Chaotic (Imperfect Perfection) (16 page)

He blew out a breath, a relieved
look on his face as he squeezed my hand back. “I’m sorry for being such an
asshole, Della. I just saw you with that guy and figured something had happened.
I don’t know why, you’ve never given me any reason not to trust you.”

He slid next to me in the booth,
tipping my chin up so our faces were just inches apart. “I know I’m never
serious about things, but I’d like to be that way with you Della. Are you ready
to stop all this teasing bullshit we have going on and really be with me?
Because I want to be with you and only you.” He brushed my hair back, that I’m
sure was a frizzy mess from all of my dancing. I couldn’t help but smile at his
sweet words. They were so rare.

“And I want to only be with you.”

“Good, I think we can make this
work then,” he said, giving me one of his wide smiles for the first time all
night. “I’m glad we have that all cleared up.” I felt his hand underneath the
table, creep under my dress and trace the outline of my underwear. “This is
mine now.”

“Oh, really? Your one of those
guys, huh?” I moved my hand to the front of his jeans and squeezed. “Then this
is mine.” He raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t say anything, just grabbed his
wallet out, throwing more than enough money on the table for the bill and
grabbed onto my hand. “Glad that’s all cleared up. Let’s go and introduce
ourselves properly then.”

I blew out a sigh of relief as I
walked out of my last class of the semester right before winter break. It felt
good knowing that I would be passing all of my classes, with high grades. All
of my hard work had paid off, and I was proud of myself.

My phone rang as I walked into my
empty dorm, and I groaned when I saw it was my mother but figured I should get
it over with. Her calls were rare and most of the time didn’t last very long,
except for a few snooty comments.

“Hello, mother,” I answered,
kicking off my shoes to lie down on the couch.

“Always so happy to hear from me as
usual, dear.”

“Well of course,” I replied. “And
to what do I owe this phone call from you today?”

“Oh, just the usual. I wanted to
check in and make sure things were going all right. I know you said you’re
grades we’re good, but truthfully I won’t believe it until I see it with my own
two eyes.”

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to
wait a little longer. I had the last of my exams today, so I’ll be sure to
update you when they’re official, but I passed everything with even if I bombed
the exams.”

“That’s wonderful, Adelaide.” I was
surprised at her chipper tone, and I felt a little bit of my icy exterior chip
away. “Well, I just wanted to let you know that Chris has been sniffing around
lately. I was very vague when I told his mother where you left off too, but
he’s been asking lots of questions lately. Seriously, Adelaide, I’m not sure
what you did to that boy, but he is still very much in love with you. It’s kind
of nauseating.” And there goes that ice, freezing right back into place.

“I don’t know what to tell you,
mother. I haven’t had any sort of contact with anyone back home since I left.
Chris just needs to get over me, I guess.”

“Hmm…we’ll see about that. He’s
been threatening things lately if I don’t inform him of your whereabouts. He
acts as if I kidnapped you and stashed you away somewhere.”

“What kind of things is he
threatening?” I asked, sitting up straight as the door opened and Callie and
Zoey both walked in. They both waved to me before dumping their bags on the
floor and heading into the kitchen.
“You know exactly what things I’m talking about. I warned him just to keep his
mouth shut, and if he really ever wants anything to do with you ever again it
would be for the best. Does he really think blabbing things about you is the
key to your heart?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “I just
don’t understand why he would do that. What Chris and I had was juvenile. It
probably wasn’t even love.” It was nothing like what I felt for Justin. I
wasn’t sure if it was love yet, but it was definitely working in that
direction.

“Well, whatever it was doesn’t
change anything. You know how something like that could ruin our reputation
around here. This town is all about the gossip.”

I bit my tongue, wanting to agree
with her, actually she was the queen, but I just didn’t feel like getting into
that right now. A girl’s night was planned for tonight, and I was going to have
some fun with my roommates before we all headed off in different directions
tomorrow.

