She Loves You, She Loves You Not... Read Online Free Page A

“I don’t suppose you’d let me trim it.”
    I stand to signal this convo is over.
    “You’re going to have to talk to me sometime, Alyssa. You owe me that.”
    I whirl on her. “I
owe
you? What about everything you owe
me
?”
    “Me?” she goes.
    “You abandoned me when I was a baby.”
    Her face flushes bright red.
    I can’t believe I said that out loud.
    “I didn’t abandon you.” Her voice is flat.
    I mutter, “What do you call it?”
    “I left you with your father. But I always intended to come back. And I did.”
    “Then you disappeared again.”
    When I was thirteen. No more cards or presents, not even a phone call to check in. “I haven’t heard from you in four years, Carly.” Not that I care.
    Carly goes limp. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles into her knees.
    Sorry. Is that all she has to say? I head for the main level. Behind me, I hear, “You want to tell me what happened to make your father disown you?”
    That stops me short. Who said he disowned me?
    “Tanith was less than forthcoming with details when she begged me to take you in.”
    I turn around. Tanith called Carly? “What do you mean, she begged you?”
    Carly pushes to her feet. “I shouldn’t have said—I told her I’d have to think about it, is all. When she said your father wanted you gone and no one else in the family could take you in, then of course there was no question.”
    The tension in the house was unbearable. A week went by after the… the incident. But I didn’t know Dad had disowned me. I thought we were going through a cooling-down period, that he’d come around. There’d be tension, sure, but we’d work through it.
    My throat catches. No one would take me? All Tanith told me was, “You’re going to stay with Carly for a while. I hope that’s okay.”
    No one
wanted me?
    “Alyssa,” Carly says behind me, so close I can sense her hands rising to clutch my arms. I cross the dining area, toward the loft.
    Carly follows on my heels. “I didn’t plan to leave you. Or abandon you, as you put it. We don’t always know what life’s going to throw at us, now, do we? Sometimes we just get slammed.”
    Tell me about it. I start up the stairs. I want to hear her say everything’s going to be all right because she’s ready to be my mother now the way she never was before, and I need a mother. Desperately. Except I wouldn’t believe her. I’m having a few trust issues at the moment.
    “Alyssa, please.”
    The pleading in her voice makes me slow at the top of the stairs.
    “I’m here now,” she says. “That should count for something.”
    Yeah. I have nowhere else to go. My grandparents didn’t even want me?
    Carly says, “You know what? Let’s make a fresh start. We’ll put the past behind us and begin anew.”
    Can I do that? It’s what I’m trying to do with Sarah. I needto go forward; get past all the mistakes I made, whatever they were.
    “You know what I do to forget the past?” Carly says, heading for the wet bar. “I drink my own special concoction. I call it Milk of Amnesia.”
    I let out a short laugh. That was actually funny.
    She smiles up at me. “That’s the first time I’ve even seen a glimmer of happiness in you since you got here.” She holds my eyes for a long minute, too long. She has these steel-gray eyes that slice right through you. My eyes.
    Holding up a bottle of liquor, Carly says, “I promise it’s a cure-all.”
    Slowly, I come back down the stairs and stand by as she mixes Baileys with red wine and pours two glasses. The color is a disgusting pink. She offers me a glass.
    “To us,” she toasts.
    I clink with her and sip. Dad would kill Carly if he knew she was letting me drink. But Dad has no say in my life anymore. Milk of Amnesia is good. Delicious.
    “To survivors,” Carly says.
    We clink. Drink.
    “To overcomers,” she says. We clink again.
    Is that a word? Who cares? I take a gulp.
    “To working girls of the world.” Carly raises her glass. “Oh, hey.