Текст книги "Take Me for Granted"

Автор книги: K. A. Linde

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter 40: Aribel

I heard the beating on the door before Cheyenne did. I dashed to her room and flung the door open wide. “Chey, you have to answer the door.”

“Ari, are you sure about this? I’ve never known you to back away from confrontation,” Cheyenne said, her voice sympathetic.

“I’m not backing down from confrontation. We had our confrontation last night, and it was horrible! I can’t talk to him today. Please, I’ve never asked you for anything like this.”

“Besides driving you back from the ski resort a day early when I was getting together with Vin?”

I shuddered. Vin. Gross. “Thank you. You’re the best friend ever.”

“All right, but I’m only doing this because I love you,” Cheyenne said.

She walked to the door, and I huddled on the floor within earshot of the conversation that was about to go down.

I hadn’t thought that Grant would follow me. I’d made a split second decision this morning to come back to Jersey. I’d even called my parents and asked if we could move up the flight to Boston, so I could come home earlier. They’d been surprised since I’d insisted on going on the ski trip in the first place, but they hadn’t complained. They missed me.

Now, Grant was here. What do I do now that he’s here?

“Grant…hey,” Cheyenne answered warily.

“Where is she, Cheyenne?”

My heart pounded from the sound of his voice. I just wanted some space. I needed time to think about whether or not this was what I wanted, but then hearing his voice…it just brought back all the memories.

“She left already.”

“What? No way. Her car is still out there!”

“I dropped her off.”

“In Newark?” he asked incredulously. “You would have never made it back by now.”

I watched Cheyenne shrug. She was lying for me. I would squeeze her if I didn’t feel like a total jerk for cowering behind the door while she fought my battles for me.

“Come on, I know she’s in there. I need to talk to her.”

“I already said she’s not here. You should just go back home.”

“Ari!” he yelled.

I heard his hand hit the door gently to keep Cheyenne from closing it.

“Ari, I know you’re in there! Just come talk to me. Can’t we talk about this?”

I closed my eyes and put my head between my knees. God, I just wanted to run to him. I wanted to see him and have that feeling of completion again. But I couldn’t forget our argument, and I wasn’t ready to have another one. I’d asked for time, and I still needed it.

“She’s not in here!” Cheyenne yelled back. “And even if she were, do you think she would talk to you with all this yelling? Haven’t you done enough damage?”

“I just want to fix this,” he told Cheyenne. “She has to know how I feel about her.”

Oh no, not the tears again.

“Well, if you really care about her, I think the best thing to do is to just back off. She’s stressed. She’s never been in this kind of situation. I told her you were going to break her heart, but she wouldn’t listen.”

I felt the tears trickle down my face at Cheyenne’s words. There was the I told you so that Cheyenne had kept from her lips when I asked her to drive me home this morning.

“So, just give her some space. Maybe after the break, she’ll want to talk to you.”

“I can’t wait that long. I can’t risk losing her, Cheyenne.”

“You already have.”

Her words hit me like a ton of bricks, so I couldn’t imagine what it had just done to Grant. I’d risked so much by getting involved with him, but it felt like I was risking more by giving him up. And this relationship purgatory we were currently hanging in made the agony of a decision even worse.

He hadn’t lost me. I was still his.

My heart and my body called out to comfort him, but I didn’t. My mind was still reminding me of how much he’d hurt me.

“Well, if you see her, then tell her I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said those things. I shouldn’t have even let Kristin into my room. I understand how serious it all is, but there is no one else for me. No one. It wasn’t even a thought in my mind. Ari is it. She’s the only girl I’ve ever fallen for, and I’d really be worthless if I let her walk away without a fight. So…so, just tell her to talk to me. I want to make it right.” Grant’s voice was hoarse. I’d never heard him like this.

“I’ll tell her, but I really think you should just leave her alone,” Cheyenne said.

“I can’t. I’ll never be able to.”

Cheyenne sighed. “At least for break. Just think about what she wants for a change. If she wanted to talk to you and make things right, wouldn’t she be talking to you right now?”

“I’ll give her whatever she wants. If she wants silence, I can give her that.” He practically forced the words out. “But I’m here to stay, Cheyenne. You tell her that, too.”

“I’ll tell her,” she said before closing the door. “Well, that went well.”

I shook my head and let the tears fall freely. “I should have spoken to him. He sounded so distraught.”

Cheyenne plopped down next to me and wrapped a comforting arm around my shoulder. “I know this is your first real relationship, Ari, but take it from someone who knows…it’s better to let him suffer a little.”

“I don’t want him to suffer.”

“Don’t you? Just a little?”

