The Price of Love (A Price Novel Book 1) (31 page)

I spoke louder. “I need to stay at your place for a while.”

“OK, is something wrong? Are you and Molly not getting along?”

“No,
Milly
and I are fine, but we are graduating and she’s not going to be in LA anymore.”

“Oh, no. When is your graduation? I have a huge trial coming up that I can’t miss.”

It wouldn’t surprise me that I’d graduate from med school with no family there to witness it. “It’s OK, Mom, really. You don’t have to come. I just need to make sure I have a place to stay.”

“Of course you have a place to stay. I do think Gia has taken over your room, and Kenedy’s stuff is all still in hers. But you can have Gia’s old room.” Nothing about any of that surprised me. Kenedy had been gone almost as long as I had. She also had a bigger room than I did. She had her own bathroom too, but of course Mom would have never let Gia or me move into her room and move her stuff into one of the smaller rooms.

“That’s fine. I won’t be there long. Thanks.”

I was about to hang up when she said, “I’m going to send you back to Rose, and you tell her your graduation date so she can get it into my calendar. I will see you then. Bye.” And she hung up.

I felt like that five-year-old child again whose mom had forgotten to pick her up from kindergarten. Why couldn’t my mom just be normal? Why couldn’t she just care about me? Maybe this was why I thought Slayde wouldn’t care.
If my own mom doesn’t care, why should he?

I had to stop thinking about all that. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself and study. I would be going back to my mother’s until I figured something else out. I had never in my wildest dreams — or worst nightmares — thought that I would move back in with my mother.

I had one final left, and it was the only one I was concerned about. I went back to my room to try and study, but I still felt distracted and restless. I had good days and bad ones — mostly bad, actually — but this one was just relentless. I had to go somewhere else. I couldn’t sit in this room, where we’d had so many good times together. It suddenly felt like all of the air was disappearing from the room. I couldn’t breathe. Grabbing my backpack, I started throwing books into it. I thought that maybe if I got out of there quickly enough, the tears couldn’t catch me.

The elevator took forever, so I hit the stairs. When I stepped outside, I saw Eric’s roommate, Blake, and Milly walking toward the dorm. I turned the other way and walked fast, hoping they hadn’t seen me. I didn’t feel like talking, but I wasn’t that lucky.

“Arden, wait,” I heard Milly yell. “Where are you going?” Blake stayed on the sidewalk and didn’t follow Milly, who was following me.

“Arden, please just call him. This has gone on way too long. You’re torturing yourself, and him too.”

I laughed. “I doubt that.”

“Whatever; you know he is just as miserable as you are. This is so crazy and stupid.”

I didn’t want to talk about this. I looked to see if Blake was still standing there, waiting for Milly, and he was. “Blake, you want to study?” I asked. Blake would be a great distraction. That’s what I needed. A tall, gorgeous distraction. Blake and I had actually gone further physically than I had with anybody before Slayde, and Milly knew that. Since I’d been with Slayde, I hadn’t seen Blake much. I’d forgotten just how hot he really was.

“What are you doing?” Milly asked quietly, so Blake wouldn’t hear her.

But he nodded, and I ignored Milly and walked to catch up with him. She followed, and the three of us went to the library and studied. Yes, I could handle the library with Blake. That’s what I’d concentrate on — Blake. I felt a little better already, and these days, any relief from the chest-tightening pain was very much appreciated.

After about an hour, Eddie called Milly’s phone. She stepped outside to talk to him, leaving Blake and me alone — and with the dirty look she shot me on her way out, I knew she wasn’t happy about that.

“So, Blake, where are you doing your internship?” I asked.

“Boston.”

“Really, that’s interesting. My little sister Isabelle lives near there. She’s at Harvard Law — maybe you should look her up,” I said.

“I might do that if she’s single, and even half as pretty and smart as you.”

I couldn’t believe he was flirting with me. I blushed. “Well, if I’m so pretty, why did you stop calling me?”

“What?” He looked confused. “Eric said you told him to ask me to stop calling you, that you weren’t interested in me anymore but didn’t want to hurt my feelings.”

Milly was right.
Damn Eric!
“I did no such thing!” I said too loudly. The people at the table next to us looked at me. I laughed quietly. “That damn Eric. He’s really something.”

