Everything Between Us (19 page)

“Thanks. Having a decent night?”

He nods. “Claudia’s picking up one of my sculptures.”

I’d make an asshole remark about how that makes sense, since he’s boning her, but I keep my mouth shut. I’ve got a nice buzz going, and Stella’s voice is fading a bit the more I drink, so we’re good. “Cool. How many are you showing?”

“Four. I’d like to move all of them, but that’s probably too much to ask.”

“They’ll be on display through the month.”

“But they sell better on exhibition nights.” He glances toward the street entrance and nudges me. “Look who just showed up,” he says.

I glance over to see Liza walk in, her auburn hair shining with gold highlights. I stare at her face, trying to muster the heat I’m going to need to give her what she wants, but what comes over me instead is loss. Sadness. This is what I get, what I deserve, when what I really want is—

“Well, hello,” Markus rumbles, stepping forward. “Holy shit, Dan, you were right.” He looks over his shoulder at me. “She
is
hot.”

He strides away from me, toward the girl who’s just stepped into the room, silky brown hair framing her face, deep, dark eyes scanning the room, willowy body encased in a light blue dress with silver beading.

My breath rushes out of me and I nearly drop my empty wine glass. “Stella,” I whisper.

And, like she hears me, she turns her head, and her full, red lips curve into a smile.

Chapter Sixteen: Stella

Daniel’s standing by three paintings of marbles, and immediately I know they’re his. They have that brazen, happy, silly feel to them. But then again, everything feels a little happy and silly, because I raided my dad’s liquor cabinet right before getting in the car.

I knew I wouldn’t make it if I didn’t. The last two days have been exhausting, as I’ve tried to talk myself into coming and paced the enclosed porch at night, unable to sleep. I’ve been living for this moment, but it wasn’t easy to get here.

“Liza,” says a thickly muscled guy I recognize from the co-op website. Mark, I think? The one who looks like a Hells Angel. “How have you been?”

My mother kisses his cheek, and as she does, his eyes linger on me in a way that makes me want to take a step back. “Markus,” she purrs. “I’ve been so stressed lately, but I just got back from a week in Palm Springs and I feel much better.”

His meaty palm is on her bare back. “You look as amazing as ever,” he says, still looking at me. “Is this your sister?”

I snort. How cheesy can you get? My mother glares at me. Snorting is not good manners. “This is my daughter, Estella,” she says. “She’s taking a semester off from Wellesley.”

“We all need a break sometimes, I guess,” Markus says with a smile. He takes my hand and lifts it to his lips, but I snatch my hand away before he can plant a kiss.

“Nice to meet you,” I say, folding my arms over my middle.

He straightens up and smirks. “She looks just like you, Liza. Is she as talented as you are?”

“Definitely not,” I say.

Mom smoothes her hair and smiles at me. Somewhere in there is a hint of motherly concern, but mostly I see her need. She wants to be loved and recognized and admired. She’s not happy I’m here, but she didn’t feel like she could say no. She has, after all, been trying to drag me out of the house for weeks, so I trapped her when I asked to come tonight. If she said no, she’d lose her leverage. She couldn’t claim I wasn’t trying to get better.

So she’s taken another tack. All the way here in the car, she told me about my dad’s affairs in lurid detail, the time she walked into his office to find his pants around his ankles and a secretary on her knees in front of him, the time he answered the phone and she heard a woman moaning in the background while he told my mom what he wouldn’t be home for dinner, the time she checked his email and found naked pictures of one of the account managers. She slammed me over the head with the specifics, wrapped them around my neck and pulled reality tight. She wanted me to know she had a right to this, to Daniel, to their affair. She’s been wronged, and she’s finding her pleasure here. I didn’t say a word. My head buzzed with alcohol and hope, and it got me through. If I can just get Daniel alone, he’ll figure this out with me. He’ll tell me what he meant when he said he missed me. He’ll listen when I tell him how I feel.

He’s right there, across the room.

Mom waves at Daniel and beckons him over. He still looks tired, circles under his eyes, lines around his mouth. I hope his mom is doing better, because he was so torn up about her. I don’t think he’d be here if she had died or if she was doing really poorly, but it’s obvious he hasn’t had a chance to rest. And he’s giving Markus a look that I’ve never seen before, steely and cold.

