B00AAOCX2E EBOK (25 page)

I lifted and dropped my brows.
I’m game.

“Getting an eyeful?” a new voice said, causing my head to snap to the side. Mallory stood beside me, a deceptively innocent smile on her face.

“Hello, Mallory,” I said with the saccharine tone I reserved for her. “How lovely it is to see you. What? No air-kisses?” I asked. I pouted, feigning hurt.

Mallory’s mouth curled humorously. “Maybe next time.” She leaned against the table and crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes slithering over to Ian. “You know, I always did wonder about you two.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” I patted her on the head, and Mallory slapped my hand away. “I see the peroxide has really seeped all the way into your brain. I’ll explain this slowly so you can understand. Our relationship is platonic. Oh, sorry, three-syllable word; too big for your mind to comprehend. How about this: we are just friends.” Even if that wasn’t exactly true of late – I wasn’t sure what we were at the moment – it was none of Mallory’s damn business.

Mallory turned her body to face me. “Here’s a three-syllable word for you: denial. I saw the way you were looking at him.”

“Oh, and how was that?” I lifted my hand to check my nails.

“Like a skank-bitch in heat.”

My jaw clenched, and I had to force myself to take a slow, calming breath. “Maybe it’s time you get those eyes checked.”

“Maybe,” Mallory murmured, turning her eyes back to Ian. She looked him up and down slowly and licked her lips. “But if that’s the case, I guess you won’t mind if I take him off your hands? I’ve heard he can do incredible things with his mouth.”

“I really doubt you’re his type,” I said, trying not to reveal my alarm. The problem was Mallory was
exactly
the type of bimbo Ian usually hooked up with.

Mallory chuckled and held out her hands. “Look at me: I’m
every
guy’s type.”

She really wasn’t wrong. With the strawberry blonde hair, big chest, toned legs, and come-fuck-me eyes, Mallory was the kind of girl that most guys were dying to get in bed. And usually did. “I thought you only dated frat boys?”

Mallory tossed back her head and laughed. “Oh, honey. I don’t want to date him – no respectable girl wants to date him. I just wanna give him a test drive, see if the stories are true, and then I’ll drop him back in the trailer park where he belongs.” She shook out her hair and flounced off before I could come up with the kind of scathing retort her words deserved.

Stomach sinking with dread, I watched as Mallory sauntered up to Ian and placed a hand on his shoulder. He looked over and she spoke to him, then held out her hands, inviting him to look at her, much as she had with me. My gut sank when he did indeed look, his eyes moving down then back up again. A quirky smile curved his mouth. Mallory whipped out her cell phone a minute later, snuggled in close, then snapped a picture of them.

I spun around and gripped the edge of the pool table when the room continued to spin, even after my head had stopped. I’d drunk too much, let myself get carried away with this fantasy. That whole scene with Mallory was the reality check I needed.

Sure, we’d been talking about sex here, and not necessarily a relationship. He technically had no obligations to me. But even if sex was his only interest, you’d think he’d at least restrain himself from checking out ever shiny, skanky bauble who threw herself at him and planning future hookups.

Ian’s hand appeared over my head and he brought the drink below my face. “Drink up,” he said in a teasing voice.

I took the glass, but turned away from him and put it on the table. “No thanks,” I gritted out. “I’m not thirsty anymore.”

“What’s up? You okay?”

I turned back to him. “What did Mallory say to you?” I asked, angling my head.

“The girl at the bar? I don’t know. She wanted me to buy her drink for some golf game her sorority is playing.” He pointed down at the pool table. “Look, are we going to finish our game or what?”

I shook my head. “I’m done playing.”

“Pool or with me?” he asked, easing into his teasing grin again.

I looked him up and down and sneered. “Both.”

His grin faded and he held out his hands. “Wait. What did I do wrong here?”

The simple fact that he didn’t even see what he’d done made it clear that our heads were in two completely different places. “Nothing.”
You were just doing what you always do, and I was stupid enough to expect different.

