Need Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy Book Three)

by Dunning, Rachel

  My stomach is already churning. I roll my eyes and she says, “Fine, then just have a sip! A girl can’t drink alone!”

  I do, I have a small sip and instantly I’m coughing and doing that whoosh-ahhh! thing (God, it burns!) like I’m also a dragon.

  I used to be able to booze it up big time in my younger days. Not anymore. Twenty-six going on seventy.

  Vikki drops to the ground and lands with her legs crossed (amazing!), then puts her arms and hands flat on the glass table, drops her chin onto her wrists. Her eyes loll a little in my direction and quickly she thrusts one of her arms out and does an open-close hand gesture that says, Gimme gimme gimme!

  I give her the bottle. Swig. Whoosh! “AHHHHH!” Slam on the table! Some of the vodka spatters out. She says, “So, talk!”

  I tell her everything. I spill my guts, everything from to what we did last night (we spend some time on that, because Vikki has never been one to stint on details) to where we’re at now.

  Finally, her head swaying and, most likely spinning, she says, “Life is fucked, huh?”

  “That’s all you have to say!?” By now I’m buzzing a little myself. Vikki’s practically falling on the ground.

  “Well, he loves you...” A pause while she gathers her thoughts. She sticks a wobbly finger up. “Right, what I was gonna say...” Whahahwahgunnazay... “is that he loves you, you love him. That is obvious. This is the realest of real loves I have ever seen! But you destroy each other. That is also obvious. It’s too good.” Too goot. “Neither of you can accept it. You’ve both had terrible lives and you just can’t accept that something this wonderful, this amazing could fall into your laps. So you both fuck it up. You fucked it up with your freaking stupid and idiotic mental sabotages—whatever!—and he fucked it up by closing the door on any possibility of ever getting you back with him by sticking his pecker in that flirting skank’s c—”

  “WHOA! WHOA! I get it!”

  Vikki smiles, takes another long gulping swig, lies on the floor. I fly out of my seat and grab the Imperial before what’s left of it starts pouring over her shag rug! “Thank you, baby.” Zhangyoobebby.

  I sit cross-legged next to her, take another light swig of the vile stuff myself. Then another. (In total, I think I’ve had the equivalent of about six shots over thirty minutes. Vikki’s had the rest.) I start playing with her hair while she looks up at the ceiling, stroking it out of her eyes, wiping the alcohol-induced sweat from her brow and cheeks.

  “You give good advice when you’re drunk, you know that, Vikki?”

  She smiles a dazed smile, lolls her eyes a little around. “And you’re a horrible friend when you’re in love.”

  “Huh?”

  “Me me me! Me me me! Blaze Blaze Blaze! Did you ever stop (hiccup) to think that maybe I also needed a shoulder to cry on?”

  “Huh?”

  She starts to get up but staggers. I help her. When she’s sitting up, she flops her right elbow onto the table next to her and drops her head into her open palm with a thud. The palm goes back at an ungainly angle but she seems unperturbed. I look away from the palm, and focus on her half-closing eyes.

  “Vikki? What’s happening?”

  “I think I’m gonna be...” She makes a retching motion and I flinch toward her to help her to the bathroom but she just grimaces and holds her hand out, shakes it at me. Then she burps. “No, not yet. Not yet. Maybe in a half hour, yes. But not now.” She reaches for the bottle and I snatch it away from her. She gives a weak smile.

  “No more. Not until you talk to me. What’s happening with you?”

  She does that half-retch-half-belch thing again, then says, “I love him more than I planned on loving him. And I think I...I think I want to...marry...him.” She closes her eyes.

  “I’m not following.”

  Eyes still closed, she says, “Crazy Vikki, Wild Vikki, Temptress Vikki who has not lived her life yet or fulfilled her dreams yet, wants to get married to a man! Vikki who planned on being famous by the age of twenty and having male groupies lick her genitalia and put their fat, freaking you-know-whats inside her and do her over and over again, every week a new man, big muscles, porn-star quality—that Vikki—wants to settle down and get...married! That Vikki does not want any other cock, any other man, or anything else. That Vikki wants to put on a FUCKING APRON AND START COOKING!” Now her eyes are wide open and she’s shouting at the top of her lungs. “Gimme that bottle!” She snatches it away before I can move (I’m shocked right now), slides the opening erotically between her luscious lips and downs the rest of it, flings the bottle across the room so that it makes a clonk-clonk-ting sound as it lands on the carpet (but thankfully doesn’t break.)

