Obsessive (7 page)

Melody opens the door, and I follow her into the room. It looks like a normal office, with a big wooden desk and filing cabinets against the walls, but for some reason it just
feels
more impressive. Even if it is just the mayor’s office in a small town, it’s the first step to something greater. Behind the desk, a man sits with his shirt sleeves rolled up, just like mine. His tie is even blue and red striped, like mine. Another good omen. I smile.

“This is Grant Blue. He says he’s supposed to intern for you. I think he’s lying.”

My smile evaporates, along with my burst of false confidence. My eyes dart frantically toward Melody the backstabber, then to the mayor, who’s looking at me with eyebrows raised, then back at the redheaded betrayer again.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. I can’t speak. My tongue feels like it’s made of lead.

The mayor stands up and circles his desk. “Don’t be ridiculous, Melody. Why would someone lie about interning? It’s hard enough to hire someone to fetch me coffee and run documents around, let alone getting a willing mark to do it for free. That’d be like sneaking into a work camp.”

He reaches out, and I shake his hand, without even thinking twice about it. “I’m glad you could make it, Grant. I understand you were class valedictorian at Guthrie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What a coincidence. So was I. We beet diggers have to stick together, am I right?”

I nod. “Absolutely, sir.”

Clapping me on the shoulder, the mayor smiles. “Enough of this ‘sir’ business. You can call me Patrick.”

I blink in surprise. Mayor Golden’s first name is
Patrick
? As in, P-A-T-R-I-C-K, with seven letters?

That settles it. This man is officially my ticket to future glory and success.
Today, mayoral intern. Tomorrow, President  of the United States. Why not?

With that, he turns back toward Melody. “Sorry about my daughter. She likes to give the new interns a hard time.”

Daughter?
Uh-oh.

Behind the mayor’s—aka her dad’s—back, Melody gives me a self-satisfied smile.

“That’s because most of the interns you hire are useless.”

Wow. Okay, so maybe she only
looks
like a nice girl.

I decide not to let her obvious dig get to me. The odds are in my favor. I just have to keep believing that I’m going to succeed, and I will.

“I really appreciate the opportunity, sir—I mean, Patrick.” I purposefully ignore Melody’s gaze. “What would you like me to do first?”

“Actually,” the mayor looks at his watch. “I’ve got a lunch with the district governor at the country club in fifteen minutes. You know what? Why don’t you come along? We can get to know each other a little better, and you can keep me from being too bored with all the talk about budgetary concerns. Melody will get a time card set up for you, and you can officially start working in the office tomorrow morning. Sound like a plan?”

“Uh, sure,” I say. “That sounds great.”

Best. Internship. Ever.

As I wait for the mayor—who is quickly becoming my personal hero—to grab his coat, Melody leads me back into the front office and hands me a sticky note.

“Write down your phone number and social security number please, so I can put you in the system.”

“Okay.” I pull a pen out of my pocket—because I don’t like to use other peoples’—and write down the information. Everything seems to be happening so fast, it feels so surreal. But maybe this is what life is like when you stop overanalyzing everything. Things just work out on their own, like magic.

When I hand the note back to Melody, her fingers brush mine. I make a mental note to excuse myself to wash my hands the second we get to the country club, so I don’t smell like fruity perfume for the rest of the day. Then I kick myself, because my OCD is making me paranoid again.

“See you tomorrow,” she says, smiling.

I smile back, even though I know I should be careful not to let her get the wrong impression. Plus, if Tash finds out I’m working with a cute redhead who happens to be my new mentor’s daughter, she could get upset. I know I should be cautious, and make sure not to cross any lines.

But on the other hand, I’m freaking sick of playing it safe all the time.

CHAPTER SIX

As I leave the country club, I decide that today can’t possibly get any better.

But the New Grant, confident and optimistic as he is, wants to see if he can keep the good luck train rolling. So instead of driving home, I drive to Tash’s to tell her the good news: that I’m staying for the summer.

By the time I pull into the driveway next to her trailer, I’ve got it all figured out. The perfect spin for what happened last night. I freaked out because I didn’t want to get serious and then leave her a few days later. Just like last time, the day before prom. Except now, I won’t have to leave. She’ll forgive me when I tell her that I gave up the summer course at Duke. She has to.

