Addicted for Now (33 page)

On cue, Ryke cringes at literally the only cuss word he
can’t stand.

I watch the way his face flips through emotions, and in a
quick second he settles on one:
Guilt
.

I expected rage, a battle of words, something to perpetuate
the turmoil spinning in my stomach. Not his eyes to cloud with remorse, as if
he was the one who spitefully slandered his mother.

He knows me. He knows
what I was thinking, why I say the things I do.
Between the aggressive
attitude and foul language, I often forget Ryke has a brain, probably one that
works better than mine.

“Not sensitive,” he says softly, almost hesitant. “I think
guarded and defensive are better words.”

His eyes fill with apologies, not wanting to hurt me like my
father does. Ryke doesn’t have the same fear as me, the one where I turn into
Jonathan Hale. But for a moment, Ryke must have tasted what it was like to be
him. I personally know it isn’t pleasant.

 
After a deep breath,
I say, “I can’t help it. I’m always going to be defensive when it comes to
Lily.”

“We’re her sisters,” Rose pipes in. “Everyone in this room
loves Lily
and
you. We are the last
people you should be guarded around.”

Something burns inside of me, words that ache to be
released. I’ve never talked to any of Lily’s sisters about their childhood. I
only know what I’ve seen and what Lily has told me. If anyone can fill in the
blanks and help me answer Daisy’s question, it’s Rose.

“Why was Lily allowed to spend nights at my house?” I
ask.
 

“You were her friend.”

“Rose. What friends at twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old
spend
the majority of nights at someone else’s house?”

She narrows her eyes. “It was usually on the weekend.”

Holy shit. Someone has taken a sledgehammer to my stomach.

By the look on her face, she has no idea how many nights
Lily slept at my house when we were children. But how many activities did
Rose’s mother bombard her with? Ballet, horseback riding, piano, French.

Off my shock, Rose starts shaking her head fiercely. “I
would have known. I would have seen her walk through the front door in the
mornings…” Her face falls, and Connor reaches for her hand while she stares off
dazedly.

“You never saw her in the mornings,” I say what Rose is
thinking. “My father’s driver always took us to school from my house.”

“I had club meetings in the morning. I left early all the
time, so I just thought she was asleep.” It wasn’t Rose’s duty to take care of
Lily. She’s only two years older. “How many nights did Lily sleep at your
house?”

“In middle school, about four days a week, and then she just
kept coming over more and more until high school…” I shake my head and cringe.
It’s my fault. A huge part of what happened, I know, I caused. “…in high
school, she slept over almost every night.”

“I didn’t know that either,” Daisy admits. I’m not
surprised. Daisy is a lot younger, and when she turned about eleven, her mother
started pursuing acting and modeling agencies for her. And for the majority of
Daisy’s tweens, I remember how she always looked exhausted, eyes heavy-lidded
and yawning more than talking.

“Our parents couldn’t have known about your sleepovers,”
Rose says. “They would have never allowed it.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

This is where my chest constricts, where vile resentment
starts to pound in my head. I didn’t have these feelings towards Samantha and
Greg Calloway until I went to rehab. Before that, I thought they were the
coolest parents for letting their daughter, my best friend, spend an exorbitant
amount of time with me. Sitting in therapy for three months and becoming sober
has cleared the dust.

I’m beginning to understand what happened.

Connor’s mouth slowly parts in realization, letting me know
he’s put the pieces together. Why Lily is the way she is.

Rose is clouded by her own relationship with her parents.
She sees a mother who inserts herself into her daughters’ lives to the point
where compassion transforms into suffocation. She sees a father who loves his
children, buying them fancy things and sending them to exotic places to show
his affection.

“Loren,” Rose says, “finish what you have to say.”

“Every day, Lily asked her mother if she could spend the
night at my house. The answer was always the same. And then when Lily was
fourteen or fifteen, Samantha finally told us to just stop asking, that she’d
approve no matter what.”

I remember Lily crying onto my pillow that same night. She
never told me straight out, but I knew the only reason she even asked her
mother in the first place was because she wanted to hear the word
no.
A single sign that her mother cared
about her the same way that she did Poppy, Rose, and Daisy. That she wasn’t
undeserving of her mother’s time and attention. Her mother doted on her other
sisters. She put all her excess energy into them, skipping right over Lily as
though she was worthless of that affection.

And so she tried to find it down the street. With me. And
when that wasn’t enough, she tried to fill it with other men. With sex. With a
high and an intense burst of emotion.

