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.
I couldn’t say that I wasn’t hoping that we’d find a way to get back together again. So many guarded feelings had blocked our relationship from ever progressing. In fact, maybe we didn’t make each other better people. We probably just made each other worse.
Kissing goodbye any hopes at getting to see Eli again, I tried to think of who else could possibly be coming that I needed to talk too. I assumed that Ci and Milo would be there, separate, of course, but we had been talking again for a while. Izzy would most certainly be there since it was at Polly’s and I couldn’t think of an actual reason that I needed to talk to Aiden when he wasn’t waiting on me. Two other people crossed my mind, one of them Georgia, who I was pretty much refusing to talk to at the moment. The second one was Blaine, who owed me a lot of answers.
Without wasting anymore time, I quickly typed back: I’m in.
Sawyer’s response came almost immediately. Good. Zo put your name on the list.
I quirked my eyebrow at the way he abbreviated Zoey’s name. It could’ve been just because Sawyer’s always been the laziest texter I’ve ever known, but I was guessing that it had something to do with the fact that Sawyer had gotten quite close to Izzy’s friends this summer. I was happy for that boy. He deserved to actually be happy.
“You know, you look quite professional sitting behind that desk, Adrienne.” My head snapped up from where I was grinning at my cell phone. Raising my eyes to my dad, I watched as he shut the door behind him before making his way across the room. I shot up from his chair, beginning to apologize for even being in it in the first place when he just shook his head, motioning for me to take my seat again.
As he settled in across from me, I folded my arms over one another on the desk. He gave me a smile before reaching up and pushing an envelope across the wood surface. Narrowing my eyebrows at him, I looked down at the envelope.
“Go ahead, open it.” He said, a slight chuckle following his words.
With his approval, I pulled it to me, fingers nimbly slipping beneath the flap. Pushing it open, I reached my hand inside and pulled out a large booklet and a million papers. My face didn’t light up with true excitement until I flipped the booklet over and a picture of a grassy campus quad with a large brick building in the background met my eyes. At the top of the booklet in official collegiate letters was, Hollowbrook College.
“It’s okay with you?” I could hardly swallow around the lump that had settled in my throat. I looked up over the booklet at him, not truly believing any of this was happening. The smile on his face almost made me tear up as he nodded slowly, looking as if he might actually be proud of me for the first time this summer. “Is this for this fall or do I have to wait?”
“You almost missed the deadline.” He said truthfully. “And you’re going to have to pick your classes in the next few days. There’s not exactly a lot left to choose from since all of the incoming freshmen have scheduled, but you’ll still be able to get into your required courses.”
“I can’t believe this.” I breathed, wanting to hug the book to my chest and let out a scream. Instead of that, though, I dropped the book on the desk and scurried around to where he was sitting, flinging my arms around him. “Thank you!”
“You deserve to go wherever you want to go. It’s your future.” He said when I let go. “Besides, you’ve proven to me this summer that no matter how much I try to control you, you’re still going to do whatever you want.”
“You got that right.” I teased. “Seriously, dad, thank you. Thank you so much for letting me do this.”
“Like I said, you’d better go schedule your classes.” He said, brushing away my thanks. “And you’ve been given a roommate as well, so it’d probably be a good idea to get in touch with her.”
Nodding my head along with what he was saying, I stepped back to pick up the envelope from the desk. It was as I was picking it up that my eyes flickered over the pictures once more. The one from England of the four of us suddenly seemed like a lifetime ago, with Georgia and I standing in front of mom and dad at some dinner party. Georgia was standing with her arm wrapped around my waist, the smile on her face so big it seemed almost fake.
Did she hate me even then? Or had this just happened recently?
It made me sick to think about how much I believed in my sister. I had always thought that we had such a bond. Apparently, I had believed in the wrong side of my sister. I had only seen the girl she was when we were in front of our parents or in public. I had never thought that maybe Georgia wasn’t the person she said she was.
I must’ve gotten lost in my thoughts because after a moment or two, my father cleared his throat and interrupted me. “Are you okay, Adrienne?”
I looked up from the picture and went to tell him that I was fine. Instead of telling him how I felt towards the person I called my sister, I asked him about her and the company. “Why didn’t you give Georgia a chance here?”
My father blinked, the smile falling from his face as he looked at me. “You know how much I love you both, but it was a decision that I had to make for the good of the company. Georgia is very smart, brilliant, in fact, but we both know that your sister is very much her own person. She doesn’t like to take direction and she also doesn’t think of much else besides herself.”
