Perfect Regret ( BOOK 2) (20 page)

Gracie’s eyes narrowed, apparently not agreeing with my reasoning. “Uh, when Mila borrowed my green dress last year without asking and then spilled red wine all over the front, I did
not
ask the bitch to come out drinking the next night. No way! She had ruined something that was mine. She had violated my trust. And that was just over a dress, Riley. Damien violated your heart. That is way worse. I think you’re letting him off way too lightly,” she scolded, frowning at me as though I were disappointing her.

Yeah, the girl obviously missed my point completely.

“Well it’s a good thing Damien didn’t stain my dress then. Just drop it already,” I said, feeling tired.

“Here you go, girls,” Damien said, appearing with our drinks. I shot Gracie a pointed look before thanking him and taking my cocktail. Gracie took her beer from him with a forced smile.

We drank our respective beverages in relative silence. The bar was pretty busy with the after work crowd but even in our noisy surroundings, the lack of talking at our table was almost deafening.

Damien cleared his throat. “So, how was the flower show, Ri?” he asked.

“Probably not as cool as covering the interstate crash. Plus I had an allergic reaction to a huge display of hydrangeas and spent the last half hour sneezing my head off,” I complained. Gracie and Damien each laughed at my misfortune and I grinned, taking one for the team. Hey, if my snot filled afternoon alleviated the weirdness, then I would share away.

“Yeah, well Kim, who was I shadowing, was about to kick my ass. Personally I thought the mucus made that hideous arrangement look better,” I chuckled.

“It seems like you guys are having a good time,” a voice said from behind me. Gracie looked over my shoulder and waved, her face lighting up in a smile. Damien went a pale and gripped his beer tighter as though expecting to have it hurled in his face.

I, on the other hand, felt chills run down my spine at the sound of the voice I had heard not so long ago, as he begged me to watch him as he made me come. I definitely shivered that time. The memory was too much for my poor brain to handle.

But my desire was quickly replaced with irrational rejection as Garrett walked around me, his arm brushing against my back as he went to Gracie’s side. He pulled out a bar stool and sat down. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

He didn’t acknowledge me, however. He didn’t bother to look my way once. He glanced down at Gracie’s beer and leaned forward to whisper something softly in her ear. She looked up at him, her eyes seeming to plead with him. They spoke quietly, only to each other, and I wished like crazy that I could hear what they were saying.

“You want to go play a game of darts?” Damien asked, pulling me out of my masochistic voyeurism. I tore my eyes away from the pair across the table and looked over at him, giving him, or at least what I hoped to be, my sincerest smile.

“Sure, that sounds good,” I said overly loud. Okay, so I was hoping to get Garrett’s attention. Sure it was childish and pathetic. But I hoped he would remember it was just a week ago that he had shown an entire bar how much he wanted
me.

The problem was I couldn’t decide if this need was about my feelings for him, or once again about a misplaced sense of pride. Because Garrett
had
wanted me. And now he seemed to want nothing to do with me. And nothing hurt an ego more than being cast aside for one of your friends.

I scraped my chair back, making a big production of leaving the table.

Look at me, damn it!

And then he did. Garrett looked away from Gracie and finally met my eyes. He glanced from me to Damien and something unidentifiable flickered in their depths. And then whatever I thought I saw there closed off and then there was nothing.

He turned back to Gracie and spoke quietly to her again, picking up her half empty beer and setting it aside. He held out his hand and she nodded, placing her smaller palm into his much larger one.

Gracie looked up at me and there was no self-satisfaction on her face at having Garrett there beside her. In fact she seemed upset. I wish I understood what was going on between them. Were they dating? Or were they just friends as Gracie claimed. And why oh why didn’t I have the guts to come out and ask like I normally would have?

“Garrett’s going to give me a ride home. I’ll see you on Wednesday,” Gracie said and I couldn’t read the tone in her voice.

“Are you sure you don’t want to hang out longer?” I asked, glancing at Garrett who seemed to be looking at everyone but me.

“Garrett, you don’t feel like staying?” I asked him, taking the leap to address him directly.

“No, I think Gracie and I are going to head out,” he said giving me a hard look. “Besides, you seem to be in good hands,” he stated matter a factly before turning around and walking out the door.

Gracie looked at me and cocked her eyebrow, but only said a quick “goodbye” before following Garrett out of the bar.

