Brutally Beautiful(22)

Fucking sociopath.

All the way back to the trailer, I walked through the woods, not wanting to be anywhere near the road, just in case Kade Grayson lost his last marble and decided to do a drive by on the way home.

By the time I reach my empty trailer, my hands were cut up from catching on bushes. I was emotionally drained and so confused my head was spinning. The man looked at me one way, yet wanted to humiliate me and degrade me into hating him with his words. I thought I already had the market on meeting the most screwed up men before I came here.

Throwing myself on my bed, I closed my eyes and tried to unwind from being emotionally sideswiped by the freight train that was Kade. Immediately, I was asleep, and I awoke hours later when someone was pounding on my trailer door.

I stumbled out of the bedroom and made my way to the front door, and was completely embarrassed when I saw Francis standing on the top step holding a beautiful bouquet of white roses.

Shit. I’m already messing up this date.

But it’s okay. I’ll gloss over our date for you, only highlighting the GOOD parts. He showed up wearing a shirt that read, I recycled this shirt from yesterday! I’ll let you savor that tidbit of information for a minute. Yeah.

He was easy. Careful. Nice. Safe. He held doors open for me. Paid for dinner. Talked about himself constantly and his field of whatever the hell he was interested in while I played word with friends on my phone. I won, by the way, with the word bracketed (triple word score) for 54 points. Woot! And no, I don’t feel guilty for it, because throughout the entire time he was with me, he continuously instagrammed, facebook-statused, and twittered everything that he thought was status worthy. I swear, during dessert his tweet was, ‘There IS no organic soymilk in the ENTIRE RESTAURANT! How do they expect me to drink my tea? WHOLE night is RUINED!’

He was nice, don’t get me wrong, but I really couldn’t have a relationship. I didn’t want to. I told Fran exactly how I felt and was as honest as I could have been with him. Getting to know one another and becoming friends was fine, but more than that, I didn’t want to deal with, especially with someone who was so Fran. I mean, come on, Fran had a five-year plan and at the end, I was his goal. No one should ever have a goal of another person. You can't be someone else. Your goals should be to strive for better things in yourself, not depending on other people. Besides all that, I couldn't do another relationship; I couldn’t trust anyone, not after what happened to me this last year. The only person I put my trust in was Bree, and I was just staying here for her, because I hadn’t seen her this happy since the day my brother asked her to marry him.





Chapter 4





It was getting closer to Dylan’s 30th birthday.

I sent him an eCard. What? That’s good enough.

He called and screamed at me.

He’s having a party. Of course. A small dinner party and he asked me to come. And, to come with a date. A date? Grand. Now the woman I have casual sex with will think we could date now.

Best part: Dylan’s girlfriend is hosting it for him, along with her roommate. In her trailer. Trailer. Trail...Errrr. Great, tonight’s dining experience: Ramen f*cking noodles. I called Morgan, my casual friend, and she agreed; her husband won’t be in town, so she can make it.

Clutching a bottle of $500 wine, I climbed out of my Land Rover Range Rover and walked through the yard crunching over the cold hard dirt and gravel that led to the doublewide, cringing with every step. I took inventory of the small wooden steps that led up to the front screened door to the dilapidated mess my brother’s girlfriend calls a home and find a few muddied pair of converse sneakers, an industrial size gallon of bleach, and a box of generic latex medical gloves. A half burned out car from the 1950s was in the yard and a white picket fence that surrounded a dead tree. A small wooden crucifix was staked in the ground around its roots. White-f*cking-trash. It was like a scene from one of my books. My skin crawled thinking about stepping a foot inside the trailer. I strategized on focusing solely on Morgan and the suction of her mouth on my cock after this dinner debacle. I really didn’t understand how I was going to make it through the night.