Becca Ritchie - Addicted for Now

She pales. “You don’t mean that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

She touches her lips for a moment, just staring at me. “Because…your father, he gave you everything.”

You have everything, Loren. Don’t be such an ungrateful little shit, Loren.

“Yeah,” I nod. “He gave me everything.” Before she can speak, I ask, “So what stopped you? Your parents? Some religious belief? Cold feet?”

“Jonathan stopped me,” she says. “He was furious with the idea of losing his child. We came to an agreement. I would have you, and then you would be his entirely. I would get the life I planned, and you’d grow up in luxury, something I wouldn’t have been able to give you on my own. I thought you would be happy.”

“Yeah, I’m still working on the happiness part.”

I wait for the flash of regret to fill her eyes, but it never comes. I’m the spoiled rotten heir, the one who drinks until he’s wasted. The one who went to rehab like it was some publicity stunt. And I have a sex addict girlfriend.

Emily quiets as a school bus rolls to the curb. The doors open and middle school kids dart out. A girl with my light brown hair and my nose adjusts her backpack, walking towards the house.

Emily forces a smile for her daughter. “Hi honey, can you go inside please?”

Her daughter squints at me, fixing her large round glasses on her nose. “Aren’t you Loren Hale?”

I hate that a middle school girl knows me. My face is all over the tabloids. Yesterday, they dissected a photograph of me leaving a restaurant hand-in-hand with Lily.

And then it hits me fully.

She’s my half-sister.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“And you’re at my house…? Do you know my mom?”

Emily waits impatiently for her daughter, about to interject, but I do her a favor and shut down her inquiry.

“Not really,” I say. “She’s a friend of my father’s.”

“Mom,” she whispers. “You know famous people?”

Emily shrugs, her shoulders stiff.

And then my eyes catch a pin on the strap of the girl’s jean backpack. Mutant & Proud. What are the odds? “You like X-Men?”

“The cartoons,” she says. “X-Men: Evolution.”

“My girlfriend likes those too.”

“You mean your fiancée? I just read in Celebrity Crush that you’re getting married.” She rocks on her feet and pushes her glasses further up her nose as they slide down. “Is it true?”

“Yep, it’s true.”

Her eyes brighten like she’ll have something good to tell her friends tomorrow at lunch.

Emily widens the door so her daughter can pass. “Willow, inside please.”

Willow examines me with an inquisitive gaze before she resigns to her mother’s pleas. And then she slips indoors and out of sight.

“You named your daughter after a Buffy character?” Maybe we like the same things, I stupidly think. Probably because Willow strangely does.

She frowns. “What?”

“The televisions show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” She’s still confused. “Never mind.”

“What do you want, Loren?” she finally asks. “What did you think would happen by coming here?” Her voice lowers and the door begins to close so I can’t see past her body and into her house. I can’t see the life that I never would’ve had. “You’re twenty-one. You’re an adult.”

“You’re not my mother. I think I got it,” I say roughly. I hate that I don’t hate her. Not even a little bit. I take a step back, my eyes flitting over the house, over something that I don’t want to destroy. I ruin everything I touch.

And I’m not going to mess up her life. Even if mine is all fucked up. Right as I’m about to leave this all behind, something else catches my eye in the window.

A girl. A child. No older than two or three. She peers through the glass, clutching a stuffed dinosaur. I see me. Growing up and being lied to. Never knowing about my brother and finding the answers in the most jarring, horrific way. The secrets. The betrayal.

I face Emily again. She seems at peace with her decision and her life, but she’s repeating the same mistake as my father. As Sara Hale. She doesn’t see it now, but the lies she weaves will eat at her family from the inside out.

“You should know,” I say, “that even though I’m not your son, I’m still their brother.”

Her lips press in a line.

But I keep speaking. “And maybe you don’t see it like that, but take it from someone who’s been in their situation before—they will.” I think of Ryke. “I’m not saying that you have to tell them about me now or anytime soon, but they’ll find out eventually. If not from the press, then from some stranger, and they should hear it from you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she says shortly. “Anything else?”

