Artificial Love (The Goodbye Trilogy #2) (9 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Emily

Something was changing inside of me. Subtle and undeniable, there was no turning back to the ways of the old Emily. And I didn’t want to.

I was so focused on Johnny, his face, his arms as they moved around, and his really messed up story, that I hadn’t realized I moved from the kitchen to the couch. I also felt the need to brush my hair. I brushed so much that the rigid bristles of the brush felt like it was an extension of my tingling scalp. I needed a scalp massage. Those were divine.

Johnny had positioned himself on the couch and was looking out into space. He appeared lost in the conversation we had about Julia and their break up. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around his motives for sleeping with Brennan’s wife but I could clearly tell that he was lost. He was a lost little boy and I wanted to fix that.

“How long are you going to keep the wall of Julia up?” I asked as I closed my eyes to the feel of the delicious bristles on the back of my head.

Johnny shrugged like he hadn’t even noticed that I was in the room He grabbed the brush from me and started to sing a rendition of “Died in Your Arms” by Cheap Trick into it. I giggled and giggled and giggled. My face was hot and I looked down at my shirt to see that the paisleys were swimming. It kind of scared me so I tore off my shirt. I had forgotten I was only wearing a camisole with no bra but who cared? Johnny wasn’t paying any attention. He had morphed one eighties song into another and I clapped with silly glee. He was my own personal rock star for the evening and it made me feel so special.

Johnny stopped abruptly and looked me up and down, taking in the fact I’d rid myself of my demon paisley shirt.

“Nice,” he said as he drew out the word, making it pop with the last sound. I cringed. Nice. How would he know that one word was the epitome of all I was? He couldn’t – unless Jules had told him. I looked over to the Ouija board and gave it a stern look
. You stay put, Gracie. Don’t mess with my mood tonight
, I thought.

“Iggy Pop once said that really good music isn’t just to be heard, you know? It’s almost like a hallucination,” Johnny said as he pointed the brush at my nipples that had clearly made an appearance to this party. “My question is why can’t we enjoy music, hallucination, and hearing?”

We both thought about that for a while. I studied my hair brush in his hands while he studied something on my face.

“I personally like to
listen
to music with my hearing,” I said lamely, for no other reason than to break the annoying silence.

Johnny’s pure smile was heart-stopping beautiful. He loved what I had said. I repeated it in my mind and yes, it had been really amazing. I liked to listen to music with my hearing. Wow, that was so deep. I felt like the smartest woman in Manhattan and Johnny knew it, too. In a gentleman like manner, Johnny handed me the hairbrush, walked to his sound system, turned on some light music, then like he was walking on water, came to sit right next to me.

“Touch me, Emily,” he said softly. His eyes were warm. As if I was back at summer camp, my heart rate kicked up and it was like I was a little girl touching a little boy for the first time.

“Why?” I managed to squeak out. I started to brush my hair again and immediately hated it. I looked at the brush in disgust and threw it on the ground.

“If you touch me, you will enjoy the feel of my skin. I promise.” His eyes never left my face; even when I turned to throw the brush, he actually moved closer to me. My palms were really clammy and cold. I rubbed them on the plush couch and then, very tentatively, my fingers skated along his left forearm.

I closed my eyes and ran my whole hand up and down his arm. It was so warm and his muscles were defined enough for me to run my fingers in and along the ridges. The hair on his forearm was soft but not like a woman’s. He still had the man feel. He was a man and I was feeling a man’s strong flesh and his reaction was obvious. He sighed a lot with enjoyment. He groaned when I touched the inside of his elbow, like it may have been a ticklish spot at one time.

I opened my eyes to find him staring at me with purpose. “What do you think?” he asked like I had the answers to the meaning of life.

“I think I’m confused. I really enjoy touching you, Johnny. It’s…well, it’s nice,” I said as I blew out a sexually frustrated breath.

