Addicted to You (13 page)

He set about his usual morning
routine—cleaning up and feeding Bonny before having eggs and toast
for breakfast. He made it to work with five minutes to spare.

“Feeling better?” James asked from behind
the mountain range of books stacked on his desk.

Will winced. He’d lied about being sick to
avoid coming into the office and having to deal with his
substandard work on the case study.

“I’m fine,” he said. He settled into one of
the chairs in front of James’s desk. Then he stood again because
sitting resulted in not being able to see his boss over all the
books. “James, I need to talk to you.”

James leaned back in his leather chair,
which creaked underneath his weight. Opening a textbook in his lap,
he said, “Good. I need to talk to you, too. I’m guessing it’s about
the same thing, namely the fact my ten-year-old could have taken
better notes than what you turned in last week.”

Will tried not to look guilty, but probably
failed. “I don’t think I can complete the case study.”

“You ‘don’t think’?”

“I’ve been avoiding the work because I have
a—” He considered his words. “—conflict of interest.”

James’s brows rose. “Are you a real sex
addict?”

“Uh. No,” he said with a crooked smile.
“There’s a girl who attends the meetings, and … I like her. I would
prefer not to have to continue lying to her.”

The book in James’s lap snapped shut, and he
gave Will a small, indecipherable smile. Will couldn’t help
straightening his shoulders a bit.

“So what you’re saying,” his boss said, “is
you’re giving up on the case study—the case study I’ve been paying
you to work on for the past several weeks—because you have a crush
on one of the addicts.”

When he put it that way, it did sound rather
immature. But it was true nonetheless. “Aye.”

James nodded. “Congratulations.”

Caught off guard, Will’s brows narrowed in
confusion. “What?”

“Congratulations,” he repeated. “I’m
assuming you’ve asked this girl out.”

Will looked away, and James threw up his
hands.

“You’re risking your job for her, and you
haven’t even asked her out yet?”

“I’m working on it,” he said, disliking how
defensive he sounded. It wasn’t his boss’s business whether he’d
asked her out or not.

“Right. Well. You do realize I’ll have to
punish you,” James said, sounding perfectly serious.

Will angled him a wary look. “What do you
mean?”

James stood, his mouth stretching into a
smile that was alarmingly self-satisfied. “I have a task for you.
It’s a very important task. You may refuse, but if you do, you can
consider yourself removed from this position.”

That was a hefty thing to say. Will nodded
to indicate he understood.

“It involves paddles, a gag, and a Black
Room of Bondage.”

Will blinked. Then he took a step back
toward the exit. “Excuse me?”

The stern set of his boss’s brow faded, and
James broke into laughter. He slapped his hand on the cover of his
textbook. “God, your face is priceless. Relax, I was kidding.”

Annoyed and relieved, Will gave his boss an
impatient look to get on with it.

James cooperated by saying, “Professor
Atwood, the department head, was invited to attend a party this
weekend. Big formal affair hosted by one of the members of the
University board. Since she already has plans, she deferred the
duty of attending and rubbing elbows with a bunch of stuffy old
people to me. Now, I get to hand the job over to you.”

“You want me to attend a party?”

“And talk to people. Network. This is an
opportunity for you to make some valuable connections. And for me
to avoid having to socialize with a bunch of people who don’t like
me.”

Will frowned.

“Oh, don’t worry, the dislike is mutual,”
James said with an encouraging smile.

“So if I attend this party for you,” Will
said, just to be clear on the terms, “I don’t have to complete the
case study, and I get to keep my job?”

“For the time being, yes.
But if you aren’t going to be working on the case study, I
will
have to find you
something else.” He looked much too delighted by the
prospect.

Given that he could have just fired Will,
his terms were fairly reasonable. And he was right that it would be
a great opportunity for Will to meet some influential people.

He reached over the shortest stack of books
and shook James’s hand. “Deal.”

Mist twirls and dips.

Wraps around your body,

clings to your arms.

Ornaments your hair

in smoky strands of silver.

Leah tapped her eraser against the edge of
her notebook and read over that last line. She was still writing
too many abstract images, and there wasn’t a single focus. The
assignment had been to pick one person, place, or thing, and then
to write the poem around it.

“Urgh.” She scribbled over the whole thing
and flipped her notebook to a fresh page.

The cat sits in the window.

Watches cars.

Falls asleep.

Best life ever.

She was going to fail this class. With a
sigh, she flipped the page again to the next blank one. The paper
ripped in half. She winced at the sound, which tore through the
silent library like a firecracker. A student at the nearby computer
looked over with a frown.

Tossing the scrap of paper on the table
beside her backpack, she blew irritably at a piece of hair that had
fallen over her eye and considered what to write about. Yawning,
she propped her elbow on the table and rested her head against her
palm, eyes closed.

Thank goodness this was the only poetry
class she had to take for her writing major. It was only midway
into the semester, and the professor had already assigned the class
over a dozen poems to evaluate, five poems to write, and made them
buy three different books, one of them his own. That was just
tacky.

Normally, Leah enjoyed being challenged
because an ‘easy A’ class was a waste of both her money and her
time. But she just really didn’t like writing poetry. It came with
all these different rules that writing prose didn’t have.

She sighed again and opened her eyes,
looking around the library for inspiration. She loved everything
about libraries—the musty smell of old books and dusty shelves, the
chairs shoved into quiet corners that were perfect for reading, the
silence that didn’t have to be filled with meaningless chatter.

Between two shelves across from where she
was sitting, she could see two people sharing a loveseat, their
heads bowed over a single laptop. The girl was whispering and
pointing at the screen, while the guy nodded quietly, smiling as he
turned his head to look at her face. They didn’t seem to mind that
their sides were plastered together. The girl actually tried to
scoot even closer to him.

