The Fourth Horseman: Excerpt 6

This is all of chapter 4, in which Suzanne buys a dress and sits in a chair with Anastase.  

The other excerpts can be found here:
Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3
Excerpt 4
Excerpt 5

*****

Chapter Four

“I was thinking,” my father said over dinner that night. “Since your mother is on the road to recovery, we could go into town for dinner next Saturday, maybe to that sushi place you like. Maybe bring Gabriel. Interested?”

“Sorry, I can’t on Saturday,” I said. “It’s Homecoming.”

My father dropped his fork to his plate. “You’re kidding.”

“I have to go. Gabriel’s nominated.”

“Do you believe this?” my father asked my mother. “Are you hearing this?”

My mother shook her head, smiling. “You’ve met Gabriel, right, dear?”

“Our daughter. Dating the Homecoming King!”

I rolled my eyes. “He hasn’t won. He’s just nominated.”

My dad fluttered his eyelashes at us. “I wished for this day, but I never thought it would come true. Will there be a limo? What are you going to wear?”

I sighed. “No, there will not be a limo, and I’ll wear a dress or something.”

“What dress?” my mother asked.

I thought about the contents of my closet. I had many dresses, mostly black, mostly t-shirt style good for summer. “I dunno.  A dress,” I said.

“Anything with sequins?” my father asked.

My mother ignored him, her full attention on me. “Do you have one that isn’t black?”

“Unlikely,” I admitted.

“We’ll go Monday,” she said. “My classes are over at three, so take a car from school and meet me at my office.”

Wait, was my mother actually offering to take me dress shopping? Herself? “Um . . . okay,” I said.

“Maybe something off the shoulder,” my dad said, hitching his shoulder up and pouting at us.

“Eat your potatoes, dear,” my mother said, handing him his fork. 

*****

After some discussion and consultation with the women in my mother’s department, who all seemed to adore her and be pleased to be consulted, we ended up at Mayfair Mall in the Milwaukee suburbs, where they had a Nordstrom, and so were deemed to be most likely to have something suitable.

Mayfair was a suburban mall in the old style; all indoors, with little plazas around fountains and piped in music. We started at security, where my mother rented one of those little scooters with a basket on it and got a map of all the elevators. “We don’t have to do this,” I said as we headed down a creepy service hallway to find an access elevator. “If your leg is bothering—”

“It’s fine.” My mother waved my concern away with one hand. “I’ve got a scooter.”

“But we don’t—”

“If you think you can use my leg as an excuse to get out of trying on dresses, think again,” my mother said. “Press the button.”

I pressed the button. My mother had been remarkably upbeat about her injury since it happened, adjusting to each accommodation, laughing about her challenges, but I thought it was mostly an act; she was pretending to be fine with a scooter or a wheelchair or crutches or the foldout bed in the living room, because to not be fine with it was futile. Maybe a better description was “coping mechanism.” Either way, it probably wasn’t kind to challenge her about it.

I’d used my power to speed her healing in the first days after the injury, and it had helped, but I could only do a little bit: I didn’t know how to control it and too much help would put her into the realm of medical miracle and result in all sorts of questions. Still, when I saw her struggle up the stairs or grit her teeth against the idea of taking a pain pill or even like this, on a rented scooter with a red flag flapping above her, I itched to do more. We didn’t use our powers enough, none of us, and it was beginning to frustrate me.

We mixed in with the other girls and their parents in the Nordstrom dress department, all clearly on the same mission. “What do you think of this?” I asked, holding up a long black velvet sheath.

“I think you look would like Mortitia Adams,” my mother said. “Nothing black.”

“What! Why not?”

“Because you wear black almost every day. You should wear a color for a change. Like this.” She held out the skirt of a short red dress that flared out like a drink umbrella.

“No red,” I said. “I don’t want to go as a slutty vampire.”

We went back and forth for almost two hours, my mother maneuvering her scooter through the racks, using one of her crutches to hook dresses, me pulling my shirt on and off in tiny dressing rooms, until finally we found it. The dress. I’d been apathetic about the choice when she brought it to me, draped over the basket on the front of her scooter.

“It’s beige,” I said. “That’s not a color.”

“Well, it’s also not black or red or pink or green,” she said, listing all the colors one of us had already vetoed. “Just try it on.”

There’s was no point in arguing—she would just have to see me dressed like a sack of oatmeal to be convinced—so I took the dress and closed the dressing room door. It was beige, but in the unfortunate overhead light I noticed it had some shimmer to it, like silver threads shot through. I unzipped it and slipped it over my head, adjusting myself in the halter-style top and zipping it up before I turned around.

It was amazing.

The material clung to my figure, but not in a tight way, just in a . . . a clingy way, until the skirt swirled out from my thighs. Against my skin, the beige made me seem almost tan, and the silver thread intensified somehow toward the bottom to give the impression of foam washing up on a beach. I was a mermaid on the sand.

I opened the door and my mother saw me and gasped. She gasped.

“Oh, Suzanne.” She covered her mouth with one hand. “Suzanne.”

“I know,” I said. “This is . . .” I held out my hands.

“How much is it?” she asked.

