Gabrielle (16 page)

“I don't know what I thought,” I said in an equally soft voice. “But I know how crazy it all sounds.”

“You and me,” he said as he threaded his fingers through mine. “We're perfect together.

Two big messes.”

How could a mess, let alone two, be perfect? And yet, despite the conversation we'd just had, his arms were so comfortable. So warm.

Settling my weight back into his, I forced myself to push it all away, and just focus on that feeling of safety for as long as it lasted.

Because I knew, without a doubt, that it would flit away again soon.

A week went by, and then two. I tried not to think about what I'd learned about my mother. I continued to push away the horrible conversation Dylan and I had in the park about things. I worked on my songs in the practice rooms, and although Dylan and I hung out a lot, I never played them for him. I couldn't. Not when I was still trying to figure out what they meant.

Not when I was still trying to figure out what I felt.

He and I kissed. A lot.

We hadn't had sex yet; he'd really meant it when he said he didn't want me to be like all the other girls who had passed in and out of his bed. Still, we didn't have to actually do the deed for me to learn something about myself that I hadn't really known before.

Beneath my sweet seventeen-year-old exterior was a woman who liked being stroked, caressed, kissed.

Of course my grandmother and I had talked about sex. I hadn't been sheltered from the facts of life by any means. But we hadn't talked about it since I'd learned about my mother, about the fact that she'd been a courtesan, too.

Somehow, even though I knew my grandmother had been one, I'd never really thought of her in a sexual way. How could I? She was my grandmother. And how could I look at anyone else in a sexual way when I'd never looked at myself that way before, either?

But now, for the first time in seventeen years, I was starting to.

“Are you sure it will be okay with your grandmother for me to be here?”

I gave Dylan a confident smile. “Of course it's okay. You're my boyfriend. She trusts me.”

He didn't say anything to that, but he let me take him in through the kitchen and up the stairs to my bedroom.

I closed the door behind us.

“So,” he said with a slow grin, “this is where you sleep.”

I felt hot all over, suddenly, and threw my jacket down on my piano bench. I hadn't thought about what my bedroom would look like through his eyes, but now that he was in here, I wished I had pulled some of my pictures off the walls, ones from when I was a little girl with the

—

“Nice pigtails.”

Yup, that was the one, where I had pigtails.

I stuck my tongue out at him.

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” he warned me, his voice slightly dark and teasing all at the same time.

My skin prickled as I said, “Oh really? What are you going to do about it?”

A split second later my back was flat on the bed and he was over me.

“This.”

His mouth was sweet and so delicious I forgot all about the fact that I'd been starving when we first got to my house. Now I was starving for something else entirely.

“Dylan,” I said a little while later, when he unbuttoned the top buttons of my shirt and started kissing his way down my neck and across my collar bones, but stopped himself before he went any lower, “don't stop this time.”

He lifted his head to look at me, his dark eyes even darker now. “Gabi.”

My name was more a groan than anything else.

I pulled his face back to mine and kissed him. “I want more. I'm ready for more.”

This time, he actually groaned into my mouth. “You shouldn't say those things to me.”

Every time we'd started to have this conversation, he'd shut it down. This time, I wasn't going to let words stop me.

I was going to take action, instead.

Still kissing him, I picked up one of his hands in mine and slid it beneath the hem of my shirt. My stomach muscles quivered as his fingertips made contact with my skin.

He was so warm.

And clearly tentative, if the way he was holding himself perfectly still was any indication.

But I knew he knew what he was doing, that if I'd been any other girl he would have gone straight for what he wanted.

So I moved his hand higher, then higher still. My breath was coming faster now and I was a heartbeat away from placing his palm over my bra, when he yanked back on me.

“Gabi. No.”

“Yes. It's okay.”

But we were back to words now. And I could tell from looking at his face that he wasn't going to budge.

Beyond frustrated—and more than a little hurt—I blurted, “Why don't you want me?”

“Jesus, Gabi, you know I want you.” He pressed himself against me, just in case I'd missed the proof. “You know that's not it.”

“I'm not like those girls you slept with before. You know it. I know it.”

I hated this, hated feeling like I was pleading with him to touch me. It felt like something a desperate girl did.

Still half-lying on me, he ran his hand through his hair. How was it that whenever I did that, I looked like a crazy lady, but when a guy did it, he looked hotter than ever, and like he'd just been styled for a magazine shoot?

“I know you're not,” he finally said.

“Then why won't you—”

I couldn't say the rest of it. It was too pathetic. Way too pathetic to actually verbalize a question about why the guy I liked was deathly afraid of touching my boobs.

“You don't have to do what your mom and grandma did, Gabi.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know. Sleep with me. Do stuff you're not comfortable with.”

Oh. My. God.

Did he actually think I was acting like a courtesan?

So much for trying to forget about our conversation in the park. My whole courtesan legacy – slash – curse thing was obviously hanging around my neck like a neon sign.

Trying to stay calm when I felt anything but, I said, “The way I feel about you has nothing to do with my mother or grandmother.”

“You told me they were both courtesans, Gabi. You don't have to do this...this
stuff
with me to keep me, or whatever.”

I couldn't believe what he was saying.

“That's not why I'm doing this
stuff
.” I put the same emphasis on the words that he had.

“You're acting like the only reason I want to go further with you is because it's my family legacy to act like that. Because of some inner courtesan inside of me dying to get out. They weren't whores, Dylan! I told you that already.”

I was up and off the bed now, my shirt pulled back down. Way down. Heck, at this point, I was tempted to put my robe on so that no skin showed at all.