“Wouldn’t it be good for someone who wanted to be in control become the head of the company?” I asked.
“Not exactly. There are people with opinions and ideas just as important as the ones that the head of the company has. I know that if I let Georgia take over, she would completely disregard everything anyone else had to say about the company.” He said. “That’s where you and Georgia differ. I should have probably never told your sister that I wanted you to take my seat instead of her. It was definitely a mistake on my part. If she’s done anything to you Adrienne…”
“She hasn’t.” I lied. I wasn’t entirely sure why I was doing it. Right now, I had all of the power in my hands. I could have easily told my father what Georgia had done, revealed to him the secrets that she kept. I didn’t. I knew how much Georgia had to lose, from Owen to her upcoming wedding to getting her degree. I had the power to take everything away from her. As much as part of me wanted to do it, I didn’t.
It was better for me to let her live with the guilt of the things she had done to me. I was done playing her games.
⚓ ⚓ ⚓
It had taken almost a wall of security guards to get me through to the front of Polly’s when I arrived only five minutes before the concert was set to start. I had been stupid enough to believe that people had forgotten what I had been accused of doing. By the time I reached the front door, I had been verbally assaulted more times that I could count by the paparazzi that were pushing against the metal gates that separated the boardwalk from the section in front of the bar and grille.
Once I was finally through the doors after having told the bouncer outside my name, I felt a little less claustrophobic than before. I brushed my hair out of my eyes, taking a few steps into the grille before Aiden came up to me, his lips pulled into his usual smile.
“Sorry bout that.” He said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “We tried our hardest to keep this whole thing quiet, but you know how it is here.”
“Nothing ever stays quiet.” I muttered, looking around the room that had been transformed from its under the sea theme to one with classy white bulbs hanging from the fishnets that still adorned the ceilings and tables dressed in white cloths and large vases of multicolored flowers.
“Yeah, so, you’re sitting at this table.” Aiden pointed to one where a familiar blonde was sitting, her hair falling over her shoulders as she pursed her lips. Cecilia had her arms crossed over her chest, hiding the front of her sunflower yellow dress. She hardly turned her head as people came up to talk to her, disgruntled expressions crossing their faces when she hardly answered them. “I know it’s going to be awkward and I tried to tell Izzy that it was a bad idea, but Izzy doesn’t really listen to anyone anymore.”
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to see through the flowers in the center of Ci’s table. I couldn’t tell who exactly was sitting across from her. All I could see was a shoulder in a black blazer. Even that, though, was enough to clue me in to who it was.
“Are you sure?” Aiden asked. “I mean, if you want, you can come join me at the bar.”
We had come to the table and I could finally see over the flowers. I couldn’t even respond to what Aiden had said for I was caught in the shocked gaze of the boy that Ci was glaring at. Blaine seemed to not know what to do in my presence now and just sat there, staring up at me as if I was the last person he ever thought he’d see.
“Positive, Aiden.” I said, not turning to look at him. “Thanks, though.”
“Well, you’ll know where to find me.” He said before turning on his heel and disappearing.
You never knew who was watching at any time, so instead of giving Ci the normal greeting I would’ve, I just glanced at her. Her lips dropped slightly, her eyes meeting mine as her mouth twitched and she picked up her glass. She looked away as I took my seat.
Looking around the room, I saw that I was one of the last people to arrive. Despite the fact that it was a small private event, there was still a good amount of people here. Turning my head when one or two of the people caught my eye with a death glare intact, I moved my attention to the dimly lit stage, where a bar stool and microphone stand stood. The usual mirrored wall was covered in a thick red curtain and more white lights wrapped their way around the frame.
I could feel Blaine watching me as the people around us continued to chat. The three of us sat in silence, but on our side of the table, it was comfortable silence. I glanced at Blaine and felt the pain of our breakup all over again.
A silence fell in the room as footsteps were heard crossing the stage. I turned my attention to where Izzy was standing on the stage, her multicolored maxi dress sweeping over the floor. She seemed a little nervous, her smile almost fixed as she looked out over the people in the room.
“Hello, everyone.” She gripped onto the microphone. “Thank you all so much for coming tonight. It means a lot to my family and I know that it means even more to my mother. Before we begin, I, uh, I just want to thank Sawyer for taking time out of his busy life to play for us tonight. I hope he knows how much he means to all of us and how thankful I am for being there for me all summer. And without further todo, Sawyer Henning.”
