The Trouble With Before (9 page)

I SIT IN
my car and stare at his number in my phone after I pretty much swallow whole the burger and fries I got from the fast food place down the street from the grocery store. It’s been such a long time since I had his personal number. I hate the way that even after all of these years, my heart still doubles it’s speed and my body still recognizes him. After all the hurt and pain that we caused, I still can’t deny the fact that I loved this man more than anyone else in my entire life. No one has ever made me feel as good as he has, and that’s the reason I can’t call him or see him alone.

After I came back from college and Chris and I became close again, it took everything in me to be able to be in his house without memories crawling to the forefront of my mind. Will and I were never around each other much though. Whenever Will saw me, he made sure to excuse himself or come up with some urgent errand. As the years passed, we learned to co-exist since he wasn’t going anywhere and my friendship with Chris was one of the most important things in my life. Still, there were moments when my mind would slip to that place, or to the person that we created, who shared the best things of both of us.

I know that we should talk, that he wants to know why I’m here and probably wants to make sure I don’t want to cause trouble to his now-perfect family. I wish he thought of me as more than a troublemaker, someone who only causes pain and destruction. I used to be more than that to him, but I can’t blame him. It’s been almost a decade since I’ve brought him anything but displeasure.

I pull up to my house and see the space I parked in earlier is filled with a blue Tahoe. I park on the other side of it. It must be Jack’s. My stomach turns at the thought of him. When I was in high school, I swore he’d be just like the other men who parked themselves temporarily in my mother’s life, getting from her what they wanted and then being ghosts afterward, but Jack stuck around. After only a few months of being together, they went off to be married in Vegas before I left for Aunt Danni’s to have Willa. Evie’s and my relationship has been so rocky since then that I don’t know what type of husband he is, but I’d rather pretend he didn’t exist until I figure out what I’m going to do.

I pull the key out of my pocket as I make my way up the stairs. I quickly put my key in the lock, and when it doesn’t turn, I examine it to make sure it’s the right one.

It is.

I attempt to unlock the door again, and it doesn’t even wiggle. I immediately bang on the door. “Evie! What the hell?”

I pull out my phone and call her number only to get the voicemail.

“Evie!” Now my knocks are so hard, I know my hand is going to turn red.

After no answer, I call her phone again and I still don’t get an answer.

“What the fuck!” I shout.

I run down the stairs and around to the side of the house to see if I left my window open. I didn’t! I continue farther around the house to her window and bang on it. In less than a minute, the window raises and Evie scowls at me.

“Why the hell can’t I open the door?” I yell at her.

At first she looks bored, then her eyes perk a bit. I can tell she’s been drinking, a lot. “Because I changed the locks, hon.”

“Fantastic, can you open the door then?”

She chuckles. “See, the thing is that you don’t live here anymore, and I’d feel better if someone who didn’t live in this house didn’t have a key.”

“What! This is my house too. Grandma left it to the both of us!” I say, looking at her as if she’s lost her mind.

The curtain moves aside, and I see Jack with a trucker’s hat on and a bottle of whiskey in his hand. “Actually, according to the paperwork I have, it’s
my
house.”

His voice makes me cringe. I narrow my eyes at him and remember how much I couldn’t stand him. He looks the same, only about twenty extra pounds making him even more of a waste of space to the world.

“This has nothing to do with you! My mom knows that Grams left this house to both of us!” I’m spitting mad now. I turn my attention to Evie, who looks unaffected.

“The house was in my name, sweetheart, and times were tough. I sold it to Jack’s dad who gave it to Jack, so technically it’s his house and mine,” she says with a shrug.

I laugh, because this has to be a joke. Even Evie wouldn’t be so idiotic to give away our house for what was probably a couple of hundred, possibly thousand dollars. This house is worth almost two hundred thousand minimum.

“You’re lying.” When her eyes find mine and I see a trace of guilt in them, my stomach drops. “How could you . . . how could you do that?” I feel tears filling my eyes.

“Mike is family, Leese. He ended up signing it back over . . . to both of us,” she says pathetically.

I grip my forehead, not believing that this is happening. “You know that Gramma would have never left this house to you if she thought that you’d do this!”

“Look, it’s not like we’re saying you can’t stay here,” Evie says weakly, as if for the first time ever, she feels the sting of guilt. She should be feeling a whole freakin’ boatload of it.

“No, we’re not monsters, and you’re the love of my life’s daughter,” Jack says sarcastically before kissing Evie on the cheek, then winking at me.

I want to throw up. As if things couldn’t get any worse, I feel light drops of rain. I let out a deep breath.

“We’re going to need a security deposit though. I’d say about a thousand would cover it,” he says while scratching his chin as if he hasn’t a care in the world.

My eyes bulge. Anger controls every pulse in my body. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not giving you a thousand dollars to live in my grandmother’s house!” I growl, commanding the tears in my eyes not to fall. I turn my attention back to Evie and swallow my last ounce of pride. “Just give me a week or two, and I’ll be out. I just need some time.”

“After you get a job and you’re able to pay some rent, you’d be more than welcome to stay,” he answers.

I try to calm down, but I’m so angry, my whole body is shaking. “Evie . . . I don’t . . . I don’t have anywhere else to go right now.” I try to connect with the last shred of maternal instinct she has.

“Whelp, I don’t know what to tell you, sweetheart.” He shrugs, taking a swig from his bottle.

