Pretty Daring

by Jenn Hype

  Why am I telling you this long ass backstory? So you understand why it made me so angry to stay away from my refuge, my baby, the business I’d built from the ground up. The one piece of my life that made sense, that I was in control of, was the place I was avoiding. Because of her.

  Which was why my bad mood was understandable as I made my way up the steps to the door of my childhood home. Bypassing the knock, I let myself in. The usual smell of my mother’s home cooking wafted my way. I breathed deep, closing my eyes and letting the comfort that accompanied the smell wash over me.

  “There you are!” My eyes opened just before my mother smacked me with a dishtowel. “You’re late!”

  Her voice was stern but her eyes were soft.

  “How’s dad?”

  “In the den, watching the game.”

  “Anything I can help you with in the kitchen?”

  Asking was a formality. Mom never let anyone do anything in her kitchen, but I always offered. We all had chores growing up, and helping with cooking and clean up was one of them. Once we all grew up and moved out, though, we no longer had access to the kitchen without permission. She was a born nurturer, and doing the cooking and cleanup was her way of taking care of us in one of the few ways she still could. Even my sisters, who were almost as good at cooking as our mom, weren’t allowed to so much as stir the gravy.

  “Biscuits are in the oven, Momma Rose!”

  Out of my mother’s kitchen, with powder on her nose and forehead and a smile on her face, came Blake. She had an oven mitt on each hand and an apron tied around her neck. There, in the home where I grew up, was the woman I’d been avoiding for days.

  “Is a man no longer entitled to some privacy anymore?” I asked no one in particular.

  Blake smiled sweetly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Mom waved away her apology. “Nonsense. You weren’t interrupting anything. I was just about to ask CJ to take you out back and show you around the property. The girls can help me finish up dinner.”

  Warning bells didn’t just go off in my head - they fucking exploded. Not only had my mom obviously invited Blake to dinner and neglected to tell me, she was sending us outside under the guise of having my sisters help cook dinner. Even though we all knew she wouldn’t let them step foot in there. Yet, Blake had obviously been helping. The only conclusion was that mom was up to something. That, or I’d stepped into the fucking twilight zone, but my mom scheming sounded more likely.

  Per my mother’s orders, I took Blake out back to show her mom’s garden. A few minutes of awkward silence later, Blake bent down to finger the petals of a purple flower. I couldn’t even guess as to what kind it was, but the way Blake touched it with such delicacy and studied it like it were the most beautiful flower she’d ever seen, I found myself wishing I knew something - anything - about it, so I could impress her.

  Not that I wanted to impress her. Fuck. Did I want to impress her?

  “Your mom likes to garden, I take it?” She asked when she stood back up, grinning ruefully.

  I laughed. “What gave it away?”

  Blake took her time spinning in a full circle, slowly taking in the massive backyard my mom had converted into something that looked more like a botanical garden than almost two acres of land in a rural part of New York.

  “Hmm, just a guess.”

  She winked and I felt my muscles relax. Even though we were outside, I didn’t realize how thick the air had become, how much I was struggling to get a full breath. As much as Blake drove me insane, there was something undeniably calming about her too. It was the weirdest combination, not knowing from one second to the next what kind of reaction she would elicit from me.

  From there we continued to walk in silence, but it no longer felt strained. Blake would stop and bend down to inspect something closer, and I would stand patiently with my hands tucked into my pockets, just watching her absorb every minute detail. Watching her was fascinating. My mom worked tirelessly in her garden and it took her years to cultivate it to the point it was at. And sure, I recognized that it was pretty and well kept, but I didn’t appreciate it like my mom did. They were just…plants. Some of them colorful.

  “You know a lot about flowers?” I asked dumbly.