I laughed, but it came out more like a hiccup. “I just want to put the pieces back together. I feel…God, I don’t even know. I feel like he ripped my body in half.”

“It’ll be okay,” she said softly.

I rested my head on her shoulder and cried.

“Just go away for break. Take some time to think about everything that happened. If you want him back, then it sounds like he’s willing.”

“What if I wait too long?” I whispered the fear that came to me.

“Then, he was never worth it to begin with.”

Chapter 41: Grant

The only thing I wanted for Christmas was hundreds of miles away and refusing to talk to me. Despite telling Cheyenne that I would remain silent if that was what Ari wanted, I was having a terrible time with it. I’d texted her constantly the first couple of days, and I’d called her more times than I even wanted to admit. She hadn’t responded. I had to face facts that she actually wanted my silence.

I still texted her when I couldn’t bear to let her think that she was off my mind. But even those, I let dwindle to once a day, then every other day, and then every third day.

Guilt infected everything. Guilt about how I’d treated Ari, how I’d talked to her, for not going after her, for not doing enough. Guilt about how I’d treated Sydney, how I’d treated the guys, how selfish I’d been in everything I’d been doing for months…years. I was no better than my old man. That much was becoming a pretty obvious fact. Self-sabotage was the name of the game, and I was the goddamn reigning champion.

Normally, in these situations…well, shit, I’d never been in this kind of situation. But when I got down, I usually overindulged in anything that would make me forget. Everything made me think about her though. I didn’t want to drink. I didn’t want to smoke. I didn’t have the energy to think about anyone but her, so there was no way I was going near women. A fucking blizzard had ripped through Jersey, so I couldn’t ride my bike. The only thing I still had was my guitar, and her song seemed to be the only one I remembered.

“Are you going to mope around all break?” Sydney asked a few days before Christmas.

I’d apologized to her as soon as she’d gotten back from the ski lodge. She’d brushed it off like it didn’t matter and told me it just ranked right up there with my other bizarre behavior. Really reassuring.

“I’m not moping.”

“You are so moping!”

I just shrugged. I didn’t want to argue with her. I started strumming out “Life Raft” for the hundredth time, and Sydney groaned.

“Stop playing that song. Can’t you just…I don’t know…find someone else?”

My eyes shot daggers at her.

“All right, all right. Bad idea.”

“She just needs time.”

“Has she spoken to you at all since she left?”

I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t consider that she had moved on. My life was hanging on the edge of disaster with those thoughts constantly swirling through them. I didn’t need the push that would send it into a spiral of chaos.

“Look, cuz,” she said, sinking into the seat next to me, “I know this is hard on you, but you need to do something else, something to get your mind off of her.”

“Like what? Everything that I’ve ever done in the past just conjures up more memories.”

“I don’t know. Just do something productive. Go work out or go for a run or go work for Randy again. Sitting here and thinking about her all day is only going to make you depressed. You were never exactly chipper, but this…this isn’t you.”

I ran a hand back through my hair and tried to listen to reason. Sydney was right. Ari was on my mind 24/7 and if I didn’t get myself together, her walking out of my life was going to destroy me.

“All right then.”

Sydney and I drove to Duffie’s, and I smiled at the old familiar feeling at seeing the building. A long line of people greeted us when we entered. The hostess recognized Sydney. They hugged and started talking rapidly. That was my cue.

I wandered back to the kitchen and found my aunt and uncle where I’d always found them before. Randy was busy making pizza dough from scratch while young servers busied themselves around him. Carol was sitting at a cash register, ringing out customers and making change. It felt…homey.

“Grant!” Carol said with a big smile on her face. “How wonderful to see you, honey.”

“Hey, Aunt Carol, Uncle Randy.”

“Sydney get you out of the house?” Randy asked with a knowing glint.

So, he had been behind this.

“Yeah, she did.”

“Well, what are you waiting for?”

A white apron was launched at my head, and I caught it easily with one hand. I laughed. It felt good to have something to laugh about.

“We have a lot of work to do.”

The pizza place closed at midnight. I stayed after to wipe down tables and refill Parmesan and red pepper flake containers. The steady motion of running the restaurant had kept my mind occupied and had given me a blissful reprieve from my thoughts. When I finished around one in the morning, I closed up shop. Instead of going straight home, I turned and walked out onto the beach.

I’d been avoiding the beach at all costs. It had once been my place of solitude—just me and the crashing waves, the sand between my toes, the salty air. Peaceful, serene, entrancing. But I’d brought Ari here. I’d shared my favorite place in the world with her, and now, it wasn’t mine. It was ours.

