Over You

by Cole, Stevie J.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wasn’t with you.”

  He stopped in the middle of the walkway and grabbed my face, pressing his lips against mine in a hard kiss. “I’m sorry I did this to us.”

  “I’m sorry I left.”

  His fingers laced through mine, and suddenly, everything seemed right.

  I’d told myself I would be okay without him. That leaving him was the right choice, and I had to believe those things just to get out of bed those first few months. Convincing ourselves that we’re right is human nature, but I was learning, it was fate’s job to convince us when we’re wrong.

  When we finally made it to the top of the hill, I noticed the tiny chain barrier enclosing the formation. Two feet from the ground and nothing more than a single chain drooped between metal post would keep me from touching the rocks. And that caused a twinge of disappointment to shoot through me. I wanted to touch them for the sheer fact that it gave me a connection to the past. It was in some way, freezing time for a moment.

  Spencer released my hand and approached the tiny chain divider. He nudged it with his shoe. “That’s bullshit.” Staring straight ahead, he shoved his fingers in his pocket. “How are you supposed to touch them?”

  “You aren’t.”

  “That’s what your bucket list thing was, right? To touch the rocks because they’re older than dirt?”

  I bit at my lip. He hadn’t forgotten.

  Spencer’s gaze went from the chain to the rocks and back. He bumped the rope again, and a devious smirk curled his lip. That look of mischief was the same he had given me before we trespassed to ride horses. The same one he had given me when he talked me into jumping off the Santa Monica Pier—naked—at three a.m. on my twenty-first birthday. It was identical to the one that had crossed his face when he told me to move in with him. That smirk always precluded a bad idea that was good.

  I pointed to the sign with a red line over a walking stick figure. “That says, ‘Do not cross the barrier.’”

  “Since when have I followed instructions, babe?” He motioned his chin toward the stones. “Come on.”

  “No.”

  “You afraid to break the rules?” He straddled the chain, then looked around. “No one’s even out here except tourists.”

  When I shook my head, he flapped his arms and clucked like a chicken. People stared.

  “You go ahead. I’ll stand here and be sure to take your picture when you get arrested.”

  “Arrested?” His head dropped back on a laugh. “For stepping over a chain?”

  “The sign warns against it.”

  “I can pretend I don’t speak English, which means I can’t read English.”

  “There’s a stick figure with a red line through it.”

  He gave a flippant wave and stepped back onto the sidewalk, sulking as he wrapped an arm around me. “You never were a rebel.”

  “And you only pretend to be one.”

  He blew an arrogant snort. “Really?”

  That was evidently the wrong thing to say because he scooped me into his arms and hopped right over the barrier. “Spencer!” I slapped at his arm. “Put me down.”

  “Patience, babe.”

  I kicked my legs. He laughed. I pinched him. He laughed harder.

  “You’re squirrely, you know it?”

  I envisioned flashing lights and cops running after us, blowing whistles. “If I go to jail. . .”

  “No one is going to jail.” He spun us around. A swirl of gray and green whirled past. “See? No one’s coming.”

  He was right; however, the tourists who chose to obey the signs stood behind the chain, pointing and snapping pictures.

  “You know this is going to get on the internet.”

  “The internet is a wasteland of useless shit and cat memes. Of course it’ll go on there.” He placed my feet to the ground in the shadow of the massive rocks.

  I craned my neck back in amazement at their sheer size. Spencer took my hand and pressed it between the cold stone and his warm palm.

  I closed my eyes with a smile. It may have seemed silly to other people, but that moment was one I’d dreamed of since I was a little girl. Being dwarfed by rocks that held secrets no one knew. Touching one of the Wonders of the World, and feeling the energy of thousands of years’ worth of hands. “Five years ago, I would have never thought this would be doable.”

  “I’ll make everything possible for you, Georgia Anne.”

  His fingers threaded through mine. He inched toward my face. My back hit the rock when his lips met my mouth. I didn’t care that people were most likely snapping pictures. I didn’t care if my name was splattered throughout tabloids. I only cared that he was trying and that our story hadn’t ended.

