Consumed (Addicted to You Book 1) (13 page)

“Deal,” I nodded my approval. “On one condition,” I finished.

“Oh God,” her voice showed her dismay. “What now?”

I felt the pain rumbling below the surface, urging me to get out of the bar before I started crying again.

“I need tonight,” I spoke in barely above a whisper. “I need my best friend tonight. For her to sit with me and stuff our fat faces with chocolate. For her to listen to me cry and hug me and tell me I’ll be okay. I need you.”

“Just for tonight?” she asked, hesitating.

“Just for tonight! And tomorrow we will party,” I agreed.

“Okay,” she smiled. “But, I get to pick the chocolate.”

“Deal!” I laughed. “Can we get out of here?”

“You haven’t touched your drink!” her squeal told me that was unacceptable.

I grabbed the glass, put it to my lips and downed every drop of fruity liquid from inside. I watched Colby laugh and shake her head, grab my arm and lead me away from the bar.

“You are either going to sleep hard or cry hard,” she shook her head as we walked out.

“Well, I think I’m good on the crying,” I answered and we both laughed and made our way back to the room, stopping only to purchase the sweets we were going to need to console my broken heart.

“Best. Ice. Cream. Ever!” Colby announced, making sure to add a dramatic pause in between each word.

She was right. It was an expensive brand that we’d decided to try, loaded with chocolate and peppermint because that was my favorite. We’d been sitting and talking about the party and stuffing spoon fulls of ice cream into our mouths since we’d returned to the room.

I hadn’t really talked about Spencer or what had happened. I was trying to block it out, but as the alcohol I’d added to my system began to take over I realized I wasn’t going to be able to do that. The pain was going to overwhelm me at any time.

“Spit it out,” Colby sputtered through a mouth full of chocolate.

“What?”

“Whatever you are thinking about,” she answered. “This is your one night. So spit it out.”

“He…uh…Spencer….” I was choking back the sobs that wanted to escape my body, reminding myself that I was trying to be okay. “His …” the words wouldn’t come, no matter how hard I tried to speak them.

I didn’t want to say it. If I said it out loud then it became true. And my heart wasn’t prepared to accept that. My soul wasn’t prepared to be okay with it. But she was right. This was my night. For her to comfort me. Before I caved and went back to being her friend. The one that did what she wanted.

“His phone…” I tried to make the words move forward. It was as if the mere feeling of the sentence was burning to the skin on my lips. I wanted to hold it back and keep it from scorching me. “It’s…” I decided to just push them instead. Holding it in wasn’t helping. “Off.”

She shook her head, blonde curls bouncing against her shoulders. Her crystal blue eyes looked distant, cold and disbelieving.

“People turn their phones off Ave,” she rolled her eyes. “It happens all the time. Quit being so overdramatic.”

“The number,” I began. “it’s disconnected.” My eyes darted to the floor, to Colby and back again –refusing to focus on anything long enough to cry. “It’s never….he’s never…”

I couldn’t finish the sentence but I didn’t have to. Colby grabbed me into one of the big tight hugs I hadn’t felt in years. Nothing rude or hurtful came out of her mouth. She didn’t use my pain to cause me pain. She simply held me, rubbing the back of my head-probably noticing the sand throughout my mousy brown hair.

“Ohhh honey,” she whispered and continued to hug me, for a split second understanding my pain and agony.

Thankfully she didn’t insist I say much more. She didn’t make any comments to cause me to be defensive. She just comforted me. Much like I’d wished she’d done in the beginning.

“I’m so sorry,” she offered, neither of us discussing the fact that she wasn’t.

My head tilted sideways and I rocked back and forth slightly. It wasn’t much. One night to let the heartbreak tear me apart. A few hours of having the sympathy of another human being. Only a short time to let myself mourn a love I was in all by myself. More than anything, it was only one night to pretend my best friend really cared about my heartache.

It seemed unfair. I’d loved so hard and so strong that a night didn’t seem nearly enough time to grieve. The passion we’d shared, the connection that we’d had, it was worthy of more than that. Of course that would depend on if we’d even had it. I was pretty confident that I’d imagined it at that point.

But for Colby it was a lot. She had been hurt. I had let her down. She deserved a better trip. A better friend for that matter. Yet she was giving me this. Not telling me how much she was hurt or how stupid I’d been for believing him all over again. No, her support wasn’t genuine. But her love for me was. That was what I had to remember. Her hatred of Spencer wasn’t a hatred of me.

“We are going to have such a good time,” she squealed. “After your broken heart of course,” the afterthought didn’t even appear to be sincere.

She had changed the subject, but I wasn’t resentful. She had to. It was the only way that she knew to deal with it. Colby wasn’t Spencer’s biggest fan. And she knew that I was hurting. So she was changing the subject to avoid a situation in which she hurt me further. I only wished she’d done that sooner. Maybe I could have healed faster, or at least faked it better, if she would have given me that support.

“Remember Brett?” she asked when I didn’t reply to her comment about fun.

“Who could forget?” I teased. “Worst taste in women on the planet!”

“Hey now,” she inserted.

Brett had dated Colby in high school, before she had her outgoing personality and perfectly white smile. He was the football star and she was infatuated with him. Not on the scale I was with Spencer, but at sixteen- it was serious.

Needless to say she’d been devastated when Brett had started ditching her after school. Her heart was completely torn apart when she found out he was sneaking to see Sandie Gordman, cheerleader and head ho as we called her.

That night, Colby and I had vegged out in my tiny bedroom munching on every junk food imaginable. We had seen movies where women solved a broken heart with candy and thought we’d try it.

All that ended up happening was both of us puking and passing out.