Unless she doesn’t
.

I shake my head to clear the clouds. Things are looking up. I feel more alive than I’ve felt in forever. I’m young, healthy—at least physically—and I’ve got the rest of my life ahead of me. I deserve to live it.

Don’t I?

After locking the door three times, I climb the rickety steel stairs to the green-plastic carpeted porch. Why anyone would want their front porch to look like it has plastic grass growing on it is beyond me, but everyone else’s looks the same, so maybe it’s a trailer park thing. The blinds are drawn on the living room windows, but Tash’s car is parked on the street. I knock on the screen door, four times.

No answer.

Using my foot, I pull open the screen door and knock again, louder.

One, two, three, four. Then, I count to three and do it again. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.

The door wobbles open.

I step back, expecting to see Tash or her mom standing there. But there’s no one. I realize it was me, knocking hard enough that the door opened on its own. It must not have been latched properly.

Feeling like an intruder, I shoulder it open a few more inches, until I can see most of the living room and part of the kitchen. Everything is draped in shadow, like the inside of a crypt. I consider turning around and leaving. Maybe Tash’s car is having trouble starting again. Maybe she caught a ride to work with Ramona, or her mom. But I could’ve sworn she said she was off today.

“Hello? Mrs. Bohner? Tash? Is anyone home?”

If Tash was here, this is where she’d jump out and try to scare me. Or maybe she’d make a joke about how I sound like a character in a teen slasher flick who’s about to die. Maybe both.

But nothing happens, and after a few seconds I decide I’ve missed her. I reach for the doorknob, because there’s no way I’m going to be able to shut the door with my foot and make sure it latches properly—luckily, I’ve got a three month supply of hand sanitizer in my car, so no worries—and that’s when I hear a crash from the back of Tash’s trailer.

My stomach clenches. Suddenly, an image of Trent Gibson’s face flashes across my mind. Glaring in hatred, with his fat fingers wrapped around Tash’s neck. Ripping her dress with his other hand. Hurting her. Then I’m standing above him. Hitting him. Kicking him. Punching him over and over, until his ugly face was a bloody mess. Until he stopped moving.

I’d never even hit anyone before that day. My intrusive thoughts used to be about
accidentally
harming people. Loved ones, strangers. Damaging property. Hitting a pedestrian in my car. That kind of thing. But after prom night, the thoughts turned more and more violent. It started with Trent, for obvious reasons, but eventually my OCD turned on me, like it always does. It started supplying me with images of torture and cruelty, designed to horrify me in the most personal ways. Tash, my mom, my dad, Gen, even people I barely knew, like Margot. I’ve seen myself become every type of monster.

But none of those things have ever really happened. None of the images are real. At least, not yet.

Standing in Tash’s doorway, it’s hard to breathe. But somehow, I find the will to move. Before I even realize what I’m doing, I’m barreling down the hall, toward Tash’s bedroom. If Trent is here, hurting Tash, I don’t know what I’m going to do…but it will be something bad.

There’s a thin L of yellow light shining around her door. I push toward it, hoping with everything I have that I’m not too late. That I can save her.

I shove the door open. “Tash!”

Her scream is earsplitting. Her eyes are wide with fear. So are mine.

I’m so hopped up on adrenaline, I automatically swerve sideways to avoid the stuffed alligator that comes whizzing toward my face. Though, maybe it was a stuffed crocodile—hard to say which, at the speed it was going.

Tash stands in the middle of the room, totally naked, clutching a towel to her chest. “Grant! What the fuck? You scared me to death!”

“I’m sorry.” I’m also staring, and I can’t seem to stop. I close my eyes and bring my hand up in front of my face, but it’s too late. The image is now burned onto the back of my eyelids, in a good way. “I thought….” But I can’t say what I thought, at least not out loud. Partly because it seems like the wrong moment, in light of the fact that I just saw my girlfriend naked for the first time, and also because she made me promise not to bring it up again. Not after what happened in May.

Instead, I say the first thing that pops into my head. Correction—the first words. “So…you’re naked.”

Tash scoffs loudly. “No shit, Sherlock! So turn around, why don’t you?”

