by Piper Lennox
Getting caught up in sexual attraction is as bad as what happened in the restaurant, when I got all emotional and pathetic because he called me interesting. Again.
Both are too risky to entertain. My past with Theo is behind me. It can fuel me; in fact, it should. But it can’t control me.
And fantasies are no better, because they make me think of a not-so-distant future with him—what it will feel like in his bed. In his arms.
There is no future there.
Maybe I should forget the whole thing. This was never a real plan, after all. Just a furious and aching daydream, some kind of self-defense mechanism. I never thought I’d act on it.
But, then again, I never thought I’d get the chance.
Well—now you have. And you took it.
I swipe my hand through the fog until I get a clear view of myself. The girl staring back at me doesn’t have the tears in her eyes I think I feel in mine.
“Finish what you started,” she tells me. And I nod, because I know she’s right.
Yes, Theo Durham broke my heart.
Then he broke the rest of me, my entire life, piece by piece.
But I’m done crying over it. I’m done waiting for a miracle, some magical day when he’ll grow a conscience and seek me out to apologize. Not only do I know it won’t happen, but I don’t even want an apology, anymore.
I want revenge. And by God, I’m going to get it.
Over the next few weeks, Theo Durham will fall in love with me. Completely. Inescapably.
So far gone, he can’t recognize himself anymore.
And then I’m going to shatter whatever he’s got in that chest, until I’ve left him every bit as broken as he once left me.
6
Seven Years Ago
“You’re sure you don’t want to come in?”
Callum yanked up his parking brake and massaged the bridge of his nose. “Positive. I wasn’t invited, first of all. And second, I don’t give a fuck about these guys.” He dropped his hand and swept his eyes over my outfit again, a black skirt with a faded gray tank top. “Since when do you dress like that?”
Since I learned I don’t pull off low-riders, I thought. Anxiety promptly drowned my excitement. Was this outfit okay? Did it look like I was trying too hard?
I tugged my shirt until the rolls on my stomach were hidden, then assured myself the clothes were a good choice. True, they were different than my usual outfit of jeans and tees—but they also highlighted a couple assets I wanted front-and-center tonight.
“This is how everyone dresses.”
“Not you.”
“Yeah, well...it is now.” I popped the handle on my door and hurried out of his Camry. Music pulsed down the street, swallowing me whole as I checked my clothes one last time.
“Have fun with your new besties.”
I slammed the door without answering. He didn’t understand. But he should have.
Callum was just like me: living on the fringes of this carefree, elegant, exciting world, growing up with parents who worked ten times as hard as the people who employed them, without any of the same rewards.
And it wasn’t just our stations. We were geeks. Awkward. Uncool and unpopular. At least he was strong enough to fight off his bullies back home. I had to deal with the likes of Vivi and Cate year-round. Same bitches, different zip codes.
But not anymore.
Not tonight.
If they can just get to know me....
The crowd filled Theo’s home like trendy herds of cattle. My trip from the foyer to the living room took five minutes, everyone moved so slowly. They had no reason to hustle.
God, I envied them. I wanted so badly to be them.
That was my first mistake.
The second: bumping right into Vivi and Cate, instead of sticking to my plan of avoiding everyone until I found Paige.
“Oh, Jesus.” Vivi twisted her mouth in a grimacing smile. Something about her reminded me of oil stains in puddles. Pretty to observe, but worth sidestepping whenever possible.
With her sister flanking her, though, I couldn’t just mutter some insincere apology and scoot around. How two girls as thin as they were could so thoroughly block paths was beyond me.
“What are you doing here? Looking for a hookup?” Vivi pulled her favorite impression of me: a dramatic overbite and crossed eyes. “Who should we fix her up with?”
My stomach turned. “I’m just looking for Paige. She invited me. Or...I don’t know, I guess Theo kind of did.”
“Look at that.” With a snap of her gum, Vivi nudged her sister and giggled, “Did you see how she blushed when she said his name?”