  “Oi!” A whistle sounded. “You can’t go over the barrier.”

  My pulse skyrocketed.

  A wide grin shaped Spencer’s face when he pulled away. “Come on, Rebel.” He took my hand and led me through the grass toward the path.

  One of the workers came jogging through the crowded walkway, a whistle gripped between his lips while he clutched his side. “Oi!”

  Spencer fought a laugh when the man in uniform stopped in front of us. “You can’t do that.” He pointed at our feet clearly on the wrong side of the barrier.

  “No Como say yessay. Merci.”

  The man took the whistle from his mouth. His brow wrinkled. “Come again?”

  “Issi missi rocko day taco.” Spencer lifted me over the chain, then pointed at the rocks as he stepped over. “Rocko taco.” He tapped the chain with the toe of his show. “No say como loco Diego.”

  I cupped a hand to my mouth and faked a cough to stifle the laugh building in my chest. Spencer kissed my forehead and motioned back at the rocks. “Benefito. Perfectico. Magnifico.” He shook the confused man’s hand. “Uh. Gracias.”

  And then his arm was around my waist, turning me away.

  “You realize you said thank you in both French and Spanish,” I said as we walked off.

  “Look at me being all cultured and shit.”

  “Well, before you go getting all cocky, the rest of it was gibberish.”

  Spencer glanced over his shoulder at the worker who remained completely stunned in the middle of the walkway. “But, did it work? Did you touch the rocks? And even better yet, get slammed against them in a passionate kiss?”

  “I hate you.”

  “Those, my dear Rapunzel, are lies of the worst kind.

  19

  Spencer

  Five days with Georgia. She was good at distracting me. Keeping me busy when my mind wandered and the cravings set in.

  Five days of promises. Although I’d thought about it every hour on the hour, I hadn’t broken my promise. Each time I denied that yearning, I felt a little more hope bud in my chest. Maybe I could do this.

  Five days clean. And I was puking my guts up.

  “Shit.” I spat in the toilet and fell back on my ass. I expected the shakes and the mood swings. I didn’t expect to puke. Coke typically doesn’t make you sick.

  Alcohol, however, does.

  I pushed away from the toilet and rested my head against the wall.

  Georgia tapped on the door. “Are you okay?”

  It was a simple question, but it grated my nerves. My temper spiked “Yes. Fuck. Leave me alone.” The words left my lips, and I hurled again.

  Detoxing conjured up a pendulum of mood swings that made those roots of self-hatred dig a little deeper. It dredged to the surface the worst version of Spencer Hailstorm, and there was little controlling it. There was rarely a warning.

  One minute, I’d be loving; the next minute, my brain would short-circuit. Sparks would fly from my ears, and I’d end up spewing lines that only came from grade-A assholes. I gripped the toilet seat, my stomach churning and my mouth watering with hot spit. That devil on my shoulder tugged at my ear. If she loved you unconditionally, you wouldn’t be bent over a toilet. True love
has no stipulations.

  She tried the handle. “Why did you lock the door?”

  “Because I don’t want you watching me puke. Christ!”

  “I’ve seen you puke a hundred times.”

  “This is different.”

  Watching me hurl from one too many drinks or bad sushi from Mr. Chang’s Buffet Palace was the result of one bad decision. This—this was the result of a million bad decisions. It made me look weak and pathetic, and I didn’t want her to see me that way. I didn’t want her listening either. “Just let me be sick.” I felt another bout of nauseous coming on. “Get away from the door, dammit.” My voice boomed from the walls.

  I managed a strangled, “I’m sorry” before I grabbed the porcelain seat again. With every heave, I wanted to down something or snort something just to make it stop. The sicker I felt, the angrier I grew. I blamed Jag. I blamed the label. I blamed my problem on losing the baby. Sure, those were all factors, reasons I sought a high, but this shitshow was no one’s fault but my own.

  I flushed again, then back to the cold wall I went. “You’re a fucking loser.” I butted the heel of my palm against my forehead.

