now, not after, after you heal from that pain. I’ll never be the same.
Trust. The word falls easy from my lips. Trust me, need me, use
me. You call to me. Your eyes hide secrets I want to know. Yet I keep
myself from asking, afraid that the answers are too close to home.
Slowly, I catch myself from falling, faster. I want to be with you
now, not after, after you heal from that pain. I’ll never be the same.”
I played it in a minor key, giving it a folksy feel. I figured if I
added some electronic sound effects, it would be amazing.
I looked over the words and cringed. I’d forgotten how
emotional writing was, how it seemed to reflect exactly what was
on my mind and damn the consequences. The words taunted me as
I put the paper down and finished the song.
I set up GarageBand and recorded it, then attached it to an
email for Alec.
My phone rang five minutes later.
“Dude,” Alec said on the other end. “What was that?”
“A song?” I swallowed. Crap, I thought he would like it.
“You made Nat cry.”
“It wasn’t about her!” I argued. “I just wrote it and —”
“Chill.” Alec laughed. “She cried because it was so beautiful,
and because she gets emotional when she’s proud. Right, babe?”
I heard Nat say a dirty word and laughed.
“She’s mad at me for telling you.” Alec chuckled into the
phone. “Can we record that for the album?”
I thought about it for a minute. It was kind of personal, and
it wasn’t even about me, but about her. But it wasn’t as if she
listened to us anyway. “Sure. Yeah, let’s do it.”
“Cool, now write twenty more.”
“While you do what?”
Alec laughed into the receiver and spoke in a low voice. “I
think I’ll have Nat keep me occupied.”
“And this conversation is over.” I rolled my eyes. “Later,
brother.”
“Bye.”
It was three in the morning before I found my bed, and also
the first time in the last year that I didn’t crave something to numb
my feelings.
I felt raw. Exposed. I’d forgotten how much I liked it. Liked
to actually feel, as bad as it hurt. It was real, it was life. And I was
finally living.
Chapter Seven
Alyssa
I ran the dishrag over the counter for the hundredth time,
while trying not to look out the window at Demetri.
“I think it’s clean,” came a voice from behind me. I nearly
jumped out of my skin. With a slight sigh, I jerked away from the
counter and stared at my dad. His expression was a cross between
worry and amusement. At least he didn’t look freaked that I was
going to off myself in the middle of the night. Was that progress?
“What are you doing here?” I asked a little too breathlessly.
Dad’s face broke out into a smile. “I own the place, and I had
it on good authority — your mother’s — that you looked
exhausted, so I was going to give you a few hours to yourself.”
I hated hours to myself. I hated any time to myself, because
that meant my focus was on me, and when my focus was on me, it
was on Brady. And when my focus was on Brady… I just wanted to
cry.
“Um…” My eyes traveled to the window that looked out at
Main Street and Seaside Taffy, our competitors. A few people were
gathering around the corner, and I knew Demetri had probably just
gotten in to work.
“You okay?” Dad asked, though his voice sounded far away.
I kept my eyes focused on Demetri as he took a bow to the
gathering crowd and began tossing taffy out. Idiot. Our business
wasn’t doing horrible, but it’s not like he was helping our sales any.
If people had the choice between Demetri Daniels or a depressed
girl with a permanent scowl, they’d choose Demetri every single
time.
As if he could hear my every thought, Demetri’s head
turned and our eyes locked. At least that’s what it felt like. His stare
was so pensive, my palms began to sweat. Slowly, I sank behind
the counter until it was just my eyes peeking over the edge.
My dad chuckled. “What are we doing?” He joined me by
the counter and seemed to be more curious than alarmed. Great.
Now I looked like a crazy person.
“Uh…” I licked my lips and frantically tried to search for an
excuse. “I dropped the rag.” My fingers released the rag onto the
floor. I offered a small smile.
“You sure you’re doing okay?” Dad felt my forehead. “You
feel hot.”
“She does look hot, doesn’t she?” I knew that irritating,
beautiful, ridiculous voice. I closed my eyes and prayed I was
imagining things.
My dad shot onto his feet and laughed. “You wouldn’t
happen to be the person my daughter’s been staring at for the past
few minutes, would you?”
“Probably not,” came Demetri’s voice. I opened my eyes to
glare. He was staring at me, and then he winked. Crap. “She
doesn’t like rock stars. In fact, she verbally assaulted me yesterday
about working her corner.”
“Alyssa,” Dad scolded.
“Dad,” I said back in a warning voice as I rose to my feet.
“Did you need anything, Demetri?”
His eyes crinkled as he attacked me with one of the most
gorgeous smiles I’d ever seen in real life. “I did… I do.”