Blake laughed too. “I guess I should have known better than to just believe Eric. My bad!” He paused and looked around. Then he leaned in closer so no one else could hear. “So, you’re not dating that famous guy anymore?” He kind of flinched when he said it, like he knew he might be touching on a sore subject.

And he was right. There it was, that sucker punch to my gut. I looked down. “No. I’m not dating anybody.” I made myself smile at him.

“Well, that’s the best news I’ve heard all day.” He smiled at me. “Why don’t we go out for drinks tomorrow night, after finals are over? We’ll deserve a drink by then.”

“All right, that sounds great!” I said, and for a minute I was actually a little excited.

“Except for you have plans already, A!” Now standing at my elbow, Milly threw Slayde’s pet name for me in there because she knew it would sting. She gave me an ugly look. “You told Eddie you would come to his graduation. Remember?” She looked really pissed.

“Oh yeah, sorry, I did. Well, why don’t we all go out after? We could always go to Pot of Gold.”

“I doubt Eddie will want to go to work after his graduation,” Milly snapped.

“Well, damn, Milly, we can go somewhere else.” I snapped back.

She wasn’t playing with me. “Whatever.” She grabbed her stuff and left. Of course I followed her.

Milly was almost back to our dorm when I finally caught up to her. I called, “Milly, wait. What the hell was that all about?”

She stopped and looked at me. “You know, I want to ask you the same damn thing.”

“Why are you mad?” I whispered, trying not to cry. Fighting with Milly was not what I wanted to do today.

She calmed down a little. “I’m not mad, Arden. I’m just worried. Why are you flirting with Blake? You know he doesn’t mean anything to you. You know you don’t actually want to go on a date with someone else.”

“You’re right, Milly. I guess I should stay locked up in a dorm room for the next fifty years, so I can continue to avoid the tabloids, entertainment television, and anything else that reminds me of him! What do you want from me? Why don’t you want me to be happy?” The tears burned my eyes, and I could barely speak because of the huge lump that had formed in my throat.

“I do! That’s all I want for you, but you’re making a mistake.” She was raising her voice again, obviously unfazed by my tear-filled eyes.

“How do you know, Milly? It’s not your heart that’s been destroyed. It’s not you who can hardly get out of bed in the morning. It’s me.” I was now yelling and crying.

“Don’t you think I know that? Have you forgotten I live there? I’m watching my best friend suffer, knowing that all she has to do is pick up the damn phone. This is nuts. What’s wrong with you, Arden?”

“Why can’t he pick up the phone and call me, huh? If he is so miserable, why hasn’t he called me?”

She looked at me like I had just slapped her in the face. “Are you serious right now? You have made it abundantly clear that you don’t want to talk to him. This is not a game to him. He doesn’t want to chase you around the rest of his life. He wants you to want him, Arden. He wants you to come back on your own. He didn’t do anything. You did. You freaked out and made a bad judgment call, and you’ve been sitting on your ass, sulking like a five-year-old ever since. Tell me something. If you don’t want to be with him, why do you cry yourself to sleep every night?”

“I never said I didn’t want to be with him, Milly. I said I can’t be with him. There is a big difference,” I said, trying to stop the tears and snot from running down my face.

“Why can’t you be with him? Please enlighten me, because I obviously don’t have a clue what is going on.” She threw her hands up in exasperation.

“Because it won’t work. We will end up right back here,” I cried.

“You know what, you’re right. If you don’t grow up and get your head out of your ass, then it won’t work. Maybe he needs to move on. He needs to find someone else, and then maybe he will be happy again too. I guess next time I talk to him, that’s what I will tell him. I’ll tell him you said that you’re ready to start dating other people and that he should do the same.” She started to walk away but turned around and pulled some tabloids out of her backpack and tried to hand them to me. “You need to see these.”

I tucked my hands under my arms just like a five-year-old. She tried to hand them to me again, and I wouldn’t take them. I knew I was acting like she was trying to hand me a bomb, but I felt like they were just as dangerous. “I don’t want those.”

“You need to look at them. I know your mind is running away with you. I’m nosy, and I’m sorry, but I’ve been checking out all the magazines since you split, just in case there was something that could hurt you. I didn’t want you to find out something via
Entertainment Television
. Here.” She tucked them under my arm and walked away.