“Oh, right.” I can feel my face turning red, and now my blood is pumping for a whole new reason. I do a one-eighty, but I don’t leave the room. It’s a bold move for me, considering Tash has a lot of stuffed animals to throw. “Sorry,” I say again. But if I’m being honest, I’m really not.

Tash makes a sound that’s half-growl, half-laugh. “Are you, though?”

I smile, because I know she can’t see my face.

“Don’t turn around,” she warns, then she starts muttering to herself. “Fuck, where is my motherfucking robe?” Then, “You’d better not be peeking!”

I can hear her tearing the room to shreds behind me, and I smile even harder, because her robe is hanging on the back of her bedroom door, right in front of me.

“Scout’s honor.” And okay, maybe she wasn’t completely naked, because now I think I can remember seeing a flash of something small and lacy before she picked up the towel. Purple, maybe. Or dark blue.
And I officially need to start thinking about something else
.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Tash scoffs. “Like what? ‘Hey home intruder, there’s a gator coming your way, so you should probably duck?’ In this neighborhood, you’re lucky it wasn’t a baseball bat. Or a bullet.”

I turn my head, slightly. Out of the corner of my left eye, I see a flurry of blonde hair and black fabric. She’s almost dressed, but I don’t want to seem like a pervert, so I keep my back turned. I want to kiss her so bad. My fingers are itching to touch her. Or maybe I just want to wash my hands. At this point, all of my urges are getting so strong, it’s hard to tell the difference.

“No…I mean, when I called your name. Why didn’t you say anything? I wouldn’t have just…barged in if I wasn’t worried that something was…. What were you doing?”

“Uh, let’s see. First I was sleeping, and then I was showering, and then I came back into my room and blow-dried my hair, and then I figured, what the hell? My mom’s out of the house, and I haven’t gotten a whole lot of action lately, so I might as well rub one out.”

What? 
I almost choke on my next breath. “You were…were you really just…?” I can’t say it, though.

“
No!
Jesus, Grant!”

I flinch as another unidentified plush flying object hits my back.

“I didn’t hear you, because you probably didn’t yell loud enough.”

“Oh.” I finally turn around. “Sorry, again. It’s just…the front door was open.”

“So?”

Tash stares me down, hands on hips. She’s wearing a black tank top and yoga pants, and her hair is still slightly damp. She’s so gorgeous, it’s killing me. I’ll bet she tastes like toothpaste and smells like soap. I really, really want to find out if I’m right.

“Why are you here, Grant?”

My heartbeat sounds like thunder in my ears. “I wanted to see you.”

One corner of her mouth twitches, but she crosses her arms, forcing a frown.

“Well, I’d say mission achieved. You definitely saw me. Or are you going to pretend like that didn’t happen, too?”

Too?
I’m confused. Then, I remember. She’s talking about what happened on our date.
Or, more accurately, what didn’t happen.

I clear my throat. “I wanted to talk to you, too. You deserve an explanation.”

The problem is, I’m not sure I can give her one. At least, not one she’ll understand. It’s so easy for her, talking about this stuff, even joking about it. I try to imagine telling her, seeing the look on her face, and I just…I can’t.

“Fine,” she says. I wait for her to sit down on her bed, or tell me where to sit, but instead she marches past me into the living room. I have no choice but to follow her. She plops herself down on one corner of the shabby, brown floral couch, pulling her knees to her chest. “Okay, so explain.”

I sit down next to her, but on the other end of the couch so she doesn’t feel like I’m crowding her.

“The morning after we went to the park, I told my dad I didn’t want to go to Duke anymore.”

Tash hugs her knees a little tighter, but her chin is set, like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Why?”

I open my mouth to tell her the story I came up with, about wanting to give us a chance. But sitting there with no makeup on, curled up into a little ball on the couch, she looks so trusting. So fragile. Not the tough, rowdy Tash the rest of the world sees. I can’t lie to her.

“I don’t want to be a doctor.” I shrug. “At the moment, I don’t really know what I want to be. Maybe a lawyer or a senator, someday. I’m hoping…if I stay, I’ll have more time to figure things out. Before I start school, in the fall.”