Page 10 of Endlessly Yours
Shamed and forgotten.
I swallowed hard, shook my head, and went back to my desk.
I had art to work on, countless emails to go through, and I needed to finally hire an assistant to help me with social media and other projects.
I’d gained enough popularity in certain circles that now I needed someone to help deal with administrative tasks so I could focus on the art.
“That didn’t sound very boring, did it Ben?” I mumbled.
Then I set aside all thoughts of the man who hadn’t loved me enough to figure out who I was, and the man that, frankly, I realized I hadn’t loved at all. We had both been at fault. Because honestly, he was just as boring.
I opened up my current project, lifted my stylus, and got to work.
While I sometimes worked with pencils and paint, at that moment, digital art was the best for me. I could focus on exactly what I needed to for these types of projects, and not get bogged down with messiness and my indecisiveness of certain mediums.
Sometimes though, the media needed to change for the project because I got too far into my head.
Currently however, the couple in a romantic tango, fully clothed for this project, shone brightly on my screen.
I worked on shading her dress, knowing that I was going to have to pick up this book as well. Usually, I had on an audiobook as I did this, but today I needed music that pounded out of the speakers and let me not think.
Because, at first, it had nothing to do with my sister or my ex or life in general. No, they didn’t earn my headspace or thoughts.
Brooks.
I forced myself to unclench my fingers around the stylus, not realizing that I had tensed until pain ricocheted up my pointer finger.
While I wasn’t sure if Brooks remembered every single moment of that night in an airport hotel, I did. Because I had only been partially drunk. I had consented just as much as he had. But he had blocked it out enough to never speak of it. And I remembered every taste, every orgasm, and the fact that it had been the best sex of my life on one of the worst nights of my life.
Because my parents’ ashes had been spread over the ocean hours before and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to move on from that.
My parents had each died from an upper respiratory infection that had taken a toll. It had been a very bad case throughout the country, and mostly children had died from it, but in this case, my parents hadn’t been able to push through, and their lungs had stopped working. Their oxygen had gone so low that each of them had been intubated, and I had sat in a waiting room, waiting for them to wake up. And they never had.
I could still remember the look of confusion in my mom’s gaze, and the look of knowing in my father’s. Because they knew eventually, that neither one of them was ever going to wake up.
Once again, I wiped the tears on my cheeks, annoyed with myself. My parents had made end-of-life decisions, and I had been the executor of their will. After all, Beth had cut them out of their lives as well. They hadn’t cut her out of their will. But I was the one who had made the choices. I was the one who worked on their funerals. Had spoken to their friends and family and uncles and aunts and everyone else in our extended family that we weren’t close to but had come to give their respects.
And Beth hadn’t.
So that night, I tried to drink away my pain, wondering if I should just get on a different plane and head somewhere that had nothing to do with family.
It hadn’t helped that I had also been fired that morning because they’d wanted to cut back and use interns for my job.
I huffed and continued to draw, annoyed with myself for going down this memory lane. Of course, I knew exactly why I was thinking of that night. Because he had kissed me again. No, maybe I had kissed him?
I wasn’t sure exactly which had been the case, but in the end, his hand had been in my hair, pulling just hard enough. It had made my toes curl. And he had been rough that night, leaving bruises exactly where I had wanted them, and yet tender in ways I hadn’t thought possible.
And just that taste had brought it all back to the surface, and I knew I was an idiot.
It was my own fault for working at the Wilder Retreat. It was my own fault for thinking that that place happened to be the most peaceful place when I needed to clear my thoughts and work and not think about family or stress or money or life.
Part of me hated the fact that anything having to do with a Wilder calmed me. Because Brooks Wilder had nothing to do with calm.
It was just my luck that my best friend, the person who knew every single thing about me except that night, happened to be married to his brother.
Fate truly hated me sometimes. As if I had conjured her, my phone buzzed, and I looked down at an incoming call from Ava.
Distractions already pushing through the day, I set down my work and answered.