I was exhausted from working hard all day, and I wanted to feel a piece of her when I couldn’t be anywhere near her. The only time we’d ever been closer was when I’d told her about my parents. We’d connected on such a strong emotional level that she’d given me her body. I couldn’t have either of those things right now, so I gave myself the beach as a small consolation.

I tramped out through the snow, letting the dry, cold air seep into my lungs. I finally reached a point where the ocean had washed away the snow, giving way to hard-packed sand. I stood there in icy silence, just watching the waves come in and then flow back out.

Working had never held any real interest to me. I had money, lots of money, from what had happened with my parents. And the band made good enough money to top that. But I suddenly wanted a job. I wanted to feel like I was doing something worthwhile. A secret part of me wanted to prove Ari wrong. I’d never been motivated or ambitious. I’d been treading water in my life for a long time. Maybe it was time to change that after all.

Chapter 42: Aribel

Going through the motions at home was surprisingly easy. My family had never been particularly emotional, so I could hide my feelings behind an expressionless mask. I’d never told my parents that I was dating anyone. Thus, they had no reason to suspect my sullen attitude was anything out of the ordinary. Only Aaron seemed to notice a shift in my moods, but he kept his thoughts to himself, just like my family always did.

I was upstairs, getting ready for my father’s annual Christmas party, when Aaron appeared in the bathroom mirror.

“Are you about ready to go?”

Sometimes, I swore that Aaron and I could have been twins. He was much taller than me, but he had the same natural blond hair and matching dark blue eyes. He’d graduated from Princeton the year before I’d attended, and he was now working in business in Boston, like our father.

I swished the mascara across my lashes one more time, and then I put the tube away. “Sure.”

“Have you been okay?” he asked, crossing his arms over the chest of his designer tuxedo.

“Fine.”

“Aribel, I know you’re not fine.”

I ran my hands down the front of the black lace dress my mother had picked out for me when we’d gone shopping. It had an open V-cut with thick straps falling over my shoulders, a tiny empire waist, and an A-line skirt that fell to my knees. Grant’s dog tags had been replaced with a simple gold chain with a little bow pendant. My parents had gotten it from Tiffany’s for me for Christmas. It was simple yet extravagant.

I hated taking off Grant’s dog tags almost as much as I hated wearing them. They were my reminder as much as his text messages were. I desperately wanted to pick up the phone and make it all right, but something had kept me from doing it. I missed him terribly, and honestly, I couldn’t believe some of the things we’d said to each other, but I wanted to trust Cheyenne’s advice. I did need time away from him to get my head on straight again.

“Are you daydreaming?” Aaron asked, waving his hand in front of my face.

“No,” I said immediately. “What were you saying?”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you are lovesick.”

The color drained out of my face, and I was thankful for the rouge I’d just applied to my cheeks. “I’m just not feeling well.” I took a step around him. I found a pair of black heels and slipped them on.

“Aribel,” Aaron said softly, following me into the room. “Did something happen at school? Is that why you came home early?”

Oh, how I wanted to confide in my brother, but I knew exactly what he would think about Grant. Aaron would assume what I’d assumed when I first met Grant. But there was so much more to Grant than met the eye. I’d said that he hadn’t changed, that he wasn’t ambitious…and more terrible things, but none of them were true. His drive, and ambition just didn’t fit the mold I’d been carefully cut from. That didn’t mean it didn’t exist.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m your brother. You can trust me.”

I sighed and relented. “I was dating someone. We got into a big fight when school ended. I’m just trying not to think about it.”

“Well, as your brother, I can say that no guy is ever going to be good enough for you.”

I cringed at his words.

“And if you’re already fighting, then it’s probably only going to get worse. But if you decide to see this guy, tell him your older brother will beat his ass if he hurts you again,” Aaron said.

The thought of Aaron trying to beat up Grant was highly amusing, and I cracked a smile for the first time in what felt like forever.

“That’s better. Come on, we have to get to the hotel. You’ll get to meet Sarah.”

In the limousine, my parents chatted aimlessly on the way to the Christmas party, and Aaron had his arm around his new girlfriend, Sarah. I gazed out the back window and prayed for the night to end quickly. We pulled up in front of the hotel and were escorted to the ballroom.

My mother took me aside at the entrance. “Aribel, please do try to smile while you’re here tonight,” she said with a wary look in her eye. “I’ve noticed that you seem sullen, but maybe the festivities will do you some good.”

I managed a polite smile and nodded. “Of course.”

“Also,” she said, gesturing for me to follow her, “we have invited a delightful young man who works for your father.”

I groaned. “Please don’t do this.”

“Just meet him!” she insisted. “His name is Henry. His parents are from the area. He graduated from Harvard three years ago, and he is already making his way seamlessly up the company.”

