Sugar Rush, page 6
I shut my mouth, refusing to get back in to my irritated rant, and I waited for Samantha to talk about what she wanted to instead. But it seemed that she didn’t really have anything that she wanted to say at all. She was barely paying any attention to me. After taking my cell phone away she couldn’t take her face off of hers.
“New man?” I teased as she smiled at her text message. “Who is it this time?”
Samantha loved hard and fast and she adored talking about the men in her life as well. Especially to me. So, it was weird to watch her go red and shove her cell phone away as if she didn’t want to mention it at all.
“Oh, it’s no one. So, who is the health visitor this time? Someone you have had before?”
As I shook my head no, I couldn’t work out what was going on with my friend. Perhaps she wasn’t just getting annoyed with me ranting about everything going on in my life, maybe it was something deeper. There seemed to be a strange distance between me and Samantha which wasn’t there before. What was it?
“Hey, Samantha.” I guess my friend didn’t lock the door behind her because a head popped around the door to meet her. A head attached to someone I didn’t ever want to see again. “Sorry, I tried to wait but there is a ticket inspector around and I can’t keep my car parked where it is. Shall we get going?”
I darted my eyes between the pair of them trying to work out what I was so clearly missing. The last time I saw Samantha and Gary in the same room together, they were fighting. Now, they were talking…?
“Gary, I asked you not to come in here,” Samantha hissed, red as a beet root. “This is awkward…”
“What the hell is going on?” I demanded, refusing to be confused any longer. “What’s happening here?”
“Erm, me and Gary are…” Samantha couldn’t meet my eyes which had me really freaked out. “Well, after our little fight here, he came to one of my martial arts classes, and we just clicked, so we are sort of together now…”
“What?” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Are you fucking kidding me, Samantha? You are dating the enemy? The man who wants to destroy me? How could you do that to me? I thought that we were friends.”
“I didn’t tell you because I knew that you’d freak out, but yes, we’re together. Gary isn’t your enemy though,” Samantha insisted, trying her best to justify the massive betrayal that was currently washing over me in a tidal wave of terror. “Gary was used as a pawn in the game in the first place, but he is out of it now. After he left here, he told the woman that he didn’t want anything else to do with it. I trust him, I know he wouldn’t do this.”
I couldn’t believe this. I was stunned to the core. It made me feel so utterly sick that all I wanted to do was crumble on to the floor and sob. My best friend was the only one that I had left, and now she was gone too. I had lost her to Gary because whatever she said, he was the enemy and she was putting him before me.
I had never been so lost.
“Just go,” I rasped out, my lungs consumed with pain. “Get out of here. I never want to see you again.”
11
Brandon
Two weeks later
T
his was it, the moment that I had been waiting for forever. At least it felt that way. I was going to propose tonight, nothing would stop me, and all was perfect. Maybe not as perfect as it would have been at the party, but that was in the past now. I wasn’t going to think about that ever again. I hoped that she wouldn’t either.
The timing was perfect. She had just returned, we were in a fancy restaurant complete with soft playing music in the back ground, nice dimmed lighting, and candles and flowers between us. Plus, I had on my best suit and Lara looked incredible in her dress. This felt good, I was happy for this to happen now. It was much better than at home with a home cooked meal. I felt more positive about this now. Nothing could go wrong.
“So, how was your trip, Lara?” I asked her with a smile. “Your photos are great. You had a lot of sun.”
“It wasn’t a trip, you know.” She rolled her eyes at me. “I was working. It was a modeling job.”
Again, I had said the wrong thing. I had been getting better at that, but I wasn’t perfect. “Sorry, your job.”
“Yeah, yeah, it was good.” She waved her hand dismissively which was unexpected. I thought that she would talk about her job for hours. It was the sort of this she usually wanted to examine every detail. “So, how are things with you? Or more specifically how are things with the bakery? Is it ruined yet?”
Huh, there I was for a split second actually thinking that she was asking about my life, my work, but of course she wasn’t. For some reason, even after being away, she was still obsessed with the Bluebell Bakery. That made me feel a bit ill. It was repulsive to know that we were still on this God damn subject.
“I have done everything that you want of me,” I shot back quickly, wanting this subject to be over now. “I have got the health inspector to check her out a number of times, but they haven’t found anything wrong…”
“There is something wrong.” She banged her fists on the table hard. “There has to be something wrong. There is no way that we could all get sick like that over nothing. Why didn’t they find it?” Before I could even part my lips, Lara was off once more. “I knew that you were going to be useless, just like Gary, which is why I have been still working on things myself. If you aren’t going to prove that the bakery was responsible, then I can at least keep up the online abuse. It seems to be going really well as well. People hate her.”
“But there is no proof that she did anything wrong,” I reminded Lara. “The health inspector can’t find proof because there is no proof. Don’t you think that it’s time to leave this alone now?”
“No way.” Lara stared at me with sheer exasperation. “Why do you still not get it? After all this time, you still aren’t on my side. You just want to defend the bakery which ruined my birthday…”
“I’m not defending anyone,” I insisted. “I just don’t think that we still need to be talking about this now. It’s been such a long time since it was all over and I don’t see why it’s still going on.”