I felt a flare of panic. Of course a dress this spectacular would be super expensive, way more than my mother wanted to spend on something frivolous like a Homecoming dress. I fished the price tag out from under my arm and showed it to her without even glancing at it. I didn’t want to dash my own hopes.

“Oh, that’s fine,” she said. “What color shoes do you think would work?”

I blinked. My mother and I had agreed on a dress I was going to wear. In public. And now she was buying me shoes. I wasn’t sure the day could get any stranger.

***** 

We came back home with bags of stuff, like sherpas coming down off the mountain.  I did the hauling, my mother inching up the short kitchen staircase behind me. 

"Successful trip?" my dad asked, pulling out a chair for her, which she plopped into gratefully. 

"You could say that." I dropped the bags holding the shoes and the makeup and the special underwear onto the floor for Brady to stick his nose in and draped the garment bag with the dress over a chair. 

"Wait until you see it, Robert," my mother said.  "It's just beautiful."

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket.  Spencer.  "Mom picked it out," I said, as I answered the phone. "What's up, Spence?" I asked, heading into the living room.  Except Gabriel, the Beryls rarely called, preferring to text, but I thought maybe Spencer wanted to talk about what had happened in the hallway.  That wasn't really a texting conversation.

But he wasn’t calling about himself at all. “Can you come over?" he asked.  "Anastase is messed up."

I paused.  Spencer was the resident Anastase-whisperer, the one who could deal with him when none of the rest of us could, not only because he could read Anastase's mind, but also because he was Anastase's favorite by far.  The rest of us were nothing compared to Spencer. If he couldn't handle whatever was happening . . . "What's wrong?"

"He's not physically hurt, he just needs someone . . . older, I guess, and Merri's still at school."

"Okay, okay.  I'll see what I can do." I went back into the kitchen. "Spencer's having some sort of homework crisis.  Can I . . .?" I trailed off hopefully. 

"Take your things upstairs and go," my mother said.  "And take your dog."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" I kissed her cheek.  "For the dress, for everything."

"You're welcome," she said, shooing me away.  "Go on."

*****

Brady and I didn’t run, exactly, but by the time I got to Gabriel’s house I was out of breath and sweating a little and my hair was frizzed up from the rain that had started during the drive home from the mall. I stopped for a second on the front porch to catch my breath, and Brady curled up on the dog bed the Beryls had put on the porch for him.

Spencer opened the door before I could knock. “Oh, good, thank you. I don’t know what to say to him.”

“About what?” I asked, following him in. At the end of the hall, the kitchen light was on, but the rest of the house was full of shadows.

“He’s in here.” Spencer took the three steps down into the sunken den. “Ana?”

Anastase sat by the window in the large winged chair we all thought of as his, his legs hanging over the arm. It was chilly in the room, but he wore only a white t-shirt and jeans and didn’t move or speak when we came near.

“Suzanne’s here,” Spencer said. “Did you want to talk to her?”

Again, nothing. Up close, I could feel the breeze sweeping in through the window, droplets of mist spattering through the screen. Even though I was still overheated from hauling my ass over to his house, the rush of cool air made me shiver.

“I’m gonna go,” Spencer whispered to me.

“Wait, Spence,” I said, but he was already hustling out of the room. Little jerk.

“Spencer says there’s something wrong with you,” I said. “There better be, because I came all the way over here in the rain, and I have to get back for dinner, so let’s hear it.” I waited a couple seconds. “Today, Anastase.”

He shifted in the chair, folding his arms across his chest, and still said nothing.

“Alright, dude.” I turned to leave, and felt the strange cold grip of his hand around my wrist. Normally Anastase’s touch was warm, if not hot, one of the benefits of being a fire Elemental.

I waited.

After a second, he swallowed. “Clarissa broke up with me.” The words were low, not a whisper, but deep and quiet.

“Oh.” I sat on the arm of the chair and patted his shoulder. “Wow . . . I’m really sorry.”

Anastase said nothing more. I was sorry, but I was also confused. Clarissa had broken up with Anastase. It was almost inconceivable. She worshipped him. She hung on his every word. I had come over to spend time with Gabriel one Sunday afternoon and found her doing Anastase’s laundry. Not them doing laundry together, but her doing his laundry in his house. And she had left him.

“I’m sure it’s . . . you just had a fight. She’ll come around.”

He laughed, but it sounded like choking. “No, I don’t think so. She says I don’t love her.”

“Oh.” If she had finally noticed that fact, maybe she wouldn’t be back. “Well, um . . .”

He folded in on himself, knees up, head down, until he was balled in the chair, smaller than I had ever seen him. It took me a second to realize, but the faint shake of his shoulders meant he was crying. Anastase Beryl was crying.

“Shit,” I muttered before I could stop myself. “Ana, hey.” I touched his arm and he moved, suddenly, grabbing for me.

I’d been the recipient of a number of Anastase’s advances, not all of them before Gabriel and I were together. Anastase had made clear, over and over again, that if I were willing he would be happy to have sex with me and damn the consequences.

But this wasn’t the same.

