Rose must read me too well because she uses her arm to push Connor back. “You need to go.”
“Rose, she’s fine. She can’t be afraid of men forever. And anyway, she attended a party with male models. How am I any different than one of them?” I catch him flashing his impeccable smile.
“You did not just compare yourself to a high fashion model.”
“I did.”
Rose stares at the ceiling like oh my God. “You want to know how many times in a day I question why I’m with you?”
“Five times.”
“A hundred.”
“If you told me you were going to exaggerate, I would have picked that, but I thought we were being realistic here, hun.”
I snort. “Smooth.”
Connor gestures to me. “See, she’s fine.”
Rose sets her hands on her hips and looks to me for a final verdict. If I said no, she’d toss out Connor. And Connor is kind of right, as much as I hate to admit that. I shouldn’t be scared of the opposite sex being so close. Even if I have been a bit jumpy after New Year’s.
“He can stay,” I tell her.
Her eyes narrow at me like I chose the wrong answer.
I mouth, what?
She makes a small motion with her head to Connor. Did she not want him over here anymore? But then I see Connor and he’s—no lie—grinning from ear to ear, as though he won the Academic Bowl Tournament against Princeton, Rose’s college (and now mine).
She lost that tiff, I see.
“I’ll help you with your porn,” Connor says. He goes into the kitchen to find a trash bag while I try to wipe that line clean from memory. I set the bin on the floor and wait for Rose to explode. Her face scrunches like she’s ready to give birth.
When Connor disappears into the pantry, Rose lets loose. “I can’t stand him,” she says. “Honestly, he drives me nuts, Lily.”
I try really hard not to laugh. Rose and Connor broke up five times in December. I’m suspecting that number to double in January. They both call it quits and then they’ll reunite in a couple days. It’s as cute as it is exhausting.
“I think you drive him crazy too,” I tell her. “And I mean this in the Britney Spearian sense.” I hum the nineties tune and sing the chorus. Her face darkens, not amused. I can’t help but laugh. That’s Rose for you.
Her shoulders relax as she takes in the DVDs again. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Yeah,” I say quickly, not wanting to think too much about the giant leap. I’d rather race towards the finish line than slow crawl right now. Which is why I nervously tap my foot, waiting for Connor to hurry back with the bag that’ll seal my fate. Hopefully I’ll trample the urge to buy new films in the future or click into dirty sites on the internet. I think I can do it. I hope. That’s all I really have at the moment.
“So…” I say, nervously twiddling my fingers. “…you think I have OCD?” It would make sense, sort of. I do relate my sexual needs to compulsions. The need to obtain that natural high. Kind of like an obsessive compulsive’s need to follow their systematic routine. I just never related the two.
“Some psychologists believe that addictions correlate with OCD, but I can’t diagnose you,” Rose says truthfully. “You really need to visit the therapist—”
“I know,” I cut her off. “I know, I just…I haven’t decided which one I want to go to.” Who knew there were so many sex addiction therapists in the area? And I already searched for a Sex Addicts Anonymous group and came up completely blank. Since most groups consist of men trying to thwart their sexual cravings, they have a strict no-female policy. It makes sense, but it has also made it nearly impossible to find an SAA that accepts women. I’ve given up the hunt for now and plan to do one-on-one therapy.
There are also in-treatment facilities for sex addiction. Rehab, like Lo. But Rose squashed those as an option pretty quickly. She really wouldn’t give me a definite answer, and after beating around the bush, she blurted out that I have social anxiety. That I shouldn’t be in large groups trying to fix my problem.
Yesterday, I rebutted, “I don’t have social anxiety.” And in the same instance, I was nervously pacing my room.
She tilted her head with raised eyebrows. “When’s the last time you were in a group setting?”
“Lots of times,” I told her. “I go to clubs, Rose. People are everywhere.”
“But are you forced to talk to them? Do you talk to anyone other than Lo? Really, Lily, think about it. Do you even bring up a conversation with your one-night stands or do you just give them a look and screw them?”
