Vertical Lines (The Vert Series Book 1), page 1
Vertical Lines
The Vert Series Book 1
Kristen Kehoe
To the girl I was, and the woman she became: I’m sorry I forgot to believe in you.
XO
Copyright © 2015 by Kristen Kehoe
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing.
Book Cover design by James at GoOnWrite.com
Editing by Billi Joy Carson at EddingAddict.com
Chapter 1
Jordan
I don’t know what made me do it.
Correction: it’s hard to narrow down the list of possibilities and decipher just which one was the catalyst for why I pushed my brother’s dinner plate into his lap.
Was it because I wanted it, but was unable to have it since I’m a girl and, therefore, not qualified to consume that many calories? Or was it because he chewed and talked all at once, with such speed that it was off-putting to both watch and hear as he masticated his beef while regaling us with his fraternity endeavors? Or could it have been both of those things added onto years of repressed anger and mother-loving hunger?
Sweet bleeding Jesus am I hungry.
I’ve been at dinner with my parents and my older brother, Mason, for the past hour and a half. In those ninety minutes, I’ve had water, one bite of bruschetta, and salad—excuse me, mixed greens (overpriced restaurant-speak for less than salad; we are not a Chili’s and there is no bacon in this concoction). While Mason has consumed a cup of clam chowder, two baskets of bread, the rest of my bruschetta (jerk), sautéed mushrooms, and now, his own dinner. Well, some of it.
Like I said, I don’t know if it was the sight of him gulping down calories and flavor, of rolling prime rib around in his cheeks while stuffing his face with caramelized baby carrots and garlic mashed potatoes—while I pushed around my mixed green and salmon salad (no dressing) that sent me over the edge, or the fact that when I stopped and really watched him, I saw more than just the difference in our meals.
I saw our childhoods in an onslaught of memories: his full of fun and games and adventures, bugs and dirt and bicycles, while mine was music lessons, art lessons, and horseback riding lessons, cotillions and tea parties.
I saw my present—the here and now where I’m attending a school, because Mason wanted to, because Mason had gotten a letter from the dean expressing his sheer joy in obtaining a student of such a high caliber. Please, a 3.1 GPA in high school merits the word caliber? Just thank Mr. and Mrs. Richards for their generous donation next time.
And worse than the past and present flashing before my eyes while my brother galumphed and gulped and grossed out everyone in a four-table radius, was the sight of the future that slammed into me.
I’m almost nineteen; a freshman in college, about to begin my time at a university I did not choose—and though I’m young, my life is already planned. I will graduate in three years, because I’ve come in with so many credits from high school. I will attend a respected graduate school to receive my masters and complete my degree in elementary education, but not so respected it will make Mason look bad if he chooses to do post grad work and doesn’t get accepted to the institution I do, after which I will get a proper job at a posh school.
In between all of this schooling and job getting, I will meet and marry the man of my dreams who will also be perfect—which means he will be a carbon copy of every man I’ve ever been allowed to be in contact with: well groomed, on the medical, financial, or justice track (law, not police), and backed by family wealth. Yes, wealth. Money is new and ugly, but wealth is hard earned and generational, ensuring security.
In five years, Mr. Boring and I will have children, along with two homes, an apartment in some swanky city where I will travel to twice a year to buy new clothes and have a girl’s weekend. I will have a grocery fund, and a Mercedes station wagon. My time will be spent between garden club, Junior League, the arts foundation, and raising my children, and my diet will somehow be carved down to limit even my intake of water. Eventually, smelling food is the closest I will come to ever consuming it.
My stylist will rave about my bony figure and willpower, while keeping me well stocked in staid and expensive suits with matching jewelry and shoes.
This is my life, just like my dinner.
Pre-ordered.
Bland.
Tasteless.
Gaunt.
Everything about my life is small, while the bigmouth behemoth across the table gets all of his own space and food along with most of mine. Well, no more. Today is the day that ends. Today, I’m not filtering or starving or waiting.
Today, I am rebelling… and I’m starting with carbs.
I set my fork down with a clink, ignoring my mother’s quick side glance and frown—not because I set my fork down, and she’s concerned I’m not eating, but because I’ve dared to make a sound. I ignore her, my eyes on my target as I reach across the table to where the third bread basket sits and snag a piece. I don’t know who is more shocked, my mother or Mason, since he has stopped talking for the first time since we sat down eons ago. Maybe it’s because his number-one fan is no longer focusing on him, rather, her eyes are trained on me as if I’ve had a seizure and require medical attention.
I don’t know what horrifies her more: the fact that I reached across the table, where I took something from Mason—her beloved little boy who has never been denied anything a day in his life—or that I’m about to consume an empty calorie. Yep, empty. As in, has no nutritional value and will go straight to my tummy, or thighs, or hips, or ass, or who the hell cares, because it smells so delicious I’d give my left tit just to continue smelling it for the rest of my life.
