The Girl of Diamonds and Rust (The Half Shell Series Book 3) Read online

  The Girl of Diamonds and Rust

  Book 3

  The Half Shell Series

  Susan Ward

  Copyright © 2015 Susan Ward

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1511412984

  ISBN-13: 978-1511412988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  “Maybe this is love. Protecting the part of yourself most important to you and knowing when to let go so that you can keep a small piece of that person alive and real in your heart.”~~Chrissie Parker

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  PREVIEW: THE GIRL IN THE COMFORTABLE QUIET

  PREVIEW: BROKEN CROWN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PROLOGUE

  January 1993

  I wake to the sound of glass hitting glass.

  I ease away from Alan and gaze up at him. It’s barely morning, and he’s wide awake, when Alan hardly ever wakes before noon. His posture tells me he’s been sitting there quite a while, drinking and watching me.

  “You are not returning to Berkeley,” he snaps.

  All drowsiness leaves my flesh in a nerve-popping jolt. I scoot away from Alan, dragging the sheets to cover me, rapidly searching his face, and then my heart drops to my knees because his eyes are hooded as they burn into me.

  He says, “You still talk in your sleep. Do you know that?”

  No, no, no! Why did he ask me that?

  “I didn’t know that,” I whisper, sounding surprisingly calm even though every part of me is frantic and afraid.

  He takes a long swallow of his drink. “Neil hasn’t mentioned it?”

  Oh God! “I stopped seeing Neil.”

  Those black eyes fix on me, unblinking. “When did you end it with him?”

  My body chills and then heat rises on my cheeks. I try to stutter out a safe response and somehow manage to say nothing. His eyes lock on me again.

  “When did you end it with Neil? Don’t lie to me, Chrissie.”

  I sit up in the bed, struggling to meet his gaze directly, though the way he is staring at me makes it an unbearably painful thing.

  “I would never lie to you. I ended it with Neil because I love you.”

  He sets down his drink, running a hand through his hair. “Goddamn you, I ask you not to do it and you rip out my heart anyway,” he says through gritted teeth. “You won’t be straight with me even when I ask you to and yet you just answered me, Chrissie.”

  The phone rings and it makes me jump and kicks up Alan’s temper. He reaches out and grabs the receiver.

  “What?” he bites off into the phone. “I’m in Malibu. I’m taking a couple days downtime at the beach. No, I’m not discussing that.”

  My stomach turns. I can hear Nia’s voice through the phone. I can’t make out the words, but everything inside me grows cold. I don’t know which is worse: how Nia sounds talking to Alan or that he let me hear them talk because he is angry with me and wants to get in a blow during our fight without even being focused on me.

  “OK,” Alan says. “That’s fine. Tell them I’ve agreed to that.”

  He hangs up the phone and I stare at him, shaking. “You’re such an asshole. Why do you have to be so mean when you’re angry?”

  I scramble from the bed, go for my bag and rapidly start packing up my things.

  “That’s it, Chrissie. Run. Give you an excuse to run, not to have to face anything in your life directly, and you take it. That is what you do, isn’t it, love?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I hiss.

  Every line in his face tightens in extreme anger. “You ran off in New York, and you fucked up everything for both of us. You fucked up my life, too. You don’t have a right to get angry today.”

  “It didn’t sound fucked up to me on the phone.”

  “I haven’t lived with Nia since six months before I came to see you in Berkeley,” he says, almost inflectionless. “I have told you that, Chrissie. We’ve reached a settlement. I gave Nia everything she wanted so I can finally get out. That call was her bleeding me one last time before we sign the papers. When was the last time you fucked Neil?”

  He holds me in an unrelenting stare and his gaze is brutally intense, shards of fury and despondency and hurt. It’s too much, from everything uncertain and dangling, to possible and disintegrating in a horrible, unimaginable way; slamming together, brutally, all at once.

  I continue to pack, my body shaking so fiercely I can barely grab hold of my clothes and shove them in. “I’m not going to answer that. I think it’s better I don’t. I think I should leave before we both say things we’ll regret.”

  His eyes harden and some still functioning part of my brain warns that I’ve just fucked up big time, as Alan calmly grabs his pants and pulls them into place.

  “That’s how you want to deal with this?” He shakes his head, not bothering to even look at me. “You can leave if you want to, but if you do we’re over, Chrissie. Or you can come to the patio, and if you are honest with me I will listen and we’ll see where we go from there.”

  With that, Alan walks away. I stare at the door and sink down on the bed. He’s angrier than I have ever seen him, so angry he’s quiet. I shouldn’t even try to talk to him. The way he is now, this could spin out of control in any direction.

  Alan wants honesty. My inner voice reminds me of all the reasons why this is so important to Alan, of all the times people he has loved have lied to him, and warns me of how dangerous it will be for us both if I tell him everything about Neil.

  The distraught look on his face as he left the bedroom shames me. I was so unkind to him in how I behaved in this…will he forgive me…will the truth be enough? I don’t know, and that scares the hell out of me and I am more afraid than I have been at any other moment in my life.

