Page 23

I See Red

“I never asked for any of this. I just wanted normalcy like everyone else; accepting I will never be normal is the only thing I think will save me because craving it is killing me.”

—Ivy

I ’ve been up here for what feels like a lifetime.

How my body is still capable of moving, running off champagne and the few nibbles of food I have taken from the plates Liam has left at the door is beyond me.

I’m fucking torturing myself, and I know it.

This is what I do: lock myself up, torturing myself in private instead of showing my emotions to anyone in the world.

Partly saving them from my wrath, the other because it’s comfortable being locked up.

As a child, it was terrifying for me; somewhere in my mind, though, I am aware that complete seclusion is where I can think clearly the most.

It’s where I’m comfortable.

I’m like the beast in Beauty and the Beast, locked away to soak in self-pity and doubt, afraid for the world to see me unless I am at my best.

The best parts of my life are those that come after a break.

It’s how I rejuvenate myself, and that is exactly what this is.

The break before the beauty, the preparation for my wings to soar.

Fuck, maybe I am a little bird.

Damn you, Liam .

Tossing and turning on the day bed, I open one of the many books from my library in an attempt to read, hoping to clear my mind.

Deflection at its finest, ladies and gentlemen, avoid the catastrophic story that is mine and dive into someone else’s.

Nonetheless, my attempt has fallen flat, as all I can think about is him—the wedding.

What the fuck was he thinking? Champagne, music, and staring at the ceiling crying have been all I have accomplished in my time here, oh, and beating the shit out of the pillows that surround me.

Looking around, I catch a glimpse of my oasis, the paintbrushes lying next to the easel in front of the bay window that holds yet another unfinished art piece, the journals stacked on the table in front of me that I haven’t written in at all recently, unfinished and untouched, to the hundreds of books that line the walls and ceiling the shelves reaching all the way up in the rafters as far as I can see, holding onto the promise that I will one day swing across that ladder grasping their spine and actually turn their pages.

I am surrounded by my failures, reminders of all my uncompleted tasks, thoughts, and feelings— story of my life, just as my relationship with Tayden—unfinished.

There was a beginning and a thought, yet somehow, I managed to always prevent myself from closure in any shape or form, never letting go, always pushing off today for tomorrow.

Jokes on me, tomorrow’s here, and he’s getting married.

Sitting up, I look over to my desk holding yet another Ivy let down—my empire, my real estate firm, which, although I have designed to run without me there, I can’t help but feel guilty for completely avoiding it right now as the voicemail light illuminates as fast as my heartbeat, reminding me it’s full.

There are stacks of paperwork I have yet to sift through and e-mails from my assistant unanswered as I am sure she is barely treading water trying to stay above this week.

Do something, anything.

That’s what you need, work, it makes everything better.

When all else fails, money never lets you down.

Fuck, it’s allowed me many things, but mostly its sole importance all these years has been to grant me the freedom to not be okay, to never need another human.

The ability to be alone and sit in my shit, my big steaming pile of shit.

Strolling over to my computer, I open it up, pouring yet another glass of champagne.

Wiping my eyes, I sit there looking at the screen, skimming through the subject lines, desiring to open them, but I just can’t find it in me to click a single one —endless hovering.

“He’s fucking getting married, how could he not tell me?”

rolls off my tongue into oblivion. Rubbing my eyes, I lean back in my chair as I down the entire glass I just poured. Reaching over to grab the bottle, I realize it’s empty, and I need more.

Shouting down the hall, my request rings, “Liam, can you grab me another bottle, please.”

Sitting behind the door in my wait, yelling to Alexa, “Alexa, play Inside Her Head by Bryce Savage. Alexaaaaaaaaaaaa, volume ten,”

the last thing I need is Liam hearing my tears when he arrives. His footfalls become lighter, telling me the area is safe to open the door. Lightly cracking it, I snag it like that rat in Ratatouille swiftly stealing food from the kitchen.

