Hell on Heels (5 page)

Saturday, the Fourth Annual Halo Foundation Masquerade Gala

“H
enry?” I called out to the empty hallway.

Nothing.

“Henry?” My voice broke at a higher pitch this time, searching the kitchen frantically, and still, nothing.

My legs tore through the house, searching room after room. “Henry?”

I hit redial on the flip phone.

Calling Henry…

The sound of Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me” played from a distance, echoing through the walls.

My limbs worked harder, faster.

“Henry!” I panicked, my hip crashing into a table in the living room.

Glass broke everywhere as the picture frame collided with the floor.

“Henry?”

The music stopped and his voicemail picked up.

“Hey. It’s Henry. Leave a message at the beep, or don’t, whatever.”

My heart arrested at his voice and I froze, hitting redial again.

Calling Henry…

“Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away…”

Tears streaming down my face, the music mocked me.

“Henry!”

I hit the step to the basement and exploded with fury as the music grew louder.

“Henry?”

I saw a shadow under the bathroom door.

“Henry!”

Turning the handle, I pushed, but the door barely moved. I backed up and hit the door harder this time, my shoulder protesting in pain.

The door moved at best a few more inches, enough to see his lifeless body folded over in the mirror.

“Henry!” I screamed, backing up farther this time and rushing the door.

He didn’t move.

I dialled the numbers as my thighs burned from pushing so hard.

Calling 911…

“911. What’s your emergency?” The female voice burned into my brain.

“My brother… He… My brother, he’s not moving. He’s… he’s in the bathroom… and I can’t… I can’t get in and he’s not moving!” I screamed into the receiver like I hated her. Like she’d done this to him.

“What’s your address?”

“4313 Holly Park Drive.” I connected with the door again and felt it give. “Henry!”

“Miss, an ambulance is on…”

The phone shattered against the tiled floor as my body pushed through the crack in the door.

“Henry! Henry! Henry!” I dropped to my knees and screamed in his face.

Nothing.

My fingers shook as I placed them against his throat.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

He had a pulse.

“Henry!”

I slapped him, hard.

He choked and my heart seized.

I hooked my arms around his torso and pulled. He was bigger than me. So much bigger than me.

“Stay with me, Henry, please,” I begged, using all of my strength to roll him onto his side.

Opening his mouth, I shoved two fingers to the back of his throat and pushed.

Vomit covered my hand and the sleeves of my school uniform.

Pulling my hand out, I kept his head turned while the stench perforated the air.

“Henry!”

His eyes didn’t open and my tears had grown to sobs.

I pushed two fingers down his throat again.

More vomit.

He choked and spit.

“Henry, please.”

His massive frame convulsed with each heave.

Behind his lids, his eyes moved as he coughed, and finally the grey of my brother’s irises found me briefly.

“Henry!” I sobbed, slapping his cheeks again as his eyes began to close. “What did you take? Henry!”

They opened again.

“What did you take? What did you take?” I repeated over and over again.

I placed his head in my lap, pulling the sweat-soaked blond hair off his forehead.

“Henry?” I said softer this time.

He smiled at me.

“I’m sorry, Charlie.” His eyes closed.

“Charleston?”

“So sorry, Charlie bear.”

“Charleston?”

I came to looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

“Char? Are you listening to me?”

My eyes moved to find Kevin’s in the mirror. “I’m sorry, what?”

“The guests have started to arrive.”

I nodded, noting he looked as handsome as ever in an all-black tuxedo with a red mask.

“I’ll be right down.”

He stepped forward, squeezing my bare shoulder. “It looks beautiful out there.”

I tilted my head backwards, fending off the tears that threatened to ruin my expertly applied makeup and praying they stayed put in their wells.

Kevin was right. The space had turned out better than I’d dreamed it would.

“We did good,” I spoke to him, but smiled to the ceiling.

He kissed my cheek. “Yeah, babe. We did good.”

I felt his presence leave the bathroom, heard the sound of the door closing, and tilted my chin down.

Addiction will take the very best of you, and no matter how many times you beg for mercy, it won’t come.

It would never ease your suffering.

My brother’s addiction had taken the best of me, but it was my addiction that allowed for the syphoning of who I was to continue.

My gray eyes looked hollow in the reflection and I winced. I did not look like the host I was expected to be.

Picking up the red mask from the vanity, I lifted the top half of my hair up and tied the strings in place. When they were secure, I allowed the remaining mass of blonde curls to fall from my hands and cover them up completely.

I sized up the woman staring back at me.

She was damaged, but she was beautiful.

The red silk dress was high in the neck and fell loosely around my generous chest. My back was entirely exposed before the fabric formed a brilliant V-shape just above my butt. It was floor-length, and in these nude stilettoes, it made it appear as though my legs went on for miles and never quit. The naked lipstick I wore matched my shoes and offset the dark smoke my eyes were painted.

I was a lady in crimson and perfectly disguised.

Sliding my speech into my large structured clutch, I left the hotel room.

The Fairmont was nearly full by the time I made it downstairs. My guess was Kevin had let me wallow upstairs a bit longer than he’d led me to believe.

“We’ve been looking for you!” Leighton cheered as she came into view, gesturing her arms around her wildly. “Char, it looks fantastic!”

I turned my head and tried to see what she and the other guests were seeing. I’d been envisioning this for over a year, so I of all people could appreciate how well it had come together.