“Well, mother, I need to get
going-”

“Oh, I wasn’t finished yet,
Adelaide,” she interrupted. “The main reason for my call was to inform you that
Mia and I will be coming down to visit for the holidays. I all ready spoke to
your grandmother to inform her of the details and everything is all set there.
We’ll be down a couple of days before Christmas Eve. Mia and I are going to
leave after Christmas Eve dinner to meet up with Gerald at the airport.”

“Really?” was all I could muster as
I sat there in shock. The first part of that had set in when she mentioned Mia’s
name. Mia was Gerald’s daughter, and we had only ever seen each other a handful
of times since our parents had been married.

She lived with her mom in Michigan
and was basically the complete opposite of me. Mia was a year older than me and
had always strived to impress everyone. Whenever I made some kind of mistake, I
always had to hear Mia this and Mia that. I had come to really hate her over
the years, even though we barely knew each other. She had gone off to college
on a full-ride scholarship after graduating and that was the last I had heard
from her. It was actually a little strange that my mother hadn’t thrown her in
my face lately.

But the fact that my mother was
coming to visit me for a holiday, at my grandparent’s house, was pretty
shocking too.

“Are you staying there?”

“Of course not, Della.” A loud laugh
came through the phone. “As if I could stand your grandparents for that long.
No, we found a hotel nearby that will do well enough. I’ll call you when we get
to the airport, we’re getting a rental car, but maybe you could meet us
somewhere for lunch.”

“Sure, mom,” I replied simply, not
knowing what else to say. We said our goodbyes, and I walked into the kitchen,
sliding up onto the counter as Zoey and Callie sat at the small table we had
jammed in there, eating leftover pizza from the night before. Their chatter
stopped suddenly when I came in, and I looked at the two of them, neither one’s
eyes meeting mine. I knew something was up right away. I had to ask Callie to
shut up half the time and lately Zoey wasn’t much better.

“What’s going on with you two?” I
asked, swinging my legs back and forth, my eyes darting to theirs.

“Nothing,” Zoey answered quickly, stuffing
a piece of pizza in her mouth to point at how full it was.

I turned to Callie who had opened
her mouth to speak but then quickly shut it when Zoey had instead answered.
They did some kind of communication with their eyes that I could normally read,
but not this time.

“Callie, spill it. I know you’re
dying to, and you know I’ll eventually find out. So please, whatever you have
to say, just say it.”

“We-ll,” she dragged out. “We
picked up the school newspaper on our way back home.” She looked at me as if I
had done the same thing, but I just shook my head. “Okay, and…you know I don’t
read that thing.” I think the schools newspaper department was trying to make
it edgy or something by making it into more of a gossip rag more than anything.

“And there was some information in
there about you that was pretty surprising,” Zoey answered blandly, narrowing
her eyes at me.

“Surprising indeed,” Callie added.

 I sucked in a breath as they both
looked at me accusingly. I knew my past would eventually catch up with me, but
I certainly didn’t think it would like this. I don’t know why, but I just had a
feeling that’s what the topic had been.

 I could only imagine what the
article said and how exactly they got their information. The only person that
had even hinted at knowing was Mariah, and I hadn’t seen her in awhile. I still
hung out with Nash regularly, but only as friends, which I again made very
clear once Justin and I labeled ourselves.

I hopped off the counter, knowing I
needed to explain myself. “Look, I planned on telling you guys sooner, but I’ve
always had to keep it a secret, mainly because my mother didn’t want it to get
out. It happened right after I turned seventeen. I’ve talked about my boyfriend
at the time before, Chris?”

They both nodded their heads in
acknowledgement but remained silent.

“Well, he was my first, and the one
time with him was when it happened. I remember the morning I woke up and for
some reason, thought about when my last period was. I drove to the closest
pharmacy and bought about ten tests before hurrying back home to take every
single one.” No matter how many I took all of the results still came out the
same, a little positive sign or a smiley face, I threw every single one of them
across my room as if they were mocking my mistake.