  Then she makes that retching motion again, and once more—

  I blink. And she’s gone! She’s run past me into the bathroom and—

  “BUUUURCHHHHHHLLLLPFWAHHH!!!”

  —she retches.

  I run behind her, still stunned at her declarations of love. I get into the bathroom and—

  “BUAAAAAARGH!”

  —her head’s deep in the toilet bowl and her hands are around—

  “BLACHHHHHHHH!”

  —the sides of it.

  I sit on the bathtub next to her, start rubbing her back.

  She pukes again. And my mind drifts to a conversation she and I had some years ago when my deal with House Market had been signed and sealed, and I’d said to her, “Baby, Randy wants to introduce you to a few people—Rock and Alternative guys. Guys who’d be interested in your sounds.”

  She’d hesitated, then told me, “I want to make it on my own, Blaze. When I get a deal I want to know I did it. Alone. It’s a point of pride, so don’t take offense.”

  “None taken,” I’d said, a little confused.

  Then there’d been some scouts I’d heard of, people who’d heard her at a club and wanted to have the band do a demo for them. “I don’t like the label,” she’d said to me after that. “Not pure. They’d make us sell our souls, Blaze.”

  I accepted that excuse as well.

  Then I started travelling, was never with her. When I was in town, we spoke about Skate a lot—a lot!—which made me happy because it put my mind off of Deck. I’d tell her about London and Berlin and all the places she’s never been to. We’d go shopping, drink coffee, speak about fashion, men (except Deck), drink, perv, speak about Skate, about Skate, about Skate...

  Right. She’s mad for Skate...

  “My God, Vikki,” I say to her now, “I never realized it was this serious. But...why can’t you have both? Why can’t you...do whatever it is you want to do with him—”

  “Put on an apron,” she says from deep within the toilet bowl. “I want to put on an apron for him!”

  “OK, why can’t you do that and still...follow your dream?”

  She extracts herself from the porcelain bowl, wipes some yellow goo from her lips with the back of her hand. The stench is nauseating in itself. I flush the toilet, get up and wet a towel, give it to her. She wipes her head, her lips. “Thanks,” she says. She does a semi-belch, then settles back again, eyes droopy, hair sticking to her forehead, a chunk or two of gooeyness on one of the strands. I grab the towel and wipe the dirty bits of hair. “What was your question again?”

  I think for a second. “Why can’t you do that and follow your dream?”

  She starts laughing meekly, then holds her head and grimaces, shakes it. She sits up, crosses her legs, looks at the tiles underneath. “Crazy Vikki, Wild Vikki... Maybe it was rebellion, you know? Teenage rebellion? What if...” And here she looks at me. “...What if, Blaze... What if that was never my dream? What if this is my dream? Being with a man? Cooking for him? Having him bring the money home. Did you see my new TV?”

  “Of course I did. Very nice. Very large.”

  “Skate bought it. Because ‘business is good and I want to watch football on it and you can watch soapies on it or whatever it is that women watch on TV,’ he said to me.
You see, Blaze, he wants to watch football in my apartment! So he bought me a TV! I ‘thanked’ him good for that one, during a football game in fact, if you know what I mean.”

  I know what she means.

  “And then...every time he came to my place and I wasn’t here because I was playing a gig and he had to eat takeout I felt bad! Can you believe it, Blaze? And not because”—she burps—“God that burns! Not because I felt some ‘need’ to do it, but because I wanted to. Skate works hard, he provides, and, well, I can’t fucking believe it, but I suddenly want to be provided for! It makes no sense, Blaze. No sense. And you know what? I don’t fucking care! I don’t care that it makes no sense. Because he makes me happy. And I make him happy. And that’s all I need, all I care about.”

  “Shit, Vik. That’s...wow....it’s...actually quite cool.”

  She smiles wanly, plays with her toes (nails painted red.) “Yeah, only problem is...”

