Mother clears her throat, obviously annoyed. “Now, as I was saying—”
“I’ll go shopping, Mother, but know that whatever you plan between us—” I gesture between Noah and I “—isn’t going to happen.”
“Olivia, you can be so silly sometimes.” Her tone is light, friendly. But I know better. She pivots on her six-inch heels and saunters back into the house, barking orders at the kitchen workers. Something about a lunch with investors, I don’t know.
“So,” Noah begins. “There’s something between us?”
“Yeah—not enough space,” I say sarcastically. I paddle over to the edge of the pool and climb out.
He whistles as I pull myself out. “You just can’t get enough of my misery, can you, sweetheart?”
“Get dressed, Casanova,” I holler back, not able to fight back a smile.
***
“Thank you anyway.” I smile warmly at the clerk of the dress store. I exit the shop and sigh as I look up and down the strip. I spent one hour searching for a dress for the charity event, but I couldn’t find anything that would appease my mother. Meaning there wasn’t anything at an appropriate length, color that would make my “eyes pop,” or anything non-nauseating to myself.
“Well, there’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back,” Noah says.
“Stop complaining,” I tell him. “Are you hungry? We can go back to the house and eat, but I don’t really feel like being around my mother when she has guests over.” She becomes extra snobby when she has people to entertain.
“I guess I could use something sweet. Are you on the menu?” he drawls, sprinkling his fingers up and down my arm.
I laugh harshly and cross my arms. “No, I am not, you perv.”
“Too bad. I’m sure you taste delightful,” he replies.
I snort and look up at him. He gazes back with a raise of his eyebrows, amused. “I just adore the fact that you completely skipped over me calling you a perv.”
He shrugs and sighs. “I’ve been called a lot worse.”
“Like what?” I muse him.
“Like pussy killer.” He flashes me his teeth.
“And there goes my respect for you,” I utter. He laughs and nudges me playfully. I nudge him back, and he laughs harder, but I suppress mine. Initially, I thought he’d be annoying and weird like he was when he was a child, but he’s actually shaping into being a somewhat friend.
“Was it ever really there?” He twists his lips into a sour look.
I can’t hold back a laugh—not when he looks this ridiculous. “No, but I’m polite enough to fake that it was.”
“Oh, how courteous of you.” He stops in the middle of the sidewalk and bows to me, flipping his imaginary top hat into his stomach.
People look at us, confused, and my cheeks flush with embarrassment. I was wrong, he still is weird. Very, very much weird. But I sort of like it…
“Stop it,” I plead and tug at his arm, pulling him up. He stumbles into me, and I laugh as I hold him up right. “There is something very wrong with you.”
“You sure there isn’t something very right with me, Livvy?” His voice is low, and so are his hands on my hips. The flush in my cheeks sprout into other places of my body, and I smile sheepishly. His smile grows.
“Well, isn’t this quite a sight?” a familiar voice says, making ice-cold wires shoot down my back and straight into my bloodstream. Noah and I both turn our heads, finding Grey and Rose staring at us…hands interlocked. “Hey there, Livvy,” Grey drawls with a wolfish grin.
Chapter Nine
Grey
She is so beautiful. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe for her to mirror the ugly monster beneath her cardigans and ribbons. I expected claws and sharp teeth. I wanted everyone else to see that I wasn’t crazy. I wanted them to see the same thing six months ago.
But that isn’t the case.
Instead I see the most radiant girl I’ve ever laid eyes on. Soft waves of brunette hair cascade down her back. The top of her head shines under the sun, and with a certain angle, it almost looks like she’s wearing a freaking halo. Go figure…She is wearing a sleeveless dress that accentuates her slim waist and shows off her curvy hips.
She looks too much like the Liv I knew. She needs to stop this charade that she’s a perfect little innocent girl. She needs to let the veil that disguises her true self fall.
It is silent for what feels like forever, but it could have easily only been a second.
