Exposed: Book One of The Love Seekers Series

by Vickers, Maria

Which brought me to why it surprised me to hear her put herself down so badly. She seemed like a cool girl, and I knew she was pretty. Maybe not stick thin like some girls, but then again, a lot of guys I knew, myself included, wanted something to hold onto. High cheekbones, brown eyes that sparkled as if she were plotting something which could undoubtedly get someone in trouble, silky brown hair, and a quick wit. I was also quite sure she possessed big brain, because I sort of remembered Mel telling me something about Emma obtaining multiple degrees.

  Any guy would be lucky to have her. Yes, the walker may put off most men, but not everyone would turn her away just because of something she had zero control over. I’d date her except for two things. One, I didn’t date seriously. Emma deserved someone who was searching for a forever type of relationship. And two, she was nowhere near my type. Confidence was key, but I also wanted someone who knew how to use their sexuality. Don’t get me wrong, Emma was a nice girl, however, I didn’t typically do nice.

  On top of that, I had to agree with her friend. She would make a great buddy. Too bad she wasn’t a guy. If she was, we could have gone looking for trouble and had some fun.

  That being said, I fully intended to help her as promised, and when I was done, guys would be lining up to meet her. I staked my reputation on it.

  Chapter 4

  Emma

  Life always had a way of moving on whether you wanted it to or not. As much as I would have liked the world to stop spinning and join me in my pity party, or for time to stop so I could lick my wounds, it never did. Everything continued to move forward, ergo I pressed onward as well. That had been one of the hardest lessons I struggled with after I got sick–something I still struggled with a lot. But hey, I was a work in progress.

  Ideally, I would have loved to sleep a couple more hours on this glorious, overly bright, Sunday morning, but my sister, Ellie, did not agree. Not that I blamed her…much. I broke the rule she had given me when I moved to South Carolina. I was supposed to text or call her as soon as I got home whenever I chose to go out and about on my own. Sometimes I thought her more of a mother hen than a sister; however, I understood her concern. There had been a couple of times when I had tired myself out and still attempted to drive home. Calling her from a gas station or parking lot on more than one occasion had given her cause for concern.

  Last night, I had come home without texting her, got into a fight with Bryan, and shut down my phone. If she tried to call me, which I’m sure she did more than once, I wouldn’t have answered because I had every intention of shutting out life. If only I factored in her copy of my key to my house into my diabolical plan, then she would not have tried to shake me awake. Bitch. I love her, but after crying myself to sleep last night, I was still exhausted.

  Anyone who had ever experienced the thrilling ride of being on an emotional roller coaster while crying uncontrollably, understands what I meant. Sleep became your best friend, wrapping you in a cocoon of warmth and safety and blocking out the world. Actually, it just made you tired as hell and you needed to sleep off the effects of your emotional outburst.

  Ergo, when Ellie yelled at me as she attempted to shake me awake at 9 A.M., I might have lashed out by swatting her hands away, and pulled my blanket tighter around me. She decided to try another tactic. My blanket left me, ripped away, and I was too weak to fight it. Even with my medicine in my system, the myasthenia gravis did not allow me to fight for too long. I tried though, and I might have groaned, which may have sounded slightly on the cusp of being a moan or a squeal as I tried to swat her hands away again.

  She appreciated my efforts about as much as she appreciated my lack of communication. I couldn’t help it. I had fallen asleep an emotional mess, and the only thing I had done that morning, was to take my mestinon, muscle medicine so that I could somewhat function when Curley decided he was done waiting for his breakfast. Without that little pill, I would turn into a weak puddle of goo. Not really goo per se, but without it I felt weak and boneless, unable to speak or hold my head up. Forget walking or doing anything else. I could do nothing without my meds. Too bad they did not chase away my tiredness.

