“Yeah, sorry,” Eliza says.
I shake my head and smile a little. “Well … I hope they sort out whatever is going on.”
Brooks looks at me curiously, his eyes lingering a few seconds too long. We sit for what feels like eternity. Finally, Deacon emerges from the house and stomps his way to me.
“Let’s go.”
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Now, please.” He’s jittery like he’s hyped up on Jansen Brewing. Who the hell does he think he is that he can order me around? But I surrender anyway, because I need him.
“Okay. Bye, guys.” I stand and wave goodbye.
Deacon and I turn to walk away, but Brooks says, “Wait!” He shoves my purse into my hand, and our fingers touch, the tips of his fingers rough and calloused against the smooth top of my hand. “Don’t forget this.”
“What happened back there?”
“It was nothing,” Deacon says, his eyes on the road. No attempt to touch my leg or squeeze my hand or reassure me in any way.
He misses the turn to get to my apartment. “Hey, you passed—where are we going?”
“My house,” he says flatly.
“Okay.” The emptiness in his voice scares me.
I’m quiet the rest of the drive to his high-rise downtown.
After closing the door, he roughly pushes me against the wall. I draw in a sharp breath. He goes for my throat. Kissing me hungrily. Squeezing my breasts. Lacking his previous gentle touch.
Fear bubbles within me. It all feels wrong. I struggle against him, and he releases me. Backs away. “What the fuck, Deacon?” I pant.
He stares at me for a minute, before his eyes trail to the floor. Then, he walks into the living room and sits on the couch.
I follow him. “I said … What. The. Fuck?”
“I’m sorry.” His eyes are soft, and my ridiculous worries of him hurting me disappear. “Just a little fucked up right now. She got to me.”
“Who? That Kara chick?” I sit next to him.
“Yeah.” He shuts his eyes, then runs his palm over his forehead. “Our breakup, it was really bad. She would never show up like that, especially not after the way things ended. I almost wonder if…”
“If what?”
“If someone told her about you.”
“But who would do that?” Eliza would do that, that’s who. I can’t believe her, sitting there pretending like she didn’t know why Kara was there.
“I don’t know.”
“I guess a better question is why?” I ask, swinging my legs over his lap and reaching a hand up to rub the back of his neck.
“Well, I think there are only two options: either to tempt us to get back together, or to get rid of you.”
Deacon is right. There’s no other reasonable explanation for Kara’s sudden visit, except for someone telling her he had a new girlfriend. Eliza has slowly grown more distant. She must want me gone, out of her life. She’s so insecure that she sees me as a threat, regardless of my “relationship” with Deacon. A threat to everything she holds dear.
She has no idea how right she is.
Deacon and I spend the rest of the day lounging around his apartment, listening to music and binge watching Breaking Bad. Despite his efforts to act normal, he’s uncomfortably quiet. I wonder what happened between him and Kara for him to be this absent, this dull. Obviously some feelings still linger for him to have stormed off, running after her like it was a Nicholas Sparks novel. Surely he’s not thinking of getting back with her? That would be detrimental to all the hard work I’ve done so far. But he’s here with me right now. That has to mean something, right?
“Are we okay?” I ask, propping myself up on an elbow while he pours a drink in the kitchen. “Are you going to get back with Kara?”
He looks at me and shakes his head. “What? No way.”
“Are you sure? I mean, it seemed like—”
“Babe, you have nothing to worry about.” He screws the lid back on the soda but doesn’t look me in the eye.
I sure hope I don’t have anything to worry about. I need him. So far, all I have to present to Brooks is that his fiancée is a kleptomaniac who cheated on him with an old flame, the latter of which he was already suspicious of anyway. If she drops me or fucks me and Deacon up, I’ll have to come up with a plan B, and there’s no time.
Deacon drinks in silence as I continue to sit awkwardly on the couch, wondering if Kara has a super pussy or some magical blowjob secret for him to look so fucking miserably sad.
