Page 87 of Tap Left
He’s talking about Daire. I take a breath and try to determine the best course of action to put an end to this conversation. I’m so sick of this record. It’s played on repeat for half of my life now. Daire. Daire. Daire. Even when I’m able to forget him for a second, someone always manages to throw him back in my face.
Julian shifts and his jaw flexes. “I guess that’s why I didn’t tell you.”
I call time out on my internal battle to pay attention to him. “Tell me what?”
“He’d kill me if he knew I was telling you now.”
“Julian.” He still won’t look at me.
“I guess I’m an asshole either way. But if I was you, I’d want to know.”
“Julian,” I snap.
He seems almost comatose now. My words don’t affect him because he continues to ramble on.
“You don’t have that problem, Lola. The one that everyone else does. But the sad thing is you don’t even realize it. You never think you’re good enough, when in fact, your whole life you’ve been blind to the effect you have on men. Ryan and Daire and even me. You could bring any man to his knees if you knew what you were capable of. And the only reason that I think you can’t is because he hurt you so bad.”
“Ryan?” I ask again.
He finally looks at me, and his eyes are haunted. “Daire, Lola. He’s the one that really hurt you.”
Now it’s me that wants to turn away, and I do. I stare out at the sea and wish I was back in Chicago again. With my books and my cramped office and my comfortable numbers that take the bad thoughts away. But I’m not. And reality is a pain in the ass. I reach for a clump of sand and watch it fall through the spaces between my fingers.
“That girl in the boat wasn’t with Daire.”
My fist falls open, and the sand spills from my fingers in one fluid motion.
“Ryan picked her up that night. He said she looked like a treat. He always said that about the girls he fucked behind your back.”
My throat goes dry, and I can’t feel my tongue. I’m too numb to speak. And I want to tell him to stop talking, but I can’t.
“Everyone knew about it,” Julian says. “Even Daire. He tried to shield you from it, I guess. But Ryan did what he wanted. Everyone treated him like a god. And when he had even a little bit of competition in Daire, he didn’t like it. He used you to rub it in his face. He told him over and over again what a nice lay you were. How you sucked his dick and let his friends have a go afterward.”
“Stop.” I manage to find my voice. “You’re lying. That never happened.”
But he doesn’t stop. “He was such a prick.” Julian laughs. “But fuck if we all didn’t love him anyway. Even in the end, we felt we needed to be loyal to him.”
Tears threaten to spill over my eyelids as I rise to my feet. I don’t care if I have to hitchhike, I’m leaving. But then Julian speaks again. And everything I thought I knew disintegrates into the ocean air.
“Daire wasn’t driving the boat that night,” he says. “He wasn’t the one who crashed into the break wall. Ryan was.”
39
Daire
As it turns out, hiring a nurse wasn’t such a bad idea. Grazi gave her specific instructions over the phone, and I really don’t have to do much of anything except for grumble my responses when she shows up every day.
My winning personality and charm has already burned through three of them from the agency, and I’m expecting the fourth any minute. It’s a small price to pay for my privacy, and as long as they understand that I’m paying them to sit around and read magazines and ignore me, then everything will be just fine.
The elevator chimes and I adjust my position on the sofa, wondering what sort of atrocity they’ve sent my way this time. And oh, what an atrocity it is.
Purple framed glasses. A halo of messy blonde curls. An outfit that looks like it was picked out of the bargain bin at goodwill. And a temper I didn’t even know Lola had. She marches towards me, and I have the urge to cover my face because I think her head might actually explode.
“Is it true?” she demands.
“So nice to see you too,” I quip. “You look lovely, by the way.”
She crosses her arms in an effort to convey seriousness. All it does it pushes her tits up between the slope in her shirt and has the unexpected effect of making my dick stir in my pants.
