by Unknown
Contents
Title Page
Author's Note
Preface
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
About the Author
Acknowledgements
The Blogger Diaries Trilogy
STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!
PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF COFFEE, DO NOT START READING THIS BOOK WITHOUT READING BOOK 1, WISHED FOR YOU, FIRST.
These books are NOT standalones and must be read in order.
Reading order:
Wished for You
Wish He Was You
Wish Come True
Now that I’ve had a panic attack thinking about someone reading this book first, you may proceed, but only if you’ve READ BOOK ONE FIRST!
Love,
KD
Preface
You're gone and I gotta stay high All the time to keep you off my mind, ooh ooh High all the time to keep you off my mind, ooh ooh Spend my days locked in a haze, Tryin' to forget you, babe, I fall back down Gotta stay high all my life to forget I'm missing you
Staying in my play pretend
Where the fun ain't got no end Oh, can't go home alone again Need someone to numb the pain Oh, staying in my play pretend Where the fun ain't got no end Oh oh can't go home alone again Need someone to numb the pain
~Tove Lo “Habits (Stay High)”
Two days.
What it took to pack up my stuff at my brother Mark’s house.
Four days. How long it took me to drive from Houston back to Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Two Days. The amount of time I spent in Florida with an old booty-call, halfway through my long drive across the country, trying to desperately fuck the memory of Jason out my head. Because, you know, the best way to get over a guy is to get under another one, right?
Nine days since I got back home, and I’ve already found the perfect replacement.
Kayla’s Chick Rant & Book Blog
May 28, 2005
I went to a party last night with a guy I met on MySpace. His name is Carson, and he’s in the Air Force. When I met him in person after messaging back and forth with him for a couple of days, I could tell we weren’t a match, but he was still pretty fun to hang out with. He invited me to a house party across town, which was being thrown by one of his fellow Airmen, saying there was going to be a bonfire and drinks. Something about a kegorator…whatever the hell that is.
So, I put on my makeup, did my hair, and dressed in some jeans and a cute black tank top, feeling empty, just as I have for the last two weeks. When I looked in the mirror, all I saw was a hollow vessel staring back at me. The same green-eyed girl I’ve always been, but I could see the spirit had gone out of them, replaced with a desperation, a need to hurry up and fill the void left behind by the man I knew I was meant to be with, but who threw me away like one of his cigarette butts.
When will these miserable feelings go away? Advice for getting over terrible breakups welcome in the comments.
One, two, three. One, two, three, drink.
Last Night
I drove onto Pope Air Force Base after getting my car searched, since I’m a civilian, and met Carson at his dorm room. It’s weird calling it a dorm, instead of barracks like the Army base right next door. I’ve been in a couple of barracks rooms, but never a dorm room. But as I entered the small, colorless, perfectly clean room, containing only a bed, a couch, a TV, and lots of camouflaged stuff, with a tiny bathroom off to one side, I saw it was like all the others I’d seen.
I sat on his couch as Carson finished getting dressed, pulling on a grey T-shirt over his close-cut blond hair, and laughed when I was supposed to at the witty jokes he was making about the people I was going to meet. I think he was trying to loosen me up, make sure I wasn’t nervous going to a party where I wouldn’t know anyone. But what he didn’t realize was I’d been through this before. A few months ago, I was a small-town girl in a big city, who didn’t know a single soul or place to go, and found refuge with a couple of strangers who took me in…became my world…made me love them.
Maybe I could do it again. Maybe that was just my trial run, teaching me to be adventurous and open to finding new friends in uncharted territory. Maybe this time, it wouldn’t end in heartache; it could heal me.
After he spritzed on too much cologne, we walked down to his giant, white diesel-fed truck, and he opened the door for me. All the while, I was thinking, Compensating! as two giant black exhaust stacks stood tall right behind the cab like massive phallic symbols, and I rolled my eyes.
We drove off the base with him blasting country music—my favorite, not!—and down the long, empty road that leads to the town on the opposite side of Ft. Bragg from Fayetteville called Spring Lake. There’s seriously nothing out there except for a Food Lion.
We turned into a neighborhood of doublewides, and I tried not to show my growing wariness as we pulled into a driveway containing about six or seven other vehicles. I reminded myself these were military people. Any military friends I’d had in the past who lived off base spent the least amount they could on rent so they could spend the rest of their money on toys. And sure enough, as we walked through the squeaky screen-door after climbing the rickety wooden steps, I saw every gaming console on the market attached to a sixty-inch monster of a TV lining one wall of the living room. Unmatched, threadbare furniture sat in a semicircle facing a teenager’s wet-dream of an entertainment center.
I followed Carson into the kitchen, where a few people sat around a scratched-up wooden dining table with all different seats, including one black leather computer chair and a bar stool, along with a couple of metal folding chairs. In the center of the table was a bottle of black liquor…like, the liquid was actually black, and to my horror, the only thing sitting next to it was a bottle of apple juice. Just the thought turned my stomach.