“Because the cake bitch is winning, that’s why,” Lara yelled far too loudly for this fancy place. “Because she is still out there selling cakes to the world, making others sick, taking our money…”
“She didn’t cash the check. I kept an eye on it the entire time. So, she hasn’t won at all.”
Lara’s cheeks started to go a funny shade of red. Almost purple. It would have been funny if this situation wasn’t so ridiculous. I just couldn’t work out why she was so annoyed about someone who didn’t matter. She was just some poor girl who had made cakes for a party, who did nothing wrong, who didn’t affect our lives now. She could have been long gone if only Lara would stop obsessing over her. But she wouldn’t let it go.
“I don’t know if this can carry on,” Lara growled as her eyes flashed in temper. “I don’t know if I can be with you if you don’t support me on this. It’s like you aren’t even trying to understand why this matters. If you don’t care about helping me to take down this bakery, then maybe you don’t care enough about me at all…”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. She had used this on me before. It was a way to make me beg and prove myself to her, but today I didn’t want to. Today, I didn’t feel like I had done anything wrong. Lara was the one who couldn’t let go of it, she was the one being irrational and crazy. So, I sat back and waited.
“I mean it, Brandon. I’m going to walk out of here and not come back. I’m serious. You won’t get me back after this. That’s how strongly I feel about it all. That’s how important this is. If you don’t stop being a massive prick about this then I want you to forget that I even exist. I don’t want you to come crawling back to me.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I replied with a shrug. “I don’t agree with you on this one. I don’t agree with any of this. I think that it’s time to let it all go at last. To move on. I want us to get married…”
But Lara didn’t seem to sense what I was saying to her at all. She was too busy shaking her head at me, her rage swallowing her up like a thick black cloud. The word ‘married’ didn’t even occur to her.
As she raced out of the restaurant, I sat back in my seat totally confused. What the hell was even happening here? Why were we having the same fight yet again? It was utterly ridiculous. I shouldn’t have been so defensive and continued to defend the woman who I didn’t even know from the bakery, I should have stuck up for Lara, but this obsession and sheer hatred that she had was hard for me to deal with. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. It horrified me to see this side of Lara that I hadn’t experienced and made me re think everything. Right now, she wasn’t the woman that I wanted to marry. I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life with her, and if I really examined my feelings, I knew that I had been slipping in to that feeling for a very long time. I actually only purchased the ring because I wanted the engagement to fix us, but I didn’t know if I could.
I wasn’t sure that I could walk away from Lara that easily, not after such a long time. But I wasn’t sure that we were right together it was a weird mix that I couldn’t sort out in my mind.
As I paid the bill, I grabbed my cell phone to call the one person who I could talk this through with. I might not have seen him much recently because I’d been so focused on trying to make Lara happy, but I was sure that he would be up for a drink at a bar. If he wasn’t already out in one, hunting for a woman…
“Hey there.” Gary sounded oddly cagey as he picked up, unlike himself. “What’s the emergency?”
“Oh, no emergency. Unless you could me and Lara breaking up, I suppose.” I sighed heavily. “Do you want to meet up? I could really use a drink and a chat to take my mind off of things.”
Gary was weirdly silent for a beat too long. “I’m really sorry about the shitty timing, but I’m actually on a date. And like, a real date with a woman who I like, not just a fling thing or I would blow her off for you.”
Oh! It seemed like I wasn’t the only one who had been distracted recently. Now that was a real turn up for the books. Much as I always thought that Gary just needed that one woman to make him settle down, I wasn’t expecting him to find her so early on. This really did come as a surprise to me.
“Oh well, you enjoy yourself then.” After all, he had to really like this woman, didn’t he? She had to be someone special. Trust him to finally find someone just as I was losing everything. Typical. But I couldn’t be resentful for my friend because he deserved to find happiness as well. “I will speak to you soon.”
“Are you sure that you’re okay? Because I know that Lara can have a temper. But the two of you will probably be back together soon, right? You always make up after an argument.”
“Er, sure.” This time I wasn’t sure that we would, I really didn’t know if I wanted to. “It will all be sorted in an hour or so. I should probably get back and face her now anyway before it gets worse.”
“Yeah, well… okay I will talk to you tomorrow.”
“Goodbye, Gary. See you then. And thank you for… the talk.”
Gary couldn’t wait to get off the phone, he really was very invested in his date which was shocking. But it left me with very little choice. I did have to face Lara, to make sure that she understood how serious this was between us. I needed her to know that this wasn’t just a fight, but we were done…
With a deep sigh, I finally left the restaurant, wondering what was facing me at home. More fighting, Lara wanting make up sex, an intense discussion where we finally discussed our subsiding feelings and how we were going to deal with it… whatever it was, it wouldn’t be good, of that I could be sure.
