The Darkest Secret: A New Adult Romance Novel (9 page)

"Refill?" she says.

I almost laugh, but she gives me a warning look. Cockblocked by John Gillespie - there's one to add to the celebrity scrapbook.

Amber

M
y heart skips a beat when I see my Dad standing there. "Sorry to barge in," he said. "But I wanted to see this miracle for myself."

Jimmy has gone the weirdest color - a kind of putty-gray. His eyes are drawn inevitably to my feet; my panties are lying there in full view. I'm guessing Dad can't see them from where he's standing, else he wouldn't still be smiling. Oh God. This looks bad. There's no way this is going to look anything but bad. After more than six months of sweatpants and not washing my hair unless someone pointed out it was hanging in lumps, I'm suddenly all dressed up and no place to go? I can see the worry behind his smile.

"You want some wine?" I ask.

"Is that a good idea?"

"I can handle a glass, Dad."

He moves towards us. With a deft little flick of his foot, Jimmy shifts on the couch and neatly conceals my underpants beneath it. I doubt they taught him that step in dance lessons, but I'm both relieved and grateful. Dad gives me a squeeze and pops a kiss on the top of my head.

"You're privileged, Jimmy," he says. "This is the furthest she's been out of her shell for a while."

He's behaving so far, but I know he doesn't like this. He can't like this. It's way too soon.

"It's a pleasure," says Jimmy. "We've been...talking and stuff. For a while now, right?"

"Yes," I say, stiff as a store mannequin. There's no way I'm sitting down. I don't want to run the risk of Sharon Stoning my own father. Oh my God - why did I think this was a good idea? Dad is smiling so hard I think his teeth will crack.

"Well," he says. "Don't be too late, poppet. Remember you've got the doctor in the morning."

Yes, Daddy. I know, he knows. I'm seeing a shrink, because I'm crazy. It's only when the door closes behind him that Jimmy and I finally exhale.

"Do you think he's..."

"Oh, he's beyond pissed," I say, filling my glass. "Believe me. He won't show it but one way or another we'll both know about it."

Jimmy groans.

"But I
like
this job."

I am such an asshole. I didn't even think of that when I invited him here.

"You're not going anywhere," I say. "Not if I have anything to do with it."

He gets up from the couch.

"I should probably go."

I want to ask him to stay, but I know it's pointless. The little world we constructed for ourselves has gone and it's never coming back. I'm ashamed of myself for putting his job at risk and angry because I know what tomorrow will bring.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I don't think. This is how I got into this mess in the first place. Really poor impulse control - you have no idea."

He takes my hands and gives them a squeeze.

"Amber, I don't even know what mess you're talking about." His smile is sad but he's said it all. He's right. I don't know him. He doesn't know me. And if he did know me he'd run screaming.

I have to talk to my Dad. When Jimmy's gone I'm alone and staring into the abyss again. Just stepping into another room was enough to make my heart skip, flutter and fly, but I realize I'm going to have to do this. Jimmy could lose his job - what the hell does it matter if leaving my rooms gives me a panic attack? The thought spurs me on. As I walk out into the hallway it feels like my feet are barely touching the ground. I'm defenseless, unsafe. Nothing is familiar any more, not the Navajo wall hanging opposite, not the tall red vase where I once puked following an experimental teenage vodka session with Everglade. My back burns, as if a million gazes were fixed on it at once, but there's nobody there.

We've talked about this before - me and Dr. Stahl. She says it's normal, that it will take time to feel safe again, but deep down I know it's worse than that. Sometimes I see him, like he was really there. I turn around and there he is, in the chair in the corner, in the bathtub, in my bed. And even when he's lounging back in the tub or whatever, he's never really relaxed - he never was. He was always on edge somehow, something I found thrilling at first. So un-California of him, the way he strained his whole self towards my next word or gesture.

