Red Hot Obsessions (71 page)

“I’m Stacey,” she said, and she had a voice like bubblegum. It clashed with her appearance. “And I’m an addict. I’ve got six months sober.” She beamed, looking like a punk Cabbage Patch Doll.

The guy next to her shook his head.

“He does too,” she said. “He’s just shy.”

After the meeting, I wandered out of the church, feeling a little dazed. Stacey and her boyfriend were right in front of me. The minute they hit fresh air, they both lit up cigarettes.

Griffin and I had to walk through a cloud of their smoke to get to our car.

“Hey,” said Stacey, “I’ve seen you before on campus.”

“Me?” I said. Like there was anyone else around.

“You go to school with me, don’t you?” she said. “You live in Thomas, like we do.” She pointed at her boyfriend.

I felt Griffin go rigid behind me. They recognized me? What did that mean? I backed up so that I was almost touching him. “Maybe.”

“I thought so,” she said. “I remembered your boyfriend. I see you guys walking all over campus together. He’s so sweet. He only has eyes for you.”

“Oh,” I said, laughing. “Griffin’s not my—”

“I’m her bodyguard,” said Griffin.

Stacey raised her eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well, cool,” she said. “You know, Jack was going to be a bodyguard.” She slung an arm around her boyfriend. “But he found out you have to work with the police sometimes.”

“Yeah, not cool,” said Jack.

They seemed harmless. But were they?

“I’m trying to start a chapter of NA on campus,” said Stacey. “But no one except me and Jack ever show up. If
you
come, it would save us all a drive.” She grinned.

*

“Mmm,” said Stacey, her head thrown back in ecstasy. We were sitting inside The Purple Fiddle. Her, me, Jack, and Griffin. We’d just had our second NA meeting all together on campus. It had gone pretty well. Better than talking with the meth heads in Grafton. “I love tofu.”

I shook my head. “I can’t believe you just said that.” I looked at Griffin. “That’s totally gross, isn’t it?”

“I’m not a big fan of tofu,” he admitted.

“You ever eaten it?” said Jack.

“Yes,” I said. “My ex-boyfriend, who was a vegetarian, made me eat it once. It was horrible.”

“Well, who cooked it?” said Stacey. “Was it him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “So?”

“So, just try this.” She shoved her half-eaten burger at my face.

I cringed. She wanted me to take a bite of something she’d already eaten. That wasn’t sanitary.

“Go on,” she said. “I don’t have cooties.”

I took a tentative bite and chewed. I hoped I wasn’t ingesting a trillion germs. As I chewed, I realized that what I was eating didn’t taste half bad. “Hey. It’s not awful.”

“Not awful? It’s amazing,” said Stacey. “So good. Jack and I would barely survive here if it wasn’t for The Purple Fiddle. Do you know how hard it is to be vegan around here?”

“You’re vegan, huh?” I asked.

She smiled. “Yeah. Six months now.”

“Isn’t that the amount of time you’ve been sober?” I said.

She nodded. “Yup. Jack and I gave up meat, eggs, milk, and blow all at the same time.”

“Whoa,” I said. “Sounds intense.”

“Definitely,” said Stacey.

“I couldn’t do that,” I said. “I mean, I think that would be too hard.”

“Yeah, well, we were going to quit smoking too,” said Jack, “but we decided it would be too much to handle.”

“We’re going to quit eventually,” said Stacey.

“You guys want to be healthy, I guess,” I said.

“It’s more than that,” said Stacey. “I mean, while I was doing drugs and stuff, I really just wanted to stand out, you know? My dad left when I was a kid, and I guess I was looking for attention somewhere. I wanted people to see me, and always notice me.” She tugged on her hair. “That’s why, you know, I do stuff like this.”

I smiled. “I get that. I know what you’re talking about.”

“When you’re all fucked up,” she said, “you’re free, right? You don’t have anything holding you back. You can be as loud or as noticeable as you want.”

“Yeah,” I said. Wow. Stacey and I might have more in common than I had ever thought.

“So, when I quit, I didn’t want to lose that. I was afraid of being nobody. Like if I wasn’t the crazy party chick with weird hair and piercings, then who would I be, you know? But I decided that instead of using my appearance to validate myself, I’d used it for good. So, now I’m the crazy chick who’s vocal about being sober and making better food choices and all of that.”

I surveyed her. She was actually really together, in her own strange way. I liked her. “I think that’s cool.”

“Plus, being vegan is like effortless weight loss.” She gestured at me with her sandwich. “Not that you need to lose weight or anything.”