Uncorking the bottle, I pour another glass.

When all else fails, get drunk.

Bitch, you’re past drunk.

Taking the plate of food Liam left at the door, I stack it on top of the others piling up.

I can’t even think about eating right now; the smell alone makes my alcohol-filled stomach curdle.

My demons are swarming all around me.

This time feels different, the darkness becoming unhinged more than ever, the cracks busting at the seams.

Losing my cool as the music plays, screams expel from deep within my chest.

Suddenly, I’ve lost all physical control, destroying the one slice of heaven I created for myself.

Books crashing to the floor by my own hands, and pages of my writings torn from their respective spines.

Tossing them in the air, I watch as they drift, falling to the floor like I have wished my body to do many times, simply gliding to its death.

Grabbing a pillow from the bed, I smash it into the easel before flipping every single piece of furniture in reach.

My screams escalating to demonic tones I remember hearing in the psych wards, tears flood from my eyes, snot dripping from my nose as I ravage my serenity within minutes until there is nothing left to destroy.

Pure exhaustion taking over, I crumble to the floor in the perfect vision of my truest self, a fucking mess, a trainwreck actually, nothing but destruction within me and all around.

I am the center of it all.

I am a fucking walking catastrophe, my own worst enemy.

Throwing the glass against the wall, I watch as the liquid splashes across the window once covered by my art.

Glass shatters, and the window cracks from impact.

I can’t help but burst into hopeless laughter, the most hopeless and evil laugh spilling from my body.

Looking around, I spin, finding humor in what I have caused yet again.

Here we are again, baby.

What else can we do but laugh? You have officially fucking lost it, Ivy.

You are out of your goddamn mind, but you knew that already.

If only those places could see you now, maybe then they’d of had a real reason to keep you.

Say you want me back, just fucking say it.

I don’t fucking want you back.

I don’t need you.

Yes, you do. You always have. Fuck you Red.

The acceptance of my mental state wraps me like a warm blanket.

A sense of comfort conforms within me.

Sitting up, I push the hair from my face that’s clung to me by my tears and sweat from my tantrum.

Wiping my nose with my arm, my hands clear the worthless tears from my eyes.

I look up to the only thing untouched by the E-4 tornado that just whipped through this room—my computer.

All of this, I’m well aware, has been yet another mere attempt at avoidance.

A diversion to keep myself from what I really want to do, search it, see it, accept it.

But seeing is believing, and I want to believe so badly that this is all some evil joke Olive created to help force my hand to choose, but she wouldn’t.

It’s not, and it’s high time I faced the fucking music.

Rip the fucking band-aid off.

Walking over to my desk, I grab another wine glass from the drawer, pouring myself another drink.

Rage and pride take over my emotions, transferring slowly from sad and distraught to angry and vengeful.

Let’s see your move, T.

Let’s fucking see it.

Smearing the mouse across the desk, the screen comes to life as I toggle over Chrome, hovering over it mere seconds before I finally get the balls to click it.

A devilish grin forms across my face as I begin to type.

‘Tayden Bergess engagement.’ My fingers aggressively hit the keys with each letter I stroke.

Staring at the repulsive sentence I just wrote, I slam my finger harshly onto the enter button.

Hell, it might not even work now.

Sitting back, I take a massive swig of my drink, my eyes scanning all the options full of information.

Fuck it, this one looks great.

I click the link as the page loads.

Son of car mogul, Michael Bergess, proposes to now fiancé, longtime girlfriend, Anastasia Costilla.

Tayden, son of Liliana and Michael Bergess, theworld-renowned billionaire who built his fortune in cars before moving into tech and leaving his son Taydenthe original family business finally pops thequestion.

Wedding bells are in Boston’s future.

Knowing this family, they will be big and loud.TBZM reports sources close to the family say awinter wedding will be happening this year.

Those close to the families have been tight-lipped as to location or reason as to whya shotgun wedding, leaving speculation of a possible pregnancy.

