Read an Excerpt
Heartbeat
The World That Is
By Kaleigh R. Conway iUniverse LLC
Copyright © 2014 Kaleigh R. Conway
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-2751-5
CHAPTER 1
The hot sun burned as it invaded her dreams, occupying her reality now like an unwelcome guest. She could see it behind tightly shut eyelids, like a red velvet curtain. Shrouding herself in a blanket, she retreated away from the brightness of daylight; but the blanket was thick and far too hot to stay there forever. She hated it, but the morning fought on relentlessly, the night of her mind losing ground against the onslaught of sunlight. This particular morning was unstoppable, ruthless, unforgiving, shouting at her to face the day regardless of how many bets she'd lost the night before. And it had been a few.
Nyx forced her eyes to adjust to the light as she opened them slowly. Another beautiful day issuing itself through the plated glass like the bad toast at a wedding that just won't stop; it drew attention to her throbbing head and the red lines visible from space in her eyes.
Yawning, Nyx wondered absently if her stubborn acquiescence to the day was a victory or a defeat. Every day was different.
"NY X. Get up. Get up get up get up. I know you're in there, Nyx!" came a muffled voice from behind the front door.
She rolled over, pretending she couldn't feel her own heartbeat in her head. It was bad enough realising when she woke up that she was waking up alone—again—but the physical reminder of what she'd done to forget that she was going to wake up alone hurt the most. And then it made her puke.
"Nyx!" came the voice again, this time more insistent. "You promised! Get out of bed or God help me I'll break my fist over your pafetic, 'ungover, poker-losing face."
"I'm UP!" she shouted from beneath the pillows as she rolled out of bed.
One pair of panties, a bra, jeans, a sweater, and one toothbrush later ... "All right, we can go after I spit. My mouth tastes like day-old tequila and menthol and it's freaking me out."
The voice behind the door groaned, "That's wot 'appens when you go on an all-night bender, slag-face. Now 'urry up. I dun' want the cab to leave without us."
Nyx rolled her eyes. "No, Claire. This is what happens when you tell the entire bar that I'm gay."
Claire giggled. "Well you didn't 'ave to keep acceptin' their drinks, didja?"
"Free liquor is free liquor, Claire. Jesus Christ ... have I taught you nothing?" Nyx poked at her friend sarcastically, throwing a pair of sunglasses to cover up the glaring red blood vessels that made her eyes itch.
"Woteva ... Now let's get a move on. I got coffee for you in the cab."
Nyx was only able to grab half a bagel before she was torn from her apartment and down the stone steps into the cab.
How did the sun get this bright?! she thought to herself as they wheeled off onto the busy London streets.
Claire was all smiles today. "I can't believe how many phone numbers we got last night. It was almost 'eartbreaking telling them we were straight."
"We?" Nyx scoffed. "That's hilarious. But what I can't believe is that you managed to drink your weight in vodka and don't want to kill everything that moves today. I do," Nyx replied abruptly, feeling that coffee and toothpaste wasn't the greatest of combos.
The traffic was absolute hell that morning, but no one was truly surprised.
"Eighteen million people and none of them can ride a damned bike? Or take the underground? Jesus ..." Nyx moaned, staring at the brake lights in front of them.
The cab had been mostly quiet after Nyx had shot down twelve different opportunities for the cabbie to start telling his life story, and he looked fairly put out.
"I 'ave been lookin' forward to this for a week. I need all new trousers, um ... bras, some tracky-bottoms, and new trainers," Claire trilled.
Nyx did her best to smile genuinely. "Mmm ... yeah. A real, proper girls' day, shopping and everything. Just don't let me forget to hit a jeweller."
Claire rolled her eyes.
"What?" Nyx asked derisively, completely incapable in that moment of concealing her tone.
"Nuffin!" Claire replied mockingly, raising her eyebrows in pretend shock. "I'd be delighted to 'elp you frow away another perfectly good necklace, love. I'd be fackin' chuffed."
Nyx snorted in contempt. "Oi! That necklace is paying for your little shopping spree today. And my rent, so shut it."
That seemed to quiet Claire for the moment. She threw up her hands in mock surrender and then stared out the window.
"Ugh," Nyx groaned. "What I wouldn't give for a Bloody Mary right now ..."
Claire huffed suddenly, rolling her eyes. "'Ave you considered therapy? You live in a foreign country off the money you get from selling them diamonds your mum gives ye, so I'm sorry, love, but you have no reason to drink or still be single. Unlike me, who will die alone covered in cat 'air."
"Damn," Nyx breathed sarcastically, "my poor little rich girl scheme's been undone ... And just why can't I just concentrate on cultivating this modest drinking habit? I'll have you know, I am following in a long and grand tradition in my family of miserable drunks. So unless you've decided I should become a nun, I'm going to continue to remind myself that diamonds don't make up for a lifetime of neglect, hmm? And we can all go on with our lives."
"Are you not 'appy?"
