Mating Theory Page 2

  My parents both tell the story of when I was two years old. One minute I was standing on the deck. The next I had fallen into the Massachusetts Bay. They both had a heart attack, or so the story goes, until they ran to the edge and saw me swimming around like a fish, more comfortable in water than on land.

  I’m not sure whether I really learned to swim quite that naturally or why I was left to toddle around the docks without someone holding my hand, but I do love to swim. I’ve even jumped off the deck of the yacht into the water, too impatient to climb down the long swim steps.

  I’m falling backward and twisted, unable to see how far I’m falling. Unable to see anything—but I can feel it, the slam of the surface at my back, the shock of freezing cold. And then it surrounds me, heavy weight dragging me down. The air leaves me in a rush; by the time I can take another breath, I’m fully submerged.

  It’s pitch-black, impossible to know which way is up. Any direction I go could be taking me deeper. My throat burns with salt. Panic threatens to overwhelm me. My whole body clenches, fighting the instinct to breathe in deep and fill my lungs with water.

  Something touches my side, and I squirm away in terror. Even stoned and in shock I remember there might be sharks. What if they heard me splashing? What if they sense my fear?

  Except there’s a grip on my arm—a hand, not teeth. It drags me up in a whoosh of water, and we break the surface together.

  The cold night air has never felt so good in my lungs. I gasp and gasp, unwilling to stop breathing after even a few seconds without it, unable to calm down.

  Something is shoved under my arms. The white and red of a life preserver. Christopher must have thrown one down before he jumped in after me. In a kaleidoscope of stars the world comes into focus. The water, lapping at me like a living thing. Christopher, his dark hair wet, his grip on my wrist firm as he tows us toward the yacht. And the boat itself, waves drawing intermittent shadows across the white bow.

  It might have been ten years before we reach the bottom of the swim steps. Or maybe only ten minutes. I’m deadweight on the life preserver, unable to kick even once to help make progress.

  “Can you climb?” Christopher shouts.

  I stare at him, unable to process the words. The cold has done something to my body, made me sluggish and stiff. It’s done the same thing to my brain.

  “Let’s get you through the middle,” he says, reaching for the life ring. “I’ll make sure you’re secure and then go for help.”

  Sudden panic is enough to jolt me out of my shock. “No.”

  “It will only take a minute.”

  He thinks I’m worried about being left alone in the water. More than that I’m worried about the disappointment on Daddy’s face. “I can climb,” I say, my voice shaky and thin.

  Christopher stares at me for a moment, and when he speaks, his voice is softer. “He won’t be mad at you. You should hear the way he talks about you when you’re not there.”

  That’s exactly why I can’t let him know I was smoking a joint and falling overboard. He wants me to be like Christopher—to be the valedictorian and go to business school. That’s something I’ll never be able to do for him, but at least I can spare him this. “Please.”

  “Fuck,” he mutters.

  In that moment I realize he already knows this will be a secret. Our secret. Because he didn’t follow procedure. He should have shouted for help and hit the emergency button first. And he definitely shouldn’t have jumped in after me, not without someone else on deck to pull us both back up. An unbroken sky rises from the metal railing above us. The night is quiet except for our fast breathing and the lap of the water. “Thank you,” I whisper.

  “I swear to God,” he says darkly, “if you fall and die, I’ll kill you myself.”

  That would make me laugh if I were capable of doing anything other than pant. He makes me go first, though I’m not sure how he would manage to catch me if I fell. If there’s one thing I know by now, it’s that he would try. So I focus on each rung with every ounce of determination in me, grip the textured metal and pray there’s enough muscle left inside me to hold on. There are a thousand steps up the side of the yacht. A million of them. It’s my own personal journey to the promised land, and it tests my determination with every aching pull.

  When I reach the top, I push myself through the railing and collapse onto the deck.

  A warm body tumbles beside me, but I can’t look sideways. There’s only the stars, unblinking. Then a face appears above me. Christopher, looking wet and strong and grim. “We should go back to shore. The fall. The cold. You should have a doctor look at you.”

  “N-n-no.”

  “Harper. You’re freezing.”

  There’s no way to argue that point, not when I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering. I think that’s a good sign. I read that somewhere. It means the body is warm enough to shiver, but I can’t get the words out through the violent movement.

  He curses again and disappears from my view. I close my eyes in quiet despair. He’s gone to get Daddy, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. The week we would have spent at sea, now we’ll spend it in some fancy emergency room even though I’m fine.

  Not enough time has passed when hands force their way under me. Then I’m lifted, tucked close to a body as wet as mine but so much warmer. Christopher carries me belowdecks, turning carefully to the side so I don’t bump against the narrow walls.

  He lays me down on my bed, and my arms are made of lead. My legs might as well be anvils, that’s how useful they would be if I were in the water right now. I’m helpless in front of this person who should be my enemy. Poor little rich girl, he called me, and I want to cry and rage because he’s right about me.

  His hands move to the button of my jeans, and I suck in a breath. My mind was on sharks and freezing water, but now I’m thinking about roofies. I’m thinking about a girl who can’t protect herself. About Poseidon and Medusa.