This has not been confirmed, a spokesperson for the family has requested for people to respect their privacy.

This event will be filledwith the most elite guest list Boston has seen in a while.

Congratulations to the newly engaged couple. -TBZM

Ohhhh Anastasia.

God, I always hated her fucking name;so prim and proper, like a Disney princess.

Makes me want to gouge her perfectly almond-shaped fucking eyes out.

My stomach churns as I read the words, fucking pregnancy, Jesus fucking Christ.

Tilting my head back, I gargle the champagne savagely before swallowing it.

Scrolling back up, I see the perfectly selected photo his mother indisputably chose.

My stomach turns to knots, electric shock waves coursing through my blood, and I’m fucking mad, disappointed, and fucking rageful.

Reaching over to my phone, I unlock it, scrolling to his name, pulling up our text thread as I begin to type.

Ivy: Marriage? Really? Thanks for the fucking consideration of this information before I find out from the world about the marriage of someone whom I have shared a fucking life with since we were kids. It’s not even the you marrying her part, Tayden; it’s the you not telling me beforehand. We haven’t spoken in months, and you decide a fucking marriage is best? Better yet, some short engagement shotgun wedding? No, no, wait. Next I’ll hear the pregnancy rumors are true, a fucking kid, well, another kid? We have always been friends before anything else, or maybe we weren’t……..

because a friend would have called at least after the fact, and a lover would have called before the fact. Apparently, we are neither. What the actual fuck?

Re-reading it, my hand hovers over the send button, contemplating whether to send it or not before backspacing every single letter as I begin typing again.

Ivy: Congrats on the engagement. I am so happy for you.

Hovering over the send button once again, I’m frozen and unable to press it.

My internal struggle builds, my rage cusping on the edge of my eyes as tears begin falling, making the screen harder and harder to see.

My fog-covered soul scans the room, looking for something to give, a sign, an answer, when suddenly my spine is stiffened, and fear is all I exude.

“To send or not send, that is thy question, Ives”

Turning around slowly, aware of not what but who is waiting behind me before I even look.

Lifting my head from the floor, following the direction of the sound, she sits in the corner in all her fucking glory, eating up every action of my downfall.

Her perfectly curled blonde hair cascading down her strong cheekbones, a velvet red dress hugging her figure in all the right places.

The ‘V’ neck allotting her breasts air while keeping them a secret all at the same time like she’s a doll plucked straight out of a fifties pin-up magazine.

The tasseled lamp casts her silhouette on the wall behind her as she inhales a long drag from a cigarette, smoke pushing out over her meticulously drawn-on lipstick shade—Revenge Red.

She’s just sitting and staring at me like I am a snack and she is fucking starving.

My lips suddenly go dry. I am so fucked.

“What are you doing here? I didn’t call for you,”

I cautiously breathe out.

“Oh, Ivy, you’ve been screaming for me for months. Poor impressionable girl, look at the mess you have made,”

she gloats, sitting there, stark and unphased.

What the fuck is happening? God, I really am off my rocker. If I’m now seeing my inner voice in the flesh in front of me, you need sleep and water. You need less, you.

“Mess?”

I bite. “You truly think I did this? I was trying to be good; I was trying to be normal, fighting like hell Red to be fucking mundane and fucking happy and forget him, allow myself the chance for a normal fucking relationship.”

“A normal relationship, Ivy? Is that what you think you and Liam are? Normal? Look at what’s transpired with him as of late. You think his behavior has been normal? Nothing about that man is normal, and you fucking know it; you just avoid it, never fucking asking the questions you know you need to,”

she shouts.