“They slept with guys they weren't married to.”

“Everybody does that!”

“Everybody doesn't do it for money. Everybody doesn't do it for nice places to live and fancy clothes.”

I picked up one of Missy's history books about courtesans that I'd been ignoring for weeks and threw it at him.

“Courtesans weren't hookers!”

I picked up another book, a heavier, bigger one, and threw that at him, too.

“They were educated women who were doing the best they could when society was intent on keeping women in their place!”

Was that really what I thought? Or was I just pissed at him for saying the very things I had been thinking all along?

“Gabi, I didn't mean anything by what I—”

The genuine remorse in his voice, along with the thick confusion, had me dropping the third book I'd been about to chuck at him.

I sat down hard on my bed. “I know you didn't.”

He carefully set the books down on my desk and came over to me, sitting beside me.

“You're right, you know. I don't really know anything about what they were like.”

I had to admit, “Me either.”

He looked more than a little surprised. “Really? You don't?”

I shook my head. “Missy gave me these books, but I didn't want to read them. They've just been sitting over there getting dusty.”

“Missy knows about your family?”

“Of course she does. She's my best friend.”

“Does anyone else know?”

“No.” I said flatly. “No one else knows.”

Except Bradley, of course, but I was so not going to go there. Not right now. Not ever, if I could help it.

My grandmother knocked on my bedroom door just then. “Gabrielle?”

“We're in here.”

But she didn't let herself in. She trusted me too much. Even though the truth was I'd just been rolling around on my bed with Dylan, begging him to put his hands on me.

Dylan was already standing. “I should go,” he said almost at the exact second I opened my door.

“Oh hello, Dylan.” My grandmother's smile didn't waver.

He nodded at her. “I was just leaving, Mrs.—” He stopped cold, gulped as he suddenly realized she'd probably never married. Since she'd been a courtesan and all. “Uh, Ms.

LeGrande.” He shot me a quick look. “See you later, Gabi.”

“Is everything all right,
ma petite
?”

One part of me wanted to shout,
No, of course everything isn't all right!
Another part of me wanted to yell,
I was trying to get Dylan to have sex with me, but he won't do it because he's
afraid it will mean, deep down, that I'm a courtesan like you were.

Instead of doing either of those things, I said, “I've got some reading to do.”

It was clear that I hadn't even come close to answering her question, but she didn't press me on it. Instead, she pulled me into a hug.

“I was about to make a snack. Will you join me?”

I knew anything I ate just then was going to come back up.

“Maybe later.”

* * *

I didn't close the door after she left. I didn't want to feel like I was hiding anything from her.

I picked up Missy's books and sat down in the center of my bed with them on my lap.

They felt heavy. Almost like they were hot.

I didn't need these books to learn more about the history of courtesans. I knew I could ask my grandmother anything.

But I needed the separation of a writer I didn't know talking about a history that didn't include my family.

Oh God! I practically shoved the books off my lap as a horrible thought struck me.

What if my family was in one of these books? What if it turned out that one of my ancestors had been a famous enough to be written about in feminist history books?

I was a half-second from getting up off the bed, from walking away from the pile of books.

But I'd been a coward about it all long enough.

Still, when I couldn't quite make myself pick them up and open them, I knew what I needed to do.

I picked up my cell and made the phone call I'd been avoiding for weeks.

* * *

Bradley was waiting for me in the park by the time I got there. I couldn't help it, I had to look around to make sure Dylan didn't happen to be walking past.

If Bradley saw me doing that—and we both knew he had—he didn't say anything about it. Instead, he simply said, “I missed you, Gabrielle.”

I was immediately disarmed. Softened. All the walls I'd tried to put up between us after feeling like I'd let him get too close fell down.

“I missed you, too,” I admitted.

He sat on a bench and I sat beside him, putting my heavy bag down between us. On purpose. As if, somehow, a bag of books could keep me from feeling totally inappropriate things for him.

“I was worried about you. You haven't called since we met with Mrs. Porter.”

He'd called and left me a few texts and emails. None of which I'd returned. Because I sucked.

Well, that, and because I liked him way more than I should.

“I've been okay.” I bit my lip. “Actually, I've been trying to pretend it didn't happen.

That none of it is true. But that's not going to work, is it?”

“I don't think so.”

I turned my bag over and emptied the books out on the bench. “I need to read these. Now that I know for sure that my mother was a courtesan, I need to read about them. I need to find something good about it all. But I can't seem to do it on my own.”

Bradley picked up a book and started reading out loud.

* * *

An hour later, he closed the book he'd been reading to me.

“Wow. Fascinating.”

My brain had been madly processing the data thrown at it for sixty straight minutes and I was barely able to untangle my thoughts enough to murmur, “They were so similar to me. I should have expected that, but even though I knew my grandmother hadn't come from the gutters, I guess I thought every other courtesan had.”

The truth was, in measuring the differences between these women and myself, I'd found unexpected matches, places we linked up in terms of education, the way we were raised, the things we wanted out of life.

And yet, despite the fact that I certainly knew more about courtesans, about how they'd come into being and some of the good and bad that had befallen them throughout history, none of that helped me get my head around the curse my grandmother had spoken of. The curse she believed in, body and soul.

The curse she was so afraid would hurt me unless I became a courtesan, too.

“Thank you for helping me wade through all this,” I said softly.

“But it doesn't answer your real question, does it?”

I shook my head. “No. Not really.”

“There's someone I think you should talk to. Someone who could tell you more than any history book.”

The charming boy I was so comfortable with had given way to someone far more serious.