Twenty-five. My mother was pitching me to a guy who was six years my senior and listing off his good qualities, like he was antique furniture being auctioned off to the highest bidder.

“I’m not interested.”

My mother gave me a stern look. “It’s good and well that you’ve been focused on your schoolwork, but it doesn’t hurt to look around. You never know. You might like him.”

Grant. I liked Grant. No do-gooder Harvard grad from high-society was going to compare to Grant. I almost couldn’t believe those thoughts had just crossed my mind. Hadn’t I thought the same as my mother only four months earlier?

“Henry!” my mother said, fluttering her fingers.

Oh God, she had just been walking me right to him.

“Diana, so good to see you,” Henry said. His eyes swept past my mother and landed on me. “And you must be Aribel. I’m Henry Arbor.”

I handed him my hand to shake, but he brought it to his lips. His blue eyes stared straight through me. I managed not to squirm uncomfortably, but I quickly retrieved my hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

I got my first real glance at Henry, and he was everything I’d suspected—tall, blond, blue-eyed with a suit to rival my brother’s, and a smile that could charm a snake.

My mother smiled brightly at our introduction and then went back to find my father in the crowd. I avoided Henry’s curious glances and scurried after her. I spent the remainder of the evening tucked into a corner of the room, wasting time on my cell phone. A text pinged on the screen from Grant, and my heart raced.

Merry Christmas, Princess. Hope you get everything you want. Unless you manage to get a ticket into Jersey, I’m afraid I’ll be without the only thing I want. Stay warm, and come back soon. I miss you.

Tears swam in my eyes. Damn him! How did he bring out this much emotion in me from a simple text message? Ugh! I felt positively dreadful. There was no other way to put it. I missed him, and I wanted to make things right. I’d have to find a way to talk to him.

“Are you all right?” Henry asked, materializing out of thin air.

“Oh!” I blinked the tears away. “Sorry. I’m fine.”

“Do you want to take a stroll around the hotel?”

“Did my mother send you?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Henry looked taken aback, and I wasn’t sure if it was an act or not.

“No, of course not. I just saw that you looked sad and wanted to get you out of here in case other people noticed.”

“So…this is about appearances?” God, my stupid mouth.

“Have I done something to offend you?” Henry asked plainly. “You looked like you needed an escape. I can provide one.”

“All right,” I said softly.

I wanted to push Grant’s text out of my mind anyway. Henry walked me to the nearest door, and we started wandering leisurely around the hotel. He didn’t say much, which was a relief. The silence was better anyway.

“Want to see something?” Henry asked.

“Um…sure.”

He pushed open a door and led me into an empty ballroom. It was dark, the only light coming in from the panel of windows along the far wall. Henry shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket and walked me out to the balcony overlooking the city.

“Here,” he said, slipping his jacket over my slim shoulders.

I felt a touch of guilt for taking it, but I was glad I had it.

“God, it’s freezing.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “It looks better in the summer. You’d like it.”

I shrugged. “So, how do you like working for the company?”

“It suits me. How are you enjoying Princeton?”

I turned my face back out toward the city. “It’s nice.”

“Will you be in town much longer?” he pried.

“Through the rest of break. I don’t have school again until the second week of January.” That meant I would be away from Grant for a couple more weeks. Could I wait that long?

“Do you have plans for New Year’s?”

New Year’s. Oh my God! Why didn’t I think of that before? My whole face lit up. Grant would be in New York for New Year’s. He still had to be opening for The Drift. I could go there. We could talk then before I came back to school.

Realizing I hadn’t responded to Henry, I spoke up, “I’m going to be in New York City with one of my friends.”

He looked disappointed but managed to cover it up. “What about after that? I’m leaving on vacation with my family to Paris for a week, but I get back on New Year’s Eve. I’d love to take you out.”

Oh…

Oh!

“Um…I really appreciate the offer, but I’m not sure what I’ll be doing.”

“Well, just think about it. I’d like to see you again,” he said, turning me to face him.

He looked completely one hundred percent sincere. I guessed I’d somehow charmed him in our short time together, or it was the parental influence behind the whole exchange. He was rather handsome. Before Grant, I would have totally been into this. But now, all I saw was a life I didn’t want to fit into because it was one without Grant.

Henry’s eyes dropped down to my lips, and I saw his intention a split second before he leaned down to kiss me. I turned my face at the last second, and he chastely kissed me on the cheek. Henry cleared his throat. I’d embarrassed him. That much was clear to me.

“Perhaps we should get you back inside. You’re shaking.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” I whispered.

I was certainly shaking but not from the cold. It was from what had almost happened.

Grant and I were on a break.

We needed space.

We needed time.

We weren’t broken up.