The following afternoon, I sat at a table in the library, scribbling in my spiral notebook. I’d pause on occasion to consult my notes or one of the books on case-study formatting lying open on the table’s surface, but would immediately return to my writing, fearful if I stopped for one instant too long, if I allowed any distractions to enter my mind, the thoughts would leak from my ears and fall away into obscurity.

Thanks to Parker’s candid remarks and opinions on my lifestyle-choices the night before, I found the opening I needed to begin my case-study for Dr. Wilkinson’s class. My hand shook with rage when I’d written his words on the first line of the empty page –
“Everyone assumes you’re a whore!”
– but I’d welcomed the fury, fed off it, allowed it to guide my hand as I documented the injustice and cruelty of a community that condemned me for being a strong, independent woman who embraced my sexuality, while endeavoring to educate others about theirs.

I stuck strictly to what would appear as “the subject’s quotes,” too fired-up to write the “sociologist’s fair and unbiased study and analysis” of my own life. And a little apprehensive. To relate the chronology of my life and expose some of the skeletons hiding in my closet was more than a little daunting. I understood the rationale behind it – one’s past shapes them into the person they are today – but I wasn’t ready for self-analysis just yet. There were some things I didn’t want to share with a relative stranger, even if that stranger was a professor I liked and admired. And like everyone in my position, or so I imagined, there were certain truths about my life and who I was that I had a hard enough time facing.

Only after I’d completed my seventh page and my palm began to cramp did I finally toss my pen aside. A wince twisted my mouth as I flexed my hand and rolled my arms in an attempt to ease the ache between my shoulder blades. Sitting hunched over for the last hour had put strain on my back and I was really feeling the discomfort.

I reached into my bag and pulled out my cell to check the time. It was nearing three; Ian would be meeting me at my apartment at four so we could go over the website project.

The corners of my mouth turned down and my chest tightened. I took the blame for the whole night. Like so many girls before me, I’d let myself believe he was interested in more than just a good time. But he’d never actually indicated he was developing feelings for me, just that his feelings weren’t brotherly. And I shouldn’t have been surprised. That was who he was.

We just didn’t want the same things. I wanted more than sex. I wanted someone who wouldn’t think it was okay to check out other girls when expressing an interest in me. I wanted someone who’d look at me like I was his whole world. I wasn’t sure if Ian was even capable of that.

It was better I realize that now, before things progressed beyond the point of no return.

Sighing, I slid my thumb over the missed-text icon on my phone. It was from Amery, reminding me that Casey’s birthday was the following Friday and she was hosting the party. I shot her a quick text to let me know what she needed me to do.

No sooner did I place the phone on the table than it began to quake against the surface, emitting a dental-drill vibration. It was loud and jarring in the über-hushed environment of the library. I snatched it up and clutched it to my chest to muffle the sound. At least two students at nearby tables shot me pointed glares.

Opening the phone, I whispered, “One second,” into the receiver, then stood and scurried off into the nearby stacks. I slid into an empty aisle and brought the phone back to my ear. “Amery?”

“Ivy?”

Not Amery; unless she’d had a sex-change operation in the last few hours. I pulled back the phone to take a look at the number; not one I recognized.

I brought the phone back to my ear. “Yes?” I said slowly.

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

The voice was familiar, but I was having the darnedest time placing it. “Um, sort of,” I said. “I’m doing school work.”

“Studying hard or hardly studying?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Jayden. Jayden Breckenridge?” he clarified a second later when I said nothing.

My right hand clenched down on my phone; my left reached out for the shelf for support. Now? He was calling now? “Oh. Hey!” I cringed at the shrillness in my tone.

“Hey, yourself,” he said with a laugh. “How’ve you been?”

“Good. I’ve been good. You?”

“Not so good, but now that the family crisis is over, things are looking up again.”

I frowned. “Family crisis?”

“Yeah, that’s why I had to go back to L.A.”

“You’ve been in L.A.?” I echoed. I felt like I was two steps behind in this conversation.

“Yeah.” He drew out the word. “I’m going to take it you didn’t get my message?”

“What message?” Could I feel any more like a parrot?

“I called on Tuesday to say I had to go out of town.”

