Perfect Regret (Bad Rep #2)(52)
Author: A. Meredith Walters

But his lips felt foreign against mine. As if they didn’t belong there anymore. It felt like kissing a stranger. Or someone I used to know but had long since outgrown.

I put those thoughts out of my mind and threw myself into kissing the boy who had so recently broken my heart. The boy I thought I would never get over until another boy came along and proved that perhaps I had never really given away my heart at all. Until him.

STOP! I screamed silently and pressed my lips so hard against Damien’s that I cut the sensitive tissue against my teeth.

Damien pulled back and looked at me questioningly. He had to know there was more to this kiss than me wanting him. That desire and love had absolutely nothing to do with it. That this was a kiss born out of guilt and confusion and a staunch denial of a part of me that needed to die a quick and silent death.

Damien rubbed his thumb along my bottom lip, which had started to bleed. “What was that about?” he asked quietly, his eyes troubled.

I jerked my head away and moved out of his grip, giving myself and my continued poor decision making some distance. “Why does it have to be about anything?” I asked with hostility, already feeling foolish.

Damien’s lips quirked into a sad smile. “Because with you, Ri, it’s always about something. I just hoped it would be about me,” he said and I knew I wasn’t being fair to him right now. Mostly because even as I tried not to, I couldn’t stop thinking of Garrett walking out of the bar with Gracie behind him.

I couldn’t stop imagining what they were doing. What they meant to each other. What I had meant to Garrett. I hated how much I cared. I didn’t want to care. I was sick of feeling! Emotions got me nowhere but up to my chin in hurt and pain.

I gripped the front of Damien’s shirt and pulled him angrily toward me. “Let’s not think about it okay,” I demanded him, wondering briefly if I was setting myself up for more rejection. But I knew by the way his eyes heated as he looked at me that there would be no refusal.

Damien Green wanted me in whatever way he could have me. And I was taking advantage of that. Willing to use his body to forget. To forget my life that had somehow careened off track.

“Okay,” Damien said huskily, his glasses sliding down his nose as he leaned in to kiss me again.

“Can I come home with you tonight?” I asked, trying not to feel like a piece of shit for what I was propositioning.

Damien licked his lips. “There’s nothing I want more,” he murmured, pulling his keys out of his pocket and taking my hand in his.

You’d think I would have learned something about ill-advised hookups from jumping into Garrett’s bed. They only lead to complete upheaval.

But I wanted to go back to a time when my world was what I wanted it to be. A time where my dad was still alive, my heart still in one piece and the boy who shared my life was safe and predictable.

“Let’s go,” I said, trying not hate myself as I followed Damien to his car.

20

“Hey, Riley. Hey Damien,” Maysie said with a tone that reeked of disapproval. Normally that was my mode of communication and it didn’t feel good hearing it come from Maysie Ardin of all people.

It was three weeks before the end of the semester. I had fallen into some form of a quasi relationship with Damien that wasn’t quite dating but not just friendship. I absolutely refused to give him the title of boyfriend, however.

After leaving the bar with Damien that night all those weeks ago, I had gone home with him.

And no, perv, I didn’t sleep with him.

Yes, I had planned to originally but once I had gotten there I couldn’t do it.

Yay for self-respect!

Instead we had stayed up talking like we used to. And I was able to remember that aside from being my boyfriend, Damien had at one time been one of my closest friends.

After that, it became easier and easier to spend time with him. A drink after work. Studying at the library in the evenings. A lecture on environmental responsibility in the student hall. Small things that morphed into something else entirely.

Being around Damien again was like putting on a pair of well-worn shoes that had started to pinch my toes. He was still the liberal minded, environmentally aware, poetry writing, save the whales kind of guy. He still looked down his nose at people who didn’t recycle and easily judged anyone that didn’t share his single-minded vision of the world. At one time our vision had been one and the same. We were unified in our sneering, derisive judgments.

But I had come to realize it wasn’t so easy to sit on your soapbox when you scratched below the surface of what you were railing against. Because what you might find there could blow your mind

But now, even as I allowed myself to be pulled back into the way things were, it didn’t feel quite right. Even as I fought tooth and nail to make it all fit. Because I wanted something that was just as I remembered it. Before my life had changed too much for me to get a handle on. I craved the lack of emotional chaos and Damien provided that on some level.

Because lord knew, the rest of my universe was in a tailspin. First on the fast train to emo territory was the sad destruction of my family.

I had gone home for Thanksgiving break and it had been miserable. I had visions of creating new traditions; that somehow Mom, Gavin, Fliss and I would carve out a new niche after Dad’s death. What a deluded moron I had been.

While Mom had tried to put on a brave face, it had lasted only as long as it took me to unpack. Mom broke down and cried through most of my visit. There was no large family dinner this year. Instead, my mother, brother and myself ate a crappy meal at Denny’s before coming home and going to our separate bedrooms. My sister and her family didn’t even bother to come, claiming the girls were sick. I knew that they just hoped to avoid exactly what I had experienced, a get together meant to induce heavy drinking.

My brother was a mess. He had moved back in with Mom and it disgusted me how she was having to take care of him even though he was almost forty years old. And I was furious that she was enabling it.

When I asked her about it, she told me, politely and gently of course, to mind my own business and that everyone dealt with grief in their own way. This was Gavin’s way and I should respect that.

It had been hard, but I let it go. Hoping my mother knew the best way to handle the situation.

So after that depressing excuse for a holiday, I had latched onto school and classes as though it was all I had. And maybe in some ways it was. It was the only thing I had a hundred percent complete control over anyway.