“I thought things were going well with Phoenix, too,” I say with a sigh. “But . . . well, things took a turn."
"How's that?"
I shrug and try to swallow the rock in my throat. “I pretty much, you know, messed everything up . . . like I always do. It just went bad. Pretty sure he hates me now.”
God, I really need to stop caring about this.
I ignore the way my chest tightens and pour cadmium scarlet and yellow ochre onto my pallet, then begin mixing the paint to the tone I need. I shouldn’t bother Diego with my mess. And I will not cry about the asshole.
Diego gets this look on his face like he's considering if he should say anything. Then he steps closer, studying me as he leans on the ladder that we set up so I could draw the higher parts of the mural. His dark hair hangs in his eyes a little now, his glasses framing his face, making him look very serious. There’s a slight five-o’clock shadow speckling his strong jaw and he’s very tan. The bastard looks perfectly edible. He must’ve come back here to work after a dinner meeting or something because his clothes are nicer than usual.
“What happened exactly?” he asks.
I shake my head. Don't be selfish, Verity. The guy is already stressed enough. I'm not sure I know how to say it out loud, anyway. I’m unlovable? I suck at intimacy? I’m a cat-lady in the making?
His features shift, real concern furrowing his brow. “Did he hurt you?”
“No!” His leap to protectiveness jars me. I swallow my emerging emotions and decide I better elaborate at least a little. “It was inevitable. You know how it goes with me. I can’t seem to reel them in."
Diego just stares at me, his features unreadable.
"I should've known better, right?" I add with a forced laugh. So much for keeping my baggage to myself tonight.
He puffs out a breath and folds his arms across his chest. “Yes. You should have.”
I nod and give him a half smile. “Time to grow up.” My chest tightens at the words. I’m just mimicking the jerk now.
“No, Verity,” Diego says, gently. “Time to be yourself.”
My eyes snap to his. “What?”
“You need to stop hiding. You need to let this idea of pleasing these guys go. They’re idiot boys, and you’re way more than they could ever handle.”
I release a shocked laugh. “If you say so.”
“I do.” He stands straight and steps closer giving my arm a patronizing fist-bump. “Now get to work, or you’re fired.”
I’m not sure how to respond to his awkward touch, so I just laugh again and watch him as he walks back to the couch and his stack of papers. He’s such an enigma. The man is impossible to understand. Successful, kind, a gentleman. An orphan-child of an immigrant from Spain, and apparently celibate. There’s an amazing story there.
I turn away, already forming a tale of poverty and woe to beat any telenovela. I shake off all the thoughts I shouldn't be thinking, thoughts that could get me fired for real, about his soft hair and warm eyes, and I focus back on my work, quickly losing myself in line and color and texture as I begin to create. And as the shapeless smattering of rust and gold becomes leaves, and the cocoa shadows gain depth, I come to a conclusion.
I need to stop assuming life will bring things to me. I need to figure out what I want. To decide; I can either stop holding back and join the messy party of love, diving in head first, giving it my all. Or I can sit in the corner and mope.
. . . I could also just get a cat and be done with it all entirely.
FOUR
Lance’s twenty-fourth birthday party sneaks up on me. Jade plans it with my mother every year now because I burned down the gazebo a few birthdays back with my ground-breaking candle-on-a-string idea. After that Dad made me promise to leave the party planning to the experts. Which apparently was code for: Anyone Other Than Me. It's not as if Jade's a party planner; she’s just good at being bossed around by my mother.
Uhg . . . my mother. What is she going to say when I show up stag? She still thinks I have a date because I failed to mention it never worked out with Phoenix. When she asked me the other day at our monthly “lunch at the club” if that nice-looking writer was coming with me, I nodded and said, “Oh, I’m sure,” and then shoved a finger sandwich in my mouth so I wouldn’t have to talk anymore.
