An Easy Dare Read online

  An Easy Dare

  Rosalie Rousseaux

  This was our place, the park. This was our bench. When we were kids we would stand on it and throw bread crumbs to the ducks. When we were teenagers we exchanged kisses here – secretly at first, then openly because we didn’t care. I dare you to kiss me in front of everyone, he’d say, and I would. It was an easy dare.

  In the lazy days after high school, when we had nowhere important to go, we would sit here, under the sweltering heat of the New Orleans sun, and lay against each other until our longing led us to his backseat—an unromantic bed in theory, but a passionate scene in practice. I remember how his sweat felt against my body. I remember how his dark hair glimmered in the afternoon heat. There was nothing about Gabriel Augustine that didn’t burn itself into my memory and linger there, even after he left me.

  Especially then.

  Things should have been easy. You fall in love with your childhood sweetheart. You give him your first kiss, your heart, your virginity. He loves you back. You get married and live happily ever after. That’s how I thought it would be. But there are other things that make up a real life—things that aren’t in the fairy tale. Things like fathers, expectations, obligations. Families and money and futures. Love gets tucked away somewhere and forgotten. Love is for movies and books. Love is for fairy tales. Instead of happily ever after, your childhood sweetheart loses a job, drinks too much, becomes a victim of his own unhappiness and disappears, thinking you’re better off without him when you know that’s not true. When you know—in your heart—that love could win. Would win if he would just let it. But he doesn’t believe enough—despite what he said on those mornings when you’d wake up sweaty and tired and euphoric from lovemaking, or on the nights when your face was wet from his kisses and your body breathless from his love.

  And you decide: I don’t believe, either.

  Because you have to in order to survive.

  -1-

  The bachelorette party sucked. The worst part? It was mine.

  No male strippers, no sloppy shots of tequila, nothing raunchy. Instead, I was spending my last night of single womanhood sipping an overpriced Cosmo in a swanky nightclub in downtown New Orleans, watching my best friend Anna sip tentatively at a drink. She eyed me over its rim. I knew that look. It said: This party blows, and this is probably how your married life will be. You should’ve listened to me, Cat.

  For us, a night out usually meant getting trashed, being obnoxious, and staying up till breakfast until we collapsed on the beds of our apartment in the Quarter, but everything was about to change. I was marrying Cort Belrose, and when you’re married to a Belrose, you can’t act like a party girl—even if you’re only twenty-four. That’s what Cort said, anyway, and that was the reason why he insisted that his sister Delilah organize the bachelorette party instead of Anna. Case in point: She’d picked this snotty hellhole for me to have my bachelorette “party,” which included her, Anna, and Holly, a distant cousin from Baton Rouge.

  The party dragged so much that I’d sketched at least five doodles on nearby cocktail napkins—most of which depicted Delilah with fangs or devil horns—on top of which I placed my martini glass. I watched the ink absorb the water and become a blurry mess. Too bad I can’t blot out Delilah in real life, I thought, smirking. I suddenly had an image of me setting my drink on top of Delilah’s perfectly coiffed head. When I looked up she was shooting daggers at me like she could read my mind.

  When Anna tapped her water glass with her fork and said she wanted to make a toast, I playfully narrowed my eyes at her and braced myself for something wonderfully inappropriate. Delilah didn’t like me much, but she hated Anna. It didn’t help that Anna worked part-time as a waitress in the Quarter, and part-time as a phone sex operator in her apartment. Anna used to tease Delilah by telling her that Mr. Belrose—Delilah’s father—called every Wednesday night. Finally Delilah had enough and lunged at her in the middle of Royal Street. I had to separate them before they put a spiked heel in each other’s eyes. Not the best memory to have of your future sister-in-law.

  “Do you really have to bore us with a moronic speech?” Delilah groaned.

  “Yeah, Anna,” I said. “You’re gonna kill the awesome party vibe.” I motioned toward the room, which included three middle-aged couples clinking red wine glasses, a three-piece string quartet playing quietly in the corner, and a bartender serving Old Fashions and Chivas. It wasn’t exactly Bourbon Street, but it was very Delilah.