Feeling brazen, I rip a piece of the bread off and pop it into my mouth. Sourdough, still warm. Hello, Heaven, I’ve been waiting to meet you. Is there such a thing as a foodgasm? Because I just had one.
“Pass the butter, please.”
The minute those words cross the threshold of my lips, my mother’s fork hits her plate with a clank (louder than a clink, but you don’t see me give her a dirty look) and her breathing becomes ragged. I ignore her as I tear off another piece of crusty sourdough and take an actual bite from it this time. My teeth sink in and I tear the bread apart, my lips folding around the golden apple known as yeast.
“Hey, I was gonna eat that.”
Unlike my mother’s heavy breathing and wide eyes, this statement stops me. I swallow the half bite in my mouth and set down the rest of the bread, eyeing my brother the entire time. There’s a sensation coursing through me, different from the pleasure I experienced a moment ago after one bite of food that contained flavor and actual sustenance. This isn’t pleasure; it’s darker, more foreboding. A sense of déjà vu washes over me as Mason reaches across and snags the bread back from my plate, and somewhere in the recesses of my mind I hear a snap.
Twig, bonds, sanity… who knows what’s breaking at this moment, but whatever it is, the feeling I’m experiencing now has a name, and I think it’s called liberation.
There is a piece of meat on Mason’s fork and another in his gullet, one that his teeth and tongue were working furiously a moment ago. When I watch him shove the rest of my bread in there as well, my eyes widen and I understand he’s waging his own kind of power struggle, one meant to keep me from usurping his thrown at the table. What he doesn’t know is that while he was playing at war when we were younger, I was being groomed to wage one while wearing pearls and a pink dress. No one, and I mean no one, is more vicious and calculating than society women when their princess is in danger of being overthrown for someone prettier and smarter.
I smile, and I hear my mother exhale slowly. My father hasn’t once looked up from his plate, which is now almost completely wiped clean. He learned long ago in their marriage that the minute he set the fork down, the rest would disappear into the well-tipped hand of our waiter. Mason turns back to my mother, who’s picking up her fork and also turning to him; both pause when I stand.
I grab my small, and appropriate, Tory Burch handbag that matches my pale, flesh-colored dress and cardigan perfectly.
“Excuse me,” I say, as if I’m going to the ladies’ room. One step, two; the minute I’m close to Mason’s plate, I reach out and upend it in his lap with a quick flick of the wrist.
Although I would have preferred to stay and watch the entire scene play out—unlike my idiot brother, who never saw the move coming, and is even now just staring in shock at his lap where the garlic mashed potatoes and juicy run off from his meat seep into his pants and shirt—I understand that when one makes a move so bold as that, they need to be prepared to make a stealthy retreat. I’m walking out, almost to the door when I hear the first scraping of chair feet and rushing of waiters.
I don’t look back, and it is not because I’m afraid. No, right now I’m looking forward and it feels pretty damn good.
Chapter 2
Brooks
The attendant at the 7/11 counter is staring unblinking at my face while I stare at the cigarettes and consider my choices. Not in brand—if it were that easy, I’d have my Marlboros already in hand and the lighter would be leaving my pocket. It’s not a matter of which box to ask for, it’s a matter of whether or not I should ask at all.
This dilemma isn
In short, there is nothing going on inside of me. No art, no soul, no feeling that will break through and let me see something and put it together. I had to leave my house before I punched a hole in the wall and broke my hand. Not that I’m using it to do anything.
I tried walking, immersing myself in the people and the lights and the crowds of the boardwalk and taking their energy, their life, their emotion and sucking it into myself. But two hours of hating the sound and sight of everything and everyone led me back to my place where I cranked the engine of the truck and floored it up the Eight.
Now, I’m back, emptier than I was before I left, hitting my last resort: nicotine. I haven’t had a drag in three months. I haven’t had a decent session of drawing or painting or photographing in almost that same amount of time. Maybe there’s a correlation.
Or… it’s because Ashton was in the hospital again last month. Her heart isn’t doing well, the muscles weakening, and her pulse rate low. They think her liver might go next. She’s nineteen-years-old. Jesus Christ, she’s nineteen and she’s dying.
I can’t fix it—I’ve tried. Just like I have never been able to fix my mother after one of her marriages goes bad and she falls apart. Obviously, quitting smoking was my way of trying to save one of the three of us. A dumbass idea.
Right when I’m about to say the hell with it and ask for a pack, the beep of the sliding door sounds and the distinctive click of high heels cross the threshold. It’s instinct that has me glancing when the clerk’s eyes do, and when I light on the brunette—scratch that, near redhead—in the Stepford Wives outfit, the trendy little purse with the chain link shoulder strap and small heeled sandals the same color as her sweater and dress, I look away.
San Diego is full of beautiful women—unfortunately, it’s also full of empty ones. Women here don’t see their beauty, they only see the surface, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been interested in looking at one for more than a cursory fuck. The one who just walked in isn’t any different, only I’m not even in the mood to see if she’d be up for a roll around my bed.
Jesus Christ, no sex? I need out of this funk, now.
