The Temptation of Lila and Ethan (27 page)

“Stop it,” she says, wiping the tears and smeared mascara off her cheeks with the bottom of her shirt. I can see her stomach, perfect, smooth, and almost flawless, except for that scar going around the middle. “Don’t joke. You’re being too nice again and I’m so messed up.”

“Everyone’s messed up.” I reach forward and slowly wipe away some of the tears running down her cheek with my fingertips. “In their very own fucked-up way, a lot of people just won’t admit it aloud and then try to change it.” I reduce the space between us and place a hand on her arm. “But you’ve done both of those, which makes you so fucking strong, Lila. I wish you could see that. You’re strong and amazing and beautiful and you deserve so much more than sitting on a bathroom floor in a skanky bar. You deserve to have an amazing life.” I mean every word I say and even though I’m being really emotional, I don’t regret anything I said.

She tries to wipe some of her tears away, but more pour out. She starts to sob and rushes toward me, throwing her arms around my waist. I tense, but then circle her in my arms, hugging her tightly against me as she buries her face in my chest and a strange sense of calm comes over me. I feel comfortably at peace with her in my arms, and if I could, I’d just keep holding on to her forever, comforting her, making her feel better in every way that I could. It takes me a minute to grasp what it might mean. I might be falling in love with Lila. And the moment I realize this is the moment I realize that I’m not sure if I was ever really in love with London. Infatuated with her, maybe. Love, I don’t think so. Because what I’m feeling right now, this terrifying, cliff falling, heart dropping, thoughts racing, plunging into unknown was far from anything I ever felt for London.

Lila cries in my shirt for an eternity and I trace my fingers up and down her back, telling her that it’ll be okay, while I
kiss the top of her head over and over again, feeling my life—feeling myself change. The longer she stays in my arms, the less I want to let her go. I want to hold her. Smell her hair. Kiss her cheeks until I can’t feel my lips, only her. I want to do a lot of things to her, very slowly and deliberately so I can feel every sensation.

But then she pulls back and peers up at me with bloodshot eyes. “What am I going to do about Parker?”

“What do you mean, what are you going to do?” I keep my arms around her shoulder, still not wanting to let her go. “If he comes near you then I’ll kick his ass.”

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” she whispers. “You don’t need to be fighting anyone for me.”

I laugh again, louder, until my whole side aches. “I’m pretty sure I can handle Parker. In fact, he looks like the kind of guy who likes to bitch slap and pull hair when he fights.”

She restrains a smile. “He’s not that much of a wimp.”

I roll my eyes again and shake my head at the absurdity. “We are talking about the same guy, right? The douche you dated for a while?”

She nods her head and I detect a hint of an amused sparkle in her eye. “And you were so excited when I broke up with him.”

“I was drunk when you did.”

“And we were playing strip poker. I remember.”

I smile, because it’s a perfect moment, a light after a dark episode. “Ah, strip poker,” I say, tucking her hair behind her
ear. “If I remember right you never did take your bra off when I won that hand.”

“Only because I knew you couldn’t handle the goodies.” She shakes her chest and her tits bounce against my chest. She pauses and then lowers her cheek against me, breathing quietly. “Thank you, Ethan… for everything.”

I could tell her she doesn’t need to thank me. That I was glad to do it. That I loved helping her. But I’m not. I wish it’d never happened. Instead, I wish she never had to go through all of this.

I mutter, “You’re welcome.” Then lace my fingers with hers and tug her toward the door, ready to take her back to our home and get her the hell away from this place. I’m ready to take her back home.

To
our
home.

Lila

It’s been four days since my little episode and for the most part, life has been fairly normal, except for my relentless need to fixate on Ethan. Ever since he found me in the bathroom stall, I can’t stop thinking about him. It’s worse than before, an intense growing obsession. I’m not even sure what it is. The way he looked at me, touched me, spoke to me, joked with me, forgave me, and then took me home. They’re such little things, yet they mean so much. He may be rough, blunt, somewhat perverted, and completely imperfect according to my mother’s standards, but I seriously wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ve had the supposed perfect guy before, the one who gave me rings, told me I was beautiful, told me he loved me, that I owned his soul, and that he’d do anything for me. But it was a bunch of shit. Unreal. Perfect doesn’t exist. Realness does. Realness is what I need. And Ethan is as real as anyone I’ve ever met.