  Anna stood up. “Would you like to start instead, Deli?”

  “Call me Deli again and you’ll be wearing that drink,” Delilah replied.

  Not surprising that she thought we were classless. She was the type of woman who always had her nails perfectly done, her make-up flawless, her outfits crisp and fashionable. The type who never wore T-shirts, always sipped consciously at expensive drinks, and rarely smiled. There wasn’t a look that she couldn’t pull off. Right now she was sporting a sleek, dark Pixie cut that would’ve made me look like a teenage boy. I would’ve been jealous of her if she wasn’t such a total, grade-A bitch.

  Anna raised her drink. “I just wanted to say that of all the people for my best friend Catherine Martel to end up with, I never would have thought it would be a man like Cort Belrose, the shining bachelor of old New Orleans.” For added humor, she pronounced it like the tourists—‘New Ore-leens.’

  Delilah rolled her eyes. The sarcasm wasn’t lost on her. Everyone knew what Anna really thought of Cort, and everyone knew the person she thought I would’ve ended up with. The person I should’ve ended up with, in her eyes, at least.

  But I wouldn’t think about that. Not the night before my wedding to another man.

  “So—” Anna continued. “This toast is for my best friend Cat. As always, I wish for nothing more than her happiness.” She looked at me and smiled good-naturedly.

  We all sipped our drinks. Even Deli.

  Anna sat down and popped an appetizer in her mouth.

  I hoped that Anna’s veiled speech would mark the beginning of the end of my party, but before anyone could say anything, our bow-tied waiter appeared holding a bottle of Champagne. He presented it to us by holding it over his arm.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” he said. He was speaking to all of us, but looking at Delilah. This happened everywhere we went. The staff always addressed Delilah, as if she was the only one capable of making decisions because she had all the money and knew all the restaurant owners in the city. She was only twenty-five, but had local power that only came with old money.

  The waiter continued: “A gentleman at the bar sent this over for the bride-to-be. He sends it with his congratulations.”

  Delilah glanced over at the bar, disinterested. She never ceased to appear completely bored by everything happening around her.

  “I don’t see anyone at the bar,” she said.

  “I believe he sent this on his way out,” the waiter continued. “He had another message, as well, for the bride.” He gave me the note. It was a simple business card, folded once. I opened it, not knowing what to expect.

  Truth or dare? it said, in that unmistakable handwriting—small, almost illegible block letters. I turned the card over. There was no contact information, just a simple embossed name: Gabriel Augustine.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  My heart stopped.

  It’s amazing how everything can change in one second. Just those few words sent me into a spiral.

  My world tilted. The bottle of Champagne sat against the waiter’s arm, signifying a million different things, but mostly signifying Gabe. Without thinking of anything—not Delilah, not Cort, not the veil perched on my head—I leapt from my chair, nearly knocking it over, and bolted ou
t the door. The heavy, humid night air enveloped my skin as I frantically looked up and down Girod Street, hoping to see him.

  “Gabe!” I called. “Gabe!”

  My heart raced. I’d spent more than three years stuffing away all thoughts of him—the way his body pressed against mine, the rough and tender way he kissed me, how he filled every part of me, deeply and passionately, the feel of his large hands as they explored every curve of my body, the way his lips felt against the inside of my thigh; and I’d stuffed away every word he’d said, every I love you, I need you, I want you, every whisper that he couldn’t live without me, every tortured word, especially goodbye—and now it was flooding out of my head, like a cage of birds that had been set free, but didn’t know where to go.

  “Gabe!” I called again, but he wasn’t there.

  I replayed the waiter’s words: He sends it with his congratulations.

  I imagined Gabe at the bar watching me. He saw me. Gabe’s eyes were on my body. The thought gave me the chills. His green eyes were on me, just minutes ago. What had he thought?

