“I’m fine.” The words are low and gritty as I force them out of my too-tight throat.
Tori snorts. “Yeah. Because that’s totally what I think of when I look at you. Fine.”
She wraps one tattooed arm around my waist, and grabs on to my wrist with her other hand. Before I know it, she’s pulling me off the floor and into a warm, comforting hug.
Comfort isn’t her typical modus operandi—her shell’s a little too hard for that—so I figure I must look as bad as I feel. It’s a frightening thought, since currently death feels like it would be a step up.
Still, I squeeze my eyes shut and bury my face in the curve of her neck as the tears come, hot and inescapable.
“It’s okay, Chloe,” she murmurs softly as she rocks me for long minutes. “You’re okay.”
I’m not. Not even close. I don’t have the energy to tell her that right now, though, not when I know it will have to come with an explanation. An explanation I am in no way up to giving.
Tori’s my best friend and has been for the last three years—ever since we met in our freshman biology lab at UC San Diego. But even she doesn’t know about my past. No one here does—except for Ethan, and look what telling him has gotten me.
I take the comfort she offers for as long as I can get away with it, gathering myself a little more with every breath I draw. Finally, when I feel strong enough—when the tears have slowed to a trickle and my lungs no longer feel like they’re being ripped out through my rib cage—I pull away.
“Sorry,” I tell her, my hands flopping uselessly by my sides. “I—”
“Don’t apologize!” she answers firmly. “It’s not your fault Ethan Frost is a total dick. When you didn’t come home last night, I thought he must have come through, but obviously not.”
She crosses to the small, built-in bar in the corner of the room, pulls out a bottle of tequila and pours a couple of shots. “Here,” she says, holding one out to me. “It’ll be good for you.”
I stare at her incredulously. “It’s barely nine in the morning.”
“You’ve just had your heart ripped out of your chest. A little alcohol is called for, no matter what time it is.”
When I make no move to take the drink, she carries it over to me. All but forces it into my hand. “Come on,” she says. “It’ll make you feel better. Steadier.”
I’m pretty sure she’s wrong. After finding out that the man I love is brother to the man who raped and tormented me in high school, the same man whose parents paid mine off to make my accusations go away, I don’t think anything can make me steadier. But she doesn’t know any of that and I’m not up to telling it to her. Not right now.
Besides, the tequila can’t make things any worse, right? And the pain is still so acute that anything that will dull it for a little while is more than welcome.
Suddenly, drinking seems like salvation. I reach for the shot glass, and under Tori’s approving eyes, down it in one quick gulp.
“Good girl,” she says, holding out the second drink.
I down that one, too, and can’t help noticing the slow burn starting deep inside of me. For the first time since I opened the door to Brandon this morning, I feel something other than cold. It won’t last—of course it won’t—but for now I’ll take it. And if it helps me forget how messed up everything is for a little while, well then, I’ll take that, too.
“You want another?” Tori asks, as she pours two more shots and downs them in quick succession.
“Sure. Why not?” It’s not like I have anywhere else to be today, anything else to do. Ethan talked me into calling in sick to work this morning so we could—
My stomach drops all over again as I realize just how difficult this whole situation has suddenly become. I never want to see Ethan again, never want to look into his blue eyes and see Brandon’s staring back at me. But I have an internship at Frost Industries, one that I busted my ass for the last three years to get. One that I was counting on to help get me into a top law school when I graduate next year.
And now, now I can’t imagine going back there. Can’t imagine facing Ethan ever again. Not with the destruction and devastation that stretch between us. Collateral damage that I never could have anticipated.
But what’s the alternative? Going home to my family with my tail tucked between my legs? Letting my father spend some of his blood money—or more specifically, my blood, his money—to get me into law school? Just the thought makes me sick all over again.
“Is my drink ready?” I ask, desperate for something else to focus on besides how badly I’ve screwed up. It’s ridiculous, really. I’m a planner and always have been. I make a point of thinking out everything, of imagining every possible outcome and contingency plan before I do anything. With Brandon five years ago, I didn’t think, didn’t plan, and we all saw where that got me. Raped, brutalized, bullied. How ironic is it that the first time in five years that I throw caution to the wind, and I end up with Brandon’s brother. Right back where I started. The rape counselor I saw my first year at UCSD would be so unimpressed.
Oh, Ethan would never hurt me physically. I know that for certain—he’s never been anything but exceptionally gentle with me. But this, what I’m feeling now, is so much worse than any blow he could have given me. The fact that he knew, last night … That he made love to me knowing all along about what had happened between Brandon and me …
The tequila threatens to come back up.
And though there’s a part of me that knows it isn’t fair to hold this against him—he did try to break up with me when I showed up last night—there’s another part that doesn’t give a damn. Because he didn’t break up with me. And he didn’t tell me the truth. Instead he fucked me until I couldn’t stand up, fucked me nearly into oblivion. He told me that he loved me, let me tell him that I loved him. And all along he knew. He fucking knew.
My thoughts must be written all over my face, because Tori rushes over and shoves a glass back into my hand. “Drink up,” she orders, slamming back her own shot. I follow suit, then watch as she pours two more shots from the Patron bottle she’s brought over from the bar.