  I sat in the bathroom until the shakes went away and the sensation that I may pass out subsided. Then I washed my face and brushed my teeth, and I tried my damnedest not to look like a piece of shit when I walked into the hallway.

  I’d spent the last five days in hell with tiny glimpses of heaven.

  I snagged my wallet from the dresser on my way to the bed where Georgia sat with her book, and I pulled out one of the gum wrappers that had been shoved in there long ago. When I flopped down beside her, she looked up. I dropped the foil to the page of her novel. “I’m not making excuses, but when it gets ugly, just know I don’t mean it.”

  She picked up the crumpled piece of foil. For six months, I woke in the middle of the night and whispered I love you to no one, hoping you’d come home.

  I pulled more from my wallet and placed them on the bedsheet. “Just read those if I get shitty. Read those, and know that’s how I feel.”

  Her teeth went to work on her lip—a tell-tale sign she was fighting tears. “You kept writing them?”

  “Every day.”

  Sure, I had paper. I could have kept a diary, but it wouldn’t have been the same. The first time we had a fight over something stupid, she had locked me out of our bedroom. I grabbed the wrapper balled up in my jean pocket and wrote: I’m a dick who doesn’t deserve you. But I’m a dick who’s madly in love with you. I slid it beneath the door, and ever since, it had been our thing.

  “Why?” She choked back a sob.

  “Because I love you.”

  “No. Why did we let ourselves fall apart?” She collapsed to my chest, clutching my shirt.

  That was a question I didn’t have an answer to, so I instead of trying to give her an explanation, I pulled her to me and kissed her like she was water and I was the desert.

  An hour later, the crumpled sheets had come loose from the corners of the mattress. Rain pelted the roof, creating a dreamer’s lull, and I laid with Georgia on my chest—skin to skin—singing “Us Against the World” while I combed thru her soft hair.

  Our eyes locked while she traced a familiar path across my chest. The shakes, the sweats, the hell of detox had left me for the moment, and I soaked up every bit of her—of us. Of the heaven that was once my normal.

  I stopped singing. “How long can I stay?” I asked.

  “Forever.” Her fingers swept my jaw. “Keep singing.”

  And I did exactly as she asked.

  Georgia twirled a strand of my hair around her finger. “Does the label still make you go to Travis to get your hair trimmed?”

  Travis was my personal stylist assigned to me be Devil’s Side to ensure my hair was kept up to the brand standard. It was ridiculous. “Yep. Good old Travis.”

  “It’s crazy how much of your life they dictate.”

  They dictated too much of it. I sang a few more bars, thinking about the slow metamorphosis I’d undergone over the past few years. I felt like the only thing that hadn’t changed were my Vans and Georgia Anne. And I wanted the label-created version of me dead.

  I stopped singing and inhaled. “Do you have any scissors?”

  “Why?” Her eyes tapered.

  “This.” I fisted a handful of my ridiculous mane. “Isn’t the Spencer I want to be.”

  “You keep screwing around, the label will drop you.”

  “I don’t care.” I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress, grabbed my boxers from the floor, and pulled them on. “Where are your scissors.”

  “The nightstand.”

  I rummaged through the drawer and took the pair of shears shaped like the Eiffel Tower. Placing the blades in my palm, I held them out to Georgia. “Please.”

  She slipped into her robe before taking them from my grasp, and I followed her to the bathroom. The fluorescent light above the vanity flickered to life. I gripped the edge of the sink and stared at my reflection. The man in the mirror was never who I wanted to be. He was chaos, and the woman beside him was heaven.

  There was no room for chaos in heaven. “Cut it,” I said.

  Georgia stared back at me in the mirror. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Cut it all off.”

  Inhaling, she took a strand of blonde hair and snipped. The trimmings scattered the vanity.

  Her uncertain gaze met mine again when she made the next cut. She clipped until hair filled the sink and covered the floor, until I looked like an older version of the guy that climbed onto her roof and took her away from her shitty life. Not threw her into one.