“The hell are you drinking, Kyle?” Carson asked, disgust evident in his voice.
“It’s called Tattoo. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had something besides apple juice to mix it with. One shot, and I already feel like I’m going to ralph,” a very attractive guy with brown hair and a little stubble replied from where he was parked in the computer chair.
“Why don’t you get your lazy ass up and go get something else to mix it with then?” Carson questioned, slapping Kyle’s shoulder as he made his way around the table to what looked like a mini fridge with a tap attached to the top. He pulled down a mug from one of the cabinets and started filling it with golden liquid.
Ah, must be the kegorator.
“Too drunk. I need to hurry up and get off leave. This whole drinking all day thing is going to kill my liver soon,” Kyle said, a slight slur to his words.
“I’ll drive you,” a pretty brunette, with a similar tall, slim build as my own, offered.
“Maybe in a little while. Waiting for the pizzas to be delivered,” he told her, and I saw her nod before turning back to the computer she was on in the corner of the room.
“Everyone, this is Kayla. She just moved back here from Texas. She was there for college, but grew up here,” Carson announced, and I felt my face grow warm as everyone turned and looked at me. They all offered me warm welcomes, probably used to new people coming to hang out with them, since there’s always a steady flow of bodies in and out of the area we live. It’s not a common thing to ask someone where they’re from, and they say Fayetteville. Being a military town, they’re usually just stationed here for a few years before moving on to their next base. Also, with all the training they do at Ft. Bragg, people come for short stints of time for different schools.
“Goddamn it, I can’t get this stupid shit to work,” the girl at the computer growled, and I saw she had the page opened up to MySpace. Everyone else ignored her, carrying on with their own conversations, so I made my way over to see if there was anything I could help her with.
“What are you trying to do?” I asked, and she turned her head to the side and up to look at me over her shoulder.
“There’s supposed to be a way you can change the background on your profile, but I can’t figure out how,” she said, banging on the keyboard.
“Oh, I can do that for you. I just did it to my own profile a few days ago. Took me a while, but I finally got it.”
She moved out of the seat and opened her hand toward it, offering it to me. I sat down and asked, “Have you found the background you want already?”
“Yeah, this one,” she replied, leaning over me to grab the mouse as she clicked on the other tab she had open. She pointed to a brightly colored abstract image, and I showed her how to copy the code and then paste it into her profile. After saving it and going to her page, we saw it had worked.
“Awesome, thank you so much. I was about to throw the damn thing.” She laughed and took a sip from her beer bottle that was sitting next to the computer. “I’m Brittany. What’s your name again?”
“Kayla. I’m glad to see there’s another chick here. I was kinda worried it’d be just me with a shitload of dudes.”
“Even if it was, these are all good guys. It’s usually just me with all of them. My boyfriend and I live here, but he’s deployed right now.” She turned to face the room and started pointing out different people. “Kyle lives a few houses down. I actually moved down here with him from Ohio when we were together, but we broke up. We’re still best friends though.”
She gestured to another guy sitting at the table, who looked like he was concentrating really hard on whatever he was messing with in his hands. “That’s Mike. He lives here too. He’s really sweet and has a new obsession with rolling his own cigarettes.” I glanced over and saw Carson sitting next to him, clapping him on the back and making him spill some of the tobacco he was working with. Mike elbowed him and called him a fucker.
“Oh, I think Carson told me about him. That’s his best friend, right?” I questioned.
“Yep, those two are inseparable. They make an odd couple, don’t they?” She snorted.
They did look sort of mismatched. Carson was tall, thickly built with blond hair that was almost white. Mike, on the other hand, was tall, but thin and lanky, with hair so dark it was almost black.
They remind me of another pair of best friends.
I shook off the thought quickly and concentrated on what Brittany was saying as she gave me the rundown on the rest of the people standing around the kitchen, and off to the side in what looked like a den, and when I looked toward the living room, I saw more people had shown up and were booting up one of the game systems.
“Jeez, how big do these parties usually get?”
“So big you won’t be able to fucking move, and then it starts spilling into the backyard, where we have the bonfire barrel. It was annoying at first, because this is a weekly thing, but with Chris gone, it’s kind of comforting having everyone here all the time, and I’ve learned to sleep through all the noise,” she explained. “Here, let me show you around.”
She took my arm and pulled me through the growing mass of men, all of them either with a glass or mug full from the kegorator, or bottles they had brought themselves. She guided me through the den and into a hallway with several doors leading off it, walking to the very end so we could work our way back. Opening the last door on the left, she told me it was Mike’s room. The walls were covered floor-to-ceiling in Native American art. Even his bedspread had a white wolf howling at a full moon.