Talking about my love life with my mother is a nightmare. She’s spent the last five years trying to convince me that I’m a lesbian so I could help her look more sympathetic to the ladies at the club. Plus, she’s sure so-and-so’s daughter is the perfect girl for me, like she wants to be the gay community’s Yenta. As she says, “At least if you had someone you wouldn’t look so pathetic all the time.” I almost had her convinced she was way off the mark when I was dating Phoenix.
Now I’ll be showing up alone to a party. Again. More fuel for the lesbian fire. Plus, she’ll give me that look. You know the one: Tisk-tisk, I told you so. Like she can smell my weakness and sense what I’m already fully aware of—my lameness with men and sure-footing in spinsterhood. I’d fake it with someone for the party if I still had time to work it out. Diego’s already coming (plus, me dating a gay man won’t make her shut up) and Willow and Jade already asked all the guys in our building. Only two of them could come. Yes, even Jade has a date.
“Darling,” Mom drones out as I come to the door. She glances around, like she’s searching for someone. Then she looks me over with her lips tight. I’m wearing the short black dress she bought me that cost more than the average person makes in a month. And the purple Jimmy Choos to go with, which are far too high in the heel. I pulled my purple and pink streaked hair back so the “insanity of it,” as she says, is somewhat hidden. I even put makeup on the tattoo I have on my chest of a small butterfly. The tattoo on my back of the flock of ravens is still a little visible where the dress doesn’t cover it, but the flowers on my thigh are hidden under my pantyhose.
She should be thrilled.
“You could’ve at least gone and gotten your nails done, Verity, dear.” She squints at my hands that I’m now trying to hide with my clutch. “I’m not pleased.”
Of course not.
“Hello to you too, Mother.” I give her my best plastic smile—I’m well-practiced with this look: Fake As Shit.
I walk past her and head for the open bar. Lance is there already. I sneak a tap on his shoulder and say, “Happy birthday, Brother.”
He turns from his conversation and pulls me into the group. “My little sister, boys!” He raises his glass like he’s toasting me. “You touch her and you’ll die a horrible death.”
“Why?” a nearby girl asks. “Does she have the plague?”
I can’t see who made the snide remark. It doesn’t matter. Several of the guys in the group are already laughing and looking me up and down.
Well, this is already going so well. Clearly, I should’ve come earlier.
“When did you start the shots, Birthday Boy?” I hold my plastic smile in place and pull from Lance’s arm, feeling sick and wanting to hide already. I know he means well, but he’s drunk, the party’s barely started, and I’m already being laughed at.
Lance raises his glass again. “To twenty-four years on this fucked-up planet!”
Everyone cheers and I’m forgotten. I fade behind the bar and grab a bottle—I don’t even look to see what it is. It feels heavy, which means it’s full. That’s all I need to know.
I slip through the crowd and out the back, onto the porch, making my way to the pool house. Lance obviously isn’t using it, and I can hide.
But I’m foiled, stopped by Mrs. Walters, one of my mother’s friends from some charity board she's on who’s with a group of women, most of whom I don’t recognize. She waves me over and the chatter begins from where I assume they left off—but not before they ask me where my date is. I wave at the house vaguely and then their gossip fills the patio again. None of them even seem to notice the bottle of booze gripped tightly in my fist. That should tell
you a whole lot.
I clench my teeth as the small talk grates against my already frayed nerves. They chat about pool contractors and which tennis trainer at the club I should try out. Apparently, a good swing isn’t the only thing Frank Halls has going for him according to Sandra Loral who recently got a few enhancements and wanted to “experiment” before she got married again—for the third time—Frank has quite the knack with a racket, “If you know what I mean.” Wink, wink.
I give it five minutes and then make an excuse to wander back inside. It’ll be too weird if they see me going into the pool house alone. It sure would give them something to gossip about, though.
So, I head through the main part of the house again, back through the entry, down the hall, to my old room. It’s now the New Office but it has a perfect window seat I used to sit on to look out at the city and dream about how soon I could move out. I grip my bottle of mystery booze and head for the safety of solitary. I have my medication. And it’ll be quiet.
