Taken (19 page)
“I will. Tell Aunt Jan goodbye for me.”
When we hang up, I lay my head on the table. This situation is so ridiculous. There’s nothing left for me here. I have no job, an apartment and roommate I’m avoiding, and I’m lying to my mom. I don’t want to be here or there with you, but there’s no door number three at the moment.
I’m lying to myself, too. I do want to be there with you, but I can’t be. Even Aunt Jan said it—I can’t be with someone I don’t trust. Can I teach you? I don’t know. Will you devour me, my heart, and my emotions before you learn?
It feels like I’m circling a fire, debating on whether to pounce into the flames or not. People don’t dive into flames unless they’re stupid. I’m not stupid, but I’m acting stupid. You’re making me act stupid.
Ugh. I bang my head gently against the table. The ping of an email alert on my phone has my head popping up.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Decisions
Rachael,
I did a lot of thinking last night. I apologized to Joan. I’d like to make it up to you
somehow.
Apologies are far more effective in person though.
Hope to see you soon,
Merrick
Good luck with that. I’m not going back.
From: [email protected]
RE: Decisions
Merrick,
I haven’t made up my mind. There’s a lot to take into consideration.
You’ve already apologized. What’s done is done.
Indecisive,
Rachael
After sending off my reply, I lay my head back down on the table. My stomach growls. I need food, but Mom made sure to clean out the fridge before leaving for three weeks. If I had the energy, I’d go out and get something.
My phone rings. It’s Shannon. I can’t bring myself to talk to her, so I let it go to voicemail. Then I send her a text letting her know I’m home and at my mom’s, and I’ll stop by the apartment later today. I feel terrible avoiding her.
I wander into Mom’s room hoping to find a book to read. After perusing her bookshelf for a while, I pick a memoir that looks like it has zero romance and crash on her bed to read. I get three pages in when there’s a knock on the front door.
I should’ve never told Shannon I was here. Now she’ll pester me to get out of my ratty old bathrobe and do something with my hair and go shopping. Maybe she’ll want to go to lunch though. I’m still ready to chew my fingers off. I should order Chinese.
I grab the doorknob and yank the door open. “I knew you’d show up.”
She’s looking sexy as always in a black halter top and jean shorts. Her golden blonde hair is pulled up in a high ponytail, her skin is bronzed to perfection and I’m left wondering how we ever became friends we’re so completely opposite. She whips her sunglasses off and looks me up and down. “You look like shit.”
“I feel like shit.” I stand back and let her inside.
“So, what the hell happened to you?” She plops down on Mom’s couch, picks up a magazine from the coffee table and crosses her legs. I sit next to her. “Last thing I knew,” she says, flipping through the celebrity rag magazine, “I left you at the club eyeing up some hot piece of man meat. Then you disappear, and I get a call from some woman telling me you’re in Florida doing work on that hotel project you turned down. How’d that happen?”
“I…well, it’s…wait. How did you get your car?”
She shakes her head. “What the hell are you talking about? You left it in the driveway.”
Merrick must’ve taken care of that, too.
“Rachael? Hello?” She snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Something’s going on with you.” She swivels to face me. “What happened?”
I rub my arms and try to think of a way to start this conversation. “You know the man meat? That was Merrick Rocha.”
She stares at me blank-faced.
“Of Rocha Enterprises. You know, the billionaire businessman who offered me a job?”
“Oh!” She cocks her head and gives me a strange look. “He’s not old.”
“No. He’s not. Anyway, we left for Florida that night and that’s where I’ve been. At the hotel on Turtle Tear Island in the Everglades.”
Her eyebrows shoot up and she clucks her tongue. “Alone with the billionaire? Is he a sex god, too?”
I can’t help the sigh that falls through my lips. “I wouldn’t know. It’s…complicated.”
She grabs my shoulders and shakes me. “Rachael. He’s hot as hell. What’s complicated about that?” Her hands drop. “He’s married.”
I laugh. If only that were the problem, our relationship would be cut and dry—friends only. “No. He’s not.”
“Gay?”
“Not even close.”
“Then there’s something wrong with you, cuz the man I saw at the club had a serious body and a face that could soak panties from here to hell and back.
What
is the problem?” She tosses the magazine onto the table and leans back folding her arms. “I know you’re not saving it all up for marriage. That cherry’s been popped. So, what is it?”
I grimace. “Do you have to talk like that?”
She waves her hand at me. “We’re not in middle school.”
“I told you, it’s complicated. And it’s over, so whatever.”
She takes my hands and swings them back and forth between us. “What happened? Tell your bestest friend in the world what happened.”
Her sing-song voice cracks me open. Sobs break from my throat. Tears lurch from my eyes. “I can’t talk about it. He…he…” I gasp for air. “He’s so stupid!”
She laughs. “Of course he’s stupid. He’s a man. They’re all stupid. That’s why we’re here—women were put on earth to smack some sense into them. They think with their dicks. We’re their brains.”
I sob and sniffle some more. “I don’t want to have to tell him how to act. He should know these things…the things he does…he hurts me.”
