Or who I wanted to do it with.
Should I move to Alaska with Mom, Cassie, and Charlie? Live with my mother again? Live with one of my older sisters and their serious boyfriends? But do fucking what?
I looked around—the entire clan’s eyes were on me, every single one. And there was…love in those eyes. Acceptance. They didn’t fucking know me, so how could they love me? How could they accept me? They didn’t know me. They all—Mom, Charlie, and Cassie included—thought they knew my worst, deepest, darkest, most painful secret…the affair and abortion.
If only it was that simple.
If only it was as simple as not having a career plan or goals. Well…it was not like I had career plans beyond college; the plan was always get the degree and figure “then what” when then became now. I always assumed if I put off the notion of a career long enough, something would just…happen. I’d end up doing something.
But now even that had been taken away.
I was adrift.
I was at a loss.
I had nothing. A storage locker full of…shit. Clothing, mostly. A shitty fourth-hand futon, a thrift store coffee table, a mattress and bed frame, some books, some posters, some knickknacks from my childhood, a few photos of family, some notebooks full of old poetry and song lyrics. Some cassettes and CDs with self-recorded attempts at being a singer-songwriter.
That’s it—the sum total of me, if you count my possessions as me. If you count my personality and my achievements as me, I’m even less. I’m a partially educated twenty-one-year-old woman with no real world skills or work experience, no degree, not even an interesting romantic history to point to—just a collection of dirty stories from sleeping with any half-decent looking dude who caught my momentary fancy.
“You all think you know me. Like it’s so easy to just…know someone. Like, I told you a few stories about my shitty, fucked-up life and because you’re all so amazing, you can all just accept me and fucking love me.” I glared icy daggers at Myles as I said that. “You don’t fucking know me. None of you fucking know me.”
“Lex, honey—”
I whirled and stormed away. “That includes you, Mom.”
I walked out into the gloomy leaden sky, into the drip-drip-drip of a solid drizzle. Running away from everyone who thought they knew me, who thought they cared about me. Running away to…
What? Who? Where?
Nothing, no one, nowhere.
Myles
We all watched her go, and silence expanded throughout the bar in the wake of her departure, the only sound the faint croon of an old Tony Bennett tune.
“That is one fucked-up female,” one of the Badd men said.
Whack! The sound of a hand smacking a chest. “Baxter! Be compassionate.”
“I am compassionately saying she’s got some serious damage she ain’t dealt with. Fuckin’ all of us know from painful personal experience that when you don’t deal with your shit, your shit has a way of hunting you down and fucking you up until you quit runnin’ and face it.” He looked at me, incredulous. “Dude—the fuck are you still standing here for? Go, motherfucker!”
I went—at a run. She wasn’t hard to find, as she hadn’t gone far. Just across the street to the end of a dock where a mind-bogglingly huge mega yacht, an ocean-going, full staff and crew kind of yacht, was docked. Lexie was sitting at the very end of the pier, her feet kicking into space, her shoes beside her.
She didn’t turn around. “I am not discussing any of what just happened, Myles, so if that’s why you’re here, you can just fuck right off.”
I plopped down beside her, moving her shoes to the other side. Propped my hands behind me, and watched a cruise ship that was anchored offshore, all lit up. I didn’t say a thing.
She finally eyed me, not turning her head. “What? What do you want, Myles?”
“What do I want?” I laughed. “A lot of things. Gotta be more specific.”
A bitter, angry sigh. “With me, Myles. Here, now, in this moment—what the fuck do you want? Why are you sitting here, not talking?”
I shrugged. “Just keeping you company.”
“What if I don’t fucking want company?”
I looked at her. “Then you say to me, ‘Myles, you sexy, understanding hunk of a man, I really just need some time alone. Could you please give me a little bit of time and space? I’ll come find you when I’m ready.’”
She lifted her chin. I saw her wheels turning. Deciding. Did she really want to be alone? Or did she just not want to be questioned?
I held her gaze. “Have I, at any point, demanded answers or stories or explanations from you?”
“Myles—”
“Have I, Alexandra?”
“You don’t get to—”
My temper flared. “The fuck I don’t! I think at this point I absolutely have earned the right to use your full name, Alexandra Rochelle Goode. Answer the goddamn question—have I ever demanded anything from you?”
“No,” she whispered.
“And I’m not doing that now.”
“But you’re—”
“Sitting next to an upset woman who I care about a lot.”
“Dammit, Myles.”
“No, not dammit Myles. I give a shit about you, Lex. Bare minimum, you gotta let me have that without fuckin’ fighting me on it. I give a shit about you—how you feel, what you want. You know who else gives a shit about the person that is Alexandra Goode?” I gestured angrily back at the bar across the street. “Every fucking body else back there. Most especially your mom, Cassie, Charlie, and Crow. So all I’m sayin’ here is, you’re not fuckin’ alone in dealin’ with whatever hell it is you’re holding on to.”
“I’m not—”
“I got a motherfucker of a bullshit sniffer, Lex, so don’t give me that. Yes, you fuckin’ are. I’m calling you on it. It’s as plain as the nipples on your tits that you’re harboring some seriously fucked damage inside you.”
She sniffed a laugh. “As plain as the nipples on my tits, huh? Isn’t the
