Keeping Secrets in Seattle (12 page)

He nodded. “I know. You changed a lot that year.”

“When Cameron took me downstairs after we danced, I was ready for the game to be over. I told him that I wanted to go back upstairs and find you.” My throat tightened.

“Why didn’t you?” Gabe asked, his voice hoarse.

I bit my lip, pleading with myself not to let my tears spill. I wanted to get through this.
Had
to get through this. “I didn’t want to be with him. I…” A tear slipped out, and I swiped at it angrily.

Gabe brushed at the moisture under my eye. “Vi…don’t. I hate seeing you cry. Come on.”

I turned into his hand, closing my eyes and pressing my mouth to his palm. He sucked in a sharp breath and cupped my other cheek with his other hand. His head leaned close to mine, and when our foreheads brushed together, a spark shot straight down into my chest.

When he spoke again, his voice was scarcely above a whisper. “Go on.”

I sniffed. “You have to know. I never meant to hurt you.”

Without warning, Gabe stood and stalked to the kitchen.

“Hey.” I jumped off the couch and followed him, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. His kitchen was darker than the rest of the apartment, and it was hard for me to see anything but his profile against the window. I sat on the counter a few feet away from him and watched him. “What the hell? You brought it up, and now you’re walking away?”

He shook his head, not looking at me. “We don’t call it the forbidden subject for nothing.” He filled a glass with water and took a long drink, then went on. “It took me so long to get over what you and Cam did. The whole time you were in Utah, actually.”

It stung when he said Cameron’s name.

“You have no idea what that did to me.” He gripped his glass tightly in his hand. “And then you just disappeared to your dad’s house. In friggin’ Utah. Without saying good-bye or…or how about this: I’m sorry I slept with your friend. Nothing. Why would you leave like that and not tell me? Or my mom?”

I just sat on the counter top, picking at a frayed piece of my jeans. “It was no walk in the park for me, either.”

“Eventually I started talking to Cameron again. It took until Christmas break that year. He came to my house and apologized for…” Gabe looked like the words filled his throat with bile. “What you guys did.”

My eyes widened and I looked up. “What did he tell you?”

Gabe glanced at me. “Nothing. It’s not like I wanted to know the details, anyway. We’d never really declared ourselves exclusive. He told me that you were fair game. And eventually I guess I decided he was right, though I thought differently at the time.”

I cleared my throat furiously. “I considered you my boyfriend.”

He looked at me, only half of his face visible in the darkness. “Then
why
? Why’d you do it?”

My mouth opened, then shut, then opened again.

His eyes dropped. “By the time you came back from your dad’s I was past the anger. I just missed my best friend. I wanted us to go back to the way things were before.”

I nodded sadly. “I know. So did I.”

“When your mom came over to tell us that you were flying home, I made the decision that those couple of weeks when we were dating was ancient history. I packed them away in the back of my mind and promised myself never to bring it back up again.”

I watched him look out the window, his profile strong against the Seattle skyline.

“You came off that plane so different.” Gabe shook his head. “Your hair was purple and you had your nose pierced. You were a completely new person. There was something darker about you. Evasive and defiant. You snuck out all the time and tried to piss your mom off every day, and you’d changed your looks so drastically. It was weird.” When I didn’t respond, his voice deepened, anger visible on his pinched face. “I asked you, over and over again, what was wrong. I begged you to tell me why you were acting so weird.”

I nodded. “I know.” By the time I’d come home from my father’s, the vault had been locked, and the secret about Cameron was in it. I’d vowed to never bring that subject up again, and no matter how much he pleaded with me to spill it, my secrets remained mine alone.

Gabe’s eyes were so sad that I wanted to reach out and cup his face. Instead, I just sat on my hands. “I couldn’t tell you then. I’d worked too hard to lock it all away.”

“I never stopped, you know.” His voice was quiet.

My pulse stuttered. “Never stopped what?”

He gripped the glass tightly. “Never stopped loving you.”

I held my breath. My bones morphed into butter, and I was going to slide off the countertop and into a pile on the floor.

“What?” I whispered.

Gabe went to set his glass down on the counter, his eyes still locked on mine, but missed it by half an inch. It hit the tile floor with an ear-piercing crash and shattered at his feet.

