Chapter 12
twelve
Everyone always underestimated me. No one thought I could handle anything and that because I was shy, sometimes painfully so, I was also slow to pick up on things. That I couldn’t comprehend deviousness or lies or manipulation. But I could and I did and I sat there on the balcony wondering why in the hell Ryan thought I was stupid enough to believe that he was going to work. Mickey had assigned Ryan to bodyguard me. He wasn’t going to tell him to leave me alone in a hotel and go off and do some other random project at eleven at night.
“Brandy, I need to go,” I told my best friend. She was talking on and on about some guy she’d met at her job at the café and I wanted to care and be a good friend but I couldn’t focus. “I’m sorry, but I don’t feel good.”
Her voice turned solicitous. “Oh, I’m sorry, are you okay?”
I had tried to call my mother but she hadn’t answered her phone. I had called Brandy because I had needed to avoid Ryan for a few minutes, collect my thoughts. I hadn’t expected him to bolt and now I had a pit in my gut. He wasn’t coming back. I knew it. Like he knew it. It had been written all over his face. My tears had scared him.
“I’m fine. I just haven’t felt right since I fell and I kind of have a headache.” I felt like a jerk lying to her, but I couldn’t tell her the truth either. There was something just totally mortifying about admitting even to my best friend that the guy I had hand-picked as the one to lose my virginity too had bolted fifteen minutes after he pulled out. It was just not something I wanted to say out loud right now. I’d tell her in a day or two after the sting of humiliation had worn off.
“Okay. Take some aspirin. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I said goodbye and ended the call. I stared blankly out at the ocean. It was so peaceful here, way up high, above the crush of cars and people. It felt like I could reach out and touch the waves. Like I could splash my fingers in it the way you would as a child in the sink.
I didn’t really have a headache. Nope. I had regular old heartache and I had no one to blame but myself. Ryan had tried to warn me that he wasn’t going to be around for the long haul. That he wanted to have sex with me because he was attracted to me, but that he wasn’t any better than any other guy. I hadn’t believed him. Now I wasn’t so sure. It didn’t take a diagnosis from Freud to see he had some abandonment issues. But what never made sense to me was why people who resented their parents exhibited the same behaviors as them.
I would like to delude myself into thinking that he bounced because he knew if he stuck around he would fall in love with me and for whatever weird man reason he had decided he could not do that. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe commitment just wasn’t his thing. Maybe I just wasn’t his thing. I could hear my mother’s warning ringing in my ears and it pissed me off to realize that she was right. Even when I had told myself it didn’t matter, that one night would be enough, I hadn’t been honest with myself. I was going to want more from him.
If he had spent the whole night with me, cuddling, and cute and loving, I would have wanted breakfast. If we’d gone for breakfast, then I would have wanted him to call or text me later in the day. I would have wanted more. I would always want more until he was mine. My boyfriend. That was my shit, my mistake. Not his. He’d been clear as a damn bell about it.
What would Julia do? She would not sit on the balcony alone like a moron feeling sorry for herself. She would get up and leave. Or say to hell with it and go to bed. But more likely she would leave.
Ryan had left his beer on the table and I drained the few inches of liquid left. I could look at staying in two different lights. One, that it was my being defiant and nonchalant. Like I could just enjoy the hotel and the view and to hell with Ryan. But I knew myself well enough to know that wasn’t what it would feel like. It would just be lonely. I would lie in that bed and I would repeatedly sniff the sheets to see if I could find any remnants of his scent and how pathetic would that be? I would end up crying, guaranteed. I would eat every chocolate item in the minibar and I would get drunk on the little wine bottles. In the morning I’d be hungover, sick to my stomach, puffy-faced, and out eighty dollars in minibar expenses.
Better to just avoid all of that. I stood up and went back into the hotel room, stripping off my dress as I walked to the bathroom. I needed a shower. I needed to not be as aware of how amazing sex with Ryan had been. Ten minutes later I was dressed in the clean clothes from my overnight bag and I removed the beer bottle from the balcony table and tossed it, shutting the slider. Glancing around, I realized that Ryan had left his duffel bag. It gave me pause. Maybe he was planning to come back.
