Standing, I wait for the ground to settle beneath my feet and take my first step toward her.
Chapter Two
Cora
When your cousin asks you to be her maid of honor, you accept, even if the thought of it makes you want to vomit, not because you don’t love your cousin, but because the idea of happily-ever-fucking-after is a joke you’ve been sold one too many times. Worse than that, looking at your cousin makes you want to believe in it and that just pisses you off all over again.
Despite how nauseous the whole idea makes me, I watch Mia as she readies for her big day and I can’t help but be just a little envious of her. She has it; if ever someone has a chance at happily ever after, it’s her. And she deserves it. Maybe this is one of those times that justice actually comes to those who deserve it and Mia, the nicest, most giving person I’ve ever known is getting hers in the form of finding someone who loves her beyond all bounds. And maybe that’s why mine has never worked out; I don’t have a nice bone in my body, and rehabilitated or not, I’m no better a person sober and celibate than I was drunk and promiscuous. Drunk just gave me an excuse.
“You okay?” Mia asks me and I nod. No way I’m going to tell her that being at a party two days before her wedding is making me want to find a razor and end it. Or just end those people around me; I’m not really big on self-harm, but I have been known to fuck up a few of those people around me. Hence the rehab.
“The question is not if I’m okay, Cousin, the question is if you’re okay. We’re closing in on your last days of freedom, any wild wishes you need to live out before the big day?”
She laughs and shakes her head before sipping from her drink, her first and I’m betting only for the night. Yep, where she’s a poster child of self-control, I’m the opposite. Eleven months clean and I still think about taking a quick drink, finding an easy mark who’s looking for the same thing and checking out for a few hours because it’s nicer in the dark than it is in the world.
But the world always comes back, I remind myself, and when it comes back after a night of overindulgence, it’s a lot uglier than it was when you checked out in the first place, and so’s the person you wake up with. So, instead of giving in to my urges to drown myself in a bottle and/or a body, I grab some water and sip from it, keeping an eye on Mia as she watches the door for her betrothed while scanning the room and observing those people around me.
As expected, there are more girls than guys, but that’s because we travel in packs. Well, most of us. I never have. Mia has been my one and only true friend since we were little and as I was growing up I thought that was okay. Other girls were the enemy, my competition, the person who stood in between me and whoever I wanted and so I rejected them, making sure to stay alone. Now, at almost a year sober and celibate, I’m realizing that connections and relationships are necessary in order to live. I can’t explain why except that without people, I want to find that dark hole and sink. It’s Mia’s who’s pulled me out time and again since our freshman year of college, when I decided I was going to be the person my mom always thought I was, but Mia wouldn’t let me sink all of the way. At the end of our sophomore year, she’d had enough and sent me to rehab, a thirty day detox where she visited me every chance she was allowed. Not because she wanted to check on me, but because she wanted me to know that I wasn’t alone.
Then I transferred cities, moved to San Diego to work and move in with her. For the past year she’s been my backbone, my base, and now it’s time that I stood for her. In two days, she’s marrying her first and only love, and I’m going to stand there in the champagne dress she’s picked for me and smile even if it kills me. For Mia, I can do it, even if I’m still learning how to be strong for myself.
When my eyes meet the dark brown ones across the room, I’m surprised to feel the small jolt of electricity. Interesting, is my first thought. And dangerous. I was in the game long enough to know a train wreck when I see one, and this gorgeous package has CRASH written all over him.
From his seated position I can’t tell his entire height, but I’ve assessed enough men in my life to know it’s more than most of the guys here, an easy six-four or six-five. I take in his shaggy brown hair that screams baseball player with its curling ends and sun lightened spots that my trained eye knows are less calculated than those from a stylist. His skin is olive, darkened to a bronze from what I can see on his arms, arms that carry one distinct swirl of black ink on the inside, but its shape I can’t tell.
When Brown Eyes sets his drink aside and stands, I wonder if it’s smart to be looking at him. When he starts over to where I’m standing, I go from wondering to knowing it’s a mistake to keep my eyes on his, and yet, I don’t look away. For the first time since I got out of rehab, I’m tempted by the opposite sex. I’m not thinking of safe and healthy, I’m not even thinking of alcohol, which is usually where my temptation comes from. I’m thinking of his skin, warmed and golden from the sun, and how it would feel against my much paler skin, which suddenly feels cold as I look at him. I want explosions, mind numbing explosions and warmth, touch and feeling, cravings that remind me I’m still alive.
And that line of thinking is what sent me to rehab in the first place. Straightening my shoulders, I bring myself up to my impressive five-nine and meet Brown Eyes head on as he stops in front of me.
“Name,” he says in a voice that’s low and scratchy, like he hasn’t used it in a significant amount of time and he isn’t happy about using it now. Shivers break out on my arms and I think well done. And then I remember that the girl I used to be is the one who would have responded to that in under twenty seconds, had his shirt off in double that. I’m different now, because Mia believed I could be and because I want to be, deep down underneath all of this stuff and these feelings, I want to be different, too. Uh-uh, Cora, I tell myself. Explosions are only so fun, especially when someone else is lighting the fuse.
Thinking that I need control so this doesn’t get out of hand, I raise my brow. “You first.”
Life Interrupted Page 28