I’m trying to figure out what this all means in terms of my feelings for him. I thought I understood love once, but it turned out I was wrong. Could the feelings I have for Ethan possibly be love? I have no idea, but eventually I’m going to have to figure it out, instead of wandering around analyzing everything.

I’m also looking for a job again, one that’s Ethan approved, and I’m still getting used to that fact. No one has ever thought highly enough of me to think I deserved something better. Sure, my mother wouldn’t approve of the job at Danny’s either, but not because she thought I was better than that. She would think the Summers’s name was better, but not my character. In fact, if she was basing it solely on my character she’d say I belonged there, something she made pretty clear during one of her phone calls.

“You did what?” she practically screams into the phone and I have to hold the receiver away from my ear as it rings against her voice. “You moved in with some guy?”

I put the receiver back to my ear and balance it between my head and my shoulder. “Yes, that’s what I said.”

“I know that’s what you said,” she replies curtly. “But what I don’t get is why the hell you did it.”

I’m rinsing off the dishes as I load up the dishwasher. I also vacuumed, swept, and cleaned the toilets, and even though it sucked, I also took a bit of pride in doing it. “Because I needed a place to live.”

“Is this guy rich?”

“No, he’s normal.”

“Normal isn’t acceptable, Lila Summers. Normal will get you nowhere but pregnant and living in a shack and wishing your life was better.”

“Normal is perfectly acceptable.” I smile at myself, saying it aloud, as I scrub some green stuff off the plate underneath the stream of water. “And besides, what makes you such an expert on normal. You don’t even know anyone who is.”

“Your aunt Jennabelle is.”

“I didn’t know I had an aunt Jennabelle.”

“She’s my sister and you don’t know her because she lives in a studio apartment with her three children and had to take a job as a secretary to make ends meet after she left her husband when he started screwing a woman he worked with. And no one ever wants to visit a poverty-stricken, single-parent divorcee who lives in a crappy apartment. If she would have just stuck with her husband and overlooked his one flaw then she wouldn’t live in the run-down part of town with a bunch of drug addicts and criminals.”

“Just because they live in the run-down part of town doesn’t mean they’re drug addicts and criminals,” I say. “And I would love to visit her,” I argue, rinsing off a glass. “She sounds like a strong woman who was brave enough to leave a man who obviously didn’t love her enough to treat her well and she’s been able to take care of herself.”

“She’s poor, Lila,” she harshly snaps like the word is so filthy it has no right to even leave her lips. “She can’t even afford a new car.”

“Neither can I,” I state, sliding some silverware under the faucet and scrubbing the gunk off with my fingers.

“Well, that’s your own damn fault for being so stubborn. You could have everything you wanted in life, Lila. The perfect life, but you keep messing it up for yourself. Instead of doing what I’ve told you to do and come home and live with us until you can get back on track and meet a nice, wealthy guy who will take care of you, you’re living in poverty, probably taking the bus.”

“I’m not living in poverty,” I reply. “Not yet, anyway. Thanks to my normal friend, who’s letting me stay here with him because he’s nice. Money and cars and nice clothes aren’t everything, mother. And I don’t want to sacrifice being around people who I like just to have a glamorous life.” Wow, when did I get to this place? “I want to be around people I care about and who care about me. That’s all I really want in life.” God, I care about Ethan. I really, really do.

“Well, that’s a lovely way to look at life. Maybe you should go visit your Aunt Jennabelle and get a real taste of what life is like,” she says, and then adds, “And what on earth is that noise? That water noise in the background.”

“Water.” I put the plate in the dishwasher.