Or so I assume.
I open the door, expecting to be met with darkness. Instead I’m met with the breathy sounds of someone in the throes of . . . something.
At first I think it’s someone in pain, but then my eyes clear and I realize what I’m really encountering.
Perched on my window seat is a guy crouched over someone. Oh my God, is that who I think it is? Lindsey Tredwell?
Her shirt is hiked up, she has her head tipped back, and the guy’s body is hovering over hers, his hands sliding up her skirt as he kisses her neck possessively.
And no one even notices me. Standing there. Gaping at my nemesis getting her rocks off.
My stomach crawls up into my throat. I squeak out an apology, panicking, backing out as my bottle of mystery alcohol slips from my grip.
I fumble, trying to grab it as it rolls farther into the room.
But then the two lovers go still, looking at me, and I feel the need to ignore the bottle of booze and stand straighter, act more casual, pretending my heart isn’t pummeling my ribs.
Lindsey’s eyes become two white orbs in the shadows. She jerks herself away from the guy with a gasp. Then she wiggles out from under her lover, off the window seat, fixing her shirt as she jets past me fast enough to create a light breeze.
The guy growls and sits down with a huff.
A million things speed through my head: run away with Lindsey; curl in a ball and die of mortification; flip on the light to point and laugh. But instead I open my mouth and say the dumbest thing ever, “You’ve ruined my window seat!” Because . . . well, he has—there’s no freaking way I’m going to be able to sit there and meditate on life or read a book now. All I will be able to do in that spot is relive this moment. Forever.
And then he answers, “Thanks a lot, Molly. Feck, you got a right holy show.”
But my brain has the absolute wrong reaction to his words—well, not his words because they’re completely incomprehensible—but his voice. It’s stunning. A brogue accent that scraps in all the right places along the back of my neck.
Australian? Irish?
Wow, I’m being ridiculous.
I shake my head, trying to rattle out the thirteen-year-old girl who read too many issues of Rolling Stone while she painted her nails black, sitting on a retro Edward Scissorhands bed spread she had to hide from her mother.
“Who the hell are you?” I manage to ask, trying to get myself back to being annoyed.
But then he speaks again. “A fella who’s needin’ the jacks.”
Did he just call himself a fella? And who’s Jack? “You’re in my room! Get out!” Because I feel the need to take control. Of something.
My eyes are adjusting now, and I can see more than the shape of his jaw. He looks around and frowns, his copper-colored eyebrows shadowing his eyes. “You sleep in an office? On that desk, maybe?” He motions toward my mother’s desk, a large oak monster made to look like an antique. “Grand craic.”
I open my mouth, but no retort comes out. I’m unable to completely process his words with that accent. Plus, now he’s standing and my brain is distracted by the shape of him, broad shoulders in a black T-shirt, about six inches taller than me in my heels, light hair falling over his forehead as he picks up his jacket from the desk chair.
Then he’s coming closer. And my eyes fall to his hands. He’s buttoning up his jeans.
I blink and look away, blood rushing to my cheeks.
“You’re Lance’s sis,” he says, like we’re meeting in an aisle at Target, shopping for towels. “Verity, right?”
My eyes skip to his—they’re a smoky silver-green in the low light. How does he know who I am? Have I met him before? I feel like I’d remember that. There’s something about him, the way he fills the space around us. He’s really close now.
My tongue is officially glued to the roof of my mouth.
Then he says, as if reading my mind, “I spotted a picture of you and Lance in your ma’s kitchen. Recognize the colors.” He grins down at me and motions to a loose piece of my hair, then slips on his jacket. I catch a glimpse of an intricate tattoo curling up his left arm before it disappears under the sleeve. There’s a tattoo coming out from under the neck of his shirt, too. He’s got gauges in his ears, not too big, not too small. “Name’s Fin,” he says.
Fin, the musician? The one Lance is working with? This is the pile of drunk man-meat that I stubbed my toe on the other night?
