Текст книги "Addicted for Now"

Автор книги: Becca Ritchie

Соавторы: Krista Ritchie
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Текущая страница: 29 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

{ 47 }
LOREN HALE

I feel like a creep.

Sitting in my rental car for an hour and staring at the same four-story brick house. The lawn has newly mowed lines, a sign poking from the grass: McAdams Middle Honor Student.

Maine carries a breeze that beckons people outdoors, but I’m still rooted to the seat, my joints frozen solid. My biggest fear is staying in this damn sedan, coming this far and not mustering the courage to walk up the driveway.

I can smash a bottle of liquor on another guy’s door, but I can’t put one foot in front of the other to say hi to a woman. There’s irony somewhere in that. And maybe if I wasn’t scared out of my fucking mind, I’d laugh.

I rub my neck that gathers with nervous heat. I should have brought Ryke and Lily like I originally planned. When I told Lily I was looking into meeting my mother, she was nothing but supportive. They both wanted to come.

But I ended up only buying one plane ticket.

I have to do this on my own.

No one has entered or exited the house. From the outside it resembles a normal middleclass family home. It’s what I could have had. Normal.

I let out a long breath and run my hands through my hair. Just go. Just get it over with, you fucking bastard.

Before I can process what I’m doing, I climb from the car and reach the mailbox. I breathe like I’m in the middle of a five mile jog. Inhale. Exhale. One…two…three. But I’m not sprinting. I’m not running. I’m barely walking.

 My worn sneakers land on the front stoop. My legs weigh me down. My shoes, however ugly, are filled with lead.

I raise my fist to the door, falter and drop my hand to my side. Come on. Do it. I’ve replayed conversations in my head, thinking about this moment for years. Come on, Loren. Grow the fuck up.

Inhale. Exhale.

One…two…

I ring the doorbell.

The door opens. And my mind goes blank.

A woman stares at me with an identical stunned and stupefied expression. I never called her, never warned her about this meeting. I was too scared that she’d shut me down. I just wanted to see her face, hear her voice, all at the same time.

She’s young, not even forty. I search her features: slender nose, thin lips, and shiny brown hair. I suddenly realize I’m looking for me in her.

“I’m—”

“I know who you are.” Her voice is velvet, the kind you can close your eyes and fall asleep to. I bet she reads her kids bedtime stories. The thought knots my stomach. “I’ve seen you on the news.”

I wait for her to invite me in, but she grips the knob like she’s seconds from swinging the door in my face.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

I’m not sure what reaction I expected. My dad—he told me that she didn’t want me. I thought, maybe, he was lying. I still grasp to that futile hope that she cared for me like a mother would a son.

Inhale. “I just wanted to talk.” My voice sounds coarse compared to hers. Like an animal to an angel. It fucking sucks. And I can’t stop staring at her, like she’s moments from being ripped from my memory.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” Her eyes carry apologies even if her words don’t.

“Right,” I say and nod to myself. I could walk away. I could leave it at that. I’ve seen her. What else do I need? What the fuck am I searching for? “You’re my mom.” I want to take back the words as soon as I say them.

She cringes, the door shrinking closed, but she stays beside it, wedged between the frame. And she stares at me like I’m a mistake, a black mark on her resume that she’s been trying to scrub clean. She doesn’t say it, but I can see the phrase all over her face. You’re not my son, not really.

She didn’t raise me. I was a bad part of her life that she’s been trying to forget.

She clears her throat, uncomfortable. “Did Jonathan tell you anything?”

“Not much.”

“Well…what do you want to know?”

The open-ended question takes me aback for a second. What do I want to know? Everything. I want all the answers that have been kept from me. “What happened?”

“I was a teenager…” She glances over her shoulder for a minute and then says, “I was young and was easily drawn to a guy like Jonathan. We slept together once. That’s it. And I was careless, and that’s why you’re here.”

Something nasty sits on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow down the more spiteful retort. I sweat through my shirt, so fucking hot. I wipe my brow and say, “So that’s what I am to you then?”

