Chapter 12
Gabrielle
After closing the door, I leaned up against its hard surface and sank to the floor.
I brought my knees up to my chest and cradled my arms around them, burying my face into my forearm, not caring that my t-shirt was rather sticky and smelled like vanilla milkshake.
Why had that awful vision come into my head?
I hadn’t thought about any of that stuff for many years.
Except when I wrote the book, but even then, the memories hadn’t been that prevalent in my mind.
In fact, I’d felt much better after writing it all down.
Giving the story to my characters instead of me had helped relieve my anxieties.
Removing myself from the situation and giving the problems to someone else had been something I’d done inside my head many, many times.
Writing it as someone else was just as easy.
It had paid off, I guess, since my new publisher and editor both said it seemed so real.
The editor even asked me if it had happened to me.
I denied it all, of course. I always tried to see the character as someone else.
I had to be careful and not be too specific in the telling of the tale, too.
According to my editor, nobody wants to read heinous acts like that in too much detail.
Seeing Brodie standing there, dripping with sticky vanilla milkshake had made me remember that horrible time in my life.
God, how embarrassing. He must think I’m a complete nutcase.
It had been so uncontrollable though. Like someone else had taken over my mind.
I didn’t even realize it had happened until Brodie was ordering me to look at him.
The room lit up with a bright flash of light. Three seconds later, thunder boomed through the eerie, dark night. I jumped at the sound and wished it would go away. I hated thunderstorms. And thunderstorms without rain? Now that was just creepy.
The outline of the bed in the dark seemed to dominate the space, making the room seem daunting when the light flashed.
The area was small, but I didn’t need much room.
Most of my belongings were still in San Diego.
All I had with me now were the suitcases I’d brought.
After emptying them, my clothes seemed dwarfed by the wall-length closet they hung in.
My eyes hurt. My head hurt from all the thinking, and it took me several minutes to realize the pounding in my head was actually someone knocking on the bedroom door. When I heard Brodie’s pleas to open it, I swiped away the rest of the tears that had dripped down my cheeks.
“Gabrielle. Please open the door.”
“Please go away.”
“No.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Why?”
“Because I need to see that you’re okay.”
“I’m okay. Now please leave me alone.”
“No. I need to see for myself.”
I didn’t want to open the door and see him without his shirt.
It was too embarrassing. What was wrong with me?
I’d seen men without shirts before. Lain with men without shirts before, but for some reason, the sticky mess on Brodie had brought back all the horrible things from my past that I so desperately wanted to be rid of.
“Take my word for it.”
“Come on, Gabrielle. Open the fucking door.”
I stood up and dried my face on the towel hanging on the back of the door then pulled it open. “Well, since you asked so nicely.”
Not waiting for an invitation, he stepped into the room and looked around. The room was still dark since I hadn’t bothered with any of the lights. A couple seconds later, lightning struck out again, giving the room a momentary glow, and I flinched as the crack of thunder quickly followed.
He walked over and turned on a small lamp that rested on the table beside the bed before he sat down on the edge of the mattress, lifting a couple of the pillows and tossing them to the other side.
“Just make yourself at home, why don’t you?
” I said and watched him look around as though he were looking for something.
I realized I was wringing my hands together, so I stuck them in the pockets of my shorts.
He had a shirt on, at least. So I was safe there.
I don’t know why his nakedness affected me so much.
“Where are they?”
“What?” His question took me by surprise.
“Where are they?” he repeated, a little louder.
“Where are what?” I asked, completely puzzled as to what he was talking about.
“You know what.”
“No. I don’t. What is it you want?”
“I don’t want anything. I want to know where they are?”
“Again, where are what?”
“The fucking drugs.”
“What?”
“The drugs you’re on. Where are you hiding them?”
“I don’t have any drugs. Seriously, you think I’m on drugs? Why would you think I had drugs?’
“There’s something up. Whatever it is, it’s making you act weird.”
“I’m not on drugs.”
“Well, Gabrielle…” He stood. “Something just happened out there in the hallway and you didn’t seem like yourself.”
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. You went somewhere. You know it and I know it. You spilled a milkshake all over both of us and then it was like you disappeared and some scared little girl replaced you.”
I leaned against the doorframe, stalling.
I didn’t know what to say to him. He walked over to me and took my hands in his.
“Look. You don’t want to talk about it, fine.
I get it. It’s none of my business. All I want to know is that you’re okay because a few minutes ago, you definitely weren’t okay. ”
“I’m okay.” I thought quickly of something to explain my weird behavior. “I was testing out the way I thought one of my characters might react in a story I’m writing. So see? No reason for concern.”
Brodie made some huffing sound, side-stepped around me, stopped in the middle of the doorway then turned toward me. “Well, that sounds like one hell of a story. I look forward to reading it someday.”
He would? “You would?” I found myself asking aloud. The idea of him reading my book seemed so… surreal.
He shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“I don’t know. I never pictured you as a reader.
I mean a guy who likes to read novels. I mean …
I’m sure you read.” Now I was babbling, but at least we were talking about something besides what had happened.
I wasn’t entirely sure about what that was myself, so there was really no way I could explain it to Brodie, or anyone for that matter.
“I read. Stephen King, Tom Clancy, or Michael Connelly. Horror and mysteries mostly. From the way you were acting, your story sounds like it might fall into the horror genre. Is that what you’re writing? Horror? Because you sure scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry. A little on the horror side, it’s mostly a romance, but with a very dark edge. It’s a stand-alone, but the main character is one that I had in my other novel.” I wasn’t lying about all that. I was toying with a new story like that. One I’d actually started writing the other night.
“A romantic horror story. Sounds intriguing. You have another novel?”
“Yeah. I accepted a contract with a publisher a few days before I came here. I told Lena about it this morning, but I told her not to mention it to anyone.”
“That’s really cool. Congratulations. But why did you tell her not to tell anyone?”
“I wasn’t sure if I wanted anyone to know. I was thinking of using a pen name.”
“Oh. Why don’t you want anyone to know you wrote it?”
“Let’s just say it has some stuff in it that I don’t want certain people to read.”
“That makes sense. I guess.”
“I can’t believe you thought I was on drugs.”
“I didn’t.”
“But you accused me of being on drugs and hiding them.”
“I had to ask. You were acting very strangely. We should still celebrate. About the book.” He smiled, but from the way his smile didn’t reach his eyes, I was pretty sure he hadn’t bought my explanation. Regardless, I was grateful that he hadn’t pressured me for any more information.