Page 55 of The Last Kind of Kiss
“See what?”
“Life.”
Ever since the night of December twentieth, sorrow’s spread through my bloodstream like rot, and all those terrible, gut-wrenching thoughts popped open a hatch in my skull and wormed their way into my brain tissue. I’d given up on life. I’d given up on love. I couldn’t escape myself, I couldn’t escape Summit, and I couldn’t escape the blame that burbled sickly in my stomach. But Lila…she annuls the grief and the guilt if only for a split second of time, and I want to feel that peace for as long as I can.
“You know, you can have a life like that again,” Hayes says quietly, his gaze straying to my face, and his eyes catching a glint of light from the buzzing bulb above.
Hope’s a fickle thing, but for once, I welcome it like an old friend. “You think?”
Hayes places a gentle hand on my back. “Iknow. There’s a girl out there, right now, who’s still fighting for you. You still have another chance to live the life you’ve always wanted,” he consoles. “You deserve to find love, Bri. You deserve to be happy again. Don’t be scared to let go of the grief, because if you continue to hold on to it, you’ll never allow yourself the chance to heal.”
19
SMELLS LIKE TEAM SPIRIT
LILA
To say things have been tense between me and Bristol is a hilariously inaccurate understatement. I haven’t spoken to him at all this week. Granted, he’s been busy with hockey, and I’ve been busy…eating my weight in cheese puffs at night to stuff the dreadfully hollow hole in my heart. I’ve spent countless hours replaying our whole confrontation in my head. I’ve spent sleepless nights contemplating what I should do next. Yeah, I’m bound by contract to uphold this whole “fake dating” thing, but after the campaign is over, he gave me a choice to protect my peace. A choice that’s looking more and more appealing the longer I’m away from him.
A hockey game is the last place I want to be right now—the garish jerseys and tacky foam fingers, the rambunctious team spirit, the nauseating image of Bristol skating effortlessly across the ice while he exhibits astounding athletic ability in front of millions of viewers. I don’t want to be in public in general. If you think a hockey environment is overstimulating, try attending a game where the paparazzi won’t give you enough space to breathe. Not only that, but I’m forced to wearBristol’sjersey to reinforce this whole relationship thing. A hideous, clashingjersey that covers up the very cute outfit I planned for this outing!
I’m trying to be less negative, I am, but those self-help podcasts aren’thelpingme at all. I’m not ready to see Bristol’s face again, and I’m certainly not ready to see it on the Jumbotron. I still can’t get over the fact that he kept his dead ex a secret from me—a dead ex who once meant the world to him. It’s going to sound ridiculous, but I feel like I’m competing with a ghost.Iwas the second choice.Iwas the backup. If I continue to keep in contact with him, I’ll always be reminded that I was never his first love. That’s not even the worst part, though. If Summit was still alive, Iknowthat Bristol would still be with her.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to protect myself. Staying away from him will keep me from getting hurt again, but I can’t just ignore the way my heart yearns for him, the way it’s not fully whole when I’m not around him. I can’t win. Either way I’ll suffer, and I’m so tired of suffering. A year he’s perpetuated this unjust blame to pulsate in my stomach like an ulcer. A year I spent questioning what was wrong with me to make him leave without an explanation. And now, months later, I’m right back where I started, believing that maybe I’d be better off dead than to live with this incurable loneliness that’s haunted me since my father left.
There’s always going to be this darkness that lingers in the back of my mind, this uninvited house guest that’s pried up the floorboards of my brain to hide and lie in wait. This creature that feeds on the debilitating self-doubt and fear that’s never truly left my body. This creature that has the undeniable power to break the brittle bones of the only good thing I have in my life.
A family of three comes scooting by our row, bumping into my knees as they pass by, and I’m instantly transported back to the present, where overly hyper screams crescendo in my ears.The rink is filled to the brim like a teeming sardine can, bodies upon bodies shoved into uncomfortable plastic seats, some rowdy fans even taking it upon themselves to crowd the plexiglass while warm-ups are underway. Aeris and I just so happen to be rinkside—a “perk” of being a WAG—which increases my chances of making eye contact with Bristol from zero to a definite one hundred.
“If it’s any consolation, you make Bristol’s jersey look ten times hotter,” Aeris says to me.
I glance down at the baggy jersey swallowing my figure, and it feels wrong for me to be wearing it. My sprinting heart double-beats in time to the banshee-wailing buzzers, and my frosted breath refuses to inundate the tight confines of my chest. I appreciate Aeris for trying to cheer me up, but I’m pretty sure happiness is a state I can only achieve with some high-quality pot and top-shelf alcohol.
I masquerade the stress lines of hurt probably rooted in my face, offering her a smile that I doubt reaches my eyes. “Thanks, Aer-Bear.”
I didn’t want to spend the entirety of my Friday night with my best friend getting into the nitty gritty details about Bristol’s dead ex, so I settled on a vague rehash about the damage my poor heart sustained, and she comforted me while we watched women onThe Bachelorcycle through the same pain I was feeling.
The thing about Aeris, though, is that she can read me like an open book. And right now, DUMB BLONDE WITH AN INFERIORITY COMPLEX is underlined, highlighted, and annotated with obnoxious doodles.
“If you want to leave at any time, just tell me and we can go.”
My gaze swings to the lumbering figures glissading across the ice, batting around pucks and shouldering their teammates. “It’s alright. I need to be here. It’s good for the press,” I respond,keeping my thousand-yard stare fixated on any playerbutnumber thirty-six. The game should be starting soon, and Bristol hasn’t come up to pester me yet, so staying under his radar is the only way I’ll get through this.
Out of the corner of my peripheral, I can see Aeris wring her hands together in her lap. “Li, I know this campaign is important to you, but you’re not…overextending yourself, right?” Her voice is quiet, threaded with a squeaky nervousness that she only uses when she’s too afraid to hurt my feelings. A pre-Band-Aid rip.
I blink a few times, trying to comprehend the weight of her question. “Of course not. I’m fine. This campaign has been great, really. You don’t have to worry about me.”
She frowns. “But I do worry about you. It’s my job to worry about you.”
I’m about to turn and look at her when there’s a bang on the plexiglass that makes me flinch. Bristol’s somehow found me in negative two business days, and he’s looking even hotter in his full hockey uniform, which is basically the equivalent of military-grade weaponry for any woman with a working vagina.
“Hi, girlfriend,” he greets, pretty much vibrating like the Energizer Bunny. There’s no trace of the tortured, haunted man who cried and held onto me for hours. So either hockey players snort a line of crack before each game, or he’s playing it up for the cameras.
Even though it stings, I dip into those acting chops of mine, heeding the voice in the back of my head that whispers condescendingly,None of this is real.
I feel the corners of my lips tip up into a smile—and it’s unfortunately not just a byproduct of this whole “show.”
“Hi, boyfriend.”