I took a bite of my jalapeño turkey wrap. “Well, every girl wants to lose weight.”

“I know, right?” she said, taking a drink of her soda. She inclined her head. “And all guys universally hate it when girls start talking about that.”

Griffin and Jack both seemed really interested in their food.

“They’re a lot alike, Griffin and Jack,” said Stacey.

I set down my wrap. “How do you figure?” They didn’t look very similar to me. Jack was skinny and pierced. He had long, blue hair. Griffin was the complete opposite of Jack.

“They’re both quiet,” she said. “They both keep things to themselves, especially bad things. They don’t open up about their pain to just anyone.”

That was true, I guessed, as far as it went.

Stacey sucked on her straw. “Jack hates cops, for instance. Hates ‘em. Won’t tell me why.”

“They just bug me,” said Jack, eating a French fry.

“Something happened,” she said. “He’ll tell me eventually.” She stole one of his fries.

“Hey,” he said. “You got a plate full of your own.”

“I know, but yours just look crispier than mine,” said Stacey.

“You know,” said Griffin. “I think Jack and Leigh got crispier fries.” He took one off my plate and popped it in his mouth.

I glared at him. “I get one of yours, then.”

“So, when are you two going to admit that you’re totally smitten with each other?” said Stacey.

Griffin choked on the fry.

*

“Look,” said Griffin as we walked up the stairs to my apartment. “What she said, it’s not... It’s important to me that you’re safe, but not because of anything... you know, like that.”

I opened the door to the apartment. “Believe me, I know that. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I mean, she doesn’t even know us. We just met her. She strikes me as the kind of person who says whatever floats to the top of her mind anyway.”

He laughed, closing the door after me. “Yeah, she sure does talk, doesn’t she?”

I went to the refrigerator to put my leftovers from The Purple Fiddle in there. “Besides, I know exactly why you follow me everywhere and watch me constantly. It’s because of my dad. Right?” I closed the refrigerator door and looked up at him.

He didn’t have a takeout box. He stood next to the window. It was afternoon, and the sun was streaming in behind him, giving him a halo. “Uh, right.”

“You’re like a guardian angel,” I said.

“Trust me, doll, I’m no angel.” He moved away from the window, across the room to the couch. He slept there, and usually he was good about folding up all the blankets. But he must have forgotten this morning, because it still looked like a bed. He picked up a blanket and started folding it.

“Well, you’re not interested in me. Because that one time I tried to kiss you, you got really freaked out. You weren’t into it at all.”

He continued folding the blanket, making it smaller and smaller. “Yeah. It’s, um, not like that.”

“Trust me. I get it. It’s all about my dad. You owe my dad for saving you. It has nothing to do with me. I mean, you probably don’t even like me. Why would you? All I’ve done is cause you problems. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to be involved with me either.”

He set the blanket on the couch. He picked up the sheet and began to fold it. “Of course I like you, doll.”

“You do? Because I kind of got the impression that you wanted to murder me.”

He chuckled. “I’m trying to
keep
people from murdering you.”

I smiled. “Well, I like you too. You’re a pain in my ass, but you’re kind of right. About everything. And I’d be dead if it weren’t for you.”

He set down the sheet. He caught my eye. He was smiling too. We stood like that, in the afternoon light, smiling at each other across the living room. It was nice.

I took a step towards him.

He broke eye contact. “So, I just wanted to make sure you understood that.”

“Understood what?”

“That I don’t have feelings for you,” he told the couch.

Oh, right. That was what we had been talking about. I had been distracted. When we were looking at each other like that, it had seemed as if... But he was saying... I straightened a pillow on my recliner. “No. Of course I understand.”

“It’s not because I don’t like you. You’ve been through a lot. And dealing with drugs is tough for everyone. I think you’re great. I really do.” He sat down on the couch. “It’s just because of your dad.”

“That’s what I said before.” I straightened the pillow more. I wasn’t sure how much straighter I could actually get it.

“And because it wouldn’t be appropriate,” he said. “Because if I got involved with you, then I wouldn’t be as good at protecting you.”

“I totally understand,” I said. “I never believed Stacey anyway, you know? We don’t have to keep talking about this.”

“Right.” He looked at his hands.

I wasn’t sure where to look either. Things had gotten really awkward all of the sudden. I sat down. “So, what was my dad like, when you were spending time with him? Because I didn’t really see him much.”

“What do you mean, what was he like? He was freaked out. He was worried about you. He wanted you to be safe. You were all he talked about.”