  “Get up, Emma,” Ellie demanded with her irritation thick in her voice. I knew that tone. It meant she was already at her limit. I wondered briefly if one of the kids had pissed her off this morning, and then all thoughts left me when she jerked the blanket so hard, I rolled to the other side of the bed sans blanket.

  “What do you want?” My whines sounded more like a petulant five–year–old than an adult.

  Her chest rose and fell with the effort she had exerted, and I could almost see her counting to ten, giving herself time to calm down. And when she finished, her fists slammed down onto her hips and she snapped, “What do I want? Well, considering we had plans for brunch at 10 and you’re still in bed, and let’s see, you had a date last night and never once called or texted me. How did I know if you made it home all right?”

  There was the mother hen I knew and usually loved. “Sorry I didn’t talk to you. To sum it up, it was a horrific night and I just wanted to go to bed.

  An immediate change overcame her. Her features softened as she moved to sit down on the bed. “Want to talk about it?”

  Did she really just ask that? Hell no I didn’t want to talk about it. If I didn’t call her the night before, I had a good reason, and I did not want to fucking admit that for the umpteenth time, another guy loathed me before I even uttered one tiny peep. “No.” My answer was clipped and slammed the door shut on broaching the subject further.

  Or so I thought. I should have known better.

  “Just because he didn’t work out—“

  I interrupted her as quickly as possible. “Stop. Just stop right there. I’m pretty much done after this one.”

  “Emmm…” she sang, stretching my nickname out as if it had more than one syllable.

  “What?”

  “You can’t give up on everything because of one bad guy.”

  My palm itched to slap her. “First, I’m not giving up on everything. Second, it’s been nine bad guys. Not to mention the countless others that never made it to the dating round.” Have I mentioned I loved my older sister? I do. Seriously. Really. However, she recently retired from the Navy and found herself with extra time on her hands. Time she loved to use to torment…I meant to help and support me. She made it her own personal mission to rescue me or something.

  “You just haven’t met the one.”

  Would it be bad if I throat punched my own sister? “The one? I’m pretty much convinced that he doesn’t exist for me. That’s fine though. I have…umm…I have whatever the hell it is I have. Now can you go away? I’m still sleeping.” I curled into a ball on my bed and tried to ignore my sister behind me.

  “I know, Curley. She needs to get up,” Ellie said to my dog, and he answered with a bark. Traitor. To me, she ordered, “No can do. We have brunch plans, and I came to pick you up. So get up, get ready, and let’s get the day started.”

  Curley barked again and jumped on the bed right before he pounced on me. “Oomph. Curley, lay down.” He refused to listen and started whimpering. Thanks to my sister breaking in this morning, he was now awake and wanted his food pronto. Maybe I should be happy she waited until after 9:00 A.M. to assault me this morning, considering there had been more than one occasion when she snuck in before seven. I would have killed her this morning if she tried that shit. I still may.

  “I know, Curley. Tell your mommy that you’re starving and need food.” With those words, Ellie successfully got what she wanted.

  Slowly sitting up, I scooted off the bed and pushed myself into a standing position using my walker. Not sure why she decided to poke me when she had already won, but she was lucky my legs were unsteady otherwise I would have grabbed her finger and attempted to break it.

  I did mention that I loved my sister, right? Maybe I needed to repeat it a few more times like a mantra. “Stop! I’m up already. Why don’t you make yourse
lf useful and feed Curley while I take a shower?”

  “Sure. Come on, Curley.” She turned around and left the room. I didn’t miss the victorious expression that list up her face.

  I am so not a morning person.

  Like I said, Ellie got out of the Navy almost a year ago after 15 years in the service. I applauded her work and the sacrifice she made in serving the military, because I knew it could not have been easy. We had grown up in a military family and our dad was absent more than he was present during our childhood. Sometimes he seemed more like a stranger than a parent. And she had still decided to enlist and serve. Of course her kids came a few years after she joined, but she still managed to make it work.

