Teach Me To Live (Teach Me - Book One) (4 page)

Maybe I really was more locked in my own mind than I realized. The thought was chilling.

“Do you like it?” Mom asked nervously. Her brow was creased and her voice was high-pitched. I knew that sound only happened when she was uneasy, but they didn’t need my consent to redo the pool house.

Forcing a smile to my face, I assured. “It’s beautiful, Mom.”

I turned back to the new space before me, taking it all in. The living area and kitchen were one open space. Along the far wall, directly opposite the entrance, stood a set of glass double doors. Green curtains on the inside of the door covered the glass, but I knew a bedroom with a lavish ensuite was sprawled on the other side. The kitchen was white with a speckled beige quartz countertop. The glass cabinets displayed a beautiful set of spa green dishes.

In the living room, there was a beige leather couch artfully situated between two green suede statement chairs. A green shag rug sat in the center of the living room, starkly contrasting with the mocha hardwood, yet still tying the entire room together.

Obviously, they’d hired an interior decorator too. Stunned, I turned back to face my parent’s. “It’s really nice. You guys did great.”

“I take it you like it?” Dad asked cautiously. Beneath his caution there was excitement that confounded me.

“I do,” I nodded, growing more and more confused by the second.

“It’s yours!” Mom announced bluntly. It was as though the words had literally forced themselves into the artful space surrounding us.

Startled, I leaned forward slightly as though that might help me understand. “Mine?”

Dad nodded. “Yours, kiddo.”

“Mine.” I repeated under my breath as I took in the space with a new light. “Seriously?”

Dad grinned proudly. “If you want it, it’s yours.”

“I do!” I smiled, and this one was real. For the first time in a long time, I was smiling, not because I was expected to, but because I couldn’t deny the swell of happiness. “Thank you.”

Mom giggled as she claimed the space between us to tug me into her embrace. “You’ve seemed so tense lately, Madison,” she spoke into my hair, but I knew the words weren’t private. “We’re hoping this will give you some of the freedom you’re aching for, dear.”

“I appreciate it,” my reply was one of truth. I didn’t realize how suffocated I felt in the house, in my childhood bedroom, until this moment of tethered freedom.

Yes, technically, I was still under my parent’s roof. Technically, they still held the reins of my destiny, but at least I could feel that I held some ounce of freedom. At least I could pretend that I was a normal high school graduate who was taking the next step in her life, and this was my new apartment in a not so expensive part of town. At least when I closed my eyes, the princess pink of my roof wouldn’t flash behind my lids.

Maybe, just maybe, with a little air to breathe my anxiety would dim. Just maybe I might wake in the morning without feeling the growing rhythm of my unsteady pulse.

If I said I hadn’t thought of the coffee shop girl, at least once a day, for the last eight days, I’d be lying. If I claimed to have not spent what felt like a mini fortune on five-dollar cups of coffee, multiple times a day, in hopes that I might run into her, I would be lying. Again.

When I’d left her that day I’d been certain she was all kinds of wrong for me. She had a darkness that any sane person would fear. In all reality, I wasn’t all that sane. I liked the idea of testing fate, pushing boundaries, and stretching the elastic band of life in wait to see how far I could go until it snapped.

It wasn’t that I was trying to end my life before my time. It was that I was trying to milk my days of every ounce of life they had to offer. What else did one do when they’d already reached their date of expiration?

Shaking the thought from my mind I swung my leg over my bike before pulling my helmet from my head. Giving my head a good shake of the hair Mom claimed was too long, I moved toward the door of the coffee shop. Seriously, if I kept up this habit of signature coffee I’d need to win the fucking lottery.

Why I hadn’t gotten her phone number instead of giving her mine, I had no clue. What if she smudged the ink and lost a digit? Would she stalk the coffee house like I was with the hope she’d run into me, like I hoped every day that I’d run into her?

And why the hell was I so adamant on making her a part of my life? What did I really have to offer her besides a new look on the days ahead?

Running a hand through my mess of long dark hair I sidled up to the counter. A pretty little blonde barista smiled shyly at me in recognition and I let my lips curl in a silent hello. I had a feeling she was waiting for me to ask her out or even just ask her anything, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t toy with people’s emotions. I wasn’t that guy. My brother was that guy and rather than doing the heart breaking, I let the devious side of myself live vicariously through him.

“You’re back,” the barista sang. My eyes lowered to the nametag clipped onto her apron. Sarah.

Sarah was the kind of light and fun I needed in my life. She was the kind of bubbly laughter I should be spending my time with. But the thought alone made my heart lurch in some unfamiliar feeling of helplessness. I didn’t want to spend my time with Sarah. I wanted to spend the ticking of my second hand with the beautiful girl whose dark eyes looked up at me with pleading I had a feeling even she hadn’t understood.

But shit, it’d been eight days. If she were going to contact me she would have done it already, right?

Sarah spoke again. She leaned into the counter coming closer to me. “What are you having this time, Mr. Mysterious?”

