Falling for the Ghost of You (3 page)

My gaze drops from his, only to be captured again by his mouth.  God, that mouth is sinful—all seduction and danger.  It sends shivers through me, but the hot, turned-on kind.  Not the I’m-cold-get-me-a-blanket kind.

What do I mean?  I don’t know!  Hot Guy’s still holding onto my arm.  God, snap out of it!  I pull away and try to gather myself.  How embarrassing!

Wow, he’s
tall.  Taller than I thought—m
aybe a few inches over six feet.  And he smells
so
good.  Like fresh laundry and something else, something clean and autumn-y.  The scent makes my stomach quiver in weird and exciting ways.

“Are you alright?”  Hot Guy repeats while I gawk at him.

“I’m n
ot crying,” I snap,
unfortunately finding my voice.  “I’m just having one of those days.”

“Sure,” he says agreeably, backing off.

I notice he’s checking out my ass.  No, wait, it feels weird back there.  Is that…is that a breeze?

My mouth drops open in absolute horror.  “Oh, God, no.  Don’t even tell me…the back of my pants are ripped, aren’t they?”

Hot Guy cocks his head to the side and glances at my rear end again.  “Okay, I won’t tell you.”

I can’t help the groan that escapes me.  “Really?” I say to the sky.  I notice he glances up, too, wondering who I’m talking to.  To him, I ask, “How bad is it?”

“Scale of one to ten?  Or do you mean how much of your hot pink rabbit panties can I actually see right now?”

I immediately clap my hands over my butt.  “Oh, crap!”

Hot Guy chuckles a little, and I’m not too distressed to notice how sexy a sound it is.  I can’t help the blush that warms my cheeks.  I am so—wait, what is he doing?!

Hot Guy is unbuttoning his shirt, and as I watch, mesmerized, he shrugs out of it, and hands it to me.  I automatically take
it, because I am
distracted by the sleekly muscled swimmer’s build revealed in the gray t-shirt he’s wearing under the dress shirt.  It’s just ridiculous how hot Hot Guy is.  Crazy ridiculous!

Sigh!

My heart is doing some unusual things right now, but let me tell you, I’m not the kind of girl whose head gets turned by every cute guy that walks past.  But this guy is beyond the everyday normal.  He’s like, walk out of every woman’s fantasy gorgeous. 

I’ve got to stop staring at him. 

I clear my throat, and force myself to look up at his
oh my god
flawless face.  “Thanks,” I say, holding the shirt up.  “Um.  If you want this shirt back, I guess I could mail it to you.”

But Hot Guy shakes his head slightly.  “Don’t worry about it.”  He opens the door to Taco Bill’s, and holds it open for the elderly couple that totters out.

Oh, it’s the old guy that I threw Matt’s present at!  He sees me and shoots me a bushy glare.  “Hooligan!” he huffs, shuffling past me.

“I’m so sorry!” I call after him, but he just throws a
hmph
over his shoulder.

I am even more humiliated, if that’s possible.  I sneak a glance at Hot Guy.  He looks amused, his beautiful mouth curved up in an adorable smirk.  I’m so glad the odds are I’ll never see him again.

“Hope your day gets better,” he says, and disappears into Taco Bill’s.

Thanks, Hot Guy.  I’m pretty sure it can’t get much worse.

******

Chapter 3

I head straight to Lauren’s.  S
he makes her weird soup, while I go on a tirade, verbally assaulting Matt and Rachel with every bad name I can think of.  Sometime during this madness, Lauren’s twelve year old twin sisters slink into the kitchen and watch me curse and fume with wide fascinated eyes.  I don’t get really mad often, but when I do, I tend to go a little bit
Hulk
.  Ish. 

Two hours later, I feel better.  Sort of.  I go home to take a shower, and I cry a little under the soothing hot spray.  Soon, my tears dry up and I begin to feel really stupid.  And pissed.  I keep thinking of Matt and Rachel together, sneaking around and rubbing their hands together gleefully...laughing, kissing, having sex…ugh!

I shut the water off with more force than necessary, and dry myself off vigorously.  I wrap my towel around my body and stomp into my room, muttering to myself. 