  Blake’s lips twitched. “Not a lot, but some. My mom gardens, and she tried to pass on her green thumb to me but I always took more to the activities I did with daddy. Michelle, my sister,” she clarified, “She’s a lot more like mom. It surprised us all when she moved all the way out here to go to school. We’d all expected her to get married young and start popping out babies, doing the whole white picket fence thing. I mean, she’s wicked smart and college was always her plan, but I still thought she’d go somewhere closer to home.”

  Her voice grew distant, and I waited while she stared off. Eventually, she shook her head and seemed to find her way back to the present.

  “Anyway, she’s the reason I’m here. Four months ago her asshole boyfriend beat the shit out of her. He might have killed her if her roommate hadn’t come home early. I flew out here and stayed with her the whole two weeks she was in the ICU. There was so much swelling in her brain, they didn’t know if she’d ever wake up. But my sister is a fighter, and to look at her now, you’d never know anything even happened.”

  I was surprised she’d confided in me something that seemed so private. My instinct was to change the subject to something less heavy, but I was supposed to be winning her over, right? That was the whole plan? A plan I was totally failing at, seeing as how I’d been avoiding her. And I’d never gotten around to asking Reed for help. But I was there now, so why not take advantage? It wasn’t like I actually wanted to get to know her or anything.

  “Is she doing okay now?”

  Blake laughed humorlessly. “She refuses to let me tell our parents. Says she doesn’t want to burden them. I tell her she’s being stupid, she gets mad and we argue. Since moving here from Nashville, it’s become an argument we have often. For the rest of the world, she puts on a brave face, but I know she’s just stuffing her pain deep inside so she doesn’t have to deal with it. Focuses on school and tries to change the subject whenever I bring it up. But she’s jumpy and skittish. Not in an obvious way, but I’m her sister - she can’t hide it from me.”

  “Is he in prison?” I asked as we sat down on a white ceramic bench that looked nice but was seriously painful to sit on.

  “The piece of shit is in jail, yeah, but it’s going to trial. I hate that she’ll have to face him again, but maybe once he’s behind bars permanently she’ll be able to really move on.” She bent one leg under the other at the knee and propped her elbow on the back of the bench as she turned to face me. “Do you know if all those rumors about prison are true? I was hoping he’d wind up being the bottom bitch of some burly guy named Theo who used to be a motorcycle gang leader.”

  I threw my head back and barked out a laugh. “You say some seriously crazy shit, you know that?”

  Blake grinned crookedly. “I know, it’s both a blessing and a curse.”

  “Dinner’s ready!”

  We both stood and headed towards the house, but just before we reached the door, Blake touched my arm and I stopped. Her eyes searched mine and she bit her lip nervously.

  “Please don’t say anything to anyone about what I just told you. I-I’ve never talked about it to anyone, and I guess I just needed to get some of it out, but it would hurt Michelle to know I repeated it.”

  I swallowed past the lump in my throat. She trusted me with something she hadn’t trusted anyone else with. That was a heavy responsibility, and not one I was a stranger to, but it was definitely affecting me differently than normal. Something akin to pride swelled in my chest. I’d given Blake no reason to trust me, yet she did anyway. And fuck if I didn’t want to prove she could.

  By the time we made it back inside, all traces of Blake’s melancholy from just moments ago were gone. She smiled so brightly it lit up the room
, and she chatted easily with mom about the garden and flowers and other such boring nonsense.

  “How’s business?” Dad asked me, tearing my attention away from Blake who was blushing after getting a compliment from mom.

  “Booming. The office end of things is falling into disarray because we’re always out in the field. That’s why I hired Blake. Need someone to pick up the slack for us.”

  Blake looked over at the sound of her name and I winked. Why? Fuck if I know. Winking wasn’t in my repertoire, but fuck if I didn’t like the way she blushed in response. In the few interactions I’d had with her, Blake always seemed totally comfortable in her own skin. Embarrassment? It seemed out of character for her. Then again, what the hell did I know? I’d never spent so much time trying to figure someone out. How had I gone from completely annoyed with her unexpected presence at my mom’s to wondering what I could do to make her cheeks turn pink again?

