Good Girl (Playroom) (34 page)

Well,
this bitch just became an independent adult and she’s going where she belongs. There’s a pair of warm, welcoming arms waiting for her, and she’s going to use them for the first time ever.

~Chapter Thirty~

I shower out of respect. I want to be accepted
as I am, but you shouldn’t come to someone for support and understanding smelling like pot. I’m not numb, and it’s not because I took a scalding shower. I’m resolved. I can breathe… I can finally breathe inside my own skin. It’s freeing. It’s the taste of independence, and it’s more addictive than any substance I could ever take into my body.

“Welcome home, Sapling,” she whispers in the dark as I crawl across her bed, snuggle under the covers, and lay in her waiting arms.

“It’s not much, but I always knew you cared, and that no matter what, you’d always be here waiting for me. I know I’ve been a spoiled brat, and I apologize. And lastly, you were right. I knew you were right when I moved from Mom and Dad’s, but I at least had to try.”

“Willow,” Clover sadly murmurs
. “Are you okay?” Hearing the crushed tone in Clover’s voice nearly crushes me, too. But the lack of judgment makes me smile. She didn’t say I told you so like I’d expected. No, Clover’s first thought was of my welfare. Hell, she didn’t even ask what happened. Clover may not be the best mom on the planet, but she’s the one I crawled to when I needed a hug. She’s the one that I pray will put the Mason family back together again.

“I’m just singed a little
around the edges,” I admit with a sharp laugh.

“Not burned to ash?” She plays along.

“Nope,” I snort.

“Well, give it time. Once you sleep on it, you’ll feel differently. Perhaps by morning you’ll be scorched. Don’t lie down and die. Take all that heat, ball it up deep in your belly, and use it to move forward. I don’t know what happened and it doesn’t matter. You can tell me or not, it’s the first
conscious choice you’ll make as an adult.”

“Auggie…” I begin with my first choice, the choice to trust my sister. “He’s the type of man who will control you, consume you, and nothing you do will ever be good enough.
I know who I am and who I was. Auggie made me feel badly about myself. He made me doubt my own judgment. He made me feel alive, sexy, and wanted. But at the same time, he made me feel small, stupid, and worthless. Auggie inspired me and stilted me. He made me love him and feel loved. And he did all of it because he thought it was the right thing to do. Will I forgive him- probably. Will I ever trust him again- I just don’t know. I’ll have to let ya know.”

“You know Augustus wi
ll probably come to his senses and ask you to come back. What will you do?”

“I don’t know. If I do
, it won’t be how it was before tonight. I’ve worked so hard and Auggie doesn’t see it. The progress I’ve made at
Revamped
and the Spook House- hell, I’ve taken the last step and became a student looking for a brighter future. I owe some of the credit of this to him. I’m not perfect, but I didn’t deserve to be called a
going-nowhere-in-life-addict.
It’s not true- not one word of that is true anymore.”

“Augustus woul
d have to be blind not to see the difference in you. Perhaps he’s too close and it warps his vision. Putting distance between you will cast you in a new light. Willow, I’m so proud of you. I’ve been so emotional lately. Losing Sam…” Clover’s voice breaks and that bursts my dam. I press my face against her soft chest and sob. Her arms tighten in a vice-like grip as I unleash all my pent up emotions.

Fuck scorched, I’m incinerated.

“Losing Sam was difficult,” Clover chokes out. “But seeing how it affected you, how it changed your course in life… that is what killed me. I had to be strong for our family, but I can’t tell you the amount of times I broke down after seeing you high and drunk and belligerently fighting us. What killed me is how Sam would have hated himself for causing you so much distress. The past few months, it’s like I can feel Sam smiling down at us in pride.”

“Jesus, Clover,” I hiccup, “Are you trying to kill me.”

Clover ignores me and continues to talk, “I’ve been emotional because it’s helping me move on. If a stoned-out-of-her-gourd kid can turn her life around, then so can I. I love my family, but I want a new outlook on life. Maybe you can help me.”

“I’ll try, but I’m
not making any promises,” snarkily flows from my lips, followed by a giggle. Oh, Clover has a change a coming- his name is Malcolm and I hope he lights a fire under her ass.

“Can I ask you something?” I’ve never heard Clover sound bashful. It makes me intrigued.

“I invaded your bed in the middle of the night. You can ask me anything you please. I have nowhere else to go. I was already coming here. But when Auggie told me to go home to my childhood bedroom because that’s where a child should sleep, I decided nothing would ever get me to sleep in that bed again.”

“Whi
ch one are you really with?” Clover’s words rapidly flow, and they’re so quiet that I barely hear her. It’s like she had to say the words before she chickened out.

“Fuck if I know,” I bark out. “You ready for this shit? Auggie pushed me towards Devon. Devon’s pushing me towards his brother, Kieren. I’m so damned confused that I can’
t honestly tell if the sky is blue and the grass is green anymore.”

“How do you feel about them?”
Clover nervously shifts around on the bed, telling me that that question makes her very uncomfortable.

“I love Auggie
, and right now I dislike him, too. Can you really love someone if you want them to date someone else so you can avoid commitment? As we are now, it would never work. Auggie would try to parent me and I’d fight him tooth and nail. I love Devon. I don’t know if it’s as a friend or boyfriend. I do know he’s the first real best friend I’ve ever had and I don’t want to screw it up. I miss him when he’s not around and it’d kill me to lose him. Kieren is a fuckhead, but he’s growing on me like a disease. Love of my life- oh hell no! Love him as a person, yes. I have an unnatural attraction to Kieren for some reason. I’m only eighteen. I don’t have to make up my mind right now and I won’t be with Devon by default. Devon deserves more than being my second choice- he wouldn’t be, but it’d look like it while Auggie and I are hating on each other.”