“I’m gonna go get some food,” he finally says. “Tex-Mex okay with you?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll be back.”
He leaves without kissing me.
I poke around through his personal things. There have to be some leftover pieces of their four-year relationship floating around. It’s hard to get rid of an ex. All the movies say so. But his bedroom drawers only contain clothes. Nothing interesting looms under his mattress. Nothing at all in his bedroom to suggest he’d dated someone for years. It seems he scrubbed his life of her.
I return to the living room. Decide to watch TV, but the fucking remote won’t work. Have a tantrum. Get more pissed at Darth Vader glaring at me from a signed poster on the wall. Fuck his glare. I hurl the remote at him in my frustration over this shitty day, but I really shouldn’t have done that. It was probably really expensive, and Deacon will know that I did it. I get up to inspect it and make sure I’ve done no damage. Find a small dent—fuck me—and run my finger over it. Hate myself because it’s not going away. Maybe I can smooth it out with something. I pull the two bottom tacks from the wall carefully. I lift the poster, ready to remove the top tacks, but—huh?
October 18, 2015
It seems Darth Vader is the keeper of keys. I wish I knew what they were for, because the numbers underneath each one mean nothing. Deacon’s apartment holds a plethora of them. I found more keys behind more pictures. Counted nine, but there could be more for all I know. Deacon has fooled me this entire time with his baby face and syrupy gestures. I hope to God Brooks doesn’t know about whatever this is, because I can’t imagine it’s anything good. Why else would my friend Darth be hiding them? Kara enters my mind. With as long as they’d dated and as nasty as it supposedly was, I wonder if this had anything to do with it.
I put all the picture frames back, my hands shaking as I finish tacking Darth back to the wall. It was just in time. Deacon barrels through the door only a moment later.
He scarfs down his burrito, but I’ve only managed a bite. It churns my stomach to think of all the possibilities of what he could be hiding. I want to get out of here, but I can’t. I have to keep up this relationship.
We watch TV, after which I blow him out of obligation. Then, he goes down on me, and the silence grows from there. He keeps looking at me like he knows—like he knows I looked behind his poster. Just like I think Eliza knew.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah.” My body inches closer to him, despite the heaviness of my stomach.
“You sure? You’re being so quiet.”
“Sorry. I just remembered I was supposed to do some work for my parents today. I forgot about it.”
“Need me to take you home?”
“Please?”
After stopping for gas, he pulls into a Jansen Brewing and orders me a coffee.
“It’s been a long day,” he says. “You’ll need it.”
I don’t know how he can be so slimy and yet so nice. It’s scary how chameleon people can be.
“I’m gonna walk you up,” he says, after we pull next to my building.
“No, no. It’s fine.”
“You sure?”
I nod.
“Come here.” He runs his fingers through my hair and pulls me in for a kiss.
I smile at him. “See you later.”
When he’s gone, I text Eliza: Out of tampons. Do you have any?
Yes, but not at home. Staying at
Brooks’s tonight, she responds.
And in my excuse to see if she was home, I’m suddenly reminded of not using protection with Deacon the first time. Finding a way into her apartment to inspect her shit will have to wait.
Though the odds would be slim, I need to put my mind at ease. I fish my keys out of my purse and drive to the store to buy a pregnancy test. A couple months ago I was a virgin. Now I’m worried I could be pregnant with my future husband’s best friend’s baby—some fucked up Desperate Housewives shit. I can’t wait until I’m home to take the test. I lock myself in a bathroom stall in the store. Rip off the packaging and read the instructions. Pee on the stick. Wish I had a cup, because it splatters on my hand.
I set the stick on the toilet paper holder and pull up my pants. Make myself wait three minutes before even daring to look at it.
Negative. Thank God. I cry.
I don’t have to abort a baby or kill Deacon.
The past two days have been spent following Deacon in a rented car. An impossibly stale two days watching him supervise a landscaping company as they beautify his parents’ lawn. At this point, I’d almost rather watch Brooks and Eliza have sex.
