Page 39 of Embrace
“There’s something about the way her features are placed. It’s like she’s art made specifically for me. I know it sounds superficial.”
“No,” she said quickly. “Not at all. She was made for you, and you were able to look at her and tell.” She rubbed her hands together. “I want to meet her. When can I meet her?”
I yawned hard. “Fuck,” I said, shaking my head briskly. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay. You’re tired. Why don’t you just go upstairs and go to bed?”
The motionless, warm, and wet night, the trees, opaque in the dark like hairy cavemen, the bourbon, Bryn, our conversation—it all made my eyelids heavier than usual.
After standing, I stretched my body from side to side and yawned again. “I think I should.”
Bryn raised her arms above her head to stretch. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?”
I focused on the chair swing tied to a thick branch on the oak tree. “Yeah.” I sighed, thinking about how nice it would be if Penina were here.
“Ash?” she called quietly.
I turned to look at her.
“Although I won’t get involved in your Julia Valentine predicament, I do have some advice for you. Do you want to hear it?”
Bryn had tilted her head as she waited for my reply. As long as I’d known her, which was all my life, she’d never done that—asked before issuing advice.
“Sure,” I said.
“Be nice to her. That’s how you’re going to send Julia packing. You’ve always treated her like crap and vice versa. Julia, unfortunately, is burdened by untreated abusive-daddy issues.”
My grimace intensified while I tried to make the connections in my brain. “Okay.”
“Think about it. Remember we used to call her dad AV Dickhole?”
I snorted and nodded.
“For this purpose, and since we are practicing being real mature adults, let’s take the Dickhole part off and call him AV.”
“What the fuck happened to you? Has an alien invaded your body?”
She chuckled. “I’m standing right here.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining, but please…” I folded my arms. “Continue.”
“Well, AV purported to love Julia, but look what his love entailed. Remember how he used to parade her in front of guests at parties and say how sexy she was and how she was going to be a real asset? Even forcing her to marry Jasper when she liked you more. She’s as scared as hell of Jasper. Being treated like crap is Julia’s comfortable place, and when you treat her that way, she wants more of you. Talk to her, be nice, and I bet she’ll go somewhere else and find another poor soul who makes her feel like AV does.”
I nodded and said, “Okay.”
As we hugged good night, Bryn’s words wouldn’t leave me.Did I treat Julia like crap?It had been a long time since I’d interacted with her. I had to think hard to recall our encounters.
The room upstairs was as quaint and modest as the rest of the house. The space looked like something straight out of a horror movie, though. Sheer white curtains covered the windows. The material was so flimsy, they may as well not have been there. There were two twin beds, one on each side of the room, and a stuffed animal sitting on a rocking chair.Where in the fuck did Bryn find this place?
I took off my pants, button-down shirt, T-shirt, and socks, folded each, and sat them on the rocking chair. Then I turned off the light and stretched out across the small bed. When I lifted my head, I saw that my feet were dangling over the edge. I’d never been that uncomfortable in a bed before, not even in a call room. But it didn’t matter. Bryn and I were in the same house again.
I stared at the ceiling, wanting to give in to sleep but also fight it while striving to picture Julia’s face. The act was like focusing on an eye chart and trying to read the bottom line. Her face and body were a blur, although her personality and the crazy shit she used to do were as clear as the top line of that same chart.
Our last interaction had taken place at a private island on the Hudson River. I invited her to a friend of a friend of a friend’s party. Julia had arrived before me, which was something she always did. It was a tactic. The early bird got the advantage of reading the room, knowing the players, and disarming the late birds.
She had already started with a guy named Rudy Lawson, a financier out of Manhattan. He was high on cocaine. She was not. Julia knew how to stay sober, which was another choice she made to garner an advantage over the drug-addicted rich people we often hung around.
Rudy was all over her with fucking octopus hands, and she let him rub her thighs and slide his fingers up and down her slit while he tongued her. No one cared that they were a few strokes and gropes removed from fucking while in public. That was the sort of shit that went on at parties on private islands. Regardless, Julia was always aware when I walked into the room. She wanted me to see what she was doing. Her goal was to provoke me—make me feel jealous and worthless.