Insert long and awkward pause here where my dad looked
between the two of us, chuckled, and walked off. Well, at least he
was laughing. I hadn’t heard his laugh in what felt like years.
“What?” I snapped.
Demetri shrugged. “I saw you staring at me.”
“Did not!” My nostrils flared. “There’s no way you could see
me through the windows from that far away.”
“So you were staring.” Demetri folded his muscled arms
across his chest.
“No.” I swallowed and looked at the ground. Looking
anywhere but at him seemed like a good idea.
“I felt it.” He placed his hands on the counter and leaned
forward so our faces were mere inches apart. “Not that I mind. I
just thought I’d come over and say hi, since you seemed to be
beckoning me over with your lustful glances.”
“Lustful glances?” My head jerked up. I was half-tempted to
bang his head against the counter, but I had spent the entire
morning cleaning up that exact spot where he was leaning. Damn
him.
“Yeah, they look like this.” His heavy-lidded eyes blazed a
hot trail up and down my body as he very thoroughly checked me
out, and then without another word, tucked a piece of fallen hair
behind my ear, and left.
I was still frozen in place when my mom came rushing in.
“Is he still here? Where did he go? Did he talk to you? What was he
like?”
“Mom.” I held up my hands. “Just… don’t.”
She sighed like a teenager and giggled. She’d lost her
freaking mind. “I just love Demetri Daniels, and I don’t believe a
word they say abo
ut his rehab or drugs. He’s just a nice boy
who—”
“—is doing community service.” I pointed across the street
and sighed. “He’s…” I couldn’t think of the right word, so I just
shrugged and said, “Cocky.”
Mom, clearly not caring that she was scarring me for life,
sighed and watched Demetri cross the street and grab his bucket
from a large guy with a shaved head. Body guard. It had to be.
Demetri continued singing the stupid taffy song and
dancing around the corner like a drunken chicken. And I grabbed
the rag again and pretended to keep cleaning, while out of the
corner of my eye I watched. I hated that he made me feel warm
inside. I hadn’t had that feeling in two years, and I wasn’t about to
let it get the best of me again. It was all his fault. If Demetri hadn’t
spoken to me that first day, if he had just left everything alone, then
I wouldn’t be stripping him naked with my eyes. I wouldn’t be
longing to touch that perfectly sculpted face. Frustrated, I threw the
rag against the counter and stomped off, leaving my mom to watch
him all by herself.
Chapter Eight
Demetri
Four days. I watched her for four days. What kind of stalker
did that make me? I mean she had the ugliest clothes I’d ever seen.
She was so small, she practically swam in them, and I’m sorry, but
there’s a reason guys don’t dig Uggs. They gave her legs no shape,
and I couldn’t figure out if she had really nice ones or cankles, and
then it pissed me off that I was thinking about cankles in the first
place.
Ever since Tuesday when I ran in to the competition’s store
and tried to find any excuse to talk to her, I’d been out of sorts. Not
the out of sorts that just leaves you when you fall asleep at night.
No, the type that had me eating so much taffy that I was convinced
I was going to have ten cavities by the end of the year.
I shook the bucket, but my heart wasn’t in it, not that it had
ever been truly in it, but still. I felt off. Clearly, I needed another
hobby, or friends, or something, because my behavior was
bordering on stalker-ish. Yesterday I’d even gone in her parents’
taffy store and asked about her schedule.
I swear her mom almost fainted.
When she introduced herself, she almost seemed too eager
to get her daughter into my clutches, which really should have
been my first clue that something was off. I mean, unless they lived
under a rock, they knew exactly what I was about. Spoiled rock star
who nearly killed himself in an accident, troubled past, man-whore
of the century, blah, blah, blah.
I’d pasted on my best smile, careful not to give her mom a
stroke, and asked about Alyssa.
All I found out was what I already knew. She worked every
freaking day, just like me, which just reinforced the conclusion I
had come to earlier.
She was lonely.
I asked her mom about friends.
Again, yes, I’m very much aware how creepy I was being,
but I had Bob, that was it. I was desperate for some sort of
companionship, even if said companion wanted to stab me in the
eye.
After no convincing whatsoever, I discovered that Alyssa
had Saturdays off and didn’t often go out with friends.
I could be her friend.
Lame. Maybe that’s how I should start the conversation.
“Hey, Alyssa, I’ve been watching you for the past four days. You
have a pretty face even though your clothes suck. Wanna hang out?
Oh, and by the way, I’m so bored and strung out about not being
able to get high, that if you say no, I just may kill myself.”
Promising.
Clearly, I’d been out of the game for far too long. I couldn’t
even remember how to talk to a normal person.
I kicked the ground and looked across the street again.
Tomorrow was Saturday. Tomorrow I was going to pursue the first
girl I’d pursued since Nat.
