Nick: Sweetie, what do you want for your birthday? I have to go soon. Adrian is starving over here.
Outside my door, footsteps sounded. No one else lived in the mansion but Adrian, Nick, and me. The servants barely walked on this level and when they did, it was with great silence. Those footsteps are Adrian’s. Nick, you’re such a lying bastard.
“So let’s see how far the rabbit hole goes.” I picked up my phone to type a message.
Me: Hmm. What should you get me? Maybe a new laptop to write my books on.
Nick: Sure. I’ll buy you a laptop. That’s a great idea. The best that money can buy.
Me: Do you know anything about buying laptops?
Nick: I don’t know. That’s a weird question.
Me: I’m just wondering. You’ve bought a laptop in the past year, right?
Nick: Ha Ha. I have no need for a laptop. No. It’s probably been years since I’ve bought anything electronic. Adrian usually handles that.
So Adrian bought me the birthday gift and said it was from his father? Why?
The image of Adrian stroking his dick with my shorts ran through my mind.
Oh yeah. Adrian has a crush on me.
My phone beeped again. I didn’t even check to see what Nick had said. As far as I was concerned, Nick and I were done. He’d get the message when he saw my things were gone.
I thought back to a past conversation with my mother.
“You can’t just heal a broken heart by rushing into the arms of another,” Mom had said when I showed her my engagement ring.
“Nick is a good man.”
“You’ve only known him for how long?”
“Enough.”
“Look at you.” She shook her head, picked up her remote control, and returned to Good Morning America. “Enough is what you say? Well, when a man pushes so quickly you won’t get enough. You’re both still in the honeymoon stage.”
“Oh, here we go.” I plopped down on the couch next to her. “We’re not in the honeymoon stage.”
“Every relationship has a honeymoon stage. Everything is so awesome and beautiful.” Mom muted the TV and tucked one of her gray dreadlocks behind her ear. “You love him, and he loves you. Then the honeymoon stage ends.”
“I’ve loved and lost. I know about the honeymoon stage.”
“Then, you should wait till the honeymoon is over to wear that ring.”
I slumped in my seat. “I don’t know.”
“You’re just brokenhearted from Paul.”
“We don’t say that name. You promised me that you’d respect that.”
Mom laughed. “I must have been drinking too much scotch to agree to something so foolish.”
“It’s not foolish.”
“Then childish. If you can’t even hear Paul’s name without feeling like crap, you definitely shouldn’t be wearing another man’s ring.”
I refused to say anything. Mom was a writer herself. She penned relationship books after twenty years of counseling troubled couples. She had several family therapy centers down the east coast. To argue with Mom about relationships was to be wrong.
“What do I do?” I looked at her. “I told him yes. I can’t hurt him like that.”
“Well, if you refuse to put your big girl panties on then I guess you could respectfully request a long engagement. Three to five years at least. By then, the honeymoon stage will be gone, and you both will have clearer heads.”
The next day, I presented it to Nick. He quickly agreed, and I moved in.
Now the honeymoon stage is not only over, I doubt it ever began.
My stomach growled. Since I figured Adrian had probably left the house, I decided to grab some dinner. My watch read 8:00 p.m. It had been a long day filled with a masturbating stepson, erotica-drenched fantasy, and a lying fiancé. It was time to get some food into my belly and then start packing. I couldn’t live in this house anymore. The walls reeked with wickedness.
I opened my door and bumped into a tiny box on the floor.
The label on the box read:
To Carmen.
From a very sorry stepson.
“Really? Can we just finish the day in peace?” I picked up the box, unwrapped the gold paper, and pulled off the top. Inside, several notebooks rested. However, the one on top caught my eye. My name had been written over and over on the cover. Not by a madman driven crazy with his love, but with delicate strokes amid flowers.
Flowers!
I didn’t know what shocked me more: that Adrian, this eligible, rich bachelor even had the time to write in a journal, or that the man doodled flowers in his spare time.
Oh God. Let’s see what he’s written. If this damn book is crowded with doodles of his dick, I’m going to lose it and beat his behind.
My birthday laptop popped into my mind, the one that I now knew Adrian gave me.
Well, he’s not all that bad. He tried to lift my spirits by saying that the present was from Nick.