  Speaking of pink…

  That rosy look that was only tinting her cheeks a second ago had turned tomato red. And was spreading. All I could do was stare. It was fucking bizarre, watching the red spread down her throat, over her chest and onto her shoulders. It wasn’t until I looked back up to her face that I noticed the swelling. It was subtle, but it was there, and it was getting worse.

  “Oh my God!”

  Mom jumped into action. Blake had no idea what was happening, apparently, because she just sat there looking confused. Dad was already grabbing the car keys and rushing Blake out the door while mom gathered our things and followed outside. I, on the other hand, was pretty much useless. Though I did manage to hold Blake’s hand the entire ten minute drive to the hospital. She smiled shyly at me, but didn’t pull away.

  The receptionist that greeted us as soon as we stepped into the ER took one look at Blake’s face and sprung into action. Dozens of people were sitting around, waiting to be seen and throwing us dirty looks when Blake was immediately ushered through the double doors. If I hadn’t been so worried about her, I would have taken the time to flip them all off. They could obviously see how bad of shape she was in, and half of them were playing on their phones. Obviously they weren’t dealing with a life or death situation.

  A doctor came in and asked Blake a barrage of questions while a nurse hooked her up to an IV and heart monitor. Her tongue was swelling rapidly and soon all talking was done and the small, curtained-off room became a flurry of chaos. Mom, dad and myself were all kicked out of the room, but not before I heard the doctor say something about her oxygen levels being dangerously low and her heart rate slowing. The last thing I saw before the curtain was yanked into place was the doctor jamming a needle into Blake’s upper arm.

  CHAPTER NINE

  BLAKE

  “I’m not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.”

  - Alice in Wonderland

  “You’re pretty,” I slurred as I petted CJ’s face in the back of the cab we were sharing. Once the doctors gave me a massive dose of Benadryl, the allergic reaction I was having started going away immediately. I was instructed to see an allergist to find out exactly what it was that caused the reaction, so that was on my to-do list for later. Luckily, they’d given me all this information on my paperwork when I was discharged. I’d been pumped so full of meds that I could barely see straight. No way in hell would I remember all the little details when I finally came down from my medicinal high.

  “You know it’s extremely emasculating to call a man pretty, right?”

  CJ gripped my hand and pulled it away from his face. I wanted to climb in his lap and kiss the crap out of him, but he’d thwarted all my sexual advances in the last hour. And there had been a ton. I’d be all sorts of ashamed when I woke up tomorrow, but whatever cocktail they’d given me at the hospital was stronger than anything of which I’d ever been under the influence. And whatever it was made me horny as hell. Well, horny for CJ, anyway.

  My common sense was somewhere inside of me, telling me to abort mission. If the first twenty attempts to seduce him didn’t work, then continuing to do it was only going to make things really uncomfortable later. Unfortunately, that niggling voice was much too quiet to be heard over my roaring sex drive. Even totally sober I had a hard time not giving in to my attraction to CJ. Him being a giant jerk and making his dislike of me so apparent always helped. But for the last three hours he’d sat by my side, held my hand and taken care of me. He didn’t have to do that. I even told him to go home about a dozen times, but he always insisted on staying.

  How the hell was I supposed to resist him after that?

  After trying to grope him a third time, CJ wrapped his arms around my body and held me against him in a giant bear hug. It worked in keeping my hands from straying. It did little to tamp down my growing affection toward him. However, without the distraction of trying to get into CJ’s pants, I was left to reflect on how incredibly stupid I felt. Not that some random allergy I wasn’t aware of causing my face to swell and my body to turn so red it looked like I was glowing was my fault, but still. Talk about being seen at your worst. And CJ had been such a trooper about it. Not once did he mock me or take pictures for blackmail. He just sat quietly by my side, there for moral support. As my boss? My friend? My potential future lover?

  What the hell did I even want him to be?

