Finding Joy (The Joy Series)

by Jenni Moen

  Today we were ‘celebrating,’ but that also was a lie. Allie was the reason I was now seeing double. I had failed her, I had lied to her, and then I’d abandoned her. Now I was making life decisions and had no intention of including her.

  I had to get drunk just to live with myself.

  I was heading down a road with which I was all too familiar and had sworn I would never travel. If alcoholism is genetic, I was showing all the markers. I hated myself for not being stronger than this. I hated myself even more than I had ever before, which was saying something since I’d recently had a lot of practice at it.

  The taller intern, who I had christened ‘Thing 1’ three drinks ago when I could no longer remember his name, beckoned to two girls hovering at a nearby table. When they approached, he called them by name, making it apparent that he knew them. Hell, it was possible that he’d even asked them to meet us here. If I could focus on the conversation taking place around me, I’d probably be able to figure out what the situation was, but I had neither the ability nor the inclination to care.

  Thing 2, who had been nothing but friendly to me but seemed like he might be an arrogant prick most of the time, cocked his head to the side and nodded toward the blonde with the big tits. He arched his eyebrows at me suggestively, and I looked her up and down without even trying to be subtle.

  She was Hollywood hot, a little too plastic, a little too blonde, and a whole lot too proud of herself. She wore a black dress that was too tight and too short, but probably would have looked a whole lot classier on Allie. Her fake D-cup tits were barely contained by the low-cut neckline and threatened to make an appearance at any minute. I decided I’d better keep my eye on them, lest they pop out and put an eye out.

  She didn’t mind my blatant appraisal. Treating it as an invitation, she walked around Thing 2 and stood so close that I could feel her bony hip pressing into my side. “Devon says you’re from Texas. I hear they raise ‘em right down there,” she said in a poorly executed southern drawl. “I bet you know how to treat a lady, don’t you?”

  I seriously doubted that she qualified as a lady and hoped that she wasn’t an actress. If she was, she was likely going to starve to death. “Not lately,” I said, referring to my recent propensity for acting like a jackass.

  “Well, I think I’m willing to take my chances,” she said wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

  “I’m going to head out,” Thing 1 said. He looked to the blonde who was molesting my already unruly hair with her fingers. “Take care of our boy here, Cassandra. We’re trying to show him what L.A. has to offer. Think you can convince him to abandon the Big Apple in favor of the West Coast?”

  “I think I can handle that,” she said, running a well manicured finger down my jaw line just as my phone vibrated in my pocket.

  Ethan’s name was lit up on the screen. I swiped it to bring his text to life. Frankly, I was surprised that it’s taken him this long. We were friends now, but his allegiance would always be to Allie. He was her closest friend and her protector. The fact that he hadn’t called me daily to berate me had come as a shock. However, maybe he had waited so that when he finally came after me, it would count.

  If so, his message, ‘Get your shit together before there’s nothing left to come home to. She may be waiting for you but I barely recognize her. If you don’t fix this soon, I’m going to kick your ass or fuck up my pretty face trying,’ had the desired effect. As I slid my phone back in my pocket, I was tied up in knots.

  I looked again at the blonde beside me, but this time my look wasn’t appraising. “That won’t be necessary,” I said, removing her arm from around my shoulders. I didn’t want her touching me. I didn’t want anyone but Allie touching me.

  “I’m heading out, too.” I shook Thing 1 and Thing 2’s hands and stumbled my way through the hotel lobby to the cab stand. As I slid into the seat of cab, my hazy brain failed me. I couldn’t think of where to tell him to take me.

  _________________________

  I opened one eye and promptly shut it again. Pain seared through my forehead, and I groaned. The noise echoed around my head and made my stomach lurch. Yes, noise actually made my stomach turn. I felt like a complete and total shit. How people could stand to do this to themselves repeatedly was beyond me.

  So as not to make the same mistake twice, I remained as still and quiet as possible and tried to remember what had happened the night before.

  The two interns who gave me the tour of the studio lot, had taken me to some hotel bar. It had been ridiculously early in the evening when we’d gotten started, and I’d probably had six or seven drinks in me before it had even started to get crowded. Eventually, it had been wall to wall people, and everyone had been practically standing on top of each other. Some blonde chick had been plastered to my side before I had pushed her off of me.

  Forcing myself to pay the piper, I sat up on the edge of the bed and looked down at myself. Naked.

  Naked and hungover.

  It reminded me of the first night I’d met Allie. She woke up exactly like this the next day … in a foreign place … wearing nothing but her birthday suit … and as hungover as I’d ever seen her since. At the time, I’d perversely enjoyed watching her in misery. However, when I looked back on it now, it brought a different kind of smile to my face. She’d tried to seem so confident, waltzing by me, wearing not a stitch of clothing and casually asking if I knew where her clothes were. But I’d seen through her façade. She had been mad as hell at herself.

  Just like I was now. I groaned and walked to the window. I looked out at the city before me. This was my dream, and yet it felt all wrong. This city wasn’t me. It was fake and pretentious, and I didn’t want any part of it.