I creep down the hall like an anxious crab, my heart hammering in my ears as I approach my Dad's living area. It feels like an age since I was last here. I can hear him talking to someone on the phone and I pray it's not Cory at the lodge. The fish-tank gurgles away, same as it always did, but the corals look different and when I approach it my shadow startles up a bright, skittish flash of red and blue tetras. New additions. Everything changes but me.

He stops stock still when he sees me.

"Fucking hell," he says, a sure sign that I've really surprised him. "You're really out of your comfort zone, aren't you?"

"You're not going to fire him," I say, trying to sound like I mean it, but the moment Dad points out that I'm way past the point of panic, it's like my body just wants to quit. My legs shake so hard I think I'm going to fall, but Dad catches hold of me.

"Deep breaths," he says, ushering me over to the couch. "That's it. In through the nose, out through the mouth. You're okay. You're doing great."

"Promise me..." My breath comes in big, dramatic heaves. While my lungs are working just fine it's like my brain has other ideas. My heart feels like it's going to explode out of my chest. "Don't fire him."

We're not going to talk about this now. He's too concerned about getting me to the other side of this panic attack.

"Please," I say. "Listen."

He brings me water and I sip carefully.

"How many drinks did you have?" he asks, which is such a Dad thing to say that I shake my head.

"Amber - how many?"

"One," I gasp. "Okay, maybe one and a half." I take another sip of water. My heart is still racing but I can breathe easier now. "It was only Zinfandel. Like eight per cent."

"Eight per cent is a lot when you're not used to it," he says. "And on top of your meds."

"I'm fine."

"Well, it's obviously made you brave. Look at where you are." He sounds unreasonably proud of me for having left my room and walked down the hall. But we both know it's another matter entirely to get me to leave the house.

"Promise me you won't fire Jimmy," I say.

He sighs.

"You didn't do it already?"

He shakes his head and sits down on the couch beside me.

"What's going on, Amber? You need to tell me."

"Nothing's going on. We're friends."

My denial is pathetic and the look on Dad's face says it all. A friend - for whom you wash your hair, put on lipstick and a dress. There's no way that scene of mine could have looked like anything but what it was - some kind of idiotic attempt at seduction.

"We're not having this conversation," I say, feigning embarrassment. "Just no way."

"We are," says Dad, who was never one to play along with American standards of delicacy concerning sex. "You're not ready for it. The last thing you need right now is another man in your life."

"I'm an adult, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Yeah, and in case you hadn't noticed, it all went a bit tits up with your last boyfriend, didn't it?"

"Jimmy isn't Justin. I would have thought that much was obvious."

He sighs. "You don't see it, do you? The fact that you're even comparing the two says to me there's trouble ahead. For God's sake, Amber - you just left your bedroom for the first time in over six months. There is no way you're ready to start thinking about boys."

I'd like to tell him the truth, that it wasn't the first time, that I'd been going out by the pool, but I know that will call my motivations into question. He'll find out that I used to go out there to smoke, and then to meet Jimmy. And that will be a whole new Pandora's box of issues for me and Dr. Stahl to try to close. I know my lessons by now - I have to get better for me; I have to learn the ways in which my relationship with Justin was unhealthy.

"I need friends," I say.

"Nobody is stopping you from picking up the phone."

I shake my head. Oh God, he's right. I'm not ready for anything. I'm definitely not ready for
that
. I can still see the look in her eyes. She was no stranger to psychodrama - Kiersten Rowe was the queen - but that night she was really rattled. "This is bullshit, Amber," she said, still shaking. "He's not worth this, not even if his dick has more speeds and rotations than your very best vibrator."

There is nothing I can say to make this better. The louder I protest about not revisiting old mistakes, the more obvious it will seem that I'm about to do so. I watch the fish, little jewel bright things darting in and out of the corals. In pride of place is the 'No Fishing' sign I made in pottery class when I was thirteen. Art was one of the few subjects my school was really enthusiastic about and I'd enjoyed it. I liked the coolness and the texture of the clay in my hands. I liked pricking out the letters on the sign, careful not to smudge the illusion of wood grain I'd pressed into the clay. I was careful to avoid air bubbles - back then having my work explode in the kiln seemed like the worst thing that could happen.