I park the rental a little ways down from the house. Can see the pool house through the trees. Deacon stands in front of it, watching the two landscapers carry bags of sod to the back. I’m just about over this, ready to put the car in drive and get some lunch. But then he does something that doesn’t make sense. He cuts a small hole in one of the bags. Pulls something out, and tastes it.
What the hell? Isn’t that shit poisonous? Oh. Oh, no. My eyes widen at the realization of what’s going on. Suddenly, I’m very afraid to even be Deacon’s pretend girlfriend.
I snap a few photos with my phone, scrunched down in my seat until the employees begin loading bags back in the truck. The truck roars to life, and Deacon gets in his car, too. I start my engine.
It’s hard following someone and keeping enough distance to not raise suspicion. We’ve mostly been traveling on the interstate. Looks like we’re headed north toward Alpharetta—an upscale but somewhat secluded suburb. I’ve noticed Deacon has strategically kept a car between his and the landscaping truck, but when we pull off the exit, the distance closes. I stay far behind, scared he’ll catch a glimpse of me, though there are plenty of other cars around.
After a few miles, the truck turns into a plot of land with a well-kept older home. There’s a strip mall just before the driveway, so I park in there and watch as Deacon directs the men as they back up to, but not inside, the garage. They hop out. Unload the bags. When they’re done, they pull small trees from the truck, walk into the yard, and start planting. It registers that I’ve been watching them so intently I have no idea where Deacon is.
After getting out of my car, I creep to the edge of the property. The edge of the parking lot is only steps away from the house. It’s risky, but I want a better look. The guys are far out on the other side of the yard, working away. I could feasibly get over there without being noticed as long as Deacon doesn’t appear. He’s probably in the house. Slowly walking across the grass, I almost reach the truck, but then I hear the front door.
I turn, then take off running, not daring to look back until I have my hands on the steering wheel. Deacon rounds the truck and whistles to the guys, who stop planting. For a minute, I think he sees me as he looks in this direction, but his eyes don’t linger.
I wait until he’s on the phone, engrossed in a conversation, and I start up the car and drive home—hands shaking the entire way, tears from the confirmation making it difficult to see.
October 21, 2015
I chug a beer at Tin Lizzy’s. I just got off work, and Deacon will be here any minute. I don’t know how I am going to be able to stop myself from asking questions about Emily and where they stand. He was obviously torn over Kara showing up. It’s understandable. They have history.
It has been a few days, and I can’t deny that I have felt increasingly bad about what I did. The battle going on inside my head is no fault of Emily’s, and I should have worked it out on my own instead of trying to break up her and Deacon’s relationship. But how long could she and I keep the fact that we met all those years ago a secret from Eliza? I couldn’t do that, couldn’t pretend every day that Emily and I were just two strangers when really we had some teenage romance—albeit one that only lasted a couple hours. If I were honest with Eliza, she would wonder why the hell we both remember it, since it was ten years ago, for Christ’s sake. But it was Journey! The entire experience was memorable, but she wouldn’t understand. She and Emily already hit rocky water. Knowing that Emily and I flirted all those years ago—even leaving out the masturbation detail—would make her drop Emily faster than she could say her name.
So when I talked to Kara, I almost felt like I was just helping along the inevitable. She was hesitant when we spoke, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was her accusation that Deacon had been hiding things their entire relationship, things she wouldn’t name but could not easily get past. Though, when I told her about him dating someone new, her voice got higher. She was suddenly interested in knowing anything and everything about Emily and their interactions.
She asked the usual questions, like whether Emily was better looking, what she does for a living, if I felt there was potential for a real relationship there. I reassured her that, of course, Emily was not better looking, but she was pretty. I felt bad for lying, because Emily does have an edge on Kara, though not a large one, since they’re both knockouts. She balked at the fact that Emily’s parents manufacture sex toys. Wanted to know the name, when it was founded, the value. I drew a blank on all of them, including the name, because the question was never answered at Canoe. The truth of my words stung a little when I admitted that, yes, I did see Emily and Deacon dating long term. And I felt guilty for that feeling, but I reminded myself that soon Emily would be gone, and I wouldn’t have to feel guilty anymore.