And look how well that turned out.
The familiar pang of rejection hit me square in the chest.
Why was I even putting myself out there when I literally had
nothing to offer, but baggage?
Hell if I knew, but damn if I didn’t still want to try.
Chapter Nine
Alyssa
I woke up to someone pounding on my door. With a grunt I
threw off the covers, stumbled out of my bed, and walked
drunkenly toward my bedroom door, opening it with irritation.
“Hi, friend.” Demetri smiled.
I closed the door in his face.
“Is that any way to treat your friends?” He laughed from the
other side.
Closing my eyes didn’t make the problem go away. I was
still in my Seaside High Track t-shirt and old running shorts. I
looked like a little kid. I glanced in the mirror and cringed. My
brown hair was pointed in every which direction, making me look
possessed, and I had giant bags under my eyes.
“Go away!” I yelled.
Silence and then, “No.”
“Demetri.”
“Alyssa.”
Dang, I should have never told him my name. “How do you
know where I live?”
“I followed you.”
“Seriously?”
His laugh made me want to strangle him. “I’m kidding. It’s
my day off, so I went down to the store to grab my three pieces of
taffy and…”
I rolled my eyes.
“Hey, can I finish telling you why I’m here to your face? It’s
weird talking to a door, even weirder when the door has a Justin
Bieber poster staring at me.”
Crap. I forgot about that stupid poster. Brady had put it
there as a joke when I confided in him that I loved Justin Bieber.
After everything happened, I hadn’t the heart to take it down.
Slowly, I pulled open the door. Should have known Demetri
would push past me and make himself right at home. “No really,
come on in. I wasn’t sleeping or anything on my day off.”
“Good.” He took off his leather jacket, revealing a tight tank
top that showed off tattoos down his right arm and across his
collarbone. I tried to pry my eyes away, but I was tired and clearly
needing more oxygen or something in my room.
“They’re just tattoos, Lyssa.”
“Wow.” I chuckled pulling my hands through my tangled
hair. “Already got a nickname, huh?”
“I like it.” He crossed his arms, making his muscles bulge.
I bit my lip and looked away. “So, the reason for my wake-
up call.”
“Oh, babe.” He chuckled. “You haven’t even seen the
beginning of my wake-up calls.”
“I’m not going to even ask.” I threw on a sweatshirt and sat
on the bed cross-legged. “So, the reason for you being here?”
“You’re a cheerleader?” Demetri pointed at the school
sweatshirt. The same one that had Brady’s old football number
splashed across the front. Just another piece of him I couldn’t give
away. Like everything else in my room that had his scent or touch
o
n it.
“Um, I was a cheerleader. Yup.” Talking to Demetri was like
herding cats. One minute he was on-topic, and within seconds he
was changing subjects as if it was completely normal to talk about
taffy and tattoos in the same sentence.
His eyes scanned the sweatshirt. I could tell he was trying to
put pieces of a puzzle together. But I wasn’t up for fixing. I liked
the puzzle pieces scattered, so I tried my best to give him a flirty
smile and touched his arm.
“You were saying?” I urged.
His eyes darted immediately to where my hand touched him
and then back up to me. “Taffy. I had three pieces.”
“What flavors?”
He grinned and pulled out the three wrappers for me to
sniff. With a laugh I took them into my hands and smelled each
one. If I didn’t know he was in rehab, I would think he was either
drunk or high the majority of the time.
“Kahlua, Pineapple, and Rum Punch?”
Demetri howled with laughter and began clapping.
“Seriously. Best party trick ever.”
“Clearly you’ve been to all the wrong parties if you think
sniffing candy wrappers is the way to go.” I rolled my eyes.
“Or just the wrong parties in general.” He shrugged, his
smile gone. I wanted it back and I hated that he was making me
care for him.
“So…” I leaned back against the pillows. “You came all the
way to my house to tell me about your three taffy flavors?”
“Sort of.” He lay down next to me — it was almost too
intimate. The last time I lay down with a guy on the bed… I jolted
up and began pacing in front of him.
He lifted his eyebrows in confusion but kept talking
anyway. “I saw your parents and asked where you were. Weird,
but your mom knew exactly who I was.”
I nodded. “Figures. She has a slight obsession with
Entertainment Tonight. ”
He cringed. “You’d think that would make her want to shoot
me.”
“She likes the bad boy.” I smiled. “So? You asked her where
our house was so you could torture me?”
“Torture?” His dimples killed me. “Is that what’s happening
between us?”
Panic swept through me as I felt my face heat under his
seductive smile. He was the devil. Why couldn’t he bother someone
else? Was he truly that desperate? Couldn’t rock stars pay people to
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