Naked Addiction by Caitlin Rother

softly behind him.
    He had a date with Seth.

Chapter 9
    Alison

    T ime became irrelevant after Ken Goode left. Alison could do nothing but stare at his business card and tap her bare feet on the carpet. She grabbed strands of her hair, twirled them around her fingers and pulled, repeating the motion again and again. She couldn’t believe Tania was gone. Goode’s last words played over in her mind.
    “Take care of yourself, Alison,” he’d said. Not in the usual brush-off tone she’d heard other guys use when they said that, but in a kind, caring way. Like he really meant it. She didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but was he implying she might be next?
    The more Alison pondered Tania’s death, the more it fell into perspective. This was her destiny, to live through a series of losses that came in almost predictable intervals, generally not long after she thought she’d finally found the true path to happiness. The setbacks started when she was ten, the morning her mother, Lila, left for her secretarial job and didn’t come back.
    They’d been staying at Grandma Abigail and Grandpa Harold’s two-bedroom house in the San Fernando Valley to save money. When her mother, Lila, didn’t return from the office that evening, Grandma Abigail kept saying that her mom was going to walk through the front door and surprise them with some fancy chocolates.
    “Lila always deals with the bad times by buying expensive candy in gold boxes,” she said.
    But Lila, as it turned out, was gone for good. Night after night Alison sat on the loveseat with her grandmother, watching sit-com reruns and waiting for her mother to return. Her father had disappeared, too, but she was too young to remember him. Lila never talked about him, so the only image Alison had of him was the photo in her bedroom—dressed in an Army uniform, with soft eyes that could’ve disarmed any woman. They had sure worked on Lila.
    Alison saw something similar in Goode when she’d opened her door and seen him standing there. She felt an immediate connection. He seemed to feel it too; he kept smiling at her even though she could tell he was trying to be serious. Under the circumstances, it felt wrong to think about him that way. But she couldn’t help it. Plus, the distraction lessened the impact of the news he’d delivered.
    After he’d left, she stuck her face into the sofa cushion and breathed in the scent of his cologne, which had rubbed off on the cushion, until she couldn’t smell it anymore. She knew it well. A big seller at Nordstrom, it came in a blue bottle and conveyed a strong but pleasant maleness. When she and Tania were at the mall the weekend before, Alison sprayed a tester on Tania’s wrist. Tania looked distracted for a minute.
    “Tom,” she declared finally, and Alison knew exactly what she meant.
    Alison knew it was selfish, but she couldn’t help feeling angry about Tania. Why did she have to lose her so soon? Now she’d have to start looking for a friend all over again. She toyed with a series of what-ifs. What if she’d gone over to Tania’s apartment Saturday night? What if she’d interrupted the murderer? What if she’d been killed too?
    That’s silly talk. Think about something else.
    She felt nauseated and strange as Goode’s voice echoed in her head: “Was Tania dating anyone? Had she broken up with someone recently? Did she mention any men from Los Angeles who’d been bothering her? Did she have any female friends in San Diego besides you?”
    Alison wanted to know more about what had happened to Tania, but then again, she didn’t. Who would have done such a thing? It couldn’t have been Seth. He and Tania really seemed to like each. And Keith? Quiet and not very friendly, but not the murderer type. Not that she’d ever met one. She wished that she’d pressed Tania for more details about her life in LA. For all the talking Alison did about herself, Tania shared very little.
    Alison’s hair-pulling turned painful