Addicted for Now (6 page)

The hard things are the right things, I’ve learned. But I’m
not Connor Cobalt—built with the infallible ability to go the extra mile, to do
the extra work. I’m the kinda guy that always stops short.

But I do have a plan for some cash. The only problem—it
involves a conversation with Rose Calloway.

“He’s going to try to buy you back,” Ryke tells me. “That’s
what he fucking does, and you’re going to have to say no. He’s your fucking
trigger, Lo. You shouldn’t be around him while you’re recovering.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I say, lugging my bag over my
shoulder. Most days, I regret asking Ryke to be my sponsor. Even if he’s pretty
good at it. Trigger or not, Jonathan Hale is
my
father. Ryke doesn’t understand him the way I do.

He’s not all bad.

{ 7 }

LILY CALLOWAY

My second test score came back last week, and it
was a big fat F. I knew transferring from an Ivy League to another Ivy League
wasn’t the cure for my poor grades, but I hoped that Princeton would kick my
lazy butt into gear. With Rose running around the same campus as me, I should
be more motivated. Plus, my hours are no longer wasted away on porn and
self-love. But I didn’t predict that my time would be consumed by therapy in
New York and trying to rebuild my relationships with my sisters. Getting
healthy and making amends is almost as big a time bandit as wallowing in my
addiction.

I have so many issues to deal with that school is that last
thing on my mind, when it should probably be the first. Lo may be back but time
doesn’t stop for us, and I can’t fail my classes in Princeton too. I’m already
behind as it is.

Which is why a tutor sits beside me, though he’s not doing
much “tutoring.”

For the past thirty minutes, I watched him browse Rich Kids
of Instagram, a site that I boycott and find generally revolting. I nudge him
to help me twice, and he points to my book. “Do another problem,” he says
without peeling his eyes from his phone.

I miss the days where Connor Cobalt gave me a hundred-and-ten
percent of his tutoring attention, even going as far as making me flashcards.

Sebastian Ross may just be the worst tutor alive.

He invades my personal space for a second, and I think he
may actually be showing me how to do a Statistics problem.

He sticks his phone beneath my nose. “Whose watch do you
like better?” He extends his wrist and holds it by the screen, the band gold
and the gadgetry so complex that my eyes hurt. The one in the picture is no
simpler. A teenager stands outside his gray-bricked mansion, wrists displayed
like he’s preparing to box.

“Neither.”

“Amuse me.”

Amuse
him?
How
about amuse
me!
I’m the one who
should be entertained by numbers and words. Connor would know how to make
studying fun.

I try not to glare. “I like my watch.”

Sebastian’s
one
eyebrow
arches, so smarmy and elitist that I have to give him props for mastering the
technique. He snatches my wrist to inspect the device. He huffs. “You’re
wearing a toy.” He flicks the plastic cap, nearly causing the hands of the
clock to stop.

“Hey,” I say, retracting my arm and clutching my wrist to my
chest. “That’s Wolverine, you know.” The yellow and blue band buckles on my
bony wrist, and the X-Men hero is printed inside the watch-face.

He looks mildly interested now. “Is it a collectible?”

“…maybe.”

He restrains the urge to roll his eyes. “Where’d you get
it?” he asks. “The kid’s section in Target?”

My cheeks redden even though they shouldn’t. “No,” I retort.
“Lo won it from a vending machine. You know, the ones where you put a quarter
in and it drops out the little egg thing.” We had a seventy-five percent chance
to get either Superman or Batman, so when Wolverine popped out, it seemed like
fate. We were easily entertained.

Sebastian grimaces. He has a pretty good stink-face too. “You
touched those things?” He returns to his phone, scrolling. “Sometimes I wonder
how you’re related to your sister.”

Sometimes I wonder why
she’s friends with you.

I would exchange Sebastian for a better model, but not when
Rose asked him, her
best
friend, to
tutor me. Before Connor came into the picture, Sebastian escorted Rose to every
social function, her go-to arm candy.

He leans back on the couch, wearing khaki slacks, a blazer
and glasses with wide frames and thin rims. I have a suspicion that he’s
someone who only wears glasses for show, not function. And his honey blond hair
is slicked neatly and parted on the side, groomed and styled.

Even if he didn’t take the time to look good, Sebastian is
the kind of person that was born to be pretty.

