Being Nikki (Airhead 2)

Chapter 13

“JUST KEEP YOUR GAZE STRAIGHT AHEAD, don’t look into the light. ”   That’s what Dr. Higgins told me as I sat on the examination table in front of her. She was flashing a beam from a penlight into my eyes. I guess she wanted to see if Nikki’s brain had come loose or something after my huge and embarrassing tumble on the catwalk at the Stark Angel dress rehearsal.   “Honestly,” I told her, doing as she asked and looking straight ahead, “I’m fine. ”   “Shhh,” she said. “Don’t talk. ”   I’d been assuring everyone that I was fine—except for my wounded dignity (and backside)—but everyone had just shushed me. I guess they all thought no one could take that hard a tumble and not be hurt. Alessandro was the one who’d insisted I be checked out by a medical professional.   And of course, when the Stark security town car stopped and I found myself in the Stark Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery, I wasn’t surprised. I was right back where I’d started. Well, sort of.   “Are you experiencing any double vision?” she wanted to know. Dr. Higgins was all business. Apparently she, and not Dr. Holcombe, who’d been part of the team that performed my brain transplant, was the one on call tonight. “Headache? Nausea?”   “No,” I said. “No, and no. I told you. I just slipped. On this. ” I held up the object I’d slipped on, which I’d found a few seconds after I’d sat up. A bunch of feathers, wadded together and tossed onto the runway. They’d clearly been ripped from a set of Stark Angel wings.   It wasn’t hard to guess who they’d belonged to, either. The last Angel to walk out onto the stage before me, and the one who had a particular grudge against me: Veronica.   The first face I’d seen hovering above mine after I’d landed was Gabriel’s, his blue eyes filled with concern. Gabriel Luna’s blue eyes, I’d noted. Not the eyes I’d been fantasizing about seeing, Christopher Maloney’s.   “Nikki? Are you all right?” Gabriel had wanted to know, putting an arm around me—as best he could with the tangle of wings behind me.   “I’m fine, I’m fine,” I’d assured him. “I just slipped on something—there was something on the runway…”   And I’d looked to make sure I was right, and there it was. Thank God. It wasn’t just me and my utter inability to be fierce in six-inch heels.   I’d made out like it must have been an accident. Alessandro’s face had darkened when he saw what Gabriel was holding up—because he’d seized the clump of feathers from me, and turned to face the director with indignation. That’s when Alessandro began to swear in a steady stream, primarily at the costume mistresses, for not gluing the feathers down hard enough.   I hadn’t corrected him. I don’t know why. I knew Veronica had done it, and on purpose—You better watch your back. More like right in front of you—but I’d had other important things to worry about.   Like the fact that I’d known I was going to end up here, at the institute.   And not just because they were worried about my head, either. Or at least how attached it was to the inside of my skull.   I knew they’d use this opportunity to give me a little lecture about…well, my behavior lately.   And sure enough…   “There was an incident in St. John earlier this week,” Dr. Higgins said, looking down at a thick white manila file she was holding. “You fell there as well. ”   God! I knew they were watching me. I just knew it. When were they ever going to leave me alone?   Oh, that’s right. As long as I’m the Face of Stark, making them millions? Never.   “I slipped,” I corrected her. “I didn’t fall. ” Of course, technically, I’d sort of jumped. But she didn’t need to know that. “They were making me hold on to this cliff, and it was really slippery, and I couldn’t hang on anymore. ”   “I see,” Dr Higgins said, still looking down at the file. “You went to visit your family recently, too. And that boy, Christopher Maloney. ”   It was a statement, not a question. I could only stare at her. What could I say in response, anyway? I knew the deal: I got to live in exchange for their watching—and listening in on—my every move. What was there to say about it, really?   “You know we’d like you to limit visitations with people from your past,” Dr. Higgins went on. “It will only cause people to wonder how you know them, and you wouldn’t want unnecessary attention drawn to them, would you?”   “No,” I said. “But…” Suddenly, I felt like punching something. Or someone. I’d changed out of the diamond bra and panties and wings and back into my normal clothes, so I didn’t look like quite as big a freak sitting there in her office as I might have.   But I was still, I realize, a plenty big freak. Which I could handle, actually, because I’d always been a big freak.   It was the fact that there were people spying on me all the time—and not just the paparazzi—that was kind of hard to bear without breaking something.   “I know it’s hard,” Dr. Higgins said sympathetically, as if she could read my thoughts. But she couldn’t…because if she could, she’d have looked more scared. Besides, surely my thoughts were still my own. Stark didn’t own them. Yet. “Of course you miss them. And we don’t expect you never to see them. That’s why we let you go to school with your sister. But you really need to cut back on the personal visits. You won’t assimilate into your new life as easily if you keep trying to cling to your old life. Do you know what I mean?”   