It's Never Enough: Book 1 in the Never Series (8 page)

CHAPTER NINE

“Wait. How do you feel right now?” Casper asked me just before I was about to pick up Dasher’s leash.

“Um, okay I guess.” I knew the answer he was looking for, but I wasn’t quite feeling it.

Casper had me come to his place a half-hour earlier than I normally did so he could work with me. He wanted me to be successful with the dogs. He knew that I wasn’t great walking them, and he felt that he knew why. As with all of his clients, Casper related dogs’ attitudes and behaviors to the person who was with the dogs. If you’re nervous, the dog is nervous. If you’re calm, the dog is calm. So I waited to pick up Dasher’s leash and wondered how I was really feeling.

“Really?” Casper said. “You feel okay? Because your body language and the vibe I’m getting from you says otherwise.”

It did? What vibe was I giving off? Tense? Confused? Those were just a smidge of what I was actually feeling. I was still unsure of what totally spooked Devin the other day. He texted me that night and apologized again, blaming it on forgetting that he had to help his mom with Kyle. But something still seemed off to me. There was always an underlying tension with him. He couldn’t walk the dogs either, which made me think that maybe there was something to Casper’s logic.

“What should I do?” I asked him.

He stood me up straight, pushed my shoulders down, told me to stick out my chest—I don’t know if that was for my benefit or his—and to close my eyes and take three deep, calming breaths.

“Have you tried yoga like I said? Did you go to the place Zoey recommended to you?” he asked while taking deep breaths along with me.

My eyes fluttered open. “Ah, yeah I did. It was good, thanks. I feel better now. Calmer.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Now take the leash.”

I did, and Dasher immediately went from lying passive on the floor to standing on all fours at attention. Casper let out a huffing sound.

“Mallory, you transmit your vibe to the dog. You must be peaceful.
Peaceful
.” He did the breathing motion again, and I followed. “Think of something that brings you peace.”

“I like the beach,” I said after scrolling through a list of things that I liked. Coffee, sweets, Devin, the beach. Not necessarily in that order.

“Good.” Casper added the leashes of Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen to my hands. “Tell me what you like about the beach.”

“Well, I like the way the sun warms my skin. I like the smell of the salt-water air coming off the ocean.”

“Good,” Casper said as he coaxed me to walk around his apartment with the dogs. “Keep thinking that.”

And so I did. I imagined the warmth on my face. The soft, hot sand under my feet. The crashing sound of the waves, and I did feel calmer. The dogs must have also felt calmer because they were walking perfectly beside me with no tension on the leash.

After a few laps around Casper’s living room, he stopped and began to clap. “You see? You can do it!” He continued clapping. “You just have to be peaceful. You are young. You should find much peace in your life.” He took the dogs from me.

The problem was that I wasn’t sure how to
find much peace
. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out to see a text message from Devin.

I need to see you

Sometimes I hated texts. Was that “I need to see you” a sexy need to see me, a desperate need to see me, an angry need to see me, or a happy need to see me?
Ugh!
Of course, my brain went to the worst one: an angry need to see me. Was this it? Was it all over? Had I pushed him away or something the other night?

“Here, take Vixen for a moment,” Casper said while putting the leash in my hand. Immediately, the dog stood at attention and growled. “Mallory, what have I been telling you? Peaceful, my girl, peaceful!”

At least I’d had a taste of being peaceful. Vixen nipped at the air, and I began to focus again on breathing slowly.

***

When I walked into Perked, I saw Devin wave to me from my booth. There were two coffees already on the table, so I assumed one was for me. As I approached, he got up from the seat and kissed me on the cheek. Then as I slid into the booth, he slid in beside me. Not across from me, but beside me. His thigh touched against mine, and I could feel the heat coming off of his body.

“How are you?” he asked before taking a small sip of his drink. His knee was bobbing up and down under the table, causing the zippers on the pockets of his cargo shorts to jingle. “I got you a French vanilla coffee. But I wasn’t sure how you take it.” He pointed to the packets of sugar, sugar substitutes, and tiny cream containers that were on the table.

“Thanks.” I watched him take a deep, steady breath as I put one sugar substitute in the coffee. “I’m okay. How are you?” The coffee burnt the tip of my tongue as I took a sip.

He stared at the table while nodding his head. “I’m good.” Nod, nod, nod. Then in one quick motion, he turned to me and clasped my hands in his. “I’m so sorry for bailing last night.” He paused for a beat and held my gaze with his emerald green eyes that held secrets I wasn’t privy to yet. “Things have been…tough since I’ve been back. I mean it’s only been a few months, and here I am, back and figuring out how to help my mom with Kyle and working and acclimating to the life of a civilian or whatever, and then I meet you and you’re fucking amazing.” He stopped and looked down at the table for a moment. “Sorry, but you know what I mean. You’re amazing, literally. You’re the one person I stop and think about, and a smile comes to my face. I feel…I
want
to feel totally comfortable around you.”

“Wait, you don’t feel comfortable around me?” The tension that was in Devin’s body crossed into mine, and I suddenly got a sense of what the dogs must feel whenever I touch their leashes.

“No, no, I do.” He moved even closer to me. “I do.” His hand stroked my hair. “I’m fine, really. Everything’s fine.” His eyes skimmed my entire face, my eyes, my nose, my lips, my chin, and back to my eyes. “I do.” His voice was soft like cashmere as he closed the last bit of space between us so he could kiss me. And in that moment, with his mouth draped over mine, I tried as hard as I could to push the fact that his shoulders still felt tense out of my mind.

***

“Hello, sunshine!” Fiona said as I entered the apartment.

After spending the afternoon with Devin, I expected to come home to an empty apartment since I thought Fiona was working the dinner shift. But there she was in our tiny kitchen stirring something in a large saucepan. The counters were covered with various food items: peppers, lettuce, eggplant, spices, knives, and various cutting boards.

