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“How are you doing with that?” she asks gently.
“Bad,” I admit. My voice cracks. “I only got clean for him. If I can’t have him, why am I bothering?”
“Because there are other things to want, honey. And you need to want it for yourself.”
“I just want him,” I whisper. “I don’t give a shit about myself.”
“That,” she says, with a sigh, “has always been the problem. This isn’t the time to be focusing on Caleb. You need to focus on yourself. I wish you’d give my friend Lynn a call. Go to San Francisco, stay with her, get yourself back on track.”
I shake my head. She just doesn’t fucking get it. Leaving here means losing Caleb, and if that happens, there was no point to any of this. None.
4
KATE
Iwake with a start in an unfamiliar room. Pale morning light pours in through dirty windows, hitting the plain, exposed wood walls around me. I stare at the TV, the single hard-backed chair sitting a few feet from my face, and my breath holds as I try to remember how I got here. Waking up in a strange room with the night before a blank slate is an experience I’ve had a few too many times, and it never turns out well.
Beck’s house. The breath I was holding in releases.
I guess he came home at some point, since the TV is off and I’m covered with a blanket that wasn’t there when I fell asleep.
I go to the kitchen and start his ancient coffeemaker—this thing looks like it predates thediscoveryof coffee. All his appliances look like they predate the discovery of coffee, actually. I have no idea why he lives like this—that bar of his appears to be making money hand over fist, and if it’s not, he ought to let me go over his financials.
I laugh to myself. No one familiar with my past is trusting their financial health to me.
I start frying bacon and eggs, hoping the smell lures him from his room. It’s selfish, but it’s been nearly twenty-four hours since I spoke to another person. I’m desperate to hear a voice other than my own.
Just as I’m turning the bacon, he emerges, eyes barely open, clad in nothing but shorts. I stare, of course, because he’s beautiful and comprised entirely of muscle, and how could anyone not stare? He’s got a new tattoo on his chest—curves and pointed edges, like a portrait of waves as seen by Matisse, running lengthwise. I like it more than I should. Fortunately, he’s too sleepy and perhaps surprised by the presence of food in his house to notice I’ve been looking at him like a woman who’s gone without sex for the past year.
Which, actually, I pretty much am.
I pour him coffee, and he grunts something that sounds likethanks. Or maybe it waswhy are you still here?
I’m going to assume it was thanks.
“Didn’t know you cooked,” he says, his voice raspy with disuse.
I turn back to the stove, glancing at him over my shoulder. “Don’t get all excited. One of us doesn’t get fed at the bar.”
He moves around the counter toward me, eyeing the bacon as I remove it from the pan. “That can’t all be for you.”
Joy tickles my chest as I shrug. “You think girls don’t eat?”
“I think girls as skinny as you don’t eat fifteen pieces of bacon and six eggs for breakfast, no.”
Beck and I are like this. Playfully arguing, low-key insulting each other. It makes a friendship with him . . . safe. “Fine. Iguessthere’s enough for you, but don’t go expecting me to turn into your mom.”
His eyes glide over me, from my chest to my legs, focusing on the point where my shirt ends just beneath my ass. “I’m pretty sure I won’t be mistaking you for my mom anytime soon.”
Our eyes lock, and a pulse flutters low in my belly for half a second.Tick, tick, tick. If this was an action movie, it’d be the first sign shit’s about to explode. I’ve always felt like that around Beck, though, had this uncomfortable suspicion that I was safest not meeting his eye for long.
He returns to the other side of the counter. “So what’s the plan for today?”
I pretend to be deep in thought. “Show up naked at Caleb’s office, then perhaps a movie?”
His nostrils flare. “They went out of town for the weekend, but I was serious before. Leave them alone. No matter what you seem to think, she’s suffered enough.”
I laugh, the sound bitter and joyless. “How the fuck hasthatgirl suffered? Did she not win Prom Queen last spring?”
