Surface by Stacy Robinson Page B

Claire that the pressure on Nicholas’s brain had stabilized to a safe level—good news she repeated into Michael’s voice mail.
     
    Claire unfolded from Jackie’s embrace and wiped her face. “Nicky is going to come through this,” she cried, spilling more tears. “He has to.”
    “Of course he will, honey. I know he will.” Jackie combed Claire’s hair with her graceful piano fingers as their breathing came into sync. “But,” she finally said, breaking the silence, “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me. Where did he get the coke?”
    Claire studied a nub in the worn chair fabric, wondering how she could possibly explain the events of the previous eighteen hours, wondering how Jackie would respond to her utter failure in character. As sisters they didn’t judge so much as measure themselves against each other. And despite being younger by two years, Claire had always been the responsible sister, the voice of reason in the days when frat guys had been the “morning after” topic of discussion. Steer away from the bad boys, she’d warned Jackie. The ones who stick around just long enough to tighten a vise around your heart and leave you breathless and sorry.
    Amid her dread and delirium, Claire thought back to their high school days, and to the running tally of little rescues they’d performed for one another. She thought of the night Jackie, looking so effortlessly cool in her Dolphin shorts and tattered Cal sweatshirt, had convinced Claire to hide one of her boyfriends in the basement because a newer and cuter crush had come to ask her to a Grateful Dead concert. Point, Claire. And to the time Claire needed Jackie to run interference for her with their parents over a minor curfew violation. Point, Jackie. They’d calculate their points weekly, always winding up in Claire’s bed giggling over the score and negotiating the “winner’s” fee.
    Claire chewed on her lip trying to construct an explanation for this most uncharacteristic transgression. But that first step across the threshold of truth froze her. What an idiot she’d been with her advice to Jackie all those years. Avoid the poets, the lusty artists, the hipsters. Go for the business-school guys with their intensity and promise—those were Claire’s pearls to her sister, antiques handed down from their mother. But Jackie never listened and instead suffered her fair share of lover’s asthma while accumulating a notable collection of memories along the way. And later marrying a successful engineer—a man whose groundedness and devotion bore a striking similarity to their father’s—and who loved her with a passion matched only by her own desire for him. As Claire thought about their different paths, she felt reasonably certain that if she’d been less concerned with doing the right thing back then, she would have gotten the wrong thing out of her system when things didn’t count so critically.
    She looked up at her sister, feeling soreness in her jaws and teeth. She massaged the pressure points just below her ears and slowly began her story at The Palm. And detail by detail, she felt the burden of her secret lift slightly, as if in the telling she was unclasping a necklace that weighed heavily around her neck.
    “No one’s ever kissed me the way he did, Jax. Or wanted me with such intensity.” The tracks of saltiness on her cheeks and lips stung. “I felt like I wasn’t me. Or I was this me that I’ve never let myself be.” She closed her eyes and swallowed mouthfuls of air like she had just swam an entire pool length underwater. “I don’t know how I let myself get so drawn in. It just felt so unbelievable. Until it was over.”
    “Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.” She cupped her hands around Claire’s. “These things sometimes—”
    “The attraction was beyond intoxicating,” she fought to explain. “This guy, this total stranger somehow worked his way under my skin and deprived me of . . . my