I startled. That was a new one. I’d gotten dare devil, adrenaline junkie and even bat-shit crazy. But I’d never been called anything in the realm of mysterious. I was an open book, addicted to life. To say this new accusation didn’t surprise me was a load of bull. “Mr. Mysterious?”

She shrugged, looking up at me through her lashes. “You never order the same thing. I’d say that makes you mysterious.”

I cocked my head, chewing over this newfound accusation. I could see where she was coming from. “Why order the same thing twice?”

“Because you like it,” she shrugged. Confusion painted her expression as she asked, “Why else?”

“What if I like something new better?” I asked the question I asked so many times, mostly to myself, when I contemplated ordering or doing the same thing twice. It was safe to say I avoided routine as though it were the plague. “I’ll never know if I like something more if I keep ordering the same thing, will I?”

Sarah narrowed her eyes slightly. Under her breath she mumbled, “You’re one of those guys.”

I raised a brow. I was surprised she’d labeled me so quickly. And a second time at that. “One of what guys?”

“The kind of guy who is always looking for more. Better. New.” She smirked, but it wasn’t the happy kind of smirk. “You’re a player. You’re one of those guys who think the world will fall at your feet because you’re hot. You think there’s always something better,
someone
better, so you never settle.”

This chick’s nuts.
Or she’s been screwed by one of these so-called guys.

Shaking my head, I explained carefully. “No, I just think the world has too many flavors of coffee to explore to tie myself down to just one kind.” Just to make sure she understood, I stressed. “And I’m talking about flavors of coffee, here. I’m not talking about women or whatever else you’re going to read into my words.”

She cocked her head; clearly not knowing what to think of me or which new judgment she wanted to pass. When she spoke, her words sounded on a sigh. “What flavor are you planning to explore today?”

“I’m thinking the iced honey swirl mocha. Medium.”

She nodded, typing my order into the till as I handed her another five-dollar bill. I thought our conversation was finished, but the sound of an almost mousey question flowed from her lips. “What happens when you’ve tried them all?”

“I move on,” I stated simply, honestly. Her lips twitched.

I’d pissed her off, but I just didn’t care. In the last few years I’d made it my mission to live my life the way I wanted to live it. I didn’t bother worrying myself with possibilities of pissing people off. I had no intention on ever living that way again.

“Must be nice to be you.”

She had no idea.
“Life’s what you make of it.”

She opened her mouth to say only God knows what when my phone called loudly for my attention. Holding up a finger I tugged my phone from my pocket. I didn’t recognize the number and as I lifted the phone to my ear, my breath came in quick short waves.

“Hello.”

“Hi,”
It was her.
I’d know that voice anywhere. “Um, I—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called.”

“Wait!” I commanded with more force than I’d intended. “Don’t hang up.”

“Kay,” she breathed raggedly into the receiver. My gut clenched at the possibility that she was
crying?
“I’m not hanging up.”

“You all right?” I asked.

“You said,” she sniffled. Definitely crying. My hand fisted and I felt surprise bloom at the involuntary reaction my body displayed at the simple sound of her distress. I wanted to protect her from whatever it was that made her cry. “You said to call you if—if I wanted to—l-live.”

“I did,” I agreed. I had said that. And, I meant it. Every. Single. Word.

“I don’t know how.”

“What?” I felt my entire body stiffen as I listened to the desperation weave its tangled web through her words.

“Will you—c-can you show me?”

“How to live?” Never in my life had I expected someone to plead for me, of all people, to show them how to live.

“Please,” she whispered. “You said if I ever wanted to start living and not just existing, that all I had to do was call you. I’m calling you now and I’m asking . . .” she was definitely babbling now. Her stressed nerves sounded loudly in her every word. “Can you please teach me to live?”

“Where are you?”

“At home.”

“Where is home?”

“Um,”

I sighed. She didn’t want to tell me. I was a complete stranger; of course, she didn’t want to tell me where home was. I could be crazy. She didn’t know. But still, she’d called me. “How long will it take you to get to the coffee house?”

“Twenty minutes,” she replied softly, hesitantly.

“I’ll be waiting.”

“You will?” She sounded so damned surprised. I wondered what she’d think if she knew I’d been visiting the coffee house every single day in hopes that I’d run into her again.

“Promise, sweetheart,” I don’t know what possessed me to call her sweet. She really was anything but sweet. She had a poisonous bite and a glint in her eyes that rivaled Medusa’s curse of turning men to stone. But she called to me. And life was just too fucking short to deny a calling.

“Okay.”

“Wear jeans.”

“Why?” She squeaked and I felt my lips curl at the innocence in her voice.

“Just trust me.”

I listened to the trembling inhalation of her breath and I felt a burning need to be the calm that steadied her fears. When she spoke again her words impacted me. They stole my breath and probably even a little bit of my heart. “I’ve never been blind. But trusting you feels kind of like I’m giving up my sight. Without my sight all my defenses are gone. I hope you understand what trusting in you takes for me—from me.”

I didn’t have time to reply before the line went dead.