I pushed my chair into the table hard enough for it to fall on the floor.

“What is going on between you two?” Damien asked.

“Me and Gracie?” I asked, purposefully obtuse. Damien frowned.

“No, you and that Garrett guy,” he clarified and I could only shake my head.

“We were a huge mistake,” I said sadly, feeling the truth of the words deep in my bones.

Damien’s jaw set as he picked up on what exactly I was telling him. “So you guys really did sleep together.” He pushed his hair off his forehead and grimaced. “I was really hoping that stuff you were yelling at each other last week was more about being angry than based on something that actually happened.”

I sighed and scrubbed my face with my hands before dropping them back to my side. “What do you want me to say, Damien? You broke up with
me.
I was upset. I thought you and me were forever and then suddenly we weren’t. I was in a really messed up place,” I shot out and Damien flinched.

“And Garrett was there. He and I hooked up and I thought for a stupid second it might mean something. But that was before I remembered who he was and who I’m supposed to be.”

I hated how incredibly egotistical those words sounded but it felt like honesty. Garrett and I weren’t meant to be. It didn’t matter that we had existed in a moment in time where we made perfect sense.

Each time we had been together had been abnormal circumstances. First when I was so drunk, sleeping with him hadn’t felt like a lapse in judgment. And the second time when I was so out of my mind with misery that it seemed he was the only one to hold me together.

If I had learned anything it was that I didn’t trust my heart to lead me down the right path. My emotions were too conflicted and messy where Garrett Bellows was concerned and I knew that following them would be a disaster.

I wasn’t a person to allow my head to overrule my heart. Even now, in the early stages of my grieving, I clung to my reason like a lifeline. Garrett and I were too different. Even though he had shown me a side of himself that revealed a man who at one time had wanted more for his life, it didn’t change the fact of where he was now.

And whom he was currently with.

And that
who
was my good friend.

“And who are
you
, Riley?” Damien asked with a hopeful expression on his face. He took my hand in his, cautiously at first but when I didn’t pull immediately away, he squeezed and moved closer.

I looked into the brown eyes that at one time had signified everything I wanted in my life. Damien was my ideal match in everyway. We had the same goals, the same ambitions. Damien and I were driven in similar ways, propelled by a passionate need to succeed and thrive.

And if those likenesses felt a little empty now, I was determined to overlook that and forget about the boy with the long blond hair who made me question everything I thought I had wanted in my life.

Because how could a guy like Garrett give me my happily ever after when we spent most our time cataloging the million and one ways we didn’t work? We couldn’t. End of story.

“I’m Riley Walker and I have an amazing future ahead of me. I know exactly what I want out of life and I
will
make my dad proud of me,” I said with desperation. I needed those words to be true. Otherwise I didn’t know what I would do.

Damien, emboldened by my seeming acceptance of his touch, put his arm around me. “And you will, Riley. If anyone can be something great, it’s you,” he said emphatically. His words, whether they were genuine or not, were exactly what I needed to hear.

Without thinking about what I was doing, I leaned in and kissed his mouth. Damien froze, as though worried that should he react in any way, I would bolt.

“Kiss me,” I whispered against his mouth, forcing down the sudden self-loathing that tasted like bile in the back of my throat.

What was I doing?
I thought furiously to myself as Damien wrapped his arms around me, his fingers curling into the back of my hair the way he had done a thousand times before.

But his lips felt foreign against mine. As if they didn’t belong there anymore. It felt like kissing a stranger. Or someone I used to know but had long since outgrown.

I put those thoughts out of my mind and threw myself into kissing the boy who had so recently broken my heart. The boy I thought I would never get over until another boy came along and proved that perhaps I had never really given away my heart at all. Until him.

STOP! I screamed silently and pressed my lips so hard against Damien’s that I cut the sensitive tissue against my teeth.

Damien pulled back and looked at me questioningly. He had to know there was more to this kiss than me wanting him. That desire and love had absolutely nothing to do with it. That this was a kiss born out of guilt and confusion and a staunch denial of a part of me that needed to die a quick and silent death.

Damien rubbed his thumb along my bottom lip, which had started to bleed. “What was that about?” he asked quietly, his eyes troubled.

I jerked my head away and moved out of his grip, giving myself and my continued poor decision making some distance. “Why does it have to be about anything?” I asked with hostility, already feeling foolish.

