Guy next to me felt like this was a perfect opportunity to jump back into our earlier conversation. “So what was the stint in rehab for anyway?”
Classy.
All conversation stopped at our table and every eye slid cautiously to me. This was a lie. This was a lie. I wasn’t an addict, except to maybe hope. Yes, I was only addicted to hope for life after my eighteenth birthday.
“Everything,” I muttered. I didn’t feel up to the task of picking out one of the many reasons to go to rehab. I had lots of vices; I didn’t want to give any one of them up just to prove a fake addiction. “Seriously, you name it.”
The table was quiet for six entire seconds as the heavy information sank into all those around me.
“Sex,” Ryder said clearly in the wake of the awkward silence.
“What?” I sputtered.
“Sex, were you addicted to sex?” he clarified. He settled his gray eyes on me again, their depths becoming pools of liquid silver. But still, he was mocking me, calling my bluff. There was nothing sparking in the air between us and I couldn’t help but be intrigued. What was different about him? Why wasn’t he pulled into the same bullshit every other man on the planet had to suffer from?
“Absolutely,” I sat up straighter, my confidence gaining with each moment he held my gaze. “But I refused treatment; I prefer to live in denial.” I laughed.
“You’re basically like the female version of Tiger Woods,” Ryder stated but his eyes danced with amusement.
“Exactly,” I nodded, offering him an amused smile that lacked any of its usual flirtatious traps. “But it’s my cross to carry.”
“Nuh-uh,” guy next to me grunted in complete disbelief, like I was the holy grail of damaged daddy issues. He scooted closer to me on the bench and I couldn’t help myself, I clung to Chase. I was destined to this sort of depraved, user lifestyle, but nothing could make me willingly give myself over to creepers. I had standards.
Not very many standards….
But there were some levels of crazy I just couldn’t mess with.
“Back off, Hayden, she’s not serious,” Chase barked at him. I was really beginning to like Chase. He tossed his floppy hair out of his eyes in disgust and then turned his deep blue eyes on his friend. “And it’s disgusting that you would be attracted to somebody else’s real problems.”
“I’m just messing around, man,” Hayden laughed. “I wasn’t serious either.”
“Right,” Chase rolled his eyes and his hand went from my lower back to all the way around my back.
He was strong, and protective and I melted into him. But it was all fake. He was under a spell, nothing more. This would fade….
And I would be left with an attachment that meant nothing.
“Hey, want to go with me to the Biology Lab? I have to drop off some extra credit,” Chase leaned in so he could ask me quietly. He held my gaze in his searching blue eyes, looking for something, making sure I was Ok.
“Yes please,” I whispered, trying to show him that I was fine. I wasn’t. I wasn’t anywhere close to being fine, but it didn’t really have anything to do with sleazy Hayden or even the fact that I had been sent away for treatment, just not of the addictive-behavioral type.
It did have a lot to do with the behind the scenes of my life, the ones that nobody could see, the ones that hurt and cut the deepest and screwed me up until I was a walking disaster of bipolar emotions and feminine insecurities.
But mostly it had everything to do with the gray eyes staring at me across the table like they knew me, like they saw through all of the pretty façade of my life and cut to the empty, lost part of me. But most of all it had to do with the fact that he saw me; Ryder saw me and didn’t care.
What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
I followed Chase from the lunch room, letting him lead me by the hand and I decided that I had to find out. Even if it meant that eventually I would turn on the glamour and he would be sucked in just like everybody else and all of his appeal would crumble around him…. still, I had to know.
Chapter Four
“Ivy, is that you?” My mother called from her bedroom.
“Yes,” I called back wondering if she was expecting someone else. I walked over to the windows that looked out at the busy downtown street and watched Chase pull back into traffic. I half wondered what had taken him so long to leave. I lived with my mom in a trendy midtown loft and because of the busy one way streets, Chase couldn’t park and walk me to the door like he had originally planned.
That was fine with me. We weren’t on a date; he was just taking me home from school. Although I wondered if my nonchalance about the whole thing hurt his good-boy ego. The stress of that thought had me glancing at the cherry wood upright piano that sat three feet to my left, pleading with me to play it. To take out my nervous energy on the ivory keys and unforgiving demands of Tchaikovsky.
“How was your first day back?” My mother asked as she walked out of her bedroom. She looked stunning in a short black cocktail dress and six inch stilettos. She was fastening a diamond chandelier earring with two well-manicured hands and perfected the concept of elegance.
“It sucked,” I sighed and then turned my back on her.
I walked over to our immaculate eat-in kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water out of the stainless steel fridge. I noticed a note on the counter from the cleaning lady and had to grip the counter to keep from rolling my eyes. I hated everything about this apartment, about our clothes, about our possessions…. about our lifestyle.
It was honestly disgusting.
“Ivy, ladies don’t say ‘sucked,’” my mother chastised.
“I apologize,” I mumbled. I forced myself to turn around and face her. It took a huge effort on my part and an even greater effort to look in her forest green eyes without cowering. I was her spitting image, it was our strong genes that kind of took over any mixing of DNA and molded us into replicas of each other. One day if I had a daughter of my own she would be just another carbon copy of me. Good thing I would never, ever, ever have children. That was so not in my life plan.
“So, tell me about your first day back,” my mother asked with way too much enthusiasm.
“Why are you so dressed up?” I deflected. We were supposed to have dinner together tonight. I wouldn’t be all that upset about the loss of mother-daughter bonding time but I was terrified for whatever man had to put up with my mother for the rest of the evening.
And possibly through the morning.
“Oh, right,” my mother sighed looking down at her ensemble as if she just realized how dressed up she was. Her eyes darted around the room never quite reaching my face. “Uh, Nix is in town. He has some sort of business thing tonight and we’re going to dinner first.”
My fingers found the edge of the granite counter again and I instinctively dug in, gripping it tightly until the pads of my fingers started to tingle with numbness. I concentrated on my breathing, steadying my ragged breaths and forcing myself to remain calm. I had to remain aloof; I needed to keep the perfect disguise of cool indifference. I couldn’t let her see my fear, or my anxiety, or any of the other hundreds of emotions spinning like a self-destructive tornado inside me.