Addicted (Ethan Frost #2)(19)

If I spend most of my non-working time locked in my bedroom, staring blankly at the text messages he sent me all those days ago when my phone was off, whose business is that but mine?

If I don’t go running or to the gym anymore, who am I hurting besides myself?

And if I don’t want to go out and party with Tori every night in an effort to meet a guy who won’t ever come close to measuring up to Ethan, then why should I?

“I’m not moping,” I tell her as I make a desperate grab for my purse from the backseat.

“What would you call it then?” she demands as she drags me through the gates and into the open air mall.

“I’m thinking.”

“Yeah, well, you’re making yourself sick with all that thinking and I, for one, have had enough of it.”

“So we’re going shopping?”

“Don’t sneer,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me. “I will have you know that shopping is the cure-all for everything. Even your bad attitude.”

“I don’t have a bad attitude!” I tell her with a glare that combats the words. “I’m just tired. Work’s been crazy lately.”

“Work, shmerk. You’ve been brooding. And I get it. I do. Losing Ethan Frost isn’t an easy thing for any woman to recover from—even if he is a total douche.”

“He’s not a douche.” We’ve been over this same ground about a hundred times in the last two weeks.

“He hurt you, which means he will forever be a douche in my book. It’s the best friend code.”

She dances ahead of me then, and with her new spiky green hair and matching minidress, she looks like a leprechaun. A punk rock leprechaun with piercings, tattoos and Doc Martens, but a leprechaun nonetheless.

It’s just one of the many, many reasons I adore her. Or would adore her if she would just stop trying to fix me. As it is, all this pixie dust and do-gooding is getting on my nerves. Especially since Tori has always been the prickly one in this relationship, the one who wears multi-layered damage on her sleeve—literally and figuratively, thanks to the wild tattoos she’s got. Which begs the question—in how bad shape does she think I am if she’s pulling out all the stops to make me feel better?

Maybe I’ve been wallowing more than I think I have.

Still, it’s not like it’s a conscious decision on my part. And it’s sure as hell not like I want to feel like this. Because I don’t. I hate the fact that I worked so hard to banish Brandon from my life and my thoughts, and now he’s back, lurking around every corner in my mind just waiting to jump out at me like my own personal boogeyman.

I hate even more the fact that I can’t stop thinking about Ethan. Can’t stop wondering what he’s doing or if he’s okay or if he’s thinking about me. Can’t stop remembering what it was like when we were together and I was happy, truly happy, for the first time since I was a child. Maybe for the first time in my life.

Not that that matters. Not that any of it matters. Not when everything about my life—even my work—is a shambles. Most days it’s all I can do to drag myself out of bed and to the seven building oceanfront campus that houses Frost Industries. And once I’m there, I try to focus on the research, on my job, but everything about the place screams Ethan’s name and more than once I’ve ended up curled up on the bathroom floor trying to get my head together. Trying to pretend that I’m all right, that any part of this is all right.

“You know shopping isn’t going to fix me, right?” I hiss at Tori as she drags me toward the entrance to Nordstrom. “Besides, I can’t afford to buy anything from here. I’m a lowly unpaid intern at Frost Industries, remember?”

She snorts. “Another reason to think he’s a douche. He makes how much money every year and he can’t send a little of it over toward his interns, who work all hours of the day and night for him? That’s the mark of a total loser.”

“The experience and being able to put it on our resumes is more than enough. Besides, it’s only the first year interns that don’t get paid. Anyone who comes back a second year gets a pretty generous stipend.”

“Will you stop defending him, please?”

“I wasn’t defending him.”

“You so totally were.” She rolls her eyes at me as she picks up a scarf that costs almost as much as my entire wardrobe and loops it several times around my shoulders. “You look beautiful, daaaaaaahling.”
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“Anyone would look beautiful in a three thousand dollar scarf.”

“You’d be surprised.” She gives me a push and I spin around like a top in an effort to unwind myself from the pashmina. “If you’d seen what I’ve seen through the years, you would know just how false that last statement was.” She mock shudders. “Some people should never be allowed out of the house without a fashion consult. Just saying.”

She jumps over to the hats, which are against the wall, and picks up the biggest, most ridiculous one she can find. It’s hot pink with purple flowers, and though it’s almost as big as she is, Tori somehow manages to carry it off with the kind of panache I can only dream of.

“How do I look?” she demands.

“Like you should be walking the red carpet. In Ireland.”