Sugar Baby Beautiful(77)
“Marc Antony is a cool name. Besides, for all he knows, I could have easily been for Marco Antonio. Did you hear Vivir Mi Vida. It gives me chills,” Mark said, salsa dancing beside Dr. Butler.
“Can I be Jennifer Lopez, then?” Cleo laughed, joining him. “Elizabeth Taylor killed Cleopatra for me.”
“I thought so too.” Mark spun her around and into his arms.
“Felicity?”
“Huh?” I glanced away from them and back to him.
He turned around. “What was it you were concentrating on?”
“Nothing. I saw a book I thought Theo would like, and thinking of him kind of took me off to another head space.” I lied with a smile. When I first came here, I’d wanted to get better and fix myself, but no one listened to me, and I remembered why I’d hated this place so much when I was young. It made me feel as if I were less than a person. I followed their rules, took their medication, but I still saw Mark and Cleo, now more than ever. But if I told them that, they wouldn’t let me leave.
This was not the place for me. I wanted to go home.
“Why don’t we talk about Mr. Darcy?”
“I don’t want to talk to you about him.” I sighed, wrapping my arms around myself. I tried not to think about him because it just left me feeling horrible.
I had realized two important things in the last two weeks I had been here. I was in love with Theodore Darcy. I knew that because the only person I could think about was him. I didn’t want to undo anything I had been through because it had led me right to him. He knew how to make me laugh. He knew everything about me and accepted it. For the first time in a long time, I felt safe in someone else’s arms, even as my world crumbled. The second thing I had realized was now more than ever, I was no good for him, but I truly wanted to be. I was scared the more time I spent in here, the less he’d remember me, care about me.
“You don’t want to talk about Mark and Cleo, you don’t want to talk about Mr. Darcy. Or what you are writing about in you’re journals. Felicity, you do I know I want to help you, right?”
No he didn’t. None of them did. They wanted us to stay here forever. If we didn’t say something they thought was “right,” then we failed and would either have to be watched, have to take stronger medicine, or they would extend our say. The trick was there was no right answer.
“You have helped me, Dr. Butler. I’m on my meds. I don’t believe Mark and Cleo were ever real. I remember what actually happened. I’m in a much better place than where I was two weeks ago.”
“As long as you don’t tell him you still see us, you should be fine,” Cleo said to me, leaning on his chair.
“Felicity, you seem to have a hard time concentrating today.”
“I’m more bored today than other days.” I shrugged.
“You can’t keep running from your problems,” Dr. Butler said.
“I’m not running!”
“Don’t yell, Felicity,” Mark said sternly.
“I’m not yelling!”
“No one said you were,” Dr. Butler replied as Mark shook his head.
“You blew our cover already? Jeez, Felicity.”
Putting my head in my hands, I sighed. “I’m sorry. I meant I wasn’t trying to yell. I’m just tired, all right? And this therapy doesn’t help me. Maybe it could have a while ago, when I thought I’d killed someone, but now that I know I didn’t… I know I just need my medication and I’ll be fine.”
“Felicity, I’m going to advise we extend your stay—”
“No!” I stood up. “I want to go home.”
“You’re not ready—”
“Says who, you? I’m sure if you pull anyone off the street, they will have issues they won’t want to talk about—”
“You were the one who came back to us, Felicity.”
“Yeah, and that was a mistake.” I stomped to the door. However, there were two nurses already waiting for me. “I’m checking out.”
“You still have twenty-fours in the waiver you signed, Felicity. We can’t—”
“I want out!” I yelled again.
“Felicity, please calm down!”
“I am calm!”
They didn’t believe me. My hands were pinned, and someone injected only gods knows what into my veins.
“Stop—I’m not crazy.”
“We agree,” Mark and Cleo said as my eyelids started to droop.
Theo
When I got on the jet, the last people I expected to see, my foster parents, sat comfortably in the chairs as the air hostess handed them a glass of wine to drink.