  “Christopher,” I whisper, though I’m not sure what I’m asking.

  He glares at me, his eyes black with a strange heat. “You have two options. Either I call your dad here or I make sure you’re warm. You pick.”

  You pick. In those two words he restores my faith in him—strange, because I wouldn’t have said I had faith at all. I know I need to get out of my wet clothes, and my body is too hurt by the freezing cold to be useful. “Don’t look.”

  After a beat he nods, facing away from me. Then he turns off the dim bedside lamp, bathing us only in moonlight from the port window. He undresses me with clumsy efficiency, his fingers clearly numb and struggling against the waterlogged fabric. I feel somehow colder by the time he’s done, the damp clothes in a heap on the floor, my naked skin exposed to the room.

  And then I watch while he undresses himself, faster and rougher with his body than he was with mine. His clothes land on top of mine, and then he pulls us both under the covers.

  He’s naked. The thought is enough to make me blush, even when there shouldn’t be any energy in my body for such an act. But he holds me close, tight enough I can’t make out where his male parts meet my female parts. There are only two bodies here, clinging together for warmth, creating a little cocoon. Exhaustion makes my eyelids heavy.

  “One of my mom’s husbands got into bed with me once.”

  Every part of his body becomes stiff. “What the fuck?”

  “It was bad. Not like this. This is nice.”

  “I swear to God, Harper.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, the words slurred together. “I told Mom the next day and we moved out of his mansion, even though it was really nice. He owned this big job website. Don’t tell Daddy. He would freak out even though it was a long time ago.”

  He holds me tighter, his face pressed to my hair. “I’m not going to touch you. I’m only staying here until you don’t feel like an ice cube, and then I’m moving to the chair.”

  “Thanks,” I say, the word coming out long and
slow.

  He sighs. “Go to sleep, Harper. And for the love of God, don’t die.”

  A death wish, he’d called it. “Want to live,” I mumble before the dreams take me down. It’s only later that I think that everything changed that night. Not because I fell into the bay or because he pulled me out. Because I confessed that in my sleepy-shocked state. It set us on the course to ruin, what made him the white knight to my damsel in distress.

  I wake up gasping for air, a nightmare of being submerged in water pressing against my consciousness. My muscles ache as I stretch in the bunk, looking up at familiar knots in the ceiling. What the hell did I dream about? There’s grit in my eyes as if I spent all evening at a bonfire, drinking cheap beer from a plastic cup and ignoring the frat boys on the beach.

  My mind moves slow and careful. I’m not sure I want the memory that happens next, but it comes anyway. Not a nightmare. Not a dream. I fell overboard last night.

  And Christopher Bardot saved me.

  That would be shocking, but not as shocking as the memory of him naked in the moonlight, climbing into bed, his warm skin flush against mine. He’s gone now, enough that I would think it really could have been a dream. Except for the faint scent of him that remains, something woodsy and male that managed to survive a dip in the Atlantic.

  My phone rings from the nightstand, my mother’s picture flashing on the screen. It’s a photo I took when she was laughing at the beach and didn’t think I was watching her. Completely different than the beauty queen smile she uses when looking at a camera. There’s a bittersweet sensation whenever I think about her when I’m with Daddy, a feeling of betrayal I can’t shake for loving him even though he hates her so much.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “You didn’t call to say you got there safely,” she says, a small pout in her voice.

  “Shit. I’m sorry. I should have texted at least.”

  “That’s okay. I’m sure you’re busy there.”

  That’s my opening to tell her about Daddy’s new wife. She used to scoop every detail out of me like I was a melon, hollowed out and left dry. “Mostly I’ve been sleeping.”

  “Are you still in bed?” she asks, laughing a little. “Me too.”

  That makes me smile. “You should be relaxing. You’re a free woman. Stay out late. Go to a party. You don’t have a kid at home to take care of.”

  “I don’t think I’ve had to take care of you since you were eight.”

  That’s probably true. I was the one who brought her breakfast and her medicine in the morning. I signed my own permission slips and called the driver when my art club meeting ended.

  “How is he?” she asks, her voice soft and a little sad.

  “He’s good. Same old Daddy.”

  “And his… family?”

  “I’m not sure. His new wife seems okay. She mostly just ignores me, which is fine. She has a son, though. He’s… older.”

  She must sense something in my words, because her tone changes. “How much older? He isn’t being a bully, is he? Or worse?”

  “It’s nothing like that,” I promise her, because I wouldn’t put it past her to fly out to Logan International by tonight if I didn’t reassure her.

  She felt terrible about the job-website man. He’d needed to get drunk to come into my bedroom, which means his reflexes were slow. I ran out and woke up Mom, who had us out of the mansion and in a motel room by morning.

  “Christopher’s nice, actually. Nicer than I expected.”

  A pause. “Don’t get too close, Harper. It’s only temporary.”

  I can’t blame her for the warning. She knows all too well how temporary being the wife of Graham St. Claire can be. Theirs had been a whirlwind relationship, the kind that every man and woman envied. By all accounts, even their own, they had been in love.

  And then something had happened. To this day I still don’t know what.

