Love and Chaos (6 page)

Stef’s eyes are glinting with controlled fury, and he’s talking superlow, through gritted teeth. “Just sit the fuck down and play nice. I went to a lot of effort to make this party happen for my friend Hal. You’re embarrassing me.”

Total silence.

We stare at each other.

Suddenly, I’m very, very scared.

I don’t know Stef, not really. I don’t know what he’s capable of doing to me. And I’m alone. Completely alone.

Panic rises like bile in my stomach. I stumble backward away from Stef and look around wildly.

The sun is setting, and the other yachts that surrounded us earlier have left. They’re just gone, swoosh, vamoosed. I didn’t even notice! Or did we sail somewhere? I wasn’t paying attention, have we been sailing into the middle of the fucking ocean? I turn again, desperately trying to see land.

It’s there. Thank God. Off the stern, I can see the long white beach of Grace Bay, and, in the soft dusk light, the twinkling lights of all the hotels. How far is it? A mile? Half a mile?

I look back at Stef for a second. He stands up and opens his mouth to say something.

Before he can speak, I look him in the eye. “Go fuck yourself, Stef.”

Then I turn around, run toward the back of the yacht, take a deep breath, and dive.

CHAPTER
8

The moment the water hits my head, I have a weird flashback to my wish the other day. When I thought I was so miserable, back in freezing gray Brooklyn, and all I craved was the blissed-out feeling of diving into seawater.

Be careful what you wish for.

My dress is wrapping around my legs, making it hard to swim, so I quickly remove it. Then, wearing nothing but my bikini, I start swimming toward the shore.

“Angie!” I can hear Stef screaming at me from the yacht. “Get the fuck back here, you crazy bitch!”

There’s no point in shouting back—I need to save my breath—so I tread water for a moment, and without turning around, raise my arms out of the water to give him the finger from both hands.

Then I keep swimming.

Fuck you, Stef,
I think, with every single stroke.
I’m going to pay you back for this.

I’m not exactly the running-around-the-soccer-field type, and the years of compulsory team sports in school just stressed me out because I was really uncoordinated and dreamy and forgot things like which direction to run if I ever actually got the ball. Swimming, however, is the perfect exercise for creative loners. And I’m pretty good at it.

Every few breaths I look up to make sure I’m still heading in the right direction. I think I am, but it’s hard to tell. The land is a lot farther away than I thought. All I want is to get back on land, and then somehow I’ll find my way to Brooklyn. I want my home.

Five, or maybe ten minutes later—I can’t tell—I hear a voice.

“Hey you!”

I turn around. It’s that fucking boat boy again, the clean-cut one who was watching me all day. He’s in a tiny blow-up dinghy. They’ve sent him to collect me.

“Go the fuck away,” I shout. “I’m not going back there.”

“I’m not going to take you back to the
Hamartia,
” he calls. “I’ll take you to shore. I promise.”

For a split second I consider it. But then reality hits: how many times do I have to be screwed over before I realize that everyone lies?

“I’m not going to trust some boat boy from a fucking superyacht,” I say. “Go back and tell them I’ve drowned.”

He laughs. “They don’t know I’m here.”

“Why the hell should I believe you?” I say. “I’m flying back to New York tonight. Leave me alone.”

“There is no flight to New York tonight.”

“Then I’ll fly to Chicago and catch a fucking bus.”

Before he can reply, I take a deep breath and keep swimming. Talking is making me breathless, and it’s a waste of time.

A few minutes later I glance back again. He’s still behind me. Just floating in that stupid little dinghy, using the oars to keep pace.

Whatever.

My arms and legs ache, but I don’t stop. I figure this pain is my punishment for being such a moron. For trusting a guy with the morals of a vulture. For not realizing there’s no such thing as a free lunch. (Or dress. Or trip to Aspen. Or charge card at Bergdorfs. Or … anything.) At one point, thinking about everything I’ve done, by accident and on purpose, but always with total stupidity, tears build up behind my eyes.

The last three men I slept with—Mani, Jessop, and whoever I was with at the Soho Grand—thought I was a hooker. Or something close to it.

But I thought they liked me. I really did. I thought I was just unlucky in love.

What would my parents think? What if my dad knew? How could I be so
stupid
?

I start sobbing, and my mouth fills with water, so I have to tread water for a second, making dramatic strangled choking sounds.