She was right. Maybe I do have social anxiety. And according to Rose, I should concentrate on one thing at a time. I also think she’d rather look after me than send me away. She’d go crazy not knowing what exactly the rehab’s program would be or what they would do. So right now, therapy is the best solution.
“I’m working on that for you,” Rose tells me. “I have a meeting with two tomorrow.” Literally, she has been setting up appointments just to quiz the therapists. I love her more than she knows. “The last guy was a complete idiot. I asked him about cognitive behavioral therapy and he gave me a blank stare. I’m not lying.”
Connor approaches with the trash bag. “She’s not,” he adds. “I was there.”
My cheeks redden, but they hardly notice. Or maybe they just don’t care. Yeah, that has to be it.
Before I can put the DVDs in the bag myself, Connor picks the bin from the floor and dumps it into the garbage. The fact that he’s in close contact to my porn has seriously knotted my stomach and heated my entire chest.
Connor says to Rose, “That last man was a complete asshat.”
She hesitates to agree with him, though I can tell she does.
“What’d he do?”
Connor ties the bag and sets it by the wall. He casts a furtive glance in Rose’s direction, all secrets, something that I had with Lo. My heart sinks, but I push the thoughts away quickly.
“Well, we showed up to the therapist’s office, and Rose introduced herself and told him her sexual problems—”
“Wait…” I hold up my hands, my eyes bugging. I look between the two of them, and they stand as though nothing is out of the ordinary. As though this story is fucking normal! I blink at Rose. “You did not pretend to be me, did you?”
She shakes her head. “Of course not, Lily.”
I exhale. Good. That would be embarrassing.
“I told him that I was a sex addict, but I gave him my personal information. You’re fine.”
Oh my God. “Why would you want to do that?”
She shrugs. “It was the only way this man would see me. I had to be a patient first.”
I cringe, refusing to look at Connor. I’m more shamed for her than I should be. I realize this may be what I feel soon. Maybe even tenfold. “And what happened?”
Rose scrutinizes my reaction and immediately closes a short gap between our bodies. She puts her hand on my shoulder. “You don’t need to hear this. Not every therapist is like him, and I promise you, Lily, that I would never send you to one that I didn’t think was absolutely perfect.”
Right, but a glimmer of fear still strikes me cold. “Still, I want to know.”
Connor puts a couple fingers to his lips, inspecting me the same way my sister had, wondering if I can handle the truth.
“Please,” I add.
My pout must win them over—or at least Rose because she breaks first. “He asked me what my sexual preferences were, and I told him that I gravitate towards porn and one-night stands but nothing too kinky.” The weekend Lo left for rehab, I actually professed to Rose most of my secrets. I explained my habits of ditching family events (and even told her which ones) for a quickie in the bathroom or hookup at a club. Nothing earthshattering. Get in. Get high. Get out. That’s how I liked it with everyone but Loren Hale.
“And what happened?” I almost go to bite my fingernails, but I decide to cross my
arms instead, keeping my palms buried beneath.
“He went through a list of things, asking me if they turned me on,” Rose says, unabashed.
Connor looks equally unaffected. God, they ooze confidence. He chimes in, “Fingering, dildos, vibrators, head, anal, doggy style—”
“She gets it,” Rose snaps.
He grins back, and I swear they have another “moment”—Rose looking like she wants to rip his face off, and Connor looking like he wants to kiss her for it. So weird.
I rub my hot neck. “Have you guys ever been embarrassed?” If this is a smart-person superpower, I totally want it.
Connor stares at the ceiling in thought. “Well, there was that one time…actually, no…” He shakes his head. “No, that wasn’t me.” His dark blue eyes meet mine. “I’m embarrassment free.”
“Me too,” Rose says.
I squint at her. “Really?” There has to have been a time…oh yeah. “What about when you were in sixth grade on a school field trip to D.C.?” I wasn’t with her, but her classmates rehashed the story with such theatrics that only a robot would go without feeling. My mom said she cried angry, embarrassed tears all the way home.