He holds out a hand and I nearly take it before I remember where it’s been. Heading up Lindsey Tredwell’s skirt.
I’m jolted back to reality and my tongue’s dislodged. “How horrifying to meet you. I’m considering kneeing you in the crotch right now.”
He laughs and I hate how it makes me feel. “You’re a fun one. I can tell.”
Definitely Irish.
“Always,” I say, giving him my well-established plastic grin.
“You come here much?”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
He bites his lips together, holding back a smile, and tilts his head in this strange endearing way that’s freaking annoying because it makes me want to talk to him more, as if I hadn’t just caught him being completely inappropriate in my teenage sanctuary. With a girl he probably just met. A girl who ruined my senior year in high school and is a monumental bitch.
He picks up my bottle of mystery liquor off the floor and reads the label, then hands it to me. “You lose your . . . peppermint schnapps? Hmm . . . I’d ‘ave pegged you as more of a whiskey girl.”
“Rum, actually,” I snatch the bottle from him and hug it to my chest like it’s a life raft.
He studies me for a few beats more, then says, “I’ll see ya ‘round?” and slips past me out the door.
And suddenly I’m alone.
I crack the bottle of schnapps and take a nice, long swig.
I LEAVE THE ROOM AFTER a few good chugs of medication and head back down the hall, through the entry, past the den, and into the fray. If I had half a brain in my head I would’ve walked out the front door right then and never looked back. But instead I make my way right back into the party.
I work through the crowded main area again, a little less sturdy than when I arrived, and—since it’s all going so well—I run into the very last person in the whole world that I want to see. Ever.
Like, ever-ever.
Maxwell Baxter Patterson.
I nearly trip in my Mount Everest heels. My stomach rises, the six shots of peppermint schnapps swirls in my gut, and I blurt out, “What the fuck are you doing here?!” not able to keep the shock from my voice.
He blinks for a second, like he’s caught off guard. “Verity? I . . . uh . . . How . . . how nice to see you.”
I gape and start to sputter, then remember no one’s supposed to show emotion in the Landon House. “Yes, well . . . ” I wave my hand around, like my mother’s living room decor will explain everything.
I’m officially an idiot.
Max
shouldn’t be here. Lance knows how much this boy screwed with my head—he’d never invite him over. Not on purpose.
The memories and emotions, come back in a rush and I start to seethe, opening my mouth to say all the things I’ve been holding in for more than three years, since that night after the Homecoming dance when he convinced me that he liked me, that he cared about me, that he wanted things to be special for my first time—
Diego appears out of nowhere, moving in beside me, putting an arm around my shoulder as if he can feel me about to explode.
“Well, hello, Beautiful,” he says, kissing the top of my head, snapping me out of my rage. Then he turns to Max who’s now looking shocked, watching Diego hold me—he’s actually just holding me back from murdering someone, but whatever.
Diego offers his hand, “Diego Santiago.”
Max takes it. “Max. Maxwell Patterson.”
“Nice to meet you, Maxwell.”
Max motions to the crowd, looking nervous. “My date needed to talk to someone, but she’ll be back.”
Diego actually looks interested and asks, “Oh, who’s your date?”
Max hesitates, glancing at me, and then says, “Lindsey Tredwell. Her father works with Verity’s. I’m the Plus One.”
My tongue is now bleeding. Lindsey Tredwell?! Is he shitting me?
Actually, it sounds like fate. The boy who made my V-card into a bet for shits and giggles is dating the girl who thought the whole plot up in the first place and then posted the evidence all over the internet. The Bonnie and Clyde of my sex life are a couple. And Lindsey was cavorting with some strange guy on my window seat ten minutes ago. Perfection.
My life is a poem.
A Silvia Plath poem, but a poem none-the-less.
I grit my teeth and say, “Oh, how nice. You two belong together.”
Max gives me a clueless smile. “Thanks. We’ve been dating since graduation. Both of us are at Stanford.”
Twisted In You (a Twisted Romance Book 1) Page 3