“Didn’t you think to use
protection, Della?”

“Of course, but it happened at a
party, and both of us were drunk. I told Chris to stop when I realized that he
didn’t have one, but he promised he would pull out in time, and I was stupid
enough to believe him.”

“Oh, sweetie. You don’t need to
tell us anymore,” Callie said, patting one of my hands that were shaking.

“No, I need to.” I wiped a lone
tear off my cheek. Really, my story was just getting started. “So when my
mother found out, she went ballistic. The taping of the show was still going on
at that time, so she did everything in her power so that no one would find out.

No one except for Chris of course.
I guess you could call it fatherly instinct or something, because he came over
one afternoon while I was home “sick” from school. He actually acted happy
about it, like we could be a family or something, not even graduated from high
school. Sure, our parents had a lot of money, but we didn’t.

I knew there was no way that they
would stand by our decision if we decided to keep the baby. But my mind still
wasn’t made up when my mother whisked me to some disclosed clinic that was very
hush-hush.” I closed my eyes, picturing the white sterile walls that still
haunted my dreams. Everything had been so clinical. No one had spoken to me,
not one word.

The doctor had actually mumbled
something about the rich, stupid teenagers getting themselves knocked up now a
days. Everyone had been cold and uncaring, not thinking for one second about my
feelings. I had tried to stop them right at the last minute, but they had just
ignored me, while my mother stood there the whole time glaring at me for what I
had done.

“Afterwards, I fell into a deep
depression. In my mother’s eyes it was pure luck that it happened during the
summer, so she covered my absence with my friends by saying that I was
vacationing in Europe. No one was there for me, and I felt so alone. Chris
hated me for awhile because of what my mother had forced me to do, and I think
that ate away at me even more.” I paused to take in their reactions, but they
were unreadable as they stared back at me. I had come this far, I might as well
get it all out there.

“I swallowed a handful of pills on
the fourth of July. My mother and Gerald were gone as usual, leaving me alone,
and I just couldn’t take the pain anymore. I really thought ending my life was
the best thing to do. But before I could slip away, my mother came home and
found me curled up in a ball on the floor. She actually saved me.” I didn’t add
the fact that before she called for an ambulance, she called Gerald to see how
she could handle it discreetly.

I don’t know if she knew that I had
actually been coherent enough to hear her, but she probably wouldn’t even care.
I had laid there numb, unable to move any part of my body, wishing that I would
just get to the hospital in time.

I knew then that I didn’t want to
die, even if my mother hadn’t been so worried about it. After my stomach had
been pumped, and I had a mental evaluation, I was put into therapy. It had
helped over the years to have someone to talk to that wasn’t involved in the
whole situation and had gotten me through one of the worst times of my life.

I had still felt an emptiness in my
chest for a while afterwards that I filled with partying and sometimes sex, but
that had changed once I came here. I think it had a lot to do with the fact
that I was in a new setting where no one knew my past, and I could start a new
life. So much for that.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through
all of that,” Callie said in a quiet tone. “I can’t even imagine. And to not
have your mom there for you; she’s supposed to be the biggest support in your
life.”

“Yeah, Della, I can’t imagine.”

“So you guys don’t hate me now?”

“Of course we don’t hate you!”
Callie sputtered out. “Why would you ever think that?”

“Well, you guys seemed a little
distant when you came home, I just thought-”

“You thought wrong,” Zoey
interrupted. “We were just a little hurt that we had to read something like that
in that scummy newspaper. I’m never reading that thing again.”

“For sure, I’m definitely
boycotting that trash. So you’re doing all right now?” Callie asked.

“Yeah, I really am. And you guys have
helped with that a lot. I never felt like I had any true friends before,
besides Nash, before the two of you. Surprisingly, Justin has helped out a lot
too. I think the way we started off a relationship was exactly what I needed. I
didn’t want to rush into anything too seriously, and he was the perfect guy for
that. And now, well now things are different between us, but a good different.”