This was awkward and sad. Anastase twisted in the chair, and I shifted, and then I was half in the chair with him, his arms tight around my waist, his face hot and damp against my neck, his hair in my nose. “Shh.” I patted his back as best I could. “Anastase, shh.”

He shuddered against me. I’d never known anyone who cried silently, but Anastase did, hot tears on my collarbone, hands twisted in the fabric of my sweater. I moved a little, until I could get my arms around him properly, and hug him close, one hand in his fine, blond hair. It was still awkward—the chair wasn’t really made for two people, and the wing was digging into my shoulder—but it was better.

He didn’t say a single word. Neither did I, because everything I thought of to say—“it’ll be okay” “you’re okay” “you’re fine”—would be a lie. Nothing can be done about an ending; when something is truly over, the only way out of the pain is through it.

 Anastase stopped crying after a few minutes and I tensed up, because I figured it would be a matter of time before he tried to take advantage of my sympathy. But he didn’t. He just leaned against me, his breath on my neck. When the breeze came through the screen, I could feel goosebumps raise up on his bare arms and then subside, like the coming and going of the tide.

I’m not sure how long we sat there, Anastase folded against me like miserable origami, but my shoulder had started to ache when the lamp came on.

“Hey, Ana, I just heard—” Gabriel stopped, halfway into the room. He had on his letterman’s jacket, and rain sparkled in his dark hair like dew. “Suzanne.”

“Hi.” I waved.

Anastase lifted his tear-stained face off my shoulder. His skin was blotchy and his eyes were red. He took one look at Gabriel and released me, pushing me gently off the chair to my feet.

“I, um.” Gabriel looked back and forth between us. “Spencer said Clarissa,” he said. “I’m sorry. I, uh . . .” He stopped, running a hand through his hair, then turned and walked out of the room.

*****

I didn’t even think, I just followed him. “Gabriel,” I called, but he was moving fast, through the kitchen and up the back stairs. “Gabriel! Stop!”

He didn’t, though, so I chased him all the way up to his room and managed to get my foot between the jamb and the door before he closed it. “Go away,” he said, but he stepped back from the door and let me in.

Another dark room, another upset Beryl. “Gabriel,” I said. “Don’t be mad.”

He glared at me as he stripped off his jacket. “Why not?” he demanded. “I walk in and I find you and him—“

My anger flared. “Me and him, what? What are you accusing me of?”

“You were touching him.” He sat down on the edge of the bed.

“I was comforting him,” I said. “It wasn’t anything else. Nothing happened.”

“I don’t—” He stopped. “I turned on the light and there you were.”

“Give me a break. You think I came over to your house to make out with your brother in your living room?”

“Don’t make fun of me,” he muttered.

“Gabriel, I’m not.” I wanted to stay angry at the unjust accusation, but in the dim light from he hallway, Gabriel looked miserable, and I couldn’t inflict more hurt on him. I knelt down in front of him and rubbed his kneecaps with my hands. “But nothing happened. Spencer called me and I came over and . . . I felt bad for him.”

Gabriel snorted a laugh through his nose. “Why does everyone always feel sorry for Anastase?”

“His girlfriend broke up with him,” I said. “You feel bad for him, too. Don’t even lie.”

“She broke up with him because he treated her like crap,” Gabriel said. “Why should he get any sympathy?”

“Well, if I were her friend, I would give her sympathy, but I’m not.”

He sighed. “I just don’t—it surprised me, is all.”

“I thought you were over this,” My hands slid up his arms and around his neck, my body between his knees.

His hands went to my hips, almost automatically. “I am if you are,” he said.

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because I had made my choice months ago, and I was happy with it, with Gabriel, happier than I’d ever been with a boyfriend, but there were still those moments when I saw the sun in Anastase’s hair, or the tilt of his mouth, and thought about what might have been. I was asking Gabriel to be over something I wasn’t over, not completely, and it wasn’t fair, and I couldn’t be honest with him about it, so I lied.

“Gabriel.” I stared into his eyes. “You know I am.”

For a second, I thought he would ask again, but instead he kissed me, slow and cautious at first, like he was checking for signs of Anastase, but then deeply, his arms tightening around my waist they way they always did. I hugged his neck and kissed back.

“I’m sorry,” he said, when we paused for breath, our foreheads touching. “I know I’m crazy.”

“You’re not.” I kissed him. “I mean, you sort of are, but I get it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Another kiss. “I bought a Homecoming dress today.”

“Really? Who are you going with?”

“I hear Anastase is single now, so . . .”

“Wow,” Gabriel said, his arms tight around me so I knew he knew I was kidding. “Harsh!”

“Too soon?” I kissed his cheek, his neck, his ear. “Wait until you see this dress, though. You’re gonna die.”

“I can’t wait,” he said. “I know you think Homecoming is dumb—”

I shrugged. We’d had this conversation before.

“—but it’s our first big, like, thing, and I’m hyped about it.”

It was endearing, the way he talked about it, the excitement lighting up his eyes. “I can’t say I’m hyped about it,” I told him, “but I’m happy I’m going with you. And seriously, my dress? Is amazing.”

Gabriel kissed me again. “You’re amazing,” he said, and it felt like he was saying something else, something more.

 *****end chapter 4*****