Page 9 of My Irresistible Enemy

“Aww, my son. Handsomeandsmart. I did good when I made you.”

She grinned, her eyes dancing, and I didn’t know how to say no. I’d never known how to say no to her, not really. Even in the years she was using, I’d been terrible at it. My grandmother used to say I was a soft touch and wouldn’t let me see her.

My mom’s voice was the same as it ever had been, but the past twenty years were visible on her face. All the hardship she’d weathered. Her grief. And now her illness.

I wasn’t going to add more to that. I leaned in and gave her a hug, her thin frame almost brittle in my arms.

“Alright,” I said, kissing her cheek. “I promise.”

* * *

I had never missed Xanax more.

I didn’t actually take it for very long. My therapist had suggested I try it, right after—well, when the panic attacks were happening on a weekly, if not daily, basis. And it had helped, for a while.

It put reality into this peaceful little haze where any sense of worry I had just…evaporated. But it also made me so sleepy and confused that I could barely function, so I’d stopped it after a couple of months.

This morning, though—this morning, I was having trouble remembering why I’d ever stopped it at all.

I’d left my place in Washington, DC midday yesterday and driven all the way to Savannah before stopping for the night. This morning, I’d gotten up early to drive the last hour and a half to Brunswick, where I’d catch the ferry over to Summersea.

You might think being alone in a car for ten hours would be great for someone with social anxiety, what with the wholebeing alonething, but all it really did was give me ten hours to dream up every possible bad thing that could happen once I got to Summersea and filming began.

You might also think that I’d be more relaxed since the show was being filmed at my friends’ bed and breakfast, but you’d be mistaken there as well. All that did was convince me that terrible things weredefinitelygoing to happen, and my friends would be there to witness my humiliation first hand.

Sometimes, I wanted to dropkick my brain into the Atlantic.

It didn’t matter how many times my therapist told me my brain was just trying to help, that feelings were just feelings, and I didn’t have to let them control me.

Iknewit was trying to help, I knew I didn’t have to listen, but that didn’t stop my brain from whispering all last night that I was going to make an utter fool of myself on camera and get sent home after the first episode, and that everyone who’d ever met me would watch and laugh. That I’d fail my mom again.

I’d gotten approximately forty-five minutes of sleep, total. We were supposed to check in with the producers of the show by eleven a.m., and I was pretty sure I’d left myself plenty of time, but the longer I waited for the ferry to arrive at the Brunswick terminal, the more nervous I got.

I’d just begun walking back to the ticket desk, to ask if they had any update on the ferry’s arrival, when an announcement—static and crackly and impossible to hear—came over the loudspeaker, sending a flock of seagulls up in the air in surprise.

Fuck. That couldn’t be good. With my luck, the ferry had probably hit an iceberg and managed to sink, Titanic style, into the lukewarm depths of the Intracoastal Waterway. They’d probably just announced there would be no crossing for the next seventy-two hours.

I turned to an older guy who was standing a few feet away from me, leaning up against a pillar, and gave him my best customer-service smile—gentle, relaxed, eyes crinkled at the corners so it looked genuine.

“You, uh, didn’t happen to catch what that said, did you?” I asked, trying to calm my racing heart.

The guy looked away from the water, frowning. “I beg your pardon?”

“I was just wondering if you were able to make any more sense out of that than I was,” I said, gesturing towards the loudspeaker. “I’m just hoping the boat isn’t late. It’s probably stupid, but—”

The man looked me up and down, or rather down, then up, and his frown deepened when his eyes reached about waist-level.

“I don’t believe I know you,” he said frostily when he met my gaze again.

What the fuck? It was one thing to imagine strangers being rude to me for no reason—I was almost used to that at this point, my brain did it so well—but it was another to actually come face-to-face with it. I swallowed.

“Right, yeah, I was just—” I broke off, feeling my cheeks redden. My heartthud-thud-thud-edin my ears. “You know what? It’s not important, I’ll just—”

“I don’t believe Iwantto know you,” the man said, his eyes cutting back to my waist.

What the hell was he…oh.Oh.

It wasn’t my waist he was looking at. It was my messenger bag. More specifically, at the little bisexual pride pin my mom had gotten me four months ago and insisted I wear. His lip curled in distaste.

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