Beyond Repair (Broken Girl Book 1) (10 page)

"What do you think of the dress?"

He laughs quietly, and lets his eyes follow the lines of my body. I burn in the wake of his stare but stay perfectly still.

"It looks amazing. It suits you. Do you have a party to go to or something?"

I smirk and turn my back to him again, locking my eyes with his in the mirror.

"In my life, every day is a party."

She's perfect. Every last inch of her is absolutely perfect and I can't have her. I can't have her because she's broken, and I have no idea how to fix all the things that are wrong with her. So instead, like now, I watch her like the creeper I am. I left her ten minutes ago in some store looking at lipstick and headed to find us coffee. I'm now stood outside the coffee shop watching her laugh with some kid on the street as she paints their face. The actual face painter looks onto her in awe. I can't blame him. She looks so free, so happy, so not Lydia. Right here, in this moment, she's not craving attention or hiding away. She's herself, and she's beautiful. She looks over and smiles wide, motioning at me to join her. I return her smiles and head over.

"Check her out, Callum," she says to the little girl sat in the chair opposite her. "This is Isabelle. Isn't she the prettiest little princess you've ever seen."

I crouch down so I'm eye level with the young girl. She can't be more than five or six, with big sad eyes and tubes coming out of her nose. She sniffs a little.

"I can't be a princess," she says with the smallest voice. Her fingers brush at the tubes.

Lydia scoffs, "Says who?"

Isabelle's eyes shoot to a group of older kids sitting on the courtyard then drop to the floor. Lydia notices too and lifts up the girl's chin. She flashes her a sweet smile.

"Isabelle," she sighs. "A ship only sinks when the water around it gets in."

She brushes the stray golden hair from her face as myself, the face painter, and who I can only assume is Isabelle's mother stare in silence, "Don't let the things around you get in and weigh you down."

I watch on as she picks up the brush from the pallet and paints a small leopard face on Isabelle’s hand. She paints one identical on her own, "Always be a leopard, not a sheep," she winks, enticing a small giggle out of the girl, and hands the brush back to the face painter. She gives him a quick hug. "Thanks Jay. It was good to see you again."

"You too, Lyds."

She smiles and takes the coffee I offer to her, sipping at it immediately. I almost laugh. I've never known anyone to inhale caffeine the way Lydia Baker does. Her blood must be made up of the stuff. I fall into step beside her as she picks up her bags and heads back towards the main street.

"So you know the face painter, huh?"

"Yeah," she laughs. "I met him in New York. He travels all over face painting, kids’ parties and stuff. He's a good guy."

She takes another large gulp of coffee and then tosses it into a nearby trash can, "You hungry?"

My stomach rumbles, answering for me, "Apparently."

"Awesome. What do you fancy?"

I look along the street for inspiration, stopping at a small Italian. I motion to it to Lydia, "How about that place?"

"Italian. I like it."

"So, tell me about New York."

Lydia smiles around her glass as she takes a sip of the water inside, "What do you want to know?"

"I don't know really. What was it like? What did you do there other than college?"

I lift a forkful of my risotto to my mouth and smile inside when she clears her throat. She's actually going to talk.

"Well, when I first got there I did the whole tourist deal. Empire State, Times Square, Statue of Liberty. I shopped a lot, too. I met some awesome people who then introduced me to the real places to visit, for example there is this really awesome underground bar in Williamsburg. I spent most of my weekends going from one trashy hipster joint to the next with absolutely no life plan," she chuckles. "You would have hated it."

"Why?"

Her eyes roll as she takes a bite of the chicken from her salad, "Because, Callum Reeves, no one in those parts of New York have a five-year plan. The people I hung with just sort of floated through life. They were all high on life and conspiracy theories. It was endearing and fascinating to watch," she smiles, organising the things on the table to line up perfectly. "Like a polar opposite to Park Bay. No one cares who you are or what you do there because there's so much other stuff going on. Think about Park Bay. I went crazy there like six years ago, yet people still remember every last detail of it and it's still all they can see when they look at me now. In New York, you can be three different people in the same day because there is always someone bigger, crazier, and more outrageous than you."

"I can't imagine anyone being more outrageous than you, Little Bit."

She laughs, "Believe it. I was barely a small fish in a sea of crazy sharks out there."

"Sounds awful."

"Oh absolutely. I loved it."

I sip at my own water, watching carefully as she begins to move the food around on her plate. She's sectioning it off in groups, chicken with chicken, tomatoes with tomatoes, "If you loved it so much, then why are you back? It's no secret that you hate it here."

She sighs, the blues of her eyes dimming just a little, "Because as amazing as New York is, it isn't home. Kitty is here, my mom's grave is here."

"And your dad?"

I expect her to suck in a breath and lose her shit at me like she normally does when I bring up our Mayor, but she doesn't. She just softly shakes her head.