"What? Yeah ... of course I am. Don't even worry" The rest of the trip went by silently.
She was happy when she'd worked in the pub for her rent money.
There could have been a dozen reasons why those first few packages started showing up in the mail for her. Any number of poorly executed attempts to trick Nyx into living the life she was 'born to lead.' It didn't matter.
Nyx knew she'd have sent them back when she was younger. Or sent scathing letters in reply to remind Cecile that she didn't need anyone's pity or assistance as she had done in university, but these days she couldn't be bothered to keep up the fight.
This was the real world, a world that ran on money. She'd take the 'assistance' if she could get it. At least she could write full time this way.
The letter accompanying that first package had said only a few words, and she recalled them instantly:
"Rome is fabulous. Just got these from India. Thought you should buy some new clothes. Try and take care of yourself for God's sake. Who knows who you'll run into in London.
-Cecile Stewart"
She'd sold the diamonds, spent the money on microwave pasta, a new apartment, and four different pairs of sweatpants out of spite, and got drunk in her new living room, dripping candle wax onto every photo she had of her mother. She had no photos of her father.
Thinking back hurt. It always led her in the same direction. Over two years had passed, but still it stung like fresh road rash under a hot tap to think about.
The sound of Cecile's cutlery clinking lightly on the dishes had made her head burn. "So what can you do with a history degree?" The air had been stale in the dining room, masked by the sickening sweetness of an air freshener plugged in somewhere and flooding the room with an artifice of Better Homes and Gardens.
Nyx rolled her eyes. "Can I get ... ten minutes? I JUST got home, Mom." She pushed around the chow mein on her plate, still Styrofoam fresh. Her trip home from McGill had been about as pleasant as a fork in the kneecaps. Still, she tried to believe it could get better.
Cecile tilted her nose up, swallowing another piece of cherry red sweet and sour pork. "I'm just curious ... A masters in, what was it? Medieval history or something? I hope it was worth it."
Nyx dropped her fork. "I'm done," she huffed, rising from her seat at the table, ten thousand and one past nights of idle conversation turning sour in her mouth as she turned her back in time to hear the kitchen door close. The ghost of Mr. Stewart had left the dining room.
"Just where do you think you're going? This is your first night back. The least you can do is have a meal with your parents," Cecile sniped, her stubborn refusal to rise from her seat a mirror of their roles.
Nyx sighed, her chest heaving as she stopped in the archway to the foyer. Turning back, she cast her heavy eyes on her mother, finding her place in the script of their relationship, smoothing herself back into the role she was meant to play. "Parents?" she asked bitterly, her gaze strictly ignoring the empty chair at the end of the table.
"Not tonight, Nyx. Please. I'm tired," Cecile groaned, folding her hands in her lap politely as her head twitched towards the empty chair where her husband had been sitting. Why he never engaged in these discussions was completely beyond her.
"No! I agree with you. We're all tired, Mom. Dad's so tired he couldn't be bothered to even pretend he gives half a shit tonight," Nyx snarled, the words flowing so naturally, so practiced. "I'm going to bed. Don't make this into a big thing, okay?"
Cecile sighed and Nyx felt a fire growing in her throat.
"What?" she shouted. "What, Mom? Just say it."
Cecile's eyes fell to her hands as she wrung them. "I'm just unsure why it is you came back at all if all you were going to do was start a fight."
Somewhere in the back of Nyx's most secret heart, the remark stung, smacking of a hurt that went back further than she wanted to remember. But she did, and silently a force inside marked another line on the scoreboard, another pawn surrendered.
"Would you have liked that?" Nyx whispered, unable to meet her mother's gaze. "If I just hadn't come back? Would it have made your already staggeringly easy life a little less messy?"
Cecile pursed her lips, highlighting the quiet that choked out any lasting remnants of familial civility.
Nyx forced her tongue to the back of her mouth as a stinging pulled at the corners of her eyes. "You do, don't you? You wish I wasn't here."
Cecile fidgeted with her fingers, fighting a torrent of words that would rend the distant squeal from her mind and replace it with something altogether silent. A perfect silence. But this was no time for that.
"Yes ..." she whispered, keeping her eyes low. "Yes, I wish that."
Nyx nodded, the smell from the air freshener now far too repulsive to stomach any longer. And the food on the table looked fake; it made her stomach hurt.
"Fine," she whispered back. "I'm gone."
She hadn't looked back. Two years. Two years, no phone calls, no emails, one letter, and one terribly disfigured mother/daughter relationship. It was the legacy her life had left her. Her old life. And if she were completely honest with herself, no, gemstones did not make up for it.
Stepping out of the cab and into the unusually sunny day, Nyx was suddenly very aware of how beastly her headache was getting. Fishing around for sunglasses in her purse, she lingered in the shadow of a nearby awning, waiting for Claire. Mostly too hungover to want to attempt any more conversation. Mostly. She was still a bit wounded from the conversation in the cab.