Her eyes flit past my body. A neighbor across the street stares hard from his mailbox, and I wonder if he’s trying to place me—figuring out where he recognizes me from.

“You can invite me in,” I offer.

She shakes her head and clears her throat again. “No. It’s best if you stay outside.”

“Right.” That’s all I can say without yelling, without screaming everything that weighs on my chest. Why didn’t you come back for me? Why didn’t you fucking care? I’m your goddamn son! I spent years without a mother, without that maternal figure. The most I had were the people who paraded in and out of my house in the mornings. Makeup-smeared, half-dressed women who had no words of wisdom for me, no answers to my problems, no sweet, nurturing voice to ease me to sleep.

“You have to understand…” Her eyes fall to the ground. “I didn’t want you.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I say sharply. My father was right. I shouldn’t have sought her out.

“I was in high school,” she says. “I was just a girl, and I planned to go to college, to have boyfriends and a life. You were going to take all of that from me.”

You were going to take all of that from me. The words ring in the pit of my ears.

I stare at the bright sky, just staring, just looking for something that will never reveal itself to me.

What the hell am I doing here? Not just here, at this house. I feel like I was born to destroy people’s lives. I did it before I even came into the world. And I did it after. You were going to take all of that from me.

“Out of respect for Jonathan, I told him that I was going to an abortion clinic.”

I shut my eyes, and a hot tear slides down my cheek. I wipe it. Exhale. “I wish you went through with it,” I suddenly say. Because then I wouldn’t have to bear this pain. My face wouldn’t twist this way. Lily wouldn’t have spent her childhood in my broken house. Her mother would have loved her as much as she did her sisters. Ryke would have grown up with two parents instead of one. My existence ruined so many people, so many things. Life would have been easier without me.

“What?” Her velvety voice spikes.

“You heard me,” I say, no longer nice. “I wish you would have killed me.”

She pales. “You don’t mean that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She touches her lips for a moment, just staring at me. “Because…your father, he gave you everything.”

You have everything, Loren. Don’t be such an ungrateful little shit, Loren.

“Yeah,” I nod. “He gave me everything.” Before she can speak, I ask, “So what stopped you? Your parents? Some religious belief? Cold feet?”

“Jonathan stopped me,” she says. “He was furious with the idea of losing his child. We came to an agreement. I would have you, and then you would be his entirely. I would get the life I planned, and you’d grow up in luxury, something I wouldn’t have been able to give you on my own. I thought you would be happy.”

“Yeah, I’m still working on the happiness part.”

I wait for the flash of regret to fill her eyes, but it never comes. I’m the spoiled rotten heir, the one who drinks until he’s wasted. The one who went to rehab like it was some publicity stunt. And I have a sex addict girlfriend.

Emily quiets as a school bus rolls to the curb. The doors open and middle school kids dart out. A girl with my light brown hair and my nose adjusts her backpack, walking towards the house.

Emily forces a smile for her daughter. “Hi honey, can you go inside please?”

Her daughter squints at me, fixing her large round glasses on her nose. “Aren’t you Loren Hale?”

I hate that a middle school girl knows me. My face is all over the tabloids. Yesterday, they dissected a photograph of me leaving a restaurant hand-in-hand with Lily.

And then it hits me fully.

She’s my half-sister.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“And you’re at my house…? Do you know my mom?”

Emily waits impatiently for her daughter, about to interject, but I do her a favor and shut down her inquiry.

“Not really,” I say. “She’s a friend of my father’s.”

“Mom,” she whispers. “You know famous people?”

Emily shrugs, her shoulders stiff.

And then my eyes catch a pin on the strap of the girl’s jean backpack. Mutant & Proud. What are the odds? “You like X-Men?”

“The cartoons,” she says. “X-Men: Evolution.”

“My girlfriend likes those too.”

“You mean your fiancée? I just read in Celebrity Crush that you’re getting married.” She rocks on her feet and pushes her glasses further up her nose as they slide down. “Is it true?”

