Bearly In Control (5 page)

“Nice to meet you,” he said, spitting on the side of Edwin’s cheek as he spoke. “A friend of Grace’s is a friend of mine.”

Edwin didn’t believe that for a second. He could feel him trying to display his authority. There was no need for a pissing contest though. A werebear didn’t have to prove himself tough to a simple human as much as a wolf didn’t have to prove his dominance over a chipmunk. They weren’t in the same league. They weren’t even in the same sport.

Edwin tried to remember what Sidney had told him as he untangled Devon’s arm from around his shoulders. Guys love to talk about sports.

“So how about that sports team?” he asked.

The two other guys approached him smiling. Great. His sports talk was working.

“Wasn’t it awesome how the sports team won the game?”

The guy with the blue, loose tie around his neck,
Todd was it?
, leaned in. “What sports team?”

Edwin slipped his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat. “The red team?” It came out like a question.

The three guys laughed. Edwin shifted his weight away from them. He didn’t like it here. The guys reeked of the chemically smell of cologne.

“What school did you go to?” Devon asked with a mischievous grin on his face.

Why did everybody keep asking him that?

He felt a flush of heat and he felt the urge to rip off his clothes and let his bear burst through his surface. He took a deep breath and glanced at Grace. She looked like an angel sitting on the white couch with her legs crossed, speaking to the girl with the black hair and ugly make-up caked onto her face. He wished that he could be the kind of normal guy that she deserved.

He exhaled long and slow, and calmed his bear down. He couldn’t phase here. It would embarrass Grace. He turned back to the guys and tried desperately to fit in.

For her.

“He’s so hot,” Madison said, leaning in Grace’s ear. “Who are his parents?”

Grace took a sip of the champagne that Todd had poured for her. The tiny bubbles tickled her tongue. These people were all about family names. They didn’t like to associate with the ‘little people’ as they called them. “Nobody you would know.”

Madison sucked in her breath. “Well I’m sure he’s nice. Where does he work?”

Samantha and Britney were listening as well, craning their necks so they could hear her over the heavy bass that was making the couch vibrate.

Grace hesitated. She cursed herself for hesitating. Edwin was a great guy and a good catch but these ‘friends’ only cared about two things. Power and money.

“He’s a kayaking instructor,” she said.

Britney snickered and Samantha took a sip of her drink, her mouth twitching on the straw.

Madison smiled, a fake smile. “Well it’s always nice to have a summer fling with a hot guy.”

Grace bit her lip.
Why do I hang out with these people?

But she knew why.

She could hear her Dad’s voice:
“For the good of the family.”
Grace was
strongly
encouraged to make friends with these people. Their parents were some of the most powerful people in the country and her Dad needed the connections. So she went clubbing with them, went on exotic trips, the modern day equivalent of a king marrying off his daughter to cement an alliance with another powerful family. But she never liked them. They stank of entitlement and self righteousness. People who were convinced they had hit a homerun when they started life on third base.

In her early twenties her Dad had threatened to cut off her allowance and take away her car when she was spending more time with Angie and Becca. “Their families bring no value to the table,” he told her. “Rebecca’s Dad works at Home Depot for God’s sake.”

It didn’t matter to him that they were the only people that she liked and who liked her. The only people that she could be herself around. To him it was a waste of time.

He didn’t care about her happiness. He only wanted
“What was for the good of the family.”

But it was all bullshit. A tag line. A campaign promise that was thrown out as soon as the politician took office. Something they laughed about behind closed doors.

Her Dad was all about what was good for his political career.

A shiver shot through Grace’s body. “Where’s Edwin?” she asked, perking up on the couch. Her eyes darted around the club, looking for people screaming and running away in terror, looking for a brown bear in the middle of an empty dance floor. She exhaled in relief when all she could see was sweaty, grinding bodies draped in the tiniest pieces of fabric that sold for the most outlandish prices.

He was probably just in the bathroom.
Let’s hope
.

Devon sat on the arm of the sofa beside her with a smug look on his face. The kind of look that only a guy who grew up with butlers could give.

“Only an elementary school education Grace?” he asked, snorting out a laugh before he took a sip of his scotch. Grace could smell it on his breath.

Madison leaned in, “Really?” she asked, with a devilish smile on her face.

Samantha and Britney leaned in, unable to hear over the music. “What did he say?”

“I went to Harvard,” Devon said, the edges of his voice starting to slur.

“I guess they didn’t have any classes on how not to be a douchebag?”

He snorted a laugh. “You’re allowed to be a douchebag when you make seven figures a year.”

Ugh
. The attitude of her Dad’s social circles summed up into one line. He didn’t mention how it was at his father’s company.

“Aren’t you a little too old to be rebelling against your Dad?” Madison asked.

“I’m not rebelling,” Grace said, already on the defense. “I think I l-” No. It was too soon for love. Was it?

“I really like him,” Grace said, fidgeting with her hands.

Madison sipped on her champagne. “I would really like him too with those looks.”

Grace shook her head. “It’s not that.” A naked Edwin, walking around the campfire, cooking a fish that he caught with his bare hands flashed into her mind. It’s not
just
that.