I jumped off the counter, “Here, let me get it…ow.”

Crumpling forward, I landed in Gabe’s arms, which effortlessly lifted me up and placed me back on the counter. I realized that the bottom of my rainbow-colored sock was saturated with blood.

“Vi, your foot.” Gabe flipped on the light above the sink and peeled the sock off my foot to examine my heel. “Crap, there’s glass stuck in it.”

“Damn.” I grimaced, pain searing through my heel.

He turned on the faucet, pushed the hem of my jeans up, and swung my leg into the sink. While rinsing it under the cool water, Gabe’s fingers stroked my foot, carefully picking tiny pieces of glass out of the skin. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but you definitely need a bandage.” He reached into a cupboard and pulled out a small first-aid kit.

“Wow. What a Boy Scout. Always prepared,” I joked.

He glanced up at me. “Shh.”

I watched him in silence. Gabe finished cleaning the cuts, dried my foot off with a kitchen towel, then delicately taped gauze on my heel, stopping momentarily to chuckle at the sight of my freshly painted teal-green toenails. When he was done, he swung my leg back, then stood in front of me. It wasn’t until about twenty seconds later that I realized he was biting his lip. He reached over and flicked the light above the sink back off, leaving us in the darkened kitchen. And again, we were right back to where we’d been five minutes earlier. He positioned himself between my knees, and his fingers fastened themselves on my waist. My pulse raced, and my head went light.

“Vi…” Gabe sighed as he leaned toward my lips. I could feel the heat from his mouth on my own.

The sound of a key in the lock filled the kitchen.

“Alicia…” he hissed.

“I thought she was going to Whidbey!” I whispered back, covering my almost-kissed lips with my fingers.

His eyes were round. “I don’t…her plans must’ve changed.”

His fingers immediately jerked back from my hips, and he pulled away from me like a skittish animal, his tennis shoes crackling on the shards of glass still on the floor. I covered my mouth as soon as I realized that Alicia was the only other person besides
me,
who had a key to Gabe’s door.

Shame washed over me like a bucket of ice-cold water. I had a boyfriend. Gabe had a fiancée. What was I thinking? I hopped down, sidestepping the glass, and darted into the living room, where I sat down in a chair and conspicuously grabbed a magazine to flip through, my heart thundering in my ears.

The door opened, and Alicia’s voice called out, “Gabriel?”

My throat clinched shut, so I turned the magazine right side up with a stifled shriek.

Gabe cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m here.”

She floated into the room and stopped dead in her tracks when she spotted me. When she spoke, her voice became eerily dark. “Working all day on your proposal?”

“Yeah, almost done with it. Violet came to give me a haircut, because I was getting so shaggy, and I know you hate it when I look shaggy.” Gabe was speaking too quickly. “Then we got to talking and watching the game on TV. Hey, how was your trip to Whidbey?”

Alicia’s cool gaze scanned the room: the television, which was playing a Spanish soap opera because I’d flopped onto the remote control earlier; Gabe’s work papers spread all over the carpet; the messy dining room table and discarded laptop; the chair sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor with a circle of hair around it; the piles of crumpled paper all over the dining room; the broken glass and blood on the tile floor; and, of course, my bandaged foot.

“Hello.” She said it to me through clenched teeth.

I had to make a conscious effort to lower my lids to a normal level. “I was just leaving.”

Limping over to my shoes and coat, I scooped them up without bothering to put them on. “Thanks for inviting me this morning. I think my dress will work nicely. I…” I racked my brain for something nice to say. Something to try and fix the mess I was undoubtedly leaving Gabe with. “I can’t wait to see you in your gown. It sounds awesome.”

Alicia’s eyes were filled with venom. “We’ll be seeing you.”

“Okay.” I opened the door and stepped out. “See ya, Gabe.”

Just before the door clicked shut behind me, I heard him reply weakly. “See ya.”

Chapter Thirteen

September 30, 2003

My nightmares are starting to get out of control. I’m still hoping that journaling about it will help…

My throat was raw from screaming, and the sound of bass right above the bedroom was buzzing in my ears. After Cameron left his room, I crawled off his bed and made my way to the door, passing a couple making out on the couch in the rec room. When I stumbled past them, the girl called me a slut. I decided to go home. Get myself cleaned up. Wash my face and put on clean clothes. Then call Gabe’s cell phone to tell him where I was. I just wanted to get away before he came back…

When I came home from Gabe’s apartment later that night, I burst through the door and faced Kim and Betsy with wide, crazy eyes. I’d had the entire bus ride home to analyze every moment of my afternoon with Gabe, and I’d come to the conclusion that it was officially time to investigate Alicia further.