“Sit,” she tells me, gesturing to the nearest sofa.
I do, because my knees are feeling a little unsteady. Three shots of tequila in five minutes—on an empty stomach, no less—is not something I’m used to.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I tell her as I all but collapse on the couch.
She settles down next to me with a snort. “Some things don’t need talking about. Especially not the fact that men are assholes. They just are—it’s an immutable fact. Like it’s written in their fucking DNA or something.”
She clinks her glass with mine and gestures for me to drink up.
So I do. Again and again and again, until my head is spinning and my stomach is roiling and the pain … the pain is still there, but it’s cushioned by the fuzziness that comes with having way too much to drink.
“Have another one,” Tori tells me, filling my glass yet again.
I moan a little from where I’m lying facedown on the couch cushions. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on,” she says. “We’re just getting started!”
Warning bells go off deep inside me, not for the first time when it comes to Tori and drinking. After all, she’s had just as many shots as I have and she barely looks drunk while I’m slurring my words and can’t even lift my head off the sofa. I mean, she’s been a heavy drinker for as long as I’ve known her, but this … this is something else. Something more, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a good thing.
“No more,” I tell her again, taking great pains to enunciate my words. It doesn’t work.
“Party pooper.” She takes another shot. I don’t know how many that is—I lost track of my own shots somewhere around number five. And that was a while ago …
My phone rings from its spot on the coffee table. I don’t have the energy—or the fine motor control—to pick it up at this poi
nt, so Tori does the honors. She scowls at the name on the display, then tilts it toward me so that I can see. My eyes are nearly crossing from the tequila, but I squint enough to make out the fact that my caller ID reads Ethan Frost.
“No,” I tell her, burying my face back in the couch. I can’t talk to him, not now. Not when I don’t know what I want to say … or what I want to hear. All I do know is that if I so much as hear his voice, the pain will come rushing back, and this time no amount of alcohol in the world will be able to dampen it.
She nods, sends the call directly to voicemail.
Seconds later, he calls back.
She does the same thing and he calls back a third time. Then a fourth time. And a fifth.
Each time he calls sobers me up a little more, makes me feel a little worse.
The sixth time the phone rings, I reach for it. I don’t know what I’m going to say to him, but this can’t go on. I won’t make it if he keeps calling like this, keeps making me think about him when all I want to do is forget. Forget Brandon and my parents, forget the rape and everything that came after it. Forget Ethan and everything he’s meant to me. Everything he’s done for me.
But Tori shakes her head, refuses to give me the phone. Instead, she answers herself. Without giving Ethan a chance to so much as say hello, she launches into him.
“Hey, dickhead, since it’s obvious you can’t take a hint, let me spell it out for you. Chloe doesn’t want to talk to you right now and she sure as shit doesn’t want to listen to whatever you have to say. If that changes, I promise you’ll be the first to know. But until it does, stop fucking calling!”
She hangs up with a flourish, then turns the phone off so that I don’t have to worry about him calling back—or about him not calling back, however this thing is going to play out.
“Have another drink,” Tori says, forcing one into my hand.
“No—”
“Just one more,” she orders. “Trust me, after all that, you look like you need it.”
I feel like I need it, too. So I take it. And one more after that.
The room starts spinning and I close my eyes, falling headlong into the darkness.
I wake up hours later with my head in a vise and a desert in my mouth. It takes a few moments for me to figure out where I am and what’s going on. Only moments, but those tiny spaces in time are the best ones of my whole day. Because for those moments, I don’t remember. Anything. For those moments, everything is all right.
Sure, my head hurts and my stomach is churning, but everything else is okay. There’s no pain, no rage, no fear. Nothing but my love for Ethan and the knowledge that my world is as it should be. As I’ve always wanted it to be.
And then it all comes flooding back. Not in a trickle, with little drops of information registering on me slowly. No, it comes back in a flood, in a hurricane of regret that whips me into a frenzy and has me clenching my fists and curling into myself in an effort to keep myself in one piece.
“Tori?” I manage to croak out as I shove myself into a sitting position. My hair is in my eyes and I push the long, random curls out of my face before climbing shakily to my feet. I need Tylenol. I need to vomit. I need … something.
I need something I can’t have.
“Tori?” I call again, but she still doesn’t answer.
My mouth is so dry that just saying her name hurts, so I drag myself up and across the room to the kitchen. I pour myself a glass of water, and drink it in three thirsty gulps. That’s when my eyes fall on the note written in Tori’s elaborate scrawl.
Out of tequila. Gone to get some more.
Yeah, because that’s definitely what we need right now. More tequila.
Then again, blacking out was nice. It’s the waking up that hurts like a bitch.
Very deliberately, I walk to the refrigerator and pull the door open. I study the contents carefully, as if my life depends on it. I examine each apple, each carton of yogurt, each stalk of celery as if it’s the most important thing in the world. Because if I’m thinking about the tiny bruise on the side of one of the apples, then I’m not thinking about my own bruises. I’m not thinking about Ethan or Brandon or how the hell I’m supposed to get myself out of the mess my oh-so-carefully plotted life has so quickly become.