“Yep, it’s true.”

Her eyes brighten like she’ll have something good to tell her friends tomorrow at lunch.

Emily widens the door so her daughter can pass. “Willow, inside please.”

Willow examines me with an inquisitive gaze before she resigns to her mother’s pleas. And then she slips indoors and out of sight.

“You named your daughter after a Buffy character?” Maybe we like the same things, I stupidly think. Probably because Willow strangely does.

She frowns. “What?”

“The televisions show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” She’s still confused. “Never mind.”

“What do you want, Loren?” she finally asks. “What did you think would happen by coming here?” Her voice lowers and the door begins to close so I can’t see past her body and into her house. I can’t see the life that I never would’ve had. “You’re twenty-one. You’re an adult.”

“You’re not my mother. I think I got it,” I say roughly. I hate that I don’t hate her. Not even a little bit. I take a step back, my eyes flitting over the house, over something that I don’t want to destroy. I ruin everything I touch.

And I’m not going to mess up her life. Even if mine is all fucked up. Right as I’m about to leave this all behind, something else catches my eye in the window.

A girl. A child. No older than two or three. She peers through the glass, clutching a stuffed dinosaur. I see me. Growing up and being lied to. Never knowing about my brother and finding the answers in the most jarring, horrific way. The secrets. The betrayal.

I face Emily again. She seems at peace with her decision and her life, but she’s repeating the same mistake as my father. As Sara Hale. She doesn’t see it now, but the lies she weaves will eat at her family from the inside out.

“You should know,” I say, “that even though I’m not your son, I’m still their brother.”

Her lips press in a line.

But I keep speaking. “And maybe you don’t see it like that, but take it from someone who’s been in their situation before—they will.” I think of Ryke. “I’m not saying that you have to tell them about me now or anytime soon, but they’ll find out eventually. If not from the press, then from some stranger, and they should hear it from you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says shortly. “Anything else?”

Fuck you. I can’t say it though. I don’t really feel it. More like, Fuck me. For being so stupid. For thinking you’d care.

I shake my head, everything draining from me like I’ve been slit open on the sidewalk. I take another couple steps off the stoop, glance up at the three-story brick house. Middleclass family. Happy. Normal.

I turn around and never look back.

{ 48 }
LILY CALLOWAY

With Lo in Maine, he wanted me to skip my therapy session with Dr. Evans today, but the therapist called me and said that if I skip, he’d contact my parents and tell them how poor my progress has been. So I sit alone in Dr. Evans’ office, constantly checking my phone. Lo said he would call after he sees Emily. If their meeting doesn’t go well, I’m worried that he may choose to escape with alcohol. I really wanted to go, but at his request, I’ve stayed here.

Dr. Evans applies the electrodes to my wrist and hands me the small black box with all the wires poking out. He nestles behind his desk in his seat, wearing a smug look. He loves the fact that Lo isn’t here to interrupt the session.

“So are we doing magazines again?” I fidget in my seat, a little nervous to be doing this with only Dr. Evans in the room. When Lo’s here, it feels less weird.

“I think we should move on to another compulsion today.”

I try to wrack my brain. What else could I conquer with aversion therapy besides fantasies and porn?

His eyes drop to my thighs. “It would have been easier if you wore a dress or skirt, but I think you can manage.”

My heart bangs against my ribcage. Maybe I heard him wrong.

“I want you to masturbate. You’ll be shocked until your brain responds to the negative stimuli.”

Oh my God.

My head moves on its own accord, shaking fiercely from side to side. “No,” I blurt out. “No way.” I am not masturbating in front of him!

“Lily, your parents hired me specifically,” he explains. “This is what works. You need to condition your mind to recognize masturbation as a bad impulse.”

My parents are my weakness. I have vocalized that I’d do anything to fix what I’ve done. But how far am I willing to go?

“Is there anything else I can do today?” I ask.

He mulls this over, fingers by his temple in thought. “I suppose we can try something else,” he says to my relief.