I glance at the boy’s hand on her lower back, and a split second later he drops it and shifts nervously. I don’t know if I glared because I somehow, maybe, still feel something for this girl or because I want her to suffer like I have for the past six months. I honestly can’t pinpoint it, but I don’t dwell on it for too long.
“Hi, Liv. I’m Rose; do you remember me?” Rose pipes up in her sweet but high-pitched voice. I stare at Olivia as she stares at her, mouth ajar. I know that look well enough to know she’s overwhelmed with thoughts and is trying to decide what to say.
“She remembers you, babe,” I say with a seemingly genuine smile. I slip my fingers through Rose’s, and she looks at me, confused for less than a second. I ignore her stare and gauge Olivia’s reaction.
Her eyebrows frown as her full pink lips curve downward. She looks like she got kicked in the gut. I feel my chest churn with the need to tilt her head back and console her, but I push away the silly need and maintain my cool exterior as she visibly gulps.
“U-um, I remember you, Rose,” she says with a polite smile. A glimpse of the kind and mannered girl I fell for peeks through the veil; I turn my lips up, disgusted.
“Hey, I’m—” the boy begins, flashing me his too-bright teeth.
“Don’t give a fuck,” I interrupt him.
Liv gives me that look that translates into “Do you have to be so rude?” I roll my eyes, like I normally would, but I don’t force on a smile. I let my face twist into a scowl, and I let it stay that way. She can’t influence me to be “nicer” anymore. She can’t pull a puppy dog face when she wants her way. She just can’t. But what she can do is feel like complete shit, like I have felt for the past six months ever since she broke my heart.
“Okay, well, I think we ought to be on our way,” Rose says, breaking the silence. She gives them a friendly smile.
“So, you guys are together?” Liv croaks. She clears her throat, trying to pass her moment of weakness off as a casual thing. She tries to look calm and conversational, but I see what she’s doing. The lace veil that once hid her from the naked eye dropped. I can see that she’s upset about this—pained even. I don’t know if I should be ecstatic she’s feeling a small fraction of my pain or truly wrecked. I go with the former. She does deserve it, whether she looks like an angel or not.
“Yes,” I lie through a smile.
Rose says nothing.
We aren’t a thing, nowhere near it. I still resent her, as she still resents me. But I ran into her a couple of months back when I was drinking at a bar in Indiana, my home state. I don’t even remember why I went there after everything that happened between Liv and me. I guess I was just wrapped up in so many emotions hitting me, that I ran to the first place that I was once extremely happy—my family home.
I found the one-story house browner than ever, rust trailing the porch stairs, knee-high weeds, and an old tricycle of mine lying in the brown grass. I squatted in the broken home with broken memories for about three days, wallowing to myself, crying like a little bitch, wishing my mother was sane, and my father was alive, and Liv loved me even a fraction of how much I loved her. But none of it came true. So I moved my pity party to the place where all organizations like mine were welcomed and washed away with alcohol—the bar.
I found her, Rose, working a shift there. Apparently, after receiving disappointment from her family, and the town, and even the college she desired to attend, she stayed behind, got a place of her own, and began working at the bar to pay her own
way through community college.
I had never felt so fucking bad in my entire life.
I ruined her life, and all because I was fucked up in the head and couldn’t control my emotions.
I apologized like crazy. I think I even began crying. I was drunk, apologetic, and a fucking mess. And she sopped it up with a victorious grin, cried with me, hit me like a pro fighter, and then left me in a puddle of my own blood and tears. Next day she showed up to the house, let me talk to her about how I wasn’t right all those years ago, and told me she forgave me but would never forget. I took it.
Now, we’re just sort of hanging out together. We haven’t fucked or anything like that, so I don’t know exactly what we are. But I’m not even sure if I’m ready to get in another relationship. Not when I’m still hung up over someone else…
“Oh.” I watch as Liv’s face falls and the boy next to her frown at her…he likes her. I can see it on his face. I almost storm over to him and shove him into the glass of the antique store we’re standing in front of, but then I remember she isn’t mine anymore…and I squeeze my fingers around Rose’s a little tighter. I can feel her gaze on me, but I act like I don’t and quirk my lips into my signature half-smile.