Rose’s eyes widen in alarm. “Do you want to know what the therapist said or not?”
“Are you blushing?” Connor asks Rose with a laugh. Connor: 2. Rose: 0. She’s going to kill me.
“Let’s get back to the subject at hand,” I say, trying to cover for her, but the damage is done.
Connor nudges her hip with his elbow. “What is it? Did you fall into the Reflecting Pool?”
“No,” she deadpans, glaring at the wall.
“Did you misquote Abraham Lincoln’s speech?”
“That wouldn’t happen, and that’s not the least bit embarrassing.”
“I would be embarrassed,” he says with raised eyebrows.
“Yeah? Well you’re like a green rooster. If your kind exists, there’s only one of you.”
He grins. “Say that again.”
“I’d rather embowel your cat.”
I laugh. “Ooh, burn.” Bringing Sadie into the arguments always livens things up. Rose has threatened to mutilate his pet about twenty different ways. It’s her main weapon against her boyfriend, but he finds each one as amusing as the next. Apparently, Rose has yet to enter his apartment on account of Connor’s tabby cat that hates women. Since the cat is also full-fledged female, Rose finds the creature as close to a demon as an animal can be.
Connor tries hard not to break into an even wider smile and show defeat. He cocks his head to the side. “Some idiot boy gave you a wedgie, didn’t he? Give me his name; I want to talk to him.”
“It was the sixth grade,” she says with furrowed brows. “You don’t need to go through my history book and attack all the people who have wronged me.”
I chime in, “Yeah, because she’s already castrated most of them.”
Connor lets out a laugh, and I swear, he’s about ready to drop on one knee and propose. He licks his lips to hide his growing pleasure. “So I’m right then? Wedgie?”
“What? No.” Rose jerks back, offended. “I don’t even find it that embarrassing anymore. It actually just chaps my ass, which is why I think we should move on.”
“I don’t want to move on from this, hun. Just let it out. Breathe and release.” He inhales strongly and blows out of his mouth, teasing her a little, and her cat-eyes burn holes in him.
“Fine, Richard.” Oh, she even used his real name. Things are getting serious now. I can’t deny—their tiffs do take my mind off missing Lo and my habits. Sometimes I think that being around Rose and Connor helps take the edge off. Other times, I just feel like they stand in the way of me and my desires. “I was walking through one of the Smithsonian museums, and I stopped in front of a model of the solar system. While I was reading the labels, a group of boys in my class gathered behind me and pointed and snickered before saying, ‘I can see Uranus.’”
Connor doesn’t laugh. “That’s not even clever.”
It gets worse, is all I think.
Rose’s lips twitch, trying to smile, but anger flits in her eyes at the memory. “I ignored them, and then they said, ‘Hey, your anus is bleeding.’”
Connor frowns.
“I started my period that day.”
I grimace at her pained memory. Those things stay with someone forever. Even if they seem small and insignificant, childhood stories like Rose’s are the ones that last a lifetime.
“Give me their names.” Connor motions to her with two fingers as he takes out his phone and opens the note app.
Rose actually lets out a weak smile. “I yelled at them,” she tells Connor, “that day—I turned around and told them to shut up, and I ran into the bathroom and cried and called my mother.” Her face turns serious. “I never want to have children.”
My stomach drops at the bomb she just exploded in the room. I knew this about Rose, but talking about kids in front of a pretty new boyfriend would be a trigger for them to scamper away.
Clearly, this is a Rose Calloway test.
Connor inhales deeply, as though digesting the sudden proclamation. His face stays blank, accepting Rose’s challenge. She’s practically asking him to run the other way. “After that, I wouldn’t either. Boys should be more respectful about the female reproductive system. It’s what brought those fuckers into the world.”
Rose laughs at this, almost cackling. I can’t help but smile too. “Fuckers?” she repeats.
He shrugs. “It’s better than dipshits.”
“I actually think dipshit is more appropriate.”