  This wasn’t paradise. Of course, I hadn’t thought of Manhattan as paradise either … until Allie came along. It was too big and too cold. The people were distant and more self-absorbed than the Texans I’d known my whole life.

  But Allie had changed all that. Or maybe she’d just changed my perception of my surroundings. Whatever it was, after three years of living there, Manhattan had finally become my home.

  Thinking about Allie made me wonder again if I’d done anything the night before that was unforgiveable. I crossed the room and pulled my phone out of the back pocket of the jeans lying in a heap on the floor. I scanned through my phone, looking for any evidence of my debauchery from the night before. Luckily, there were no pictures and no outgoing texts. The only things on my phone from the night before were the text from Ethan and two missed calls and a voicemail from Burke.

  I knew what Ethan wanted, but I was more concerned about what’s gotten into Burke. It was unusual for Burke to call me. Two calls and a voicemail could mean the end of days. When we had to talk to each other, we did so through text or over a beer. We weren’t ones to sit around and chat over the phone, and we certainly didn’t leave each other voicemails.

  Just as I started to text him back, my phone vibrated in my hand. I halfway expected it to be Burke or Ethan again, but it wasn’t. “Hey, Mom,” I said.

  “Hey, how was your interview?” she asked, cutting right to the chase.

  I headed into the bathroom, hoping there would be some sort of complimentary kit in there that included some painkillers. I needed more than a few. “It was good, but I’ll be heading home later today.”

  “That’s good,” she said cautiously. “But did you get the job?”

  “I think I probably did, but I don’t think I want it.”

  “Oh, why not?” she asked, her tone instantly becoming lighter.

  “I don’t think I’m L.A. material,” I said, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror and wishing for a second that I was somewhere else … talking to someone else.

  “So what are you going to do instead? Go back to New York?”

  “Nah, I need to go back to take my finals and finish things up at school, but my professors said that under the circumstances I could do it after the first of the year.
No. I’m going to move back to Dallas.” I had just made up my mind.

  “I knew you would come back,” she said gleefully. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to leave me.”

  Something about what she’d just said didn’t sit well with me. “What do you mean, Mom?” I asked hesitantly and then with more force, “What do you mean ‘you knew I wouldn’t be able to leave you?’”

  “Oh, you know. I just meant that you belong at home with me. You can work for Warren again. We can go back to the way it was before you left for school.”

  Warren.

  “Now, what happened with Aileen last week … she brought that on herself,” he had said. “She knew the consequences. Did she do it because she was upset? Maybe. Did she do it because she was mad? Maybe.”

  Holy hell. “Mom, did you do all this on purpose?”

  “What are you talking about?” she said indignantly. “Did I do what on purpose?”

  “I know you think you knocked her off the wagon and ran over her with it, but you didn’t. She made the choice. She decided to throw all those years of sobriety down the drain. She knew what she was doing.”

  “The overdose, Mom. Did you do it on purpose?” I held my breath while I waited for her to answer.

  “Adam, I can’t believe you’d even ask me that,” she answered. But her voice didn’t convey shock or indignation at my accusation. She sounded nervous.

  “Not one single day of her life has she ever put you first. Her needs have always come first. Always. You know this. I know this. She knows it, too.”

  Warren had already figured her out. He had given me everything I needed to put it together myself, but I’d been blind.

  “You did,” I breathed into the phone. “You set me up. You did it so that I would break up with her. You knew that I’d feel guilty and I would blame myself.”

  “That’s just absurd,” she said. Her act was getting better, but I wasn’t buying any of it.

  “I’m done,” I said, my voice hard and cold. “I will always make sure that you’re taken care of, but you will never play me for a fool again.”

  “Adam,” she said, just as coldly. “You won’t ever walk away from me. You can’t. We’re bound together, you and I. Joy did that.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Mom, but Joy’s dead. She’s not holding us together any more. I was the one holding us together, and I’m not going to do it anymore.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “I’m going home. Tell Warren I said, ‘I’m going home.’” I hung up before she could say anything else.

  I looked at myself again in the mirror, and for the first time in weeks I was happy with the man looking back at me. I ran my hand through my hair and down the back of my neck. My hangover was miraculously gone. I felt cured except for an itch on my back.

  I reached over my right shoulder and scratched it only to wince in pain. What the hell was wrong with my back? I twisted in the mirror and caught a glimpse of something black and slightly greasy back there. I twisted a little more and let out a sharp laugh.

  On my right shoulder was a new tattoo of a solid black cat. Its back was arched like one of those cats you see on Halloween decorations. A full moon behind the cat created a line between its legs. Together, the arch of the cat’s underside and the line of the moon made a perfect ‘A’.

  It was time to go home now and see if my Allie Cat would take me back or if she had given up on me. If she didn’t forgive me, Burke would never let me live down my new Allie Cat tattoo.