“Are you…” Clover
cuts herself off and I swear I can feel the heat of her blush.

“Devon and I are. Auggie’s hot and cold. I’ve been with him, but not really. I’m
not committed to them and they’re not committed to me. Right now, I’m going to go with what feels natural,” I admit it, and I realize that I feel no shame in it.

“Can I tell you a story, Wi
llow? I know you and Violet are hurt because I insist you get the shot, but I have my reasons. After what you just told me, I bet you’re glad I put your naughty ass on
Depro
.” Clover snickers and it warms me.

I b
reathe a sigh of relief that Clover’s okay with her sister’s skanky behavior. “I’d love to get to know you as a person, Clover.” The hitch in her breathing has my eyes watering again. I sniffle and wipe my eyes on her nightgown.

“Mom and Dad are weirdoes- there’s no denying it. In order for me to rebel I had to be normal. I loved the structure of school, it centered me. I understand you better than you think, Sapling. I was tiny, smaller than you are. I also didn’t have a lot of friends because I exceled in school. Spring break of my senior year I was sixteen, seventy-five pounds, and an inch shy of five
foot. I was worse off than you. At least you had the badass, stoner vibe going on. They didn’t make fun of me because I was invisible.”

“No freakin’ way were you smaller than me,” I thump my head against her breast as example.

“Smaller- I only had a set of nipples and nothing else. I told you that having kids brought out any curves I have now. I grew two more inches by the time I turned twenty.”

“So there’s stil
l hope for me yet,” I muse and Clover laughs at the yearning tone in my voice. 

“
I met a girl at my afternoon college courses- Ginny. She was a few years older than me, but we hit it right off. In fact, we’re still best friends to this day,” Clover says with a smile in her voice.

“I feel like a little maggot right now, let me tell ya. The fact that I’m just know finding out who your best friend is.” I shake my head in disgust. “I’ve been completely disconnected, and Kieren better book me a session at
Axel
. I’m getting that tattoo,” I snort.

“What?” Clover
yelps in outrage.

“Sorry, I’m just kidding,” I chuckle.  “It’s a private joke between us. I was tol
d to stop constantly apologizing.”

“Oh, thank God,” Clover
sighs in relief. “You hate Auggie fathering you, you’re lack of knowledge of me is because you’ve resented me mothering you. It’s fine. Now is the first time we could connect as something more- as women. So… Ginny… we talked in class for months, but we never got the chance to hang out. During spring break, I had time off and she invited me to a party. It wasn’t a college party or anything- it was her family, but they were young. The moment I walked into Malcolm and Camilla Mason’s house my life changed.”

“Oh my God, you’re being serious?” I bolt up
off the bed and try to look Clover in the eye. The glint of blue is shining with amusement.

“Hell, yeah… serious as meeting the love of your life.
Camilla was Ginny’s sister. Everyone was there. Augustus ran up to me like I was a celebrity and dragged me around, introducing me to everyone- the little shit. Hard to believe that I met your future boyfriend when he was fifteen months old because your other boyfriend introduced us,” Clover teases.

“Now you’re just making shit up,” I grumble and slap her in the arm.

“My hand to God, I’ve known those guys since I was younger than you… We’re huddled around a picnic table eating corn on the cob when I saw him. I dropped my ear and splattered myself with butter, but I couldn’t look away. He was the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen. I thought he was my age, those chipmunk cheeks made him look like a kid. I found out later- much later that he was twenty.”

“Sam,” I whisper in awe. Clover ha
s never told anyone how they met, no matter how much Violet begged. Clover’s giving me a gift, and it has to be killing her.

“There’s something about instant chemistry that
can’t be denied. We didn’t talk. All we did was stare at each other while the party went on around us. Hours later, I was leaving the bathroom… and before I could blink, I was pressed against the wall with a pair of luscious lips descending on mine. Sam was my first kiss, and minutes later in the spare room, he was my first. There was no thought. It was a compulsion that couldn’t be denied. I didn’t even know his name. I didn’t regret it. But there were consequences to losing my virginity at sixteen, without protection, to a grown man whose name I didn’t even know. Five weeks later, I was bawling my eyes out on my graduation day. I was pregnant. Instant chemistry can’t be denied, but it’s irreversible, too.”

“Clover,” I cry. “What happened?”

“First, I’ll say this is why I put you girls on the shot as soon as you menstruated. It’s a fairytale to think that you’ll fall in love and then decide to make love. Sometimes it’s taken from you, and sometimes you fuck against a closed door while your best friend’s family is in the living room, and then again on the edge of the bed, and finish the round off bent over a dresser,” she snickers at the memory, and then turns serious. “I didn’t want you to go through the agony of having your self-worth shredded.”

Clover pulls herself up and rests against the headboard. She’s silent for a very long time. I worry that she’s fallen asleep, but I see a sliver of blue peering at me.

“I told Mom and Dad, and then went to university. I told no one else. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but it wouldn’t ruin my life. It was a choice I’d made, and I’d deal with it. Only problem was that I underestimated what it meant to have a best friend- I didn’t have one for the first sixteen years of my life, so I was shocked when Ginny showed up months later with a handsome man in tow. When you weigh eighty pounds, you can’t hide a pregnancy. Sam wouldn’t leave me alone after that. An hour with Sam was like a week with someone else. He was an open book.”

“What did you do with the baby?”
I regret the words as soon as they’re spoken. Clover starts hysterically crying and all I want to do is soothe her.

“Sam
never forgave me for this, even on his deathbed. Sam said he’d love me for an eternity, but he’d never forgive me. He loved me so much that he did what I thought was right. I regretted it a billion times over, and then I’d agree with my decision. I went back and forth for years. I believe that once you make a life-changing decision you better stick with it. I gave the baby up for adoption and it nearly killed me.”