When Kara showed up unplanned, however—okay, I did kind of mention that I suspected Emily would be accompanying Deacon to lunch—I saw the pain on Emily’s face. Talk about buyer’s remorse. I struggled to look her in the eyes. She was surprised but handled the situation impressively. She kept it classy, not getting up and running after Deacon and making a scene, which I hate to admit is what Eliza would have done. The way she handled everything was admirable, and that admiration has unfortunately kept her in my thoughts since Deacon dragged her off.
I’ve been staring at the food menu, but not really reading it when I hear Deacon’s voice. He’s looking around for me. I hold up an arm and wave it wildly.
“Sorry I’m late, bro. There was a wreck,” he says.
“When is there ever not a wreck in Atlanta?” I motion for the waitress, who was waiting for Deacon to arrive before taking my order.
We ask for Coronas, and Deacon asks our cute-but-barely-legal waitress if he can get extra limes. He sometimes tries too hard with the ladies. She notices and giggles nervously. His eyes stay fixed on her ass as she walks away.
“Think she’s hot?” He leans over the booth.
I shrug, then grimace and bat him away. “Dude, you smell.”
He laughs. “Worked in the yard a bit today.”
The too-young cutie whizzes by our table without stopping to talk and sets down some guacamole and salsa. I eat the guac but push the salsa away to Deacon because it’s hot as fuck—too spicy for me, and spicy is usually my thing. Maybe our waitress wasn’t amused with Deacon’s flirtations. I warn him, but he laughs and scoops some up with a chip. Almost chokes. We push it to the end of the table.
He gets a text. Sucks his teeth and shakes his head after looking at his phone.
“Kara…” He motions to his phone.
“What’s going on?”
He sighs. “I think I might have to end things with Emily.”
A weight lifts from my shoulders, but now I feel an overwhelming sense of fear. I’m relieved, because
if he dumps her, I can feel normal again when she’s gone—safe from my stupid male hormones. But a part of me wants to panic that I will never see her again, even though I don’t want to because I know it’s bad for Eliza and me.
“Really?” I say.
“Yeah,” he mumbles through his chips. “God, it’s so fucking hard. I don’t know what to do.”
I say nothing, allowing him time to marinate on his thoughts.
“I feel so bad. Emily is so fucking great, man. Super nice girl. Amazingly gorgeous. Top shelf pussy.” He made no effort to lower his voice when he described her vagina. I look around, embarrassed and thankful no one is staring at us. “But Kara … we dated for four years. Four fucking years. That’s a long time to just throw away, to just forget.”
“So, you think Emily is just a rebound?”
“Not at all. That’s the whole fucking problem, dude. I have real feelings for her. But you can’t just flip a switch and turn off four years, you know? It takes time to turn that shit off, to stop loving someone. I was miserable after Kara left. Until I met Emily. She helped me, man. I thought I was over Kara. I wasn’t even thinking about her anymore. But then she fucking showed up. And I can’t be with both of them, so I have to choose. It fucking sucks.”
I can’t believe I have done this to my friend. I didn’t just hurt Emily, I hurt Deacon, too. “Yeah. I’m sure it’s tough. I can’t imagine caring about two people at once.” I can imagine it. I just wish I couldn’t.
“It blows.” The palm of his hand hits his forehead several times in frustration. “Just fucking wish I knew the right answer.”
“You never did explain to me why Kara left in the first place,” I remind him. I asked him about it in the beginning, but he refused to talk about it. I’d assumed he’d cheated, though I had never known him to cheat in the past.
His shoulders slump. He shakes his head. “I don’t want to get into it. It was my fault. That’s all that really matters.”
The Evolution of Ivy: Poison Page 15