“Cheating ass bastard!”  Saying it out loud is weirdly cathartic.

“What was that, Violet?”

I scream and jump awkwardly in the air.  My mom’s sitting on my bed!  She’s looking at
me
with a funny
little half-frown on her face.  D
id she hear what I said?

“W-what?!  Nothing!” I stammer out, clutching the towel against me.  “I was just…rapping.  I like to sometimes, when I think I’m alone.  What—what are you doing here in my room, on my bed?  What’s, uh, going on?”

“I didn’t know you rapped,” Mom says, confused by my babbling.  “That’s…weird.  Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.  I thought you might want to wear this for dinner.”

She holds up a long dress in a sapphire blue for my inspection.  The dress is one of those wraparound styles, with a shimmery leaf pattern embellishing the clingy fabric.  It’s very pretty.

My poor mother.  She has great taste and loves clothes, and she’s stuck with me, the girl who puts comfort above fashion.  Half of the shirts in my closet are from the box of clothes my dad left behind when he dumped us for the ho on that dating site.  It’s not that I’m a fashion clown.  Right after I lost a bunch of weight, I’ll admit that my outfits tended to be showy and slutty.  But after a short while, the thrill of the attention wore off, and now I just don’t care.  I got tired of the middle aged guys eye licking me.  Pervs.

“It’s nice,” I say to Mom, because she’s beaming excitedly at me.  “But I was thinking about wearing jeans and a nice shirt.  I don’t want to give your fiancée the wrong impression that I’m some kind of proper young miss.  I mean, think of how disappointed he’ll be when he finds out the truth.”

“Hm, you’re probably right.  But I’m sure Bill will get over it.”  Mom drapes the dress over my
crossed arms.  “I know you’re going to look so beautiful in it!  Did I tell you how much I love your hair?  The new color really makes your complexion glow.”

“Thanks.”  I sigh quietly.  “If I wear a dress, I’ll have to shave my legs.”

Mom tucks a lock a smooth blonde hair behind her ear and looks at me in surprise.  “Don’t you shave every day, anyway?”

“Well, yeah, but most days I’m not thorough.  I just run the razor over my legs really quick if there’s noticeable stubble.  But I don’t check to see if they’re really smooth.”

“Why do they need to be smooth tonight?” Mom asks with a shrug.  “Do you plan on anyone touching your legs?  I suppose there could be some cute waiters at the restaurant.”

“Mom.”  I roll my eyes.  “You know I only let valets feel me up.  It’s the bow ties.”

Mom grins.  “Oh, well, then you’re in luck.  We’re going to the Four Seasons.  I’m pretty sure the waiters there wear bowties.”

“Ugh!  We’re going somewhere fancy?  Is this the start of a new trend now that you’re marrying into money?  Are we going to have to start pretending we’re classy people?”

“Hey!”  Mom points a finger at me, looking hurt.  “You don’t need to be rich to be classy.  Don’t you think I’m classy?”

How can I disagree with her?  Especially when she’s got her finger halfway up her nose?  Yeah, she’s got a really weird sense of humor.

“Thanks, Mom, that’s very attractive.  What a role model.  You’re going to wash your hands, right?”

Mom springs up from the bed.  “Of course.  That’s what c
lassy people do,” she sniffs as
she glides by me.

She comes back in while I’m slipping my robe on.  “You keep distracting me, V.  I wanted to talk to you about something.”

I immediat
ely tense as I turn to her.  Mom
looks nervous—she’s not meeting my eyes.  Oh, God, please don’t let it be the cancer…

She plops back down on my bed again and picks up my pillow, settling it down on her lap and then resting her arms over it.  My muscles stiffen painfully as I wait for her to say the dreaded words.

“Promise you won’t think I’m skanky.”

“Oh, my God!  I’m so—wait, what?”

Mom doesn’t look up.  And is she blushing?  She takes a deep breath, and I get another kind of feeling.  “Bill and I—”

“No, stop!”  I put both hands up in a stopping gesture.  “I so don’t need to know that you two have had sex!”