Moments passed. Hours flew? Sly timed touches. Serious, sensual and calculated looks. We were inching. Close now. Johnny’s body felt so wonderful up against mine. My beating heart affected my rasped breath. I couldn’t figure out what I had to do next. What did I want to happen next? I shivered at the thought of being with sexy Johnny Lennox. I warmed at the thought of being with the complex man that let me couch surf.

Being that I
was
on drugs, I struggled with how fast or how slow the next moments went by. The most prominent actions were terribly disappointing. I knew when the Ouija board flew across the floor. I registered that Johnny quickly backed up to the farthest part of the couch. Was he trying to get away from me or
her
? As I anticipated, I dropped my eyes down to the rapid fire of the triangle indicator as it spelled out the same word over and over again. N-I-C-E

Stupid me, I was so damn close to kissing Johnny again. I knew he had wanted to. Of course, Grace had to go and ruin it for me again. Her timing was always in poor taste. I wanted to scream in frustration because this was the first time she made herself known in front of someone else. I would have to explain this to Johnny and I was feeling good. This night was about to take a turn for the worse due to Grace. I just hoped I didn’t end up out on the street while on drugs. That wouldn’t be good.

Chapter Seventeen

Johnny

I don’t think I was breathing. My heart was pushing out too much blood and I was faint. I was scared to death – quite literally.

“Johnny,” Emily started to speak calmly.
Calmly
. Why was Emily so fucking calm?

“Are you okay?” she asked as she tried to reach for me. I had backed myself into the corner of the couch like a frightened cat.

I looked from the board and up to Emily with astonishment. Okay, so I was freaked the fuck out and she was totally chill. What the fuck was up with that?

“Do I look okay?” I asked very slowly and shaky. She scooted over to me and even though the Ouija board was still moving a mile a minute, she hardly registered it as she came to take care of me.

She took her fingers and smoothed the frown lines on my forehead. I felt them. It was me being completely confused and baffled. I got frown lines often but never during a mushroom trip, which by the way was at its peak at that very moment. She moved in closer and placed her firm lips onto mine. I felt her inhale through her nose and when she exhaled, she moaned a little, totally taking my mind off of the freaked out game on the floor. I wrapped my hand around her orange haired head and drew her closer, opening my mouth, trying to wiggle my tongue into her mouth. She gasped a little and I went in for the kill. Our tongues met and she was fucking delicious. I felt like a horny little teenage boy and I kissed her with tenderness and humility. She fit me perfectly. We started for second base and before I knew it, she was jumping up and wringing out her fingers.

“I have to stop. It stopped so I have to stop.”

Emily was officially a nut case. Maybe I should introduce her to Dr. Fearless Quack.

“What the fuck just happened?” I laid there on the couch, my shirt half way up my stomach, an erection clearly on display, and the Ouija board back in its place on the bookshelf.

“Grace Miller is what happened. She and that,” she pointed at the general area of the Ouija board without taking her sad eyes off me, “never leave me alone. I mean, it doesn’t happen every day but I think that there’s a method. She comes out to haunt me in the worst times, Johnny. I didn’t know what to do and you looked so scared.”

“So you attempted to molest me?” I asked, completely confused.

Emily covered her mouth with her four fingers and tried not to laugh. She failed. Within seconds, she was flat on her back on the ground, laughing so hard that I wasn’t even sure she knew what she was laughing about.

“Molest you?” Her question didn’t need an answer because she kept on laughing like it was possibly the funniest joke that was ever told. It wasn’t. I wanted her to molest me.

“Okay, so Grace Miller was the girl that was murdered when you were young,” I started. I needed answers and my buzz was killing off brain cells by the second. I had to know before I turn into a pile of mush, coming down off the high.

Emily sat straight up. “How do you know her?” Her face went from reddened laughter to pale and scared.

“Jules told me all about her and the Ouija board. Each of you asked what you would be when you grew up. Right?” I inched my body closer to her on the couch and signaled for her to come closer. My dick hadn’t settled down and I still wanted her close to me.

“What did she tell you, Emily?” I kept a straight and serious face because I knew the damage Grace’s answer had done to Jules. I was sure she still was haunted by who she thought she was supposed to be. In that moment, I hoped she and Brennan were able to move passed that.