“Seriously,” Cate said, lowering her voice and touching my arm, in this strange way like...
...like we’re friends.
“Do you like him?” She winked. “You can tell me.”
My tongue felt too thick. “I don’t even know him.”
Yes, I did. He just didn’t know me. I knew all of them, these perfect little specimens in an ant farm I’d observed for years.
For example: I knew Vivi was insecure about her nose, always begging her parents for plastic surgery to fix some flaw only she could see. I made sure to stare at it, hard, until their whispers and laughter stopped.
Behind them, I spotted Paige through the crowd.
“Excuse me,” I told Vivi’s nose. From the corner of my eye, I saw her cover it as I walked away.
“Aria!” Paige grinned when I approached, my new name sounding even more perfect in her singsong voice. “You made it!” Cherry blossom body spray enveloped me with her hug. Her breath was spiked, something sweet and sharp like fruity vodka. “Here, let’s get you a drink.”
The huge marble island in Theo’s kitchen was covered with bottles. Paige ran her fingertips over the necks and muttered the names to herself like a gemstone appraisal.
“Ah,” she announced, finally fishing one out of the glimmering glass sea, “here it is. This is what I’m drinking. Hand me a cup, will you?”
Despite her slurring, she poured well. Not a drop landed anywhere but the cup. She added grenadine and Sprite, winking at me when she realized she’d mixed up the ratios and made it too strong.
“But that’s okay,” she said as she passed me the drink, “because you got here late, so you have to play catch-up.”
You don’t know the half of it, I thought. It felt like I’d arrived to my entire life late. This night was a fresh start for me; I could feel it buzzing through my veins faster than the alcohol. And yes: I had to play catch-up.
My foot was in the door, but I wasn’t quite here yet. If I wanted to cement myself in their world, I had a lot to do.
I started by drinking every drop of what Paige gave me. I laughed and smiled behind my hand, so no one could see my teeth. When I had to make eye contact, I made sure to do it with my head turned a little off-center, so both my eyes were in the same direction.
When the boys on the deck offered us weed, I took the bowl like I’d watched Callum and his brother do a thousand times. Everyone laughed when I coughed, but the liquor made it easy to laugh along with them. They weren’t making fun. We were having fun.
Everything was hazy and gorgeous. I stuck close to Paige most of the time. We dipped our feet into the lukewarm infinity pool. We lay back on the deck and watched the stars.
The lights in the living room dimmed, replaced with projectors and flashes from phones. Paige took my hand and pulled me into the hot, writhing mass of bodies. We danced until it felt like the music had replaced our blood.
Through it all, I searched for Theo.
His name floated to me endlessly. Everyone was talking about him. No one knew where he was.
“He always does this,” one girl shouted to another, over the bass of a dance remix that made all of us feel like jumping, not dancing. “Just, like, fucking vanishes right when the parties get good.”
“Yeah,” the other girl said, “that’s his thing.”
“Speaking of his thing....”
Their conversation bubbled into hysterical, drunken laughter. I felt my gaze drawn to the ceiling, peppered with swirling lights and shadows.
That’s where he was: overtop it all, enjoying his kingdom from a distance. I’d seen him through enough windows, on enough summer nights, to know.
“Whoa.” Paige panted and laughed as the song ended, leaning into me hard. Her hands locked behind my neck, her face in my chest as she said, “God, I’m wasted.” Her knees gave way; I caught her and put her back on her feet. “Let’s go upstairs.”
Emphatically, I agreed. This seemed like the kind of party where, if you passed out, nobody would notice. She’d get trampled if she stayed down here. She needed a couch or bed as fast as possible.
The broad, looming staircase was filled with people. Most were in pairs, just talking, while a few were making out (or far more), too impatient to find a room. Maybe there weren’t any available.
Still, I kept climbing, hefting Paige along and reassuring her we were on the way to a warm bed and cold water.