She has a point, but fuck I was trying my hardest to love someone and love them without having to know every corner of who and why. I truly didn’t want to intertwine myself in this triangle any longer, to let go, and I was doing better than I expected until, well, until today. Well, the other morning, at breakfast. Okay, maybe I wasn’t, but it was better to some degree, right? It’s not like I created this mess, or maybe I did by cutting off my relations with Tayden the way I did or even indulging in a relationship with a man I know nothing about like Liam. Maybe this is all my fault for never accepting myself for face value and not telling Tayden my truest of feelings all those years. I loved him, but Red was fixated on him in ways I never was. I’m bonded—she’s obsessed

“Look at you, look around you, you’re up here hiding in a room like you haven’t built one of the biggest real estate brokerages in the fucking world, like you didn’t survive childhood torture, rape, molestation, and emotional reckoning, weak like a fucking helpless little bird whose wings are clipped. It’s like you no longer know how to fly, curled up, waiting for someone to fix you, for love to fix you instead of facing it like I have tried to make you do for all these years. I’m disappointed in you, young grasshopper; you have still yet to learn the true route to your happiness,”

she snarls.

My face turns sheet white, and I’m confused by this conversation until I snap.

“Weak? You aren’t even me; you are a version I created in my head years ago as a terrified nine-year-old girl to help me and protect me, yet all you did was ruin me and deepen the hole that was dug for me at birth, being careless and reckless all these years, constantly deterring me every time I try to find peace. Starting things back up with Tayden when you knew damn well where it would lead, leading me astray from everything I wanted to be and being everything I can never be, but no, you don’t think about that Red. Because you are a selfish fucking bitch, and that’s why I fucking ended you. That’s why I killed you and erased you from my mind. No more, no less.”

A smile swarms her face as she rises from the seat with ease. A chuckle escapes her as she glides face-to-face with me. Suddenly, I feel a warm touch on my wrist, my body feels like it’s on fire as panic sets in. Turning to the mirror hanging sideways on the wall. Her words become mine as I look on, my lips moving.

“Oh, Ivy. I was never the version that you created. I have always been the truest form of you. You, my darling, are the version you needed to hold onto to feel good about who you truly are deep inside: angry, selfish, weak, tortured, scared of your own voice, yet bulletproof. I’ll give you that. You are the victim in our story, and I am the survivor, not the other way around. You victimize yourself every day by not letting go and living in this dark, pathetic world you call comfort over a fucking dead man. In fact, you always speak of your inner child like I am her, but I am not. You always have been the poor, hurt little child fighting to be who you could have been if life were different. While I, well… I am the future you, and it is you that has been holding me back, not the other way around. News flash, you can’t go back, you can’t undo what has been, you can’t peace it away, or fuck it away, although , I do enjoy those attempts so very much. So, hear me very, very clearly when I say this. From here on out, I am driving this fucking insane asylum, and if you don’t behave, I will end you. You thought you could kill me, but you didn’t because I am you. I am the woman that emerged from your ashes. I am never-ending and always living, and if you don’t fall into place while I clean this mess up, then I will erase you entirely and this little housewife role you have so desperately wanted to play with Liam, living a ‘mundane life’ as you call it, will be a thought of the past, at least for you. I, on the other hand, have grown very fond of him, and without you, I can finally sink my claws into what I know he’s been hiding all this time. Now, sit the fuck back and let the boss do what she does best, little girl. Clean up your fucking mess. ”

Looking at myself, I watch as she takes over. First my words and now my emotions. It is terrifying, yet exactly how the phoenix rises. Within seconds, the fear slowly fades as, once again, I feel myself falling to the back until all I see is her without a speckle of myself.The mirror in my forefront, my fingers brush through my hair, trailing down my clothes, adjusting them, the deranged smell that illuminates my body as they shift, vile. A deep breath leaves my chest.

“ Checkmate, bitch .”

Walking over to the door, I turn the handle, exiting this sad, pathetic display of human control left all over this room, my skin begging for a shower, and my body needing this new Liam’s touch.

It’s time I plan for my next move, and it will be fucking epic .

Heading down the hallway towards our master bathroom, I step into the shower, relinquishing myself from the threads that hide my sexually explorable and divine body.

