14. Lia

14

LIA

"This one won't fly," I complained.

Caleb gave me a lopsided grin. "Technically, none of them will," he said, and took the paper from my hands to flatten out so that I could try again.

He had so much more patience than I did. It was annoying.

—Sarah, from One of a Thousand Wishes by A. R. McGeorge

H ow could he be so dismissive of me?

It'd taken me a bit to figure out how to cancel Rhaim's upcoming meeting on his calendar, but once I had it asked me if I wanted to send updates out. I'd done so, and hopefully that meant Rhaim's business associates wouldn't barge into his office to find me pacing.

And snooping.

Going through literally all of his stuff.

I was a veteran snooper, because I found it easier to understand people by association with their belongings than I did talking to them.

People could lie about their upbringing, but front row Beyonce ticket stubs pinned on a corkboard could not.

So I methodically went through everything in Rhaim's office, trying to intuit more than the little I knew about the actual man.

He was good—to me—in the past, at least.

He was strong. There were framed certificates on his wall from assorted business associations, one for Adding Value to the Community.

And he was loyal—because he still had up pictures of his dead wife.

Which, perhaps I should've felt a little awkward crawling to him in front of, but I didn't know at the time, and she wasn't here now, was she?

She'd gone and left him all alone and he needed someone.

Me.

I did take longer than I should have to inspect those, though. She'd been really pretty, had had hips to die for, and short dark hair. I remember when I'd found out about him getting married, during one of my ill-advised late-night Google sessions. The news had seemed to come out of nowhere to me—and I'd lay there quietly weeping, torturing myself, reading everything about her for a week straight. The event had even gotten an entire spread in a local paper, because she'd used to be their wedding columnist.

Then I'd bought a subscription and made myself sick reading everything else she'd ever written, being disgusted and angry in turns because she seemed really nice.

Even . . . cool.

In a way that it was clear that I was not.

I was proud of myself at the time though. Because as much as I wanted him to want me— fiercely, eternally , like all of the relationships I read about in books—I also wanted him to be happy.

Which was true love, right?

And he did look happy with her.

Then I'd gotten "interrupted" again, had had to change schools, and the new meds they put me on made me feel like I was dead—which was ironic, only because I wanted to be. But somehow I'd stayed on my course, I'd found enough focus in me, at the expense of everything else that might've constituted a personality, to pass with good grades, up until the next "interruption" sent me into a tailspin.

"Interruptions" was what my father called them. But what they really were, and what he didn't know about, and what I could never tell him, was that they were caused by anonymous emails to me.

I'd be going about my day, my life would be golden, I would be on course to pass, to graduate, to go to a volleyball tournament, or a dance, on the cusp of being normal, and then something awful would land in my inbox to derail me:

Do you ever lay awake at night thinking about me?

I stroke myself all the time thinking about you.

And I would ...disintegrate. That was probably the best word for it. I'd destroy everything I owned, or go catatonic for days, fighting or flighting in turns. Panic would make me throw up enough that I'd get marked as bulimic, and once that even got me sent to a special hospital. Between that and my mother OD-ing, presumably because she was depressed— because of me —the bar for people being "concerned" about me was much, much lower than the average teen, and I cycled through therapists and medications after every time I got moved like they were water.

Eventually I'd learned to tell everyone what they wanted to hear, and when finally as an adult I was in control of all my pills—I'd flushed most of them down the toilet.

Why?

Because I was fucking stubborn.

Stubborn enough to not look at Rhaim and his happy life with his happy wife online for years, even as I still lusted after him in my moments of pre-or-post medicated sanity.

I needed him then more like a god I could believe in.

Someone distant, who meant well, and who was always there.

Like a beacon for my tortured soul.

Then when I'd finally, finally broken and looked him up again—the beautiful brunette was gone. Killed in a car accident on a swerving country road.

Clearing the path for me, and I hadn't even had to sully myself by wishing her poorly. My conscience was intact—and my purpose absolutely renewed.

I picked up one of her photographs. It was her alone on the deck of a boat, smiling widely with nothing but blue skies and ocean behind her.

My PI told me he went to the cemetery on Sundays to visit her.

I couldn't even imagine what that kind of pain was like.

"Thank you for taking care of him for me," I whispered to her. I was setting her picture back on the shelf it'd come from when the door to the outer office burst open, framing Rhaim inside of it.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"