Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen
It’s crowded. And warm. And there are so many more disco balls in the giant dark club room at the back of the ruin bar, spinning like stars. Without any overhead lighting, only bits and pieces of the space are lit up by the thousands of disco-ball reflections at any given moment. Strangers, a bar, someone who looks like Max but isn’t, a booth, someone in a bedazzled suit, Arthur holding my elbow as we sidestep toward a table in a less populated corner. Evidently, it’s David Bowie Night, which means the music flips between electronic remixes and karaoke, which means it’s so loud. But I’m a little drunk and a little emotionally distraught and I keep thinking about Italy, clocks, time running out, let go, have fun. I can have fun. I am having fun!
“I didn’t know David Bowie was popular in Hungary,” I say, like a person having fun would.
“What?” Arthur shouts.
“I said, I didn’t know that—”
Just as we grab the booth, a boy in a feathered Brian Eno getup begins to croon a deeply soulful rendition of “Be My Wife,” and it’s fine, really; I have to be grateful he picked a song with lyrics and without car crashes.
Arthur studies me. His beer is already half empty. Again. “Are you drunk?”
“Almost. Why?”
“Because you’re smiling while someone’s singing karaoke.”
“Watch your mouth. I like karaoke.”
“ You like karaoke ?”
“I like watching other people do karaoke.”
The way he chuckles and shakes his head gets his point across, despite our karaoke star belting loudly enough to drown him out. I watch as he pulls out his phone, types for a few seconds, then sends it off.
My phone vibrates in my pants pocket.
Shooting him a suspicious glance, I pull it out to read his message.
As your boyfriend, I can learn to like karaoke. My rendition of Whole of the Moon always got rave reviews.
The wine spritzers gone by bubble beneath my skin. Not reacting to this—Arthur implying that we’ll go to karaoke more than this one time—doesn’t leave me with many facial-expression options. I go with a small smile but keep my eyes on my phone, so he doesn’t notice the weird pang that’s weirdly panging through me.
I like any social setting where you’re fed lyrics instead of having to talk. Also, my mom does the weirdest Beatles covers. She harmonizes with herself.
I peek up. He’s grinning at his phone.
She must be where you get your panache from.
Haha I’m adopted, but yeah. She’s a badass. She met my dad while she was hiking the Appalachian Trail by herself. His water bottle had rolled off a cliff and she probably saved his life.
This is how I like to spring the childhood topic with new people: a little truth, a lot of distractions. Arthur’s smile dips, and he quickly tap-tap-tap-taps.
I didn’t know. I’m sorry.
I squint at the screen, wishing I could pop this text bubble out of existence.
It’s OK! I’m lucky. I’m from a small town so I was always placed with the same foster families. After a while my parents and I made it a permanent thing. My birth mom struggled.
With gambling. With men. With being a mom.
With mental health. She was the forever optimist that got crushed by real life.
I look at those texts that summarize sixteen years of trauma, then send it over. I’m starting to feel bad, vulnerable. Stumbling into a conversation I wasn’t fully prepared to have.
My phone vibrates.
I can see why you like your job then. You get to be a professional realist.
Something presses against my ankle and my eyes jolt up. It’s Arthur, of course. The lights swing over his face, swirls of silver circles. He’s searching my eyes to see if he’s offended me.
I don’t know if he has.
The first few notes of “Space Oddity” cast a hush over the bar. So when Arthur leans over the table and into my personal space, I actually hear him say, “You’re really good, Lilah. You could keep working in F1. Be a videographer. Do social media. Any of it.”
He’s inches away. I can see the dark circles buried beneath his eyes. Get a hint of fizzed florals. A single bergamot.
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “I’m pretty sure ‘failed documentarian’ won’t get me hired here.”
“Failure only sticks if you let it.”
“Not everyone is so…” Resilient. “Bouncy.”
His eyes narrow. “Why can’t you bounce back?”
Maybe it’s the now-empty glass sitting in front of me. Or the feeling of Arthur’s eyes, heavy on my skin. But I say, “I was in high school when I started making documentaries—my social worker’s idea. But that’s when my birth mom had her worst episode yet, too. She was silent for weeks. Didn’t eat. Just slept.” I press my fingernail into the glass. “I’d already been taken away so many times, it was the last straw. And I knew it wasn’t my fault, her depression. But when she signed me over, it was like, okay. I am weird. I am an alien. I could never give this person the happy daughter she wanted, and I didn’t need to try anymore. The day I packed up for the last time, she was on the porch, and you know what she said?” I wrap my hand around the locket around my neck, the cold metal, the memory. “Nothing. At the very end, at our real ending, my fairy-tale-loving mom didn’t have any more empty promises about happily ever after. Honestly, I think she was relieved, too.”
“She…” Anger sweeps over Arthur’s face, but he stops himself. “Okay.”
“It’s okay. I had my camera. That’s the real therapy trick—you can’t screw up life if you’re filming it,” I joke. “If there’s always going to be a wall between me and everyone else, at least it’s the glass of my camera lens.”
Transparent. A window and a cage.