Leah couldn’t help staring. They were
nauseatingly cute. Was that what she wanted? She had been pretty
sure of the answer until that moment in the theater. The question
had lingered all week, driving her back to the therapy session
yesterday where she was forced to wonder about her choices and what
she wanted out of love and life and whatever the hell else the
counselor had talked about.

The problem was that she still had no
idea.

Like this damn poem. Screw the assignment.
She picked up her pencil and began to write whatever came to mind
first.

Carry me back to that moment

before the wonder dies.

I want to repose

where the old oak grows

amidst the fireflies.

Someone dropped into the seat beside her.
She looked up from her notebook to find Helena squinting past her
shoulder at what she was writing.

“I hate poetry,” Leah announced.

Helena smiled and shoved her backpack next
to Leah’s on the table. “That’s because you suck at it. Just keep
practicing. Don’t you also hate sucking?”

“That depends entirely.” She smothered a
laugh and ducked sideways to avoid Helena’s swipe at her head.

“Out of the gutter,” she said. “What are you
doing for lunch? Want to join me and Jay?”

“Be the third wheel on your lunch date? No
thanks.”

“It’s not a date,” Helena said as she played
with the zipper on her backpack. “There’s nothing suspicious about
eating lunch with a friend. And you’re not a third wheel. If
anything, Jay would be the third wheel.”

“You are way too defensive for me to take
your arguments seriously.”

Helena swiped at her head again, and Leah
snickered as she took refuge behind her notebook.

“Are you coming with me or not?” she
asked.

“Not,” Leah said, before laying her poetry
notebook back on the table. “I have to figure out what I’m doing
for this class. God, I hate poetry.”

“So you keep saying. Anyway, since you’re
not working very hard, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Not to chaperone another Jay date, is
it?”

“No, you—” Helena made a strangling gesture
with her hands. Leah coughed into her palm to keep from laughing
again because they were starting to get evil looks from the
neighboring students.

“Okay, okay.” She was glad for the
distraction anyway. She closed her notebook and turned to face
Helena. “What is it?”

“Why are you still attending therapy?”

Leah blinked in surprise. Helena didn’t
sound upset that she hadn’t told her. If anything, she sounded
happy about it. Like she had just discovered a juicy secret.

“How do you know that?”

“I was taking the city bus last night out to
the strip mall, and we passed the church. I saw your car in the
parking lot.” With an impish smile, she hunched her shoulders and
whispered, “You know, just because you met that guy there doesn’t
mean you have to keep going. Have you even gotten his number
yet?”

Shaking her head, Leah turned away and put
up her hands. “I’m not talking about this.”

“Oh come on!”

Leah shushed her with a hissed reminder that
they were in a library.

Undeterred, Helena giggled and gave Leah’s
shoulders a small shake. “You’re actually going back there to see
him even though you hate it. This is huge.”

“What makes you think he’s the reason I went
back?”

Helena snorted. “Oh, right, you went back
because you like the cookies.”

“They make very effective paper weights. And
projectiles.”

“Would you be serious?”

Leah rolled her eyes and
shoved her hair behind her ear with restless fingers. “Fine. I went
back so I could see him again. But I haven’t even worked out how I
feel about everything
,
so even if I wanted to, there’s nothing to talk
about.”

Thinking about Blue Eyes filled her with
nervous energy. It made her want to pace or shake out her hands to
try and shed the impatience. She kept feeling like she needed to do
something about it except she had no idea what that was.

But she would rather write bad poetry than
talk about her feelings again, so she went back to her notebook and
flipped it to a blank page.

“Ugh, you are
no fun
.” Helena reached
for her backpack and began organizing her homework on the
table.

Several minutes of comfortable silence
passed. Leah tried to focus again on her poem, but the
concentration just wasn’t there.

Then Helena said, “Actually, that’s not even
what I really wanted to talk to you about.”

“What did you want to talk about then?” Leah
asked warily.

“Since you’re beginning to have feelings
like a normal person, maybe you should try talking to your
mom.”

Leah looked up from drawing lightning bolts
in the margin of her blank page. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Well, you’ve got that party tomorrow. Maybe
you could …” She wiggled her fingers, something she did when she
was trying to find the right words. But it was more fun for Leah
pretend she just enjoyed making spirit fingers. “Extend the olive
branch. Work on your relationship.”

Leah slapped down her
pencil and gave her friend an incredulous look. “We’re talking
about
my mom
here, right? You know she doesn’t care about me or Elijah or
having a
relationship
with us.”

“Yeah,” Helena said, her voice quiet.
Careful. “But you do.”

Leah tightened her jaw and looked away, that
ache blossoming again in her chest. “You couldn’t have waited until
we were home to bring this up?”

Helena tossed her hair back and then ran her
finger down her textbook page to find where she’d left off reading.
“Well, I wanted to catch you before tomorrow’s party, and you know
how neither of us are ever home at the same time during the
weekdays except for at night when you’re either knocked out or
I’m—”

“Okay, okay,” she said. “But why are you
bringing this up at all?”

“I
know
you, Leah. I see the way you
look at your mom. And the way Elijah looks at her. For his sake, at
least, just …” She gave a light shrug and pretended to look
nonchalant about the whole thing. “Think about it.”

“I can’t believe this,” Leah muttered. She
picked up her pencil and began furiously doodling dark clouds above
her lightning bolts.

Helena was apparently finished because she
quietly set about finishing her homework. Leah, on the other hand,
could no longer focus on anything but the dull ache pressing at her
ribs. She mentally rewrote her poem.

Carry me back to that moment

before the wonder dies.