Complete Submission: (The Submission Series, Books 1-8) (55 page)

“Well? Where did it come from?”

“You.”

I snorted a laugh and drank the last mouthful of whiskey. “Fucking fantastic. Was it out of Ibiza?”

“Canary Islands. Someone’s got their fingers in your pie.”

“Apparently.” I held out my hand. “I appreciate you coming here to finish this off.”

Santon took it, and we shook. “Call me in a couple of weeks when things free up.”

“Will do.”

He left, and I went down to the locker room, chewing on what the fuck was happening with the Canary Island trust. Kevin certainly didn’t have the right kind of mind or connections. It was possible I was underestimating him. It was also possible I had latched onto him because I despised him.

The club’s huge lot had a driving range, tennis courts, batting cages, and a fake pitcher’s mound and home plate. The owner had owned a major league team or two, and he kept baseball in the club even if the facilities weren’t used much. Eddie and I used it more than any other two members. I’d set up the time with him to feel him out about Monica. Maybe I could convince him to try another marketing angle, any other angle, because I knew what he wanted to do was putting her through hell.

I rubbed the ball, scraping the fake pitcher’s mound under my cleat. Eddie stood in the batter’s box. Such a cocky fuck. Guy hit .209 on his best season.

“Come on, Drazen!”

I waved him off, getting ready for my pitch. Eddie’s stance was as comical as it had been at Penn. “Eddie! You constipated?”

“What?”

“You’re standing there with your ass out.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, fuck
you.
” I threw. He hit it to the left field, smacking a target marked SINGLE before it puckered the nylon mesh. A minor miracle. I caught a glimpse of the speed clock to my right. Sixty-five. My shit was rusty. Or I was distracted.

After his success connecting bat to ball the first time, Eddie was back in the box, looking triumphant.

I took another ball from the bucket. “I heard you met with Monica Faulkner.”

“She’s a hot number.” Eddie whipped the bat around before getting into constipation position. “You buy her song or you’re just keeping her from singing it?”

I fingered the ball. “Why?”

“We want it, and she’s not giving it up.”

“It’s her song.”

“It’s all about collaring and floor licking. Got you written all over it.” He pointed the bat at me. “I want it. It’s money. I think you’re keeping her from releasing it.”

I threw a strike. Seventy-five, but my elbow had snapped a little from the exertion. I wasn’t pulling from the shoulder. “You’re giving me a lot of credit.”

“You’re the master.”

I hated it. I hated knowing the undertone of what he meant, because someone like Eddie trivialized something I took seriously.

“Doesn’t work like that, douchebag,” I called out.

I threw another strike, well inside the zone. Clocked at seventy-seven, but it didn’t jerk my elbow.

“Then help me understand ‘the point.’”

“The point is you can’t trick her out like a whore and put her on stage.”

“Come on, man. Give the world a taste of what you got.”

When I threw the next pitch, he connected. Hard. I stuck my glove in front of me and caught it before it hit me in the nuts.

“Sorry, O’Drassen.” He used my great-grandfather’s name from the old country when he wanted to tease me. It bothered me in college, and he’d latched on to it. I was setting up the next pitch when Eddie stepped out of the box. “Seriously, I want her.
We
want her. She’s got that thing. You know the thing. The thing I can sell. Every man in the room will want to fuck her.”

“What?” I had it coming. I’d been the joker, the storyteller, the adventurer. I’d been the guy making cracks about who I fucked, and where, and how many times, over beers. Meanwhile, I’d defended Jessica from every unkind word hurled behind her back. Why should anyone think I gave a shit? “She won’t fuck you, Ed.”

“Why not? I’m a record executive,” he joked.

Despite the fact that he was kidding, the images came to mind like a neighbor I avoided. Her eyes half closed. Eddie on top of her, pushing one of her legs up as he pumped into her, and her saying his name when she came. Over and over. Then the images came faster. Her laughing with him. Bending over for him. Holding his hand. Looking up at him with love, a smile spread across her face while he thought of using her and dumping her.

I shook it off. I was being an adolescent. “Get in the goddamn box.”

“All right. Sorry, man. I didn’t know she meant something to you.”

