ELENA.

The next day was a Sat.u.r.day and I took Penny up on her offer and we spent the day moving my things to her Brooklyn apartment. Penny even managed to find time to retrieve my stuff from Nick"s place, and it took her less than an hour, despite Nick"s groveling, which made me grateful for her being there. He still hadn"t stopped sending me those texts and he still kept calling me. I never responded, not even once, not by a text and I was certainly never taking any calls from him. I knew he couldn"t keep this up for long, he would give up eventually and I just had to wait. In the evening Penny and I did a bit of celebrating by going out to her favorite bar. Because I was there, Penny pretended not to like the guys over there and even though one of them even left her his number on a napkin, Penny was determined not to get carried away. Me, I was trying my best to stay cheery but it wasn"t working as well as I had hoped. Nick"s texts seemed to have increased in number somehow, and the groveling was positively aggressive. Ultimately, I gave up and put my phone in my purse so I wouldn"t get the alerts, and I decided not to look at it until the next morning.

The next day was Sunday and by the time Penny woke up I had her favorite breakfast ready for her. Since Penny knew even less about cooking than I did, she looked incredibly happy. Over breakfast, we talked. "I"m going to have to start searching for a job soon," I said. "The royalties aren"t going to be enough, and I don"t have a lot of savings."

"When are women going to learn to be money-wise?"

"Hey, I know plenty of men who aren"t money-wise either."

"That"s not the point," Penny said. "Women have it decidedly worse. They need to pay more attention to this stuff."

"I made a mistake, alright? Point is, what am I going to do about it?"

"I"ll see what I can do about the work thing," Penny said. "But I"m not too hopeful. It"s very tough landing a job these days."

"I know, and I appreciate your help."

"I"ll ask around and try to find you the best possible job, but we have to be realistic."

"I understand completely," I said. "You know I"d do anything. I wouldn"t mind flipping the proverbial burgers if I have to."

"I know, babe. But still, it"s better if you can find some real work."

"I don"t even have a college degree. Who"s going to hire me for a real job?"

"We"ll figure something out," Penny said, rea.s.suringly. "And what about your writing?"

"The stuff I"ve written it"s not earning that much," I admitted. "I"ve been working on something new, but it might take a while to finish."

"That"s not why I asked," Penny said. "I just want to make sure this whole thing doesn"t stop you from your writing."

I wasn"t sure, to be honest. Something inside me just didn"t feel right. I hadn"t been able to bring myself to write a single word for so long and that was part of the trouble. Ever since things with Nick started to go really bad a few months back, it started affecting my work.

"It won"t," I tell her, even though I don"t really feel it. "I"ll be fine. I promise."

When I checked my phone, Nick"s texts were staring back at me again.

"He"s still doing that?" Penny asked. She must have seen the look on my face.

"Apparently, he"s in love with me," I said.

"Really?" she said, mockingly. "Could have fooled me with that other b.i.t.c.h lying in your bed."

"We don"t even know that she"s a b.i.t.c.h."

"She"s sleeping with a married guy for goodness sake. She"s a b.i.t.c.h."

"Maybe she didn"t know."

"She didn"t see all those photographs, of you and him in the bedroom? She didn"t notice that there was someone else living in that house with him?"

Penny had a point.

"You can"t feel sorry for someone like that," Penny said. "She is as much at fault as Nick in all of this."

"I know but I just think she has nothing to do with this. Pen, she"s just a placeholder. If Nick wants to cheat on me he"ll find women to do it with him."

"I don"t know what anyone sees in him."

"There"s something about him," I tried to explain. "When he"s nice to you, when he"s telling you something, you want to believe it. Come to think of it, he"s not even that good an actor you know? You"re left wanting him and then, when he is clearly not giving you enough, you start asking yourself why? You start wondering what you"ve done wrong instead of asking what he"s done wrong. I don"t know how he does it."

"That is a load of bull and you know it."

"You don"t know him, Penny. He"s a charmer! He could sell an Eskimo a block of ice if he wanted to."

"Yes but sadly, he isn"t selling Eskimos anything. He"s selling his cheap a.s.s to women who don"t deserve it."

I smiled at the way Penny said this, how her anger was making her furious about the way Nick was behaving. She hated it more that he wasn"t leaving me alone. I think a part of her feared I might start finding the good in him somehow, that I might go back. If I really dug down deep, there was one part of me, a tiny little bit of my old self that just wanted things to go back to normal.

Even if that normal wasn"t right.

THORNE.

When I came back to the loft after a tiring business trip Wednesday morning, there was no sign of Lane anywhere. I hadn"t seen him all week. There were phone calls on my land line, messages left on my answering machine and the one I had to return right away was Dad"s. When I called him he was in his study, reading and sounded annoyed which was unlike him. Mom was usually the one constantly aggravated, not Dad.

"Thorne?"

"Yes Dad."

"Why did you call back so late?"

"Dad, you know I have a cell phone right?"

"Hmmm."

"What"s going on?"

"Your mother seems concerned," he said.

This again. "Dad, Lane is fine. I"m keeping an eye on him."

"She seems to think he might do better if he goes back to boarding school."

"He doesn"t want to go."

"He said that to you?"

"Dad, he"s having trouble. He just needed a break. I"ll make sure he goes back."

"You do that."

There was silence that I didn"t have the power to break. After a few more grunts Dad kept the phone down and I was free again.

I called Lane"s number, hoping to find out where he was.

It was off.

ELENA.