  Now that I looked back on it all, moving from place to place, seeing new things, experiencing things many did not, it was probably one of the best childhoods I could have ever asked for. After my dad retired and we settled in Texas, I met people that had never left the state lines. The world was bigger than that and deserved to be experienced.

  When Ellie had been in about five years, she met a guy named Chris and they immediately fell in love. “An instant spark,” she told me. For her to talk like that, the one person who probably didn’t have one romantic cell in her body, I knew this guy was special to her. I wanted that kind of spark too.

  Six years older than me, Ellie had been with her husband for over a decade. Apparently, they were doing something right because they were still together, still in love, and had two ornery children. I loved my nephews. Really, I did, but they could be little heathens at times. One was five and the other seven, so it stood to reason that they could be a little rambunctious with short attention spans…and they hated to listen to anyone and everyone who told them what to do. That being said, her kids had had to deal with her leaving a lot, but at least they didn’t move as much as we did. Once she returned from the Navy, they remained in South Carolina, which allowed her kids to stay in the same school they had attended since the beginning.

  When it became apparent my disease would not be fading quietly into the night, my family held a meeting and decided I needed to move out of Texas and closer to family, and my sister won the betting pool. My only stipulation for agreeing to the move was that I had to have my own space. I didn’t want to live with family, or have people think I needed them to do everything for me. I loathed feeling like I had become a burden. So when I found an apartment less than a block away for the right price, I moved.

  Ellie tried to be understanding of my situation, but she didn’t quite get it. In truth, it felt as if no one really related or understood me anymore. I say me, but it was the damn disease. They couldn’t understand the disease and the affect it had on me, therefore, they no longer understood me. I became an anomaly. It was okay though. I was all right with that, because if they understood exactly what I dealt with, it meant they were dealing with the same thing or something similar. And this…I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

  My shower cleared the fog in my head and began to wake me up, and with my alertness came a renewed sense of embarrassment over the previous night. It wasn’t only the fact that I’d been looked down upon like I was some sort of pariah, but I also confessed everything to a practical stranger. Why the hell had I divulged everything to Bryan?

  Well, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t here, he didn’t really know me, and I could unfriend and ignore him for the rest of my life. Done and planned.

  Today greeted me as a new day, and I would take full advantage of it, even if it meant I had to suffer through brunch with my sister, her family, and her friends. Bleh.

  I love my sister. My mantra repeated itself in my head. I loved her, but I wasn’t always keen on some of her friends. At times I felt like they put up with me only for her sake. If I mentioned something to her, she would tell me that I was being paranoid or something like that, but I didn’t think so.

  There were times when the disease made it harder to speak. My words get slurred and I sounded worse than a drunken sailor. One time, Ellie had a group of friends over and I had come. Going to the bathroom that night, I rounded the corner, and I heard a couple of them pretending to slur. It stopped as soon as they saw me. Their mocking of me and my situation stabbed me. My eyes started to burn, but I refused to cry in front of them. How many of their whispered words were about me? How could my sister be completely blind to it?

  I know I have self-esteem issues, and I didn’t trust people like I used to, but in all honesty, I had been burned more than once, and had lost friend for no other reason than being sick. When I couldn’t do everything I used to do with them, they abandoned me, and I never heard from them again. A couple reached out after the dissolution of our friendship, however, behind my back, they teased me and joked about my situation to others. They made fun of the fact I…let’s just say, I had changed. I used to play tennis, go for long walks, could drink any of them under the table, partied, and had fun in life. Myasthenia gravis robbed me of all of that.

  Hearing their taunting words, finding out from others–people who were still my real friends–how they mocked me or claimed I was faking, felt like someone had taken an ice pick and stabbed it into my chest. It made me leery of new people. Maybe the wall between me and my sister’s friends was more me than them. I didn’t know, but the wall that I had erected around me, protected me. Or so I thought. It might keep people at bay, however, it didn’t stop the hurt feelings.