The boat boy stalker is right behind me. “Listen, it’s Angie, right? My name is Sam, and I—”

“Please fuck off, Sam!” I am trying as hard as I can to sound normal and tough.

Stop crying,
I tell myself sternly.
You can get through this. Just get away. Keep swimming.

And so that’s what I do. I swim, and breathe, and force every other thought out of my head.

“Angie?” Sam the boat boy calls out again. “Are you okay?”

“What are you going to do about it if I’m not, Sam?” I call over my shoulder. “Save me? I don’t need to be saved. I just need to get home.”

About two hundred feet from shore, just as the sun has finally set, swimming suddenly gets easier. It feels like the tide is helping me. I’m aiming for one of the smaller hotels, which I’m hoping will mean it’s an exclusive luxury-type place, where everyone keeps to themselves and you tend to not know the other guests. My arms and legs are almost cramping now, and I am exhausted, but I won’t stop. I’m determined to make it.

Finally, my feet hit sand. I turn around and see Sam, the boat boy, still twenty feet behind me in his stupid dinghy. God, what is he going for, some kind of Mr. Perfect medal or something?

“You can go now, Sam,” I call. “I’m safe and sound.”

“I don’t think you’re ever safe.”

Ignoring him, I keep swimming until I can easily stand up, my body more than half out of the water. Then I walk out of the sea. When I’m on the beach, I look back. Sam has finally left, already halfway back to the
Hamartia
. Sayonara, annoying boat boy.

It’s at that moment that I remember my passport, clothes, shoes, and money—the three thousand dollars—are in my cabin on the yacht. Oh shit, my phone! How could I have left everything behind without a second thought?

Fuck it. I’ll manage. I can’t go back now. I’ll figure something out.

With as much dignity as I can fake, I walk across the sand toward the hotel. I’m wearing my white bikini and nothing else, but it’s a beach resort, so it’s not like I’m out of place, right?

In front of the hotel is a faux-shabby beach bar, with reggae playing quietly. It’s a chill scene that stinks of money. The guests are predictably self-satisfied: the men are a little bit too sunburned, with the ubiquitous fat guy ostentatiously smoking an expensive cigar. The women are all wearing quasi-Ibizan tunic tops and deep conditioning their sea-and-chlorine-fried hair, pretending they’re going for the slicked-back look.

And they’re all gazing out, with restless boredom, at the ocean, at the pale twilight sky and the only yacht in sight. The
Hamartia
. It’s so weird looking back at it, like it’s a toy. A tiny, stupid toy.

Trying to look like I know exactly what I’m doing, I walk up to the bar. “I’ll have a Coke, uh, a Coca-Cola, please,” I say. “And I’ll start a tab.”

“Room number?”

“Um, I forgot!” I laugh gaily, trying to look dumb and charming. “My boyfriend will be down any second.”

The bartender nods, and serves it up in a huge chilled plastic cup.

Taking big frantic gulps—ah, sweet sugar rush!—I glance around, hoping I look like I belong. I need Internet access so I can e-mail Pia, beg her to get me on a flight home, maybe help me get an emergency passport.… God, I wish I’d talked to her more lately. She’s my best friend, but I never tell her what’s going on with me. I don’t even know why. I just always keep everything secret.

“Hey, can I buy you a drink?”

I turn around. Older guy, early thirties, accent. South American, maybe Spanish. Supermacho, in that almost pretty way Spanish guys often are, with dark brown eyes, ridiculously thick eyelashes, and perma-stubble.

“All good here.” I hold up my drink.

“Shame,” he says. “All I’ve wanted to do since I got here was meet a blond girl in a white bikini, and buy her a drink.” He makes a sad puppy face.

“Oh, okay. I’ll have another Coca-Cola.” And maybe he’ll pick up my tab.

“I’ll have the same.” The guy nods at the bartender. “I’m Gabriel,” he says.

“Angie.”

“I’d love to ask you out for dinner, Angie. But I have to go back to New York tonight. My sisters have to be back in the city for some school thing.”

I turn around. Two petulant-looking teenage girls are sitting on the sofas behind us. Both have long, swishy brown hair, deeply tanned skin, and are texting furiously.

Then I remember something.

“I thought there were no flights to New York tonight?”

“Ah,” he says, picking up his drink. “Well, I have my own airplane.”

