Mind Games
Page 22

"And who is your beautiful friend? Is she-she isn't one of those girls, is she? The ones you told me about?"
James waves a hand dismissively in the air, but I see the lines of his shoulders, they are tight. He isn't happy, but you would never know from his voice. "I said a lot of things when I was drunk, Rafael. Which was pretty much all the time. You really believed my stories?"
"About women who can see into your head? Of course I did. It explains my ex perfectly. But you never answered who your friend is." He leans over James's chair to mine and I feel very vulnerable laid out in just a bikini, I want to stand, to get in a defensive stance, but I don't need to.
Not yet.
"Emilia," I say, and he takes my hand (he shouldn't touch my hand) and brings it to his lips.
"Charmed. So you cannot see the future or read my thoughts?"
"Judging by the way you're staring at my chest, I'm glad I can't read your mind." I sit up. (Well-muscled but in a carefully sculpted way. No practical use. I could snap his wrist.) I pull my hand away.
He laughs, turns, and slaps James's shoulders again. "I like this one. Is she yours?"
James shifts closer to me, puts an arm behind me, crossing the full length of my back. His skin is on so much of my skin, and he did it on purpose. "Yeah."
I lean my head on his shoulder and I can't help it, there is a smile blooming on my whole face, my whole body. I feel this smile, like I haven't felt anything in a very long time. I am his. I am.
Tonight I am going to dance with James. Tonight I am going to dance with him and he will kiss me, and we will be together. I don't care if there is the little wrong buzzing at the back of my head. I want this.
Rafael winks. "You always had the best taste. Come back to the yacht with me; it'll be like old times. You can share your good fortune."
Again Rafael smiles at me and he is wronger than wrong, but there is no danger here on this bright beach next to James. Still, my smile drops and my eyes narrow and I could break-snap-break him.
"We have other plans."
"Cancel them. You and I have things to discuss. So much to catch up on." Rafael has lost the false good-natured tone of his voice; it's brimming with intensity now.
James pretends not to notice Rafael's mood, waving a hand in the air as he leans back in his chair and pulls my head onto his shoulder, draping his fingers on the curve of my waist and it is nice, so nice, I think I have never been this happy.
Rafael slides back into a smile. "You know my number. And I know yours." He leaves and I do not move, will not move, not ever. Right, right, right. I will make this feel right.
"Sorry about him," James mutters.
"It's fine." I smile and close my eyes. It's better than fine.
I put my hair up. I take it down. I have no sense of how I should get ready tonight. Sometimes I get a feeling-one pair of shoes over another, one way of doing my hair-that for whatever reason is right. Tonight I can't get a read on those feelings. Everything is scattered and shattered and put back together.
Tonight I am going to dance with James.
I laugh, giddy, and leave my hair long and waving down my back. Simple. I'll keep it simple, because James has seen me through so much and I don't need to change, not for him, never for him. We understand each other. I can read the lines of his shoulders, catalog the lies of his smiles; he can touch my hands and not care.
I'm his. It's such a relief to be someone's, to not have to be my own (to not have to be Annie's-don't think about Annie, not tonight, especially not tonight).
It's still early, we aren't leaving yet, but I hold my shoes and dance and twirl barefoot out of my room and into the hallway of the cool white house we're staying in. It is all stone and tile and brilliant splashes of color. I dance past the hallway, past the kitchen. I am going to dance into pieces, I am ready to go, I am ready for tonight.
Laughter and hushed voices from the kitchen. Something is off, my stomach isn't giddy with butterflies so much as sick with them now, and I don't want to but I have to, I have to see.
I am a ghost, I am a whisper of feet on the tile. The arched entry to the kitchen shields me and I peer past the edge and there is Eden.
And she is wrapped around-wrapped around-wrapped around James, my James, and she is laughing and her hands (not my hands, not my horrible hands) are in his hair and she is whispering in his ear.
"I promised her dancing," he says, and she frowns.
"But I'm so tired of dancing. I'm lonely. I want to stay in tonight. With you."
"Another time, love," he says.
Love, love, love.
Love.
My dancing heart has danced itself apart and I was wrong, of course I was wrong, I am always wrong, everything is always wrong.
I am James's but he is not mine.
"Fia?" he calls, pulling away from Eden (soft Eden, untrained Eden, Eden with all her soft parts that I could hurt, hurt, hurt-no, don't think about it, get away from Eden, don't let her feel it). "You ready?"
I back into the other room. My feet are ghosts and my heart is a ghost and my dreams? I have no dreams.
I am an idiot.
"I'm ready," I say. I wipe it clean, push it away, I am nothing, I feel nothing, there is nothing here.
Eden squirms when we get in the car. "She's doing that thing again."
"What thing?" James asks. He is smiling and driving, and I wish I were driving. I would drive us off a cliff. No I wouldn't. (Maybe I would. I am so stupid, I am sick with the stupidness of me.)
"That thing where she feels totally empty. It gives me the creeps. She hasn't done it in a long time."
"She is sitting right here." My voice is bright. My voice is a lie. I can lie better than you can, James.
"You're happy, right?"