  I stayed in the shower until the water started to turn cold, and when I shut off the spray, my shampoo decided to fall into the tub creating a sound equal to an explosion. It echoed throughout the bathroom, and quite possibly the whole apartment. And what happened next? I was greeted by a pounding on my bathroom door.

  Ellie shouted, “Are you all right in there? Did you fall?”

  “No, my shampoo fell.” Really, can’t people tell the difference between a bottle and a body? I would have thought it would have been obvious, but then again, I did just compare the noise to a bomb.

  “Are you sure?”

  The Bill Engvall Here’s Your Sign comedy routine popped into my head, and I wanted to be snarky and say, “Nope, I hit my head when I fell and I don’t remember a thing. Here’s your sign.” But I swallowed those words like a giant horse pill taken without water, and instead yelled, “I’m fine.” My tone was harder than I intended, but I didn’t care too much about offending her at the moment. She pulled me out of bed after a night from hell, this was the best I could do.

  “All right. Do you need any help?”

  “Nope. I got it covered.” After I got sick, it seemed as if I needed assistance doing simple things. Shopping, opening jars, and occasionally needing a ride. However, there were some things I would rather do for myself as long as I could. Bathing was one of those things. I would rather not show my naked ass to my family if possible. They saw enough when I was a baby. Thank you very much! It may take me longer, but I managed.

  I should have been prepared for her to be lying in wait for me though. As soon as I stepped out of the bathroom and took one small step toward my bedroom, she was there hovering over me from behind. “You want to tell me what happened last night?”

  “Bad date. End of story.” Unwilling to hash out the details, it was all I was willing to concede. I didn’t care if she wanted to know more. I wanted to be cured, but that hadn’t happened either.

  “That’s all I get? I thought you two would hit it off. He seemed like a nice enough guy.”

  My back went ramrod straight. I leaned against the wall for support and cautiously turned around. Narrowing my eyes, I studied her for a moment before I quietly asked, “Have you actually ever met him?”

  “No, but Jenna said…” Her voice tapered off when she caught dark expression.

  That’s all I needed to hear. Jenna was actually a friend of my sister’s that I had met shortly after moving to Charleston. Not only did she not have good intentions, but she’d sworn this guy was one of the best she knew and wouldn’t care ab
out my disability. She was also one of the girls I had busted pretending to slur. Either she wanted to make fun of me some more, or she assumed that since he worked as a physical therapist, he would automatically accept someone who had to use medical devices in everyday life. I leaned toward the former over the latter. “So basically, you’ve only heard her side of this guy’s personality?”

  “Well, yeah, but he seems like a great guy.”

  “Seems and is are two completely different things.”

  Maybe it was the hard edge in my tone or my choice of words, but she started to look even more wary as she asked, “What did he do?”

  “Nothing. That’s the problem. He did nothing.”

  “He had to have done something for you to act like this.”

  “No, he left before he could do anything else.”

  “Maybe some sort of emergency popped up.”

  My sister, the person willing to give her friends the benefit of the doubt—or in this case, a friend of a friend—defended the asshole from the previous night, but I refused to allow her to make stupid excuses for someone else. I had been wronged, and I was done with it all. “He seemed fine until he noticed me walking toward him with my cane, then he got up and started to walk out. But who knows, maybe it was my ugly mug.” I tried to laugh it off, but it still stung. I still felt raw and exposed.

  Her mouth formed a soundless “O.” She blinked once, twice, and a third time before she finally changed the subject. “How about some breakfast? My treat. Maybe after, you’ll feel better.”

  Once again, everything was pushed back into the dark corner–or rather back into the closet–and that was the end of it. It was not that my sister wouldn’t deal with it. I believed it was more that she didn’t know how to deal with it, or what to say when it got shoved in her face. I didn’t blame her completely, because she at least made and effort and tried as much as she could. “Sure. Breakfast sounds good.” I gave her a small smile, and once again swept everything under the rug for her benefit.