The room was filled with polite clapping as Sawyer came out from the side door, guitar hanging over his shoulder. Smiling, he stopped before continuing onto the stage to pull Izzy into his arms. She seemed surprised by his actions and gave a little giggle as he wrapped his arms around her. Kissing her forehead and receiving a cute little ‘aw’ from the people in the audience, he let her go before continuing up on the stage.
“Oh, calm down.” He rolled his eyes, but was still smiling. “We know just how cute we are.”
Everyone around us laughed as he settled onto the barstool and pulled the microphone towards him. Propping his guitar on his knee, he adjusted the microphone and strummed a few chords, humming under his breath slightly. He raised his eyes after a few moments, squinting to see past the bright lights that were now shining onto his face. He looked towards the back of the room, an even bigger smile falling into place.
With his fingers still moving, he said, “How about we give a hand to Mrs. Holt? You’re the strongest woman I’ve ever met. Thanks for teaching me so much about life this summer. Here’s to you beating cancer. And to Izzy, who’s taught me more about love and strength than I could’ve ever imagined.”
Turning my attention to the back of the room where Izzy was standing with her mother as the room broke out into applause, I leaned into my seat. As my eyes flicked back to where Sawyer was still smiling into the light, I felt my heart warm slightly. This was the reason why Sawyer deserved to be so happy. He was such a genuinely good person that he made me feel ashamed of the way I treated the people in my life.
I was left with this feeling throughout the rest of the concert until Sawyer was finishing up his last song as pictures of Izzy’s family danced across the projection screen that a pull of the curtains had revealed. I could hear sniffles around me and one glance around the room brought me the view of the women dabbing beneath their eyes. Beside me, Ci was hiccuping quietly, looking at me with tears in her eyes. Reaching beneath the table, I found her hand and squeezed it. She gave me the smallest of smiles before looking back at the screen.
Looking across the table to where Blaine was sitting, who looked uncomfortable amongst all of the tears, I tilted my head towards the door behind us that led out onto the back patio. It didn’t seem to register with him at first before I finally just gave up and pointed towards the door. He looked at me for a moment, blue eyes boring into mine. It took a moment before he eventually nodded and then stood up, pushing away from the table.
He followed me through the maze of tables until we reached the door, slowly pushing through the door. Walking outside to where the patio was almost completely quiet except for the softened sound of Sawyer’s voice from inside the building. The lights outside were on, trickling white light over us as we made our way around the tables to where the banister was. I leaned against it immediately, ignoring Blaine for a moment while I tried to get my bearings together. He stopped just short of me, probably feeling just as awkward and as uncomfortable as I was.
How could it be that someone I had trusted my life with for so long could end up being one of those who had held a knife to my back all along? What had I done to make him feel as if he needed to turn on me? Where had we gone wrong?
“Blaine, I…”
“Adrienne, I…”
I turned slowly and looked at him. This was the first time in a long time that I had been this close to him. Looking at Blaine immediately made my heart ache with memories of how we had never once been this awkward around one another before. All I could think of were the times that we had been happy, when there had been no need for words, just lips pressed up against one another’s and trailing fingertips. I couldn’t help but think of the times when Blaine was more or less my rock, the one I took all of my superficial problems too and allowed him to soothe me with boxes of cupcakes and sad movies.
“I’m sorry, Adrienne.” He blurted before I could even give him a chance to continue. I could see the red of the flush that stained his cheeks even in the dim lighting. “I shouldn’t have done what I did.”
I could tell that his apology was sincere, that the guilt of what he had done to me seemed to be eating him away. At first, I didn’t say anything, just bit my lip and tried to take in these words slowly. Out of those who had done me wrong, Blaine was the first and only to actually apologize. I wanted to revel in those words for a moment, to allow them to wash over me and really sink in.
“Why did you lie to me?” I finally asked, after realizing that maybe I had let Blaine stand there a little too long. My hair was being tossed around in my face by the typical seaside breeze. Tucking it behind my ears so that I could actually see him, I watched as he shifted his weight between his feet.
“I wanted to hurt you as badly as you hurt me.” Blaine finally muttered, looking past me and over my shoulder into the darkness. He avoided looking at me as he continued to talk, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his dress pants. “I mean, when Georgia told me about Eli, she made it sound as if you were, you know, sleeping with him. She even had pictures of you two together, Adrienne. It was disturbing and hurt like hell.”
“You shouldn’t have ever listened to Georgia.” I muttered, turning all the way around so that I could look at him. I crossed my arms over my chest and allowed the wind to whip my hair around. “She turned out to be someone I never thought she’d be.”