Normally I’d be tempted. But I have Loren Hale.

And Sebastian is gay. So there’s that.

When he snorts out loud, I catch a glimpse of his cell.
There’s a picture of a guy sitting in a hot tub on a million-dollar yacht,
surrounded by expensive bottles of champagne.

Now I roll my eyes. I really want to grab the phone from his
hand and chuck it across the room. “Have you even taken Stat?” I ask.

“Stats.”

“What?”

“It’s called Stastic
sssss
,”
he says, hissing the “s” for further emphasis. “Not Statistic.” His gaze stays
fixated on that stupid phone.
 

“Have you taken Stat
sssss
,”
I hiss back.

“Yes, it’s an under level requirement for business majors at
Princeton,” he says sharply. “Obviously Penn has different standards.”

Being insulted by my tutor isn’t a new thing for me, but I’m
not taking
his
jabs easily. Maybe
because he seems more interested in pictures of rich kids showing off their
Ferraris and guzzling liquor.

“You know, Rose claimed that you’re some kind of hot-shot
tutor on campus—that you even have a waiting list,” I snap.

“I am. And I do.”

“People actually pay you to ignore them?” I shut my book.
I’ve known Sebastian since I was ten, but I spent more time at the Hale
residence than my own, so
know
is
really up for debate. He has always been into appearances, especially clothes
(which as a fashion designer, Rose values in a friend), and his
ostentatiousness is nothing new.

But I didn’t know he was such a raging dick.

He’s actually
looking
at
me this time. “They pay me for other things.”

Like
sexual
things?
I frown. No, that can’t be right.

Can it?

He sees my brows scrunch in confusion.

“I do have a waiting list,” he says, “but not for tutoring.”

That clarifies nothing. A naked Sebastian pops in my head, getting
propositioned for sex like a gigolo. I withhold the urge to ask if he’s a
hooker. Although it’s there, threatening to be blurted out.

“Then…what?” I mumble. Wow, that took a lot of self-control.

His leg drops from his knee and he leans forward to grab his
leather briefcase. What if he sells sex toys? Okay, doubtful, but he would jump
up ten points in likability for me.

He pulls something heavy out and sets it on my textbook
before zipping his briefcase closed.

These aren’t dildos or vibrators or Ben Wa balls.

It’s paper. Stacks of stapled
paper
with red markings along the margin.
 

They’re old exams.

This is one of those moments where someone hands you a joint
and you have to make a choice to either pass it on or take a puff.

“Isn’t this cheating?” I ask, not touching the papers on my lap.
Fingering one may just corrupt me.

Sebastian slides a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and
slaps the carton on his palm. “Don’t scribble the answers on your hand,” he
says. “Memorize them. That can’t be too difficult for you, can it?”

He twirls a cigarette between two fingers.

“Rose won’t like it if you smoke in here.”

Sebastian arches that one brow again and gives me a look
like
I know Rose better than you
. He
lights the cigarette.

Fine. Rose will do a better job reprimanding him anyway. I
flip through the old exams, most of them marked up with A’s. “What if the
questions are different?”

“You have Dr. Harris,” Sebastian says. “He always recycles
questions from tests. Just be sure to memorize all of them.”

I thumb through the stack. “There must be fifty exams in
here.” How can I memorize
all
of
them?

“They date back ten years. So yeah, there’s a lot.”

I hesitate to use them as a study tool, even though it’s not
outright cheating. “And you can’t actually tutor me?”

He blows a line of smoke towards the ceiling. “You didn’t
just sort-of fail your first two exams, Lily. You
bombed.
Most students would be crying in a corner, and if they had
me as a resource, they’d be riding my—”

“Okay,” I cut him off. And then realize that sounds like I
actually want to ride his… “I mean, never mind.” I shake my head, roasting from
the forehead down.

He wears a crooked smile as he puts the cig to his lips. “To
pass the class, you have to make A’s on the last two tests and the final. I’m
not a miracle worker.”

“Connor Cobalt is,” I mutter under my breath.

He must hear because he says, “Connor thinks he pisses
rainbows, but he’s not that good. And he’s definitely not better than me.” He
leans forward and taps ash in my plastic cup—full with Fizz Life, Fizzle’s new
soda, zero calories and no aspartame. I stare at the soiled drink for a long
while, trying to process what he just did.

