Addicted for Now (40 page)

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LOREN HALE

Some days are harder than others. There are days
where I don’t even think about alcohol, and then days where my brain
circumnavigates around drinking and nothing else.

Today all I can think about is my mother. My real mother.
Emily Moore
. After my father gave me her
address, I often imagine her house, what she looks like, her life without me.

What I do know for certain is that she’s a substitute
teacher in Maine. Married. Two kids. When I was little, I rehearsed the same
confrontation in my head. I’d stand on the stoop of my birth mother’s house.
I’d ask her why she didn’t want me, why she never called or left a note. But in
my mind, I was thinking of Sara Hale—not this Emily Moore.

The name has changed, but my questions haven’t. I just have
to figure out when to go and who to take with me. Maybe Ryke or Lily, but
neither know I’ve been plotting the date to travel to Maine. Ryke will
disapprove, thinking I’ve embedded myself further into my father’s world. So
I’m leaning towards a trip with Lily.

But I can’t meet Emily today, even if I want to.

Ryke wants to teach me how to rock climb. Not in a gym. Like
on a real fucking mountain. I had to ask whether we were going to use ropes and
a harness—considering the guy free climbs (he’s stupid enough to scale a
mountain with nothing but his hands, legs and some chalk). We’re planning on
climbing the normal, sane way. He can do the whole Spider-Man routine when I’m
not watching.

I can’t leave until I finish filtering the morning mail with
Rose.

The kitchen table overflows with letters, manila envelopes,
and small packages.

Paparazzi have sold photos of Lily buying tampons in the
grocery store. It’s ridiculous. And her “fan” mail accumulates with each new
headline on the cover of a gossip magazine. Most letters are from old men who
think she’ll reply or meet them somewhere for sex. That’s what’s been happening
lately. People are grabby as hell. I thought that the guy in the hallway of
Princeton was just a fluke, but a lot of men feel as though Lily wants all sex,
even from them, just because of her addiction. And they make a go of trying to
get it from her.

It’s like she has a twenty-four-seven “open” sign plastered
to her body now. And there’s no way for her to spin it around to “closed,”
which I know she wants to. Thank God she has a bodyguard.

I rip open a couple letters and nearly vomit at a picture of
some dude’s balls.

“Shred this one twice,” I tell Rose, throwing the photo into
her pile. The shredder rumbles by her feet as she feeds the machine more and
more mail.

She glances at the photograph, flips it over and lets out a
snort. “
I’ll be thinking of you while you
touch yourself
,” she reads. “Your sentiments are not shared, Mr. Gordon.”

“This guy is living at the State Penitentiary. That makes me
feel fantastic.” I toss her another letter and then slice open the packages
with a knife.

I really wish we didn’t have to go through this mail at all.
I’d much rather burn it without even opening, but some people actually send
money. Sometimes as a joke, other times I think they honestly believe Lily will
fuck them for cash. Rose, Lily, and I agreed to collect the money and donate it
to a women’s shelter in the city. At least someone profits off this.

So Rose and I spend all morning ripping and tearing and
shredding. Lily would join us, but Rose and I specifically try to censor her
from Mr. Gordon’s balls and company. One day, Lily accidentally opened a letter
with photographs attached, and her eyes grew wide in horror, as though the
person was one step away from breaking into our house to rape her. I’ve thought
about that possibility too, which is why I installed a better security system.

Lil doesn’t admit it, but Rose and I see that she’s afraid
to leave the house. She rarely goes out, and when she does, it’s usually after
a great deal of pleading.
 

Lily has accepted my mail-sifting routine with Rose, also
calling it our “bonding time.” I haven’t been Rose’s number one fan, not even
after the media-palooza went down. But what was once a frost-bitten
relationship has surprisingly begun to thaw.

“Since I have to go to business meetings now,” I tell her,
“I’m going to need some everyday kind of suits. You still have those black ones
from your menswear line, right?”

She goes still and the shredder stops growling. “You don’t
have to help me, Loren. I don’t need your charity.” In one month, Rose almost
lost every single investor she had for Calloway Couture. Only
one
has stayed onboard out of sheer
loyalty.

