Addicted for Now (Addicted #2)(145)

“Do you love her?” I ask, returning the action figure and taking a seat on the couch.

He flips the folder back open and reads the contract in his brisk, super-human manner, turning the page faster than I can read a magazine on a toilet. “Love is irrelative to some.” He dodges my question with a strange answer. As he concentrates on the contract, he begins closing the door on his brief openness.

I squint at him as I realize something else. “How come you don’t say wicked anymore?”

He briefly tears his eyes from the papers. “What are you talking about?”

“You used to say ‘wicked smart’ and ‘wicked cool.’ It was my favorite thing about you.” His lingo has changed since I first met him. Not completely though. I mean, when we run into someone he knows, he’ll sometimes throw out a ‘hey, bro.’

His lips rise. “I usually dumb down around the intellectually deficient so I don’t come off like a complete prick.” I think he just called me stupid. “But I see you as a true friend, so I’ve backed off some of the pretenses. Most people wouldn’t be able to stand all of me.”

“Can Rose?” I ask, still trying to process everything he’s saying.

His lips just lift higher. I suddenly come to the conclusion that I won’t ever know what Connor Cobalt really sounds like in his head—what words he finds abhorrent, what he thinks of certain situations, his real honest reactions that aren’t half-insults and half-something a little nicer. Maybe Rose already knows him. Or maybe she’s just as clueless as the rest of us.

I stick to a safe subject. “So next semester, you’ll be at Wharton and Rose will be in New York.” They both graduated from college in May (along with Ryke), and we threw a small celebration for all of them a couple weeks ago.

Connor’s dream came true—an acceptance to Penn’s prestigious Wharton School of Business for his MBA. Rose always scoffed at grad school. She thinks it’s just a piece of paper to brag over, at least for someone who’s an heir to a fortune. So she’ll spend her time at the Calloway Couture office in New York City, commuting from Princeton, New Jersey.

“That’s the plan,” Connor says.

I’m worried for them, and I know neither Rose nor Connor would appreciate my concern. But long distance relationships are difficult, and I can see all the drives back and forth not being worth the trouble—especially if Rose continues to struggle with her intimacy issues. She conquered sleeping in the same bed as Connor during Cancun, but she has yet to make the leap to sex.

I want her to find love and the fireworks, but nothing I do or say will change her problems. I’m just her little sister, and a broken one in her eyes.

Connor’s gaze falls to the floor where a comic book is splayed—the page opened to a pair of giant naked boobs and an erect penis. “Lily.”

“I wasn’t looking at it!” I defend. “I mean, I was, but then I wasn’t.” I grimace. How can speaking be this hard? I take a deep breath and realign my thoughts. “I was flipping through it and then when I came upon the…” I frown. “…genitals. It burned my eyes and magically flung from my hands.”

“I’ll forgive you for the hyperboles if you’re telling the truth.”

“I am! Cross my heart.” I start drawing crosses over my heart with my finger, but then I get confused. “Am I supposed to draw Jesus crosses or X’s?”

“Sometimes I wonder if we speak the same language.”

“X’s,” I say with a nod, ignoring his slight. “Definitely X’s.”

He returns to the contract, and I sidle to the window, peeking through the blinds to check for paparazzi or sketchy men lurking on the side street.

I don’t know how to vanquish this fear. I have an overwhelming desire to hide in the bathroom and masturbate my anxiety away. But I want to feel like I did in Cancun. Safe and not so crazy compulsive. I yearn for that stasis again.

My new therapist doesn’t seem equipped to help me, and I can just imagine his methods to combat this fear, a monster-sized shock machine in hand. So I refuse to share my anxieties with him.

But I won’t drown in self-love either. I’m going to try something new, and just wade in my unease until I figure out how to handle the close scrutiny and media properly. Until I figure out how to breathe again.





{ 47 }

LOREN HALE



I feel like a creep.

Sitting in my rental car for an hour and staring at the same four-story brick house. The lawn has newly mowed lines, a sign poking from the grass: McAdams Middle Honor Student.

Maine carries a breeze that beckons people outdoors, but I’m still rooted to the seat, my joints frozen solid. My biggest fear is staying in this damn sedan, coming this far and not mustering the courage to walk up the driveway.

I can smash a bottle of liquor on another guy’s door, but I can’t put one foot in front of the other to say hi to a woman. There’s irony somewhere in that. And maybe if I wasn’t scared out of my f*cking mind, I’d laugh.

I rub my neck that gathers with nervous heat. I should have brought Ryke and Lily like I originally planned. When I told Lily I was looking into meeting my mother, she was nothing but supportive. They both wanted to come.

But I ended up only buying one plane ticket.