I stared at the tattoo on my forearm. The runes that spelled outabstinence. And that joke ran through my mind, the one that sometimes did when I looked at thattattoo.
Abstinence makes the heart growfonder.
I’d had that tattoo marked on me like a brand at twenty-five, angry and righteous, like I could make her feel the pain of the needle etching the ink into my skin across the miles. A reminder to myself, that I’d see every fucking day; every day that I abstained from Jessa. From calling her, from messaging her, from thinking about her. Fromlovingher.
And every day that I’d failed miserably at all of it. Because I would never stoplovingher.
It was fucking chemicallyimpossible.
I could pretend I didn’t, but it was a fucking lie. I was drawn to that woman like a magnet. I alwayshadbeen.
She was drawn to me, too. I knewshewas.
We’d smashed together enough times, whether we liked it or not, that even as stubborn as she was, she couldn’tdenyit.
And every time we smashed together, I came away more damaged and disoriented, wondering why the fuck my world made just that little bit lesssense.
Yeah. My world, without Jessa Mayes in it, was fucking nonsense. A total fucking sham I’d been working my ass off to make heads or tails of foryears.
You might think, over time, that would get easiertodo.
Time heals all wounds, and allthatshit.
Wrong.
Time did not heal wounds. I was now thirty years old and I’d been aching for Jessa Mayes since we were kids. By the time I was twenty-one, she’d broken my heart. When I was twenty-four, she ripped it right thefuckout.
And what didIdo?
I slapped a dirty bandage over that shit and left ittorot.
* * *
There werepeople crowded into every square inch of my house. The music was pumping, drinks were flowing, the sweet, slightly skunky smell of good pot clung in the air, and I really should’ve been fucking ecstatic. Dirty’s debut album,Love Struck, had just dropped, and it was shooting up the charts with a fucking bullet. We felt poised to take over theworld.
Yeah; I should’ve been over-fucking-joyed.
Instead, to distract myself from the fact that it was the night of Jessa’s high school graduation—which meant she was going to her grad party with a bunch of horny teenage assholes—I threw a party for the band at my newhouse.
My father had died last year, leaving me a larger inheritance than I’d expected, since when he was alive he never gave me shit. So I’d taken his money, invested some in stocks, invested some in the band, and invested the rest in a piece of real estate up the side of the mountain in North Vancouver, overlooking the city. A piece of real estate with a big-ass house on it; a house that my father would hate, especially if he saw the three-car garage where I stored my bikes, the music room filled with band equipment, and the party room filled withbeerkegs.
Since my house was bigger than anyone else’s at the time, it quickly became the party house. This was the biggest party I’d thrown yet—but then again, we had the most cause to celebrate—and all the usual suspects werethere.
At least, most of the usualsuspects.
Jessa was at a high school dance, probably getting groped. Or giving it up to some jock in the back of a car. Because that’s what hot girls did when they graduated from high school,right?
Seth was God-knew-the-fuck-where, but that was nothing knew. More and more, he’d been ghosting in and out, partying with a different crowd. As our newest member, he hadn’t become quite as invested as the rest of the band, who were pretty much one big, happy, but slightly dysfunctional family—just the way welikedit.
Around one a.m., Jessa rolled in,alone.
Impossible to miss her, as usual, but especially so because the boys went up in a fit of chest-puffing pride for their number one girl when she appeared, wearing a silky little charcoal-gray top and black sequined tights with sparkly silver Chucks, a limp white corsage on her wrist, and looking kind of dazed, her eyes glassy from a night of whatever debauchery she’d beenupto.
The guys flocked to wrap her up in a whirlwind of hugs, then Jude tossed her up on his shoulders and paraded her through the house, passing her off to Zane and Dylan to do the same. Eventually Dylan deposited her in frontofme.
She stood there looking awkward as I lookedherover.
“Hey,Brody.”