It works, too. When I close the fridge, I’m thinking of nothing more serious than the grapes in my right hand and the piece of string cheese in my left. At least until I catch sight of the blender sitting on the counter next to the sink.
The blender.
Ethan’s blender.
The blender that started this whole goddamned thing.
The grapes fall uselessly to the floor as I launch myself across the kitchen. Before I can even form the thought, I’m ripping the blender carafe out of its stand and slamming it, side first, into the granite countertop as hard as I can.
It doesn’t break so I slam it again. And again. And again. Against the counter, the sink, even the floor, but the damn thing is indestructible.
Somehow that knowledge only makes me angrier. My relationship is broken, my heart is broken, I’m broken, and this goddamned blender is still in one piece. I can’t stand it. I can’t fucking stand it.
Desperate now, and more than a little crazed, I reach into the junk drawer where Tori keeps a bunch of stuff she doesn’t know what else to do with. There’s a hammer in there, just like I remember, and I grab it. I barely remember to shut the drawer before I’m whacking away at the damn blender, determined to break it into as many pieces as I can.
It’s the fourth blow that does it, the claw of the hammer finally cracking the Plexiglas of the carafe and spreading out in a spiderweb design. I watch the crack spread for a second, fascinated by the macabre beauty of the thing, though I don’t know why. And then I’m slamming the hammer into the weakened spot as hard as I can, smashing the carafe into a thousand inconsequential bits.
It’s not enough. Not nearly enough to combat the rage inside of me. I grab the base next, start pounding away at the actual machinery of the blender. It’s not as sturdy as the carafe—less likely to be dropped, I suppose—so it only takes a minute or two for me to break through the casing to the guts of the machine. I yank at the electronics with the hammer’s claw, then get in there with my bare hands and rip the thing to pieces.
Sometime in the middle of all the destruction a loud, high-pitched sound starts. I’m so caught up in the havoc I’m wreaking that I barely notice it. It certainly doesn’t slow me down as I continue to tear at the wires.
I’m hoisting the blender base over my head, preparing to slam it as hard as I can into the tile floor when the front door opens and I find myself face-to-face with a wide-eyed, open-mouthed Tori. She’s got a bottle of tequila in one hand and a take-out bag from our favorite Chinese place in the other and she couldn’t look more shocked if she’d caught me in the act of setting the condo on fire.
It’s only at that exact moment, only as I’m standing here, poised to strike the final blow to the first present Ethan ever gave me—and more than likely to Tori’s ten thousand dollar tile floor, as well—that I realize the high, keening sound filling the condo isn’t electronic.
It isn’t coming from the blender.
It’s human and it’s coming from me.
I’m screaming.
I’m … screaming.
The realization knocks the last of the fight out of me and the blender slips from my suddenly nerveless fingers. It slams into the edge of the counter with a thud, bounces off and lands unceremoniously on the floor, a few inches from my toes.
The sight of the sad, pathetic remains of the blender lying drunkenly on its side does for me what none of the wanton destruction did. It shocks me back into myself. Shocks me silent.
For long seconds, neither my roommate nor I move. We just stare around the kitchen at the absolute disaster I have made. There are shattered bits of Plexiglas everywhere, electronic wires and plastic casing strewn across the floor and from one
counter to another. There’s even a piece resting drunkenly on top of the toaster.
I want to make an excuse, but they say a picture is worth a thousand words and nothing I come up with is going to combat what Tori just walked in on. So in the end, I just stand there and wait for her to react.
It doesn’t take long. After a minute or so, she takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders—almost like she’s deciding something, or is preparing herself for battle. Then she walks straight to the hall closet and pulls out the broom and dustpan we store there. Without a word, she starts sweeping up the detritus of the blender.
I try to take the broom from her—I’m the one who made the mess, after all—but she just shoos me away. It isn’t until she’s done, until all the pieces have been swept up and deposited in a brand-new garbage bag—even the ones on the toaster and inside the mixer—that she finally speaks.
“So, are you sending this mess to Ethan Frost with a giant Fuck you, I quit attached to it? Or am I? Because one of us is and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to be the one to hand deliver it to the fucker.”
Chapter Four
In the end, neither of us delivers the decimated blender to Ethan. Instead, I take the trash bag out to the Dumpster in an attempt to get a couple of minutes alone so I can think—which turns out to be a bad idea, because the summer sun is so blinding that it makes my hangover worse and pretty much takes away any small ability to form rational thought that I might have.
When I make it back to the condo, Tori has the food set out on the table and is pouring wine into a couple of long stemmed glasses. Since the last thing I want to do is add any more alcohol to my already shaky mental state, I fill two cups with water and bring them to the table.
Tori rolls her eyes, but she takes the glass I hold out to her. She even takes a couple of sips before trading it out for wine.
“So, are you feeling any better?” she asks as I settle into the chair directly across from her. “Because I’ve got to tell you, that level of rage was pretty fucking impressive to witness.”