There was something
off
with her. To the naked eye, she seemed as sweet as chocolate cake. Well, sugar-free, fat-free vanilla yogurt, maybe. But I’d heard otherwise at the dress fitting. She was keeping secrets from him, and Shawn suggested to me that she was only marrying Gabe for the status. It was time to get to the bottom of it. It was time for me to protect Gabe.

Kim and Betsy’s eyes rolled off the screen and onto me. “Hey, Violet. What’s up?” Kim chirped.

“How was the dress fitting?” Betsy added.

“It was interesting,” I said, dropping my purse on the table. “I’ve never seen four women go from thinking they’re the bomb to wanting to do a colonic all in the course of one dress fitting.”

Betsy snorted. “Awesome.”

“It really was.” I opened the box and held up the dress. “What do you think?”

Both girls glanced at the dress and
oohed
in unison.

“I know. She picked out a great dress.” I laid it across the back of a chair. “You guys should have seen Alicia in action. She’s like a drill sergeant.”

“And you made it out unscathed?” Betsy asked.

“It was touch and go for a while.” I pulled a chair out from the table, setting it between them and their view of the television. “Guess what Shawn told me today at the dress boutique?”

Kim cocked her head to the side. “Who’s Shawn?”

“One of the bridesmaids.” I plopped down on the chair and faced them. “Seriously. You are not going to believe what she said.”

They exchanged a glance.

“If she told you to lose weight, I am going to find her and kick her ass. I mean it this time,” Betsy said.

“No, nothing like that.” I shook my head. “Think bigger.”

Kim played with her eyebrow ring. “Did she confess to murder?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Smaller than that.”

“Did she tell you she was gay?” Betsy smiled proudly and elbowed Kim. “I’ll bet that’s it.”

“What? No. Sorry to disappoint you.” I laughed. “She’s got a boyfriend.”

“Yeah, but when he catches her making out with her best friend, the cat’ll be out of the bag.” Betsy nodded knowingly.

“That’s how my high school boyfriend found out I was gay,” Kim added.

Betsy turned to her. “No kidding?”

Kim put a hand up. “I swear. It was hilarious. He walks in, and—”

“Hey.” I snapped my fingers in front of their faces. “This is about me.
Me
. Focus.”

They both looked at me.

I took a deep breath. “Back to the subject at hand. Shawn is on my side. Well, maybe not
my
side, per se, but she certainly isn’t on Alicia’s side anymore. She said some interesting things about Miss Von Longorial. And I have an idea.”

“Violet has an idea?” Kim mused. “Dangerous territory if I remember correctly.”

“Mmm-hmmm, remember when she had the idea that we should go foam dancing, and I dislocated my knee?” Betsy reached down and rubbed her knee.

“No, nothing like that. Nothing dangerous.” I waved my arms dismissively.

“You’re not going to try to convince us to move downtown again?” Betsy looked around. “I like our little place.”

Kim snapped her fingers. “Oh, that reminds me. Chloe called for you today.”

“No kidding?” I got up and walked over to the phone, where a message had been scrawled out on the back of a cereal box. I read it, my eyes widening. “Chloe wants to meet with me?”

“Please tell me that you’re not still thinking about moving to Portland,” Betsy said, frowning.

“Yeah, why would you want to leave us?” Kim scowled at me. “For Portland, no less? Look what kind of people Portland breeds. Alicia is from Portland.”

Betsy snapped her fingers. “That’s proof that this is a bad idea.”

“You guys.” I sat back down across from them. “Listen, I need a change of scenery. Or, I will, come May.”

Both of them looked at me like I was nuts.

“You mean to tell us that you’re moving to Portland to get away from Gabe and Alicia?” Betsy grunted.

“Not entirely.” My eyes dropped to the floor. “I would be lead stylist, guys. My income would double. That’s huge.”

