Bad Enough for You (Currently Editing)

Vicious Sex Animal Seeking Prey

45.] Vicious Sex Animal Seeking Prey

Summers used to be a time spent being kissed by the sun, rolling laughter over lips, and getting lost in friendships and that one boy. There were supposed to have been nights spent at the beach, tucked in around a fire with someone strumming a guitar as the flames licked the warm air around us. There was supposed to be the type of warmth that didn’t just brush over your skin, but filled you from within because of a tumult of emotions.

It wasn’t as if I had had a bad summer. It was just the type of summer I had never had before. To be honest, the absence of the normality of it left a dull ache in the pit of my stomach, one that was mostly forgotten due to the other pains that I felt.

Now with Georgia’s knife of betrayal sticking out of my back, I didn’t know what to feel. I supposed I should have been feeling some type of anger, some need for revenge. But, I didn’t. I wasn’t feeling as if I couldn’t keep breathing because I no longer had Eli. I wasn’t feeling as if by risking everything, I had given too much up for Ci and Milo. I didn’t feel as if I needed to pull that knife out only to stick it into someone else.

Too many people had been hurt already. I didn’t want to inflict any more pain on anyone else.

Determined to be done with my reckless ways, I set out to fix my life. Even though I still wanted the ability to do whatever it was I pleased with my future, I decided to take up my father’s offer of a week internship at the company. I wasn’t giving in to him entirely; I was just making an effort to see if maybe there was something here I was looking for.

We spent an entire week flying from place to place, checking in on hotels and overseeing the accompanying restaurant. While I wasn’t entirely enthralled by the idea that I would have to do this on a regular occasion, my father assured me that he never did this himself. There were people under him who went to the hotels to take assessments. The whole trip was just so that I could see some of the places that would someday be under my name.

It wasn’t until we returned to the states and I was in my father’s office overlooking Jessamine that he finally gave me an answer concerning my decision to attend Hollowbrook. He had left me alone for a moment, having excused himself to take a call. I had spent that time looking about his office, trying my hardest to keep from poking through his drawers and seeing if he had any dirty secrets of his own. However, my will to stay out of other people’s business, especially regarding things they didn’t want public, helped me to just look at the pictures on his desk. I had picked them up, one by one, smiling at the pictures he had chosen.

Though I knew that he probably hardly ever actually sat behind his desk or had even a second to glance at those pictures, it was still comforting to know that we were all there, Georgia included, smiling back up at him. I supposed that it was all just apart of some facade he put on at work, but as I replaced the picture of the four us from when we went to England back on his desk, I felt okay with it.

I was in the midst of evaluating the comfiness of his black leather Ralph Lauren desk chair when my phone beeped on the other side of the desk. Pausing in my spinning, I pulled myself forward and went to reach for my phone. I fished it over the desk calendar that was completely blank until it was right before me.

Playing at Polly’s tonight. Private concert. You should come. Someone you need to talk to will be there. -Sawyer

I felt a leap of excitement in me when I read the last line. I immediately thought that it would be Eli, but my heart sunk almost as soon as the thought flittered through my mind. Sawyer had never met Eli and there was no reason that he’d be at one of Sawyer’s private concerts. I knew that it wouldn’t be Eli there, but I still wanted to see him, to at least get a chance to apologize for the things that I had done wrong.