Arthur’s eyes dart to mine. He does that before he wrenches conversations apart—gets nervous, looks too soon, waiting for a reaction that doesn’t exist yet.
“Do you still feel like an alien?” he asks, and I feel wrenched.
I don’t know what to say. Yes. No. How does someone become a person after all that? There isn’t an easy trick to breathing air after a lifetime in outer space. “I don’t know,” I admit. “Maybe?”
The lights dip away, and it’s dark again. Arthur hasn’t moved his ankle. I don’t want him to, either.
His eyes light up gold. “I’d visit you. After this.”
Then it’s black. “In D.C.?”
Lights again. “In space.”
Then the disco balls illuminate the doorway nestled in a corner—and there’s the last person I want to see, standing next to Sarah.
Max walks in with what has to be half of the Ignition staff. Orange T-shirts take over the David Bowie costumes immediately, swarming the crowd, walking to Arthur and I’s booth. And as for me, I’m stuck in time, paused.
Sarah looks at me, and she isn’t smiling, and she knows .
I see it in the way her knees almost buckle mid-step, guilt as clear on her pretty features as wiped-down glass. She starts to weave toward me quicker, abandoning Max to do so, and I’m not ready for this. The future, leaving this bubble.
So I grab Arthur’s hand and yank him from the booth, away.
And away is the dance floor.
The karaoke melts into a remix, “Golden Years” and “Let’s Dance” spliced together in a new and interesting way. Arthur’s hands are on my shoulders. “What’s going on?” he whisper-yells.
“Max. Sarah,” I whisper-yell back. “She knows, and she still came with him.”
His hands slide down my arms. Then he wraps his fingers around me, one hand on either side, and it’s like being coated in apocalyptic-social-situation armor. Arthur is here, and he knows how to deal with people, and I have him on my side. He’s mine. “You’re okay. You’re good. Fuck them.”
“But she didn’t—it’s, it’s not really her fault—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. I need to go apologize.”
Arthur takes my chin in his hand. “No. You are not apologizing to them.”
My heart isn’t beating. His fingers are so much warmer against my face than they’ve been anywhere else. “Watch me, Graywood,” he says. “Don’t look anywhere else. Just at me.”
In the dark, I only get a glint of light back from his hazel eyes, then the disco-ball gods bless me with a full swing. Arthur’s face is lit from chin to pushed-back hair, dazzling and concentrated only on me, and that residual need to make myself small enough to plug up any holes in Max’s sorry life vanishes into thin air. Because Arthur is right. I’m okay. I’m good. Tonight, I’m Arthur Bianco’s girlfriend, and that’s power.
I have my hands around his shoulders when I think to ask, “Can you show me how to dance?”
Momentarily, Arthur has the wherewithal to look conflicted. Perhaps he’s able to read my tea leaves and knows in his toned gut that I’m not going to gracefully handle whatever happens next, after tonight, when I’m back to thinking instead of talking. I probably owe him an explanation, too, seeing as I’ve gone from tipsy-bad-childhood rant to please-let-me-rub-you-in-my-ex’s-face at the speed of light.
His hesitation makes my fingers curl. I like that he’s worried about where this is going, a little on the fence.
“Yeah,” he says, almost too quiet to hear over the music.
Then we’re falling off the fence together, and I like this much better.
In my limited experience, there’s a get-to-know-you stage of physicality, awkward and adorably giggly, fingers brushing and elbows bumping. Arthur sails right past that requisite clumsiness. He takes my hips in his hands and pulls me close, drawing me into synchronicity with his body, and I must make a sound, a whimper or something. He chases the noise with his eyes, moving me back and forth as he inspects my lips, and I didn’t know that this was what dancing felt like, like he’s touched me a thousand times and knows how to push the curve of my hips to command my legs, my hands, my spine.
It doesn’t matter that our relationship is fake. It hardly matters that half this club is finally, officially, undeniably staring at us. I wind my fingers into the front of his shirt, let him take the lead, and ignore the rest. In the dark, being held by him is just like diving underwater. Deep, where the waves move you. I take a breath, brace my lungs for impact, and let myself get caught up in him.
When Arthur leans toward my ear and says, “He’s watching,” I’m shocked to remember that I’m not swimming. There was a purpose to this.
Then excitement trills up my sternum. “Don’t look at him.”
“Where should I look, then?”
“Me.”
It’s a gross demand. Needy. Arthur rumbles beneath my palms and clicks his tongue, his only chastisement. Then he slides his hands up my sides until his long fingers are curved around my rib cage, thumbs just short of the bottom swell of my breasts, and tips me back. It’s like I’m falling, my body weight swaying to the balls of my feet, only he keeps me upright. And he looks. His face is moments from mine, nose to nose, breath to breath, and I’m officially not sure what my sexuality is—if I like comfort, if I like safety, if I need a deep connection—because hello, yes, this. I want… whatever this is.
Then he’s closer, Arthur’s annoying, rude, pretty mouth finding where my ear meets my neck. “You know about slipstream?”
“You,” I say, “talk so much.”