Stepping under the water, I wash off all that Ivy was: weak, broken, scared, lonely, needy, and hopeful from my beautifully toned body as I re-absorb all that I am with every drop of water that trails down me.

Feeling refreshed, I head to my side of the closet, searching through all that is Red and flawless.

Which piece shall I wear today? My fingers trace across the clothes before me, taking me back to Maine, back home, back to him the day we first made love before settling on a comfy red jumpsuit.

Turning to my right, I scan my shoes, pulling a pair of red rhinestone sneakers from their respective cubby.

Eager to see Liam, as it has been far too long since that bitch held me hostage in her fairy flower garden veil these past few months, I race down to meet him.

He’s just where I expected him to be; down in the basement, standing at the bar as I turn the corner, pouring himself his favorite, my favorite.

I guess one could say our favorite—a bourbon on the rocks.

Strutting in, I exclaim, “Pour me one, hot rod?”

His face finds mine, a smile taking over as he pulls out a second glass, pouring it, staring into me like he’s been waiting and is so fucking pleased to see me.

Grabbing one of his fancy spherical ice cubes, he drops it in, and my tongue glides out of my mouth across my red-stained lips in excitement for a real drink with a real man.

Even if he hasn’t learned to fully love me yet, he will, for it is all part of my plan, and I am ready to stand in the winner’s circle and claim my prize.

Liam shoves the glass across the bar.

It roars across the wood before landing fiercely in my palm, my fingers wrapping it, ignoring its cold touch.

Seductively, I bring it to my lips, taking a swig before setting it back down, releasing an “Ahhhh” from my lips.

We stand there, eye fucking each other.

I wonder what he is thinking at this exact moment, but I’m too caught up in my own sinful ideas to engage just yet.

Not letting the moment pass sooner than it should.

Taking a deep breath, my words dance across my lips, “I have my monthly Facetime call to make, then I was thinking you could take me for a spin on that pool table.

Better yet, show me what’s behind door number one.

Oh, how I’ve been itching to know, and I could use that special Liam release I’ve heard so much about,”

I taunt, raising my glass up at him and shooting him a wink.

“Yeah, I think I can arrange that,”

he boasts. I’m certain his cock is growing hot and flustered right this moment at the mere idea.

“Perfect, give me like an hour, and it’s a date,”

I snicker. Turning towalk out of the bar down the hall, my bourbon in hand. I begin skipping as I sing, “ Sapphire and faded jeans, I hope you get your dreams, just go ahead let your hair down, you’re gonna find yourself somewhere somehow. ”

Pausing for a second, I hear Liam’s strong voice call out to me, “I’m going to fuck the shit out of you, Red.”

I wish I was shocked, but that would mean I’m naive to his secrets, which I am not. I don’t know them, but I plan to fuck them out of him until he spills every last drop. Clue number one: he just called you Red. Leaning around the bottom of the stairwell, I toss him a smile.

“I’m fucking betting on it,”

I entertain him before going right back into song.

“ Girl put your records on, sing me your favorite song, you go ahead let your hair down. ”

Dancing up the stairs, step for step as the lyrics rumble from my lungs.

That’s the first time we’ve ever talked to Liam from a Red perspective with no Ivy to be seen. It’s the first time he ever acknowledged my existence, noted. How does he know me? Well, that is for another day because right now I need to make my next move, ruin a wedding. Then I need to get fucked like he has never fucked me before. I’ve been dying to sink my teeth into this newly reformed Liam as me and not her. Fucck, it feels good to be back. Let the chaos commence. Goodnight, Ivy. Sleep tight, don’t let the monsters bite, bitch.

Back in the study I just left an hour ago, I hover the mouse over Facetime. Opening it, I begin the call.

“Sorry I didn’t answer yesterday. I was rather preoccupied.”

“That’s okay. So, how has life been since our last call? Anything new to catch me up to speed on?”

“You have no idea. I promise mines longer than yours though. So you first; what’s new?”