What the hell kind of thought was that?
Johnny Lennox doesn’t care about the happiness of the two people who initiated him to ruin his life and his band. Talking in third person was goofy on mushrooms but I doubted if Emily would be down with it at this point in our evening. Maybe I could try it out later, when I was Jedi mind tricking Emily out of her clothes.

“So, what did she tell us right then?” Emily pointed to the empty space on the floor where the board just was. “Or are you asking me what she told me when I was twelve?”

I stared at her in disbelief. Emily was so nonchalant, almost foul in her blank response to the really screwed up and creepy turn of events.
A ghost?
Yes, a ghost had just been in my apartment. Maybe I was too high and I’d imagined this and time actually skipped and we were talking about something else.

“She said that when I grew up, I would be N-I-C-E. Nice,” she said on a long exhale. “You know that already.”

I closed my eyes and watched the stars and spirals cloud my rapid brain synapses. I remember looking down at the Ouija board and it had not said “nice”. It had said “Kiss her.”

“She didn’t say that you were nice tonight,” I whispered to myself, opening my eyes slowly.

Emily cocked her head and for the first time since the board went fucking wacko on us, she looked disbelieving and shook her head in confusion.

“She always spells nice, Johnny. She did it the day that my father grounded me for kissing a boy in high school. She did it the day that I went in front of the Dean at UNH to tell them I had cheated on a paper when I really hadn’t. She did it the day that I got married. She has made her presence known quite a bit recently, but it’s always for me and it’s always to remind me that I am supposed to be a nice person,” she rambled.

I moved closer to her. I wanted to kiss her.

“I’m the nice daughter, the nice sorority student, the nice wife, and I guess I’m now the nice friend you never had?” she questioned me as she raised her eyebrows at me. She tried to lick her lips, but she had some serious cottonmouth. I got up to get her a beer. I grabbed two and plopped back down on the couch.

As I went to give it to her, she said something but I couldn’t hear her. Her mouth moved and it looked as though she said, “Kiss me”. Within seconds, I had Emily on her back. I kissed her hard and as fervently as I could. I needed to kiss her. She was safe. She didn’t let stupid Ouija boards and ghosts freak her out. She didn’t care that she looked like a homeless person. She was nice in all the ways that actually mattered.

I pulled back when I realized that I was not being so nice by kissing her. She would want a relationship or some shit. She would want a diamond ring and forever. That was only meant for… Jules. No, that wasn’t right. Emily was Jules. Jules was Emily. This was the most intense trip I had ever been on.

“Wow that was some kiss, Johnny. All I asked was if you missed Julia,” she said as she started to rub her lips.

“We need to get rid of that board,” I said urgently. That board was fucking me up, not the mushrooms. Every time I looked at Emily, she was seductively looking at me. She wanted sex. She wanted me to fuck her and hard. She was begging for it with her eyes and her luscious mouth.

“Why? The board doesn’t matter anymore. It won’t harm us. She only wants to remind me to be the nice person I’m supposed to be. I am being nice. Well, as nice as I can be under the circumstances, I guess. Divorce kind of sucks but divorcing Michael isn’t so bad.” She was talkative. So chatty. It was weird because normally I would nod and hum like I cared but with Emily, I hung on to every fucking word that came out of her mouth.

“You’re the first person that she’s ever made herself known to when she comes to me. It’s so weird she did that tonight.” Emily looked off into space and I noticed that a large tear fell from her eye. I tried to wipe it away but she told me not to.

“These mushrooms feel really good. I’m so glad I ate them.” She purposefully looked into my eyes and gave me a genuine smile. “I think I know why she chose you. She knew you wouldn’t call me a freak. I have never told anyone about it and I don’t like to think about it but now,” she inhaled and another tear fell, “it feels like I can let her go a little now that I don’t carry the burden of being haunted by that word. I can talk to someone who won’t throw me into a psych ward,” she laughed as she took a drink from her beer and put her bare feet up in a crisscross fashion. How was I supposed to kiss her when she sat like that?