Addicted to You

by Colina Brennan

  She rubbed at tired eyes. It was useless. The idea of Leah Carter in a relationship. She had been alone for too long. It wasn’t going to happen.

  For her own good—and Will’s—it was wisest to simply do what she always did and back off, protect herself, not take that chance. Will had already proven, after all, that he couldn’t be trusted.

  She ignored the doubt scratching at the back of her mind, whispering that she hadn’t really given him the chance to prove himself.

  It was only when the cab arrived at her apartment, and she reached for her purse to pay the fare that she realized it wasn’t slung over her shoulder like usual. Her purse wasn’t anywhere on her at all. Which meant that it was still at Will’s apartment where she’d flung it in her haste to get into his bedroom, and then forgotten it in her haste to leave.

  Her purse with her cell phone and her ID and all her personal information.

  Including her address.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Finn looked better. And by ‘better,’ Will meant he didn’t look like he was going to drown himself in a vat of paint.

  From what he could tell of Finn’s now crowded apartment, Finn had taken out his frustration with himself in a more stereotypical way. Stacks of canvases were crammed into every corner of his living and dining rooms. Only a handful of them were blank, some were still wet, and the rest were smeared in places where Finn had tossed them carelessly aside before they could fully dry. Paint spattered the once white walls (his landlord would probably have something to say about that), and Finn himself looked like a walking paint palette after all the colors on it had been smeared together.

  Will perched himself on the arm of the sofa—the only available seating besides the stool Finn was sitting on.

  “You’ve been busy,” Will remarked.

  Finn was still attending classes and going out with him for lunch, so he hadn’t realized until now just how badly his friend was taking what had happened with Kat. He felt like an arse for not realizing sooner. Not that Finn would have ever asked for help.

  “Yup.” Finn shoved a slice of pizza into his mouth and chewed it while mulling over his latest painting.

  “Want to talk about it?” Will offered.

  “What’s to talk about? Kat hates my guts and will never forgive me.”

  “Or,” Will said, “you could try talking to her. You know, most relationships fail because there’s no communication.”

  “You mean like how you didn’t tell your sex addict girl why you were really in therapy and now you’re screwed?”

  Ouch. He hadn’t worked out what he was going to do about that yet.

  After she left his apartment, he had spent the night staring up at his ceiling and wondering how the hell he was going to fix things. She had been furious with him, rightly so, but he wouldn’t accept that as the end. He had never gotten anywhere by giving up. Unfortunately, he didn’t know where to go from here, and the compulsion to do something had begun to fill him with restless energy.

  Without letting the sting of Finn’s words show, he said, “It was just a suggestion. You never know.”

  Finn snorted. “Oh, I know. She’d stab me with a dull knife if she could. Anyway, talking to her again would just be weird. We were never together. Can’t fix something that never existed.”

  “That might make it easier to talk to her actually,” Will said, as he stood to retrieve a slice of pizza. The pizza box sat on top of a stack of still-drying canvases. He moved the box to the floor just in case the drying paint ended up adhering it to the canvas. “Not as awkward.”

  “Her boyfriend kissed me. It’ll be awkward whatever way you spin it.”

  “Fair enough. Remind me why you like her,” he said, returning to his seat on the sofa arm with his greasy lunch.

  Finn sighed and tapped his canvas with the end of his paintbrush. “She’s not the mean bitch everyone thinks she is.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” he said. It was entirely possible Finn was right. After all, Leah was certainly more than the apathetic grump she presented herself as. “But I was there when she asked if you were insane just for inviting her to eat with us.”

  “Okay, fine, she’s kind of prickly. But trust me. I’ve seen her other side.”

  “When?” Will asked. Finn had always made it sound as though Kat had no idea he even existed.

  “Doesn’t matter now. Anyway, what’s going on with your sex addict problem? Has she gotten in touch yet?” Finn asked. He wiped his greasy fingers on his smock and then swirled his brush through some paint and brandished it against his canvas.

  “No. Even if she wanted to, which I doubt, she wouldn’t know how to find me. She doesn’t know my last name.”

  Finn looked unimpressed. “If she really wanted to find you, she would. She knows I’m playing lead in The Banker. All she’d have to do is show up to one of our performances and ask me for your number.”

  He had a point. But it was a depressing point.

  Will shrugged because it was the only thing he could do. “I was just going to return her purse and give her some time. She’s got enough trust issues as it is without me making it worse. She’s entitled to hate me. I’ll just have to persuade her not to. Eventually.”

  “Dude,” Finn said, fixing him again with a look that suggested Will was daft. “You’ve got her purse. Just … barter it for her time or something.”

  Will’s eyebrows pinched. “Are you suggesting I blackmail her into talking to me?”

  Was this what it had come down to? He had reached a whole new plateau of pathetic.

  “No,” Finn said, sounding defensive but still dodgy. “I’m just saying you should use your resources. And right now, her purse is one of them.”

  Will rubbed his face with the hand not covered in grease. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Hey, desperate times,” Finn said, laughing. He sounded more like his usual self again.

