Thrive

by Krista Ritchie

  “The world is never going to understand us,” he tells me, his eyes so impassioned that I can’t look away. “But it doesn’t matter, Lil. We have each other, and I get your pain, I understand how badly it hurts, so I need you to block out the other people today, okay? They don’t exist in our world.”

  Our world.

  There is no going back to a life with just Loren Hale. Even though it’s harder to have real friends, real connections with other people, it’s the right thing. But it’s what causes so, so much agony inside. Every day in their presence, we stare at reflections of what we should be and know that we can never become them.

  My shoulders relax, and I whisper, “Do we have superpowers in our world?”

  “Yeah,” he says, “but you’re not invisible.”

  Damn.

  “What can I do then?”

  “Fly,” he says, “with me.” He lifts me up quickly, onto his back like we always do. And he races towards a door, my hair blowing behind me. My lips rise in a weak smile.

  He says, “Want to get lost with me in a palace?”

  I rest my chin on his shoulder, a couple tears dripping but they come from a fuller place in my heart. “Yes.”

  It’s a good kind of yes. The best kind.

  One filled with a thousand I love yous, the type of love that can make you fly.

  { 38 }

  1 year : 00 months

  August

  LOREN HALE

  Her lips swell underneath the pressure of mine, her fingers clenching my light brown hair, yanking hard. I slam her back into the bedroom wall. Our bedroom. Our wall.

  She reaches out for stability, her fingers finding the wooden edge of our dresser. My cock deepens in between her legs, and she lets out a sharp, ragged breath followed by a cry of pleasure. I kiss her strongly as I rock against her, and her body spasms with pleasure. Her hand slides, knocking a lamp to the floor.

  The crash is barely audible.

  My head bursts with light, overcome with her body, her sounds, and the emotions that we exchange through our lips. I never want to stop kissing her like this, while I’m full inside of her, our pulses in sync and this desperate urgency pumping our blood.

  I don’t stop. The intensity smashes into me, black and white spots dancing in my vision. Nerves that I didn’t know existed explode, and my movements become hungrier, harder, eking out every ounce of energy she has left.

  I hold the back of her head, pushing up into her over and over. Our lips are so close that our noses brush.

  “Lo,” she cries out. She tries to grab onto the dresser again, but her hand, slick with sweat, glides right off.

  In a heavy grunt, I say, “Up.” I lift both her thighs higher over my waist and let go to brace a hand on the wall, pinning her with my body.

  Her legs limply slide right back to the floor. “I…” she trails off, too tired for words. But her eyes are alight with cravings, wants and desires.

  I raise only one of her legs this time and hold it above my hip. The angle slices her breath and lolls her head to the side.

  I slow my thrusts, and a moan escapes her parted lips. Tears crease the corners of her eyes. I wipe them away with my thumb as I begin the perilous ascent, speeding up and climbing towards that high.

  I turn my attention onto her small breasts, kneading one. Her body arches towards me, and I pinch her hardened nipple. She gasps.

  “Lo,” she pleads. “Pleaseplease.”

  “Almost, love,” I say and then let out a long groan. Sex with Lily Calloway just may be the most toxic, mind-altering experience of my life.

  I do it pretty much every night and every morning, and together, we still manage to go into another dimension of pleasure. She clenches tight around my cock, and it’s over at that. My breath staggers, and my thrusts turn determined and even harder.

  Her hands wearily grip my biceps, not even attempting to really hold on.

  I’m the only thing supporting her at this point.

  When I finish, I carefully pull out, my hands still firm on her waist in case she can’t stand. Her eyelids flutter in exhaustion, and I lift her in my arms.

  She struggles to fight sleep that finally weighs on her. “Lo, I’m…” she yawns. “…really sorry.”

  My muscles sear at her sincere apology. I wipe the strands of wet hair away from her eyes. “Don’t be sorry, Lil. It’s my choice too. Only for tonight though, okay?”