  _________________________

  It wasn’t until I was at the airport, waiting for my flight to be called, and my phone rang that I remembered that I still hadn’t talked to Burke.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all night. It’s Allie. Are you sitting down?”

  “Yeah,” I said, my heart thumping wildly in my chest.

  “She was walking home from work late last night and was jumped.”

  What? What was he talking about? “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “It was late, man. Some dude jumped her between the office and your apartment. She’s going to be okay, but she’s in pretty bad shape.” He paused, and I thought I heard him cover the phone and laugh.

  “Are you laughing?” I asked.

  “No, man, I’m not … well, you’ll see.”

  “Did he … is she ….” Surely not or he wouldn’t be laughing if …

  “No, man. Nothing like that. He just beat the hell out of her and took her purse. But she’s really shaken up. I thought you should know.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “She’s at your place. Carly’s with her. I think Ethan’s out hunting for the motherfucker, that crazy bastard. He’s positively livid.”

  I was, too, and, I couldn’t get home fast enough.

  It was the longest and most productive flight of my life.

  CHAPTER 22

  Alexis

  “Someone’s here to see you,” Carly said, sitting gently on the side of the bed.

  “I don’t want to see anyone,” I said, pulling the pillow over my face.

  “I think you might this time,” she said in a singsong voice.

  “For the love of God and all that is holy, look at me, Carly. I don’t want to see anyone for at least a week. And definitely not until I’ve seen a dentist.”

  “You’re gorgeous just the way you are,” she said.

  “No. I’m not,” I snorted through the pillow. “I’m hideous.”

  “There’s no way that the most beautiful girl in the world could ever look hideous,” said a voice that I hadn’t heard in far too long. “Now let me see your beautiful face.”

  I pulled the pillow down just far enough to uncover my eyes and craned my neck to get a better view.

  He was back, and the smile on his face told me that he might be planning on sticking around. The smile on mine told me that I just might let him.

  Adam

  “Well I’ll just leave you guys to catch up,” Carly said. I stepped into the room to let her pass, and she closed the door behind her to give us some privacy.

  As I took Carly’s place on the bed, Allie covered up her face again and rolled away so that her back was to me. I barely caught a glimpse of her and only from the eyes up, but could already tell that Burke had been right. She was in pretty bad shape. “Are you speaking to me?” I asked.

  “Sort of,” A muffled voice said from beneath the pillow.

  “I’ll take sort of. Scoot,” I said, tapping her on the back. She whimpered a little as she scooted over to the middle of the bed, and I made a note not to make her move again. I lay down behind her, as close as I could get without actually touching her. I wasn’t sure where the safe spots were or if there were any. I lightly traced a finger along her side, from her hip to her waist, and she shivered beneath the blanket. “I’m just going to talk, okay? I’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

  Her response was muffled and indistinguishable, but I took it as permission to proceed since she hadn’t kicked me out of bed. Actually, she was being pretty agreeable, considering the giant ass I’d been over the last few weeks.

  “I got your email.” She stiffened beneath my light touch. “I’m sorry I didn’t respond. I didn’t know how to at first. I didn’t want to make any more promises I couldn’t keep. I’d broken enough already. But I shouldn’t have abandoned you.”

  “Just … you … me.”

  “What?” I asked, in reply to her broken response.

  She tossed the pillow aside and turned her face toward the bed. “I just wanted you to talk to me. You shut me out. I had no way of knowing what you were thinking or if you were okay.”

  “I know,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done that, but I thought it would be easier on you in the long run.”

  “Easier on me because you were going to leave me.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I didn’t know.”


  “But you’re here now. Why are you here?”

  “I’m going to take care of you.”

  She laughed. It was a dry, brittle laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. “I don’t need you to take care of me. I don’t need you to swoop in here and save the day. And I don’t want you here out of pity.”

  “Allie …. I’m not here out of pity.”

  “Aren’t you though? I haven’t heard a word from you in three days. And then you hear that I’ve been attacked, and suddenly you’re here. Adam to the rescue. You’re good at that, right?”

  I winced. “I’m not here to rescue you. I was already at the airport, coming home to you when I heard. It did make for a very long flight though.”

  “You were?” she asked. “Why? What changed?”

  “Let’s just say I had an epiphany of sorts. And a priority check.”

  “That’s funny. I had one of those recently. But that’s neither here nor there,” she said absently. “You weren’t wrong to make your mom your first priority. She needed you. Nobody would disagree with that.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said. “But I recently learned that wasn’t the case.”

  “I need more,” she said, fidgeting beneath the covers.

  “It was intentional, Allie. The overdose. It was just a ploy to get me to come home.”

  “What?” she asked, glancing sharply over her shoulder and giving me a second glimpse at her face.

  The eye turned toward me was black. The skin across her cheek red with road rash. It made my blood boil to see her like this. It must have shown because she twisted away from me again and tucked her face into the bed.

  “She did. She all but admitted it to me. I was such an idiot, too, thinking that walking away from you was what I needed to do.”