Everything from the walls to the tables was draped in heavy black suede and red silk. It made the room feel rich and luxurious, as though somehow you’d wandered into somewhere forbidden and been allowed to stay. The lighting was low and moody to capture the mystery of a masquerade, and exquisite floral arrangements of matching hues lined every walkway throughout this floor of the hotel, as well as the dance floor and stage.

“And you,” she whistled low, “you look sultry!”

Only Leighton would use a word like sultry to describe someone in regular conversation, and I loved that about her. She looked heart stopping in a low cut black dress that showed off her petite frame and a tiny lace mask.

That had also been a theme to the event; all guest were required to wear black or red, as well as a mask. It was, after all, a traditional masquerade, and aside from the staff or those speaking, everyone’s identity should remain relatively anonymous.

It was then I noticed the male hand at her waist and her use of the word ‘we.’

“We?” I asked, eyeing the man next to her.

“Char, this is Morgan.” Her date reached the hand not affixed to her waist out to me. “Morgan, this is my best friend, Charleston,” Leighton said with unabashed enthusiasm.

I shook his hand. “Nice to meet you, Morgan.”

“Great event,” he praised, which was kind, and I responded with a, “Thank you.”

Leighton turned to him and smiled. “Would you grab me a glass of champagne?”

Her voice was breathy, and I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Which, in all honesty, wasn’t fair. I didn’t know Morgan, and I was judging him based on the other men who’d, for lack of a better word, screwed her romantically. I didn’t know anything about their, what I gathered to be relatively new, relationship, and I was critiquing it immediately.

I guess that’s natural for the faint of heart though. Those too damaged to give in to hope are all essentially judging books by their covers, even though we had no intention of reading any of them. Sad, I supposed.

“Sure, babe.” He kissed her cheek and disappeared into the slew of people surrounding us.

Hurling herself at me, she wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed. “How are you doing? You okay?”

“I will be.”

It was the lie I told her every year, at every one of Henry’s galas, when she asked. Truth was, I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ‘okay.’ I hadn’t been ‘okay’ for a long time.

Letting go, she pulled back and smiled softly. “Yeah.”

“Who’s the guy?” I asked, eager for a change in conversation.

She beamed, smoothing out her dress. “I met him at work! He’s a lawyer on the floor above mine and we met in the elevator.”

She would meet a gorgeous man in an elevator like a made-for-TV movie, and he
was
gorgeous. His skin was a dark chocolate, and it made the green of his eyes seem as though they saw through you when he spoke. He was taller than me, which meant he towered over Leighton, and even I had to admit she looked adorable tucked protectively into his side.

The jaded parts of me worried for her, but I learned a long time ago not to rain on her parade. Leighton was a big girl and she made her own mistakes. Instead, I smiled back at her and wished that maybe Morgan just might be her
Page Six
happily ever after.

“You two look cute together,” I offered, and she jumped up and down.

“Don’t we?” She sighed, and I felt a small pang of jealousy for her never depleting romanticism.

It never mattered like that for me.

I could never fall the complete way she did.

Of course, I was only human, and thus hope did get the better of me from time to time, but unlike her, I despised hope.

Hope tricks you into believing in a reality that doesn’t exist.

I guess that’s what makes the reality of dating so sad for someone like me. Sometimes I was the leaver, and sometimes I was the left, not that the distinction mattered much anyhow, the conclusion inevitable regardless. The fall out always being that a part of me was now sewn into the fabric of their heart’s memories. Truth be told, I’d given away so many pieces of my soul over the years that the woman looking back at me over the bathroom sink was often a stranger at best. We’d all sell our souls to the devil himself for a chance at being loved, so I never faulted Leighton for that, but perhaps I had none left to bargain with, soul that is.

I was nothing if not frequent in my fondness of “in for a penny, in for a pound,” but like every gambler, my luck would run dry and I’d turned up broke more than a time or two.

If love was a loan shark, my debt was already well past due, and I’d be left black and blue before the night was through.

It was because of this that hope and I remained in a lustful tangle as frienemies.

You know, I think that was the problem with using people to manufacture and generate a high. People were unpredictable. They were an uncontrollable chemical substance, and thus, the high varied dramatically from person to person encounters, as did the fall.

Some left bruises that faded, and others left scares that wouldn’t ever go away.

Leighton had heartbreak too, frequently, but she rebounded like a warrior. She became braver and more determined with each and every relationship misstep.

It was admirable.

For my heart, albeit wild, was grossly without bravery. The fear in me had bred a coward’s heart.

I’d spent many a night over the years bathing in the dim light of my alarm clock raining black tears on white pillowcases because of men. I was a smart woman, constantly bested by her own romantic inadequacies. I had to wonder though if the tears always came because fear whispered to me that I’d never be enough of something for a man, or if it was because fear challenged that I’d never be enough of something for myself.

I guess that’s why they say don’t believe everything you tell yourself in the night.

If I did, I was worried that in addition to having a coward’s heart, I’d find in me a gutless soul, and that was more than I could seem to bear.

Morgan returned with champagne to interrupt my self-loathing, and Leighton’s dramatic portrayal of the author with whom she’d effectively ‘bagged’ this week.

I politely declined his offer for a glass.

I never drank at my events, but especially not this one. Not on Henry’s night. Not when I would tell a room of strangers about the brother I loved who died too young.

“Of course.” Morgan nodded sympathetically, and I decided maybe I did like him. He had soulful eyes.

“I need to go check in with Tom and make sure we’re running smoothly. I’ll come find you after the speech, okay?” I leaned forward and kissed my best friend on the cheek.

“Char.” Her fingers curled around my upper arm. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I will be.”