  I imagined how I must have looked to him—frowning, trying to keep from spilling my pink martini down the plunging neckline of my little black Gucci dress (a gift from Cort), and sitting across from Delilah Belrose, who we used to make fun of when we were kids.

  Wearing a veil, of all things.

  It was hard for me to picture Gabe in a place like this. You had to have reservations, a jacket and tie to walk through the door. How did he get in?

  I swallowed. The fluttering in my belly continued, but a realization flooded over me and quelled my desperation to see Gabe: I was getting married tomorrow, and this was my bachelorette party.

  The door to the club creaked open behind me.

  “What the hell was that all about?” It was Anna.

  I didn’t turn around. I kept staring down the street.

  “Are you involved in a secret society, Catherine Martel?” Anna said, lighting a cigarette. “If so, are there any wild sex parties? Can I join?”

  I took a deep breath and handed her the business card. “It was Gabe.”

  She examined the card, wide-eyed. “Gabe?” She looked up and down the street, too, and whispered, “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Gone. Again.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Tonight, of all nights, for him to pop up.”

  Anna took a drag of her cigarette.

  “And of all places,” I continued. “A place like this, where they barely let you through the door unless you’re wearing Armani.” Another image of Gabe popped into my head: sixteen, shirtless, wearing filthy jeans and ratty sneakers, wiping sweat from his forehead after mowing the Belrose lawn in ninety-degree heat. I’d brought him cold water that afternoon and he’d said, See that pile of sticks over there? Guess they finally pulled them all out of their asses. We laughed about that pile of sticks for weeks.

  “Well, based on that bottle of Champagne, I’d say he was able to afford that suit,” Anna said.

  I waved the smoke out of my face. “What do you mean?”

  “That Champagne was ‘Salon de Blancs.’”

  I shrugged. “What does that mean?”

  “Hell if I know. But it was worth four hundred dollars, according to my friend Deli. She made sure to tell us that it was an acceptable brand, but not the best, by her standards. I thought about shoving the cork in her mouth, but Holly said we should wait until you got back to open it.”

  My mouth was suddenly dry. “What did she say when I ran off?”

  “Nothing. Just sat there looking bitchy. As usual.” She flicked a long spiral of ashes onto the sidewalk. “What are you gonna do about Gabe?” She glanced off toward the dark road again.

  I swallowed. “What can I do? I’m getting married tomorrow.”

  Anna tossed her cigarette and hooked her arm into mine. “That bottle of Champagne was a sign, Cat. It means that you shouldn’t marry Cort. He’s not the one for you. He—”

  “Sh.” I shook my head. “Don’t start with all your ‘signs’. I can’t listen to that now. I’m marrying Cort tomorrow. I love him, I do. Maybe not the same way I loved Gabe, but …” I swallowed again. “… there are all different kinds of love.”

  “Yeah,” Anna said. “And one of them is the kind that kills your spirit.”

  “Which one are you talking about—Gabe or Cort?”

  She raised her eyebrows, as if to say: You be the judge.

  “Well,” I said, as we walked toward the door arm-in-arm, “One of them left me, and the other wants to marry me. What does that tell you?”

  “It tells me that you should have picked option C – stay single and party with your best friend Anna.”

  The sound of my laughter cut through the silence of the night, where Gabriel Augustine lurked somewhere. Watching me, maybe.

  Perhaps wishing he hadn’t left.

  When I sat back at the table, I told myself that it didn’t matter. Yes, he was my first love. Yes, it meant something that I knew he was safe after all this time.

  But it was too late for us. Sending me an overpriced bottle of Champagne wouldn’t change that. I didn’t care about money. Cort was loyal to me and my dad. That’s why I was marrying him. Not because of his last name.

  I once loved Gabe with a passionate ferocity that I thought would kill me one day. And then he was gone.

  Maybe he was back now, for good. Or maybe he would disappear again. Either way, it didn’t matter.

  He was my past.

  That was then, this is now.

  But then doesn’t disappear so easily.

  Not with a man like Gabe.

  Not with a love like ours.