“You know why Lily was allowed at my house at night?” I ask
Rose, starting from the beginning again.

Her cheeks concave, her back goes rigid, and a familiar
chill fills her eyes. “Because you’re a Hale.”

That’s what I thought.

“What does that fucking mean?” Ryke asks.

“Lily didn’t need to be good at anything,” I tell him. “Her
mother passed over her because she was my friend. I was her future.” The heir
of a multi-billion dollar empire. Her mother concentrated on Daisy, on Rose,
who could be more successful in other facets. But Lily—her worth centered on a
guy. Me. And I think, somewhere in her head, she believed it herself. That she
would never amount to anything more than pleasing other men. That she was
destined for a life less than her sister’s.

Daisy frowns. “I thought Lily just got a pass since she was
kind of average at everything. I’ve always been jealous of the freedom she
gets.”

I nod. “Lily thinks she should be grateful for the freedom
too.” That’s why she has trouble admitting to herself that she’s been hurt by
her mother. She could have been suffocated like her sisters. And she wasn’t.

But there should have been a happy medium between what Lily
had and what Daisy is now enduring.
 

I pause for a second, these words some of the hardest to
produce. “Your mother outwardly loved you, Daisy, and you, Rose,” I say looking
to each of the girls. “Even Poppy was showered with this type of overbearing
maternal affection. And Lily…she was denied all of that. She was like the runt
in the litter.”

Rose’s eyes glass like she may cry. I’ve never witnessed
tears from her. I always imagined that they’d ice over. Her voice, however, is
strangely stoic. “I didn’t realize…” She shakes her head. “My mother wanted the
two of you to become a couple. I knew that, but I blamed you more for taking my
sister away from me. I didn’t realize that she really had nowhere else to go.”

Well that kind of makes me feel like shit. She makes it
sound like I was Lily’s only option. “She could have stayed home.”

“She would have been alone, Loren. I was barely around
because of school and ballet.”

And then a wave of guilt just annihilates me. “Yeah, well
maybe she should have been alone. Look what good it did being around me.” I
shake my head, running my hands repeatedly through my hair. My leg starts to
jostle in anxiety.

“You didn’t do this,” Rose tells me. “Our mother should have
told her that she loved her for something more than being with you. She could
have found her something to do, something to achieve.” A dream, a passion, a
hobby, a fucking sport. Sex became all of those things for Lily. And I never
stopped her. Not once. I was so consumed with my addiction that I didn’t care
what the hell she did, as long as she was breathing at the end of the night. As
long as she was by my side—my best fucking friend.

“You don’t understand,” I mutter. I led her here.
Unknowingly, I brought her to this place in her life. If I never even existed,
she would have received that love from her mother that she craved.
 

“Then tell me.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Loren—”

“She slept in my bed!” I shout, my eyes welling. They burn
so badly. “I let her sleep in the same bed as me. Okay, this wasn’t
Dawson’s Creek
. I never kicked her out
after we hit puberty.”

Rose whispers to Connor, “I don’t understand the
correlation.”

“Dawson and Joey stopped sleeping in the same bed together
in the first episode. She said that he was old enough to get an erection.”

Rose looks back to me. “You didn’t have sex with her every
night, did you?”

“No, but—”

“You can’t compare your life to a television show.” The fact
that Rose is defending me does not entirely help. I’m used to her tearing me
down, not building me up. I keep waiting for someone to thrash me with their
words, with their feelings. With hate. I deserve that pain. It’s my fucking
fault.

“You don’t get it!” I’m on my feet somehow. “I could have
stopped her. I should have walked her down that road every night. I should have
done
something
.” Instead I gave her a
bed to sleep in, a place to fill her vice.

“Loren,” Rose starts.

“Stop,” I say, placing my hands on my head, these thoughts
swarming me in a tidal wave, the guilt so unbearable on my chest. “You should
hate me,” I tell her. “I deserve that.” I nod. “I broke your sister.” My face
contorts in pain, a hot tear escaping. I want to punch something. To go run
until my heart stops, until the breath just leaves me cold and dry.
 

No one says a thing. They wait for me to collect my
bearings.

My breathing slows, and I rub my face. When I drop my hands,
I say softly, “I wish I could take it all back.” I want to reverse time. To
walk Lily right out of my house, down the street and to her own bedroom door. I
would tell her that it’s okay if her mother doesn’t love her because her
sisters do. And she doesn’t need to avoid her house by being in mine—that she
shouldn’t keep searching for love in sex because it will only leave her empty
and miserable.