Only when I got home, much to my surprise, she was nowhere to be seen. She had taken a bag and left me. It seemed that she did understand after all. I couldn’t deny that this brought with it a strong sense of relief which was a massive sign that I couldn’t ignore. Me and Lara were definitely not meant to be, or I wouldn’t be feeling that way. It really was over for us.
12
Brandon
One week later
“ S
top it, will you,” Gary demanded while narrowing his eyes suspiciously at me. “Don’t engage with her anymore. Remember, Lara is the one who walked put on you. She caused the break up and walked out. You are just the one who realized that you wanted to stick with it. That’s her own fault. She can’t obsessively message you like this to try and change your mind. It’s manipulative and wrong. She needs to respect you.”
“I think she’s just struggling to come to terms with it, that’s all,” I offered, trying to be respectful of my ex girlfriend. “She knows that she isn’t getting back with me, it’s just… comfort.”
“You shouldn’t be the one comforting here, she doesn’t deserve it. She treated you like shit, Brandon, and you are honestly so much happier without her. I can see it. You need to keep that happiness. That’s all that matters.”
I was happier in general without the stress that Lara brought in to my life, but I had to be honest that it was still hard to let go. Only because we had been together for such a long time. Turning my back on Lara after convincing myself that she was the woman that I would end up marrying… well, it wasn’t easy.
“Just stop texting her and focus on me, Brandon. I have something that I want to tell you.”
I knew that ignoring Lara would send her in to a frenzy, but I had to remember that she wasn’t my problem anymore. Like Gary said, she walked out on me, we were over, eventually, that was something that we needed to come to terms with eventually. It would be for the best in the long run.
“What is it?” I asked Gary curiously. “What’s so important that you have such a serious face on in the bar?”
“It’s about the party. Lara’s party. Me and my… girlfriend.” He always went bright red as he discussed the mystery woman in his life. I hadn’t even met her yet, but I knew that she was important. “Did some research in to the whole event because I was still convinced that the bakery had nothing to do with it…”
“And your girlfriend got involved with this research?” I asked, incredulous. “You don’t have better things to do? Honestly, Gary I thought that you were a lot smoother than that.”
“She wanted to help me, that’s all.” He shrugged one shoulder at me as if I shouldn’t have been shocked by this revelation. She had to be something really special. “And we found out that the drinks company we used has been through a lot of issues recently. Issues involving their disgusting Coffee Milk Martinis.”
“What are you talking about? And why are we still talking about this fucking party…”
“Because Lara has been destroying the bakery for no reason because that woman did nothing wrong. It isn’t right when it was the drinks to blame. Her hate is directed in totally the wrong way.”
I rolled my eyes with irritation. “So, tell her that. I am sick of hearing all about it.”
“I tried, but she won’t listen. She won’t take down her endless nasty posts of fake reviews and she won’t get any of her friends to do it either. Even with all of the evidence that I have put in front of her.”
“Evidence?” I couldn’t help but jump on that word. “What do you mean evidence? What have you found?”
“Look.” He pulled out his cell phone to show me some documents that I couldn’t quite understand. Not from the quick view that I’d been given. “The company which makes the drinks has been in a lot of trouble, like I said. There was that sickness bug going around, I don’t know if you remember it.” I shook my head because I had no idea. “Well, it was rife at the time and they were under-staffed and stressed out, trying to fulfil a lot of orders that they couldn’t. instead of canceling some of the orders because they couldn’t cope, they rushed things through and used sub-par ingredients. Including expired milk in the Coffee Milk Martinis. It was really off and that’s what made people sick. It happened at other events as well. The company is trying to deny that they are responsible for the whole thing but there’s a massive investigation into it. I have put the party forward as part of the investigation and I really think that we are about to discover who is really to blame for it all.”
“Coffee Milk Martinis.” I didn’t know what else to say, those words struck me the most. “So basically, we have been trying to take down a bakery that has nothing to do with the illness. Lara has become so obsessed with this bakery that it led to me and her breaking up, and it turns out that’s false? I can’t believe it.”
“I don’t think that the bakery is the only reason you guys broke up,” Gary reminded me as I anxiously raked my fingers through my hair. “But yeah, and she knows that it’s all false as well. I told her everything and showed her as well and still she doesn’t give a shit. She is weirdly obsessed, and I don’t know what you can do about it. Think about everything that she has done online and she’s still doing it now. She has even lost followers over this, Brandon. I don’t know if you have been watching her online activity, but her fans are sick of it.”
“I haven’t been looking at her online,” I gasped out, shocked to the very core. “I don’t want to see what she’s up to, but at the same time I know how important her followers are to her. That’s basically all she cares about, so it’s worrying that she’s willing to lose people for this campaign. What the hell is wrong with her? Do you think that this might be more than just the bakery? I don’t understand it. I haven’t ever seen this side of her before.”
Gary gave me a strange look. “Are you sure? Because I feel like I have seen the hate campaign from Lara before. Maybe not for this long and to this extent, but she definitely has this in her. Perhaps because this was her thirtieth birthday was ruined and it embarrassed her in front of other influencers.”