Fuck you. I can’t say it though. I don’t really feel it. More like, Fuck me. For being so stupid. For thinking you’d care.

I shake my head, everything draining from me like I’ve been slit open on the sidewalk. I take another couple steps off the stoop, glance up at the three-story brick house. Middleclass family. Happy. Normal.

I turn around and never look back.

With Lo in Maine, he wanted me to skip my therapy session with Dr. Evans today, but the therapist called me and said that if I skip, he’d contact my parents and tell them how poor my progress has been. So I sit alone in Dr. Evans’ office, constantly checking my phone. Lo said he would call after he sees Emily. If their meeting doesn’t go well, I’m worried that he may choose to escape with alcohol. I really wanted to go, but at his request, I’ve stayed here.

Dr. Evans applies the electrodes to my wrist and hands me the small black box with all the wires poking out. He nestles behind his desk in his seat, wearing a smug look. He loves the fact that Lo isn’t here to interrupt the session.

“So are we doing magazines again?” I fidget in my seat, a little nervous to be doing this with only Dr. Evans in the room. When Lo’s here, it feels less weird.

“I think we should move on to another compulsion today.”

I try to wrack my brain. What else could I conquer with aversion therapy besides fantasies and porn?

His eyes drop to my thighs. “It would have been easier if you wore a dress or skirt, but I think you can manage.”

My heart bangs against my ribcage. Maybe I heard him wrong.

“I want you to masturbate. You’ll be shocked until your brain responds to the negative stimuli.”

Oh my God.

My head moves on its own accord, shaking fiercely from side to side. “No,” I blurt out. “No way.” I am not masturbating in front of him!

“Lily, your parents hired me specifically,” he explains. “This is what works. You need to condition your mind to recognize masturbation as a bad impulse.”

My parents are my weakness. I have vocalized that I’d do anything to fix what I’ve done. But how far am I willing to go?

“Is there anything else I can do today?” I ask.

He mulls this over, fingers by his temple in thought. “I suppose we can try something else,” he says to my relief.

Dr. Evans stands and walks to the front of his desk, he leans his butt on the edge, the remote still in one hand. The other falls to his zipper. Oh fuck. This is not the something else that I had in mind!

“What are you doing?” I croak, frozen in my chair.

“Whores like you are obsessed with male genitalia. You’re going to look at it, touch it, suck it and I’ll shock you until you’re nice and normal.”

“No.”

Rose found my perfect therapist, Dr. Banning, after meeting with horrible ones. And I wonder if she had to put up with situations like this for me, just so I would avoid it. I know she did. I know because I remember the look Connor and her shared when they were discussing therapists they visited together.

Dr. Evans is already tugging down his silver zipper, and his dick emerges from his khaki pants. My hands shoot to my eyes as the familiar buzzzz pulses in my skin.

I’m not looking. I’m not looking. I’m not here. Not really.

The room quiets, and I think maybe I’ve won.

And then I feel it. On my leg.

I jump up like my entire body has been electrocuted this time. The shock box falls to the floor, ripping out the wires that connect to the electrodes on my arm. I stumble back, my eyes bugging. Dr. Evans closes the distance between us, right in front of me. I refuse to drop my gaze to his dangling penis.

“Get away from me,” I sneer. I’m not about to fall to my knees with my tongue lagging out of my mouth. I’m not the same girl who’d fuck everything away for a quick high. I’m stronger. Even without Lo. I know that now.

Dr. Evans shoos my threats, and he grabs my wrists. His mouth finds my ear. “You will sit down and comply, or I’ll tell your parents just how much of a whore you really are.”

Tell them, is my first thought. I won’t sacrifice my own pride, my own dignity for them. Nothing in the world is worth the shame that I will feel from this. Nothing.

I stare right back and all my hate and resentment towards everyone that has vilified me as a slut or whore rumbles up in two words. “Fuck you.”

His grip tightens and I realize how small I am compared to him, compared to any man. I might as well be a bag of bones. I take a deep breath and scream, “GARTH!”

Dr. Evans presses a hand over my mouth and his other hand starts descending to my shorts. “If you won’t do it yourself, I’ll have to do it for you.”