  And here she starts to show signs of breaking down, her chin racing up and down as she tries to get it under control, her eyes going red, a vein popping on her forehead. And it finally gives way. She bursts. I immediately fall in next to her and hold her. Her body shudders and rocks under my grasp.

  “Hey, hey, hey, baby! C’mon! It’s OK!”

  Through gasps and painful sobs she says, “I don’t think he loves me like I love him, Blaze! Because he hasn’t asked me to marry him in all the time we’ve been together! Not even asked me to move in! How fucking long should it take!?” Then she cries more—wild, howling cries that echo in this lonely apartment. And I hold her, and she weeps.

  She turns and hugs me, spittle falling from her lips and wetting my shoulder, her tears wetting my neck, and she squeezes me. “I’m sorry I was so mean earlier, Blaze! I was just...drunk!”

  “No, you were right. I never...listened to you.”

  “Bullshit! Of course you did! I was drunk and you know it! I always played it down about me and Skate, never admitted it myself!”

  I laugh. And so does she, only it makes her cry a little more. “OK, fine, you were drunk.”

  She holds me tighter, and we sway together. The last time we swayed like this was when Deck had been in a hospital, head gashed and split open, and Vikki had sung to me. She’d sung to me all night, at the hospital, and I’d fallen asleep in her arms.

  I’m not much of a singer, so I don’t bother trying now. But I hold her. At one stage I think she falls asleep, and I just let her sleep on me in here for a bit, in this sharp-smelling bathroom. Just for a few minutes.

  I’m stunned by the realities of what I’m seeing, stunned by the complete destruction and shattering of The Luxurious Viktoriya Golovkina in front of my very own, disbelieving eyes.

  Viktoriya Golovkina, the Viktoriya, fur-wearing, downward-looking, sunglasses-in-the-shade, tall-standing, don’t-fuck-with-me Viktoriya! She was the siren, a fortress to feminism everywhere...

  And now she’s also a blubbering mess of estrogen lying limp in my arms.

  She’s in love. Truly and completely in love.

  The epiphany finally strikes me. And it is blinding in its clarity:

  Love fucks us all up. So if you don’t wanna be fucked up, don’t fall in love. But you’ll also be unhappy, miserably unhappy. So you can choose: Be screwed up and happy, or be un-screwed up and wretched.

  I smile, stroke my girl’s sticky hair, and say to her, “Let’s get you to bed, best friend.” Then I kiss her on her salty brow, hug her just once more, tightly. She’s so fast asleep she doesn’t know I’m doing any of this.

  I think of Savva, sweet Savva. And the memory is a weak one. Because my best friend is now in my arms, right here, right now.

  Alive!

  And I love you, Vikki. Thanks for being there for me.

  -6-

  Vikki’s sleep is a restless, drunken one. She has nightmares, wakes up in sweats; once or twice I believe she’s gonna hurl again right next to me here in her bed.

  My own sleep is light. I’m thinking of Deck, thinking of how much I needed him, wanted him, how every cell in my tightened body had called for him.

  And he didn’t take me.

  I’m glad he didn’t, and I’m also not glad.

  I’m glad because it might have been too much, too soon. I might have spun in on myself, unable to take all the joy it brought me, unable to “accept” it, just as Vikki pointed out earlier:

  You’ve both had terrible lives and you just can’t accept that something this wonderful, this amazing could fall into your laps. So you both fuck it up.

  She’s right, so right. We have both led terrible lives. Deck losing his mother to a horrible cancer that wasted her body and left her alive, suffering, moaning, begging to be let go, but not allowed to, until the very end. Then his own abuse of drugs. He talks lightly of this, but anyone who pops Es is screwed in the head by life a little. Trust me, I know.

  Losing his father in front of his own eyes...

  And my life.

  So you both fuck it up.

  I stroke my best friend’s hair, still sticky, still clinging to her skin. She’s got a light snore going now, a side-effect from dousing her doubts with booze.

  So you both fuck it up.

  “And don’t we ever,” I whisper to myself.

  I slide off the bed, shuffle over to her living room and pull out my phone. I want to text Deck, want to say stuff like “Hey, thinking of you” or “I love you, Declan Cox” or maybe something naughtier, something more playful...