“Really?” I said. “That’s funny. Because before that accident, he almost never talked to me at all.”

“That can’t be true. He was crazy about you.”

“When I was thirteen years old, my dad gave me a card wishing me a happy tenth birthday.”

Griffin winced. “That’s harsh.”

“He never came to see one of my school activities, like other parents did. By the time I was in high school, I stopped doing school activities. I figured, what was the point?”

“That when you started messing with drugs?”

“Yeah. It just didn’t seem like it was that big of a deal. And I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

“He did care about you, doll. I know that.”

I shrugged. “I wish he would have shown me that instead of you.”

“He risked everything to save your life.”

I realized I was crying again. Damn my dad. He didn’t deserve this many tears from me. I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand. “Like you do. Because he asked you too. How can you be so loyal to him?”

He leaned back against the couch. “Look, I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Because of my dad. Yeah, we’ve established this.” Why were the tears coming faster now?

“Not just because of that.” He stood up and went to the window, putting his hands in his pockets. “I don’t want you to die. I mean, how could I sleep at night knowing there was a girl out there who was willing not to judge me about my past? She said I was a confused kid, not a criminal. And she had a big heart. She worked hard to change. She was willing to do whatever it took, even if she hated it. If I let a girl like that die, I’d never be able to live with myself.”

I went to him. I put my hand on his shoulder.

He closed his eyes.

“Griffin, that was the sweetest thing anyone has ever—”

He moved away from me. “I
can’t
, okay?”

CHAPTER SIX

“So your dad seriously hired you a bodyguard?” said Stacey from the other stall in the clothing store.

“Seriously,” I said.

“Are you in that much danger?”

Griffin and I had talked about how to lie about this. “It’s my dad’s job. He works for an international arms corporation. He thinks I could be in danger.”

“Oh, whoa,” she said. “So, you might be.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Hopefully not.”

“And Griffin lives with you?”

“Well, he has to watch me.”

“All the time? Like while you’re in bed, too?”

I giggled. “Stacey, he can
hear
you.”

“I sleep on the couch,” said Griffin. He was outside the dressing room.

“He can
always
hear me,” she said. “He’s always around. How are we supposed to have a proper girly conversation about him behind his back, when he never turns his back?”

I laughed.

I could hear that Griffin was chuckling too.

“I’m serious,” she said. “You’re my best friend, or at least the closest thing to one I have since I got sober. And Griffin is ruining our ability to bond.”

“Well,” I said, “we can always go to the bathroom at the same time. He doesn’t come in women’s restrooms.”

“Perfect!” she said.

I surveyed myself in the mirror. “I don’t like this dress. I’m going to take it off.”

“No, you don’t. Not until I see it.”

“Fine,” I said. I opened the door. “I’m showing you. What do you think?”

Stacey popped out of her dressing room. “Oh! Gosh, it’s way too frilly, isn’t it?”

“Told you,” I said.

Stacey turned to Griffin. “What do you think?”

He eyed me. “Um, I like it.”

Stacey rolled her eyes. “Boys. They’re useless. You’ll have to try on something else.”

“Okay,” I said. “I like yours, though.”

Stacey preened. “Thanks! I like red. Matches my hair.” She darted back into the dressing room.

I went back into my side. “I don’t know why we’re trying on these dresses anyway. I don’t have anywhere to wear it. I can’t go out anymore. Too easy to get tempted or to run into the regular crew.”

“They’re sober dresses,” she said. “A reward.”

I tugged a different dress over my head. It was yellow. Really yellow. How had this ended up in my pile of clothes to try on? I didn’t think I’d picked it out. “But what use is a reward if you can’t use it?” I opened the dressing room door. “I’ve got another one to show you.”

“Okay, give me a second,” she said. “You know, Griffin, if you’re bored, you could go hang out with Jack in the arcade.”

“I can’t do that,” said Griffin, grinning at me. “I have to stay close enough to watch Leigh.”

Stacey came out of the dressing room. She had on another red dress. It was cute.

“Oh, I like that one,” I said.

“Me too,” she said. “But yours is so... yellow.”

“I know,” I said. “I swear I didn’t pick this out. You did, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said. “But it looks yellower now that you’re wearing it.” She squealed. “Oh my God, I just had a really awesome idea!”

“Is it about making it not so yellow?”

“No,” she said. “Don’t be silly. It’s about where we can wear our fabulous new dresses.”

“Where?”

“A party.”

I shook my head. “No, I can’t. It’s a bad idea. The last time I had a party, I ended up going straight to my dealer afterwards.”