“Just trying to educate you,” he replies smoothly. “When I’m behind another car, it creates a space with lower pressure, pulling me ahead.” He rolls my hips into his, my heels lifting off the ground, and is he… is he trying to—“Because that’s how you win a race sometimes. When you really want something, you’re okay with being in second place for a while. Play your cards right, and second place helps you get into first.”
The air pressure between us feels ready to burst, and then there’s Max, and it does.
“What the hell is this?” he snaps, adequately loud over the music.
I spring back from Arthur, mostly. I don’t think he tries to stop me. He’s just really strong, and he also goes to step in front of me, so we kind of end up with his hand around my back and me against his side, and it looks like we’re a united front, so I don’t move any more.
“Hello, mate, what’s up?” Arthur says, as if he wasn’t just five seconds from explaining Formula 1 aerodynamics by way of non-Kentucky sex education.
“What’s up with me ?” Max shoots back. He’s all ninety-degree angles: crossed arms, locked legs, flabbergasted and furious. “What the fuck are you doing to her?”
“I suppose I’m celebrating,” Arthur replies with a hint of a smile.
Max scrubs his face. Then he turns to me. “Is this guy, like, bothering you?”
The ridiculousness of him attempting to defend my honor from a big, bad man makes me laugh, more hysterical giggle than relaxed chuckle, but Max’s eyes sharpen into points anyway. The laugh dies in my chest as he says, “This isn’t funny. You don’t even like—never did this with—you don’t do this shit, Lilah. I knew he was into you, but why would you be into him?”
His awareness shocks me, guilts me. Gets pretty close to crushing me until I look at Arthur, who gives me an I’ve got this one nod. “We were just dancing. That’s fine, right? You wouldn’t be jealous of someone spending time with your employee, I’m sure.”
“I—no. No.” Max blinks, recenters himself. “Lilah, okay. I get it. You wanted to get me back, and you did. But you can’t—if he’s—if you’re… This is a really bad look for our business.”
Our.
“No, I’m not,” I say.
Max isn’t blinking anymore. He’s staring, unabashedly. “You’re not what?”
I could lie and say that he’s right, I was jealous. I’ve been lying for weeks. I’ve been putting up with Max for longer, though. The memories of our relationship jump into the light again, like they’ve been waiting for me to figure this out, that we were never equals, never creative partners . He controlled me. He told me to listen to top music playlists so that I wouldn’t embarrass him in front of his friends when I didn’t know song names, so I did. He wanted a girlfriend who loved sports, so I sat on our sofa as he cussed at the screen, withstood his rants, moved to Texas. I started using digital cameras instead of my vintage ones, watched the bubblegum-masculinity movies he loved, memorized the good, funny television references, had fifteen minutes of silent missionary-position sex once per week. I was even okay with him not loving me and me not loving him, because I’m logical, good, calm Lilah Graywood, who sticks to her place in the shadows and has never asked for anything. Not a better life, or a “normal” brain, or people who love me, or understanding from a world that refuses to give it. Even getting revenge had been Arthur’s idea first.
But that isn’t me anymore. Max may have changed into someone else first, but I’ve changed more, and I don’t want to go backward.
“I’m not trying to get you back. I don’t even think I loved you to begin with,” I tell him. And then, because on some level he might deserve it, I add, “I’m sorry.”
Arthur’s eyes swing to me, his body tilting and face thrown in red-alert surprise. “You don’t love him?” Arthur says, right as Max laughs out, “You’re sorry for not loving me?”
Maybe this was the wrong night to go with radical honesty. Arthur is still looking at me, and I’m too overwhelmed to analyze the emotions in his wild hazel eyes. He’s unmasked, shield-free, and if I had an hour to pore over a photo of his face, maybe I could figure out what he’s thinking.
“All right,” he says suddenly. He stands up taller, staring down at Max with a deadly frown. “This conversation is over. We’re leaving.”
Max frowns back. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I didn’t. I said we’re leaving.”
“You aren’t taking her anywhere. She’s my partner.”
As he says that, Max tries to prod his finger into Arthur’s chest. Arthur catches his wrist in the blink of an eye, and Max’s mouth falls open like an airborne catfish.
I hate that his pain still makes my stomach drop. Before I can remember that I’m supposed to be going forward, not backward, I step around Arthur to take Max’s hand from him, hoping to help calm him down. “Max. Let’s talk in the morning. This isn’t the right place.”
There’s barely time to register the fist knocking into my collarbone before I’m falling back. I think Max meant to push me away—I hope that’s what he wanted. But his fingers were balled up tight, his cheeks pink and eyes two tight white stars, and I’m crashing into a couple who bravely try to keep me upright. Nope, not a couple. Sarah. She has her arms around my waist, and her big eyes are round and scared. “What the frick, are you okay?”
“Whoa,” Max mumbles, seeming to realize as we all do that he just made the biggest mistake of his life.
I ignore them both. “Arthur, I’m fine. Don’t. Arthur —”
“Sorry, love,” Arthur says, before he grabs Max by his sweaty arms and throws him against the dance floor.