  Will we ever regain that air of playfulness we once had? Him chasing me around my loft with a shaken up bottle of sparkling water, threatening to wet me completely with it and then take my t-shirt off “because you could catch cold if you run around in a wet t-shirt, Blaze.” Him using my LPs—my sacrosanct, consecrated, saintly LPs!—as frisbees across the room only to get me to stand up and storm over to him so that he could snatch my waist, pull me onto him on the beanbag, straddle him and then turn me on so grandly that I’d bury my lips in him, start rubbing my sweetspot against him right there, me in my baggy pants, him in shorts, and needing him more than ever.

  I need you, Declan Cox. This is what I want to say to him. This is what I want to text him. It’s epiphany number three for the night. I need him. Not because I can’t survive without him. But because survival wouldn’t be worth it without him.

  As my BFF so succinctly put it about her own relationship, I don’t care that it makes no sense. Because he makes me happy. And I make him happy.

  I decide she deserves an expensive breakfast tomorrow, maybe all the way over in the city; Upper East, sista.

  On my phone I type in the words, I need you, Declan Cox, then I stare at the Send button for an eternal amount of time. I look at the clock on the screen: 2:32AM.

  The crazy storm of earlier has stopped. Crazy weather. Crazy, unpredictable times.

  Did he have a good time with his boys? Did they party it up all night? Did Deck and Trev open up another scandal for The Giants that they’ll have their bonus checks docked as a result of?

  My, how things have changed, and how they’ve also remained the same. Deck, Bad Boy of America. But still my Deck. He ain’t no bad boy, that’s just an image. And only I know that. Because I’m the only one he can trust with that information.

  I would never use it against him.

  I do send the message, but not before adding, When can I have you? to the end of it.

  Send.

  I’m suddenly warm, down there, and the This-Is-Just-Like-High-School feeling creeps up on me again.

  I drop my head back against the couch’s back, thinking of Deck’s grin as he flung those LPs in my direction all those years ago, feeling his hard hands around my tiny waist, pulling me onto him, knowingly maneuvering his knees so that my baggy-pants legs would spread and I’d land splat on his manhood. And it had turned me on, oh God, it had turned me so on.

  I tighten my legs. I inhale deeply, fan my shirt, try and get a grip. A
nd I dream, dream, dream of him. I think of his hand sliding under my shirt, cupping my tiny breast, massaging it and sending shivers up whatever connects your nipple to your neck. I remember him pulsing once, just once, and the low moan of need that escaped me when he did. I remember his hands growing desperate, grappling to get my shirt off, remember him tugging my pants down to expose my swollen lips, so needy for him, calling him into me by their pheromonal scent, their gleam. I remember him moving his lips forward, eyes glued to my mound like a man seeking water in the desert. And he parted his lips, moved his tongue out, pulled me toward him. My head rocked back, his hands pressed at my back, my nether lips swung in his direction—

  “Blaze?”

  Huh!?

  “Mmmmmmmm? Oh....God...what a fuckin headache...” It’s Vikki’s voice, muffled and swimming toward me from the bedroom.

  Fuck!

  I fan myself, smile. I’m so turned on now, so damn horny!

  But Vikki’s painful cries call me. “Mmmmmm.” It’s the moan of a hangover. And I know I’m on coffee detail. So I call back out to her.

  “Coming, baby.” Only, I ain’t. I so ain’t.

  But I almost was. Almost was.

  I need you, Declan Cox. When can I have you?

  TWELVE

  PEANUT

  ~ THAT SAME NIGHT ~

  -1-

  Declan Cox

  It was a disaster. A total disaster. And now the press. Oh, the press...

  And worse, Blaze. I need to tell Blaze before she sees it in the news, on the sites. I won’t have a repeat of the Tatiana incident! I can’t!

  It had begun with Skate’s complete annihilation of his kidneys by downing PBRs with Well Whiskey by the dozen. Trev and I had stuck to OJ and other forms of non-alcoholic enjoyment. There’s only so much leeway Coach Warwick gives you and bringing Blaze over to practice today was the end of mine. I’m glad I did it, glad I took her.

  But then...this!