“Well, I know that,” she snaps. “But what’s it from?”

I turn off the faucet and close the dishwasher door. “It’s from the sink.” I press the power button and wipe off my hands on a towel. “I just got done doing the dishes.”

“You what?” she shouts into the phone so loudly my ear rings. “That’s it, Lila. This kind of behavior is unacceptable.”

“Why? Because I’m cleaning up after myself?” I walk into the living room and flop down on the couch. I have some vanilla-scented candles burning and the whole house has a shiny, polished look to it. It looks good and I hope Ethan will appreciate it when he gets back from work.

“Summers’s do not clean up after themselves,” she snaps. “They hire maids for that.”

“Well, since I’m broke, a maid really isn’t an option.” I sit back in the chair and comb my fingers through my hair. It’s still long and perfectly trimmed just like I was taught to maintain it. “God, with the way you’re acting, you’d think I’d just told you I did drugs or something.”

She laughs into the phone. “Quit being a little bitch and be grateful for everything I’ve done and given to you. Without me, you’d be worse off than you are now. And that’s going to end quickly because I’m coming down to get you.”

“Good luck finding me,” I say, inspecting my split ends. I should really just cut my hair off, like I wanted to when I was a kid. “Vegas is a very big city.”

“What is wrong with you?” she cries. “You’re being rude and inconsiderate. I don’t get it. I don’t get any of this, like why you’re even living in Vegas in the first place.”

“Because it was the first place I pointed to on the map,” I mutter to myself, remembering how I got here.

“What are you talking about?” she seethes hotly. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Nope, not really.”

“Well, you need to,” she snaps. “If you’d just listen to me then you’d quit messing up your life. Being with a guy because he
cares
about you is going to get you nowhere, especially if he’s some low-life like the guys your sister dates. He’ll end up screwing you over and then you’ll be left alone, probably pregnant and poor.”

“That’s not going to happen, so quit being overdramatic.”

“Yes, it is. You wait and see. You’ll get pregnant and guys like that won’t take care of you. And I sure as hell won’t help you.”

“I don’t want your help,” I tell her, fuming with aggravation. “I want to be right where I am, living with Ethan. I don’t want to be with anyone else. Ever.” Wow, this conversation with my mom is getting productive in a very scary, life-altering way.

“You are really starting to piss me off,” my mother says sharply.

“And you’re pissing me off.” I hang up, tossing the phone onto the coffee table. I feel so strange. So light, even after talking to her because of what the conversation revealed. I want to be here. With Ethan. And I don’t ever want to leave, at least as far as I can see into the future.

“I want to do something exciting,” I mumble to myself, coiling a finger around my long blonde hair. It’s the same
haircut I’ve had for years and I’ve never dyed my hair, yet I’ve always wanted to. “I want a change.”

Change. I want to change who I am. I want to be better. I want to be a person who I can love, not hate and despise. Smiling, I get up and grab my purse off the table, and then I head out the door, knowing I’m going to have to take the bus, but it feels okay today and that in and of itself is another change. I wonder how many more are to come.

I’m really starting to walk on the wild side, well the wild side for me. I got my haircut at a discount hair salon and not just a trim or anything. I cut it off so it’s shoulder length and I added black streaks to it. I’d always gotten pretty much the same haircut, always at this expensive, appointment-only place down in the main area of the city. Turns out discount places aren’t that bad. Shelia, the lady who cut my hair, was really nice. She told me how she ended up cutting hair, how she’d been going to school to be a lawyer because her parents wanted her to. But when she was sitting in class one day, listening to her professor ramble on and on about the law, she realized how much she could care less about law and that really she’d rather be breaking some laws instead of learning about them. She left class, traded her nearly new car in for a motorcycle, and drove across the country. Just like that. Then when she got back she decided to try beauty school, simply because it was the first place she came across when she entered town. Her parents
never forgave her for messing up what they deemed a perfect life, but she didn’t care. She was happy. Still is. And that’s all that matters.