“It’ll be a sober party,” said Stacey. “A party to commemorate your one-month sober. Isn’t that awesome?”

“I can’t,” I said. I looked at Griffin. “Back me up, here.”

“Where would the party be?” asked Griffin.

“At Jack’s and my place,” she said.

“How many people are we talking about?” he said.

“I don’t know. Just NA people,” she said. “People our age. Not the meth ladies from Grafton or anything.”

I laughed. “Still...”

“I think it’s fine,” said Griffin.

“You do?” I said.

He shrugged. “Sure. As long as it’s small and contained and you’re not strung out on cocaine.”

“But I thought that you would think it was a really bad idea.”

“Well, I don’t,” he said.

Stacey clapped her hands together. “Awesome. This is going to be so cool, you’ll see. Jack and I are going to the Morgantown NA meeting next week, and we’ll invite all our friends from there.”

“This is really going to happen? I haven’t found a good dress yet.”

“Try on the blue one,” said Griffin.

“The blue one?” I ducked back into the dressing room to look through the dresses that were hanging up there. There
was
a blue one. I took it off the hanger. “Okay, I’ll try it.”

It was periwinkle blue, with sparkles. It was simple, but nice. It had thin straps, and it hit about mid thigh. The color looked nice with my skin. I pushed my way out of the dressing room.

“How’d you know?” I asked him.

He looked me up and down.

“Seriously, Griffin, do you have fashion talents that I don’t know about?”

He shrugged. “I noticed that you look good in blue. And, I, uh, I like that dress.” He was still taking me in.

As his gaze swept my body, I felt a little tingle every place his look settled. I drew in a breath.

“You should buy it,” he said.

I nodded. “I think I will.” And then I stood there gaping at him like an idiot until Stacey came out of the dressing room to gush over the dress too.

*

Thanks to Stacey, being sober wasn’t boring in the slightest. I spent most of my time with her and Jack. Griffin seemed to like them too. At least he didn’t complain. I didn’t go out trying to score cocaine. I didn’t have crazy, wild parties. I went to bed at a decent hour, and I got up with plenty of sleep. I went to class. I ate lunch with Stacey and Jack at school. I came home and did class work. Sometimes, we went to their place for dinner or to hang out. Sometimes, I asked them to come to my apartment.

My party was scheduled for the end of spring break, which was when I’d have been sober for a month.

I could hardly believe so much time had passed. It had gone quickly, and it had been easy.

A lot of that was because of Stacey.

She was my best friend. If I was honest, I hadn’t had a best friend since elementary school. I didn’t know how it happened exactly, but I’d somehow missed out on having friends that were girls. I remembered that my last best friend had been named Jackie. We’d been thirteen when Jackie stopped speaking to me.

It was over a boy.

She liked this guy. I don’t even remember his name. But he was the heartthrob of our class. Everyone liked him. The way I saw it, it wasn’t like she had any kind of dibs on him.

But she still got mad when I made out with him.

I don’t even know why I did it. I guess it seemed like it would be cool.

But whoever that guy’s name was had only made out with me because I let him feel me up. It didn’t go anywhere. I kind of thought it would. I always thought guys were going to be more interested in me than they were.

I’m not saying that I used sex to try to get the attention of guys.

Well. Maybe I am. I was pretty young when I lost my virginity, and the guy I did it with—Aaron—was a few years older than me. He didn’t care that I was fourteen, though. He was a senior in high school. I was a freshman. It wasn’t like he was taking advantage of me. I knew what I was doing. But it was kind of the same thing.

I gave it up.

And then he promptly lost interest.

It wasn’t always like that. I did have several boyfriends in high school and, of course, there was Eric in college. So not all the guys were jerks who were just after one thing. Some of them were really nice guys. (Of course, I wasn’t always nice back. I had some issues in high school.) But there were enough of them only interested in sex that I should have learned my lesson. I should have realized that having sex with a guy was not the way to make him like me.

But I guess the problem was that it did kind of make them like me. Not always for a very long time. But for at least a few minutes, sometimes a few weeks if it took a while for them to get bored. When they were having sex with me, they weren’t paying attention to anything except me. That was a cool feeling. I liked that feeling. So, I guess I had sex with a lot of guys.

I sort of got a reputation.

And for some reason, I didn’t have a lot of friends that were girls after that. They all thought I’d steal their boyfriends, or at least make out with them.

The sad thing was, they were probably right.

When Stacey talked to me about doing everything in her power to get noticed, I identified. I hadn’t pierced my tongue. I’d spread my legs. You couldn’t see what effect that had on me on the outside, not like Stacey’s piercings. But...all in all... I thought piercings might have been a tad healthier than what I’d done.