  “Mmmhmm.” She can barely nod. We’ve been fucking for a little over four hours with few breaks in between. All to wear Lily down to the point of mental and physical exhaustion. Giving her sleeping pills would have been easier, but her therapist was worried she’d start being dependent on them.

  I doubt she would’ve approved of this alternative, but it’s just one night of insane sex. I won’t let Lily get used to this and make it a new routine.

  I set Lily on the bed, open her legs a little, just enough to wipe her clean with my crumpled gray shirt. Then I pull the black and white comforter to her chin. Her eyes fight to stay open.

  “Where’s my spoon?” She pats the mattress beside her.

  I kiss her forehead. “I’m going to take a shower.” I trust that she won’t masturbate while I’m gone. I had to have satiated her enough, only sleep on her mind. I tuck the edges of the comforter around her thin body. “I love you, Lil.”

  “I love you…” Her eyes close, and she breathes out the last word. “…too.”

  I watch her fall asleep for a couple seconds before I turn towards the bathroom, battling against the same fatigue. Before I even reach it, someone knocks on the door. I hesitate to answer right away.

  “Lo?” I hear Connor’s calm and controlled voice. “It’s just me.”

  Those last words are the only ones that reanimate my body. Slowly, I step into a pair of drawstring pants and slip out of the door, leaving it cracked.

  Our house in Princeton is eerily quiet, mostly because Lily has finally fallen asleep.

  Connor studies me with a long once-over, as though he’s examining a patient. I comb back my wet, sweaty hair with my hands and lean my shoulder on the wall. “She knocked over a lamp,” I say, figuring he heard the crash since his bedroom is on the main floor.

  “You’ve been having sex for four hours.” He states it as a fact.

  “Yep,” I say. “You’ve been timing me?”

  “It’s hard not to.” His eyes never waver from mine. I don’t see judgment in them, which is why we’ve become best friends.

  “Because Rose is worried about her.”

  “Because I have better hearing than most people,” he says, “and you two fuck without restraint.”

  I produce a half-smile. “We all can’t be into ball gags and handcuffs.” I have tied Lily up before though. That’s not new to me. Connor and Rose’s sex tapes, however, go beyond anything I’ve done. I haven’t actually watched them, nor do I ever want to, but the internet still talks.

  “No, we can’t,” he says softly in agreement. “And I’ve never been a fan of ball gags, though I appreciate their purpose.” He pauses. “Can I talk to you in the kitchen?” His eyes flicker to the office across the hall, the door ajar. In the shadows, an outline of a body moves behind it. Rose. Her mere presence clenches my stomach.

  For the past couple of weeks, Lily and Rose have barely spoken more than a few words in passing, on a quiet streak. Ever since Rose and Connor returned from their honeymoon in Bora Bora, the atmosphere has been…tense.

  I glance back at my bedroom, the door cracked, Lily still fast asleep underneath the covers.

  “I’ll save you the time,” I tell him, speeding up this lecture. “This was a one-time thing. I’m not enabling her. I know what I’m doing. The end. If you’d like any more information than that, then you’re going to have to spill details about your sex life.” Not that I want any more than what I’ve already received from the tabloids. But fair’s fucking fair. I cross my arms, waiting for his reply.

 
; “I’m not Ryke or Rose,” he reminds me. “I trust that you won’t enable Lily and vice versa.”

  Then what’s this about? I frown.

  To convince me more, Connor says, “Just a few minutes downstairs.”

  “If you don’t mind my stench.”

  “You smell lovely, darling.” He already aims for the staircase. “Just how I dream of.”

  I snort into a smile. “Alright.” I follow his lead.

  Once we pass through the living room, the archway and into the kitchen, Connor starts the coffee machine. I catch the time on the oven. 4 a.m. Morning for him. The dead of night for me. He still wears pajama pants, so at least we’re on equal footing there.

  I hoist myself up onto the low counter and lean back into the cabinets. “Does this conversation happen to involve two very stubborn Calloway girls?”