When I felt the ice in my chest and my mind went completely and utterly clear, I should have known. I’d spent a long time getting my temper under control, and I knew it well. My temper wasn’t a fire burning out in a confused jumble of thoughts; it was a frozen lucidity, a clarity of intention, whose sole purpose was to harm. I’d learned the warning signs, but on the mound, I fooled myself into thinking I was concentrating on the strike zone.

I threw a fastball, straight and hard. I coiled the power from my hips, up my back, and to my shoulder, pivoting my arm like a catapult. The ball landed right where I aimed: between Ed’s ear and eye.

He didn’t just fall. He spun around from the impact and landed on his back.

Fuck. I glanced at the speed clock. 91. That’s about what it had felt like as it left my fingers. I ran up to Eddie and kneeled beside him. He was unconscious.

God damn, what the
fuck
was on your mind?

Nothing. That was the problem.

A crowd rushed over just as Eddie opened his eyes. I got him to his feet. A pretty doctor had been at the pool, and she took a look at him. He was well enough to flirt with her. It was too late to have a gentlemanly conversation about Monica and her place in the musical lexicon, of course. I could hardly say, “Listen, Ed, take the BDSM shit down a notch, and she’ll sign with you.”

I had to go to plan B.

MONICA

I
almost didn’t answer Kevin. Three days passed in a heat of songwriting and waitressing. When I realized I’d let the time pass, I thought that maybe I was doing the same thing I’d always done: turn my back on someone until it was too late to go back.

Kev,

I want you to know I got this, but I don’t know how to answer it right now.

See you on the plane.

Mon

The day before I left for Vancouver, I stood at my locker, shoving my work shoes in and stepping into my street shoes, when Jonathan appeared like a shiny new penny.

“Your eye healed up nice.”

I jumped. “Jesus, stop that. I thought you were leaving me alone until I got back.”

He leaned on the locker bank, crossing his ankles. “Take my plane. Seriously.”

“You came here to convince me to take a private jet to my art opening? Talk about a nice problem to have.” I slammed the locker shut and locked it. He smiled at me, then for half a beat, too quickly for anyone to notice, he dropped his eyes and drank me in. I felt as though he was stroking me from toes to shoulders, and a tingle went through me.

“Great, I’ll make sure it’s ready.”

“I didn’t say I’d take it.”

I brushed past him. Not because I wanted to make a threatening gesture, but because my desire to be near him made the hallway too narrow. He walked beside me as if he belonged there. As if I’d agreed to a discussion about our relationship before the appointed time, which I hadn’t.

“So, what’s keeping you going to LAX in traffic and getting on a coach flight with three hundred other people?”

The employee exit spit out into the parking lot, which was crowded with staff arriving, leaving, and greeting each other with laughs and short conversations.

I had to walk close to him or talk loud enough to be heard by everyone. “Look, I’ll have the conversation if you think it will change something, but if I start accepting favors and gifts beforehand, it’s tainted.”

I approached my Honda with my key out, but as I went for it, he put his hand on the car, covering the seam between the door and the roof. That hand was right in front of me, with its spray of copper hair and fingers shaped to please. All I could think about was it running over my body, flat first, then curving to my shape. It would stop to hold and grab the parts it found, tightening on my skin, bruising me with badges of agonizing pleasure.

He said into my ear, “I admire your nobility, but the conversation’s already tainted by a few dozen orgasms.”

He still wasn’t touching me, and he pulled his face away enough so I’d have to do just a little more than lean into him to steal a kiss. I craved the warmth of his breath and his touch. God, his touch. His body was arched and I stood straight, though the desire to fit into him like a spoon in a drawer was an almost chemical impulse.

Kiss me kiss me kiss me
…

But he stood still. “You don’t want to be on a flight with Kevin Wainwright any more than I want you on it.”

I could have mentioned Kevin’s email as proof that our encounter was a misunderstanding, but I wouldn’t be an excuse maker for a guy who didn’t understand the word “no.” He’d ended up with a bleeding shoulder and bashed-in face for the trouble, but that was hardly the point.

