7
Gerard’s fate hovered in an unseeable hand.
That journal, sold to the right outlet, could ruin his entire life.
Or maybe set me free, he thought momentarily.
No, he couldn’t chance it. His private thoughts and his identity weren’t for public consumption when every other part of him already was.
The anger from earlier bubbled back up and caused him to snap. “Reading my journal is a complete invasion of privacy!” He dashed toward the robe then jumped to snatch the journal back.
His invisible foe was far too quick. “You being here is a complete invasion of my space!”
“Your space? I’m the one who paid the rent for the month!” Gerard countered, attempting to throw his arms around the transparent person. The material of the robe was too slippery, and he’d misjudged Emory’s width.
“You’ve messed with my experiments, disorganized my papers, and set me off track to codify my discovery by weeks, if not months!” he snarled, clear across the room by then. He moved fast, but he moved clumsily, too, bumping into furniture as he went.
“Have you been … have you been in the apartment this whole time?” Gerard asked, catching his breath.
“Where else would I have been?” Emory spat.
Outside of his family, when was the last time someone had the gall to speak to Gerard like that?
As soon as he became famous, everyone treated him like he was a king among men.
Not that he wasn’t scared out of his mind by this invisible man, but he was sort of tickled, too, to be cut down to size a bit.
“You’ve been watching me eat and sleep and change for a week?” Gerard was newly skeeved. He’d suffered weird fans before, even had a stalker or two, but this was on another level. A hovering robe was arguing with him!
Emory hid the journal behind his back, blocking it from view. The opacity of the robe led Gerard to an unsettling realization. “Oh my God! Have you been naked this whole time?”
The silence spoke for itself.
“This is absolutely outlandish!” Gerard said, skin crawling. He ran across the room and dove for the journal. He wasn’t going to let this creep get away with blackmail.
Emory weaseled away but must not have realized the bed was right behind him. The robe did a roll, looking as if it were tumbling in a dryer. Emory’s glasses and the journal took to the air. Loose papers showered around them. The glasses skidded across the floor.
Concerned and baffled, Gerard asked, “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Emory huffed.
Gerard approached with caution, inconspicuously picking up discarded journal pages as he went. “Are you hurt?”
“I said,” Emory reiterated, “I’m fine.”
Helping the man who’d just tried to blackmail him seemed like a step too far, but still, he grabbed Emory’s glasses off the floor and held them out as an olive branch. He had a feeling the man could not see well—if at all—without them.
“What are we going to do about this?” Gerard asked, sitting down on the floor so he was at Emory’s level. He busied himself with stuffing the pages back into his journal while waiting for a response.
“We are not going to do anything. I’m going to post on social media that you’re on Iping Island so you will be forced to leave,” he said, bringing back some of the earlier bite to his voice.
Gerard couldn’t take Emory seriously after the tumbling act he’d just witnessed or … half witnessed? “Regina said you’re wanted by the authorities. If you post, I’ll tell everyone you’re still on the island, just invisible,” he countered.
“Who would believe you?” Emory asked, voice oozing smugness.
“There’s plenty of evidence scattered around this room,” he pointed out. “The police just didn’t know what they were looking at the first time around.”
“I’m invisible. I’ll be hard to catch,” Emory said.
“I’m rich. I’ll be hard to catch, too.” Gerard crossed his arms over his chest, stalemate achieved.
Even if he didn’t really believe his money could protect him.
Especially not from grumpy invisible men with boundary issues.
“Wait, you’re the unseeable figure everybody keeps posting about on the Knock-Knock Neighbor app—joyriding in golf carts and stealing food and vandalizing the signs? ”
“No comment.”
Gerard couldn’t help but laugh at the pointless PR jargon. “You’re invisible. What’s stopping you from getting as far away from here as possible?”
“You ask too many questions,” Emory huffed, obviously avoiding the topic.
Gerard shook his head. “My dad would say the same thing.”
“Didn’t he ever tell you ‘Curiosity killed the cat’?” Emory asked.
“If you were going to kill me, I have a feeling you’d have done it to me in my sleep already,” Gerard said, easing into this conversation, retreating from the ledge of fright.
“I’m sure you have plenty of tools and ways to do so in here.
Speaking of, what’s with all the late-night experimentation?
You’re already invisible, or was that not your goal? ”
Once again, Emory’s silence spoke for him.
“You’re stuck like this, aren’t you?” Gerard asked, fairly certain he already knew the answer. He wondered, if he could see Emory’s eyes, would they be narrowed with rage that a pretty-boy pop star like him had figured it out?
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he hissed, ire turned up a notch.
Gerard shook his head, unmoved. “No, I think I do. I scrolled back quite a ways on that app Regina told me about. You were being chased. This is how you decided to avoid the police? Turn yourself invisible?”
It seemed a bit extreme. There had to be more to the story.
More silence from Emory; more palpable tension filled the air, too. It took on a physicality, like it was caressing Gerard’s face. It almost bordered on … sexual?
That couldn’t be right. Gerard was stressed, and his imagination was running wild because an invisible man was sitting in front of him.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Gerard dared.
“I can’t tell you you’re wrong,” Emory admitted finally. A tsunami of self-pity that could’ve drowned Gerard poured out in those words.
Gerard shook his head, recalling the holy water and rosary from ten minutes before. Emory was no vengeful spirit, just a sad man stuck with the unintended consequences of his own actions. Gerard wished he couldn’t relate so easily.
Whatever had gone down with Emory on Iping, Regina didn’t seem too rattled by it. If he had killed a man, it would’ve been on the news or in the island forum. Perhaps everyone was making something out of nothing. Shouldn’t Emory have a chance to share his side of the story?
No matter the case, to have accomplished a feat like this, Emory must have been astoundingly smart, which intrigued Gerard enough to want to know more about the mysterious disappearing man.
Safety mostly assured, he said, “Have we moved past the threats of violence and roughhousing?”
All he got in response was a rash pfft.
Gerard pressed on. “While I’m certainly not going to leave, I may consider letting you stay here and continue working within reason.”
“What’s it going to cost me?” Emory asked, sounding like someone who had been on the short end of the bargaining stick more times than he could count. The robe bunched as if Emory had balled up by pulling his knees into his chest.
“Not much,” Gerard said kindly. “Just your story.”
Emory sighed, shifted, and then said, “Fine, but it might take all night. And consider yourself warned: It’s not a happy one.”