I needed some myself, actually. A lot of it. My head swam, feeling like a chunk of ice rising to the top of a lemonade pitcher every time I turned too fast or laughed too hard.
It felt like it took years to reach the top. “Where can I take you?” I asked. She probably had this house memorized. I’d only memorized the outside.
“Find Theo.” Paige rubbed underneath her eyes, like a sleepy kid.
“Okay.” Thank God she was too drunk to notice how stupidly happy this mission made me.
I told myself it wasn’t anything to get excited over. Just a business transaction. Paige needed a bed; Theo had the authority to clear one off. At most, we’d speak ten collective words to each other.
But God…they’d be a great ten words.
“Where is he?”
She motioned behind me with a shrug. “Somewhere.”
I propped her against the wall outside a bedroom and knocked. A girl shouted at me to go the fuck away.
I sighed and glanced up and down the hall. So many doors.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Paige. She gave a faraway smile in response.
I knocked on the next door, and the next, always greeted by someone telling me it was occupied. Usually, all I got were crude moans.
Then I got to the last door.
Unlike the other rooms, the light was on inside; I stared at it pooling near my feet while I knocked.
“Uh...come in?”
It took several seconds to register with me that I wasn’t being told to go the fuck away or get the hell out. I touched the doorknob like it would burn me.
The bedroom I stepped into was enormous. Plush white rugs crawled across the hardwood, muffling my staggering footfall as I took in the low-profile bed. It was topped with bedding I knew, somehow, cost more than my mother earned in a month. My fingers brushed the dusty glass shelves of an entertainment center, drawing back quickly when I saw the skulls.
There were dozens of them, varying in size and shape. Their empty sockets gaped at me, lipless smiles taunting me for getting scared.
Animals, I realized. They were animal skulls, arranged by type on every shelf. Most were birds, but as I ducked my head and explored, I saw larger ones that made me imagine bobcats or grizzlies.
There was a bright light coming from the open bathroom. I squinted like I was entering the Pearly Gates.
At the threshold, I stopped short.
There was blood on the tile in front of me. Several large drops, glistening like wet rose petals.
Just beyond that, slumped against the wall near the toilet, was Theo Durham.
“Oh, God, are you all right?” I tiptoe-hopped around the blood trail leading to him. He looked up briefly, then tipped his head back against the wall.
His hand was wrapped in toilet paper. Blood seeped through every layer.
“Cut my palm,” he winced, as I took his hand in mine and tore the paper off. “Blood, uh.... I don’t....”
I looked up from his wound, which actually wasn’t very deep at all. Truth be told, as shocking as the blood was when I saw it, there wasn’t much. Not enough to cause alarm.
But Theo’s face was whiter than those fancy rugs out there, and his breathing was shallow. I glanced in the toilet and saw vomit.
“You don’t do well with blood?” I asked, hiding my smile.
It wasn’t that I found it funny. Just unbearably cute.
“How’d it happen?” I asked, while I searched the cabinets and linen closet. I found a box of knee bandages and some slightly expired peroxide. Good enough.
“Someone broke a glass in my room,” he panted, squeezing his eyes shut tighter while I worked. “Should’ve just swept it up. But I’m drunk, so.”
My laugh fluttered his Polo collar.
Up-close, he was even more handsome than I saw on the shore. I’d thought the most beautiful thing his teeth could do was smile, but I was wrong. Watching them sink into his own lip got my heart pounding ten times harder.
Imagining them sinking into my lip? A hundred.
“Almost done,” I told him, then made him keep his eyes closed until I’d scrubbed every trace of blood from the floor. “Let’s get you somewhere you can lie down.”
Lie down.
Shit: Paige. I’d left her in the hall.
After Theo insisted he was fine to walk to the bed on his own, I excused myself and ran down the hall. Paige wasn’t where I’d left her. I called her name, but it was useless: you couldn’t hear anything if there wasn’t at least one solid door between you and the rest of the party.
I reasoned with myself that she must be fine. Everyone here seemed to know and love Paige. Surely someone had helped her up, by now.