Then I thought about his face when he had seen me on the verge of tears and I decided that he had just forgotten about the bag in his rush to get away as fast as possible. I would just take it with me. He could get it later. Or I could leave it downstairs at the front desk. That was even better. Less complicated, because then Ryan wouldn’t even have to see me.
Knowing full well it was nearly midnight I took a deep breath and made my way down and to the desk clerk. “I need to leave a bag for Mr. Harris,” I said. “Room 1325.” I plunked it on the countertop.
After I showed my driver’s license and we sorted that out, I tried not to give a shit what the employee might be thinking about me. It was none of his business and surely he’d seen odder things than a woman leaving the hotel at midnight. I tried to picture what Frank Sinatra would say, and I figured he would tell me to do what you gotta do. And he would call me doll, which would be amazing. Thinking about the old days of the glamour of the Fountainbleau and Miami Beach before condos was a fun distraction from my current emotions. It would have been amazing time to be alive. If you were a movie star or a gangster anyway.
I would not have made the best gangster’s girlfriend, though. Too easily spooked. How had I gotten like this? Prone to panic attacks, more comfortable observing life then living it. I couldn’t blame my mother. That wasn’t her style. My father was definitely a quieter man, more into his business than social niceties. It was what had caused their split- they were just too different. My mother had always joked that she was so much in awe of my father’s intelligence and success, that when he had insisted they should be together, she had believed him.
I didn’t have either of their personalities really. I lacked my dad’s confidence and my mother’s feminine wiles. Nope. No gangsta girlfriend life for me.
Honestly, I would not make the best bodyguard’s girlfriend either. I worried about Ryan as it was. Imagine how I would feel if we were together. I would worry constantly. But it would be worth it to me, but not to him. Clearly. The greater truth was the story of my life. The role of mobster wife suited my mother, not me. She fit into Mickey’s world of wheeling and dealing and guns and money. Me? I pretended none of it existed. I went to school, then I went home to the house that Miami Security had afforded. That was really my sole connection to the danger of keeping celebrities and rich people safe on the Beach.
After the bellman got me a cab I gave him the address of my mom’s house in Coral Gables where we were living. I needed to go home, even if it was Ryan’s old bedroom. I couldn’t stomach the thought of my mother’s prying eyes or Brandy’s endless questions. I didn’t want to be alone in the hotel, but I much preferred being alone at home over in the same room where I had felt Ryan’s tender and powerful touch.
“Were you at a party?” the cab driver asked, glancing at me in the rearview mirror.
“Yes,” I lied, because it was the perfect excuse as to why I would be leaving at that time to go back home. I clearly wasn’t a tourist. “Rehearsal dinner for a wedding.”
“Dude, I bet a wedding there would be sick. And expensive.”
“No doubt.”
“Some people got more money than they know what to do with.” He was young, probably my age, Latin. He shook his head back and forth, like he couldn’t wrap his head around it. “I once drove a hooker to one of them parties. She said she was getting ten grand for the night. I was like maybe I should be a hooker.” He laughed.
I sighed. I didn’t really want to have any conversation, let alone this one. I also thought he was reaching if he thought he could get ten grand for a night with him. He was no Julia Roberts. “She probably lied about how much she gets paid.”
“You think?” He sounded surprised, like that had never occurred to him. “I don’t know, why would she lie?”
That seemed obvious to me, but I didn’t want to sound like I was correcting him.
“There are plenty of rich people who would pay premium for a piece of pus-“ He stopped himself and gave me a sheepish look. “Sorry.”
I no longer felt the need to protect his feelings. “Maybe that’s just what you would pay, if you could afford it. Most wealthy men don’t need to pay for it.”
He gave me a look like he thought I was a bitch and shut up. Fine with me.
