Page 24 of Push & Pull
Simone was silent in her seat.
“It also explains some… you know what? I’m thirsty. You want me to stop at this Starbucks up the road? We’ll go inside and stretch our legs. I’ve gotta pee, anyway.”
What she hadn’t mentioned was that Simone’s lovemaking style now made a lot of sense. Petra had been surprised to discover how pliable the heiress was in bed.I could’ve done whatever I wanted to her. She was into all of it.With most people, that was hot as hell. To be fair, it was hot with Simone, too – but Petra had to acknowledge where it probably came from. This was a woman who attempted to treat people respectfully, even when she wanted something from them.
You’re no Clyde Quimby. That’s all I’m saying, Simone.
“You know… about last night…” Petra ignored the groan of despair coming from the passenger seat as they turned off at the next exit. “I hope you don’t think that’s why I invited you along.”
Simone was so far slumped in her seat that her off-the-shoulder sweater was halfway down her arm, and her blondish hair mussed against the headrest that she was already two inches too tall for. “It’s fine.” Her voice was flat. “I don’t regret it if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“That’s good. Because I think we had a good time. But I wasn’t expecting it. I mean…” Petra lined up behind several other cars at a red light. “I respect boundaries. I’ll try to get us two beds when we check in tonight.”
“It really doesn’t matter to me. It’s not like you snored.”
Petra kept her chuckle to herself.Yeah, you’re the one who snored, Ms. Sleep Apnea.She usually hated it when her bedmates snored. Then again, Simone was a far cry from most of the people who had been beside Petra when she was at her most vulnerable to the world.
Chapter 9
Petrahadnot,infact, managed to secure anything more than a king-sized bed at the Raleigh hotel they stayed in that night. Simone maintained her stance that she really didn’t care. Petra would not be the first woman she started sleeping with because it was convenient.
After dinner, they went their separate ways. Petra to her meeting with her uncle, and Simone to the nearest open big-box electronics store where she picked up a prepaid phone and a cheap laptop to tide her over. The phone was mostly for emergencies while out on the road, but the laptop was an instant godsend as she was finally able to check her email in the hotel room.
“ATTN: Next Week’s Meeting.” That was from the work email of Astrid Evans, Simone’s busy, busy stepmother.
As much as Simone did not want to talk to Astrid – ever, but especially right now – she was glad to see this email now. Astrid needed a response within the next two hours, and Simone knew that her stepmother took her deadlines seriously.
The TV was set to reruns ofFriends,a show that Simone only occasionally watched but liked well enough that it made for good background noise. The only problem was that Joey’s antics and Phoebe’s meltdowns were distracting her from catching up with her own friends and work.Two days may not seem like a lot to most people, but in my world, that’s the difference between having an ongoing social life or giving it all up.Simone fired off an email to Hailey and gave her the temporary number of the prepaid device. In case something came up.
When theFriendsepisode ended and turned on to the local Raleigh news, Simone picked up the remote. HBO was showing the perfect kind of queer-bait film that liked to suck Simone in with false promises of a happily-ever-after before it became nothing but softcore porn set to the background of grief and emotional torture. So happened she caught it during the softcore part.
She changed the channel to fake wrestling before finally turning off the TV.
What. Am. I. Doing.
Simone sat at the table by the window for much longer than she anticipated. Between the low hum of the cheap laptop and her frazzled mind, she realized that she was once again in a strange hotel room in a strange city with an even stranger woman.One who calls the guy from The Smashing Pumpkins, “Dad.”
Simone was still embarrassed that she had unloaded as much as she had about her family. For many in her social circle, it was all common knowledge played out for them in real time. They were polite to Simone’s face, but talked shit behind closed doors. Sometimes, what they said made it back to Simone, and she had to passive-aggressively remind her friends that they weresupposed to be friends.
Besides, she hated the speculation. Namely, that she was secretly in love with her hot lesbian stepmother.
I would rather die than ever share a bed with her.Astrid represented everything that had gone wrong in Simone’s life. Sure, the former escort had merely been doing what she needed to get by when she fell in with the rich and elderly Bernard Evans, Simone’s genial but out-of-touch father. Except, the timing couldn’t have been worse. Between Bernard’s erratic behavior and Simone attempting to adjust to adulthood while in college, she… well, she still wasn’t sure what happened, but her father’s wedding announcement was what made Simone well-acquainted with Valium.
Lola. Catherine. Janis.Those were all pseudonyms Simone made up when her sorority sisters and other friends hooked her up with their Dr. Feel Goods. At one point, her medicine cabinet was filled with enough uppers and downers that Hailey jokingly called it “Simone’s Pharmacy.” Simone never resold them, but she didn’t stop her friends from helping themselves whenever they came over. When she was on enough of those, things like cocaine didn’t seem so farfetched.
Was it Lola or Janis who had done a line right before her father’s funeral? Or was it Catherine who downed Valium during the wake and had to be secretly rushed to the hospital before things went downhill?
Since going back to rehab and finding a new therapist who offered the kind of tough love Simone positively responded to, she had tried a rigmarole of SSRIs to treat her anxiety and depression. The kind of controlled substances that her doctors told her to keep far away from other drugs and too much alcohol. At first, they kept her on the straight and narrow. Then she realized they weren’t working. If anything, she ended up back in the hospital because the first antidepressant she tried made her evenmoredepressed.
Right now, she didn’t have any prescriptions. The only pills in her bag were over-the-counter antihistamines and ibuprofen. Alcohol was always a potential regret, though. So were the cigarettes she occasionally indulged when her nerves got the best of her.
My mom would be so upset.
That was how the group therapy in rehab finally broke through to her when Simone was at her lowest, and it wasn’t in that“What would your mother think?”way. Instead, it had been a young man relaying how he dealt with the death of his grandmother, who had essentially raised him while his parents traveled the world for work. He had a similar reaction to Simone, taking pills, partying, and escalating to harder substances that sent him to the hospital.“Things were really bad after she finally died,”he said, smoking a cigarette in the facility’s open garden.“Then I remember something she said when I was in high school. She lived long enough to see me get into my top choice school I was really excited about. She literally cried, man. Took my hand and said she was so proud of me. I could be anything I wanted. I could kick ass and change the world. She saw all of that in me, and what did I do? Cried like a bitch when she died and shot heroin into my veins.”
The moral had been squandered potential, but Simone also heard something else. She heard thepotentialpain in one woman’s soul if she’d lived long enough to watch her grandson go down that path. For Simone, the most effective way to stay clean from hard drugs and abusing prescription medication was to imagine Elizabeth's reaction should she have to prematurely welcome her daughter to heaven.
I’d die again and go to hell for that mark on my soul.