Damien’s lips quirked into a sad smile. “Because with you, Ri, it’s
always
about something. I just hoped it would be about me,” he said and I knew I wasn’t being fair to him right now. Mostly because even as I tried not to, I couldn’t stop thinking of Garrett walking out of the bar with Gracie behind him.

I couldn’t stop imagining what they were doing. What they meant to each other. What
I
had meant to Garrett. I hated how much I cared. I didn’t want to care. I was sick of feeling! Emotions got me nowhere but up to my chin in hurt and pain.

I gripped the front of Damien’s shirt and pulled him angrily toward me. “Let’s not think about it okay,” I demanded him, wondering briefly if I was setting myself up for more rejection. But I knew by the way his eyes heated as he looked at me that there would be no refusal.

Damien Green wanted me in whatever way he could have me. And I was taking advantage of that. Willing to use his body to forget. To forget my life that had somehow careened off track.

“Okay,” Damien said huskily, his glasses sliding down his nose as he leaned in to kiss me again.

“Can I come home with you tonight?” I asked, trying not to feel like a piece of shit for what I was propositioning.

Damien licked his lips. “There’s nothing I want more,” he murmured, pulling his keys out of his pocket and taking my hand in his.

You’d think I would have learned something about ill-advised hookups from jumping into Garrett’s bed. They only lead to complete upheaval.

But I wanted to go back to a time when my world was what I wanted it to be. A time where my dad was still alive, my heart still in one piece and the boy who shared my life was safe and predictable.

“Let’s go,” I said, trying not hate myself as I followed Damien to his car.

“H
ey, Riley. Hey
Damien,”
Maysie said with a tone that reeked of disapproval. Normally that was my mode of communication and it didn’t feel good hearing it come from Maysie Ardin of all people.

It was three weeks before the end of the semester. I had fallen into some form of a quasi relationship with Damien that wasn’t quite dating but not just friendship. I absolutely
refused
to give him the title of boyfriend, however.

After leaving the bar with Damien that night all those weeks ago, I had gone home with him.

And no, perv, I didn’t sleep with him.

Yes, I had planned to originally but once I had gotten there I couldn’t do it.

Yay for self-respect!

Instead we had stayed up talking like we used to. And I was able to remember that aside from being my boyfriend, Damien had at one time been one of my closest friends.

After that, it became easier and easier to spend time with him. A drink after work. Studying at the library in the evenings. A lecture on environmental responsibility in the student hall. Small things that morphed into something else entirely.

Being around Damien again was like putting on a pair of well-worn shoes that had started to pinch my toes. He was still the liberal minded, environmentally aware, poetry writing, save the whales kind of guy. He still looked down his nose at people who didn’t recycle and easily judged anyone that didn’t share his single-minded vision of the world. At one time our vision had been one and the same. We were unified in our sneering, derisive judgments.

But I had come to realize it wasn’t so easy to sit on your soapbox when you scratched below the surface of what you were railing against. Because what you might find there could blow your mind

But now, even as I allowed myself to be pulled back into the way things
were,
it didn’t feel quite
right.
Even as I fought tooth and nail to make it all fit. Because I wanted something that was just as I remembered it. Before my life had changed too much for me to get a handle on. I craved the lack of emotional chaos and Damien provided that on some level.

Because lord knew, the rest of my universe was in a tailspin. First on the fast train to emo territory was the sad destruction of my family.

I had gone home for Thanksgiving break and it had been miserable. I had visions of creating new traditions; that somehow Mom, Gavin, Fliss and I would carve out a new niche after Dad’s death. What a deluded moron I had been.

While Mom had tried to put on a brave face, it had lasted only as long as it took me to unpack. Mom broke down and cried through most of my visit. There was no large family dinner this year. Instead, my mother, brother and myself ate a crappy meal at Denny’s before coming home and going to our separate bedrooms. My sister and her family didn’t even bother to come, claiming the girls were sick. I knew that they just hoped to avoid exactly what I had experienced, a get together meant to induce heavy drinking.

My brother was a mess. He had moved back in with Mom and it disgusted me how she was having to take care of him even though he was almost forty years old. And I was furious that she was enabling it.

When I asked her about it, she told me, politely and gently of course, to mind my own business and that everyone dealt with grief in their own way. This was Gavin’s way and I should respect that.

It had been hard, but I let it go. Hoping my mother knew the best way to handle the situation.