I knew there were pictures of Slayde in there, and I didn’t want to know anything. I had kept myself safe in this little bubble since we broke up, and I wasn’t ready for this yet. Was he with another girl? Surely Milly would have told me if that were the case, but maybe not. She was pretty mad at me right now. I was shaking, but I turned the magazine over to a page she’d folded down the corner of. It was a picture of Slayde walking into a restaurant. He wasn’t smiling like usual, and he had on sunglasses. The print read,
Is America’s Favorite Hollywood Hunk Cracking Under the Pressure?

With shaky hands, I turned the page. It was just a picture of Slayde and his friend Kevin at a ball game and the one of Slayde and Taylor going into a store in Beverly Hills. There was one of Slayde and his dad at the country club and one of Slayde and two bodyguards leaving a restaurant. In every picture, he looked sad. He was normally smiling, but he looked like he was on the verge of tears in every picture. He was still beautiful, but he looked thin.

I scanned the article:

Price’s excessive weight loss has the producers upset … A nutritionist has been brought in to revamp his diet for weight gain … Price recently canceled several interviews … Is the pressure getting to him, or is it something else? … Through all of this, he has yet to be seen anywhere with his fiancée, Arden Simms — are they already hitting a rough spot?

It broke my heart to see him like this. There was no doubt I wanted to fix the situation, but I didn’t know how. And I didn’t know if a tabloid was anything to base anything on. The press could twist anything in any way they wanted, and I knew that firsthand. Four different magazines featured all of the same pictures. And no one had any real information. Not even anything from “a source close to Price.” If anyone knew anything, it would be Lexi or Kevin, and they weren’t talking. He could have just been tired or had a headache in those pictures, for all I knew. I just couldn’t believe Slayde was lying around, miserable. That wasn’t his personality.

I shook my head. I couldn’t worry about it right now. I had to ace my exam tomorrow. I had to forget about Slayde and concentrate on studying.

Milly spent the night at Eddie’s that night, and I lay in bed, thinking about everything she’d said. I knew everything was my fault, but I really didn’t know what to do about it. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to make that call. It wasn’t because I didn’t love Slayde. It wasn’t because I didn’t miss him. It wasn’t because I wanted to be with someone else. It was because I was scared he didn’t feel the same anymore. I was scared he would reject me. What if my freaking out had been the best thing for him? What if it was his ticket out, and he hadn’t realized it until now? And if not, if he did still want to be with me, how would we ever survive in his world? I didn’t belong there, and I couldn’t live my life like that. I knew it, and he had to too.

The next morning, after our exam, Milly and I went to go eat a huge breakfast like we always did after a huge exam. She had warmed back up toward me, and I was relieved to see our argument from the day before seemed to be water under the bridge. We decided to celebrate the end of finals and Eddie’s graduation all at the same time.

We only had five days until our own graduation. After that we would all go our separate ways. For the first time in years, I would be alone again. I was graduating in the top 5 percent of my class; I could have done my residency just about anywhere, and I had chosen a hospital in Los Angeles.

Milly was only going to be in Long Beach, I knew, but I was really going to miss her. It wasn’t that far away, but with our busy schedules, I knew things would never be the same.

“Get changed, we’re going to Benihana for supper,” Milly said as she blew into our dorm room after Eddie’s graduation. I had come back ahead of her while she visited with Eddie’s parents, and I had made myself comfortable in yoga pants and T-shirt.

“Why Benihana? Can’t we go somewhere else?” I asked.

“Because we took a vote. That’s where we’re going. It’s not an option. You have to go. It’s probably our last night to all get together. And you love sushi,” Milly said.

“OK.” I really hated going anywhere like that. I wanted to stay in my safety zone, and nowhere in public in Los Angeles was in my safety zone anymore. Why couldn’t we just go somewhere quiet?

Karen had decided to be our DD for the night. I guess you could call it decided; it was really just her turn. When we were getting in the car, I saw Eric walking toward us, all dressed up. I cut Milly a sideways glance, and she didn’t look too thrilled either, which wasn’t like her. Milly was always the peacemaker, but she got into the car without saying anything to him.