But when I turn, I see him tapping more ash into the
porcelain vase on the end table that a friend of Rose’s gifted her from Prague.
“Rose is going to skin you alive.”

He smiles that smarmy smile again. “She’s all growl.”

I’m not so sure about that. When we were kids at a beach
resort, she saw a freckle-faced boy picking on a girl near a water slide. He
called the young girl fat and pointed at her one-piece. Rose intervened and used
some choice language that would make eight-year-olds blush. When the pudgy boy
didn’t respond how she hoped, she grabbed his swim-trunks and yanked them to
his ankles.

After that, I was glad to have my sister on my side. I
never
wanted to cross her. And even as I
think about that story, I realize she would kill
me
if she knew I was even sort of cheating.

But what’s worse, hearing her wrath after I use the tests or
seeing her disappointment by failing out of Princeton? Disappointment can
cripple me. So the former is definitely more appealing.

“Look, Lily,” Sebastian says. “College is all about beating
the system, and the smartest people are the ones who figure that out. You want
to be smart, don’t you?”

For the first time in a while, I have a fighting chance to
do well. “Okay.”

“So you keep those and you memorize hard. I have copies of
them, of course.” He rises and buttons his navy blazer. He wanders around the
living room, bored. “And don’t mention this to Rose. I love her, but she’s
moral to a fault. It’s kind of annoying actually.”

I ignore his last slight. I can’t believe I have to lie to
Rose, but this seems like the right path. I can’t fail more classes. I’ll be in
college until I’m forty.

I set the old exams next to a tall stack of tabloid
magazines on the coffee table. I went out this morning and bought every gossip
mag in the gas station. I checked for my picture, any article, any brief
mention of my addiction. Rose even searched through the newspaper and online
posts, but we both came up blank. Either the blackmailer is stalling or he’s
waiting for another opportune moment to strike.

We don’t even know what he wants yet. He just keeps
threatening.

“So…” I trail off as I watch Sebastian pick up a porcelain
ballerina on the fireplace mantel, checking the underside for the designer or the
authenticity. “If Rose believes you’re actually tutoring me, what do I tell her
when you’re not here on Thursday?”

“I’ll be here, pretending. I can even bring more old exams
for your other classes.” He sets the figurine down. “You copy them, though, and
I’ll make your life a living hell.” His blasé voice makes the warning worse,
somehow.

My phone pings, and I pick it up to check the message. The
sound interests Sebastian enough to saunter over and plop by my side again.

Is Rose home?
–
Connor

Not yet.
I text
back.

Sebastian catches the conversation over my shoulder. He puts
his cigarette to his lips, waiting for the response, but there is none. I’m about
to slip my phone in my pocket, but Sebastian says, “Give that here.” And he
steals the cell from my hands.

I should protest and put up a fight, but his
I’ll make your life a living hell
line
is ringing in my head. He’s kind of scary.

Sebastian types quickly and sends,
Why do you want to know?
He’s too curious, nosy and bored.
 

I left her something
at the gate. I wanted to know if she’s seen it yet.
– Connor

Sebastian snorts. “This is just sad.”

I frown. “Why? He bought her something.” Presents are
sweet
, not sad.

“He’s trying to win her back,” Sebastian says. “They had a
fight, and he wants to see if his gift has cheered her up.”

“Whatever they’re fighting about, she’ll forgive him over time,”
I say with a nod.

Sebastian tosses my phone back. “No she won’t.”

“You can’t know that,” I say, defensive of a couple that I
find destined and beautiful. They belong together the way books fit in a
library. When I needed help, they both dedicated hours to researching sex
addiction. Connor even escorted Rose to therapists, and they pretended to be Lo
and me to find a perfect one. Who would do that, other than people who love me
and people who love each other?

He stands. “She’s listened to my advice since we were
children. She’ll realize that I’m right about Connor, and she’ll toss him aside
like she has every short-term fling.”

I glare. “That’s her
boyfriend.”
Connor isn’t some
fling
. This is
Rose’s first real relationship. Sebastian should want her to be happy.

“And I don’t like him,” he says simply. Sebastian is
egocentric, self-centered and self-absorbed. I suppose Connor has taken his
place in Rose’s life. Sebastian no longer gets to attend all the lavish parties
hosted by the Calloways and peers. She brings Connor instead.

“Their relationship isn’t about what you want,” I say.