The hours that followed that conversation took me back to those days. A friendship that was solid and strong. Two hearts somehow joined together to help each other through the trials and tribulations of life. Best friends for life and beyond.

BFFLAB.

Our signature from high school.

I’d forgotten what that felt like. To have Colby there, holding my hand and propping me up when I’d fall. She’d done it for so many years. The Brett situation had been the only time I’d ever been able to be there for her. I was too busy crashing myself most days.

High school may have been the years I flourished, but college and beyond were a disaster. From the moment we’d graduated, I had been nothing more than the fragile girl in Colby’s life. The one that was constantly being broken and needing her pieces put back together. Guy after guy. Job after job. Disaster after disaster.

“I think drama seeks you out,” she’d told me once when a then boyfriend’s ex had been stalking me. “Like you are a magnet for the worst things ever.”

Those words lingered in my head as I talked with my best friend about our old high school days. A time when things were happy and even my parents liked me. I was a magnet for the worst.

That was why I’d fallen so hard for Spencer. It was like he’d brought me out of that black hole. Nobody seemed to understand that. Yes, when he left I went through this. And obviously that was the status quo at this point.

But when he was there, it was the most amazing thing I’d ever known. Nobody had the ability to lift me up like he did. Hell, I couldn’t even really get mad at him. All he ever had to do was flash that smile and I’d melt like butter on the stove. He had every part of my heart wrapped around one little finger.

The problem was that Spencer was a broken man. He’d been through so many things. Some he had shared with me, others he simply hinted at. The worst being his almost marriage.

He had adored the girl, but something bad had happened. She had left him two weeks before the wedding and ending up marrying his best friend instead. I didn’t know all of the details, but I did know one thing. It’d never gone away for him. He didn’t trust love. Of course he’d had other problems in the dating world. Girls that cheated. Girls that didn’t love him. Girls that he couldn’t get along with. He was a magnet as well.

When we’d met I was certain it was the gods making things right for both of us. We’d suffered so much in life. Both with love and with family. Neither of us was surrounded by friends and relatives wishing us well. We had a few, but the ones we could count on were few and far between.

We’d clung to each other almost immediately. It hadn’t taken very long for us to realize that there was no place we enjoyed as much as we enjoyed being together. I didn’t want to call it love that early, but it was hard not to. I couldn’t imagine my world without him.

But since that first day I’d been without him almost as much as with him. He’d already left me several times, each one lasting a little longer. Sometimes it felt like a game, but others I remembered the way he looked at me and I knew it was real. I just didn’t know why it had to end. Other than he was so afraid of love that he ran from it. But on days like the one I sat in the room with Colby, that seemed a flimsy and pathetic excuse.

I remembered that one day when Spencer and I had been cuddled up and watching movies and he’d sighed really loud.

“Why does love have to be hard?” he’d asked me, not showing much confidence in life at all that day.

“It’s not,” I answered.

“How do you say that love isn’t hard?” he looked at me. “After all you’ve been through?”

“Because today I am lying here with you and being here with you is the easiest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” I had admitted.

It had been true. Nothing came as easily to me as loving him did. It was natural. It was perfect.

Until he left.

And as I sat and talked out my heartbreak, I realized that part of the destruction of my friendship with Colby was my fault. I’d been so extreme with Spencer and the constant heartbreak and related fear of future heartbreak, that I’d shut out my very best friend.

Granted, she played a role too. Because she wasn’t ever quite as happy with me as she was in that moment. Seeing me broken. Knowing I’d given up. It seemed to make it okay for her then. When I was still holding out, still loving him, she wasn’t able to be there for me. She couldn’t help me when I still believed love and its power. But when I gave up, she was there.

I was grateful for her that night despite our problems. I needed her. The more chocolate we consumed; the less I thought about the recording and disconnected number. The more she talked about the party we would attend the next day; the fewer tears fell. Somehow having her there, holding me through it, made the hole inside almost bearable.

I’d almost forgotten what a real smile felt like. How much I enjoyed laughing had slipped my mind. That night I remembered. And I cherished it.

Not sure that I’d wake up and be okay the following day, I held tightly to those giggles and conversations we had so easily that night. Life may have collapsed under the pressure of my broken soul, but for just one minute we were normal again.

The pain wasn’t gone. I could feel it peek in. I pushed it out. Something told me it wasn’t time and that I needed to ignore it. But that emptiness that lurked below the surface, it was the reason I was clinging so tightly to Colby. A fact I wasn’t sure was any less selfish than I’d been before. It was just executed in a different way.

Hours later we both curled up in her bed, whispering as if we were going to get caught by our parents. I didn’t remember the next day, and still don’t remember now, what we were laughing about or how long we lay there. I just remember my head on her shoulder, her arm around me, as I felt my eyes closing from the weight of all I’d encountered.

“I love you Colby,” sleep filled my voice, causing me to almost slur the words.

“Love you too Avery,” she whispered against the top of my head. “Sleep good girl, we are going to party hard tomorrow.”

As I slipped into dream land I saw Spencer’s face, a frown on his lips as his eyes looked at the floor. I wanted to cry out, beg him to look at me and come back, but as quickly as the image appeared it faded.

And I knew it was over.

Chapter 16

“Why do you hate him so much?” I took a bite of ice cream and waited.

Colby and I were sitting in the food court at Woodfield Mall and enjoying a treat from Cold Stone Creamery. We’d spent the day shopping and after our ice cream we were headed to the theater to see a movie. It was our day to spend together and enjoy our friendship.

The problem was that she’d spent most of it making snide remarks about Spencer, including the one she’d just said about how she was glad he hadn’t tagged along to ruin the day.