  “It does.” He opens a cupboard by my head. He’s so tall that we’re actually eyelevel. “It’s really trivial.” He retrieves a black mug. “If they both sat down and talked, they’d realize that they’re on the same side. But instead, your girlfriend isn’t getting any sleep and neither is my wife.”

  “How do you know Lily isn’t sleeping?” My edged voice hurts my ears at this time of night.

  “You just had sex for four hours,” he says, knowing everything before I even tell him. It’s not as annoying right now as it could be. “And I’ve also seen Lily awake in the living room at 2 a.m. a few times.”

  My lips downturn, worry coating my features. “What was she doing?” I must have fallen asleep already, and she crawled out of bed.

  “Reading Kafka,” he says. “She said that she was hoping my reading material would bore her to sleep.”

  I let out a heavy breath. When Rose and Connor left for their honeymoon, the words “slut” and “whore” and “gross” were never thrown around in the media. The headlines commended Rose for being monogamous, strong and open enough to defend her right to be submissive in bed.

  The polar opposite happened to Lily. She was degraded, humiliated and dragged through the mud. Still is. Every fucking day.

  She can’t sleep and forgets to eat sometimes. I’ve already talked to her professors for next semester, setting up her courses so she can watch the lectures online and attend the classes for exams. While my girlfriend sinks under the weight of the world’s hypocrisy, she bears this immeasurable guilt that no one understands.

  No one but me.

  Deep down, she wishes that Rose had the same outcome as her, so at least she could feel less singled out, less repulsed by herself, less like a spot on the world that should have been wiped clean. And she can’t destroy those feelings or try to explain them. Because they seem completely fucked up.

  But I know what it’s like to have emotions that war within you. To want something so cold and callous, only to feel a shred of self-worth.

  I get it.

  I fucking get it.

  Rose is willing to give Lily time to sort through her feelings and come to terms with what’s happened. But that means a stalemate between them. When they walk into the same room, they withhold most conversation and barely meet eyes.

  Connor pours coffee into his mug. “I’ve tried talking to Rose, but she believes that Lily needs to work this out on her own.” He waits for me to add something, and I realize that he brought me down here to see where Lily’s head was at. Maybe to gauge how long this tension will last.

  “I think Lil just needs some time,” I say, not sure how much time. “She’s going to her therapist every other day now.”

  Connor sips coffee from his mug, and I notice his ring on his left hand. Lily and I discussed our living situation with Rose and Connor after their wedding, and it lasted about two minutes. They don’t feel comfortable moving out, even though they both should be closer to Philly. Their work is there, like Cobalt Inc.

  Connor stopped pursuing his MBA so he could take over as CEO. The only tie they have to Princeton is Lil, who’s still in college.

  Since the paparazzi have increased exponentially after the reality show and now Rose’s sex scandal, they both said: “it’s best if the four of us still live together.” A united front—or whatever. I didn’t refute. Because even though it’s harder with them here, I like having Connor around for advice. And Lily needs her sister.

  He rests against the center island, facing me, and he stares at his mug with a lost look in his eyes, one I don’t see often from him.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “My mother is dying,” he says out loud. “She’ll be gone within the week. Breast cancer.”

  My jaw slowly drops. I can count on my hand the number of times he’s mentioned his mom. She stepped down from her position as CEO of Cobalt Inc. a few days ago. Now I know why. “I’m sorry,” I say, my brows bunched in confusion and a bit of hurt for him.

  I can’t read his expression. He’s not letting anything pass through his features for me to hold onto. All I see is a blank surface, my own emotions ricocheting back at me.

  “Don’t be,” he tells me. “She wouldn’t want your apology.”

  “She sounds…”

  “Cold,” he finishes.

  “I was going to say like Rose, no offense.”

  His deep blue eyes rise to mine. “They’re not alike. Katarina doesn’t have the capacity to love someone other than herself. If anything, she’s more like me.”

  “Was…like you,” I say. He’s finally admitted to loving Rose.

  He smiles. “Love still seems like an irrational concept to me.” He pauses. “But in believing in it, I’ve become like everyone else.”

