“What’s it matter to you if she fucks us? You didn’t want her, threw her out like trash.”
“No shit. And the slut still defends you. But pathetic bitches always need someone to take care of them. Think I’ll be that guy.”
My gut twists with every word uttered. On the outside, I just stand there and appear to let their words blow over me like fluffs of worthless noise. Inside, I can’t breathe.
First Stretch’s strange statement about things not being what I think they are. Then the guys telling me, in detail exactly what they’ll do to Celia. And after that, telling me how much of a fucking moron I am for everything.
But how can I trust? How do I know who is actually playing me? Is it all a bunch of lies meant to throw me off? Or has Celia really gone behind my back? She’d flirted non-stop with some of the guys. And they all saw her at one time or another at work. But then again, Hayley had said the same and was proven to be a liar.
Fuck if I know anything anymore.
I stay until the winner is announced, Fife, who has taken extreme pleasure in dogging on me lately, and then head home. Except I don’t make it there. Instead I find myself standing outside Cecelia’s apartment. It’s late. Real late. Ricky, Celia’s roommate is probably sleeping. Or fucking someone and I really don’t want to see that. Still.
Knocking, hard, I wait for movement behind the door. I silently pray to see Celia standing there, one of my holier shirts draping her frame, as she glares at me for waking her up. I’d even take her slamming the door in my face in her fury if it means I can see her. But when the door is yanked open, the pissed off grumble comes from a nearly naked Ricky, his dark skin slick with a sheen of sweat. I don’t even want to know what he’s been doing.
“What the fuck do you want?” he demands and then grimaces at the sight of me. “Oh. It’s you. What do you want?”
“Is Celia here?”
He looks me up and down, no doubt checking me out. I don’t bother to see if he has any kind of reaction to me even though it would be fairly fucking obvious with him only wearing fucking briefs.
“Why should I tell you?”
“You don’t like me, I don’t like you. But I ca…I just want to know if she’s here.” I catch myself. I care about Celia. That’s true. But I don’t know my real feelings anymore. Not after feeling like everything we had was tossed away.
“Like I told you the last several times, she ain’t here. Hasn’t been here and honestly, at this rate, I’m wondering if she’s coming back.” He crosses his arms over his chest, jutting a hip out. There’s a deep frown on his face as he appears to consider something. “Okay, I’m only going to say this once, so suck it all up. It’s not like her to not let me know what’s going on. Especially with rent due and all. Cece has always been very good at keeping up. She don’t play games, and despite her taste in men,” he gripes at me again, “she’s a good girl. So whatever happened, I got a feeling its bad. I’m half a step from calling the cops.”
“Why haven’t you?”
“I figured, being that you her man, you already had,” he answers. I cock my head in confusion and that makes Ricky huff in frustration. “You may be pretty, but you are a real prick. You two are always together. In the beginning I figured she was just with you. When she wasn’t, I figured, well, if she hangs around with you so much, maybe you care something for her, so you’d make sure she was okay. Clearly my initial thoughts on you were correct since you haven’t bothered.”
“We haven’t been together, for some time now,” I tell him and he seems shocked by this.
“Well, I’m hoping she wised up and dumped your pathetic ass,” he snarks at me. “But I got me a feeling it was you who did the dumping. Hopefully, wherever she is, she’s better off.”
He closes the door in my face after that. I hear the lock click over and his grumbling slowly trail off as he walks back toward his bedroom.
My heart lumps in my throat.
She’s not at home. Hasn’t been for a long time.
Where is she?
Where could she have gone?
How am I supposed to fix this?
More to the point, what am I supposed to fix?
Her possible betrayal still gleams in my mind’s eye. The flirting. The chance she really did mess around. The way she never really denied it. Actually catching her with fucking Frankie. It’s all there playing on a constant loop that I can’t seem to shut off.
But what if it’s not true? Then what?
Cecelia nearly killed Hayley for what she’d done. Wouldn’t that mean she hadn’t betrayed me? Kicking the wall, I head away from the apartment, rushing down the stairs and out into the warm night. I’m confused. Hurt. And so fucking angry still, I literally see red.
On the off chance Ricky is lying to me, I camp out near Celia’s apartment building. If I’m not working, I’m watching her building for any sign of her presence. After three days, when I realize I’m not being lied to by her roommate, I try to wrack my brain with other places in the city Celia could be.
Due to our lack of extravagant funds, we don’t – or didn’t – really do a whole lot. We don’t, or well, we didn’t see movies or go to concerts. We don’t have a bar – not that I’d go in one anyhow – or diner we hang out at. No spots to have ever called our own.
I know she works with a woman who she’s known for several years now, who has helped her with jobs and stuff. Melody has been her friend for almost as long as we’ve been in Chicago. They were waitresses starting out in the same skeezy places and bonded.
Only problem, I don’t know much more about Melody.
I don’t know where she lives, what she looks like other than she has fiery red hair or even her last name to look her up.
Though we’ve made acquaintances in the city, neither of us has really made true friends since we’ve gotten here. Neither of us has allowed a deeper connection, or a broader level of trust with another person. We relied, perhaps far too heavily, on one another. Or maybe it’s as simple as understanding how tumultuous those connections are when our own parents severed them so easily.
The irony is not lost on me about our own frayed association.
Regardless, I know nothing of Celia’s life away from my own.
This strikes me two ways. First, did she have relationships, friendships I don’t know about? If so, why hide them from me? We were supposed to be best friends. No, we were closer than that. Closer than even boyfriend and girlfriend. We may have never said the words, but what we were…it was everything. I didn’t keep anything from her, so I don’t understand why she would keep something from me. Especially if it is as simple as who her friends are.
And this makes me again question again the ease with which she could hurt me like she did.
The second thought that strikes actually depresses me. Because what if I never learned of her relationships or friendships simply because she has none? Though she lives with Ricky, they are not friends. They are roommates. It’s a business venture. They respect each other insofar as to take care of their portion of the bill. And truthfully, she met him through an apartment roommate search anyhow, the same way I’d met Frankie and Brock.
Cecelia has mentioned Melody frequently. They are friendly. They have a mutual respect for one another, help each other out. They have worked shitty jobs, sticking together to make the best of them. I’ve never met this girl though. Why is that? Celia has met those I associate with. She’s on a first name basis with them. Yet, I’ve never been permitted to meet those she knows.
If it really is only Melody, well, I don’t really want to think about that.
The isolation, loneliness, though not my own forces a fissure into my heart.
The only possibility I can come up with, the one I don’t want to be true, no matter how much she hurt me – if all the rumours are true – is that she’s lost.
I hate the idea of it. But I can’t help but feel, deep in my gut, deep in the place my fear lives, that this, this is why I haven�
�t been able to find her. Why I haven’t seen her. Why no one has. And for this not to be true, I find myself talking to a God I don’t really know exists, begging for her to be safe. Clean.
Alive…
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Look for And The Sweet, the dramatic conclusion to the Addictions Series, released November 2016.
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The Bitter
By Delilah Frost
First Edition. June 21st, 2016
Copyright © 2016 Delilah Frost
For Luna Raya Books.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase authorized editions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Bitter (Addiction #1) Page 21