I should have told her all of these things, but I didn’t
know any of them back then. And I was too goddamn drunk to care.

“It’s not your fault,” Rose says. “You were a kid. We all
were.”

“And you have a shitty fucking father,” Ryke adds.

“And no mother,” Daisy says.

“And you were an alcoholic,” Connor concludes.

It’s like they’re my conscience, and yet, they’re only my
friends. For the first time, I have them, and I feel tears build at the words
that I never thought I’d hear.

It’s not your fault.
Yeah,
I’m getting there. I can believe it one day, I think.
 

I have weathered the most painful answer. I can manage any
others now.

I look to Daisy.

“Next question.”

{ 34 }

LILY CALLOWAY

A full week has passed. And I haven’t left Ryke’s
apartment. School is an afterthought, even though my last test is in a few
days. I’ll just show up and pass and then be back to my reclusive state before
finals begin. I have no intention of seeing my parents, and if Lo and Ryke
would let me, I’d be a hermit for the rest of my life.

But Ryke is not the kind of person who coddles, and Lo
refuses to enable me anymore. So they have awarded me a seven day “grace period.”
Or what they like to call “the time it takes to get my shit together to face my
parents.” It may have taken God seven days to create the world, but I think I
may need more time to screw my head on right. I am not Christ-like. When I
mentioned this to Lo, he told me I could have an extra sympathy day. I think he
said that word on purpose—
sympathy
. I
crinkled my nose and decided to take the seven days instead.

I’m on Day Seven. Judgment Day. The one where I’ll have to
face my mom and dad.

The majority of the camera crews remain at our house in
Princeton or the one in Villanova. Rose and Daisy have been staying at Connor’s
since the cameras are sparse around his neighborhood. Plus he has more room at
his bachelor pad.

My parents have opted to stay silent when it comes to the
media. They paid their lawyers a hefty sum just to utter the words “no
comment.” There will be a press conference at some point, especially since
Fizzle and Hale Co. stock have dropped considerably.

After home-visits and lengthy phone calls with Dr. Banning,
we agreed that I need to read and watch what’s being said about me. Her words
were, “Don’t internalize your feelings when you hear what people are saying. If
they upset you then let it out.” She also told me to make light of every
painful situation—to uncover a silver lining and humor in all the bad. Anything
to soften the gut-wrenching blows.

I sit on the leather couch and perform my usual morning
ritual. Turn on the television to the morning news and flip open my laptop to
the gossipy, tabloid websites.

“We still don’t have an official statement from Lily
Calloway or her family,” the news anchor says. “But we have a psychologist here
today to talk about sex addiction and the dangers.” Boo. I spend hours in
therapy; I do not want to listen to this. I mute the TV and focus on the
computer.

I type my name into the search engine. Various articles
titled
Sex Addict
pop up. One even
says,
Sex Addict or Slut?
And there’s
a lengthy debate on whether sex addiction is truly an addiction or whether I’m
a whore in disguise. I stay away from that one.

Dr. Banning says that the more I hear and see the two words,
the more I’ll become desensitized to them.

It hasn’t happened yet.

I shudder when I click into a new site.
Daughter of Soda Mogul Sleeps with Soccer Team.
I close out quickly
and enter another webpage.

Lily Calloway Reviewed
by Princeton after Allegations of Hiring Male Prostitutes.

Apparently being a frequent client of an escort service
doesn’t bode well in a university’s eyes. I’m trying not to worry about it
until after I talk to my parents. Tackle one issue at a time.

I make the mistake of logging onto Twitter and typing in my
name. How do I make light of someone saying my vagina must be stretched and
ugly? I haven’t checked lately, but I don’t think it looks that bad.

Besides, who stares at that body part and thinks,
wow, that’s the most beautiful vagina I’ve
ever seen?
Likewise, penises are not all that pretty. I may enjoy them, but
I’m not about to snap a picture and decorate my wall. Eyes are beautiful. Sex
parts are functional.

My fingers click away and land on Tumblr—my bane. I’m about
to search for
Lily Calloway
, but I
hesitate above the keyboard. And on impulse I type in something bad.

Sex gifs.

The magic words open Pandora’s Box, and animated “moving”
pictures cascade in an infinite scroll. Girls and guys are tangled lustfully,
some positions sexier than others. And a few images are pure close-ups of
naughty bits. I shouldn’t be thumbing through anything pornographic, but I
begin to relax at the familiar routine.
 

