female revoked.

Gaia turned around to look at her backside in the slightly warped mirror that hung on the back of the door to her room. Earlier that day she'd picked up a pair of capri pants off the sale rack at the Gap in an effort to look cute and feminine. Instead she looked like the Incredible Hulk
right after he turns green
and bursts out of his clothing.

What kind of shoes were you supposed to wear with these things? Definitely not boots, as she could plainly see in the mirror. Was it too late in the year to wear flip-flops?

Sam was not going to fall in love with her. He was going to take one look and run screaming in the opposite direction. Either that or laugh uncontrollably.

Why was she torturing herself
this way? In her ordinary life she managed to pull off the functional style of a person who didn't care. She had no money, which occasionally resulted in the coincidental coolness of thrift shop dressing.

But now that Gaia actually cared, she had turned herself into a neurotic, insecure freak show.

Caring was to be deplored and avoided. Hadn't she learned that by now?

She stripped off the pants and pulled on her least-descript pair of jeans. She pulled a nubbly sweater the color of oatmeal over her head.

Better ugly than a laughingstock.
That was Gaia's new fashion motto.

She had to get out of the house before Ella sauntered in and recognized the beaded necklace Gaia had "borrowed." Ella was a whiny, dumb bimbo, but she had a nose for fashion trends. Gaia had every intention of returning the necklace before it was missed, so why cause a big fuss by asking?

Gaia thundered down the three flights of stairs, slammed the painted oak-and-glass door behind her, turned her key in the lock, and struck out for the park.

And to think she'd come home after school to work on her appearance.

She hurried past the picture-perfect row houses. Lurid red geraniums still exploded in the window boxes. Decorative little front fences cast long shadows in the late day sun, putting Gaia's shadow in an attenuated, demented-looking prison.

After a few blocks, Gaia suddenly paused as the sound of heavy guitar music blared through an open basement window, followed by a raspy tenor voice. "framed/you set me up, set me out and/blamed/you tore me up, tore me down and/chained/you tied me up, tied me down and . . ." It was that band again -- Fearless. For a fleeting moment Gaia wanted to shout through the window and ask them where they got their bizarrely Gaia-centric name, but she had to keep moving.

She didn't have much time. CJ probably wasn't crazy enough to open fire on her in daylight, but once the sun got really low, she had to be ready for it, especially hanging around the park. How typical of her new life in the biggest city in the United States that the guy she wanted to seduce and the guy who wanted to shoot her hung out in exactly the same space.

Her stomach started to churn as she got close. What was she going to say to Sam?

"Hi, I know you have a girlfriend and don't like me at all, but do you want to have sex?"

On the one-in-ten-billion chance that he agreed to her insane scheme, what then? They couldn't just do it on a park bench.

Suddenly the actual, three-dimensional Sam, sitting on a bench with a clunky-looking textbook open on his lap, replaced the Sam in her mind.

Oh, crap. Was it too late? Had he seen her?

"Gaia?"

That would mean yes.

Swallow.
"Hi." She tried out a friendly smile that came off more like the expression a person might make when burning a finger on the top of the toaster.

He stood up, his smile looking equally pained. "How's it going?"

She hooked her thumbs in the front pockets of her pants. "Oh, fine. Fine." What was she? A farmer?

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Great."

Oh, this was awful. This
come-hither Gaia
was a complete disaster. Why couldn't she be cute and flirty
and
have a personality?

He was clearly at a loss. "Do you, uh . . . want to play a game of chess?"

She would have agreed to
pull out her toenails
to escape this awkward situation.

"Yeah, sure, whatever," she said lightly. God, what a wordsmith she was.

"Or we could just, like, take a walk. Or something."

"Great. Sure," she said. Had her vocabulary shrunk to four words?

"Or we could even sit here for a couple of minutes."

"Yeah," she proclaimed.

"Fine," he countered.

"Great," she said.

They both stayed standing.

This was pathetic. How was she possibly going to have sex with him when simply sitting on the same bench involved a
whole choreography of commitment?

She sat. There.

He sat, too.

Well, this was progress.

She crossed her legs and inadvertently brushed the heel of his shoe. With lightning-fast-reflex speed they both swung their respective feet to opposite sides of the bench.

Or not.

Gaia studied Sam's face in profile. It made her a little giddy to realize what a hunk he was. A classic knee weakener. He belonged on television or in a magazine ad for cologne. What was he doing sitting near
her
?

He looked up and caught her staring (slack jawed) at him. She quickly looked away. She pressed her hand, palm down, on the bench and realized her
pinky was touching the outer edge of his thigh.
Uh-oh
.

Should she move it? Had he noticed? Did he think she had done it on purpose? Suddenly she had more feeling, more nerve endings (billions and billions at least) in her pinky than she ever thought possible. All of the awareness in her body was crammed into that pinky.

Now it felt clammy and weirdly twitchy. A pinky wasn't accustomed to all this attention. Did Sam feel it twitching? That would be awful. He'd think it was some kind of lame come-on. Either that or she'd lost muscle control.

Well, actually, this
was
some kind of lame come-on and she
had
lost control.

The problem was, if she took away her pinky, he would know she noticed that she was touching him, and that would be embarrassing, too.

He moved his leg. Suddenly Gaia's pinky was touching cold, lonely, uncharged air. She felt the piercing sting of rejection. Jerk. Loser. She was ready to give up on the whole project.

Then he moved it back and practically covered her entire pinky. Oh, faith! Love! Destiny! Could she propose to him right there?

He smiled at her. This time it was sweet, open,
real.

Her stomach rolled. She smiled back, fervently hoping it didn't look like a grimace and that her teeth didn't look yellow.

She heard a noise behind her. She jerked up her head.

She realized that the sun had dipped below the Hudson River and the streetlamps were illuminated. Oh, no. Could it be? Already?

She had to go. Fast. She wasn't going to turn into a pumpkin, but she was very likely going to get shot in the head. That could easily put a damper on this fragile, blossoming moment.

The sound resolved itself into a footstep, and a person appeared. It wasn't CJ, but just the same, it put an end to the encounter as powerfully as a bullet.

It was Heather. The girlfriend.