  Will was desperate, but he wouldn’t resort to blackmail.

  But what he could do was contact her and ask to meet in order to return her purse. Then he’d explain himself again—as many times as necessary—and ask her forgiveness.

  He made his way through the maze of canvases into the kitchen to wash his hands. Then he returned to the living room and dug into his backpack for Leah’s purse. Going through its contents, even if it was just to find her contact information, still felt like a violation of her privacy so he did it quickly.

  He found her ID tucked into a slim, red wallet. Holding it up, he read her information. Her last name was Carter, and she lived in one of the suburbs surrounding the city. Armed with her full name, he opened up his laptop and looked her up under the REU student directory to find her email address.

  With a glance at Finn, who gave him an expectant look over the edge of his canvas, Will opened up a blank email. He paused, debating how to word the subject line so that she wouldn’t see his name and immediately trash his email without reading it. Writing an email had never been this nerve-wracking.

  “You should pretend you’re looking to get some website stuff done,” Finn suggested, apparently seeing Will’s dilemma.

  “Stop suggesting I deceive her. That’s what got me into this mess in the first place.”

  “So you’re just going to hope for the best then?”

  Hope was all well and good, but it wouldn’t get him what he wanted. He had never lived by hope. If he had, he’d probably still be in Glasgow. If he wanted Leah to forgive him, he’d have to take action and earn it.

  At first, he typed into the subject line: ‘I have your purse.’ But then he realized it sounded like the beginning of a ransom note. So he settled for simply: ‘Please read.’

  Subject: Please read

  Leah,

  You left your purse at my apartment the other night, and I’d like the chance to return it in person. When you’re available, could we meet somewhere—

  With Finn’s suggestion to use his resources echo
ing in his ears, Will deleted ‘somewhere’ and instead typed:

  —at Vitale’s to talk? (Do you like Italian?) There are things I’d like to say that I’d rather not put into an email.

  “Like ‘let’s not have sex’?” Finn asked.

  He looked up to find his friend had left his station at the easel and was now hovering over Will’s shoulder, reading his email. Will elbowed him, and Finn laughed, backing off. He ended the email with:

  Please forgive me. Will.

  He spent a good minute debating on whether to send it. Chances were high Leah would still delete it anyway. After another few seconds, he saved it as a draft and then closed it. An email felt too impersonal. Leah’s ID also had her address on it. It would be better to go see her in person.

  A part of him knew that he ought to just find out where she worked on campus, drop her purse off with her boss, and reconcile himself with her anger and distrust.

  But he sort of had the feeling that Leah might not be completely against seeing him again.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Leah barely slept for the third night in a row. She rolled out of bed, bleary and delirious and cursing the blue-eyed boy for refusing to leave her thoughts alone. It was now Sunday. She had expected him to contact her by now. What if he hadn’t even noticed her purse yet? What if by the time he did notice it, she might have convinced herself (again) that she didn’t want to see him?

  She was very good at convincing herself of things.

  Her anger over the whole situation had shifted now to annoyance, although she had no idea if she was more annoyed with herself or with Will. Will had joined the group under shitty pretenses, all things considered, but she was pretty sure that if his boss wanted to publish anything, the group members would have to be contacted for permission, regardless of the fact it was all anonymous. She couldn’t help but wonder how Will had presented them in his research. Had he taken unbiased observations or had he been secretly judging her from the start?

  Now she understood why, before kissing her at the theater, he’d asked if she meant it when she said she didn’t have a sex addiction. Apparently, he’d been having a moral dilemma.

  His betrayal still stung (God, she hated the word ‘betrayal’; it was so melodramatic). But if he had been telling the truth, then he had already quit the project (although it didn’t excuse his lying-by-omission). And even before confessing, when she’d told him to stop, he’d been willing to call it a night and give her time (respecting a girl’s wishes should have been standard behavior, but it sadly wasn’t in Leah’s experience).

  This caring thing was exhausting. Now she remembered why she’d stopped.

  Helena, ever the early riser, looked up in surprise when Leah stumbled into the kitchen at seven in the morning. With one eye on her scrambled eggs still cooking on the stove, she gave Leah a suspicious nose wrinkle.

  "What on earth—" she began, only to pause when Leah half-grunted, half-snarled in her direction. She brandished her spatula. “Just imagine where I could insert this.”

  Ignoring her, Leah began rummaging through the tiny pantry across from the refrigerator. The narrow space made it so that she could never have both the pantry door and the fridge open at the same time. She pulled a large mixing bowl out of a cupboard and began filling it with items from the pantry. Flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, and a few other things before carrying her items out to the dining room table.

  Since she no longer had her journal, baking was the next best way to distract herself. And brownies sounded perfect right now. She returned to the kitchen for eggs, butter, and her measuring cups. She paused to preheat the oven on her way back into the dining room.

  Helena observed her in silence. Then she switched off the stove, slid her scrambled eggs onto a plate, and joined Leah at the table. “So I take it you’ve seen it.”

  Leah finished dumping sugar into the mixing bowl before asking, “Seen what?”