I hover on a black and white picture with pretty shadows.
The girl’s mouth forms a perfect “O” as a cock thrusts inside of her. I can’t
believe it’s been two whole weeks since I’ve had sex. I try to remind myself
that I lasted ninety days without Lo, no sex in sight. But that feels different
than this.

After my addiction went public, Lo wavered on having sex
with me. And he chose not to feed any compulsions that he thought would arise.
He believes I’ll turn into a wild, sex-crazed monster. Those are actually my
words, but when I said them, he never denied it. Sex has been a coping
mechanism, the tool that I use to deal with tough situations. And for the first
time, I have to confront a hard-hitting issue without a boost of my natural
high.

It’s not like we haven’t done
things.
We just haven’t done
it.
He fingered me the other day, and last night, he let me give him a blow job.
So that was nice.

I sigh. I am desperately envious of a two-dimensional girl’s
orgasm, worthy of fireworks and sparklers and red velvet cake.

Suddenly, the lock to the front door clicks, and since
Ryke’s apartment resembles a flat (the living room connected to the kitchen) I
have a direct view of anyone who walks towards the couch. I quickly shutdown
Tumblr and log onto
Hollywoodharlots.net
,
a site that has been incredibly gossipy about my addiction. They even snapped a
blurry photo of Daisy exiting Connor’s apartment and captioned the pic:
Younger Sister of Lily Calloway: Future Sex
Addict?

It makes my stomach churn.

“She wasn’t hitting on you,” Lo says as the door swings
open.

“Are you sure?” Ryke asks. He shuts the door and pockets his
keys. “She looked like she knew where she was going.”

“She was definitely lost.”

Both shirtless with only running shorts, sweat glistens
their toned bodies. Morning runs relax Lo, and all week I have been searching
for my anxiety-reducing activity. But those funny positions in yoga revert my
mind to sex, and meditation causes me to fantasize. So I started looking at
porn again, but I’ve been economical about my usage. I won’t get carried away
this time.

Lo plops down on the couch beside me, his eyes flickering to
my computer screen. “You read anything interesting?”

“Besides the fact that I’ve officially screwed up my
sisters’ lives…”

“Rose and Daisy can handle it,” Lo reminds me. But the whole
point of pretending to be in a fake relationship for three years, of keeping
this giant secret, was to avoid all of this from happening. I never wanted to
hurt anyone.

“I re-watched the SNL skit,” I admit. “I think I found it
funnier the second time around.” On Saturday, a comedian impersonated me. She
drank so many cans of Fizz that she acted drunk and stumbled into a brothel. A
few humorous quips later and I sufficiently turned into a caricature.

“You have to admit, the comedian nailed your hair
perfectly,” Ryke says with a grin.

“Yeah, but she gave me a terrible accent.” I don’t have a
regional dialect, but she layered on a thick, obnoxious Philly drawl. I’ve also
zeroed-in on the least offending thing about the entire skit.

“To her credit, she’s probably never heard you speak.”

“Whose side are you on?” I ask him, but I already know the
answer. If anyone has been making it easier to make light of the situation,
it’s Ryke and Lo.

“I think your first press release should be in that accent,”
Lo tells me. “How funny would it be if everyone thinks you actually speak like
that?”

I smile. It would be a good prank.

Lo leans over to grab my computer. “Let me see this for a
second,” he says.

My guard rises and fear spikes. I grip the console as if I’m
trying to protect a fairy kingdom from goblin invasion. “What? Why?”

He edges back a little bit, eyes narrowed with skepticism.
“I want to see if my dad had a press conference yet.” It must be hard to stay
silent towards his father throughout all of this, but it’s probably best that
they’re not on speaking terms. Jonathan Hale has always been Lo’s trigger to
drink.

“Uh…I can check.” I type quickly into the search engine.
It’s not that I have anything incriminating on here, but I fear random pop-ups
from a porn site that I visited yesterday. When the time is right, I plan on
telling Lo that I’ve found a way to be a healthy porn-watcher. Definitely not
now, though.

“No,” I tell Lo after a couple minutes. “He hasn’t even
released a statement.” Same as my parents. I wonder if they’re both waiting to
speak to their children first.

