I don’t know if I’ll feel this way tomorrow.
But today…it feels nice.
{ 23 }
LOREN HALE
My Nike soles sink into the sand, digging hard into the uneven surface as I run. The sun beats against my bare chest, and I hope that I sprayed enough lotion to avoid a nasty burn.
Even in the boiling heat, Ryke sprints beside me, keeping up with my lengthy stride. I try to run every morning. It helps with my cravings, especially in Cancun. I can’t take one step out of our hotel room without seeing a sloshed college student or a bottle of beer. Seventeen bars are on this resort alone. I knew coming here would test me to the limit, but I never anticipated how I would feel.
Yesterday with Lily was literally the only day that alcohol never crossed my mind. Not once. We snorkeled with the turtles and climbed to the top of a Mayan ruin. She never asked me for sex, and I never craved a drop of whiskey. But that was one good day out of many shitty ones. I want to improve our statistics, to lessen all the bad days until they’re nothing but a dream.
I push harder, the humid air squeezing my lungs. Sweat beads my skin, and the pain that ripples through my muscles feels better than my nagging thoughts. So I keep driving farther. I keep bending my knees and pumping forward. And Ryke never breaks from my side.
I know that if I didn’t care so much about Lily—or have Ryke here to glare at me—I would have already broken my sobriety. And then Connor makes me want to be a better person—however lame that sounds.
But today we all split up.
Lily is shopping with Rose and Connor, which gives her a break from obsessing over having sex. Surrounding ourselves with other people is still new for us, and kind of exhausting, but we’re making it work.
I glance over my shoulder, and we slow down to a jog almost immediately. Melissa and Daisy are barely a speck in the distance. They were the only two that wanted to join us on a run. Unsurprising, since Lily looks like the Big Bad Wolf huffing and puffing after a minute sprint, and I’ve never seen Rose wear sneakers in her life. Connor would have come along, but he didn’t want to leave Rose and Lily shopping alone in Mexico.
Our feet slow to a complete stop. “Connor’s investigator still hasn’t come up with anything new?” Ryke asks, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, shirtless like me.
“Connor says he’s looking into it as quickly as he can.” And if his contacts don’t pan out, hopefully my father has better luck. But I wouldn’t tell Ryke that I’m talking to Jonathan Hale. Nothing good can come from that.
“Let’s say, worst case scenario, it gets leaked that Lily is a sex addict,” Ryke says, uncapping his water bottle as we wait for the girls to catch up to us. “What happens then?”
My stomach churns at the thought. “I don’t even want to entertain the idea.” All I picture is Lily sobbing and unable to be consoled. Watching her in that kind of gutted agony would kill me, but if we do go down that road, I can’t resort to booze. For once, I have to be there for her. She’s my best fucking friend. And she deserves the type of guy who can make her feel better, not worse.
If I can’t do that, then we really shouldn’t be together.
Ryke studies me. “You still taking Antabuse?”
I give him a bitter smile. “One pill a day keeps the demons at bay.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“Yes, Dad.” I stretch my muscles, pulling my arm over my chest, trying to relieve this built-up pressure. If the pill bottle wasn’t in my pocket—if I had left it in my suitcase with the other stolen luggage—I would have more temptations to drink. I was lucky for once.
I also hate talking about that medication. Talking makes me think and thinking makes me want to fucking drink.
“I wish you would have told me about Mason Nix sooner,” Ryke admits, changing the subject once again, this time to one of our top suspects. Ryke is good at that—talking and revolving around different topics. I find myself zoning into something, being immersed by his roundabout discussions like a whirlpool.
“Why is that?”
“We share the fucking gym at Penn. I see him almost every day. If I knew what he did, I wouldn’t have…tolerated him.”
“So what does you not tolerating him look like?” I ask with furrowed brows. I picture him ramming his fist into Mason Nix’s conceited face. Granted, I already did that.
“We may have had words,” Ryke says.
I still imagine a fist fight.
“You know,” I mutter, staring at my water bottle, “for the longest time after our freshman year, I kept thinking that I was in the wrong. I can’t even tell you how many tires I slit. And Lily told me that she didn’t expect what happened that night, but she didn’t mind it either.” I shake my head, thinking back to our first year at Penn. We both went to a frat party, the entire soccer team in attendance. Most of it is still a giant blur. But I do remember hearing guys near the kitchen discussing some girl on the second floor. Someone named Mason convinced a freshman to screw each guy on the soccer team.