I was glad to have her around. She was awesome, and I felt better than I had in a long time. Almost... normal. Which is weird, because here we were, two chicks who’d both done scads of cocaine and spent our adolescence doing whatever we could to get people to pay attention to us. We were the opposite of normal.

Stacey constantly teased me about Griffin. She said that there were definite sparks between us, that the air was thick with tension when we were close. She said this in front of Griffin, because he was always there. But occasionally, when we were all hanging out in her house, she and I would manage to get one room away from the guys. Close enough that Griffin could hear me scream if something bad happened, but far enough that I could talk without him hearing.

And that was the only time I could talk about how I felt about him. I didn’t know what it was. It might not have been anything. Maybe it was just the fact that he was swoon-worthy and that he’d saved my life a few times. (I couldn’t tell Stacey that, of course.)

But I thought it might be something big. I thought I might really like him.

And I didn’t know what to do. “I don’t want to screw it up. Because, you know, in the past I’ve gotten physical really quickly.”

“There’s nothing wrong with getting physical,” said Stacey. “Nothing at all.” She shrugged. “But it
is
cooler when you do it with someone you love.”

“And you love Jack?”

“Totally.”

“And you always loved him? Even before you had sex?”

“Well, maybe not before we did it the first time,” she said. She grabbed my hands. “Look, it feels different with Griffin because it
is
different. When it’s a big deal, you know. I knew with Jack. You know now.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “But I don’t know anything. All I know is that Griffin is really attractive, and that when I look at him, I feel a little weak all over. And that I’m really glad he has to be around me all the time.”

“So, there you go,” she said. “That means something.”

I pulled my hands away from hers and ran them through my hair. “Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. We don’t even really know each other, Griffin and me. I don’t know anything about his family or his past. I don’t even know what year he graduated from high school.”

“You’re around him all the time. Ask him.”

“No, I can’t. It never feels like the right place or time to ask him those things. And besides, I’m always busy with school work.”

She grinned. “But it’s spring break next week. No school work.”

I raised my eyebrows. “What college are you going to? I’ve got two projects to work on over spring break.”

“So get them done now, and you and Griffin can go do something romantic.”

“Like he’s going to go for that,” I said. “He’s completely against anything happening between us because he says it’s unprofessional.”

“And sleeping on your couch isn’t unprofessional?” Stacey rolled her eyes. “He’s making up excuses. The boy has it bad for you.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“He calls you doll.”

“That’s just his New Jersey slang thing. He calls all girls that.”

“He doesn’t call
me
that. He likes you.”

I didn’t know if he did. He’d made that little speech about me, about what kind of girl he thought I was and why he wanted to keep me alive. But that didn’t mean he had romantic feelings for me. Why would he? “He doesn’t have a reason to ‘have it bad’ for me. It’s not like something happened one night, our eyes met, and fireworks were going off in the distance.”

“Do
you
have a reason for liking him?” said Stacey.

“Well...” I thought about it. “I guess not.”

“That’s not how love works,” said Stacey. “It’s not back and forth like in romance novels. It’s not bursting in at the last minute, stopping someone before they get to the altar. It’s not a slow burn. It’s an explosion. You meet someone. You talk. You feel something. Or you don’t. It’s simple.”

I groaned. “If it’s so simple, then why has
nothing
happened between us?”

“You guys did kiss that one time.”

“Yeah, and then he rejected me, and I went and got more drugs. It was my hitting bottom moment. Not romantic at all.” I sighed. “I thought that when a guy liked you, you didn’t have to chase him everywhere. I saw that episode of
Sex and the City
, ‘He’s Just Not That Into You.’ If a guy’s playing hard to get, it means he doesn’t want to be gotten.”

“That’s a television show, not real life,” said Stacey. “And besides—”

“What are you girls talking about in here?” Griffin’s head appeared in the doorway. He was grinning, and he looked
so
good.

“Nothing,” I said, standing up. When Griffin came to find us, it meant girl talk was over.

We joined Griffin and Jack in the kitchen, where the two of them were eating vegan cheesecake. It was actually really good, even though Stacey had made it from tofu. We sat down at the table.

“How many pieces of that have you had?” said Stacey.

Jack shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Because,” she said, “I did make it, and I kind of wanted there to be some left for me tomorrow.”

“Sorry,” said Griffin. He set his fork down. There was half a piece of cheesecake on his plate. “You can have the rest of this piece.”