And right as I turn, the computer leaves my hands. Lo sets
the device on the coffee table. My heart slows down when his lips touch mine,
and then it speeds up again when his hands dip to my waist. I lose myself to
the way his tongue slides into my mouth and the way he sucks on my bottom lip.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Ryke entering the living room and bending
in front of my computer.

Oh no.

I’ve been tricked!

I pull back abruptly, my bottom lip caught between Lo’s
teeth. I tug away and jump off the couch, charging for my laptop before Ryke
can. But Lo grabs me by the hips and throws me over his shoulder. Oh man.

“Hey!” I yell, lifting my body off of Lo by pressing my hand
on his back. “That’s mine.” Ryke doesn’t seem to care. He takes the laptop casually
and sits back against the couch. “Lo, put me down!”

He pats my ass. “You don’t like it up here?”

“Are you taking me to the bedroom?” I ask, rethinking my
dislike of hanging upside down. If it ends with me on a bed and having crazy
sex, then I wouldn’t complain.

“No, love.”

“I can give you head,” I offer.

“I’m still in the room, Lily,” Ryke reminds me, his eyes on
my computer screen. I flush only a little. I have become terrifyingly more
comfortable mentioning sex around Ryke.

“You don’t care, do you?” I ask Ryke, egging him on a bit.
He has my computer after all.

“I care,” Lo replies instead. “It’s almost noon.”

“That’s why they call it a nooner.”

“No, Lil.”

I clench my teeth, hating that I’m making him say the word
no
over and over. I should be better
like I was in Cancun. But ever since the leak, I feel like I’ve regressed a
little. I just…need to figure out how to return to where I was, but finding
that path proves harder every day.

Ryke taps the keyboard, the clicking incessant while his
eyes dance around the screen. “I don’t really understand why you’re so fucking
obsessed with blow jobs anyway. You’re a sex addict. What the hell do they do
for you?”

“Ryke,” Lo snaps.

“What? It’s an honest fucking question.”

I don’t want to tell Ryke the truth. That before I dated Lo,
it was just a means to an end. Foreplay. Getting a guy hard. Pure and simple.
Now, since I’m not even allowed to be on top (lest I become too compulsive)
giving head is really the only thing that makes me feel in control. And I just
really, really like making Lo come.

I smile at the thought.

“You’re not going to answer me?” Ryke asks. “I thought we
were friends now.”

I may be comfortable saying
some
things in front of him but definitely not that. “What are you
doing on my computer then?” I ask. “And why am I being held hostage?” I try to
wiggle out of Lo’s grip.

He slides me down to my feet, and before I dart to the
computer, his arms slip around my waist again, pinning my chest to his. He
stares past me, and disappointment and dread begin to fill his amber-colored
eyes.

What? I crane my neck over my shoulder. Ryke grimaces at
something on the screen. My heart flip-flops and somersaults. “What’s wrong?” I
say in a small voice.

“Your history is fucking filthy,” Ryke tells me in a serious
tone.

But…that’s impossible. I clear my history. All the time. Lo
lets go of me, cold replacing his warmth, which stings the most. I stay frozen
by the coffee table, and he joins Ryke on the couch, scanning the long list.

“I don’t understand…” I mutter.

“I checked your history yesterday,” Lo says, his eyes
grazing the screen like Ryke’s. “It was all erased. I thought that was
suspicious. So I told Ryke this morning, and he said there’s a backup installed
on expensive computers to revive it.” He finally meets my gaze, and before he
speaks this time, I interject.

“I can explain,” I say quickly. “I started looking at it a
few days ago, but only for a few minutes at a time. I’m learning how to portion
control. I was going to tell you after I talked to my parents. It’s a good
thing actually. I can watch it like a normal person now.” My voice becomes
unnaturally high.

Ryke, surprisingly, keeps quiet and turns to Lo.

I’ve already framed his response. He won’t condone my porn
usage, that I’m sure, but he’ll tell me he understands how hard it is for me
and that I have to do better. I wait for his sympathetic words.

“I hope you enjoyed it,” Lo says with edge, “because that
was your last time on the internet.”

My mouth falls open, too shocked to speak. He closes my
computer and snatches it from Ryke’s lap. I imagine him tossing it in the
trash, and my voice suddenly reanimates. “Waitwaitwait!” I throw up my hands.
“I have school. I need to write papers and do research.”

Lo walks to a cabinet and places my laptop inside. “Then
I’ll sit with you when you do them, but obviously you can’t be trusted with a
computer right now.” His eyes hit mine. “Have you been looking at porn on your
phone?”