“Ask Lizzie for a raise, then,” Kim said. “Hell, if money’s tight, talk to us. We can divide the bills differently.”

Betsy nodded. “I don’t want you to move.”

Kim pointed her finger at me. “Besides, you’ve got a boyfriend now. What does Landon think about this?”

Shaking my head, I sighed. “He thinks he’s going to convince me to stay.”

“Well, more power to him.” Betsy folded her arms across her chest. “Maybe he can convince you that this is a dumb idea. Portland is, like two, and a half hours from here, Violet. You don’t really want to have a long-distance relationship, do you?”

I shrugged. “It takes two hours to get from one end of Seattle to the other. What’s the difference?”

“When does Chloe want to meet you, anyway?” Kim asked, her mouth pulled into a line.

I looked down at the cereal box I was holding, and an idea sprouted in my mind. “Wednesday. Getting back to what Shawn said about Alicia, want to help me do some research while I’m in Portland?”

Betsy cringed. “If I dislocate my knee again…”

“No. No dislocated joints, I promise. Just a road trip to Portland. I’ll go talk to Chloe for a while, and then we can scope out Alicia’s folks’ house or something.” My pulse sped up as the idea grew. “What are you guys doing on Wednesday?”

Betsy pointed across the living room to a stack of file folders. “I was going to work from home this week.”

Kim grimaced. “I’m supposed to give Lizzy a bikini wax.”

Betsy and I shuddered in unison.

“Can’t you get out of it? For the sake of a covert operation?” I reached over and squeezed Kim’s hand.

“Okay, fine. But you…” She grinned right at me. “Have to be my assistant when I reschedule Lizzy’s wax.”

“Ugh. Fine. Do you have gas in your car?” I asked Betsy.

“Um, yes, a little.”

“I’ll pay to fill it up. We’ll need to leave early—Chloe said she’s in her salon by ten. I should be done within an hour. I want enough time to do some serious stalking. Time to catch Alicia in her lies.”

Kim’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you going to do if you dig up something major?”

“I don’t know.” I gulped. “If it’s major, I’ll tell Gabe. If it’s not, I’ll have to find a way to make nice with Miss Von Longorial.”

Kim yawned, then pulled her girlfriend toward their bedroom. “This had better be worth it.”

…

Driving with Betsy behind the wheel was always an experience. After having been raised on an eastern Washington farm for the bulk of her formative years, she drove all motor vehicles like lumbering combines, weaving in and out of traffic like she was herding charging cattle. Her faded Chevelle cut through the other cars on the interstate like a scene reminiscent of NASCAR, and her radio blasted rock music so loudly that our morning coffees vibrated in our hands. The bulk of the ride was spent listening to Kim and Betsy debate whether or not to paint their bedroom orange, so I decided to sit back and watch the buildings of the city slowly give way to the green western Washington landscape outside my window. Miles and miles of lush green fern and thick, mossy cedar trees stretched out ahead of us.

When we arrived in Portland, Betsy and Kim parked the car in front of Chloe’s salon. I stood on the sidewalk outside the historic brick building, adjusting my bright yellow pencil pants and black tuxedo shirt.

“We’re going out to breakfast. There’s a doughnut shop around here that puts bacon on their maple bars,” Kim announced with wide eyes.

“Bacon!” Betsy called from the driver’s seat.

I laughed as I backed away. “Okay, meet me back here in an hour, and bring one for me.”

Kim cast a scowl at the building. “Say hi for me.”

The meeting with Chloe went well. I was impressed by her salon layout, and even more impressed with the amount of responsibility I would have working there. At The Funky Fox, I was just a stylist. No real responsibility beyond cutting and coloring hair for Lizzie’s bevy of drag queen beauties, and a scattered female client here and there. In Portland I would manage the entire style floor and the aestheticians, as well as ordering products for the salon.

The idea of moving away from my beloved Seattle made my heart heavy, but the idea of getting out of Gabeville, and all of the painful memories that resided there, made my stomach dance with excitement. The idea of starting fresh in a new city made me feel empowered.

As soon as Kim and Betsy pulled up, bacon maple bar in tow, we headed into the suburbs. The thick downtown vibe of Portland gave way, allowing more space between houses and larger, damper green yards.