“What? No congratulations?” I say, feigning hurt.
She frowns at me but doesn’t say anything.
“I think we should go, Livvy,” the boy suggests, again pinning her with a look of pure concern she doesn’t acknowledge.
Livvy? It sounds like a nickname an old grandma gives her pet poodle. Plus, I am sort of heated he’s calling her any nickname in the first place, but I don’t let my anger show, I hope.
I roll my eyes. “Yeah, I think so, too.”
Liv snaps into her façade of politeness and nods with a small smile toward Rose. She tries to appear okay, like she’s not breaking on the inside. But I know her well enough to see that she isn’t okay—she is shattering, her heart is cracking, piece by piece. I don’t know how I should feel about that…
I abruptly cut my eyes from her sad ones and pull Rose away from the cardigan-loving couple. I couldn’t stand there anymore. Couldn’t deal with the gut-wrenching pain of watching her with someone and the realization that I should hate her. Only problem with that is…I don’t think I can hate her, ever. Trust me, I’ve tried. I always end up thinking of her big, blue eyes that seemed to peer into my soul and fall right back where I started—in love with the small girl in flats and khakis.
“What was that?” Rose whispers to me after we’ve walked for a while. I don’t know where we’re going, but I just had to get away from her.
Go back to the old you, don’t let her see. Don’t let her see. I recited the same lines I’ve chanted over and over the day she tore my heart into a million pieces like it was a piece of paper that didn’t matter.
“Nothing,” I reply. “Nothing at all…”
***
A few hours have passed; I’m smoking a blunt to cool my nerves from my previous run-in with Liv and her boy-toy. It was weird and brought up way too many emotions; I couldn’t function. But now the drug is parting my messed-up feelings for her and the way I should be—distant and over her. It’s safe to say I am smack dab in the middle.
She’s like a bubble gum that tastes sweet as can be and makes you smile, but once you drop her to the floor, ready to leave behind the bitter taste she produced, and stepped on her by accident, she won’t ever leave the bottom of your shoe.
“Pass it, man.” Jake, a guy and fellow fighter among many chosen to compete in the summer games I befriended, bumps my knee with his. He slits his pale blue eyes at me, the scar slashed across his cheek scrunching as he scowls at me, but it’s playful. He knows if he tries any shit with me, I’d pummel his ass and give him a matching scar.
“Fuck you, get your own,” I mumble while taking a hit. I refrain from coughing; he’d just laugh at me and I would be forced to go through with my threat of handing his ass to him. We are currently waiting with some friends of David’s for our turns to go out there to fight random matches—just for fun. We’ve been doing this for practice and to generally blow off some steam. But for me, it’s to let off an old-time cruise ship’s worth of steam. Enough steam that pollutes the air and leaves you wondering if the sky will ever return.
“Get the fuck outta here.” He lunges for the thick blunt in my hand, and I laugh and jump off the tattered couch. We fumble around and fight for the blunt for a while before I finally push his ass back on the couch and take a long-ass puff. He growls at me and jumps to his feet as I laugh, but I stop and hold up a finger when my loose shorts buzz. I pull my phone out of the waistband and stare at the message from “D.”
“Everything okay?” Jake asks after a while of me staring at the text with a blank face.
I nod while walking over to my locker, propping it open after twisting the combination, and throwing my phone on my gym bag. I kick it closed and flash him an assuring smirk. “Everything’s A-okay.” Then I purposefully take a long, slow drag of the blunt. Before he can storm over to me and fight for it, the metal door creaks open, and one of the coordinators of the fight announces it’s my turn.
I take a long drag of the blunt, enjoying the way my head goes light for a second, and I see beams of reflected light bounce off the dirty mirror on the wall before me. I stare at myself for a split second. Wrapped hands, finger-gloves around them, shirtless, tattoos on display—I’m ready. Ready to win another round, one more notch in my growing list of fuckers who faced my wrath. Ever since that fateful day six months ago, I turned into the beast she once saw me as and fought my way through all the hurt and pussy feelings she forced upon me without even knowing.