At home, I jumped out of the cab and threw the fare at him. Then, my bag over my shoulder, I ran inside the house, wanting to get away from the driver. He hadn’t creeped me out exactly, but I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of him knowing where I lived or thinking I was alone. So I crammed the key in, opened the door, dashed inside, and locked it as quickly as possible, heart racing.
Sighing in relief, I turned.
And ran smack into someone.
I opened my mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over it.
Yet another woman slid alongside of me to get to the bar and I fought the growing impatience. I just wanted a damn beer and yet the parade of half-naked women could score a cocktail off the bartender in two seconds while I had been standing there for ten minutes.
“Excuse me,” I said to the woman who elbowed me the gut. She was about four foot eleven and ninety-five pounds yet she had the nerve to glare up at me and swear in Spanish.
I swore myself and stepped back to give her room. I couldn’t be a dick. It wasn’t her fault I was in a sour mood. Alejandro was out on the dance floor grinding up on some beautiful and enthusiastic girl and I knew without a doubt he would manage to finagle her out of the club and back to his place, maybe with her friend in tow. Me being there was pointless.
After the feisty girl who had shoved me got her very large cocktail in a plastic tube, she turned and instead of maneuvering past me gave me a flirtatious smile. “Are you proportionate?” she asked. “Because you’re huge .”
Subtle. I had to give her props for being willing to hit on the giant frowning beast in front of her. But I wasn’t going there. “State secret.”
She tilted her head and smirked. “That means you have a pencil dick.”
“Think what you want. I’m not here to prove anything.” Well, that was a bullshit lie. I was there to prove I didn’t care about Isabel. That was working out really well. Not. She was all I could think about and every woman in the club paled in comparison to her.
Almost every guy there would call me nuts because Isabel’s beauty really was understated. She wasn’t tanned and plumped and covered in mascara and wearing hair extensions and false eyelashes. She didn’t have glitter on her tits and a belly button ring peeking out from the cutouts of a very small and very tight spandex dress. She wasn’t South Beach. She was real. And she was fucking beautiful.
Fuck. I couldn’t prove a goddamn thing other than that I was totally head over ass for Isabel. This was bullshit. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do Isabel, but I couldn’t do this at the club either.
“Tough guy. I like that in a man.”
“I would break you,” I said, to dissuade her.
She just tossed her hair back over her shoulder and gave me a feminine growl. “Yum.”
I sighed. I actually sighed. “Look, I’m not interested. I’m… involved with someone.”
“Oh, God, please don’t tell me it’s complicated or you’re on a break or whatever. Or you just hook up but you don’t want to be with anyone else right now and all the other crap that goes on now with dating.” She blew air out of her mouth, making her bangs lift off her forehead before settling back down. “Why can’t everything just be straight forward? Like, if you just want to fuck me, say you just want to fuck me. Or you want to date me. There is no anything in between and I’m sick to fucking death of it.”
“It’s not always that simple,” I protested, feeling oddly defensive. Just fucking was what I had always done, but did she have to make it sound so rude?
“So which one are you doing?” she asked, rolling her eyes. “Refusing to define your relationship or telling her there shouldn’t be restrictions on what, or who, you can do?”
“I just told you I wasn’t interested. I’m not into dating multiple people at the same time.”
“Then why is it complicated?”
“Who said it was complicated?” God, she was annoying. It was like she was my conscience in the form of a tiny Latina with a bright blue dress.
“You did. You said involved. Not dating. Not girlfriend. No fuck buddy or friends with benefits. You said involved.”
“What do you care?” I asked, turning back to the bar. I was going to pull a gun on that bartender if he didn’t bring me a beer in the next twenty seconds. At least being tall I had the advantage of being easily seen. I waved my hand and yelled, “Hey! I’m sick of waiting here.”
“Rawr,” my new friend said. She was like a porcupine. Every direction I turned there were quills poking me. “I don’t care. It’s just a general observation on the bullshit of dating in your twenties now. Fuck Tinder. Everyone wants some kind of perfection, hedging their bets.”