“We’ve done everything wrong,” I said. “Me, mostly. So I’m not going to walk into a conversation with you all sexed up from your money.”

His smile spread, and his eyes closed a little. He bowed his head as if he didn’t want me to see his amusement, but I saw his shoulders shake a little with laughter.

“The things you say,” he said when he finally picked up his head.

“The things you
do
,” I replied. “Can I get in, please? I have to pack.”

He took his hand off the door. “You should wear that thing you wore to the Eclipse show. I know you won’t let me buy you something new.”

“Forget that, Drazen.”

“The shoes at least.” He stepped backward twice, and I couldn’t help but give him the same type of look he’d given me earlier. I drank him in. His neck, his shoulders, the dark blue suit covering the body I imagined. The chest pressed against mine. The arms stretched over me, holding my hands down. The hips thrusting into me cruelly. He took another step back, and I felt as though I was being pulled forward.

Stunning creature. I wondered, like he said, God had made him for me as much as I’d been made for him. Of course, God then spitefully created a world where we couldn’t be together without being puppets of other people’s imaginations.

MONICA

I
stood on my front porch, shaking. I looked only at my keys as they slid into the lock and only at the knob as I turned it. My gaze zoomed no wider than the door as it opened. I hated acting like a toddler playing peek-a-boo, believing if I couldn’t see Mommy, she couldn’t see me.

The house already smelled musty. I put my head down and walked to my room. I shut out my peripheral vision because I couldn’t be sure there weren’t eyes in the corners. I focused on my feet as they traversed my living room rug. My kitchen floor. The wood floor of the hall.

My room.

I threw the duffel on my bed.

The closet. The dress, still in a dry cleaning bag.

The shoes, clumped on the floor.

The bathroom. My fancy makeup.

The dresser.

The top drawer.

I only had the Bordelle underwear left.

Under a manila envelope.

The bed.

The duffel bag.

The objects pushed inside.

Shoes. Dress. Underwear. Makeup. Envelope.

The zipper.

My feet on the floors. The rug.

The porch.

The door.

The key.

Click.

My breath.

Exhaled.

MONICA

I
dried my hair with the bathroom door open. When Darren’s screen door opened, I jumped. He was on his way to Canada with Adam, and I wasn’t expecting anyone. I half hoped it was Jonathan but knew it wasn’t. Peeking out to the living room, I saw Darren shuffle in. I pulled a dress out of the hamper and wiggled into it so I could get to him quickly.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Men.”

“Men? What’s that mean?”

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and cracked it. “I mean, how the fuck do you deal with us?”

“You’re cute and you have these nice dangling bits. So?”

“So, well. Adam.”

“I’ve met him.”

He rubbed the label on his bottle. “Really nice guy. Really.”

“Really. So? Why aren’t you at the airport?”

“I kind of freaked out on him.”

I threw myself on the couch and patted the seat next to me. “Go on.”

He plopped onto the chair. Somehow, the couch had become my territory. “As we were loading up a cart, I just… I don’t know. There was this reflective metal panel in the wall, and I was standing next to him. I saw us in the metal panel. Foggy, but it was us. He was looking at his phone, and I was looking at the panel thinking, ‘Oh fuck. This is what other people see. Is this who I am? Did I decide this? And when?’ I care about him. I love being with him, but when do I start calling myself bisexual, or gay, or…who the fuck am I, Monica?”

I had plenty of platitudes. I had advice I couldn’t even pretend to take myself about just being who you are and letting the world see what they wanted. Uttering those words without hurtful irony would have been obscene. “I don’t think any of us know ourselves.”

He rubbed his lips together, a gesture I remembered from our early days. Darren was trying not to cry. It was painful to watch.

“I’ve been trying not to worry about it,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out if I care whether people think less of me or not, and honestly, I don’t think it’s that. I mean, fuck, I’m a drummer. I’m always the one standing in the back. It’s just… I feel like I never had the chance to work it out and say, ‘All right. This is what I’ll be to the world.’ I got all wrapped up in him, especially after Gabby. Am I gay without him? Or am I back to who I was? Because I never thought about it before him, so now I’m taking on this whole identity without ever deciding on it. Am I making any sense?”