  CJ helped me upstairs when we reached our apartment building, but by that point I was sobering up quickly. Embarrassment will do that to a person - suck all the fun right out of a situation. Awkward goodbyes were given when we reached our doors, and after reassuring him ten times that I could manage on my own and didn’t need him to accompany me inside, I was finally alone. I slumped against the wall and slid down to my butt. Then banged my head against it a few times for good measure. I honestly couldn’t decide if I wanted to laugh or cry. My lips and eyes still felt a little puffy and my skin was itchy, but for the most part, I was back to normal.

  I wanted to call Michelle and tell her what happened at Rose’s, and then subsequently, the ER, but she was in a class. She’d also told me earlier that she’d be going straight from class to a study group and then had to cram for a big exam. She would probably be pissed at me for not letting her know about the whole debacle right away, but I wasn’t going to distract her. School was important to Michelle and she didn’t need to be worrying about me when I was completely fine.

  I wished I had a friend to call. Someone who could bring a bottle of wine and ice cream and make me laugh it off, but I had no one.

  Once again I was struck with the reality that I hadn’t made any friends yet. Sure, I’d become kinda friends with the guys at work, but they were guys. It was different. And it’d only been a week. None of them had girlfriends, either. How the hell does one make friends in a new city?

  Friends were hard for me in general. The whole reason I was such an extrovert was because of how hard it was to make friends. I learned early in life just how difficult it was to be myself without fear of rejection. Something everyone struggles with, I know. But rejection for me stung a little deeper than it did for other people, from what I could tell. As I got older, it got especially difficult. I gravitated towards the outcasts and loners. Standing by and watching someone else suffer from loneliness or get picked on for being different just didn’t sit well with me.

  The problem with that? No one wants a pity friend. My friendship wasn’t out of pity, but it seemed to always be taken that way. For a long time I looked like the popular kids. We weren’t rich, but we were upper-middle class and lived comfortably. Before I started branching out and finding myself, I just dressed like my peers because it was easiest. It was all I knew. Only I couldn’t help but be drawn to the ones who stood out from the crowd, even if negatively. Teenagers are mean little shits, but some of these kids took it and never complained. They didn’t change who they were to try and fit in, they just took the looks and occasional insults tossed their way and kept right on moving.

  I wanted that
for myself. I just didn’t know how to get it. So I tried time and again to befriend the ones sitting apart from the rest, only to be rejected just the same. It felt like I didn’t fit in anywhere. Why was it so hard to find friends who would accept me as I am? Most days it felt like conformity was the only way to avoid a lonely existence. But I didn’t want to conform. To anything. I didn’t want to be just one thing. My interests were vast and limiting myself to one or a few of them felt suffocating.

  My way of adapting was to take on a larger-than-life approach. Instead of easing myself into a friendship and letting my true self become visible in small increments, I just threw it all out there from the start. It was so much simpler. Investing time, energy and effort into someone only to watch them walk away when they realized just how big your personality was made it hurt so much more. Exposing myself immediately and giving them the opportunity to leave before I became attached lessened the ache. Not a lot, but enough to make it tolerable.

  So far my bold approach hadn’t exactly worked. I’d made some fun friends over the years, but none that lasted. People tended not to stick around where I was concerned. That’s why Michelle’s decision to move to New York for college had hurt so badly. And why I’d so easily decided to move here with her. Except it wasn’t me and Michelle against the world like it had been before. She had a life, friends, classes. I was happy for her. Truly, I was. But this time was harder than school. Kids were jerks, but you had a pool of people to choose from. People who had no choice but to spend time with you. Built-in friends. In the city, I was one of a million. It felt like everyone around me had a purpose, a goal, a plan for their lives.

  I had copious amounts of free time and nothing to do with it. Awesome.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t want to be alone in my apartment, depressing myself by reflecting on my pathetic existence.

  Jeez, these drugs make me melodramatic.