I was having the usual staring contest with the blank page of my word processor. I knew they were inside my head somewhere, but the words refused to make an appearance. I was just sitting there, staring at the screen because I kept thinking maybe if I did it long enough, some magic will happen and I might end up writing something. Life gets even more depressing when this happens. It"s when words leave me that I know something is terribly wrong.

The first time I watched a Bond movie was when I was eleven. Watching Pierce Brosnan go about wearing that suit and protecting the woman he cared about, touched me in a way no other story had. I wasn"t old enough to know that James Bond changed women all the time, and that he also runs around trying to act like he"s G.o.d or something but I didn"t care. Not then. Back then, Bond was the one thing standing for the underdog-the child inside of me that needed protection and wasn"t getting it in her own home got hooked. That"s when I started writing my first novel. It was about three spies who were hired by the MI6 (naturally) to take down a dangerous villain. I never got around to finishing that one, but I did show it to my grade school teacher who told me she could see a movie inside her head when she read what I wrote.

Now I get that it was the c.r.a.ppiest novel anyone in the history of world literature has ever written, and she was just trying to encourage me to keep at it until I got better. But even back then, I had it. I had the urge to write, to delve that deep into fantasy. Childhood wasn"t exactly a dream for me. Suffice it to say that my family likes to forget about me and I like to forget about them. It"s probably the only way we can both survive, by not dwelling on things that went on in my childhood home. I would tell you the story, but really it is no worse or better than any of the horror stories that you may have already heard. Getting into those details would be pointless. Suffice it to say that what I wasn"t getting in that place, I started finding in fantasy.

I would read books, find my own heroes. Soon enough, instead of being rescued, I wanted to be the hero of the story. I think that"s when I started writing more seriously. I started with short stories, some of which turned out to be good, judging by the feedback I got and I kept at it. My teachers were happy. They had a.s.sumed, erroneously, that I would be wise enough to make writing a career. But by the time I was old enough to fill out college applications, everyone else had already made life decisions for me. Nick thought I should get a degree in business. My mother wanted me to study medicine because she thought doctors were the well-paid by far. My father, who loved reading and enjoyed good music, also thought that while these things were good for entertainment, it was uncouth to make a career out of it. He didn"t care much what degree program I pursued, as long as it was ascience-related." Needless to say, that instead of believing in my own vision, my own dreams, I started believing in the wisdom of others.

That was my biggest mistake.

Not following my heart.

I was mid-way through a business degree when it dawned on me that this wasn"t something I could do. It was like Einstein said; people were judging me on my ability to fly, when I was really a swimmer. But you can"t explain that kind of stuff to people. While the decisions may not have been mine, the failures certainly were. And the more I failed, the worse I got until the whole thing was just confusing. I kept making one mistake after another, including agreeing to be with Nick Jones. Because Nick was never happy with my decisions, and watching him, seeing him do exactly as he had set out to do, it all led to me to believe that there was something incredibly wrong with me. I lost faith. Not just in my decisions, but in my talent. A couple of years ago, when I got back into writing for no apparent reason than that I just felt like the words had to come out, I finished writing my first book within three months. When I showed the result to Nick, I was expecting him to be supportive. How could anyone be less proud of what I had done? But Nick gave what he considered was an ahonest" review. So far, his review has actually been the worst I have ever received. Other people thought I had something to offer. One small-time publisher even agreed to publish my work. But I know what I am. I know where I stand.

I was not a genius.

I had some talent but it was not as good as that of the great writers who have inspired me. I could only wish that my writing was good enough to entertain and for the time being, take someone"s troubles away. That it can bring someone right into the fantasy world, where the books I read took me. That"s all I really cared about. But the problem with life was that I had to work. And that was why I had to do those c.r.a.ppy freelance gigs that took too much time and never seemed to pay enough. But for now, I suppose they would have to do.

For now.

And then what?

I didn"t know.

I did not have a clue.

That was the problem. I felt like I should know what direction my life was going to take but I didn"t have the slightest idea. Okay, so I get that I wouldn"t be staring at a blank screen for the rest of my life, and eventually something would come up, but I still felt like there was something lacking, that there had to be more.

But what did I know about more?

I"d been tagging along with Nick for years, hoping it would be the answer to all of life"s problems, but it didn"t turn out to be that way. How exactly are you supposed to go for what you want, when you don"t even know what you"re looking for?

THORNE.

I always loved the music in here.

Loud.

You could lose yourself in it.

But sooner or later something would steal you away. This time it was my friend Jonah. I could see him loosening his tie, downing his fourth martini and getting a lap dance from a woman dressed in nothing but a leather harness. "Thorne!" Jonah yelled to be heard over the music. "Are you here to have fun or sit around?"

"Sit around," I yelled back.

"p.u.s.s.y!" he said and laughed.

As though some stupid line like that could make me do what he wanted me to do. But I suppose Jonah was right to be angry. This wasn"t some ordinary strip club, it was a bondage club. People didn"t come here to have drinks and watch others get lap dances; they came here to do what their desires drove them to do. My other friend Mark, who had just come back from one of the rooms, turned to me. "Did you know Cyndi started working here again?"

"I did not."

"I just saw her when I was going to my room," Mark said. "She was asking about you."

I don"t know what to say to that. "Thanks for letting me know."

"Thorne?" I heard a female voice and knew instantly who it belonged to.

"Cyndi," I said, turning towards her. She looked gorgeous in a skimpy corset that clung to her body. Her blonde wig accentuated her features, not that her actual brunette hair did not. "Hi."

"Long time," she said.

"Yes," I smiled awkwardly.