  Somehow I manage to go to my duffel, pull out some sweats, and dress. I open the door. The house is quiet when I step into the hall, and it surprises me that it is. I don’t know what I expected, but not this heavy, waiting silence.

  I go toward the wall of glass and I find Alan on the patio just as he said he would be. Then I slide open the door and step out.

  After a minute or two, Alan pushes off the wall and stomps out his cigarette on the concrete. His jaw is clenching. His gaze shifts and his eyes lock on me.

  “Even after this I’m not sure I want us over,” he says, sounding frustrated with himself, but he is pulsing with anger even more strongly than he was in the bedroom. “You didn’t answer me when I asked before. When was the last time you fucked Neil?”

  I stare at him, the tightly held arrangement of his long body parts, and with aching despair I know I shouldn’t have come out here to try to talk him. We will both end up bloody, hating each other before this is through.

  “We should wait to talk until you’re calmer.”
/>   Alan’s eyes flash and widen. “Not today, Chrissie. That is the worst thing you could do for either of us. Walk out that door without answering every single question I have and we are over. That is the only thing I am positive of today.”

  I stand frozen in place, searching his face. I can’t tell for certain if he means it, but I do know if I stay he will rip us to shreds. We don’t have a chance if I stay here.

  “No, Alan. If we try to talk this out now, that’s when we will end up over. You are just too angry to see it.”

  ~~~

  By the time I reach Berkeley, I am something beyond numb. I don’t even have the sensation of having driven here. The scenery passed in a blur, unreal, as disjointed moments of my life rose in my memory, now connected, unkind and too real.

  All through the drive, my senses were only claimed by the flashing images of all the mistakes I’ve made. The mistakes I’ve made in how I love Alan. The mistakes I’ve made with everyone in my life.

  I pull into the carport, grab my bag, and somehow manage to get into the elevator. I look at myself in the mirrored squares, and it’s a strange thing that I should look normal, exactly as I always do, and yet there is nothing comfortable or familiar left inside me.

  I hurt the man I love. I hurt my best friend, and yes, Neil is my best friend. I didn’t realize it when we broke up, but it is painfully present inside me today.

  Inside the condo, I drop my bag, and without turning on the lights I go to my bedroom. I rummage through my drawer for my mobile phone, flip it open, stare and start to shake.

  It fully sinks in at this moment. It didn’t completely have the feel of realness before now, though it probably should have and I don’t know why it didn’t.

  My legs are no longer able to hold me, and I sink on the bed and stare at the phone. Ten hours and not one message from Alan. Nothing. Not a single call. This time, I should have stayed and fought for him. Even if it bloodied us. Even if it hurt too much. And even if it ended this way.

  Chrissie’s Journal

  There are times I truly hate the phone. There are times I truly hate Alan. And there are times I truly hate myself. I’m sick of staring at the phone. I’m sick of waiting for Alan to call me. And I’m sick of feeling pathetic for repeatedly calling him.

  I knew it in January when I walked out on Alan; I’d made a catastrophic mistake, the kind you don’t repair with a guy. It shouldn’t surprise me that Alan ignores my phone messages. It shouldn’t surprise me to see him splattered across the tabloids with a new girl every week. It shouldn’t surprise me that he’s self-destructing in print and ignoring me.

  I’ve lived this horrible moment before. I seem to live the horrible moments of my life over and over again. It is all exactly like it was after I left Alan in New York in 1989. Only this time, I wish I could undo it, take back my mistakes, because this time I really could use Alan being here with me.

  There is nothing about the past three months I don’t get…or blame Alan for…or forgive myself for. I am the one who fucked us up big time. I just really wish Alan would call, so I could tell him what’s going on with me because I don’t know what to do. What I’m supposed to do. What he would want me to do.

  Crap, Chrissie, stop lying to your journal. You know exactly what Alan would want you to do. You just want him to say it so it won’t be something you do, something you own totally on your own.

  Shit, how can someone’s life get so fucked up in three short months? January was awful and it keeps going downhill from there. One minute my life is OK, survivable, and then everything changes too quickly and my life is anything but OK.

  Three little words and the world has changed. Time has lost the feel of realness. I have lost the feel of realness. I don’t know what to do, and I hate that I’m in this mess alone trying to figure out my life by myself.

  Fuck, Alan, just call me. We’re over. Message received. You don’t need to continue behaving like an asshole so the message is sent to me every day via the tabloids. Your silence says it all. So now, can you please answer a single phone message?

  Accept the fact, Chrissie, he’s not going to call. I need to stop calling him. Maybe it’s time to let go of him the way he has definitely let go of me. Only a stupid girl runs to a guy, who doesn’t want her, with her problems. This is my problem and I need to fix it on my own.

  Maybe this is what being an adult is. This awful aloneness with life-altering decisions you are too terrified to make.