We sought out South Summit High School, then scoured the surrounding neighborhoods. Every time we came across a row of houses that appeared to be upper middle class or nicer, we cruised down the street, scanning mailboxes and front stoops for the names “Von Longorial” and “Long,” but found nothing.

“Are you sure this is the high school she said she went to?” Betsy squinted through her windshield with a frown, after an hour of searching had passed. “There aren’t very many fancy houses around here.”

The homes surrounding South Summit High were mostly modest houses. Old cars were parked out front. Toys littered the sidewalks. Bikes were parked in front of the porches. Some houses looked clean and well kept, but many of them were in need of a fresh coat of paint, and a few of the houses on each street had fairly neglected yards. The neighborhood didn’t fit the mold Alicia described.

“I think I’m gonna google an address,” I murmured from the backseat as Betsy wove the Chevelle up and down streets slowly.

“Good idea.” Kim pointed into the parking lot of a gas station, where the sign was flickering and someone in a low rider had the bass up way too high. “This is like looking for freaking Waldo.”

Betsy turned off the car while I powered on my BlackBerry and searched for the name “Von Longorial.”

“It’s not here,” I said to the girls, who’d started humming the
Mission Impossible
theme. “I’ll check for Long.”

“What about a phone number?” Kim asked, checking her eyeliner in the visor mirror.

I scoured the Internet for a few more minutes. “Nothing. They must be unlisted.”

“What? Let me check.” Kim grabbed the phone from me and began pushing buttons. “Well, crap. You’re right.”

Betsy shrugged. “We’ll have to figure out where they live another way.”

“How?” I scanned the neighborhood. There was nothing around us except a warehouse and a few older homes that looked vacant.

“Let’s just ask where the wealthiest neighborhood in the school district is and then drive around there,” Betsy announced wisely.

I scowled. “How am I supposed to recognize Alicia’s parents’ house?”

Kim turned around in her seat and stared at me. “We didn’t drive all the way here just to give up. It’s sunny today. Maybe her mom will be working in the yard. We’ll look for red hair.”

Betsy adjusted her glasses. “Bulimia Betty strikes me as the type who’d have a gardener. Just sayin’.”

“Good idea.” Kim smiled encouragingly. “Then we’ll ask a neighbor.”

“All right…but you do realize people are going to think we’re casing houses to rob?” I blinked at a passerby who was looking at us while clinging to her grocery bag tightly.

“Let ’em stare.” Betsy waved. “Hey, a woman in a minivan just pulled in. Go ask her.”

“Argh…fine.” Grumbling, I got out of the car.

Kim giggled. “The things she’s willing to do in order to stalk someone.”

Betsy covered her mouth. “I know, right?”

I teetered across the parking lot to a woman filling the tank of her minivan, wishing that I’d skipped the spiked zebra-print boots this morning.

“Um, excuse me, ma’am?” I waved at her cheerfully.

She turned to face me. Her nondescript brown hair was pulled into a ponytail, and one knee of her sweats had a tear.

“My friends and I are from out of town, and we were just wondering…um, where is the rich neighborhood?”

She frowned at me. “The what?”

I shook my head. “Sorry. I’m looking for a more affluent neighborhood in the South Summit school boundaries?”

The line between her brows deepened, and I heard a baby wail inside the van. Her eyes flicked between my friends—who were now singing along with Led Zeppelin at the top of their voices in the Honda—and me. “Why?”

“Oh, no. I’m sorry.” I laughed and stepped forward. She immediately backed away from me. “We’re looking for an old friend. She’s, well, her family is wealthy. And so we just have to figure out which part of town she lives in. But we know that she went to the high school here.”

The woman bit her lip. “South Summit?”

I nodded and blushed as Kim and Betsy began to sing the chorus to “Dazed And Confused.”

“Well, there’s Minting Heights. That’s a development a few miles south of here. Those are some pretty nice houses.” She shrugged at me. “You can try that.”

I charged back to the car, and cursed Kim and Betsy out for terrifying the woman. She was probably calling the cops as we drove away to tell them that a bunch of stoners was out casing the rich neighborhoods. We headed due south, and sure enough, we came to a gated community with rows and rows of cookie-cutter houses, all in varying shades of taupe. This was Alicia’s type of neighborhood. Lucky for us, the electronic gate was open, so we cruised right in.