Fight or Flight

My hands tightened on the wheel. “Promise?”

I glanced at her and saw her draw a cross in the air above her chest. “Cross my heart.”

Determined not to be a wet blanket, I exhaled shakily and then shimmied my shoulders as if I was shuffling a melancholy grip off of me. “Coachella, here we come!” I repeated more forcefully.

Gem whooped beside me. “Hey!” She fidgeted excitedly in her seat. “I have an idea. Let’s do Coachella every year. I mean, we’ve already started it as a tradition, but it’s different now that it’s just you and me. Let’s make it always just you and me. No matter the new friends that enter our lives or how serious you and Nick get. You. Me. Coachella. Every damn year.”

Warmth suffused me. “Definitely.”

Gem turned the volume back up on the radio. We drove for another few minutes when she suddenly reached across to turn the volume back down. Feeling her gaze, I looked at her. Her expression was serious, sincere. “I love you, Bree-Bree. You’re my family. Family is forever. I’m yours and you’re mine and nothing will ever change that.”

We kept our promise, and no matter what was going on in our lives, we got in a damn car and drove to Coachella, just the two of us, until the year after I graduated.

I’d never been to the festival since, and anytime I heard mention of it on the radio or television, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. Harper had brought up the idea of going once. After my grim reaction, she never mentioned it again.

I tried never to think back to my times with Gem there, because I was afraid of what I’d remember. Afraid to remember that once upon a time we were two young women who loved each other as deeply as sisters.

My knees buckled, a sob bursting out of me before I could stop it, and I slid down the wet tiles of the shower, pulling my knees into my chest. For the first time since my mom had called to tell me Gem had died, I cried.

I cried as pressurized water bounced and rolled off my skin, disguising my tears in the shower, unable, even when in private, to admit, even to myself, that I was crying. Admitting that was like admitting my guilt, and right then I couldn’t bring that guilt to the surface. I was afraid if I did I’d never get to my feet again.

Perhaps I chose this particular dress to be dry-cleaned in defiance.

It was the dress Nick’s mother—who once upon a time had loved me like a daughter—had told me was inappropriate for the occasion. I’d worn it to the dinner my parents had insisted we attend the night before Gem’s funeral.

It was black, figure-hugging, with a conservative hemline tight around my knees. There was a small split at the back of the knees, but nothing risqué. I think what Mrs. Kane had found inappropriate about the dress was the neckline. It was sweetheart-shaped and showed cleavage. Problem was, I had boobs and plenty of them and I gave good cleavage no matter how high or low a dress was cut. This dress was supposed to be conservative.

My boobs didn’t know what the hell conservative meant.

Mrs. Kane had even side-eyed me at the funeral when I was wearing a black dress with a Peter Pan collar. If she wanted to blame anyone for my abundance of cleavage, she could blame my mom, who could have been Dolly Parton’s long lost hippy daughter.

I noticed Mom didn’t get the side-eye at the funeral in her long, floating bohemian dress with its revealing neckline. Not that Mom owned any article of clothing that didn’t have a low-cut neckline.

The memory of Mrs. Kane’s distaste for me and this dress somehow bolstered me. It tore through my grief and fired my anger. And I needed my anger more than I needed any of the rest of it.

“You’re beautiful, Ava, but it’s not enough. You feel empty.”

Those words Nick had spoken to me so long ago still haunted me. Still knifed through my gut. Then: because they hurt so much. Now: because I’d never defended myself. Back then there had been a part of me that believed the words were true.

Suddenly I remembered the Scot’s disdain for me all day. The way he’d judged me because of how I looked. That defiance in me grew, and as I readied myself to eat dinner alone, I rebelled by taking time with my appearance. Yes, maybe a long time ago I’d relied on my looks too heavily. But I was older and wiser now, and looking good wasn’t about anyone else. Doing my makeup, slicking red matte lipstick across my full lips, putting on three coats of mascara that made my big jade green eyes pop, using my curling iron to create loose waves in my long blond hair, pairing my black dress with black stilettos and their signature red soles—all of it was for me. It was me saying, Screw all of you. My physical appearance was just a small fraction of who I was. I was more than a pretty bauble to hang on the tree of a man’s world.

Tears burned in the back of my eyes and I blinked them away as I stared in the mirror. Years of moving on was not going to be obliterated by a few days in Arcadia.

When I was feeling stressed or distressed, I would run. Run for miles. Sweat it out. Let it all go. Running was my self-medication. But I didn’t have my running gear with me and I was in an airport hotel. Without my usual avenue of relief open to me, I decided getting out of the hotel room would just have to do.

Armor on, I swiftly turned away from the mirror, grabbed up my purse and key card, and left the room.

I made my way down to the hotel restaurant, giving the hostess a blinding smile when she asked me if it was a table for one. “Yes, please.”

The restaurant had a traditional look about it—dark wood furniture, dark wood floors, and intimate low lighting. I stared straight ahead, following the hostess to a small booth at the back of the restaurant. Suddenly feeling as though I was being watched, the skin on my neck prickled. Out of my peripheral vision I caught sight of a table of businessmen staring in my direction and put the feeling down to that.

“Is this okay? Or would you prefer a small table?” She gestured to one in the middle of the room.

But I preferred the privacy of the small booth. I slid into it. “This is great, thank you.”

She handed me a menu. “Your waitress, Emily, will be with you shortly.”

I thanked her again and dropped my gaze to the menu. My stomach grumbled loudly as soon as I saw filet mignon.

My waitress, a tall, willowy young woman with an English accent appeared to take my drink order. I asked for champagne, because screw it. After the week I’d had, I was treating myself to a goddamn filet mignon and a glass of champagne. Or two.

As I sipped at my glass of bubbly, I pulled my phone out of my purse and trolled through the work e-mails I wasn’t supposed to be looking at until my return.

However, the skin on my neck continued to prickle, distracting me. It wasn’t a wonder, then, when I felt someone approach my booth and stand over me. Slowly I lifted my gaze, annoyance already heating my skin when I found a tall, rangy guy in a business suit grinning down at me.

“Dining alone?”

I didn’t reply and let my deadpan expression do the talking.

It didn’t deter him. “That is a diabolical sin.” His dark gaze drifted down to my cleavage, which he blatantly ogled. My skin crawled. “I’m Matt. Let me join you.”

In hell, maybe. “Matt, I appreciate the offer. But I just want to have a quiet dinner alone. Thank you.” I dropped my gaze, returning my attention to my phone.

It took him a second or two—I could almost feel his confusion—but he eventually walked away and I breathed a sigh of relief. Dear old Matt was likely thinking to himself, Why would a woman dress that way if she wasn’t looking to grab a man’s attention? And that there was one of the things still wrong with our society. There was this obnoxious misconception that women only dressed well to attract a mate. Hello! Some of us were just obsessed with clothes, shoes, and makeup and liked to look good, you know, for ourselves. Shocker.

So I wasn’t at all taken aback when the feeling of being watched didn’t dissipate with Matt’s retreat.

My toes curled inside my shoes with agitation as I felt another person approach. This time he slid into the bench across from me in my small booth. I lifted my gaze to the stocky blond guy who bore a faint resemblance to a handsome Australian actor. Clearly, he thought this made him irresistible, if the cocky, assured smile he shot me was anything to go by. “Sorry about my friend Matt. I tried to tell him a beautiful woman like you wouldn’t be interested in sharing a meal with a guy like him. I came to rescue you instead. I’m Chuck.”