Finding London (Flawed Heart #1) (11 page)

“Of course.” Cooper nods.

Maggie hits his arm again.

“She comes from a rich family, and she might be a bit spoiled.”

Both of their faces scrunch up with repulsion.

I chuckle. “I know. Believe me, I know. But, somehow, on her, I find it…cute.” I shrug.

“Cute?” Cooper questions, lifting a brow.

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Okay, so you didn’t sleep with her because…she’s spoiled?” Cooper clarifies.

Maggie chimes in, “No, he didn’t sleep with her because he likes her.”

“I’m so confused.” Cooper forks a large piece of pancake into his mouth.

“You and me both, brother,” I admit.

“Well, I think it’s adorable,” Maggie says. “It’s about time you found a girl who makes you all confused. That’s when you know it’s real.”

Cooper turns to look at her, his mouth agape, like she’s an alien sitting at the table with us. “They’ve been on one date, babe. Let’s not get all serious here.”

“Loïc doesn’t date, so that’s how we know it’s serious. Plus, you knew you loved me almost immediately. The first time we spoke our junior year, when we were lab partners, you knew.”

“I knew I wanted to screw you. I was a horny seventeen-year-old, not Casanova. It took us years to get to where we are now,” he disagrees.

“It took years because you were immature, but you knew immediately. We both did. Loïc isn’t a boy, like you were. He’s a man.”

Cooper drops his fork onto his plate. “I don’t like how you said that.”

“Which part?” Maggie questions.

“The
man
part.” His voice is low.

Maggie and I both laugh.

She says, “Oh my God, would you stop? I mean that, at twenty-five, he’s more mature than you were at seventeen, so it’s not going to take him as long to figure things out. He is technically a man, as most guys your age are.”

Cooper eyes her with a glare of speculation before he nods, apparently satisfied with her answer, and picks up his glass of orange juice.

“Wow, I can’t wait to have a relationship someday,” I say dryly.

Maggie grins, placing her hand on Cooper’s. “I know. It’s the best.”

I chuckle—not because she’s making a joke, but because she isn’t.

“So, when are you taking her out again?” Maggie asks.

I roll my head back and sigh. “Not sure.”

“I’m putting ten bucks on never,” Cooper states.

“You’re horrible!” Maggie complains.

“No, I’m realistic. I don’t think he’s there yet. These things take time,” Cooper says, explaining himself.

“He’s had time. I get it; I do. But the only way to heal is to keep going forward. Staying idle won’t help anything.” Maggie turns her attention from Cooper to me. “Moving forward can be scary, but it’s necessary,” she says with kindness before standing and grabbing her plate.

This exchange seems normal, but a part of me thinks that maybe it isn’t. Yet this is the way it is. The three of us are open books around each other. If other people were to give me advice, I’d take offense. But there’s none taken here. These two are my family, and as unconventional as we are, I know that they have my best interests at heart.

Despite my automatic tendency to side with Cooper, I know Maggie’s right. It’s time.

Loïc

Age Twelve

Marion, South Carolina

“These words are my sanity. They make me feel less alone when I am so very lonely.”

—Loïc Berkeley

I spy with my little eye…white, white, and more freaking white.

I sit at a wooden desk, surrounded by four stark white walls. This square cubicle—also called my bedroom—is just big enough to hold a twin bed and this desk. The small hand-me-down dresser—that has probably been used by more kids than I can count—sits inside the closet because the room is too small to contain it. And all of it—the desk, the bed, and the dresser—has been spray-painted…white.

I think, when one kid leaves, Glenda spray-paints everything to prepare the space for the next one. Maybe it’s her strange version of cleaning. White is known to be a sanitary color—or noncolor, I suppose. But it’s so odd to be in a room with zero color. If I were in a mental institution, I could understand it, but I’m not crazy—yet. Depending on how long I’m at this placement, I might be when I leave.

I can’t complain though. This home is much better than Dwight and Stacey’s in New Hope.

New Hope…what a joke.

I can see the irony of it all now. Boy’s parents die in a tragic car accident, and he is sent to live with a happy young couple in a town rich in new beginnings. The one thing that city didn’t have was hope—at least, until Dwight drank himself into a coma, making Stacey call an ambulance.

In the chaos before the ambulance came, there wasn’t time to tidy up the house and put on the faces of a joyful family. The paramedics got to see the home for what it was—hell. The staged joyful home that the foster care workers had been presented with at the few visits they made during the three years I was there was nowhere to be found. I’m not sure exactly who figured it all out and told the proper people, but I’m so thankful. Sometimes, I get the feeling that it was Stacey. She actually seemed mildly pleased to see me go—not in the way that she was glad to be rid of me, but in the sense that she was happy for me.

It’s surreal to think that the glugging sounds that terrified me as I cowered, hidden underneath their crappy kitchen table on my last night in the house with Dwight, were actually the means to an end for my placement there.

I moved to this home three days after Dwight had been taken to the hospital. And while this placement isn’t bursting with love, no one physically hurts me here. I live with Glenda and her five other foster kids. I’ve been here for two years now, and I’ve seen kids come and go.