"The happiest." I smile at him. I am going to dance tonight. I am going to dance tonight and I am not going to dance with James. I will never dance with James.
The club is the same as every other club we go into anywhere else in the whole world. Music and lights and bodies. I leave James and Eden without a word and go to the center of the floor and dance out my rage and my sorrow and dance out everything I am not.
I am not a girl who thought she was in love with James. I am not a girl who has failed and betrayed her sister at every possible turn. I am not a girl whose hands have ended lives. I am not a girl. I am just a body in motion.
"Emilia?"
I do not turn around until the hand comes down on my shoulder and I remember that today I was Emilia. I twist out from under the hand and turn to see Rafael. He is beautiful and he thinks I am beautiful and everything about him is slick and predatory-and he wants me.
He is wrong and I should not encourage him, I should leave right now and find James. This is not safe. (There are too many bodies, several of the tall, broad guys around us are obviously with him. I am outnumbered; it is dark; he thinks I am very young and very helpless and only one of those is true.)
He does not like James. He hates him. I noticed on the beach, but I was distracted by James claiming me. Not claiming me. Using me. Keeping me away from Rafael.
I smile and raise my arms over my head, dance closer to Rafael. He hates James. He is dangerous. I let him put his hands on my h*ps and twist my body against his. Because he is not James.
And James does not want me this way.
"You are beautiful," he whispers in my ear and he is not lying. I turn my back to him, trace my arm behind myself, onto his neck. We are dancing and dancing and then before I realize it he is kissing me.
It is my first kiss.
I want to cry. I want to sink into the ground and disappear. I want to be the nothing that I thought I was. His mouth is everywhere, his hands are everywhere, suffocating me, and I cannot breathe and I want to go home, but there is no home. I want Annie.
"Let's go somewhere else," he says, taking my hand in his and pulling me through the crowds. It is wrong, and I have counted the men with him and there are too many, and if James does not like him, then he must be a truly horrible person.
We walk out of the club into the dark night and the air is sharp with a humid, cold bite. I shiver and Rafael turns, wraps his arms around me, puts his mouth to mine again, pushes me up against the wall of the building. He is all tongue and hands and he disgusts me, but I disgust me, too.
Too wrong. I don't want this. I push him back, off me. "I'm going inside," I say.
"Come on, baby." He tries to come in close and I push him again. "Don't be like that." His voice isn't sweet like honey anymore. It is low and dark like tar. "Let's have some fun. We'll go to my boat and have some fun. And then we'll talk about my friend James."
"Thanks but no." I try to walk past, but the men with him (five and they move quickly and, unlike Rafael, they have muscles for a reason other than looking pretty, and I have no weapons) close the gaps, blocking me in.
"You are one of them. One of his girls. I've heard the rumors. And James has unfinished business with me. He's very bad at keeping promises, but maybe his girl is better." He has me back against the wall; he traces one of his fingers down my neck, down, down, down.
I knee him in the groin. "I'm nobody's girl."
He calls me a nasty name, and that annoys me because he has no right, and then one of the men grabs for my hair (I should have put it up). I duck, get low, kick at knees and elbow at noses. I want a knife. I have two down, three left, and now they are careful, wary. I have shown my hand.
I laugh. This is fun. This is what I wanted all along, I realize. This is better than the dancing. This is getting lost while doing something. I duck a rush, push the man so he careens forward and his head connects with the wall with a dull thud.
Someone grabs me around the waist and I slam my head back into his nose, hear it crack. He lets me go and I drop to the ground, sweep the feet of the only man left, propel myself to standing, and kick him in the face.
Rafael pushes himself up against the wall, and he does not think I'm beautiful anymore.
"You're crazy," he hisses.
"Too true."
"Fia!"
I turn and there is James, and he's furious. I've never seen him so angry. "What are you doing?"
"I was dancing." I shrug.
"James, you owe-" Rafael starts, but James hits him in the stomach so hard Rafael collapses.
"We're done here," James says to him.
I walk past them down the dark, empty street. I think I'll walk back to our house. It's only a few miles and I like the night air.
James grabs my arm and I know I don't have to elbow or kick, but I know where I need to if I want to. Want and need. Such a fine difference.
"What were you thinking?" he shouts.
"I wanted someone to dance with. He was a great dancer. Terrible kisser, though. And an even worse fighter."
"Fia!" He yanks my arm so hard I twist to face him. "You can't just-you have no idea who he is! He's dangerous-he could have hurt you. You of all people should have known that! Why would you take that risk?"
I glare at his face, his face that I have wanted for so long. "Sometimes I pick things that aren't good for me."
"What if something had happened?"
"I'm sure Eden would have comforted you."
His face freezes, then falls. "It's not like that. She-I have to keep her happy. That's all it is. I don't feel anything for her. The feelings she picks up off me aren't for her. Never for her. Let me explain."
"No, let me explain. You're right. I did know better than to go with Rafael. But I knew better about you, too. From the moment we met, you were wrong. You were always wrong. And I ignored it, and I pretended it wasn't true. I'd like to go back to Chicago now. You don't have to manipulate me, pretend to care, pretend to be my friend to get me to do what you want; I don't have any other choices. But I'm done playing make-believe."