  -2-

  The prep for the wedding would start early the next day, so Cort and I had agreed it was best if I crashed at Anna’s after the bachelorette “party,” while he crashed at his swanky four-bedroom house in the Quarter—a house his family had owned for generations. (It was actually our house now, but I’d only been living there for five weeks and it still felt like his. I was more comfortable in my old bedroom at Anna’s, anyway).

  After the mysterious note and bottle, I was relieved that I didn’t have to go home and face Cort. I felt guilty even having the folded card in my pocket, like it was a dirty little secret. Maybe it was.

  When we walked through the door, Anna opened a junk drawer in the kitchen and shuffled through it, looking for a lighter for the cigarette dangling from her mouth.

  “You’re the most unorganized smoker in the history of smoking,” I said, closing the door. “You should take it as a sign that you can never find anything to light your cancer sticks.” Anna based everything on ‘signs.’ Sometimes I couldn’t help teasing her about it.

  “I’ll quit smoking the day I find the perfect man,” she said, the cig bouncing between her lips.

  “A perfect man is hard to come by.”

  “Ah, but the perfect cigarette is always behind the counter at 7-11,” Anna offered. She finally found a lighter, but didn’t light the cigarette right away. She pulled a small paper bag out of the drawer instead. “I can’t believe I forgot to give you this earlier.” She dangled it in front of me like catnip. I took it and sat on the couch. “You’ve got me picking stuff off the sidewalk like a mental case. If you ever get famous, you’ll owe me big time.”

  The bag jangled. From the sound of it, I could already tell there were a shitload of bottle caps inside. I was right. But not just bottle caps—old pennies, a discarded Jack of Spades, five Mardi Gras doubloons, and a handful of buttons.

  I picked through the small treasures and spouted off a series of thank yous.

  “It’s not every day that someone gets excited over trash they find in the French Quarter,” Anna said. “But somehow you manage to turn trash into something awesome. Hm. Maybe it’s a good thing you’re marrying Cort after all.”

  I shot her a look.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Cheap shot.”

 
I stood up. “Is the piece still in my old bedroom?”

  “Of course.”

  I hadn’t been in my old room for more than a month, but when I opened the door and walked inside it felt like years since I’d seen it. Surreal. It was like stepping into an old chapter of my life. Everything in the room evoked a memory—the old nightstand that Anna and I picked up at a flea market and promised to restore, even though we never did; the nubs of charcoal pencils I’d used for sketches; my red sweater, with the hole in the seam that I never got around to fixing; even the window, which gave me a clear view of Chartres Street.

  And in the corner: a 30x40 stretched canvas, signifying a half-finished art project that I’d started about eight months after Gabe left. Anna and I called it “the piece” because it didn’t have a name yet. I’d completed several smaller, less ambitious projects as an art major at the University of New Orleans, but after Gabe left, my college career (and my life, it seemed) went to shit. Instead of spending my last year in class, I spent it crying in this room until I eventually decided that I needed to do something or I’d drive myself and everyone else crazy. So I went to an art shop, bought this canvas, and decided to create a masterpiece of recycled art. Instead of picking up the pieces of my shattered heart, I’d pick up pieces of forgotten junk that littered the streets of the Quarter and turn it into something beautiful.

  When I was finished, all the bottle-tops, buttons, crinkled receipts, loose change, and scraps of fabric dropped by the tourists would become a 30x40 willow tree. That was the plan, anyway. Right now it just looked like a bunch of stuff pasted on a white space.

  I eyed the trinkets in Anna’s paper bag and tilted my head to examine the canvas from all angles. I could already imagine where I’d put some of the buttons.

  When I walked back into the living room, Anna was still standing in the kitchen, smoking and reading horoscopes. She looked up.

  “When I get back from the honeymoon, I’m gonna bring the piece to Cort’s house,” I said, then corrected: “My house, I mean. I haven’t done anything to it since I left and I want to add all this stuff.” I shook the bag. “I haven’t collected anything for it in months.” Mostly because Cort thought it was embarrassing when I picked things off the street. I didn’t mention that, though.