To be honest, I pretty much stick to myself. I’ve tried making friends with some of the other kids, but that has never worked out for me. The few kids I’ve gotten close to have either hurt me by lying about me or stealing from me. Or they leave. Some were adopted, and others were sent to different homes for various reasons. But it doesn’t matter why they go. It hurts just the same. It’s simply easier to stick to myself and not get emotionally invested in anyone here.

If any truth has stood the test of time, it’s that those I love always leave me in one way or another.

I’m currently writing in my notebook. The words within these pages are my sanity. They make me feel less alone when I am so very lonely. I write down the stories that Dad used to tell me. He was the best storyteller. I’m constantly scribbling down memories or moments with my family that I remember so that I don’t forget them. I can never forget them.

Today, I’m writing a story that he told me about his favorite moment playing soccer. He made it sound like he was about the age I am now. I can close my eyes and still see him dribbling an invisible soccer ball across our living room floor as he gave me a play-by-play of how he’d single-handedly made the goal that won his team the game against their biggest rivals. I smile to myself as I recall how he ran around the living room, giving me and Mom chest bumps and high fives, as if we were part of his soccer team. He knew how to make Mom laugh. I realize now though that she was often sad, so maybe he was always extra goofy to cheer her up.

I’m glad that they died together. I don’t think either one could have lived without the other. I just wish I could have gone with them. It’s not fair that I was left here alone. Dad said that I was a brave warrior, and though I’m trying to be, I think I’m failing. I don’t feel brave. I feel scared all the time. But Dad said that being scared and pushing through it anyway was part of bravery. So, I hope that he is proud of me. I hope he can see that I’m trying so very hard to have courage.

It’s been five years since Mom and Dad passed away. I keep waiting for Nan and Granddad to come get me, but they haven’t. I haven’t heard from them at all. I haven’t received one letter or phone call from them in five years, and I don’t understand why. I know they love me. I felt it every time I saw or spoke to them. They called me their miracle baby, a gift. So, why haven’t they come? Why won’t they save me and take me back with them to England? We could spend half of the year in the city and the other half at the cottage. We could be happy.

Maybe they’ve been looking, but they can’t find me. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense. They aren’t familiar with the foster care system in this country and are having a hard time locating me. I just have to stay strong for a little bit longer.

I finish writing my memory and then rip the paper out of the notebook. With each hand, I grab it at the top between my index finger and thumb, and I pull, ripping the page down the middle. I repeat this process what seems like eighty more times until my writing sits in a clump of indistinguishable letters on paper shreds on the desk. Then, I lift the white plastic trash can and swoop my hand across the desk until every piece has fallen in.

This is my ritual every time I write.

A year ago, a horrible girl named Jessica stole the notebook where I had written all my recollections. She started running around the house, and in a mocking voice, she read my private moments with my family to all the other kids. It tore me apart when they made fun of my prized memories.

I can still hear the shrill of her voice when she chanted with a whine, “Daddy calls me his little warrior, and warriors are brave.” She proceeded to rip the pages out of my book, leaving them scattered all over the house.

That was the saddest I’ve been since my parents’ deaths. Even the worst moments with Dwight didn’t compare to how much her actions broke me. I suppose I’m more equipped to take the physical pain. I have methods of blocking it out, and I know it won’t last forever. But nothing I could have done would have stopped the anguish I felt while listening to her words.

Emotional pain, at least for me, lasts forever. I’ll never escape it.

So, that’s my ritual. Every day, I write a page or two in my notebook. I keep my parents alive in that way, and then I make it so no one else can have access to it. No one deserves my thoughts. No one deserves to know how amazing my mom and dad were. My parents were mine, and I will keep them always. I will never let anyone tarnish their memory again.

And despite what Jessica thinks, I am brave and good. But she doesn’t know what that even means because she didn’t have perfect parents, like I did, to tell her. She’s never had anyone to love her. And because of that, I hope to someday forgive her for being so weak and breaking my heart with her cruelty.

But it won’t be today. I’m not that strong.

London

“I desperately want Loïc Berkeley, and I’m used to getting what I want.”

—London Wright

I relax back into the large tan chair as the massaging balls beneath the leather roll up and down my spine. The contraption working my tired muscles isn’t as divine as a real massage would be, but it’s a close second, especially when it’s paired with a pedicure. I let out a content sigh as a woman massages one of my feet with a soft scrub.

Just what the doctor ordered—and by doctor, I mean, me.

Paige and I love spa days. They’re very healing. When we feel a moment’s stress, our go-to fix is an old-fashioned mani-pedi—and by old-fashioned, I mean, one that takes place in the newest salon in town with the most attentive staff and state-of-the-art massage chairs. Oh, and free wine, not that piss water the cheap spas offer. This is real yummy imported wine.

Ah!

I shoot up, and my entire body cringes when the pedicurist rubs the rough brush across the sensitive skin on the bottom of my foot. My fingers grasp the sides of the chair. My knuckles go white from the force of my grip.

Paige chuckles next to me. “Your favorite part.”

I can’t reply or even give her a look. All my focus needs to be on enduring this small amount of torture on my way to perfectly painted nails and soft-heels heaven without drop-kicking the kind woman’s face in front of me. The struggle is real
.

Yes, I know…First World problems.

She finally finishes assaulting my feet and starts to massage my calves with a lotion that smells like coconut, reminding me of the beach.