Markus edges closer to me as Daniel sets his glass on a passing tray and slowly makes his way toward us. It’s really crowded in here, and the change in temperature from the cold air of the street to this stifling gallery is making my head feel like it’s been stuffed with cotton. Or maybe that’s the alcohol.

Before Daniel can reach us, he’s intercepted by two women, Mrs. Gielgood—tanned with long hair—and Mrs. Dexter, blonde with big boobs. My mom decides she’s tired of waiting and walks forward to join them, greeting him effusively and kissing his cheeks like she’s marking her territory. The other women move in closer to him, talking and laughing, while Mom presses her chest to his as she uses her thumb to wipe her lipstick from his skin. This is Daniel as I always imagined, women all over him, wanting to touch him. A twinge of nausea makes the room tilt a little, and I take an unsteady step to the side.

“Can I get you a drink?” Markus asks my cleavage.

“Sure.” I need to regain my composure before I talk to Daniel. I don’t want to make a fool of myself.

Markus puts his arm around my waist and steers me toward the bar before I can object. I look over my shoulder to see my mom whispering in Daniel’s ear, and the memory of her kissing him hits me like a fist to the chest. He’s turned away from me, and her arm is around his waist. He’s surrounded, three women, long-nailed fingers on his back, his arms, his chest. I have to talk to him, but I want to get it right. I’ve gone over it in my head, thought of a million different ways to say it, and the best way is actually a quote from
Great Expectations
, which I’ve re-read over the last few days as I thought about him.

“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have read … You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with …”

It’s something Pip says to Estella after she tells him she’s going to marry someone else, someone who cannot possibly treat her as she deserves or want her for anything but her appearance and the triumph of claiming her. And now, as I watch my mother’s lips fluttering near Daniel’s cleanly shaven cheek, I have the urge to scream it across the room.

Instead, I’m standing with Markus, who’s leaning toward me, a few inches shorter than I am, especially since I’m wearing heels, but nearly twice as wide. “What’s your poison?” he asks.

“I’m not very discriminating,” I say, not bothering to mention that I’m underage. At the moment, my lips are kind of numb.

He mutters something to the bartender at the makeshift bar and pushes a glass into my hand a moment later. People keep bumping me with their shoulders and backs and elbows, and I’m having trouble catching my breath. I take a big sip of the cold drink, needing to relax, to cool down. It singes my throat, so I press the sweating glass to my neck. I glance toward Daniel … but he’s gone.

Markus touches my face, and I flinch back. “Your cheeks are red,” he says. His breath smells like my drink. His cheeks are kind of red, too.

“I’m hot.”

His black-brown eyes flash. “You certainly are. I was actually talking to Daniel about that the other day. He told me you were … looking for an experience.”

“What?”

His eyebrow arches. “Are you still looking for someone to give it to you?”

“Art lessons, you mean?” I look down at my drink and take another sip. It’s way too warm in here.

Markus chuckles and traces his finger down my arm. “No, a different kind of lesson. Because I’d be happy to teach you. I think you’d enjoy it.”

Through the cotton lining my brain, the realization forms and crystallizes. Daniel told him. He talked to people about our arrangement. My heart jolts, followed by a sharp pain in my chest. My fingers spasm, and I drop my drink. The tumbler shatters at my feet.

Markus grabs my arm and moves me away from the glinting shards as a dozen heads turn in my direction. I stare down at a curved claw of broken glass a few inches from my toes until Markus tips my chin up. “You okay?”

My mouth opens and closes, but nothing comes out. It’s so freaking hot in here, and suddenly I know I’m going to throw up. Wildly, I look around for a bathroom, and finally zone in on a back hallway. I have to get there. I start forward, but Markus grabs my arm. “Hey, where are you—”

I rip myself away from him and ricochet off someone next to me. More tinkling, shattering glass.
Oh, God.
Why did I think I could do this? It feels like a hand has closed around my throat. I can’t get enough air. Saliva is pooling in my mouth. If I don’t get to a bathroom, I’m going to humiliate myself in front of everyone, all my mom’s friends, all of Daniel’s friends, maybe even Daniel himself, because I know he’s somewhere around here. How many of them know that I’m the girl who offered him a thousand dollars for sex? How many of them know what a loser I am?