"You still have that stupid sign," I say, feeling like I should feign embarrassment.

"It's not stupid. It's one of my most treasured possessions."

"And what am I?"

"Amber, that's not fair."

"Isn't it? You're still going to fire him, aren't you? For daring to have drinks with your precious daughter?"

He rubs a hand over his scalp, the way he used to rake his hands through his hair, back when he still had some.

"I'm not going to fire him," he says. "But I don't know if you should see one another..."

"...I'm not a child." I say. And I hate myself for doing it, but I know how to make him do what I want. "Please," I say. "I promise, Daddy. I promise I don't think about him in that way. I swear. It's just...I'm lonely."

I know he'd rather die than admit that what I want has anything to do with lust. I simply don't feel that way; how could I? I'm still his baby girl.

***

I
don't want to talk to Dr. Stahl. Not today, but I have no choice. She has that poised, pointed look she gets when she's waiting for me to tell her something significant.

"There are certain aspects of your relationship with Justin we haven't yet touched upon," she says, with such uncharacteristic prissiness that I know she's talking about sex.

I shake my head. "I don't want to talk about that."

"Amber, it's not uncommon for..."

I get up from the chair. She tenses. Now she knows I can walk out, she's wondering if I will. I know what she's going to say. She has statistics, case studies. She can tell me a million and one ways in which men like Justin learn to push a woman's buttons. And it's all bullshit. It has nothing to do with the way he made me feel.

"What?" I say. "What do you want to talk about? Is this because I had drinks with the security guard? Because I'm not fucking him, if that's what you want to know."

"Even if you were..."

"Which I'm not."

She sits with her hands folded, her head slightly inclined. I try to picture her outside of her role as doctor, as an ordinary woman who sticks her middle finger up when people turn without signaling, someone who cries over pet food commercials when she's premenstrual. I can't do it. She's smoother and flatter than the surface of the pool, but unlike the pool there's no way to ripple her.

I lean back against the end of my bed.

"I don't know what you want me to say.”

Although I do. It’s obvious. I know her game, I know where this leads. Yet another way in which I am a victim. Well, I’m not going there.

Jaime

T
his never gets less weird. John Gillespie. I'm sitting in the same room as an actual Bond villain.

Probably not a good time to ask him what Daniel Craig is really like.

He doesn't look threatening. Just worried. And well he might be. I don't know what would have happened last night if he hadn't showed up when he did.

He hands me a bottle of water and takes a seat on the couch opposite.

"So," he says. "You probably know the score with Amber, right?"

My throat is dry but I'm too nervous to unscrew the cap.

"I don't know what you mean, Sir," I say.

"With the psychiatrists, the paps, the boyfriend. You've probably heard it all by now, right?"

I shake my head.

"No."

His eyebrows arch.

"No? What, you live under a rock or something?"

I try to twist the cap loose, but my hands are wet from the condensation on the bottle.

"I know there was something," I say. "But I decided it was none of my business."

"Why?" His eyes are the coldest blue.

I shrug.

"Because it's not. I don't want to look Amber up on the internet. I don't think of her in that way."

John Gillespie frowns.

"Jimmy, you're a nice kid. If things were different...well...we wouldn't be having this conversation. But there's stuff you should know about my daughter. She's not well. She's not been well for a long time."

"I got that, yeah."

"Did she tell you about what happened with her ex?"

"No. She doesn't tell me much." What do I really know about her, when you get to the heart of it? I know her brand of cigarettes. I know she can't dance, or drink. I know she has a scar on the back of her neck, but I don't know how she got it. I don't know much at all. Maybe that's why it's easy, when I say it.

"I'm not in love with her," I say. "Or anything like that. We just talk. About nothing much at all."

He sighs heavily, his elbows on his knees.

"She needs friends," he says. "That's what she tells me."

The cap finally comes loose in my hand. I want to drink but the room is too quiet and still.

"I can do that," I say, my mouth dry.

He looks up. "You sure?"