Anstice smiled, no doubt laughing at the absurd idea. “Call me tomorrow, okay? And dinner is still happening.” Anstice hesitated, glancing at Keir as if they were mentally communicating. It pissed me off when they did that, so bloody connected together that they knew what the other wanted to say without actual words. “We want you to meet someone. A good friend.”
I stopped mid-bend to pick up a canvas, but straightened and looked at her. “Blind date me, and I call off our friendship.”
“No, no. It’s not like that. Waleron just might be someone you can . . . talk to.”
“A head doctor? You want me to see a head doctor again?” I cursed under my breath several times. Doctors had done shit for my father, and right after my abduction, I’d seen a therapist in the hospital. All I managed to get out of therapy were more questions as to what happened to me.
“He’s not a psychiatrist,” Anstice said. “He’s just someone who might be able to help with what you’re going through.” Anstice raised her chin. “I’m not taking no for an answer this time. You never go out anymore. All you do is work and sit here hibernating. So Saturday after you close, I expect to see you at our place.”
If I refused, she’d be over here every night until I agreed, and that wasn’t happening. Space and solitude had become my two best friends.
“Fine, I’ll come. But tell the boys to take a hike. They pissed me off the last time.”
“Jedrik’s flirting is harmless. And he likes you,” Anstice said.
“Yeah, well, tell him to take his charming ass out the door or I’ll do it for him.” The last time I’d gone for dinner, the thirty-something boys—and Hack and Jedrik were boys considering they bantered back and forth like a couple of ten-year-olds—had fought over who could get me to go on a date with them. They’d actually made a hundred dollar bet. I still couldn’t figure out why they even lived there with Anstice and Keir. It wasn’t like Keir needed the rent money. Hell, they lived in a mansion in the richest part of the city.
“I’ll deal with it,” Keir said, then put his hand on the small of Anstice’s back and headed for the door.
Even though I was happy Anstice had found the love of her life, it also brought with it a barrier between us. We’d grown up together, friends from the first moment we’d met in the playground in second grade. Anstice had been crying over an injured bird and some boys in the fifth grade were teasing her. I walked up to the little instigator, who was doing most of the egging on, and slugged him in the jaw. He fell flat on his ass and began crying. Anstice and I had been friends ever since.
But something had changed since the ‘episode’—that was how we referred to my abduction. Anstice was leery, refused to talk about what had happened, and seemed withdrawn. Something had changed.
Mostly, I felt disappointed with myself. I’d always been free-spirited. Now I felt trapped. The funny thing was, I didn’t even recall the days I’d been held in captivity. The doctors said it was normal, a way to protect my mind from something so traumatic. But my mind was snowed under with flashes of sounds and scents that reminded me of the horror I’d survived.
Goose bumps rose and I ran my hands up and down my arms. I was always cold now. It was this bizarre feeling, as if I’d been in sub-zero temperatures, constantly shivering, and my body unable to get warm.
It had been two years since I’d been intimate with anyone. No wild sexual encounters, no erotic flings, no dating. And I certainly didn’t do relationships. The reminder of my father’s brains splattered all over his mahogany desk was vivid enough to end any attachment before it ever got to the point of more than a fling.
I’d always been pretty bold about approaching a guy I found attractive, whether in a grocery store, pub, park, or the bank. If I thought a guy was cute, I asked him out.
Rejection came with the territory, but it never bothered me. Now, if I saw a guy I was attracted to, I walked the other way. Inside, I was a tornado of emotions—tearing, pushing and pulling in every direction. I couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong with me.
After I was released from the hospital, I began obsessing over the man in my paintings. It was as if he was begging me to discover who he was. I thought painting him would get him out of my system—instead, it intensified the urgency to paint him again and again. Desperation was strongest after the sun set, keeping me awake to stare at his portrait hanging over my bed. Some nights, I sat on the end of my bed cross-legged, staring at him as if waiting for him to say something.
Crazy. Shit, that’s what I was. Bat-shit crazy.
I grabbed a new canvas from my closet and propped it up on my easel. I pressed play on my stereo and Hinder’s “Lips of An Angel” blasted. Pulling the pencil from my hair, I began sketching. My hand moved with precision, knowing what it was drawing, having done it repeatedly. I ignored the red paint drying on the floor, the ruined canvases, and the promise to stop thinking of him. The buzzing in my head began singing its familiar song.
THIS SUCKED. I DIDN’T want to go, yet here I was tugging on my faded, button-up jeans. The day I arrived home from the hospital, I’d thrown out all my zippered jeans because, for some unknown reason, after the abduction, the sound of zippers freaked me out. I sifted through a pile of clothes on the floor and found a clean, chocolate-colored turtleneck that didn’t have any paint splatters.
Socks I lacked—period. I preferred bare feet even in winter. It had something to do with smothering my feet; a childhood thing I never outgrew. My mom used to say it was because I was a little angel—part of the earth—and I liked to feel it between my toes. She never made me wear shoes until I went to kindergarten and the teacher called complaining it was unsanitary for a child to be running around with no shoes and socks. My mom had ranted about someone trying to tell her how to raise her child, but finally caved only because the school refused to let me come back until the rules were conformed to.