My eyes scrunch. “Are you two seriously discussing curse words?”
“Yes,” they say in unison, turning their attention back to me. Rose picks up where she left off on the story involving the therapist. “Anyway, he went through a list and asked me what I preferred, I told him, and he asked how often. Then, he asked me if I tried to stop, but he said it in a way that was completely unprofessional.”
Connor elaborates. “He told her that most women come into his office seeking attention, especially from him since he’s good looking and fit, and that in order to verify her problem, she would need to—and I quote—‘suck cock until her mouth bled.’”
My jaw unhinges. “What?” I say in a small voice.
Rose punches him in the side, and he feigns wincing, incensing her more. “I was trying to be brief about it,” she says. “You didn’t need to tell her word for word.”
“I hate paraphrasing. To use your vocabulary, it chaps my ass.”
Rose holds up a hand to his face, ignoring him and telling him to shut up in one swift motion. Her eyes meet mine and they soften considerably. “I learned later that he had never treated a female sex addict before. I’m trying to find a woman who understands your condition. And I promise, she will not only be respectful but she’ll be intelligent and know more than Connor and me put together.”
“That’s impossible,” Connor tells her. “We’re the two smartest people in the entire world. You put us together, and you get a superhuman.”
Rose rolls her eyes dramatically, but she’s actually smiling. “You’re an idiot.” She nods to me. “Okay?”
I believe Rose. I trust her more than anyone else in the whole world, maybe even more than Lo. He would be so offended if he heard me say that, but in this moment, I think it’s true. He’s not here. But I have her.
There’s something beyond comforting about that. “Thanks, Rose.” I give her a hug and hope that no matter how horrible I am, no matter how much I bitch and regress, she’ll forgive me.
2 YEARS AGO
My wedges dangle in my hand. My bare feet touch the dirty sidewalk. I’m running. Well, more like chasing. As I try to catch up with Lo, a freshman dormitory looms in the background, cop cars swarming the brick building. Underage drinkers cuffed or given a not-so pleasant citation.
Lo spins around, slowing and shuffling backwards at the same time.
He’s so good at running away from things. At eighteen, I still struggle to keep up with him.
“Faster, Lil,” he tells me, but he has a goofy smile on his face. As if this could be considered a new adventure. Racing from the cops during our first week of college. Me, chasing after him.
“We’re…going…up a…hill,” I huff, my pace between a walk and a jog. Something sticky glues to the bottom of my foot, and I cringe with a downturned frown. I hope that was just gum.
“I’m going to leave you,” he threatens, but I hardly believe him. Especially with the way he nearly laughs at me. And then he picks up speed again, sprinting forward, hoping that I’ll gain the strength to finally reach him.
I never do. But it’s a nice thought.
My knees bend beneath me, and I use the last ounce of my energy to dart towards him up the steep hill, traffic on the left side of us as cars return from the clubs and bars. The dorm party we attended wasn’t even that fun. The beer sucked, as Lo put it. There was no room to move, and the halls were so crammed with people that a weird smell permeated in the air. Like weed and sweat mixed together. Gross.
But I don’t regret it. Because Lo was there, and we’ll have something to laugh about later.
His black shirt begins to mold to his taught back and chest and arms, outlining the shape of his lean muscles, giving me an idea of what lies beneath. When he runs, he looks beautiful. As though no one can touch him, as though he’s leaving behind a burning world and heading towards a peaceful one. His cheeks will sharpen; his eyes will narrow in determination. Of course I can’t see any of that.
I just have a nice view of his ass.
That’s not too bad to look at either.
And then I begin to fall. Pain shoots up my ankle so excruciating that I let out a cry. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I sit on my butt and inspect the bone. It’s not protruding from my skin, but the muscle feels tight and strained.
“Lil?” Lo rushes back to me, nearly skidding down the hill with a face full of worry. He bends to my ankle, and inspects the bone just as I did. His fingers lightly touch my skin. “How bad does it hurt?”
Ricochet (Addicted #1.5) Page 6