People are already staring, and I know I must look insane, bug-eyed and crazy, bouncing off people crowded shoulder to shoulder around paintings, desperate to get to that back hallway, which seems like it’s getting further away instead of closer. I have to keep going, even though my vision is spotting and my toes are numb and the fierce prickles are roaring up my arms and down my legs. A woman steps backward into my path just as I lurch forward, and I crash into her. She’s not holding a drink, thank God. Her hands go around my waist to steady us both, and she looks up at me with wide eyes.

“Oh dear,” she says.

“I need the bathroom,” I squeak.

“Yes.” That’s all she says. She glances at someone standing behind me, then slides her hand around my back and whisks me toward the hallway. I blink down at the top of her head, her short, reddish brown hair tickling my shoulder as she steadies me. “Here we are.”

She shoves open a door and pulls me inside. I run into the stall and stand over the toilet, panting, wheezing, my heart going a billion miles an hour, the sobs rolling out as I try to clench my teeth closed, desperate to be silent. I can’t stop can’t stop can’t stop can’t stop.

I can’t stop this, because I’m weak and pathetic and shouldn’t have tried to come here. I can’t believe how stupid I was to think that I could show up and tell Daniel how I feel about him. I can’t believe I thought he’d want to hear it. I am fucking delusional. Crazy. I’m crazy.

I sink to the floor, my hands streaking sweaty and cold down the metal edges of the stall. I can’t control my breathing. I’m going to faint. I’m going to throw up and faint and die. I squeeze my eyes shut, praying for it to end, knowing it has to, but every time I try to get a foothold on my control, I get tossed off again. He’s here, with my mom, and they’ll be together tonight, and I’ll be lying next to this toilet, drowning in my own crazy. He told people about me. He probably laughed with them about how ridiculous I am. A broken, hoarse shriek forces its way out of me.

“I know this is going to sound like a strange question,” says the woman from just outside the stall. “But would you happen to be Liza Bierens’s daughter?”

Oh, fantastic. Even this random woman knows about Liza Bierens’s crazy daughter. “Don’t tell her,” I plead, barely able to get the words out between shudders. “Please.” She’d hospitalize me. She’d send me away. This would be all she needed.

“Okay,” the woman says. “But I want to help you.”

“Leave me alone,” I whisper. Because no one can help me. I am unhelpable. I should never have come here. I cannot live in this world. I can’t even live in my own skin. I’m on my knees in a tiny bathroom stall. I am pathetic.

The woman says something else to me, but I can’t hear her. My heartbeat is too loud, my thoughts are too loud, my failure is too loud.

I close my eyes and lower my head to my knees, ragged breaths bursting from between my lips, unable to stop it, unable to hold it back. Through the ringing in my ears, I hear the door to the bathroom open and shut, and the woman doesn’t talk to me again. Maybe she’s gone back to the party. I hope so. I wish I had enough control over my limbs to lock the door so no one else could come in.

But that’s too much to hope for, so I reach up and lock the stall, then curl up on the floor as wave after wave of terror pounds me into nothing, rips me into pieces, and scatters me to the wind.

Chapter Seventeen: Daniel

I’m surrounded, and Liza’s got her claws in my arm, and Stella’s disappeared. I’m starting to question if I really saw her here. It might have been the product of my half-drunk wishes. After all, if I could hear her voice in my head, why couldn’t I see her right in front of me? But … would my own hallucination go wandering off with Markus, of all people?

Liza keeps running her hand down my hip. She’s horny as hell, and I’m fighting the urge to shove her away. “As you saw, I had a little complication,” she whispers in my ear after I’ve snagged her a drink. “Estella insisted on coming.”

I blink. Confirmation that Stella’s really here. Now we’re getting somewhere. “That’s great,” I reply, looking around for her. “You wanted her to get out of the house.” I can’t believe she’s here. How did she do it? And why? She seemed so certain she couldn’t. She was so scared. But she did it. A fidgety excitement stirs inside of me. There are places I want to take her. Things I want to show her. I want to share my world with her.

What the hell am I thinking?

“I know I wanted her to get out more,” whines Liza, “but I didn’t want her to spoil our night. So I’ve explained everything to her, and I think she understands.”