Pretty Hate (New Adult Novel) (30 page)

Patrick took us into one of the bathrooms and put me down on the floor. He turned the shower on and looked at me.

“Your eyes are twitching hard,” he said. “You’re fine...you couldn’t handle the rush. Next time, take two. It gets you past the rush.”

I slumped over against the toilet as I watched him take his puke-covered shirt off.

“Where’s Declan?”

“Gone, baby,” he said as I rested my face against the cold tile floor.

I opened my eyes and looked around the bathroom and Patrick was gone. I tried to stand up and the room spun. I crawled out of the bathroom and down the hall on my hands and knees to India’s room. The door was wide open and the lights were on. I hung onto the door casing and pulled myself to my knees.

“India?” I said as I stared into the room.

She was naked on the bed with Nando behind her and Anthony underneath her.

“God,” I said as my stomach tightened.

I crawled back down the hall to the bathroom and shut the door and passed out.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The sunlight beamed through the window and hit me in the face. I lifted my head off the bathroom floor and knew that this was going to be one of the worst days of my life. I peeled the disgusting dress off my body and hauled my ass into the shower. I wrapped a towel around me and walked down the hallway and peeked into India’s room. She, Nando and Anthony were still going at it.

“Wow,” I said under my breath as I walked toward Declan’s room.

I felt like I was going to be sick again as I pressed my ear to his bedroom door and then I pushed the door open and looked inside. His room was empty and his bed was made.

I looked in his mirror at my swollen, bloodshot eyes and green-tinted skin and wanted so badly for him to walk into the room and hug me.

“Maybe it was all a dream,” I said to my reflection. “Maybe there is no Ingrid.”

I crept into the living room and saw the X-filled bowl on the mantle. Various bodies were strewn across the room in various stages of undress and the house was as quiet as a cemetery.

I looked through the French doors and saw him. He sat alone at the patio table reading a magazine with a drink in his hand. With the cobalt sea behind him, he was the most beautiful picture I ever saw.

I tiptoed into the doorway of the patio and watched him. He twirled his hair around his finger while he read and I thought about the first time I met him. He caved my chest in when he smiled and when he spoke to me, he set me on fire like the Ecstasy did.

He looked up from his magazine and saw me. He put his finger on the place he was reading and looked at me. His face was tense and I wanted to run away.

“What are you doing over there, Beth?”

“Oh, just...nothing,” I said and took a step onto the terrace.

“How long have you been standing there?” he said.

“I just got out here, really. I didn't want to...”

He was already on to something else as he picked his finger up and looked back down at the page.

I stood there for a moment and debated whether I should go back inside or walk down to the beach. Maybe it would be better to go inside, I thought. Maybe he'd follow me there? Yes, I'd walk inside and saunter into the bedroom. He'd follow me, lay me on the soft, down canopied bed swathed in muslin and make love to me as the surf banged against the rocks below us. My pretty, melon-painted toes would be pointed above my head and he'd marvel at the luck of having a girlfriend with such well-tended toes.

That didn't happen.

Declan closed his magazine and took a sip of his drink. He stretched his long arms over his head and yawned. His robe came open and he stood from his chair. I put my hand on the door to the living room and he looked at me and shook his head.

“Still there?” he said and sat back down. “Come over here.”

I walked toward the table and stood across from him. I looked down at the ground and took a deep breath.

“I wanted to say that--”

“How are you feeling?” he said.

“Well, um, I don’t feel so hot. It’ not because I’m hung over, Declan. I feel terrible about what happened. I want this trip to go so well, I’m just terribly nervous. I want us to become closer and it seems that the more I try, the more I make a mess. I just like you so much, Declan and I want you to like me.”

“Yes, I know that you do, Beth,” he said as he glanced out at the sea, “which makes this further difficult.”

“What's difficult, Declan?” I said as my ears burned.

“Beth...” he said as he looked at me and tilted his head.

I wanted to change the subject and think of something else to bring up. Do a tap dance, tell a brilliantly funny joke, sing
Somewhere Over The Rainbow
. In Spanish. Anything to stop what he was thinking at that moment. Anything to stuff the words that were about to fall out of his mouth back down his throat.

And then I saw Ingrid across the terrace, floating in the pool, naked.

“Look, Beth,” he said and turned his magazine over and stared into my eyes, “you are an amazing person. Beautiful. Amazingly beautiful.”

I wanted to punch him in the side of the head f0r taking so long.

“What do you have to say, Declan? Whatever it is, just say it.”

“Okay,” he said as he ran his finger around the rim of the crystal goblet that held his scotch. “Look, this has run its course. The rat found the end of the maze, so to speak.”

“What?” I said and shook my head. “Rats and mazes and courses?”

“It's time for you to go home, Beth. It's just time for us to say goodbye,” he said and shook his head. “This is how it works in my world and it is what it is.”

“It is what it is
? What are you, twelve? Just tell me what I did. I'll fix whatever you want. I had a bad reaction to the drugs last night, that’s all. Patrick said I should have taken two pills.”

“You didn't do anything, kiddo. It's not you, it's--”

“Me,” I said and looked at the ground.

“No, it's all me. I'm just not wired the way you want. This relationship thing is not for me.”

“But, I don't expect anything.”

“Oh, yes you do, Beth,” Declan said and smiled. “I know the way you're wired.”

He walked toward me slowly and I felt the panic come up from my stomach, through my heart and crackle up my neck. And with the panic, came the tears. I stared down at the red clay tiles and the floor blurred. His feet appeared in my field of vision and I wanted to die.

“Lift your head and look at me, Beth.”