“Does he hit you?” She jumps off the couch. “I’ll kick his ass. I’ll get a whole gang of guys to kick his ass!”
“No!” I grab her hand and pull her back down on the couch. “He thinks he’s doing nice things that I’ll like, but…
gah!
I can’t explain it.” I wipe my eyes on the sleeve of my robe.
She twists her lips in annoyance. “Well, you’re being a little vague. Maybe it you actually told me something it would help.”
I lick my lips and rub them together before blurting, “He brought another woman to bed with us the night I decided I was going to have sex with him.”
Shannon is speechless. She sits and stares at me, blinks a couple times. “That’s never happened to me.”
I’m not sure if she says it for comparison’s sake, or if she honestly has no idea how to respond. “First time for me, too.”
“What did you do?”
She leans forward and folds the collar of my robe, straightening it.
“Nothing at first. I went along with it. Until things got a little too…personal. Then I ran out of the room and locked myself in the bathroom.”
“Was it—what was it like?” She bites her nail.
“I don’t know!” I stand up and take a few paces to the window. “It didn’t last long. I freaked and ran out.”
“Huh.”
When I turn and look at her, she’s still biting her nail. “What?”
“I’ve always wondered what I’d do in that situation, but somehow it’s never come up. I’m kind of surprised it happened to you first.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, and turn back to the window. It’s bright out, looks hot. Not as hot as Turtle Tear. I wonder what you’re doing right now, how the renovations are going today.
“How’d it end?”
I spin around. “I left. I told him I couldn’t deal and ran.”
She shrugs a shoulder. “Seems a little drastic. I mean, he’s kinky, so what?”
I shake my head. “No. No, it’s more than that. I told you, it’s complicated. You just have to take my word for it. It can’t work out.”
Shannon stands and holds her arms out. “Okay, I believe you. Come here.”
I cross the room and she pulls me into a big hug. “My heart hurts.”
“I know. I know it does.” She pats my back. “What you need is a few cosmopolitans and new sexy underwear.”
“I’d rather have ice cream and sweatpants.”
“No, no, no.” She takes my arms and backs up a step. “You want back on that wagon, but you don’t want it to buckle under your weight.” She hooks an arm around me and leads me to the bathroom. “Shower and change. We’re drinking and shopping and by tonight you won’t remember his name.”
I take a shaky breath and blow it out. “Okay.” Before I shut the bathroom door, I turn to her. “How’s Seth, or Shane or what’s-his-name that you met at the club?”
“Who?” She smirks and giggles. “Over. He has no idea what to do with that thing between his legs. Which is unfortunate, because it’s a nice one.”
I roll my eyes and shut the door, thinking about how nice yours is. Too bad I’ll never get to know how well you use it.
Chapter Thirteen
I’m so drunk I can’t see straight.
“One more,” Shannon urges. “Don’t be a pussy.”
“I can’t feel my tongue.” The words seem to echo somewhere inside my head. I’m not sure I said them aloud.
She laughs though, so I guess I did. “Do you remember his name?”
“Yeah. Shitface.” I laugh so hard, my elbow slips out from under me, sending my head, which was perched on my hand, lurching toward the bar. It hits, but I don’t feel anything.
“Rach!” Shannon tugs me up off the bar. “That had to hurt like hell.”
“I’m numb.” I laugh again.
“She’s not driving, right?” The bartender eyes me like I’m his one-way ticket to jail. He has nice blue eyes. Unlike your brownish-black ones that drill straight through mine.
“Shitface,” I say again. “He’s such a shitface.”
“No,” Shannon tells the bartender. “She’s not driving. Can I get a cup of ice?”
He sits the ice down and she wraps some in a napkin and holds it to my forehead. “He really did a number on you, huh?”
“Who?” I pluck an ice cube out of the glass and suck on it.
“Shitface.”
“I love Shitface, and I hate him. Mostly, I want to fuck him.”
“Hey!” She jolts her head back in surprise. “Did that just come out of your mouth, Rachael DeSalvo?”
“Hell yeah it did.” My head starts aching through the numbness making my train of thought derail. “Ouch.” I press my fingers against the cold, wet skin under the napkin Shannon’s holding.
“Let’s get you home, nympho.”
I laugh and then cringe. “I think my head’s swelling.”
The drive home is a blur. Shannon tugs me out of the car and shoves me in the door of our apartment where I crash on the couch. My phone chirps, but I ignore it. My fingers wouldn’t be able to function to answer it anyway.
“Here. Hold this to your head.” She hands me a plastic zip-lock bag filled with ice. “How do I stop this thing from driving me crazy?” She’s pressing buttons on my phone.
“Throw it against the wall. Who cares?” My mom’s face travels through my consciousness long enough to be irritating, then your face does. “Shitface,” I mumble. Then I close my eyes and focus on breathing and not puking.
I wake up on the couch with my stomach rolling and lurching and make a mad dash for the bathroom. After puking my stomach inside-out, I notice the giant, black and blue goose egg in the middle of my forehead. “Shannon!”
She mutters something from behind her closed bedroom door. I shove it open and throw myself down on her bed. “What the hell happened to my head?”