So after that depressing excuse for a holiday, I had latched onto school and classes as though it was all I had. And maybe in some ways it was. It was the only thing I had a hundred percent complete control over anyway.

And thankfully my desperation paid off. My midterm grades had buoyed my spirits. Straight A’s. I was hoping to be on the Dean’s List again this semester. And I could almost hear my dad telling me how proud he was of me. I felt obsessed with the need to prove myself.

It was no longer just about me but about showing that my dad’s faith in me was founded. Part of me realized that I wasn’t handling my grief in a healthy way. That I was shoving it aside in favor of a dogged determination to succeed.

My social life was non-existent. Maysie was so immersed in all things Jordan and Generation Rejects that I rarely saw her. Gracie and I had developed a relationship built on wary mistrust. Our one time friendship deteriorating under the strain of her silent bitterness. Because she would never acknowledge how she felt about me. To everyone else, we appeared friendly. Two girls who got along.

But I felt the rift and it sucked. I didn’t know what to do about it. And the more time that passed, the larger the division between us became.

And with Gracie came Vivian, so there went fifty percent of my social interactions. So maybe it was more out of loneliness that I allowed Damien back into my world.

Whatever it was, he was there, like he had never left. I wish I could say it felt like finding something that I had been missing, but then I would be lying. It was more like stepping into a bath that was luke warm. Not really relaxing or comfortable, but it didn’t make you jump out and take a shower instead.

Crap, my metaphors were as bad as my reasoning.

“You coming to the Rejects’ gig tonight? It should be fun. This will be their last one before heading out on tour after Christmas,” Maysie asked me, deliberately ignoring Damien.

Damien squeezed in closer to me, at the mention of the band. Yep, he was still feeling very insecure about Garrett and it manifested rather noticeably whenever anything Generation Rejects related was mentioned.

I tried not to feel suffocated by the way he pressed against me. “Uh, I don’t think so. I’m off tonight and Damien and I were heading out to a poetry reading later,” I answered, trying to inch away from an overly clingy Damien.

Maysie caught my movement and eyed me knowingly. “Poetry reading? Come on, you can do boring shit any night. Jordan asked if you’d come,” Maysie needled.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said, getting to my feet. I headed into the kitchen, knowing Maysie was hot on my heels.

“Come on, Ri. I’m not sure what you’re playing at right now, but the Riley Walker I know wouldn’t even breathe the same air as Damien after everything he put you through. If this is about Garrett”

I held my hand up, interrupting that line of thought before it could go any further.

“Don’t go there. Just don’t,” I warned, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge.

Maysie sighed. “Riley, don’t make the same mistakes that I did. I almost lost the most important thing in my life because I had unrealistic expectations about my life and what a relationship
should
look like,” Maysie warned, pulling a bag of popcorn from the cabinet and putting it in the microwave. I didn’t say anything. Mostly because I was too busy processing the fact that at some point in all of this mess I called a life, our roles had reversed. Maysie had, unbeknownst to me, become the no nonsense voice of reason and I had become the screwed up head case with a bad case of I-can’t-make-up-my-mind.

I started to chew on the skin around my thumb. “I know I’m being a hypocrite. I know I’m not making any sense, but…” I let my words trail off. No reason to cut myself open completely. This conversation had me feeling way too vulnerable and touchy. I hated that my world had turned upside down because of a guy.

Somehow, someway, Garrett Bellows had gotten inside me. He was like a parasite, slowly sucking me dry. Whether I ignored his existence or not, he was still there, embedded in my intestinal track, draining me of all good sense.

“He scares you,” Maysie piped up, grinning at me as she shoved a handful of popcorn into her mouth. She needed to keep that mouth full because I wasn’t appreciating her on the nose analysis of my internal conflict.

I made a noise that sounded like I was choking. “Scared? Give me a break, Mays. Annoyed? Yes. Frustrated? You betcha. Ready to take off someone’s head? Looking more and more like a definite,” I said in warning. “But never, ever scared,” I said with more conviction than I felt.

Maysie chuckled. “Oh yes he does. He gives you butterflies. He makes you sweat. He calls you on your bullshit and keeps you on your toes. You both love and hate how he does that. He has you tied up in knots and you can’t get out. And Miss I-Have-My-Whole-World-Figured-Out is going crazy because of it. So you’ve gone into shut down. You’re forcing Damien down your throat in an effort to deny what you know is there.” Maysie seemed entirely too pleased with herself.