For all I knew, she rallied and went back downstairs. Her energy while drunk was even wilder than when she was sober. It wouldn’t have surprised me to find her at the island again, dancing and pouring a round of shots for whoever asked.
Back in the room, Theo had migrated from the bathroom to one of the rugs, arms crossed over his face. I shut the door as softly as I could behind me, then tiptoed closer.
“You don’t have to be quiet,” he said. “I’m not asleep.”
“Actually, I was wondering if you fainted after all.”
Theo cracked up. The rumble of his chest skittered across me, competing with the bass of the stereo downstairs. No contest.
“Couldn’t make it to the bed without me, huh?”
“Maybe.” Through the gap in his arms, he peeked at me. “Or maybe I’m faking, so you’ll take me there now.”
“Uh-huh. And then what—you’ll stumble and ‘accidentally’ pull me down with you?”
“Maybe I will.”
“And maybe I’m too smart to fall for that old trick.”
This time, his laughter went straight to my brain.
I sat beside him, oddly emboldened. It was probably the liquor at work. My high from downstairs had worn off, but my drunkenness just kept deepening as the night went on.
I liked it. All my fantasies of mingling with the summer boys of the Hamptons involved sparkling wit and flirty banter I was never capable of in real life. But now, suddenly, I was.
“What’s your name?” Theo rolled away from me on the rug, grabbed something from underneath the entertainment center, then rolled back to me. He unscrewed the bottle with his thumb in one perfect spin.
“Aria Jacobs,” I said, watching his Adam’s apple dip when he swallowed. He pushed the bottle into my hands. I drank. “Theo, right? Thank you for inviting me.”
“Did I?” He wiped his mouth on his arm, one long drag that left his lips even pinker than before. “Sorry, I don’t remember.”
“That’s okay. I guess it was really Paige who invited me, anyway.”
For a second, his expression darkened. “You friends with her?”
“Um...kind of.” This felt like some kind of test, and I didn�
�t know the right answer. “But not really.”
“Good. She runs her mouth a lot. They all do.” He reached for the bottle, wincing when he grabbed it with the wrong hand. I smoothed his bandage back into place.
“Have you always been like that?” I asked. “Scared of blood?”
“Hey, now, I’m not scared of it. My reaction was involuntary.”
Even his slurred, butchered words were adorable.
“Thank you for doctoring me.” He pushed up on his elbows and held out his uninjured hand.
My heart stopped when I took it, then pounded as I pulled him up to a sitting position.
The way his fingers gripped tighter, his weight shifting as he trusted me, lit every last nerve on fire with happiness.
“Why aren’t you downstairs,” I asked, “enjoying your party?”
There it was again: his green eyes going cold.
“It’s not my party,” he said. “It’s theirs.”
“Whose?”
Wordlessly, he rapped his knuckles on the floorboards underneath us.
“You do this a lot,” I said, teasing. Not thinking.
Theo tilted his head and squinted at me.
“Vanish,” I explained, then cringed. God, I was reverting back into weirdo idiot territory. “I mean...just— From what other people say, and what I’ve seen, you throw all these parties, but you don’t really enjoy them yourself.”
My breath snagged. I smiled out of nerves, then quickly covered it with my hand.
Slowly, he reached up and moved it.
“You have a nice smile.”
“Liar.”
“I never lie. Don’t call me a liar.”
“Drunk, then,” I muttered, running my tongue over the worst part of my smile: my front teeth sat like an overlapping V, and my eye teeth protruded from the gums too high. It wasn’t the worst set of teeth I’d seen...but it wasn’t like his. Like any of theirs.
“Your smile is nice because I believe it.” Theo gave me a long stare. I knew, as he scooted back against the foot of the bed and shut his eyes, I wasn’t meant to argue.
And for once...I didn’t want to.
The alcohol fully caught up to me as I joined him against the bed. My brain felt like it was unspooling. Time was too fast and too slow, all at once.