I roll my eyes. “It’s not charity. I need suits. Now that
you fired a certain someone, yours are no longer plaid and ugly.” I can’t say
Sebastian’s name unless I want to be assaulted with rage.

“He did have horrible taste,” she says, lips pursed. As soon
as Rose ripped the guy from her life, he snapped a picture of himself for Rich
Kids of Instagram and called her a cunt-bag. If you even utter his name, she
looks ready to lunge for the ball-cutting shears.
 

Rose assesses my current wardrobe. A black V-neck and faded
Diesel jeans. “You go to your office looking like that,” she reminds me. “Why
would you need suits?”

“I have weekly meetings with my father. If I show up in this
I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Running my own company terrifies me. I don’t want to pour my
heart and soul into it and then have the entire thing destroyed. What Rose is
going through—it fucking sucks. Maybe that’s why I’ve preferred apathy all of
these years. You can’t be hurt when you have nothing to lose.

She mulls over my proposition and then begins to stuff the
shredder again. It rumbles to life. “Fine, but you have to pay full price.”

I laugh. “No family discounts? I’m going to be your
brother-in-law.”

“Unwillingly,” she says with cold eyes. Jesus Christ. I’m
never going to live
that
down.

I blame Connor.

He somehow coerced me into revealing my true feelings about
this wedding. I admitted to not wanting to marry Lily, not like this at least.
I want to do it on our own terms. And somehow Rose has warped that into
I don’t want to marry her at all
. If I
could, I’d be engaged for five more years. She’d be my fiancée and we’d get
hitched when we’re both healthy and in love. But that’s not a future that will
come true, so I stop trying to imagine it.

I smother that conversation by slitting open a small
package. I made the mistake yesterday of reaching blindly into a box. I never,
ever
want to touch another man’s cum
again. Rose couldn’t stop laughing while I soaked my hands in disinfectant for
thirty minutes.

I dump the contents onto the plastic-lined table. A neon hot
pink dick stares back at me. Without touching it, I slide the dildo into a
trash bag.

The next box has what looks like an expensive vibrator,
brand-new, wrapped in its original packaging. I leave it on the table as I read
the card.

And then an excited squeal resounds from the staircase. Lily
sprints down the stairs, her glee-filled eyes pinned to the vibrator.

I grab her around the waist before she can grab
it
. She points to the package. “That’s
new!”

“I’m aware,” I say. “You still can’t have it.”

She cranes her neck. “It’s a Zell500. That’s a luxury brand.
You can’t just toss it in the trash.” Her eyes go big. “That’s sacrilege.”

I’m tempted to read her the card:
A beautiful toy for your beautiful pussy, my lovely Lily
. It’s
fucking creepy, and I know it will deter her. But I don’t want to scare her
either. That’s what we’re trying to avoid with all of this.

“It’s a vibrator, Lily,” Rose snaps, “not the Holy Grail.”

I give Rose a smile. “So you don’t want it then?”

She glares like she’s ready to put
me
in the shredder.

I stifle a larger grin and turn to Lily. “Sorry, love. It’s
going in the trash.”

She surrenders rather easily. I unhook my arms from her and
slide the vibrator into the garbage with the others.

The front door opens, and Ryke saunters into the kitchen,
carrying two large vases, white lilies poking his face. As soon as Lily spots
the flowers, she slips behind my back and clutches onto my shirt—like whoever
sent the floral arrangements are about to jump from the vase and grow
life-sized.

“These were by the gate,” Ryke says. “I would have left
them, but the paparazzi were trying to get photographs of the cards.” I hold
open the trash bag, and Rose suddenly has a fit.
 

“They’ll break!” she yells at me. “And then the glass will
tear the bag, slice someone, and blood will be everywhere. I can’t clean blood
out of the hardwood.”

I narrow my eyes. “Just so we have this clear,
I
rank above the floor.”

“It’s Brazilian cherry,” she says like that makes all the
difference. She turns to Ryke. “Throw the vases in the recycling bins in the
garage.”

He tips the vases upside down, only the flowers and cards
falling into my trash bag. Lily still hasn’t disentangled from my shirt. I
gather her hands and intertwine her fingers in mine. “Hey, what’s wrong?” I
ask.