I opened my mouth to say something but she cut me off…
again!
“I’m not saying this to be mean, but Riley, you’ve become your own worst enemy. I know you think Garrett has nothing to offer. That you’re embarrassed by the fact that you actually
like
him. But he’s a good guy. He’s a smart guy. And there is no one else in this world that would lay everything at your feet the way that he would. Remember that when you’re sitting at that poetry reading later, trying to convince yourself that being there with Damien is the right thing. Because Damien wasn’t the guy who drove you over a hundred miles in the middle of the night to see your dad. Damien wasn’t the guy who stayed with you at the hospital while you tried to keep your family together.”

My throat felt uncomfortably tight and I blinked rapidly to try and hold off the tears. I will not cry!

“And remember he’s the guy who has made you feel like you’re worth all the hassle. That no matter what you dish out, he is there to take it. To volley it right back and is there to go toe to toe anytime you’re ready.” Maysie squeezed my hands. “Damien wasn’t that guy for you. Garrett is,” she said softly and I closed my eyes and tried to take a deep breath around the huge, crushing weight in my chest.

“Enough, Maysie. Seriously, just enough already,” I begged. I didn’t want to hear any of this. I couldn’t.

Maysie looked disappointed by my refusal to hear her. “I just would like you there tonight. Jordan would like you there.
Garrett
would like you there. I know that matters to you, whether you want to admit it or not,” she said confidentially.

I didn’t bother to say anything else. I gave my best friend a final look of frustration before going back into the living room to join Damien on the couch again. I tried not to cringe as he put his arm around me.

Maysie’s punch in the gut small talk had done a number on me. I could barely sit in the same room with Damien with her words ricocheting around in my head.

“You’re not really thinking of going to that concert, are you?” Damien asked, flipping through the TV channels like he lived there. Another of the many Damien personality quirks that drove me nuts.

TV domination was definitely at the top of the list.

Reaching over, I grabbed the remote from his hand and purposefully turned it to an over the top reality show that we both abhorred. Damien made a face. “Since when do you watch this mind rot?” he asked dismissively.

“Since you and I stopped spending every waking hour together,” I shot back, turning up the volume.

Damien rolled his eyes but didn’t comment. “So we’re going to the poetry reading, right?” he asked, moving the conversation back to our evening plans and Maysie’s arm twisting suggestion of going to see Generation Rejects play.

Damien seemed so hopeful and eager that I couldn’t say no. It would be like throwing a puppy into oncoming traffic. “Sure, poetry reading. Sounds groovy,” I replied, knowing that it was by far the safer option.

Being in the same room as Garrett left way too much potential for explosion.

After Damien left, I filled the hours with every distraction I could think of. My mind too often sought to slip in a dangerous direction.

Why is it when you make up your mind about something, your heart was there to call you on your bullshit? I hated my heart; I wish it would shut the hell up. It didn’t help that Maysie was there to cheer my heart on.

I had never been so thankful for the sound my ringing phone in my life. I was spending too much time in my own head and I was looking for a jailbreak.

Seeing my mom’s name on the screen I tried not to feel the twinge of apprehension. I hated that I was hesitant to answer it. I used to love talking to my mother. I had enjoyed our conversations and her quirky advice.

Now I never knew what to expect. When she was good, I could pretend things were just like they were before.

But when she was bad I couldn’t live in my shiny world of denial. And I liked living there, thank you very much.

“Hey, Mom,” I said after answering it.

“Hey, baby girl. How are you?” Mom asked and I relaxed in relief. Mom sounded good.

“Eh, can’t complain,” I said, sticking with the bare bones of the truth. At one time I would have unloaded all of my drama on her very capable shoulders. Now, that ship had sailed and I worried about giving her more than she could handle.

I could hear my mother letting out a noisy breath on the other end. “Stop walking on egg shells around me, Riley. I promise I won’t crack. Now talk to me. There’s more to that statement then you’re saying,” my mother scolded and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

“First, how are you, Mom? I know you had your support group meeting today. I was going to call you later to see how it went,” I asked before she could badger me for more details about my life.

My mom had started attending a support group for people who have lost loved ones. She had only been to three meetings and the first two times she had been such an emotional wreck afterwards that I wasn’t sure she should go back.