I thought of Christopher. Wasn’t that exactly what he’d been doing, clinging to his old love, Em (even if he’d never once acknowledged, while I was actually around, that he liked me), instead of embracing the here and now?   “Maybe,” I admitted, more so she’d shut up and let me leave than because I thought it was really true. “I’m just having a rough transition period. ”   “Acknowledging that,” Dr. Higgins said, with a smile, “is half the battle toward overcoming it. Now. ” She looked down, and turned a page in my file. “About Nikki Howard’s brother. ”   All of my internal alarm sensors went off. Stark knew! Stark knew about Steven!   Then again…of course they did. Why wouldn’t they? They knew everything.   Dr. Higgins looked up from the file and smiled at me again. “I know you feel bad about his mother, and want to help. But really, all you had to do was ask. Because we at Stark would be happy to do anything we can to help resolve this unfortunate and really quite sad situation. ”   I blinked. “Wait…really?”   “Yes, of course. It’s odd that Steven Howard came to you and not us first, but considering the circumstances—”   I shook my head. “What circumstances?”   “Well, his mother’s…condition. I’m sure he was a bit embarrassed. ”   “Condition?” I stared at her. What was she talking about? “What condition?”   Dr. Higgins closed my file and crossed the room to sit at her desk, where her computer was. Because Dr. Higgins had been out of the office, she had to turn the computer on and let it boot. While it did this, she said, “I’m not surprised he didn’t mention it, but Mrs. Howard is not a well woman. If she should contact you, or Steven, it’s important, whatever outrageous things she tells you, that you remember that. She has a long history of mental illness and, I’m sorry to say, drug and alcohol abuse. ”   I stared at her in shock. Dr. Higgins looked up from the computer screen, saw my startled expression, and nodded.   “It’s actually not that unusual that she’s disappeared like this. She’s done it before, many times. ”   I listened with growing disbelief to Dr. Higgins as she continued.   “—of course, if you do hear from her,” Dr. Higgins was saying, “you should contact us at once, and we’ll take care of it. Mrs. Howard needs immediate medical care. ”   What was going on here? What was Dr. Higgins doing? This was not the person Steven Howard had described to me—not that he’d gone into much detail at all about his mom. Still, this didn’t jibe with what he’d said about his mom not being the type to leave her business unattended.   Who was telling the truth? Dr. Higgins? Or Steven?   “Um,” I said. Dr. Higgins was typing something into the keyboard in front of her. “Okay. ”   “I’m glad we had this little talk. ” Dr. Higgins straightened, came over to me, and patted me on the back, then helped me down from the exam table. “Sometimes it’s nice when it’s just us girls, isn’t it?”   “Yeah,” I said. You mean, when we didn’t have lawyers from Stark Corporate around, telling me what I could and could not say? “It sure is. ”   “Good night,” Dr. Higgins said, and shook my hand at the door to her office. “If you experience any headaches, double vision, nausea, or any symptoms at all, don’t hesitate to call. ”   I assured her I’d call. Then, as Dr. Higgins returned to her computer, no doubt to input every detail of our conversation into my file, I allowed myself to be escorted by Stark security through the dark and silent—this time of night—hallways to the hospital’s front entrance, where the Stark town car was waiting to take me back to the loft.   Only, when I got there, I found that the press was waiting. Hordes of them. They must have been tipped off by someone that this hospital was where I’d been sent, because otherwise how could there have been so many of them? The flashbulbs started going off the second I set one foot out the door, instantly blinding me. It was a good thing those security guys were there, giving me their strong arms for support. Otherwise I’d have suffered another embarrassing tumble as they led me down the hospital steps to the town car waiting below.   “Nikki!” a paparazzo cried. “Are you all right?” White flashes burst all around me. I could barely see the cement steps underneath my feet.   “What happened, Nikki? Care to comment?” another wanted to know.   “Nothing,” I said, trying to give a casual laugh. “I was just a klutz, that’s all. I’m fine. See? Nothing broken. Except my pride. ”   “Nikki, was this fall related to what happened to you a few months ago, when you suffered from a hypoglycemic incident at a Stark grand opening and had to be hospitalized?” someone else asked. Flash. Flash. Flash.   “No, nothing like that,” I said. “I just trip—”   But I didn’t get the full sentence out of my mouth. That’s because my vision had finally cleared enough for me to see that, waiting next to the town car was a guy. A dark-haired, blue-eyed guy, wearing jeans and a brown suede jacket. He was holding an enormous bouquet of red roses. And grinning. At me.   “Hello there,” Gabriel Luna said with a smile.   “Why, hello,” I said. I glanced around, pretty sure I knew the answer, but wanting to make sure I wasn’t about to make a fool of myself again. “Have I got the wrong car?”   “No,” Gabriel said. “This is your car. So. How are you?”   “I’m fine,” I replied, still not quite believing what I was seeing. Gabriel Luna was waiting with a big bouquet of roses next to my car. In front of the paparazzi, who were snapping tons of photos of us both now. What, exactly, was going on? Was this because he “loved” me or something?   “Oh, these are for you. ” Gabriel seemed to remember the roses suddenly, which he passed to me. Tons more flashes went off. “A bit sappy, I know,” he whispered, so the paps couldn’t hear him. “But my manager thought it would be a good idea. ”   I took the beautiful bouquet. “Your…manager?” I whispered. I didn’t understand anything that was going on.   “And your agent,” Gabriel said, still smiling away as everyone took our photo. He was opening the car door and helping me inside. “They go to the same gym. Anyway, what with the song and the show and us both working for Stark and all, they just thought, well, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea for us to be seen out and about together. I know it’s a bit stagy, but it can’t hurt to have the fans think we’re an item, now can it?”   “Oh,” I said, finally catching on. “You mean your song…”   Gabriel grinned. “Right. The song. ”   We were in the car now, and my security guys had slammed the door behind us and were shooing the paparazzi away, even as they clamored for just one more shot and called things like, “Nikki! Are you and Gabriel Luna going out? Where are you off to? How long have the two of you been seeing each other?”   It was much quieter in the car, with the door shut. Gabriel looked at me, his dark eyebrows raised inquiringly. “I hope,” he said, “you don’t mind. Your agent said it was all right. ”   “Oh,” I said. What could I say? That I was going to kill Rebecca later? “No. It’s fine. ”   “Good,” Gabriel said. “And of course I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure you must be exhausted. And if you want to get back to your place, that’s fine. But if you wanted to get a bite to eat—”   Suddenly, I realized I was starving. It had been a long time since those chocolate-covered strawberries. And I had so many things to do—finals to study for, an oral presentation to prepare, a sister to make up with, Nikki Howard’s mother to find, and her brother to ask something really horrible. Not to mention Christopher waiting for an answer about whether or not I was going to help him bring down Stark Enterprises.   “Sure,” I said, without a second’s more hesitation. “Why not?”   Which was how I found myself, an hour and a half later, at Dos Gatos, the underground club you needed to be a celebrity even to know it existed, since it looked like an ordinary diner on the outside.   But when you said your name, a guy with a walkie-talkie would let you through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, into what was really an elevator. And suddenly, you were in one of the hottest clubs in town. There I sat sharing a cozy booth in the corner with Gabriel Luna, sitting beneath the flickering candlelight from dozens of Mexican lanterns hanging overhead while he explained the genesis of the song “Nikki. ”   “The Nikki in the song isn’t necessarily you,” he was saying. We’d finished a platter of bite-size carne asada tacos, sprinkled all over with bright green bits of cilantro, and a pitcher of key lime margaritas (virgin, of course. I doubted Gabriel would have allowed them to be served any other way, given Nikki’s reputation).   “Really,” I said. “So it’s about some other girl named Nikki you happen to know?”   He grinned. “Okay. Well, maybe she’s you. But she’s more the idea of you—” In the candlelight, a wave of his dark hair cast his eyes in shadow, so his expression was hard to read. “I’m saying there’s the public Nikki, the one who everyone thinks they know. And then there’s the Nikki underneath, the one you won’t seem to allow anyone to know. ”   I looked at him. Gabriel was smarter than I’d given him credit for being. “You really think that? You think I push people away?”   “You’re the one who’s been impossible to reach these past few weeks,” he said with a gentle laugh. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were seeing someone. ”   I bit my lip. The truth, of course, was that I was seeing someone. Well, at school. He just didn’t know it.   Except that now…well, now, that person had made it clear he was in love with someone else.   And okay, that someone else was me…but me as I used to be.   “Wait a minute,” Gabriel was saying now, reaching out to push back some of my long blond hair, which had partially fallen across my face. “There is someone else, isn’t there?”   Oh, God. Why did his eyes have to be so blue? Like someone else’s eyes, actually. Only bluer, because they contrasted so nicely with his dark hair and long, curly eyelashes.   “There…was,” I murmured, looking everywhere but Gabriel’s face, and cursing Nikki for having such an insufferable physical weakness where guys were concerned. Because when his fingers brushed the skin on my cheek, I felt myself melting. Just a little, the way I had when Brandon had touched me that night in St. John. Why couldn’t Christopher touch me like that? Why? “Not anymore. He likes…another girl. Not really, but…well, he might as well. ”   Gabriel raised one ink-black eyebrow. His hand had slipped from my cheek around to the back of my neck. Uh-oh. “Sounds complicated. ”   “You have no idea,” I said.   And that’s when it happened. Gabriel began to knead the back of my neck with his fingers.   I don’t know what came over me after that. Or rather, I do: It was all Nikki Howard’s fault. Nikki’s body’s fault, I mean. Because the next thing I knew, it had happened again. That thing Nikki’s body was always doing, when it went all melty at a guy’s touch.   And the worst part was, Gabriel knew. I mean, he could tell. I knew he could tell because suddenly, he scooted closer to me on the cushioned bench, and his other hand reached up to cup my face.   And then, even though I didn’t want to—even though there weren’t any paparazzi around to take a photo of us together—I let him tilt my face up toward his, and didn’t move away when he pressed his mouth down against mine. I know! I let him kiss me. In fact, I kissed him back, kissed him with all the pent-up emotion I’d been feeling for what seemed like days.   The worst part of it was, the emotion I felt? It wasn’t for Gabriel. That much I knew. It was stored-up passion for someone else. Someone with eyes just as blue as Gabriel’s.   But someone who would never, ever in a million years cup my face in his hands and lean down and kiss me, much less write a song about me. Or notice that there was a public Nikki, and then a different Nikki underneath.   Gabriel didn’t kiss me like someone whose manager’s idea it had been to bring me roses. He’d slipped both his arms around me now and was kissing me like he meant it, and had been waiting around for exactly this to happen, like everything leading up to it had only been appetizers, and finally, finally, we’d gotten to the main course.   Which was why it was a bit disheartening when I realized what I felt about him was exactly zero. And when I started to become aware that the soft chatter from other diners all around us had gotten a bit quieter suddenly, as if everyone had stopped eating to stare at something.   Which, I realized, as I broke the kiss and drew away from Gabriel a little, was us.   “Uh,” I said to him, ducking my head so that my hair covered my burning face. I started digging through my tote for my lip gloss. “Whoa. ”   “Sorry,” Gabriel said. He reached for his water glass. The conversation level of the diners around us picked up again, and not a moment too soon. “I probably oughtn’t have done that. ” His voice wasn’t completely steady.   “No,” I said. I held my compact up over my face so I could check my reflection and reapply my gloss without going outside the lines…but also in the hopes that he wouldn’t be able to see how hard I was blushing. “It’s all right. Really. ”   “And you’re quite certain there’s someone else?”   “Yes,” I said gently. “I’m sorry. But there is. ”   “Shame,” he said, grinning, as he set down his now empty water glass. “I think we’d have gotten along famously. Even though you’re impossible. ”   “I’m impossible?” I clicked the compact shut. I wasn’t blushing anymore. “I’m not the guy who stuck the name of a girl he barely knows in a song about how much he loves her. I’m trying to overlook the fact you chose a girl who just happens to be the face of the corporation that owns your label, by the way. ”   “You don’t honestly believe I wrote a song about you to get press, do you?” Gabriel asked, looking hurt.   The truth was, I didn’t know what to believe anymore. Everything I’d ever believed these past few months had turned out not to be true. Parents who were supposed to be there to protect you actually couldn’t always do that, and corporations that were allegedly evil occasionally saved your life, and brainiacs like me turned out not to know anything at all.   What could I believe in anymore?   “It’s kind of hard not to notice that you’ve decided to let Stark introduce your song about me to the world by having you sing it at a fashion show for underwear,” I pointed out. “Or am I wrong?”   Gabriel appeared startled for a minute. Then, out of nowhere, he started to laugh.   “Touché,” he said. “But my agent is making me do that last part. I was against doing the Stark Angel show from the start. ”   “Well,” I said. I was trying hard not to smile. Because it wasn’t funny. Except it sort of was. “I wasn’t exactly thrilled about doing the Stark Angel show, either. ”   “I guess maybe we have more in common than either of us thought,” Gabriel said.   “Right,” I said, rolling my eyes. Though it was hard to keep on being a sarcastic, tough model when he was being so nice. “We’re both corporate slaves. ”   “But that doesn’t mean,” Gabriel said, “what I said in the song isn’t true. There is something about you, Nikki, that I haven’t been able to get out of my head since we met. But until tonight, you never seemed to want to let me in. ”   I smiled at him miserably. “Believe me, Gabriel,” I said. “This is one head you’re better off staying out of. ”