"Mayor Baker and I will never have the normal father-daughter relationship that people expect," her eyes turn serious. "There is no love between us, and there never was. I'm a reminder of his dead wife, and he's a reminder of my empty childhood. We keep away from each other and I'm okay with that, but I can never forgive him for what he did."

I get the sense that this is about more than just sending her off to the mental hospital, but I keep my mouth clamped shut and move on to something else. We've actually had a good day today so I don't want to ruin it.

"Okay, so something I've wanted to ask since you got back. What's the deal with the eyeliner-wearing boyfriend?"

"Dax?" She chuckles. "Dax is something else. I met him at this little hole-in-the-wall dive bar in SoHo. He was in a band, but worked the bar to make rent."

Her eyes roll dramatically and I can't help the snort that escapes me, “he was fun for the most part, but really into himself," She shrugs.

"It was never going to work out with us. He knew it, and I knew it. We were just sort of passing the time before one of us eventually left. We didn't fight or anything, just fucked and ate together. It was always going to be me that left first."

"Why's that?"

"He isn't a bad guy, he just isn't as impulsive as I am. I wanted to go out and see things, make poor decisions and unleash my crazy ass on the world. He wanted to play music and mellow out. He didn't like the way I was around other people, didn't really get me," she laughs. "Not many people do."

"Have you spoken to him since?"

She nods her head, "He called, asked if I still had a pulse. I told him I came home and that was that."

"So you really did just leave in the middle of the night. What made you do that?"

Her eyes practically sparkle under the florescent light of the restaurant, "You remember when we were kids, and Kitty and I would dress up as fairies and dance around your house?"

I nod, laughing a little at the memory. They'd annoyed the ever loving shit out of me back then with their singing and dancing.

"There was this TV show that we used to watch where these little fairies would play tricks on nasty humans. Well the night I left, I couldn't sleep so I put the TV on. Dax was passed out on the bed beside me after his show ran late. I was wired, and almost fell off the fucking bed when that show came on. It made me think of Kitty and home immediately, so I packed up some shit and booked a flight. I left a note for Dax to tell him he could have my car and took off," she shrugs. "I work from wherever my laptop is so there was nothing really keeping me there."

She pushes her plate to the edge of the table, frowning at the uneaten food on there.

"You wanna get some ice cream?"

"Lydia! Hurry the fuck up!”

I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face when I watch Lydia bounce out of her bedroom and hit Kate with a steel-like glare. We’ve been waiting almost an hour for her to be ready so we can go to some flea market crap that the girls want to go to. Joe and I have been roped in, too, seeing as Lydia and me are the best of fucking friends these days. Ever since I accidentally stayed over at her place and she gave me in the mind-blowing information on her mental health, we’ve been close. When we arrived at Kate and Joe’s the morning after, my cousin damn near fainted.

Now, two weeks later, things are smooth. We can all hang out, and Kate doesn’t hate me either. Hell, even Lydia and I hang out. There’s still tension whenever my job at the Mayor’s office comes up, but for the most part we avoid it. It’s easier that way. It’s like some unspoken taboo subject that if mentioned is punishable by death. From Kate that is.

I’m sure one day someone will tell me exactly what the big deal is, but until then I’m more than happy to feign ignorance whenever Lydia tenses up. I glance at her now as she stands with her hands on her hips. Her hair, now black with flashes of electric blue in random places, tumbles over her shoulders in big curls. She’s dressed in just jean shorts and a white tank, sporting bright pink socks on her feet. Her face is covered in the usual slather of makeup, with bright red lipstick lining her pouty lips that are currently curled up in a sneer.

“I’m going as quickly as I fucking can,” she all but growls. “But I can’t decide which jacket to wear.”

Women.
Why is deciding what to wear always such an event? I mean, does it really matter what color it is? I keep my thoughts on this completely silent. I learnt a long time ago that voicing my opinions on all things women is a bad idea. Cerys spent almost two hours getting ready, and that was just for a normal day. She was worse whenever we went actually out for dinner or something. As is usual whenever Cerys enters my brain, my thought flicks back to the day we broke up, the same day I lost my career. I’d been miserable, slouching on the sofa and waiting for her to come home and make me feel better. She was my girlfriend, that’s what she was supposed to do, right?

“There are two types of people in the world, Callum. People who fight for what they want, and people who just accept what they’re given. I’m a fighter, and I want a successful man. You don’t fit that bill anymore…”

Talk about kicking a man whilst he’s down. She never came back that night and I moved home two days later. I called, texted and emailed but it was to no avail. I haven’t heard a word from her since her ass walked out of the door, and I doubt I ever will. Kate’s voice brings me back to the room, but my mood is still soured.

“Wear the leather one.”

Lydia clicks her fingers and points in Kate’s direction, “You are a fucking genius, Kitty. I’ll be two minutes, promise. Go wait in the car.”

She dashes back into her bedroom then and so I bring my focus back to Joe and Kate who are starting to stand up. I roam the room and spot the empty coffee cups on the table. Somewhere inside I groan, because I just know that when Lydia sees them we’ll be waiting a further twenty minutes for her to clean up.