  Still, when I left Malibu I didn’t really believe Alan would end us. I thought he’d be pissed off for a few days and then break down and call me. He called and sent me letters for a year after I left him in New York, but after Malibu, nothing. I really didn’t expect this.

  Maybe there are some hurts love can’t fix. Maybe there are some things people are not supposed to be able to forgive. Maybe it is better to walk away from someone rather than to try to mend your heart after having someone rip it out.

  That’s what Alan said to me. I ripped out his heart. Oh God, the memory of the way he looked at me still makes me grow shaky and cold inside. Maybe it’s all better this way, with him walling me out in a way that makes it abundantly clear that I fucked up and we are over forever.

  Maybe this is love. Protecting the part of yourself most important to you and knowing when to let go so that you can keep a small piece of that person alive and real in your heart. Maybe this is the only way Alan can keep from hating me.

  And really, that’s not such a bad thing. As awful as this is, as much as I need him now, it would be worse knowing that Alan hates me. Maybe the best two people can do when they’ve loved each other badly, is to walk away before hating each other.

  Maybe someday we’ll get past this and be friends. That would be nice. But I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.

  It’s probably better this way.

  CHAPTER ONE

  April 1993

  I sit at the kitchen table, hunched over the typewriter, staring at a blank page. Damn, I’ve been at this four hours and I still haven’t written a single word. There is something so intimidating about a blank page. Some people think only black represents nothingness, but white does as well. The absence of everything, just in a gentler, less-frightening-looking way.

  I feel my eyes mist up and I focus on staring at my fingers ready on the typewriter keys. The absence of everything. That’s how my life has felt since I walked out on Alan. I don’t even know how I’ve made it through the last three months of school. I feel blank inside like this stark, white typing paper, and numb, as if the world in all its bright spring color in Berkeley exists in total absence of everything.

  But it doesn’t. Life, and the world, is marching into the future around me, same as always. Time goes on whether my heart is broken or not, or I’m panicking inside because I’ve got decisions I have to make being forced upon me whether I want to make them or not.

  I push away my thoughts and type my name in the upper right hand corner of the blank page. There. That’s something on the page, at least. It’s better that I don’t think about my problems today. I need to focus on the paper I have to write. I definitely have got to finish it; no paper, no grade, and no graduation in May.

  A sound causes me to turn and I see Rene racing into the kitchen. She pauses to stare over my shoulder. “Shit, Chrissie, you need to get this paper done. You’ve been at it all day. I still have one to write tonight as well. If you aren’t going to work on it, can I at least have the typewriter until you’re ready to try and finish your homework?”

  I avoid looking at her by rummaging through my notes on the table. “I’ll be done in an hour. But if you keep bugging me I won’t ever finish.”

  Rene drops heavily into the chair across from me and I can feel her stare dissecting my posture and expression. “Chrissie, what is wrong? You’ve been like this for weeks. Nervous and edgy and preoccupied. You’re barely passing your classes. Jeez, we’ve been here for four years. Now is not the t
ime to fuck up and not graduate. What’s wrong?”

  I sink my teeth hard into my lower lip and then slowly lift my eyes to hers. There is so much I haven’t told Rene and I can see that she’s worried underneath that snotty shell of too cool to care about anything she has mastered. But Rene does care, she always has, in spite of what people think and say about her. She just doesn’t show it in the kind of ways other people do.

  I feel my insides liquefy and weaken. I shake my head. “Nothing is going on, Rene. I’m just stressed and so ready to be done with this.”

  Her eyes do another scalpel-like roam across my face and her lips tighten into a not-completely-held grimace. “Bullshit. Do you think I don’t know when something bad is going on with you? Is it Neil? I never thought I’d say this, but I really miss having the jerk around.”

  I laugh, not in humor, but because of the way she says jerk. Almost affectionately. How quickly everything changes. From Rene despising Neil to missing him… I cut off my thoughts before they drift to my other quickly changing circumstance.

  “It’s not Neil. It’s everything. It’s nothing. Can we just leave it alone?”

  Rene stares at my face, sighs and then stands up, frustrated. “You’ll tell me. Eventually. You always do. It might help if you told me now instead of waiting until whatever this is becomes a disaster.”

  I watch her walk toward the kitchen doorway. She stops and stares back at me.

  “I love you, Chrissie. We’ve been best friends forever. Whatever it is, I’d help you if you’d let me.”

  Moisture clouds my eyes and my lips curl inward in a tight pucker. I nod. She would help. But I can’t trust Rene with this. I can’t trust anyone. If anyone ever knew…if Jack ever knew…I stop the words before they form in my head…I’d die!

  I suddenly feel sick, like I’m going to vomit, and I struggle to remain composed at the table. Finally, Rene turns and disappears into the living room. Her bedroom door slams a few seconds later.

  I let out a heavy breath and fight to hold back the tears. There is no point in crying. Crying won’t change things, it won’t fix a single thing wrong in my life, and I’ve already cried enough over this.