Brittany snickered and shook her head at the look on my face. “He’s a special one.”
The next door on the right was revealed to be the bathroom, and the one next to Mike’s room was another bedroom. It had been another roommate’s, but they recently got stationed at another base. The final door we came to on the right was Brittany’s room. When she opened the door, it was like walking into a completely different world. She had painted the walls a cheerful lavender, with brightly colored accessories around the room, but on one wall, I was surprised to find a massive poster of Chingy. The rapper’s presence didn’t seem to fit the girly atmosphere or the cute chick who was showing me around the house. The poster must be her boyfriend’s.
“You said you live her with your man, right?” I asked, and she looked up from fixing her bangs in the full-length mirror attached to the wall by her door to see me examining the poster.
“Yeah, he hasn’t seen the room yet. I did it right after he deployed. I figured if he didn’t like it when he got back, at least I’d get to enjoy it for six months before he changes it. That’s my baby-daddy.” She pointed up at Chingy.
I turned to see her grinning back at me through the reflection in her mirror as she applied some lip-gloss. “Ah, mine is Jared Leto. I would lick that man’s skin off,” I confessed, making her laugh loudly.
I’ve never really had close girlfriends, just my Anni, who I have seen every single day since I’ve been back home, her not wanting to leave my side. She was worried about me, and probably for good reason. I unloaded everything on her that had happened with Jason that last night, and had cried myself to sleep with her arms wrapped around me at her apartment, her trying to make me laugh by explaining in great detail what she was going to do to him after ‘flying her ass to Texas.’ Made me glad I’m on her good side, that’s for sure.
But as I shot the shit with Brittany in her room, it felt like I’d known her forever, and I hoped our newfound friendship would last past the party, whether I came to hang out with these people again or not.
We moved out into the den, where there was space for the two of us on a couch against the far wall. There was a window there, and since the curtains were open, we could see the bonfire was in full swing. Tons of guys stood around it smoking cigarettes and drinking their various drinks, and I saw some of them had brought girls along to the party, which made me feel better.
Seeing I wasn’t going for any of the beer, Brittany offered me a glass of her wine she kept in the fridge, and I accepted it gratefully. After another hour or so of listening to music, people taking turns picking what they played on the sound system, I looked up to find a cute guy standing with Carson and Mike. He had a Bud Light in his hand, and was wearing a plain white t-shirt, jeans, black Adidas sandals, and a backward white baseball cap. He had an infectious smile, which hardly ever left his face as he talked animatedly with his friends, and I couldn’t help watching him as he laughed loudly after listening to something Mike was saying.
His laugh caused a small smile to form on my own face, and the expression felt strange. It seemed to be the first genuine smile I’d had in the past two weeks, all the others having been forced to placate anyone I was around.
He must’ve felt my eyes on him, because suddenly they were connecting with his. He smiled at me, lifted his beer to his lips, and then went back to his conversation.
“That’s Aiden Lanmon,” Brittany said in my ear, making me jump. She giggled and continued, “He lives next door. He’s over here all the time because he hates his roommate. Actually, we all
hate his roommate.”
“What’s wrong with his roommate?” I asked curiously.
“He’s now slept with three girlfriends of deployed buddies. Three. One, you just don’t do that. There’s a fucking code. And two, he’s not even cute. He just gets to them when they’re weak and vulnerable, and gives them a shoulder to cry on before taking advantage of their loneliness. Douchebag.” She shook her head.
“Sounds like a creep,” I muttered, and she nodded.
“Anyways, Aiden is my boyfriend, Chris’, best friend. He’s single…actually, I’ve never even seen him with a girl except for the time that got him that scar on his nose. But I know he’s not gay. He’s too much of a flirt to be gay.”
“He’s cute.” I shrugged.
“I guess. I don’t see him that way. He’s like a brother to me. He does have pretty eyes though. I tell him all the time I wish I had his eyes. They’re this cool hazel color, like bright green and brown got swirled together,” she told me, taking a sip from her wine glass.
As we saw Carson and Mike move to the hallway leading to Mike’s room, Brittany called, “Hey, Aiden. Come here.”
“What are you doing?” I asked her in a panicked whisper.
“You aren’t with Carson, right?”
“No. Just acquaintances, but—”
“Aiden,” she cut me off as he walked up to where we sat on the couch, “this is my friend Kayla. She just moved back home from Texas.”
“Texas? My family is in San Antonio,” he remarked, sticking out his hand for me to shake.
“My brothers live in Houston,” I told him, placing my hand in his. He shook it gently, seeming to think he’d break me if he did it too hard.
Do I look that fragile? It wouldn’t surprise me if I did. I hadn’t been eating much lately, and I noticed my clothes didn’t fit as tightly as I normally liked them. Which is not a good thing, since I’m already naturally super thin.