I blinked. He called? My phone had been turned off most of Tuesday when I was purposely avoiding Ian, and it didn’t always tell me if I missed a call if the person didn’t leave a voicemail. “You left a message?”

“Yeah, with your friend. You know, the angry guy?”

I closed my eyes and digested that. “You talked to Ian?”

“Is that his name? The guy from the garage?”

I inhaled slowly and deeply, trying to rein my temper in before it raged out of control. “Yeah, that’s him. He must have forgotten to pass the message on,” I said, keeping my tone neutral.
Forgotten, my ass!
Immediately, my mind turned back, sifting through vague memories of Tuesday night. Did I even leave him alone with…?

I snorted as realization struck. I remembered hearing him talking “to himself” when I returned to the station after one of our breaks.

“What was that?” I asked, realizing that Jayden was still speaking.
Talk now; freak out later.

“I was asking if you’d still be interested in getting together?”

I smiled. “For your ‘tour?’”

“Oh, yeah.” He chuckled. “You do realize I was testing the waters with that tour thing, right?”

“Yeah.” I smiled into the phone. “I kind of figured.”

“Cool. I’m still in L.A. right now, but I’ll be home Monday morning. Will Monday or Tuesday work?”

I paused to go over my schedule in my head. “Mondays are no good for me. I have a night class, but Tuesday will work, as long as I’m at the station before eleven.”

“That’s perfect.” His voice rang with the enthusiasm that was lacking in my own. I don’t think it was from lack of enthusiasm on my part – I did feel excited – but it was different than what I’d felt the week before. With everything that had been going on with Ian, I actually felt a little conflicted about whether I wanted this or not.

But Ian didn’t know that. And his interfering ass had butted into my personal life again.

We made arrangements and said our goodbyes. I sneered as the philosophy books collecting dust on the shelves before me blurred. I gripped the phone in my fist.
Ian! Why would he…? How could he…?

I was too outraged to complete a thought.

I checked my recent calls list, finding Jayden’s number next to the incoming call icon at 11:17 pm 4 days ago.

“Son of a bitch!” I ignored the glare of the grad student at the mouth of the aisle and stalked back to my table. Gathering my notebook, I tossed it into my bag, then returned my reference books to the shelving cart.

I’ll freaking kill him!

***

I sat on the sofa in my living room, arms crossed over my chest, one leg crossed over the other, foot bouncing in the air. The longer Ian made me wait, the more incensed I grew.

How could he sit there and watch me all but crying my eyes out about Jayden not calling, and still not tell me? And what the hell was he doing answering my phone in the first place? He’d gone too far. It was not only a violation of my privacy, but of my trust.

According to the clock, it was five after four. I couldn’t believe that on top of everything, he had the gall to be late.

By four-thirty, the bounce in my foot slowed to an occasional twitch. Where was he? Biting the inside of my cheek, I stood to retrieve the house phone and dialed his number by rote. One of Ian’s roommates picked up on the second ring.

“Hey, it’s Ivy. I need to speak to Ian.”

“Sorry, Ivy,” he said, and I distinguished the voice as belonging to Zeb, the roommate from Boston. Only he could make “sorry” and “Ivy” rhyme. “He’s not here.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”

“No, I—” He broke off and I heard another voice in the background. “Hold on. Miles wants to talk to you.”

“Okay,” I said after a second.
Weird
. What could Miles possibly have to say to me?

There was some static as the phone was handed over and then Miles’s soft, breathy voice came on the line. “Ivy?”

“Yeah?”

“Give me a sec.”

Even weirder.
I heard some more shuffling and then he came back on the line.

“Okay, I’m supposed to tell you that something came up, nothing to worry about, and he’ll call you later.”

What? He couldn’t be bothered to tell me himself? “Supposed to? As in, that’s not the truth?”

“No, it’s the truth, just with an omission of information.”

“What information?”

“It was the police station calling for him to come down. He didn’t want me to tell you, but there was something about the look on his face that worried me.”

“Oh, God,” I breathed, ice suddenly chilling my veins. “Do you know what they wanted? Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“I wish I could tell you. I just know that, until he got that call, he was planning on going to see you.”