  Sinners sought baptism and absolution, and maybe that’s what this act symbolized—a cleansing, me falling at the altar of her love and begging to be atoned.

  I didn’t want to look in the mirror and see the man who’d let her down, and I didn’t want her to look at me and remember who that man was.

  The next morning, I woke without shakes or sweats.

  The first thought I had was of Georgia. Of the smell of fried meat that crept underneath the door—not of how great a line would be. I ran my hand through my short hair, and I felt a sense of freedom. Even if the road to recovery could wrap around the world twice and I was only two steps in, for the first time in forever, I felt hope. And hope did a hell of a lot.

  I got dressed and started downstairs. A sudden, loud cackle echoed up the stairwell. “She’s a nutter!”

  I rounded the corner to the living room. Georgia flipped something in the skillet while Lottie stood at the counter with her back to the doorway.

  “I’m gobsmacked. I just—” Lottie spun around, blinking twice when her gaze landed on me—or more specifically—my hair. “Whoa. Where’d the sexy mop go?”

  I scrubbed a hand through my bedhead and padded toward the stove. “In the bathroom trash.”

  “Why would you toss it? Georgia! You could make a killing selling it on the—” Her brow twitched, and she faked a cough. “What I meant to say was that you’re even sexier with short hair.”

  Georgia placed a palm to my chest when I gave her a kiss. “Mm. Morning breath.”

  “You like it.” Grabbing her hips, I slammed my mouth over hers again.

  “Sick.” Lottie’s lip curled. “You’re just a normal, nasty bloke, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I grabbed a glass from the drying rack and placed it under the tap.

  Lottie took a carton of eggs from the fridge. “As I was saying before Mr. Morning Breath waltzed in here. . . Tom called me on my way back from Glastonbury this morning and told me he had the cops called on her.”

  “Finally. I’m glad he did it before she killed him.”

  “Who got arrested?” I asked like I had any idea about any of these people aside from the dickdribble that was trying to tie one on with Georgia.

  Lottie cracked an egg over the pan before she glanced at me. “Tom’s girl—well, ex-girlfriend.”
<
br />   “Tom?” I took a sip of water. “The guy that was trying to kiss you the other day?”

  “Don’t start.” Georgia glared at me.

  Lottie gasped. “Tell me you whacked him one, Spencer?”

  “Lottie!” Georgia frowned.

  “Look, I like Tom, but I’m all for a little brawl in the name of love.” Lottie was the first girl I thought may be able to give Nash a run for his money.

  “I’m just saying.” I held up a hand. “I know when a man’s trying to come on to my girl. And he was absolutely trying to get in your pants, Georgia Anne.”

  Lottie shrugged a he’s-not-wrong-shoulder before tossing the shells in the trashcan.

  I pointed at her. “See!”

  “And can I just say.” Lottie stepped between Georgia and I with a hand to her heart. “That it’s cute that you call her Georgia Anne.”

  Georgia placed the sausages onto a plate. “He dropped me off because his psycho ex slashed my tires.”

  “And she flattened your tires because. . . ”

  “Because she’s crazy.”

  “Nope because even psycho girl knows Tom wants to screw you.” I flashed a smart-ass grin. “But, sounds like they’re perfect for each other.”

  Lottie chuckled and patted my back. “I like you.”

  After we’d eaten, I helped Georgia and Lottie clean up the kitchen.

  Lottie tossed the dishtowel onto the counter and placed a hand on her hip while she gave me a good stare-down. “You’re weak. And you offend my British sensibilities.”

  “Because I spit the curdled blood out?”

  “It’s blood sausage, and it’s high in iron.”

  “High in fucking sickness.”

  “There you go, offending my sensibilities again.” She glanced at Georgia. “It’s been lovely, but I’ve got to wash the stench of Glastonbury off and go to the call center for my shift.”

  “Okay, babes.” Georgia flung soapy water from her fingers before she leaned down by the sink to look out the window. “It’s nice out, you want to go to the beach later? Watch the sunset like we used to?”

  “They have beaches in England?”

  “Yeah.” She laughed. “It’s an island, you know.”