Nyx looked like a menace in her glasses. Silver aviators covered any expression she might have, and that's the way she liked it. It helped her feel anonymous. Not that she, in actuality, stood out. She wasn't tall or short, and like millions of plebs before her, she had shoulder-length curly brown hair, too thick to style properly so mostly it just draped. In fact, in her opinion, the only distinguishing features about her were her freckles that were placed against naturally china-doll pale skin. She looked like a thin country bumpkin who'd been living in the arctic for a while.
A debutant friend of her mother had once exclaimed, to her delight, "My God, Cecile, you never told me how exquisite your daughter is!" It had made her blush. To feel beautiful in a room full of beautiful people was certainly nothing to sneer at.
Though, as always, Cecile had found a way to cheapen the moment. "Mmm. She's got her father's freckles. British blood, I suppose. Worse yet, there's probably no way to get rid of it."
Nyx soured at the memory.
"You comin' or wot?" Claire shouted from halfway inside the first shop, shaking Nyx out of her hangover-induced melancholy long enough to fake a smile and continue inside.
It was like a Cockney heaven inside. Wall-to-wall track suits and running shoes so blinged out it looked like Ed Hardy and Snooki had thrown up all over the store and then thrown glitter on it.
Nyx was overcome with the smell of caustic aresol body spray that seemed to permeate the environment with a constant fourteen-year-old boy odour.
She wondered if her IQ points were dropping from just breathing it in as a youth made his way over, grabbing his crotch and mumbling," Oi, love, con I 'elp you wit summat?"
"No," Nyx answered curtly. Grabbing Claire by the hand, she hustled them out of the shop before Nyx was obliged to personally see to the ninth grade education of every occupant.
Claire groaned, "Wot's wrong wif that one?! He's only bein' friendly."
Unfortunately Nyx could only scream internally in that instant, and therefore restricted her facial expression to that of mild disapproval and a tight smile. "Diamonds, Claire. Diamonds. I am not buying fifty pairs of tracky-bottoms for you ... with diamonds. How do you feel about pencil skirts?"
Claire giggled. "All right, my fair lady. Lead on."
Nyx let out her first genuine laugh of the day as she led Claire down the street. "I think, in this case, you'd be the fair lady. Now come on."
"Nyx Stewart?" a voice called from behind them, and Nyx almost didn't turn around but for the shrill voice in which it was uttered. "Nyx! Darling!"
Nyx felt her throat constrict, her muscles tighten, and every vertebrae in her spine go rigid as her body realigned itself into a posture more suited to what was about to happen. Old habits die hard, and in Nyx's case, muscle memory nearly gagged her. Slowly she turned to face the voice.
"OH , Nyxie! It IS you! Oh my gosh! Darling! What ARE you doing here?!" the shrill voice exclaimed, continuing its assault on Nyx's eardrums like squealing tires on asphalt until Nyx could recognize the face that went with it.
"Heyyyy," Nyx answered, smiling through clenched teeth as she made her way across the street to where the woman in question was standing. "Muriel. How are you?"
Muriel wasted no time in throwing her arms open and inviting Nyx into a hug. It was a shallow hug, one that really only pressed the collarbones together as arms rested gently on shoulders and made everyone witnessing it uncomfortable.
Muriel had a thin face and greying hair and cateye glasses that betrayed her age. She carried herself like she had a steel rod in her spine, wearing a designer skirt and a leather jacket with a Prada handbag dangling off one thin wrist.
"I am fantastic. But you know me, sweetheart. I never complain!" she trilled, gripping Nyx's hands like she was about to read her palm. "But how are YO U? I had no idea you were in town! And who is your lovely friend?"
Nyx smiled, and it hurt her head. "This is Claire. Claire, this is a friend of my grandmother's, Muriel Gotwin."
"Pleasure," Claire half-whispered, nodding her head and smiling shyly.
Muriel nodded politely in return, turning to Nyx as Nyx continued. "We're just downtown doing a bit of shopping. What about you? Visiting relatives?"
Muriel's brow furrowed. "No ... no. Just in town for the gathering of course."
Nyx was confused. "Gathering ...?"
Muriel blinked in evident confusion now too. She released
Nyx's hands to link her own fingers as if to say, 'Oh dear ... you poor unfortunate.'
"The ball? Everyone's going to be there. This is the largest gathering we've had in years! Alice has pulled out all the stops. Isn't that why you're in town?" Muriel asked, her eyebrows angling up her face like she'd just been questioned about the existence of Santa.
Nyx was thoroughly mystified and tried not to betray it by wrinkling her eyes at the woman, but it was nearly impossible. "No ... Nope. I live here now. Have for some time. Since university actually. And I don't know Alice, so I probably wasn't invited."
There seemed to be some kind of commotion happening behind Muriel now, but Nyx was too concentrated on the expression of utter bewilderment on Muriel's face to really be paying any attention.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Heartbeat by Kaleigh R. Conway. Copyright © 2014 Kaleigh R. Conway. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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