“Leese, don’t be stubborn. It’s only fair, and it’s a lot less than we’d charge anyone else.” My mother’s face is stoic and her voice holds not an ounce of compassion or sympathy, as if this is all business.

“Anyone else? I’m your daughter. Your fucking daughter, Evie!” I’m failing miserably in my attempt not to cry at this point.

“Oh, now you’re her daughter? That’s funny. You don’t call her or check on her. You treat her like a stranger ever since you went off to school, then when you’re desperate, you come crawling back and she’s supposed to play mommy to a grown fucking woman!” he shouts.

I shake my head, ignore him, and stare straight at her. “I know that you’ve never been the mother of the year, but God, I never thought you’d do this to me. How could you be so fucking weak!” In disbelief, I watch her leave her spot next to Jack in the window.

His wide smile dissolves and is replaced by an angry sneer as if he’s offended by what I just said to his
wife.
“Hey! You don’t talk to her like that. At least she didn’t ditch her seven-year-old daughter on someone’s doorstep.” He chuckles and slams the window shut.

I feel as if a knife has gone through me, and as if on cue, thunder cracks the air.

I’VE REALLY GOT
to stop thinking with the wrong head. If I was thinking with the right one, I wouldn’t be in this mess. When I got back from California, I should have taken my ass home. I shouldn’t have gone to Chicago, I definitely shouldn’t have gone to talk to Hillary, and when she opened the door wearing a pink thong and a thin pink cami that made her tits sit up, I should have run the other way. But that would be the reasoning of a man who thinks with his brain and not his dick, and Hillary has a way of speaking the language my dick understands.

I wish I could say I went over there just to hash things out with her. I mean, I did miss her; Hillary isn’t the type of girl that’s easy to forget. She’s a complete enigma. When you look at her, she’s the type of beautiful that could easily be on the cover of one of those girly magazines. She looks like the definition of the girl next door, but it’s as if she does everything in her power to make sure that she’s not. She wears color contacts over the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen. She paints her hair with all different colors, has tattoos all over her body, and to be honest, she dresses like a stripper.

Just looking at her, you’d never guess that she graduated at the top of her class, that her parents were ultraconservative—her dad’s a preacher and her mom’s a homemaker—and that before she left them, she’d never been allowed to see an R-rated movie. Now she could be the star of X-rated porn. She was the first girl since Jamie Hunting, who gave me my first blow job when I was fifteen, who could blow my mind with the tricks she knew how to do with her tongue.

“So are you excited that I’m here?” she asks, her naked body displayed at its best angle beside mine. She holds the heel of her ankle and stretches her leg so that her knee is almost near her ear.

How the hell am I supposed to say no when she’s doing stuff like that? That’s how she ended up in my room at my house when I went to see her to end things. I grab her waist and pull her on top of my lap. “So fucking happy.”

She beams before bringing her mouth to my ear and biting its lobe. “Didn’t you miss this?” Her hands stretch down my stomach, and I nod enthusiastically. “Tell me how much you want it,” she whispers in my ear. She’s being a tease as she strokes my dick.

“So bad.” I catch her lips and flip her over so I’m on top of her.

The doorbell rings.

“Who the fuck is that?” I growl as Hillary wraps her legs tightly around my waist.

She looks up at me with a mischievous look. “I think you should go and see. No sense in being rushing. It’s not like you ignored my calls for a week straight when you could have been
swimming
in this.” She brings my hand between her thighs to show off how wet she is. She’s wearing a smile that only an angel should have, but her tone is laced in venom.

I let out a deep sigh and realize that her coming here doesn’t mean that she’s not mad at me anymore. She’s just gifting me sex; she’s here to punish me, and after the sex is over, I’m in for a lot of yelling and nagging. As sexy as she is, my dick, which was hard as brick, deflates. I climb off her and slide on my jeans.

“I wonder if your visitor is the reason you’ve been ignoring my calls?” Hillary says sarcastically, grabbing a T-shirt from my drawer.

I shake my head and let out an exasperated sigh at how bad this night is about to go.

“I’ll get it!” She bounces past me and through my bedroom door.

I quickly pull on my T-shirt. I’m sure in Hillary’s mind, the reason I ignored her calls is because I was banging somebody, and I’d hate for her to scare the hell out of one of my Grams’s little bingo buddies unnecessarily.

“I bet it’s one of the bimbos you’ve been having wild orgies with,” Hillary snaps as she hurries to the door.

“Trust me, if I was having wild orgies, you definitely would have been invited,” I joke.

“I don’t share, Aidan. I keep telling you this, and if you’ve been sharing what’s mine, I’m going to cut your dick off and flush it down the toilet,” she spits before swinging the door open.

Lisa! Her eyes widen in shock as she looks at Hillary standing in front of me, who most likely looks pissed off and ready to pounce at any second.

“So you’re the whore Aidan’s been fucking,” Hillary spits.

“What are you doing here, Lisa?” I grab Hillary by the elbow before she pounces and goes to jail for kicking a pregnant girl’s ass.

“I’m sure she wants some of your dick!” Hillary screeches. Her face is red when she whips toward me and attempts to grab my balls. Thank God I have good reflexes.

“Hey! This is Lisa
Lisa
!” I tell her tightly, holding both her arms against her body.

Hillary’s eyes are wide and her face balled up with anger until the realization hits her. She looks back at Lisa, who is soaked, her hair sticking to her body. She looks as though she’s had a bucket of water dumped on her, and she’s shivering