  “You know, the column.”

  She gave Helena a baffled look. “What column?” She looked around, half-expecting a giant beam to have appeared overnight in their apartment.

  “The newspaper column,” Helena said, sounding exasperated.

  “Oh. I knew that.” She dropped two sticks of butter into the sugar and began mashing them together with a whisk. Damn burglar had taken her stand mixer. “And no, I haven’t seen it. What are you talking about?”

  Helena took her time chewing a mouthful of eggs and washing it down with milk. It was annoying that she knew precisely how to time her delays—just long enough to annoy Leah but not before she lost interest and no longer cared about the answer. Leah rolled at her eyes at Helena’s baiting and finished mixing her wet ingredients.

  “There was an editorial in the University newspaper on Friday,” Helena said. “Word’s out that there’s a student attending a program for sex addicts.”

  “Two students,” Leah said as she went to get a second bowl for her dry ingredients.

  Helena lifted an eyebrow. “Hello? Don’t you care that they might find out—” She stopped, shook her head, and resumed poking at her eggs. “What am I saying? Of course you don’t care. How did they find out anyway?”

  Leah shrugged. She was never going back to those meetings anyway, so if anyone asked, denial would be the name of the game. “Maybe someone saw me leaving the church and got curious. Or maybe someone overheard Will’s friend when he announced my problem to the entire theater. What else did it say?”

  “Just that they think it’s someone in the arts.”

  “Well, then it must have been at the theater. No worries. I’m humanities.” She whisked together the dry ingredients and then began gradually stirring them into the other bowl. A white tuft of flour shot out in Helena’s direction.

  Helena flapped her hand through the air, grimacing. “You’re going to get flour in my breakfast.”

  “At least it’s tasty flour,” she said, stirring in earnest now to smooth out the batter. This was actually kind of relaxing. Maybe she didn’t need a new stand mixer.

  “Well, if you’re not upset about the column, then what’s wrong with you?” Helena asked, confused. “You’ve been downright morose for the last couple days.”

  Leah frowned at that. “I haven’t been morose. Where do you learn these words? I’m taking away your dictionary.”

  Helena rolled her eyes. “For you, it’s morose. And you’re making brownies.”

  “What’s your point?” She returned to the kitchen again to get the baking pan.

  “Brownies are your comfort food. Now tell me what’s going on.”

  Resigned, Leah told her.

  And passionately resented the huge grin on Helena’s face when she was finished.

  “So, let's get this clear,” Helena said, smirking. “Despite the fact that you have done nothing but self-sabotage yourself with every guy you’ve ever met, he still seems to want you.”

  “I don’t self-sab—”

  “And you, uncharacteristically, have forgiven him for lying to you—keeping in mind the only thing he lied about was being a sex addict, which frankly, I’d be relieved about if I were you—

  “He was researching—”

  “It’s anonymous! Now what was I saying? Oh yeah, you’ve forgiven him even though it took you six months to forgive me that time I scratched your CD—”

  “I haven’t forgiven him,” she said, but Helena continued to ignore her protests.

  “And then you ‘accidentally’ left your contact details at his apartment when you stormed out in what I can only imagine was the most dramatic hissy fit in the history of everything. Am I right?”

  Leah tried to glare her into the wall. She had actually made those bunny-ear air quotes when she said ‘accidentally.’

  “Are you suggesting that I subconsciously left my purse at his apartment on purpose?” she asked, returning her baking supplies to the pantry a bit more forcefully than necessary.

  “Well, yo
u did, didn't you?”

  “No!”

  “How could you have made it all the way home without realizing you didn’t have your purse?”

  Leah sat down and opened her mouth—and then shut it again. Damn it.

  “Ha!” Helena cackled, waving her fork with all the maniacal energy of an animated sea sponge. “Leah's in love! Leah's in love! Oh my God, break out the bubbly and check the sky for raining fire.”

  “What are you, nine?”

  Helena leaned across the table, beaming and not the least intimidated by Leah’s ‘the Death Star was a minor complication compared to my retribution’ glare. “Leah's so in love that she can't sleep even though most mornings, I have to drag her out of bed by her hair so that she won't be late for class."

  At which point, for the second time in three days, Leah stormed out.

  Helena shouted after her. “Don’t forget about your brownies!”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The address on Leah’s driver’s license matched the mailbox that marked the entrance to a long gravel path. Will followed the path up to a pair of dilapidated gates and a mansion bigger than some of the University buildings. His brows rose at the sight. Leah hadn’t been kidding when she said her parents had come from money. Care of the place had clearly been neglected for a while, but it was still grander than any home he had ever been in.

  He parked his car and then stepped out to examine the lock on the gates. A rusty metal interface sat in the brick wall alongside the left gate. Since there was only one button beneath a broken monitor, Will pushed it and hoped it still worked.

  He was in luck because a moment later, the speaker beneath the broken monitor crackled to life and a familiar voice asked, “Who is it?”

  Will smiled. “Hey Elijah. It’s Will. We met at the party last weekend. Can I come in?”