“Good luck out there,” Jake says, happily taking the blunt I hand to him.
On the way out, I scoff, blowing the smoke in the air with a ghost smile on my lips. “I don’t need luck. The other guy does.” I give him a cocky wink, and he rolls his eyes and nods sarcastically. I chuckle and step out of the concrete room. I let the man who came for me trail behind me, talking in his headset about my approaching the ring. I ball my hands up in fists and shake out my fingers. The sly smirk doesn’t leave my face but grows darker through each beam of light reflecting down on me I pass.
Chapter Ten
When I get home, I excuse myself from Noah so I could get myself under control. He was adamant that I talk about what just happened and why I was so upset, on the verge of crying. I think it’s sweet of him to care so much, but I’m not close enough to him to spill my biggest, darkest, and dumbest mistake I’ve ever made in my life. He’d think I was a fool, a fool who has no regard for other people’s feelings. He’d probably be right, but that just made me want to get as far from him as possible. I don’t want to hurt him too.
I thought watching Grey drive off while I laid on the ground bleeding was the worst thing I could have possibly witnessed. But I hadn’t seen him strut around town with his new girlfriend before. What I can’t understand is: Why is she with him again? Doesn’t she resent him for what he did to her five years ago? If he did that to me, I wouldn’t be able to keep my nails from his throat. Yet she’s proudly holding his hand and doesn’t seem to mind? It doesn’t seem right, but I guess they worked through the roughness and decided to give things another chance.
If he could do that with her, why couldn’t he just listen to me and give me another chance?
Thinking that only breaks me even more. I’ve been so fractured for so long, breaking even more when I think about him, I’m not even sure how I’m not blown into the wind with this fraction of myself. I’ve become more like bits of myself, like crystal shards of a smashed glass. And sooner or later, I will flow into the wind and spread across the ground. He and Rose would walk all over me with the biggest, brightest smiles…but I deserve it and so much more.
I betrayed him. I don’t deserve to sulk over him.
But I just can’t help it.
I can’t stop crying, but I finally dec
ide to shut up and distract myself. I just need to get through this summer, and then I won’t have to see him ever again. I’ll be going to classes and probably enter a book club to busy myself. I’ll catch up with Mason and Jaimie and drink coffee and have late study sessions. I’ll find some boy who likes indie bands and knows how to play the guitar or something, and I’ll be happy. Again. I will be able to breathe.
I take a deep breath before grabbing my laptop and moving from my room to the backyard. I fall into one of the lounge chairs and take another breath. I pull up the Skype application and press Jaimie’s contact. We’ve been talking while she and Julia travelled. I just need to see their faces and I’ll be able to forget about the torment my ex and his new girlfriend are putting me through.
A few seconds later, we are connected. But it’s Julia’s face I see.
“Fuck me in the ass and call me Monica Lewinsky, you actually look good,” Julia says brashly as she examines my attire. I flush bright red and cover my chest that is semi-visible in the strapless light pink polka dot dress I’m wearing. She whistles, and I laugh as she stares at my chest through the screen. She and Jaimie are currently in Paris because Jaimie had a dream they were eating a ten-foot cronut, and I promised her a trip there since Grey and I ruined her birthday party. That and she wants to track down as many French celebrities as she can. I swear that girl will have a restraining order against her in the future.
“Who the fuck are you talking to like that, if not me?” Jaimie growls and pops up behind Julia’s bare shoulder. Her brown eyes widen when she realizes it’s me, and she squeals, “Oh, it’s just you. Hey, Bam!” She waves excitedly at the screen, making me laugh and wave back. “I thought you were spending the summer at some beach house in Miami, not a resort.” She looks confused, and I redden.
Grey: The Retribution (Spectrum Series Book 3) Page 6