“Hey. So what’s going on here?” I tossed my purse on a barstool and strode up next to her. The familiar scent of tomato sauce wafted out of the large saucepan.

She tore up pieces of fresh basil. “I’m making us dinner.” She tossed the coarsely shredded basil into the pot with a flourish and then reached for the pepper mill.

Fiona didn’t cook. Ever. I was the one who cooked. Granted, I much preferred to make desserts, but I could also whip up a meal on a moment’s notice. One of the takeaways of being from a divorced home—none of my step-mothers were known for their cooking—is learning how to cook early on so my father and I didn’t starve or live off of take out and mac and cheese from the blue box. “Fiona, you don’t cook.” I took over stirring the sauce while she attempted to seed a tomato.

“Whatever,” she quipped. “I’ve been watching videos online all afternoon. It’s really not that hard. I don’t know why I never tried before.” The knife was coming dangerously close to her fingertips, and she moved from the tomato to a green pepper.

“Curl your fingers under,” I said while continuing to watch the blade.

She ignored me as she was clearly in her own little world. “You just chop things and plop ‘em together, and you have a meal. I’m sorry I never helped out with the cooking before.”

I moved and took the knife from her hand before we had to make a trip to the emergency room. “It’s okay. But why the sudden urge now? Tonight?”

Fiona grew silent as she moved beside me, her face in careful thought, while she slowly moved a block of  cheese up and down the grater. As if she needed the time to pick her words carefully. Allowing her the time, I diced up a selection of peppers—green, red and yellow—before I plopped them into the sauce.

“It’s just that I wanted to make dinner for you tonight. And I wanted us to
eat
it together. Normal.” Fiona knew that eating wasn’t a normal thing for me, and I could feel her treading lightly like a cat on a tightrope. “And I guess after all this time, I want to say I’m sorry. Sorry for not being there for you when you and Haley were…you know, going through everything.” She sniffled and tried to blink back tears.

I shook my head. “No. I pushed you away. You don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“I should have made you talk to me.” She banged a spoon down on the counter.

There was no part of me that blamed Fiona. Even when she tried to step in, I cut her out hard.

***

Haley and I had just come back from a binge. We’d hit every drive-thru and fast-food place we could find within a five-mile radius. She was amped up over a fight she had with her mom, and I’d just had a huge fight with the guy I’d been dating. It came to my attention that I wasn’t the only girl my boyfriend Drew enjoyed screwing from behind. So when Haley called me all upset, I knew we were on the same wavelength.

“I’m seriously not going to make it to your house,” she said to me as she clutched her stomach. “I haven’t had a binge like that in forever.” She moaned as I pulled into the driveway of my house.

“That’s because you haven’t been eating lately.” The moment I said it, I knew it was a mistake because she shot me a glare that almost bore through the side of my face. Immediately, I changed the subject. “Seriously, I think my stomach stretched like three sizes this afternoon.”

We walked inside the house. It was early enough that my dad and Janet were still at work and Fiona was in class.

“If I wasn’t so stuffed, I’d race you to the bathroom,” Haley said as we waddled downstairs to my bedroom. Moments later, I was waiting outside the bathroom door as Haley finished her purge. Lately, it was taking her longer since she’d try to purge more than once in a session. That was something I’d never been able to do, and I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to.

“Hey, what’s up?” Fiona said, and I practically jumped out of my skin.

“Fiona!” I spat. “I thought you had classes this afternoon?” I kept my back blocking the bathroom door.

Fiona raised an eyebrow. “I did, but my professor went home sick.” She pointed to the door behind me where Haley was making some incriminating sounds. “Is that Haley? Is everything okay?”

I plastered a huge smile on my face. “Yeah, she’s okay. She probably has the same thing your professor has. Something’s obviously going around.” I tried steering her away from the door, but she wouldn’t budge. I knew she didn’t believe me. She’d seen how thin Haley had gotten lately, and with the sounds of vomiting from behind me, any doubts she had were being eliminated. “So I’d better take care of her, and I’ll catch up with you later, okay?” I tried pushing her arm again, and this time she moved.

We had walked about five steps before she stopped and turned to me. “Hey, I know I haven’t been around as much lately, and I know you and Haley have been spending, like, all your time together, but you know I’m still your sister, right?”

“Yup,” I replied as quickly as I could.

She softened her face. “You would tell me if something was wrong, right? You know you can come to me, right?”

“Yup, yup.” My words were speedy and flat. Behind me, I heard the bathroom door open, and I knew Haley was done. It was my turn, and the longer I stayed in the hallway talking to Fiona, the more the parade of fast food in my stomach would digest and make its way onto the fat of my thighs. I had to get Fiona out of there. “Okay, I’ll see ya.” I placed my hand on her back and pushed a little, to which she resisted. The food churned in my stomach, and I couldn’t take it much longer.

“And everything’s okay?” she asked again.

“Mal, where are you?” Haley yelled.

I plastered on my best sugary sweet fake smile and flashed it at Fiona. “I’d better go make sure she’s okay.”

When Fiona started to walk away on her own, I raced back to my bathroom, slammed the door shut, shoved my fingers down my throat, and let all that I had out of me. I felt like my head was banging on something as I held onto the sides of the toilet. Then I realized that the banging wasn’t coming from my head; it was coming from the door. I finished and rinsed my mouth out in the sink while the banging—mixed with the incoherent babbling of voices—continued.

When I opened the door, I saw Fiona standing there staring at me.

“I told her to go away,” Haley said to me.

Fiona whipped her head in Haley’s direction. “Stay out of this,” she hissed. To me, she said, “Tell me what you’re doing.” Her hands jammed into her hips.