“What?”  Mom looks almost as horrified as I do.  “Violet!  That’s not what I was going to say!  Trust me, you would be the last person I would confide in about my sex life.”

I’m nearly weak with relief.  “Oh, thank God.  Same here.”

She raises her eyebrows.  “Excuse me, missy?  You have a sex life?”

“No,
some
of us are still pure, here.”  Not like Matt and Rachel, the sex-crazed traitors.

Mom looks at a loss for a second.  Then she shakes her head.  “Anyway, what I was going to say…well, Bill…he surprised me with an early wedding present—an extended tour of Europe for our honeymoon!”

My jaw drops open.  “Mom!  That’s fantastic!  You’ve
always
wanted to go to Europe!”

She nods excitedly.  “Yes, it would be a dream come true.  England, France, Italy…can you imagine?  But the thing is, Bill’s got a really important business merger, like, right after the wedding, so he wouldn’t be able to take a day off, let alone a month.  So…”  She pauses and looks at me uncertainly.  “He was thinking that maybe the best idea would be to go on our honeymoon
before
the wedding.  It makes sense, especially with the house undergoing renovations, and right now it’s Jane’s slow season—I could work on her website from anywhere, and, you know we hired that wedding planner, and she said that she can communicate with me via text and email, she does it all the time with some of her other clients, and…”

Mom has a tendency to babble when she’s nervous.  I wonder how long she’d go on like this if I let her?

“Well, that’s great,” I finally interject when she pauses for a breath.  "It sounds like you have everything worked out.  And you totally have my blessing, if that’s what you were after.”

“Thank you,” she says, reaching over to squeeze my hand.  “That means a lot.”

I shrug.  “You deserve it.”  I flop down onto my comfortable puffy desk chair.  “When do you leave?”

“Well…next week.”  Mom peers over at me.  “So I talked to Jane, and she said she’d love to have you stay over at her place.  Would that be okay with you?  Because if it’s not, I can—”

“Wait, why can’t I stay here?  I’m seventeen, I don’t drink or do drugs.  You can trust me—I’m boring.”

“I do trust you, Violet,” she says.  “But it’s not like I’m away for the weekend.  I’ll be gone for a whole month, in Europe.  I couldn’t enjoy myself if you were here alone.  And,” she continues when I start to protest.  “we have to completely moved out of this apartment by the end of the month, remember?”

I get a sudden slap to the face by reality.  We’re not going to live in this crappy apartment, anymore.  I’m going to have a rich stepfather!  Our lives are going to change drastically.

Oh, yeah, and I’ve been cheated on and dumped by my first boyfriend.  Yes, Matt was my first boyfriend.  I’m a late bloomer.

It’s a
ll a
tad overwhelming.

Mom’s still talking.  “No, it’s fine,” I say.  “I’ll stay with Jane.  She’s cool, and we get along pretty good.  Besides, it’s only for a month, right?”

Mom’s blue eyes are bright with unshed tears.  “Right,” she says quickly.  “Thank you so much, Violet!  I know I kind of ambushed you with—with all these changes, but you’re being so wonderful about it.”  She jumps up to give me a big hug.  “I’m so happy!  I can’t wait for you to meet Bill.”

I hug her back, thrilled with the strength of her embrace.  I decide right then and there that I wasn’t going to do anything to screw up this up for her. 

God knows she deserves it.

******

Chapter 4

I don’t wear the sapphire colored dress after all.  Instead, I slip on a pair of tailored black pants that do good things for my butt, and a short sleeved crimson blouse.  It’s still hot at five in the afternoon, so I put my hair back up.  I inspect myself in the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door and decide I don’t look like I’m trying hard enough.  Eyeliner and lip gloss help a little, and that’s as far as I’m willing to go.

Mom seems pleased by my appearance.  She’s wearing a dress remarkably similar to the one she wanted me to wear—clearly, she was aiming for the
twinsies
look.  I don’t like to disappoint her, but there’s only so much a good daughter can take.

The restaurant is a beautiful brick and glass building with a stunning view of the bay.  And they have valet parking, which Mom and I both handle awkwardly.