Dr. Evans stands and walks to the front of his desk, he leans his butt on the edge, the remote still in one hand. The other falls to his zipper. Oh fuck. This is not the something else that I had in mind!

“What are you doing?” I croak, frozen in my chair.

“Whores like you are obsessed with male genitalia. You’re going to look at it, touch it, suck it and I’ll shock you until you’re nice and normal.”

“No.”

Rose found my perfect therapist, Dr. Banning, after meeting with horrible ones. And I wonder if she had to put up with situations like this for me, just so I would avoid it. I know she did. I know because I remember the look Connor and her shared when they were discussing therapists they visited together.

Dr. Evans is already tugging down his silver zipper, and his dick emerges from his khaki pants. My hands shoot to my eyes as the familiar buzzzz pulses in my skin.

I’m not looking. I’m not looking. I’m not here. Not really.

The room quiets, and I think maybe I’ve won.

And then I feel it. On my leg.

I jump up like my entire body has been electrocuted this time. The shock box falls to the floor, ripping out the wires that connect to the electrodes on my arm. I stumble back, my eyes bugging. Dr. Evans closes the distance between us, right in front of me. I refuse to drop my gaze to his dangling penis.

“Get away from me,” I sneer. I’m not about to fall to my knees with my tongue lagging out of my mouth. I’m not the same girl who’d fuck everything away for a quick high. I’m stronger. Even without Lo. I know that now.

Dr. Evans shoos my threats, and he grabs my wrists. His mouth finds my ear. “You will sit down and comply, or I’ll tell your parents just how much of a whore you really are.”

Tell them, is my first thought. I won’t sacrifice my own pride, my own dignity for them. Nothing in the world is worth the shame that I will feel from this. Nothing.

I stare right back and all my hate and resentment towards everyone that has vilified me as a slut or whore rumbles up in two words. “Fuck you.”

His grip tightens and I realize how small I am compared to him, compared to any man. I might as well be a bag of bones. I take a deep breath and scream, “GARTH!”

Dr. Evans presses a hand over my mouth and his other hand starts descending to my shorts. “If you won’t do it yourself, I’ll have to do it for you.”

I fight back and struggle against his hold, trying to bite and kick, but he ends up pinning me back into the seat. His hand rests in between my legs, pressing the spot over my pants. I can’t stop screaming against his palm.

 The door whooshes open and before he can do anything else, my bodyguard bounds over and throws him back against his desk. I shake like a trembling leaf, but I’m on my feet and in one piece. Garth jostles Dr. Evans like a stuffed doll. He looks ready to annihilate the man, so I’m surprised when he releases his grip. “You’ll be hearing from Greg Calloway’s lawyers. I’d advise you to pack up your office today.”

Garth turns to me and gives me a sympathetic, almost apologetic, look. I’m just glad he was here. Lo was right about the bodyguard.

He ushers me out of the room, and I glance back for one last image of my evil therapist. My heart does not slow down just yet. I think…I think I’m in shock a little bit. I can’t close my eyes or blink.

Dr. Evans slumps down to the ground and stares dazedly at the wires from the shock box.

“Are you okay?” Garth asks in the lobby.

“I think so.” I’m trying to sparse through my emotions. I feel less like a wilted flower, but mostly, I just can’t stop breathing so quickly. I rub my wrist. Yep, I’m in shock.

“Back home?” he wonders.

“Can we make a stop first?”

He nods and we drive a few blocks over to another high-rise. My hands still shake, but they also feel a little disconnected from the rest of my body. When we arrive at the office, I knock on the door, my breathing on a slow descent.

The door swings open, revealing a woman with a black bob and warm smile. I haven’t seen her in almost two months. I don’t realize how much I missed her until her arms are around my shoulders, and mine are around hers. Tears prick my eyes.

“Oh, Lily,” she says, “we have lots to talk about.”

Yes, we do. I know what good guidance looks like now, and I’ll never let it go.

I wipe my eyes, about to tell her that I want to reinstate our sessions. But something else tumbles from my mouth. “Do you think I can call you Allison?”