  “Are you okay with that?”

  “More than okay,” he admits.

  I nod, happy that he’s not such a cynic on a matter that seems obvious to the rest of us. “Are you going to the funeral?” I scratch the back of my neck. “I mean, when it happens…” I cringe. Everything sounds wrong. Is there even a right way to talk about someone’s mother dying?

  “She doesn’t want one.”

  I open my mouth to ask why, but he cuts me off.

  “She doesn’t want people from Cobalt Inc. to waste their time mourning a corpse when they should be working. Her words.”

  Ouch. I change the topic as soon as I see stress tightening his shoulders. “How’s the lawsuit?” I ask. They’ve been trying to take Scott Van Wright to trial for weeks, or at least come to a settlement out of court. A whole team of lawyers gathered evidence while they were on their honeymoon.

  “It’s complicated,” he tells me. “The videos are already online. Winning the lawsuit won’t win us back our privacy. It may destroy Scott, but it doesn’t gain me anything.” He sets his mug on the counter. “I’ve never had to use so much energy on an outcome that has no direct benefit for me.”

  I frown. “The benefit is watching that douchebag burn.”

  He lets out a short laugh and rubs his lips. When he drops his hand, he says, “Revenge isn’t a benefit, Lo. It’s self-gratification, an emotional response with very little logic and even less reward.” He exhales and shakes his head. I’ve never seen him this conflicted. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.” He flashes his billion-dollar smile, reminding me in one single second how different we truly are.

  And how grateful I am to have him as a friend. And a roommate.

  { 39 }

  1 year : 01 month

  September

  LILY CALLOWAY

  “Should we walk?” I ask my bodyguard, whose mammoth body occupies two cushions on the couch. Garth reads a gardening magazine (I don’t question it) in the break room of Superheroes & Scones. “Or maybe we should drive? Have you seen the crowds outside? Are they big?”

  I reach over the blue couch with red pillows, flipping a blind to peek outside. A long line of bodies winds across the sidewalk, black velvet ropes barricading them from the street. The line never shortens until thirty minutes from closing.

  “Whatever you want, Lily,” Garth tells me.<
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  “It’s just across the street,” I mention. “It’d be kind of silly to drive, right?”

  He shrugs, not giving me an answer.

  My nerves are already heightened, and I’ve practiced my apology into the mirror about a million times. I don’t want to pussy out though. Not like yesterday and the day before that.

  I value my relationship with my sister too much to keep going on like this. “Okay.” I jump off the couch. “We walk. Quickly. And we don’t make eye contact with any of the cameras.” Paparazzi always linger outside the store to catch footage of me leaving.

  “All right.” He closes the magazine and stands, just as the store manager breezes into the break room. Michelle, a curvy college grad, has on a Superheroes & Scones T-shirt with the slogan: Channel your inner superhero.

  “Hey, are you leaving?” she asks, her brown bangs nearly hiding her eyes, but I catch her looking to Garth who rarely ever moves off his post on the couch.

  “Yeah, I’m going to finish the day at my house. Do you need anything?”

  “We just sold out of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1: Cosmic Avengers, but I can make a note of it in the inventory list.”

  Michelle used to help run this small Indie comic book store in D.C., and after many, many interviews with other potential store managers—and having to let go of a few others before her—we’ve hired Michelle full-time.

  I wave her goodbye. The biggest benefit with Michelle, she never asks about my personal life. Our relationship is purely professional and comics based. I kinda love it. “See you tomorrow.” I push through the door and Garth follows, keeping up with my quick stride.

  When the crowds spot me, the familiar screams of glee and click, click of cameras overwhelms my senses. Focus on the ground, Lily. The gravel is your friend.

  I concentrate on the pavement, crossing the street with little traffic and then reach a new store window. I dig into my pocket and try to find the right key on my jangling ring.

  Last week, Rose set the key on the counter with a note.

  Lily,

  This key is for you if you ever want to stop by.