Sleeping with Beauty (Seven Ways to Sin 2)

Despite his enthusiasm and his kind offer, we were all too numb to give him any reaction.

“You know,” he said, “The Northern Lights. Streaks of fluorescent green dancing in the sky.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Ken mumbled. That was as much enthusiasm as we were able to give him.

However, we gladly accepted his kind offer; anything to get us out of the house. Sasha’s home, which upon our arrival, looked massive and luxurious, even exotic, now felt vacuous and dreary.

We set out in the same van that had first brought us from the yacht to Sasha’s mansion. Jim drove. He said he knew the perfect spot to see the Northern Lights—elevated, surrounded by beautiful, rocky cliffs, no tourists around. As he drove, he gave us a brief scientific explanation about the Aurora Borealis. The sun emits electrically charged particles, they hit the Earth’s atmosphere, and the polar winds whip them into dancing streaks of colored light.

He sounded very excited as he talked. But he wasn’t saying anything about Bonita, so it fell on deaf ears.

We drove, mostly in silence. Christian grumbled to himself, tossing out the occasional rhetorical question of disbelief, “Sightseeing? What have we become?”

“Tourists,” Landon answered.

“Did we fuck up?” asked Ben.

“Did we?” I said.

“I mean,” continued Ben, “was she that upset with us that she left, didn’t say goodbye, left the documentary unfinished and headed home.”

“Yes, Ben,” I said pedantically, “That’s literally what happened.”

“Girls!” said Will. “Always so emotional.”

“Will,” I said, “she was kidnapped and fell into a coma for nearly four days!”

“Yeah, but…” Will didn’t elaborate on his objection.

After a long pause, Ken asked, “Do you think it would’ve worked out? Do you think we’d have been able to share her?”

“It was working out just fine,” said Will. “Until…”

“Until she got kidnapped and fell into a coma,” said Trevor.

“Girls!” said Will.

After a few hours of driving and a few hours of our grumbling, Jim pulled the van to a stop. “We’ve arrived,” he announced cheerfully.

We stepped out of the vehicle and onto a rocky plateau. A dozen or so yards ahead lay a vast lake of still waters speckled with small islands. I could see a faint line of green in the sky reflected in the lake’s water. “Is that it?” I asked.

“Hopefully, we’ll get to see more,” said Jim. “We just have to sit down and wait.”

Having spent all my life in the city, I wasn’t used to that level of stillness and quiet. Frankly, at first, it was unsettling. I thought of running to the cliffs and throwing myself off them. But they were far away, and my body was not interested in exerting energy it didn’t have.

It was brutally cold and windy. For me, as I suspected of the other members of our crew, that suited me just fine. I needed cold air whipping in my face. It was all I could do to fight the numbness that had overtaken me.

The sky lost its hint of green. It was now a dull gray like I had seen a thousand times before. I thought of Bonita: how I had yearned for her, to touch her, to hold her, to kiss her, for so long. And then I laid with her, and it was beautiful. I thought of how ecstatically happy I was for a few days and how quickly it had all vanished.

I thought I had lost her on the yacht when the cards favored Landon, and he got to make out with her in the cabin. Then I played the cards to my advantage. I thought I had lost her in the forest when she was taken, prisoner. Then I drove a truck straight into a house, and she was back in my arms as I was running, carrying her to safety.

I thought I had lost her when she was in a coma, but then Dr. Crumb said he had a miracle drug, and hope was reborn in me.

I thought I had lost her when after four days of administering the drug, she still hadn’t woken. Then she did, and once again, her lips were kissing mine, and I was inside her, and our bodies were moving as one.

And then I lost her; I woke up one morning, and she had gone back to New York, upset: upset with me and with the way I’d treated her.

I stood and looked out at the rocky cliffs. They were so inviting, and despite the cold wind whipping my face, my body began to fill with newfound energy. I started walking then quickly went into a jog, straight for the cliffs.

I looked out at the lake that would soon be welcoming my lifeless body. Streaks of green light shimmered off the water. I looked up, and the sky was dripping filaments of green embers while shapes appeared and dissolved in the background as if a hologram were attempting to form through trial and error.