Chapter Fourteen

Blake

 

 

There’s something wrong with her.

That thought kept running around my head, like a mantra of doom, as I gunned my bike down the highway. She seemed so intent on that list, too dead set on doing all those things. Not just for fun. Not just for kicks. Like they were life or death.

She was lying, too. A lot. It was obvious because she was not a good liar—another thing she wasn’t experienced at. At first, I’d thought she was just trying to impress me, or keep things anonymous. But now I was sure there was more.

There had to be a reason for her wanting to do that list, and standing there in her dad’s house, looking at that picture of her at fifteen, it had hit me—she was hiding something.

Then I had heard her dad say the wig was gone, and things started to click together in my mind. There was the long, thin surgery scar down the side of her left breast. While I had her tied up, looking at her, I saw small dots on her skin, spaced around her pale torso. Dots that were too tiny to be moles and too blue for freckles—tattoo marks, used to guide radiotherapy treatments for cancer. I’d seen enough medical dramas to know that, and it all added up to one thing.

Something was very wrong with her.

Maybe she’s finished with treatment and is making up for lost time.

I tried to be hopeful, but the urgency with which she came at the list implied something more.

I couldn’t just come out and ask. I didn’t know her that well, and she’d made it clear she didn’t want me to know her that well. I’d come into this—this what? Relationship? Agreement?—for the sex and for the ride. I didn’t want to know her either. I didn’t want complications, or feelings, or a relationship. Certainly not with someone there was something wrong with. Not again. I didn’t want that.

I couldn’t do that again.

So why did I care that she didn’t want anything from me but sex? Fucking ironic mess. She wasn’t the first girl to treat me like a piece of meat. I didn’t know why it made me so angry. Hadn’t I been after the same thing from her? Wasn’t I just in this to see her with another woman?

Streetlights flashed overhead as I sped beneath them, pushing my bike too fast and letting that thrill of danger and the rush of cold night air cool my emotions.

The truth was, I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.

Actually, I did know. I knew I wanted to drink. A lot.

So I did.

“Is she ugly, or mentally ill in some way?” the guy next to me at the bar asked.

I shook my head, rolling it against the cold bottle I had pressed against it. “No. She’s fucking to-die-for gorgeous. She’s the kind of girl that other girls would turn for.”

“Let me see if I got this right. She took you to a great dinner, and then to a sex shop, gave you some pussy, then went home no-questions-asked, and now you’re out having a brew. And you’re complaining?” He sipped his beer. “Man, it’s the perfect night. Don’t tell me you’re upset because she didn’t want to cuddle afterwards.”

I could hear the incredulity in Buddy’s voice. I had no idea who the hell Buddy was. I thought he was called Buddy, or Mac, or Billy, or something, but he seemed to be calling me Buddy too, so I wasn’t sure. Bloody Americans. He’d sat down next to me some time around my third beer, and we’d ended up talking. He’d just gotten divorced and I had my own problems, which made for us being great bar friends, especially after a few double tequilas. I supposed I was just drunk enough to expect some bloody sympathy—which, in light of the way he was looking at me, didn’t seem like it was going to be forthcoming any time soon. It wound me up.

“Buddy, if you’re done with her, give me her number. I could use some pussy right now.”

That really really sent me spare. My fist stopped a hair’s breadth from his long and too-narrow nose. His eyes went round, and then bloodshot. I dropped my hand, hoping he wouldn’t be a jackass and retaliate. That he would laugh it off, but the tequila was working, because he slammed his beer down on the bar hard enough to bust the bottle and shouted, “You wanna fight? Huh? You wanna have a go?”

The guy was maybe five-foot five but built like a brick outhouse. His wife had cheated on him with his own brother, which must have made for some uncomfortable holiday dinners. Worse, he’d lost his job over the situation. Buddy’s brother had also been his boss, and clearly, keeping him employed wasn’t worth the awkwardness in the work environment. The saddest part was he wasn’t much older than me, and he was acting like his life was over.

Buddy had enough shit on his plate. He didn’t need mine too.

I sat my own beer down and said, “Nah. Bloody hell, you’d kill me. Let’s have another shot, and some of those hot wings. I am fucking starving. I’m buying. What do you say?”

The anger on his face dissolved, replaced by a grin that said Christmas had just come. “My man!” he said, throwing his arms around me in a bear hug.

I ordered wings and boilermakers. My head was already spinning. I was about to spend half my night puking and the other half with one foot on the floor, trying to keep the world from spinning me right off its axis. I couldn’t seem to care. I wanted to escape all the thoughts whirling in my head, trying to work out just what was wrong with Georgina and what that meant to me. And the alcohol was barely working, only just enough to make me think it was a good idea to keep drinking.

I had reached the stage of drunk where it felt like I was caught in one of those old foreign films, the ones where the people talking moved their mouths way before their words started to make sense. The edges of my vision blurred, and everything moved too fast, yet not as fast as it should.

I had been lurching toward the bathroom when I saw her, her long dark hair tumbling down her back.

How’d she find me?

Didn’t matter.

I didn’t care. What mattered was she was here, and we’d work things out. I’d make sure she was okay.

“Hey, gorgeous,” I said, and grabbed her and kissed her, right there in the hollow of her neck, next to the sloping curve of her shoulders.

As soon as my lips hit her skin, I knew I had messed up. Her perfume was wrong, and her skin shimmered with some kind of glitter dust.

The woman turned around. Her eyebrows had been plucked to narrow curves and she wore a bright pink lipstick and tight minidress to match.

She didn’t look happy. “Gee, thanks, asshole. Next time, maybe you could give me some warning before assaulting me.”

I backpedaled. “I am so sorry. I honestly thought you were someone else.”

The girl put a hand on one hip, looking me up and down. Her pouty indignation started to crack as her lips curled upwards.

She half closed her eyes, smiling like a hunter setting a snare. “Are you saying you wouldn’t kiss me if you didn’t think I was someone else?”

The words made my tipsy head spin with tricky double negatives. I didn’t want to offend her any further. “Yes. No. Yes. No, wait. I mean, yes, you are a gorgeous woman, and I would have kissed you anyway.”

“Really?” she said. In one smooth step, she had her hips up against me.

Her overly strong perfume assailed my nose as she leaned closer and pressed her lips onto mine.