I didn’t want to be rude, but I was done. I wasn’t up for debating the issues with modern dating and the influence of social media on dating culture. Hell, no. Isabel would be able to discuss that shit all night long, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t date. Boom. End of story.
“Look. You seem nice.” Bitter, mostly, though I did admire her tenacity. “But I’ve had a long day and it’s loud in here and I don’t like yelling over the music.”
She stared at me for a long second. “So take me home with you.”
I didn’t actually see that one coming at this point. I could feel my eyebrows shot up. “I’m twice your size and I have a gun under my shirt. You shouldn’t offer for strange men to take you home.”
She made a face. “See, you just passed the creeper test. Come on, come outside for a minute while I smoke a cigarette.”
I didn’t want to. But I didn’t want to stay either. The music felt like a mallet was behind my eyes beating to get out.
On the sidewalk I took a deep breath and stuck my hand in my pocket. While the girl lit up a cigarette I pulled my phone out and checked to see if Isabel was wondering where I was or when I would be back. I kept picturing her alone in that big bed and wishing I had the guts to return to her. To hold her and make love to her the way she deserved to be held.
“Did she text you?” the girl asked.
“No.” I had nothing. Nada.
“So tell me why it’s complicated.”
“She’s my stepsister,” I said. It wasn’t true technically but it was weird and it was avoidance. I didn’t want to tell a stranger the truth, which was that I was terrified I would hurt Isabel. Walk out on her like my mother had walked out on me.
The girl made a face. “Seriously? Awkward.”
“A little.” It was going to be even more so if Isabel let Kim know we had been naked together. She hadn’t seemed like she was going to keep it a big secret, which she should. Nobody needed to know our damn business.
“What’s your name?” I asked the girl, because it seemed like she was going to stick around for a while and I didn’t like talking to someone without at least acknowledging they had a name.
She stuck her name out. “Alexandra. Nice to meet you.”
“Ryan.” I shook her hand.
“I would have thought you were like a Vlad or something. Ivan.”
“Because I’ve never heard that before.” I rolled my eyes at her, but I wasn’t really annoyed. She was keeping me from going into full-on brooding. “So what do you do, Alexandra, besides pry into strange dude’s business at the bar?”
“That’s it.” She gave me a grin. “You?”
“I glare at people.” My phone buzzed in my hand. It was an alert from work. “Excuse me, I need to take this.” It was the code to call in immediately. I dialed the office.
Mickey answered. “Security camera at the house in the Gables showed an intruder.” He paused. “And Isabel entering the house about five minutes after he did.”
My blood chilled and I froze. “What?” I patted my pocket for my keys. I needed to get to my car. “Are the police en route? When was it?”
“I called the cops. It was twenty minutes ago. We’re only doing random sweeps. It’s a miracle the staff even saw it. Usually that shit gets looked at the next day, not in real time. I’m all the way in Sunny Isles, it will take me forty minutes to get there but I’m on my way with Kim. She’s freaking out. Where are you at?”
“Ocean Drive.” I waved to Alexandra and took off jogging, phone still at my ear. “The traffic here sucks dicks though, as you know, but the causeway should be clear. I’ll be there in twenty.”
For a second I didn’t even remember where I had parked my car. I was frantic at the thought of someone hurting Isabel. What the fuck was she doing at the house? I knew exactly what she was doing. She wasn’t stupid. Isabel was smart and Isabel knew people. She knew I wasn’t coming back and she didn’t want to stay in the hotel alone. In the bed we’d had sex in.
I would never forgive myself if something happened to her.
She was a good person. The best. The kind who deserved only happiness and love. Not to be dragged down by me or endangered by my father. All I could think was that I needed to make sure she was safe, then keep her safe. I wanted to grab her and shield her from everything about the world that sucked ass, and wrap my arms around her.
It kind of felt like if I could love somebody, this was it.
I ran faster.