“I’d like that very much.”

{ 49 }
LOREN HALE

The plane lands in New York. I don’t go home. I end up at a parking lot of a local bar. Cold. Alone. Stuck with my own thoughts. It’s a dangerous game.

I grip the steering wheel, pain cutting through me like sharp knives. I can’t stop seeing Emily’s contorted face, one full of unease—uncomfortable, wishing I would just go the hell away. I lost my mother again, but that’s a stupid thought. I can’t lose something that I never had.

I pinch my eyes and scream, my throat burning. I need to run. I need to push these feelings away. I hear my father in the back of my head. I hear Emily. I hear the press, the media. You have everything, Loren. Why the fuck are you crying? Look around, what could you possibly be sad about?

Nothing. I’m not allowed to be upset, to feel anything but gratitude. I am privileged. I am rich. My eyes skim the bar, the OPEN sign flashing in neon blue. I am a rebellious new adult, needing attention. Right? That’s what this is. Alcohol will draw every eye to me, make people pity me. Make them feel sorry.

That’s not it, I think. Alcohol will drown my warring thoughts. Alcohol will shut out every voice in my head.

It will also fuck everything else up.

I don’t know what to do. I’m going out of my goddamn mind. I slam my palm into the steering wheel, another scream knotted in my throat, and the tears I stifled suddenly stream down my face. I couldn’t say no to my father, I couldn’t stop the leak, and my mother never really wanted me—not even now. I always fail. Always.

My hands tremble as I slip out my cell and dial a number quickly. I just want to hear her voice. I press my forehead against the wheel, no more energy to even keep my head upright.

“Where are you?” Lily asks with worry. “You were supposed to call hours ago. Your flight landed, right?”

“Yeah, I’m on my way home,” I lie.

“Are you still in New York? We can meet up for dinner,” she offers, probably not buying my lie.

“Why do you love me, Lil?”

“Lo, really, where are you?” Concern spikes in her voice.

“Just answer me.” I let out a long breath. “Please. Why do you love me?” I grip the phone harder, tears clouding my vision.

“When we were eleven, we were at your house, reading comics,” she says, and for some reason I know exactly which memory she’s trying to draw for me. We were on my bed, surrounded by several open and splayed X-Men comics, and we would read the same one at the same time. She’d wait patiently for me to hurry up, her eyes skimming the panels quickly while I soaked in each line, each bleed of color. “Do you remember?” she asks after a long pause.

“Yeah,” I say, my voice shaking.

“We both knew you were most like Hellion. You make the wrong choices, even when you know where the right ones lie.”

I nod to myself, tears spilling. I try to breathe a full breath, but the pain chokes me.

“But that day, you said you aspired to be Cyclops. Scott Summers was strong. He took care of everyone in the face of crisis. He was a man that people wanted by their side.” Her voice shakes too, like she’s near tears. “Lo,” she says, “you’ve made it. You’re my Scott Summers, and without you, I wouldn’t be here.”

I close my eyes and let that sink in. She doesn’t have to say, I love you because… The sentiment is attached to each and every word. She loves me because she believes I’m strong. She loves me because she’s a part of me.

She loves me because I’ve become a better man through all of this.

“Lo,” she continues. “Whatever Emily said, I need you to know that I’m not going anywhere. I’ll always be here when you come home. There will always be an us.”

“A Lo and Lily,” I breathe.

“Or Lily and Lo."

I smile. “Thank you.”

She pauses. “Do I have to say the rest?”

“No, but you can if you want.”

“Don’t fucking drink, Loren Hale,” she says sternly, but it comes off more cute than rigid. It works all the same.

“I love you, Lil.” I straighten up and wipe my eyes with the back of my arm.

“Are you coming home then?”

“I have to make a stop first.”

She sucks in a worried breath. “Lo.”

“Trust me,” I say.

“I love you too,” she tells me.

I turn on the ignition and let those words carry me.