CHAPTER
9

A few hours later, I’m sitting on board a Gulfstream, halfway back to New York.

For some reason, taking a stowaway back to New York isn’t fazing this family at all. I borrowed a pair of jeans and a sweater from Gabriel and a pair of fluffy slippers from his sister Lucia. I look baggy and weird, but it’ll keep me from freezing until I get back to Rookhaven. Gabriel has been on the phone for the past half hour, and his sisters and I are tucked up in the corner under blankets, all cozy with gossip magazines, herbal tea, and plates of peanut butter cookies. Being around the girls, and listening to their chatter, has put me at ease for the first time all day. It’s almost like being at Rookhaven.

“I am completely over Bieber,” says Amada. She’s twelve, wears braces, and though she says things with total self-importance, her eyes dart around nervously when she talks. It’s adorable.

“Bullcrap. Bieber was practically your first word! You cried at his concerts!” says Lucia, who’s fourteen. She’s incredibly shy, and talks to Gabriel and Amada loudly and sarcastically to, I think, impress me. I admired her customized jean jacket earlier—she layered a vintage Jordache sleeveless denim vest over a leather jacket, and the result is unbelievably stylish—and she blushed for about ten minutes. God, I would not go back to being a teenager for anything.

Then again, being twenty-two isn’t exactly working out that great for me, either. My birthday is coming up way too soon. I really thought I’d have a real career and a serious boyfriend by now. A life, in other words. A life that didn’t include being invited to parties and paid to sleep with the host.

Ugh. Don’t think about it.

“Where are your things?” asks Gabriel, coming over to talk to me for the first time since takeoff. “How can anyone travel in just a swimsuit?”

If you ever get the chance to hear someone from Madrid say “swimsuit,” I highly recommend it. I shrug and try to act nonchalant.

“I’m just that kind of girl, I guess.”

“Cool, calm, and collected.”

“Mm-hmm.” If he only knew the chaos inside me. I turn back to my magazine. “Wow, does anyone actually like Angelina Jolie? Because I just do not get that whole thing.”

“She is a goddess, a statue,” says Gabriel, looking over my shoulder. “For worshipping. Not for loving.”

How can Spanish guys get away with saying stuff like that?

Oh, here’s the downlow on Gabriel. I got it all before we left the hotel. He’s thirty-four, Spanish, never married, no kids of his own, sold his first tech company when he was twenty-five, works between New York and Silicon Valley, and has an apartment on Columbus Circle. Basically, he’s your average run-of-the-mill very rich guy. The girls are his half sisters from his dad’s second marriage to an American woman. I get the feeling they’re growing up with wealth, and he had to make his own.

Gabriel sits down and picks up
Us
magazine and, for a few minutes, we all read quietly.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

“Almost always.”

“The hotel made me these. Not quite as nice as the avocado and prawn salad I usually get to go when I’m at Eden Rock on St. Barts, but not bad.”

Gabriel pulls out some sandwiches that the hotel must have made for him. Freshly cooked fish sandwiches on soft, buttered white bread. Like the ones I ate just a few hours ago on the
Hamartia
.

Suddenly, I’ve lost my appetite. But I take a sandwich anyway and force myself to eat it. The girls are chattering away.

“St. Barts is boring. I like Turks way more.”

“I liked Antigua the best.”

“No way!”

Eventually, they calm down and go back to their magazines, and Gabriel turns to me with a little grin. I smile back. His hair is still messy, probably from being on the beach all day, and he has a nice face, if a little pouty-pretty for my taste.

“So, we have to work out what you owe me for this trip.”

A cold fear spikes through me. “What?”

“I fly you to New York, smuggle you through passport control, and you think it’s all for free?”

My heart is beating in my mouth. Holy shit, not again.…

“In return, you have to buy me dinner sometime.”

Oh. That’s all he meant.

I smile glassily up at Gabriel, trying to look composed, my mind racing.

What
was
I doing, really, walking into a hotel bar in a bikini like a goddamn Bond Girl, confident that somehow, I’d find a way home? I’d just swum God knows how far, all the while thinking how stupid I was for walking into such a horrific situation, how clever I was to not trust that goddamn boat boy who followed me … but how stupid was it to trust the next total stranger I met? Just because Gabriel had his sisters with him, just because he seemed nice and polite, I decided to get on his private jet? What the fuck is
wrong
with me?