“He lives in the moment,” Grace explained. “He’s happy with nothing. He does what he wants. He lives his life so wild, so free.” She looked at her fidgeting hands in her lap. “I wish I had the courage to live life like that.”

Devon slid his heavy arm around her, his sweaty skin sticking to her shoulders. She squirmed under his unwelcome touch.

“I know you like to play the difficult, rich girl role,” he said, leaning into her ear. “But your looks are going to fade and I won’t be interested anymore. This is your last chance to hook up with me.”

“Wow,” she said, wiping the spit off her cheek. “That’s so romantic.”

“Cut the shit,” he said. “My Dad owns three companies and he’s a Senator.”

Grace crawled out from under his nauseating touch. “I already have one too many Senators in my family.”

She stood up from the couch. Edwin still wasn’t back and she was getting worried. Plus she didn’t want to spend one more second with these people when she could be spending it with him.

“I can’t believe you’re choosing
him
when you can have me,” Devon said, taking a sip of his empty glass. “He’s out of our class.”

Grace whipped around, her cheeks hot. “At least he has class.”

She looked at the girls snickering on the sofa. “I can’t believe you guys wrote him off just because he didn’t go to a fancy college.” She shook her head. “Don’t call me anymore.”

She stormed down the steps into the crowd. A hand grabbed her elbow. She turned ready to throw a roundhouse to Devon’s silver-spooned mouth. It was Madison.

“I’m sorry,” Madison said. “That didn’t come out right.”

Grace bit her lip.

Madison pulled her to the nearest wall, where they could hear each other better. “It’s just, we’re worried about you. You’re approaching your mid-thirties. It’s time to stop your fling and settle down.”

This from a girl who gave a hand job to a bartender in a stockroom two weeks ago.

“Your Dad is going to be running for President,” Madison continued. “You need to set the right image.”

Grace slammed her drink onto a nearby shelf. “I’m so sick of hearing that. When do I get to live my life for me and not for my father? When do I get to make life decisions for me? When do I get to be happy and not have to follow a path that fits into my father’s career aspirations?”

“Is this about your art school again?” Madison asked. “Painters don’t make any money.”

“It’s about me getting to live my life the way I want to,” Grace snapped. She shook her head. “I’m so sick of it.”

Madison touched Grace’s arm. “If your Dad becomes President we can do whatever we want. We’ll be set.”

And there it was.

We.

The only reason that they were ‘friends.’

Madison and the others weren’t friends with her for her. They only hung out with her because of who her Dad was. Who he was going to become. All they cared about was what they could get out of it. They didn’t care about her happiness.

She turned and left to find the one person who did.

Grace pushed past the long line-up of guys waiting to use the bathroom. They threw out a barrage of drunken pick up lines at her.

“Hey sexy.”

“You want to hold it for me?” a guy said, swaying at the urinal.

She glanced under the stalls at the feet on the floor, of the poor guys who had to go number two in a nightclub. Grace’s worst nightmare.

Edwin wasn’t there.

She pushed through the crowds of people who kept stepping on her toes. She struggled to see over the sea of gelled heads.

An exit door to the side, discretely hidden down a hallway, swung open and a wide eyed, busboy ran in, still holding the bag of trash that he probably went outside to throw out.

Uh oh.

Grace pushed through the crowd towards the exit, slapping away a stray hand that was sliding down her lower back. She broke out of the crowd and hurried towards the doors.

She burst through the exit and the cool, fresh air of the evening washed over her face. Just as she suspected: there was a brown bear in the alley. He was smelling a dumpster.

She rushed down the metal fire escape, her heels clanging on each stair, into the back alley. Normally she wouldn’t go near an alley in the middle of the night but she couldn’t imagine herself in danger against anything with Edwin beside her.

The bear raised its fluffy head and watched her approach. She could see Edwin in its eyes, watching her, loving her.

She ran her fingers through the long, soft hair on its head. The bear pushed his wet nose into her belly and purred. Grace kissed the top of his head.

“What are you doing out here?” she asked.

The bear turned back to the dumpster, smelling the lid.

“I didn’t like it in there either,” she said. “It was a little too fake.”

Grace was done with those people. Life was too short and getting shorter every day, and she was done wasting time and energy on them.

“If you’re hungry I know a great place to eat,” she said. The bear turned back towards her. “It’s about as nutritious as what’s in there,” she said pointing to the dumpster, “but it sure is good.”

The bear groaned and nudged her hand with his wet nose. She scratched behind his ear and he purred.

Grace leaned down and whispered in his ear. “But I need Edwin to come out. You’re not going to fit in my car.”

five

Grace had never seen her Dad so excited. He was on.

His people, hired staff, campaign volunteers, and lighting and camera crew were swarming the living room like bees.

Her Dad’s announcement that he was going to be running for President would be traveling through micro cables across the country onto computers, televisions, smart phones and radios in just a few hours.

Grace’s living room had been transformed. The corner where she put on concerts, lip syncing to Paula Abdul tapes for her mother before she died, now had a large ominous looking camera pointed at the fireplace. Her Dad wanted the announcement in their home. He wanted to look like a family man. Every angle plotted and planned to maximize support from the American public.