  Now they hate each other. It scares me when I think about it, how two people can go from love to hate so quickly. It scares me enough that I try not to think about it. About the way Daddy could have given her enough money to be set for life, it would have been pennies to him, but he denied her everything that wasn’t court-ordered out of spite. The child support they negotiated was contingent on a third party auditing her bank account to make sure every cent of it goes to my care. If she eats a Snickers bar purchased from his check, he could sue.

  If that’s what happens to people in love, I don’t want any part of it.

  I find Daddy at the breakfast table, the newspaper propped open like I knew it would be. He’s not content without reading three newspapers every morning, even when we’re on a trip. It comes ferried to us via a speedboat at five a.m., along with fresh supplies because God knows what we would do without catch-of-the-day lobster for dinner every night.

  “Morning,” he says without looking up.

  I dig in the pile for the Art & Style section, like I always do. Other kids may have read Garfield, but I’ve always been a museum opening kind of girl. “Good morning.”

  A chocolate chip pancake appears in front of me, the butter melting in a delicious puddle. I’m a continent away from our apartment in LA, but it might as well be a different planet. I don’t have to use my lunch money to tip the bellman so word doesn’t get back that we’re flat broke. Don’t have to work an evening shift at the deli down the block to pay the bills.

  “How’s your mother?” The question comes in that neutral voice, so without inflection that it conveys everything. The way they end up screaming at each other on the phone. The very careful way that Daddy agrees to pay for my prep school tuition and room-and-board fees in a private suite—but nothing else. On that point he stands firm.

  I once told my friend in middle school, because she didn’t understand how the daughter of a billionaire couldn’t afford to take the school trip to France. I would be pissed, she said, sounding scandalized. Like he’s trying to control you with money, even though he has so much. It doesn’t make me angry, because I know he has terrible and complicated feelings about money.

  Terrible and complicated feelings about money, like my mother.

  It’s something we pass down through generations, like a grandfather clock that chimes every time your bank account rises or falls. A legacy and a family curse. I’m not naive enough to think I’ll manage to escape that.

  “Good,” I say, because we decided a long time ago, when I was only ten, that it was me and her against the world. If I tell Daddy what it’s like when she’s between husbands, how it feels to be hungry or cold, he’ll take me away from her.

  “And how’s school?”

  “I’m working on a sculpture for the spring art festival. My teacher said it’s inspired and strange and sinister. That’s a direct quote.”

  Daddy gives me a fond look, mixed with the kind of bemusement he’s always given me. It would be so much easier if I loved the stock market or international law. “Christopher told me about last night.”

  Panic squeezes my throat. That bastard.

  Maybe it’s not fair to get mad at someone who saved my life, but still. He seemed like he was going to be cool about it. I’m two seconds away from saying, He took a drag of the weed too! Before reason prevails. Never give them eight words when two will suffice.

  “He did?”

  “I had half a mind to wake you up, make sure you get on the East Coast schedule right away. Christopher told me he heard you playing music until late, so we decided to let you sleep in.”

  For a second I’m struck by the horror of Daddy walking in on me and Christopher, both naked and tangled beneath the sheets. That’s only superseded by the horror of him knowing that I fell overboard last night. Thank God someone woke up early—and that someone appears at the table, looking annoyingly well rested compared to the bags that must be under my eyes.

  “Are you a vampire?” I demand as he pours himself a cup of coffee.

  “Don’t mind her,” Daddy warns in a t
one that says teenage girls are stupid. I’m hardly the person to disprove that, but it has way more to do with changing prep schools every single year than the fact that I have a vagina. It’s easier to let everyone think I don’t care.

  “I have been known to order my steak rare,” Christopher offers.

  I nod in satisfaction. “You have that whole old-soul thing going on. No wonder you’re getting straight A’s. You probably wrote the textbook when you were a professor. And now you have to get a new degree as someone else or people will get suspicious.”

  “The typo on page seventy-eight haunts me to this day,” he says in a grave voice.

  Daddy stares at me like I’m speaking a different language. “I don’t suppose it factors into this conversation that vampires aren’t real?”

  “Not with that attitude, they aren’t.”

  A slow smile spreads on Christopher’s face, and my breath stutters. It’s the kind of smile so rare and precious it could be sold at Sotheby’s. Quality, the auctioneer would say, standing in front of the well-dressed crowd, in its raw, natural state. The world is going to want that smile. It’s going to polish him into a sharp geometric shape, hard and gleaming. And it will be worth more money than God.

  It’s not until that night that I find Christopher alone, head bent over a thick textbook at his desk, the lamp casting shadows on his furrowed brow. It softens me more than it should, seeing him working hard when no one’s watching. “This a bad time?” I ask, leaning against the doorframe.

  He turns to face me, his expression inscrutable. “Would it stop you if I said yes?”

  I pretend to consider this. “You did save my life, but I think that only means I have to save your life back. Or maybe give you my firstborn child? They skipped this part in my etiquette class, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have to respect your time either way.”

  “You took an etiquette class?”

  “Standard operating procedure for any debutante.”

  He shakes his head as if bewildered. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”