I shook my head and he chuckled.

“Beth, you are being silly.”

Declan put his hands on the side of my neck and slid them up until they rested under my chin. He tilted my head up and as he did, the tears spilled out from my eyes and slid down my face.

“Ah, girl,” he said and shook his head.

“But the song,” I said. “Every night for the past month you sang that song for me.”

He smiled as he brushed a piece of hair off my forehead.

“No, love. The first night, sure, I sang it for you, babe. But after that only because it caught on.”

“You dedicated it to me every night!”

“Yes, true. That is true,” he said and tilted his head as he stared into my eyes. “But after that first night, I wasn't going to do it again. Goddamn Alastair said I had to because it was received well.”

“Received...”

I swiped at the tears running down my face. I knew I wasn't the first girl who ever stood in that exact spot and received the same speech. Not by a long shot was I the first girl.

“Yeah, you know,” he said, “the kids loved it.”

“So it was for ratings...not me?”

“Yes, Beth. It's all about the ratings.”

“Don’t say that,” I said.

“What? Come on. This is my job. This is what I do. You know this.”

“You use people,” I said

“I wouldn't say that,” he said.

“I would...I did. You are cruel.”

“Not cruel, Beth. Honest.”

“But, you pursued me. I did not make all of this up in my head! Why didn’t you just leave me alone if you were going to do this to me? You should have just left me alone!”

“Beth,” he said and sighed, “you will soon see this is for the best.”

“It couldn't possibly ever be," I said as more tears came. “I loved--”

“Don't say it,” he said.

“Why, too honest?”

“No, too real.”

“What's wrong with real? I happen to like real! Is this because I wouldn’t have sex with you and her last night?” I said and looked over my shoulder at Ingrid. “I never said I wouldn’t, I was sick!”

“Beth, this is how my world, my life, flows. You are not that person.”

“You are acting like a fucking infant!”

“Why? It makes me an infant because I'm honest? Honesty is what you should appreciate. Honesty is the very thing that makes me a man and
not
an infant! Just because you don't like the message, doesn't mean I'm not being a man. Now, I've tired of this conversation. Everything that possibly could be said, was. Assunta changed your ticket and your boarding pass and bags will be by the door. Patrick will take you to the airport. I need to sleep.”

He walked inside the living room and I leaned against the door.

“I can change, you know,” I said.

He turned and looked at me and smiled.

“I don’t want you to change, Beth. It really doesn’t matter if you did, actually. We’re too different and it would be forced. You’re really better off. One day, we’ll be at Lucia’s and laugh about all of this. Goodbye.”

I watched him walk up the stairs and as he did, one of his workers walked past him with my bags and put them by the front door. I thought of my mother, cast aside as I was cast aside and wanted to scream. I thought of the girlfriend he would find soon, the good girlfriend who was beautiful and made him happy like no other, the girlfriend who he wrote songs about and thanked the heavens he found.

“You can still be that girl, Beth,” I said and looked at the candy dish.

I walked into the living room, grabbed two pills and a bottle of vodka off the coffee table.

I ran out to the pool and Ingrid floated on her back and looked up to the sky and smiled.

“Um, excuse me,” I said and took a swig of the vodka.

“Oh, hey!” she said as she stood in the pool. “Feeling better, I hope?”

“Completely,” I said and held up the pills. “Remember what we were supposed to do last night? Would you like to do it now?”

“Oh, you bet!” she said and got out of the pool. “I’m still going off, so I’ll wait on the pills. Take them.”

She took the pills out of my hand as she dripped water from her naked body onto my feet.

“Open up,” she said and smiled.

“Hide or shine,” I said and opened my mouth.

We walked up the steps together as I chugged down more vodka. I looked at her as we stood at Declan’s door.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’ve never done anything like this. Maybe we shouldn’t. He’s mad at me.”

“Darling, he’s not going to be mad as soon as he sees what is going to happen. This is perfect!” she said as she put her hand on the ring in the door. “You know, last night while he and I fucked, all I could think of was how much I wished you were with us.”

“Last night? What?” I said as Ingrid opened the door.

She stumbled into Declan’s bedroom and jumped up and down.

“Beth, get in here! The party’s already going on!”

“I don’t want...” I said and walked in the room. “Oh my God!”

As I stood at the foot of Declan’s bed, cradling the vodka bottle, two Ecstasy pills floating down to my stomach and getting ready to explode with an impossibly gorgeous, naked Swede beside me pleased as punch that we were all going to have sex, I looked at the scene before me and thought I was watching someone else’s smutzoo.com sex video.

That could not have been my man having sex with another woman right in front of me. And that woman could not have been my best friend, my man’s former stepdaughter, India.

But it was.

“Beth!” India said as she crawled out from under Declan. “Beth, please...”

I dropped the bottle of vodka and it smashed into a million pieces on the wooden floor as Ingrid jumped back. Declan looked into my eyes for a moment and then closed his.

I flew out of the room and down the stairs. I grabbed the plane ticket off the table and ran out the front door and crashed into Patrick.

“Cool, just put your bags in the car. Ready to go?” he said.

I sobbed the whole way to the airport, through customs and onto the plane. Assunta graciously booked a non-stop flight from Barcelona to New York. Coach.

I was wedged in between a woman with a baby in her lap in the window seat and an older gentleman who missed the deodorant memo in the aisle. The baby screamed for three hours as I threw up into a paper bag for five. My eyeballs twitched and my brain was aflame and I realized Ecstasy would never be my drug as I looked out the plane’s window and saw a scarecrow riding a flying horse as I had my face in the airsick bag.