Her eyes fix dazedly to the trash bag, and I’m not sure
where she’s truly gone. But she’s not in a fantasy. She’s somewhere sadder and
darker.

Very softly, she says, “I don’t want lilies at the wedding.”

She’s never referred to it as
my
or
our
wedding. It’s
always
the
wedding. Marriage is
supposed to be this happily ever after, but for her it feels like a means to an
end.

“You don’t have to think about that,” Rose tells her. “It’s
not for another year. We’re not even going to plan it anytime soon.”

Ryke nods to me. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah, I just need to change out of my jeans.”

“You can change in the car,” he tells me. “I have shorts and
stuff in there.” He checks his watch. “I just want to beat a storm that’s
supposed to roll in.”

Right because we’re going to be outside. Climbing a
mountain.
Just don’t kill me, God. That
would be so fucking cruel to kill me now.

Before I leave, I kiss Lily lightly. “What are you doing today?”
I ask, worried that she’ll spend the afternoon and night bingeing on old
cartoons, isolated in the living room. She claims it’s a normal bout of summer
laziness, but I know her well.

She can’t be afraid of the world forever.

“I was thinking about going to your office. Maybe get some
work done,” she says. My lungs fill with relief. I love that I have chosen a
business she can take pleasure in, something that can be both of ours one day.
I want her to graduate college first, accomplish what I couldn’t.

“Call Garth,” I tell her.

She crinkles her nose. “He smells like old cheese.”

I grin. I chose the perfect bodyguard. “Don’t leave this
house without him.”

“Don’t fall off a giant rock.”

“I’ll return him to you alive,” Ryke tells her.

“You better.” Lily holds a non-threatening finger at him.

He smiles coyly, like he plans on fucking with the ropes or
the harness to scare the shit out of me, just to retaliate for the mankini
prank in Cancun. I’m a little nervous, but after climbing in the gym with him,
the mountain shouldn’t be too difficult, even if he gives me extra slack. I can
handle the challenge.

***

We don’t even make it out of New Jersey before my
phone buzzes in the middle console. The word DAD flashing in big bold letters.

“Don’t answer that,” Ryke says.

I’m driving. And I disobey his orders, answering the phone
and keeping one hand on the wheel. I feel Ryke’s hot glare without taking my
eyes off the road.

“Loren.” My father’s voice sounds through the receiver. “I
need you to stop by the house sometime today.” His tone is pretty casual, so I
figure the topic centers on my new company. It’s barely on its feet, but he
loves to add his opinion.

“I’m heading out of town, so I won’t be anywhere near
Philly.”

“Then readjust your schedule.”

“It’s not that easy—”

“I’m not asking.”

Ryke shakes his head repeatedly beside me, probably watching
my eyes begin to darken the longer I talk to our dad. “You should have rejected
the deal for your trust fund,” he says under his breath.

I pull the speaker away from my mouth to talk to Ryke. “I
heard you the hundredth time you said it.”

“You’re his bitch,” Ryke rephrases, as if that’ll make me
understand.

I grit my teeth, the highway signs zipping overhead. I need
to get off the next exit if I want to see my dad.

I press the phone back to my ear. “What is it about?” I ask
him.

“The leak.”

I nearly jerk the car into the other lane, a Trailblazer
next to us.

“Lo!” Ryke yells, clutching the door. He snaps on his
seatbelt.

Shit. “Sorry.” I start switching lanes, properly this time,
heading towards the exit.

“Wait, where are you going?” Ryke asks angrily. He knows I’m
heading to Philly. He just doesn’t know why.

I put the phone on speaker, realizing that Ryke will throw a
tantrum unless he hears the truth from my father. I set the cell on my lap.
“You know who the leak is?” I ask aloud, my heart thrumming. After a month
without the knowledge, I was resigned with the fact that it just didn’t matter.
Mostly because I didn’t have the energy to hunt down Mason or Aaron
and
care for Lily. I chose the right
option, to be there for my best friend. But I want the information that has
eluded us for so long. And the resentful, dark and bitter part of me wants this
fucker’s head on a spike.