Chapter 27: Damaged Goods: Chapter 26

Next on my list is Thalia.

I’ve given her a few weeks of fake dating in which we haven’t really met or communicated. I think it’s time to cut the cord.

I know she was hoping for a bit more time, but I can’t do this to Bailey. Can’t do this to Thalia, either.

Giving her false hope is cruel, and I have a feeling that’s exactly what’s happening right now, based on the trillion text messages she bombarded me with while I was in Jackson Hole.

Thalia: how’s jacksonhall?

Thalia: miss u.

Thalia: Nuddies for my baby lol.

Thalia: call me when u get the chnce.

Thalia: Lev where r u? ☹

So now I’m shouldering past a sea of acned faces, about a foot taller than everyone else, trying to find my fake whatever-the-fuck-we-were.

I leave no rock unturned. The gymnasium. Her homeroom. Her friends. I even walk into the girls’ restroom and cause a small fire (literally. Not my fault, though. Who brings a hair straightener to school?).

I’m losing my mind. And patience. Where the hell is she?

A few days ago, she seemed to be everywhere I went, popping up in the cafeteria, the locker room, football practice.

Something is definitely up. She did ask me to call her a few days ago. And I did forget to answer that text message, which is epically shitty, I guess.

“Hey, Birdie, seen Thalia?” I corner her bestie in the hallway.

Her back slams against her locker and she clutches her textbooks to her chest, biting down her lip.

Her eyelids droop when I get all up in her face. Pretty dramatic, but these girls live for this shit. For that Riverdale effect.

“Uhm…Thalia?” She squints like she is unfamiliar with the name.

“Yeah. The girl you basically live with and have on your screensaver.” I jog her memory, snapping my fingers between us so she’ll stop staring at my lips.

Birdie is fifty shades of red, and all of them tell me that she’s hiding something.

“Oh…I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” I have a great bullshit meter, and right now it’s dinging so hard I’m going deaf. “When was the last time you didn’t know where Thalia was at any given time?”

“L—listen, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you. I haven’t seen her today.”

It is obvious I’m not gonna get anything but a headache from this chick, so I decide to cut my day short and pay a visit to Bailey.

Ideally, I’d have given her a bit more time to take a chill pill. But I need her to know she won’t be prancing around in little yellow bikinis.

As I head to my car, I text Thalia.

Lev: Tried to find you at school. Where are you?

She answers after three seconds.

Thalia: sick at home ☹

Lev: I’ll swing by with some Gatorade. We need to talk.

Thalia: If it’s about breaking up, don’t bother.

Lev: ?

Thalia: Not ready yet.

Lev: Well, I am.

Thalia: Well…….if you don’t do as I say…

What. The. Fuck.

This sounds a lot like a threat, but what could she threaten me with?

I’ve always been on the straight and narrow, for better or worse.

And then it hits me. It’s not me she is threatening to hurt if I put a stop to the charade.

Lev: You wouldn’t.

Thalia: I don’t know what we’re talking about! Bailey is lovely <3

Time to go Boomer on Thalia’s ass. I do the undoable: I pick up the phone and call her.

Call. Unprompted. She doesn’t answer.

I text her again. She doesn’t answer.

I send smoke signals, pigeon post, fucking telepathic communications—nada.

Thalia isn’t picking up. She’s letting me stew in her last text message because I let her broil for days when I was in Jackson Hole, busy juice-tasting every hole in Bailey’s body.

And yes, I’m done with the liquid metaphors. For now, anyway.

The ride home is a blur. I have no recollection of parking the Bugatti in front of our eight-car garage, but somehow, I manage it.

My mind is solely focused on the fact that my life just potentially got a whole lot more complicated. Thalia wormed her way into Bailey’s good graces, and the latter’s judgment is not amazing these days.

Staggering to Bailey’s doorstep—why does it feel like she lives on the other side of the continent?—I push the door open, all but crawling up to her room.

I’m not usually an anxious person, but the idea of something bad happening to her, of not marrying her, starting a family with her, lacing my life in hers like we’re roots of a very old oak, makes me woozy.

“Gotta stop doing that,” I hear Jaime calling out from his home office. “Walking into my house like you’re the one paying the mortgage.”

Doubt he can even spell the word mortgage, let alone still pay one.

When I reach Bailey’s room, the door is ajar. It is empty. I stand there like an idiot, waiting for the sound of her. For music to curl up from the ballet studio.

But all I can hear are the keys of Jaime’s mechanical keyboard and the chirp of doves sitting on a branch outside Bailey’s window.

Don’t rub it in, Mom. Didn’t have to send reinforcements. I know she needs my help.

Then I see a note on her nightstand—yellow and simple and folded neatly—and I know it is directed at me. It pisses me off that she anticipated I’d seek her out, be the first one to break.

She is getting back at me for flushing her drugs down the toilet. If only she knew I might’ve flushed my life out with it too, for a few sloppy fucks.

I pick it up and open it.

Oops. Sorry, Lev, your balls aren’t here either.

B.