“I guess you could say the same for me, couldn’t you?” He asked, finally raising his eyes to mine. “I really have no excuse for the things that I’ve done.”
“You don’t, but I’m sick of being mad at people.” I shrugged. “I mean, Georgia did her best to ruin everything for me and in a way, she succeeded. But what Georgia doesn’t understand is that I don’t want to be like her. Maybe I hypothetically followed in her footsteps this summer, but I’m not going to end up like her. I just want to be happy, Blaine.”
“With Eli?” At first, I didn’t catch the question, but when Blaine looked at me pointedly, I just shrugged again.
“I don’t know.” I told him honestly. “We’re not exactly right for one another. And there’s also the fact that I screwed everything up between us.”
“I guess me going to his apartment didn’t really help things, did it?”
I had completely forgotten about the fact that Blaine had done that. That he had intentionally gone and found Eli just to beat him up. I thought about how bad Eli had looked that day, with the black and blue eye and cut. I thought about how he admitted to what had happened, but said that he just took it. That he stood there and allowed Blaine to beat on him because he knew that I would’ve been mad at him if he returned the punch.
“Not really.” I found a meek laugh coming from my lips. “I never pegged you as the type of guy to go and beat someone up.”
“Yeah, well, I was mad.” He said. “I mean, was I just suppose to sit around and listen to Oliver talk about how close you and Eli had gotten? How at every party you guys were at, you always somehow ended up half-dressed and all over each other? It made me mad, Adrienne. Knowing that you were sneaking off behind my back made me feel as if I wasn’t good enough.”
“It wasn’t that you weren’t good enough, Blaine.” I said. “You were almost too perfect when we were together. You did everything perfectly, treated me like I was porcelain up until those last few weeks. You knew exactly how I liked to be held and how I liked my cupcakes. You were basically a real life Prince Charming.”
“Then what went wrong?”
“You weren’t bad enough.” I told him honestly, knowing that the words would probably sting since he was already comparing himself to Eli. But, we were past the part where words were said to intentionally hurt each other. We were suspended in the part of post-breakup when you don’t know what to say, how to act around one another, or even ponder whether or not it could be possible that after all of this, you could still be friends.
Obviously, this was something that only I understood, for Blaine’s face was blank as he looked at me with a confused frown. He brushed it off and withdrew his hands from his pockets, head tilted to the side as his eyes once more resumed looking into the darkness.
“Where do we go from here?”
“I guess we move on.” I said. “We let the summer end the way it’s supposed to. And when summer is over, we go off to school and start over. I mean, we’ll still see each other around the holidays. Our parents are too close to let one slide without forcing us to see one another at least once. Things will get better, we’ll find who we’re supposed to be, and hopefully the people we’re right for.”
There was silence between us as I realized how true these words were. The reason why I had been unable to move forward with anything was because I was waiting for things to just magically fix themselves. By allowing summer to end and looking forward to all of the opportunities that were just beneath our feet, something would fall into place. I wasn’t sure if either one of us would find ourselves in the next four, let alone ten years, but someday we would figure out who we were.
As the silence enveloped us, I pushed away from the banister and walked the short distance between us. Stepping into an embrace that had once felt so comforting but now felt so cold and empty, I tried to make Blaine see that what happened was now behind us.
This was fate’s way of telling us that we weren’t meant to be. Maybe there had been a lot of pain, a lot of secrets, and a lot of breaking of each other’s hearts, but we were still here. We were both still breathing. We both still had all of the world in our hands. It was just now that we no longer belonged to one another or were dependent upon the other.
From here on out, Blaine and I were two separate hearts beating alone. Though they were damaged and bruised, there was healing time right in front of us. All it would take was some time, maybe a comforting hand, a shoulder to cry on. Whatever it took, they would eventually heal and maybe someday we’d look back on this summer and see that even when everything went wrong, something right was happening in the process.
“About the apartments and Milo-“ He started, but I interrupted him. “Let’s not talk about the things we did wrong. I should have told you what I was up to and about Eli. We both made mistakes, Blaine, but it’s time for us to move on.”
I was finally somewhat at peace with what had happened. I didn’t want to hear anything else, to take the chance that my heart would leave here in worse shape than it came in. Sliding from his grip, I stepped back so that I could look at him, a smile falling into place.
“Now, c’mon.” I said. “You may not be looking for anyone right away, but I saw a girl in there looking at you like she was a vicious sex animal seeking prey.”
“That sounds mortifying.”