“You two go down,” I say to the retreating couple as I start collecting the cups. “I’ll catch up with you.”

Kate eyes me suspiciously, whilst Joe flashes me a knowing smile. I ignore them both and head into the kitchen, dumping the cups in the sink. Lydia doesn’t have a dishwasher, something about them being riddled with bad bacteria. I don’t know, she has some pretty wayward thinking when it comes to germs. I caught her attacking the bathroom tiles with a toothpick last week, and learnt yesterday that she changes her toothbrush every day. She’s beyond crazy about cleaning. I run the tap and begin the wash out the cups with the clean cloth on the side. I’m just finishing putting them away when Lydia steps into the doorway.

“You’re cleaning.”

It’s not a question, just a statement so I shrug. She walks further in and peers into the cupboard. I almost laugh, knowing she’s checking that I’ve stacked them the right way. Her quirks are sometimes adorable. When she’s satisfied, she breezes past me and into a drawer at the end of the kitchen. She pulls out her pill tub and so I fetch her a bottle of water from the fridge. A small blush creeps her face when I pass it to her, then she turns her back to me. I hear the rattle of the pills and then the small cough she lets out when she’s swallowed them. I’ve noticed this lately. It’s almost as if she’s ashamed to take her medication in front of me. I hate it. She shouldn’t feel like that, and I can’t stand that it’s my fault she does. Up until recently, I’ve never given her any reason to trust that I won’t judge her. I know she’s still hesitant towards me.

Without thinking I reach out for her, resting my hand on her shoulder. She freezes from the contact but doesn’t move away.

“Why do you hide from me, Little Bit?” I ask.

She turns then and I see it in her eyes; the shame, the helplessness, the hurt. My hand moves, cupping her cheek as I lose myself in her. She’s beautiful, in a broken and tragic kind of way. Yet it’s more than that keeping me close. It’s like I’m locked into her gaze, my brain completely disconnected, my body acting on its own accord. It’s the vibe she gives off, the way her eyes beg to be saved but at the same time warn people off. Her stare is stripping me bare, and despite the alarm bells ringing in my head, I step even closer to her. I’m intrigued, fascinated by her to almost dangerous levels.

“Because,” she starts, her hand now clutching at my t-shirt. “Sometimes I think you’re the only one that can find me.”

What?
I’m about to push back and question what she means when suddenly I’m pulled down and her lips are on mine. It takes me half a second to register what’s going on but when I do, fireworks are going off in my head. She presses her body closer to me and I move my hand from her cheek to the back of her neck, deepening our kiss. Our mouths move together in a frantic and desperate rhythm, tongues and teeth clashing in an attempt to be closer. My free hand moves to her hip, my fingers dancing on the smooth silk of her skin. Too soon she’s pulling away, and we’re both left staring at each other as we try and catch our breath. Her red lipstick is smeared, leaving me with the knowledge that it’s probably all over my face. When she smirks at me, the reality of what just happened hits me like a boulder. I just had one of the hottest kisses of my life with Lydia Fucking Baker. Holy shit. This is very bad.

“I always wondered,” she says, before I can speak.

“Wondered what?” I ask, watching as she heads out the door.

“What that would be like.”

Well, shit.

The drive to the flea market is quiet. Lydia and Kate talk in that special way that only girls can, a million words a minute and overlapping each other. Joe drives and mutters the occasional insult to other drivers, while I sit trying to wrap my head around what happened in Lydia’s kitchen. By the time we’re parking up, I’m desperate for air and space so I practically burst from the truck. I have to get a grip. It was just a kiss, and I’m acting like a pussy. I’ve kissed a bunch of women, hell, I’ve done a lot more than kiss them. Somehow though, something is different. I feel like I’ve just taken a very big step into the abyss of the unknown, and despite how much my body wants to, I won’t be doing it again. Messing around with Lydia can only mean trouble, and I want a simple life. I force all the indecent thoughts I’m having about the pretty little spit-fire out of my mind and join the others walking towards the makeshift entrance.

Maybe I should talk to Lydia, tell her that I’m not looking to start anything with her. I cast her a sideways glance, but she’s already dashing off to inspect some old looking vase with Kate in tow. It’s probably for the best. We’ve only just started getting on. The last thing I want to do is have a conversation with her that could ruin the progress we’ve made. No, we’ll just ignore what happened. Besides, she’s not exactly the type of girl to get hung up on something as insignificant as a kiss. The girl lives and breathes one night stands like a champ. She was probably just fucking with me, like she fucks with everyone else. Fuck. I bet she’s pissing her pants laughing inside at how I’m obviously hung up on it. She doesn’t seem fazed at all, so why should I? Why should I let what was probably a joke to her mess with me? I mentally shake off the thoughts. One thing is becoming obvious. I need to get laid, and fucking soon.