Seeking Her by Cora Carmack

Author:Cora Carmack [Carmack, Cora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

8

KELSEY SPENT TWO more days in Belgrade, but I only saw her once. I’m not sure whether it was the phone call or the interaction with the VIP asshole, or something else, but she barely left her hostel.

At first, I thought maybe the GPS app was broken or that she’d left without her phone. I decided to head over and check just in case. Just as I was approaching the front desk to ask about her, she walked past in a pair of cotton shorts and a T-­shirt.

If I hadn’t spent so much time staring at her, I don’t think I would have recognized her. Her hair was pulled up and wound into a knot on the top of her head. And she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her normally dramatic eyes were clean and bare. Her long eyelashes a dark blond.

She was still pretty, of course. But a different kind of beauty. It made me imagine lazy days in bed or movie nights on my couch. I thought of how it would feel to be with a girl like Kelsey, to have her comfortable enough with me that she didn’t need the clothes and the makeup and the hair.

To have her be mine.

Somehow, I wanted this version of Kelsey even more, because she felt more real than every other version of her I’d seen so far.

I followed her to the grocery store. She didn’t leave her hostel again until the day she checked out and headed for the train station once more.

In Budapest, it was like she hit the reset button. She was back to that vibrant character that drew everyone’s gaze like a magnet. If possible, she seemed to have turned the volume up even further. Like each night had to outdo the one before it.

After a few days like that, though, I started to recognize patterns of her cycle. Just like before, she would get these quiet moments where she seemed to zone out and forget the part she was playing. Her face would go blank, even as her body kept dancing or partying or whatever.

And I could just tell; another crash was coming. I wondered how long it would take before she gave up trying to fool herself in the same way she fooled the rest of the world.

With another girl and three guys, they ventured into an area of Budapest away from the center of the city. The streetlights became fewer and farther in between, and there were empty storefronts and derelict buildings.

Kelsey didn’t seem to notice. They’d already been drinking for a few hours.

But I was on high alert.

Since arriving in Budapest, Kelsey had been throwing around money like it was nothing. Buying ­people drinks and dinner and whatever else it took so they’d treat her like the center of attention.

I was tired for her.

She just tried so damn hard, and I didn’t understand why. She was gorgeous and vibrant, and she didn’t need to do those things for ­people to want to be around her.

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