* * *

I don’t remember the office being this cold or dark, but I walk in with purpose. I’m no longer sorry or sad. I’m fueled by something else, something darker and stronger that begins to eat at my core. It’s a demon that my father carries, the one where anger turns into vile words. The one where we stop being pathetic and we start being mean. I thought being sober would change me. Make this part of me vanish. But I realize it’s not only alcohol that powered my hate. It’s programmed inside of me from years and years of being raised by someone like him.

“You’re finally back,” Brian says, lounging behind the desk with this nonchalance that has always dug under my skin. “Did you get tired of ignoring my calls?”

“You were nothing, if not persistent,” I snap dryly, slumping down into the chair. I met Brian in rehab, and we discussed my life in grave detail. He was supposed to be my outpatient therapist, and I guess I kind of fucked that up when I stopped going to our sessions. Even more so when I stopped answering his calls.

“So why are you here, Lo?” He leans even further back in his chair.

“How do you not fucking hate me?” I ask in confusion.

“I assume you had a valid reason for skipping the session,” Brian says calmly, “and if not, then that’s on you.”

“I’m not talking about skipping sessions,” I snap. “How can you sit there and listen to my problems and not roll your eyes every two seconds?”

“Why would I do that?” He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t look confused or upset. Brian is a blank slate that bounces my words right back at me. All this time, I thought he stared at me like I was this royal douchebag—that I was some loser he had to stomach. But I know I was projecting. I wanted him to hate me. I was begging for it because I’m not worthy of anyone’s compassion.

“I have more money than you will ever have in your lifetime,” I tell him. “You have to sit there and listen to me bitch about stupid shit for hours on end, and then I return home to my nice house with my nice car.”

 “You think I should hate you because you have money and because I have to listen to your problems? Is that why you stopped coming?”

“No, I stopped coming because I couldn’t bear to stare at your ugly face any longer.”

He actually smiles at that. It’s genuine, which makes me feel like a bigger dick. He sets his pen on his desk and sits up. “I know you, Lo,” he reminds me. “We’ve talked for months, so I know that no one, especially your father, has ever told you this.”

“If this is your fortune cookie wisdom, you can save it.”

“Having money doesn’t make you an unfeeling automaton. You’re human. You can still have problems. The difference is that you have the ability to fix them. You just have to want to. Not everyone can receive the same help you can or afford the rehab facility you went to.” My stomach curdles at the truth. “But that doesn’t mean your recovery can’t be difficult. It doesn’t mean that what people say on TV or in the tabloids doesn’t hurt as much. You still bleed like the rest of us. You can cry. You can be upset. That right has not been taken from you.”

I stare dazedly at the ground.

“And Lo,” he continues. “I usually don’t offer my personal opinion to my patients, but I’m going to make an exception with you.”

“How kind.”

He doesn’t smile this time. “Underneath this rough, I-hate-myself-and-everyone-around-me exterior is a good guy. And I think that you have the ability to accomplish great things if you just start forgiving yourself.”

“For what?”

“I think you know what.”

“Well, you’re so keen on giving personal opinions, why don’t you tell me,” I snap.

He doesn’t. Instead he grabs his pen, leans back in his chair and clicks a couple times. “Sometimes the person we think we’ll become is the person we already are, and the person we truly become is the person we least expect.” He clicks his pen again and points it at me. “There’s your fortune cookie wisdom.”

I think he’s telling me that I have a chance. That the life I imagined—where I become the self-loathing man behind a desk, where I become my father—doesn’t have to be the one meant for me. I want to take the leap while my mind is clear, while I can see an alternative future that doesn’t look as grim. I want Lily. A house. The white picket fence kind of happiness. I didn’t ever think I deserved that, but maybe, one day, I can become the kind of person that does.

I shift in my seat, but I don’t break his gaze. “I went to see my mother. My real mother,” I tell him.

His head tilts, but his face has gone blank again. This time, I don’t feel like punching him for his lack of reaction. I just talk.

It pours out of me like I’ve carved open my stomach. Every word makes me lighter and freer.

I don’t stop.