“Marlboro Reds,” I say to the clerk. He doesn’t glance at me; he turns around and grabs them, putting them on the counter and ringing them up. I’m digging my wallet out when the clickety-clack of heels is behind me again.
“Excuse me,” I hear, and the voice gives me pause for a moment. I know it’s the Stepford Wife because she’s the only one in here, but the sound doesn’t seem like it should belong to her. The glance I had earlier showed me everything I’ve already seen a thousand times: uptight, rigid, and lifeless. The voice behind me is anything but that; bold, cultured, a little throaty. Sexy.
I have a strange urge to glance over my shoulder. I don’t, because I’m positive that however different her voice, this girl is the same as all others: empty, superficial, a walking clone of all women in her life who have taught her to be the perfect thing until some man comes and takes her to be his perfect thing.
This is why I have no art: my subjects have no soul.
“Yes?” the cashier says. I scowl at his sudden change in demeanor. He’s watched me with me with the eagle eye since the moment I walked in, waiting for me to rob him. Now there’s a pretty girl behind me and he’s Mr. Personality. Typical.
“Do you have cake? That sounds stupid; I’m not looking for birthday cake, just something with frosting and sugar and chocolate. Sweet Lord, yes, something with chocolate that’s not good for me. Do you have that?”
I roll my eyes because now Stepford doesn’t just sound like a princess, she sounds like a ditz, and I couldn’t be less interested to stand around listening to her ask about calorie count and some other shit her sorority sisters probably put her up to for some stupid ass initiation ritual. Fall semester at the universities started up again last month and there’s always idiotic things like this happening from the end of August well into October.
Slapping my five and change on the counter, I grab the pack and walk out the door, ignoring the slight intake of the cardboard cutout behind me when I brush by her.
My laugh is gruff. For a second, I toy with the idea of stopping in front of her and giving her the once over, making her uncomfortable just because I can. I don’t, not because I care that it might actually scare her, but because now that they’re in my hand, the call of nicotine is stronger than the call to mess with some girl who means nothing to me.
On my way out, I hear the clerk tell her she needs a Hostess, and I almost shit myself when she asks “To be seated?”
Yeah, brains do not run strong in her.
I don’t get into my truck to smoke; I’m already pulling it into my lungs, I don’t need to let it seep into my pores, too. Instead, I lean back against the side of the store and rip the plastic casing off before I turn the pack upside down, tapping on its bottom and shaking one out.
I flick my lighter and take a drag, hating how good the smoke feels in my lungs. Three months. Just over ninety days, yet here I am, desperate enough to endure the hell of quitting again—because I will quit again, I know it—just to break the fucking ice that’s frozen my brain and my ability to work.
The auto doors bing open. I watch from the shadows as Stepford walks through them, her hand holding tightly to a white snack package. I wait for her to continue on, to get behind the wheel of the trendy Mercedes coupe in the parking lot I assume belongs to her and not the bum across the parking lot, but then she surprises me by stopping right outside of the door and opening her treat.
Inhaling smoke, one knee bent with my foot flat against the side of the store, I gaze at her and wonder what in the hell she’s doing way down here instead back on the hill; there’s no doubt in my mind she goes to USD. No state school for this princess.
She’s as out of place in the harshly lit parking lot of a convenience store as I would be at a black-tie dinner. Her dress is a staid tan color, something that looks awful with her pale complexion, washing her out instead of contrasting or warming her. Her hair isn’t red, but it isn’t blonde or brown, either, stuck somewhere in between the three. It’s pin straight and left to fall down her back just beyond her shoulders in a blunt cut that does nothing for her face.
She’s tiny, as average in height as she is in looks, with almost non-existent hips and a thin build. From the quick look I got of her when she was walking into the store, I’m sure there is nothing remotely good happening under the bust of her dress either.
I’ve nearly finished my cigarette by the time she finishes opening the hostess bag and takes out her chocolate. She stares at it for a second, looking at it from the top and sides before bringing it to her lips and taking a small bite. She only makes it three more seconds before she gags, chokes, and looks around until she spots the garbage can that’s a few feet from me, illuminated next to the front doors.
When she spits the cake back in its wrapper before throwing it away, I’m about to laugh. And then she speaks, and I’m damned.
“So much for rebelling. Points for you, Mother, I can’t even keep down my contraband calories.” She wipes her mouth. “I’ll be damned if this stops me, though.”
The image is a flash, so brief that it shocks my system to life and then stills my entire being. I forget about the end of the cigarette in my hand, about the smoke I just exhaled out of my lungs. I don’t really even see her anymore as she dusts off her hands.
Yellow slashes, block stencil, faded in gray, spelling out… EMPTY. Obscured face and pearls around a perfect neck. Warhol-like candy wrappers splashed everywhere else. Highlight painted hair over a charcoal sketched face and shoulders.
The vision recedes as quickly as it came, but just the idea of working again, of doing something other than helping Hunter flip houses—actually creating something—has my hands tingling and my blood buzzing.
