Crushed (7 page)

Michael stares at me for a minute, his jaw moving from side to side. “K.”

I throw my arms in the air. “K. Cool. See ya.”

I walk away, belatedly realizing I’m supposed to put the ball machine back in the little storage area, but I’m hoping Michael will take care of it for me. He owes me for being a jerk.

The locker rooms at Cambridge rival a five-star resort’s, but I sort of have this thing about showering in public spaces, so I just do a quick mirror check to ensure I’m not going to scare any small children (debatable) and then head toward my car, already dreaming of the long cool shower that awaits at home. I’m not even really sure why I put myself through the misery of heatstroke just so I could watch my sister and Beefcake, but it has so not been worth it.

I plop into the driver’s side and turn the AC on full blast, sighing in relief as it blows over my overheated skin. I turn on the radio, and it’s a great old George Strait classic. I sing along to the chorus while I check my texts.

There’s one from Mom saying she and Dad have a “thing” tonight and Kristin has a date with Devon so I’m on my own for dinner.

Yessssss
. House to myself. Score.

Feeling my bad mood take a turn for the better, I start to put the car in reverse, launching into the key change of the last verse of “Amarillo by Morning” when a soft tap on the driver’s side window has me doing one of those girly type of screams.

Heart pounding, I punch the window button. “Seriously? Beefcake? Stalker much?”

“Says the girl who spent all afternoon spying on me.”

I give him a withering glare, and he leans into the car, resting his forearms on the open window. “Can I have a ride?”

I frown. “Don’t you have a car?”

“In the shop. Blake was supposed to give me a ride but I got some cryptic text about zombies, which I think translates to hungover.”

I narrow my eyes. “A ride to where?”

“A windowless bunker with chains on the wall,” he says, leaning farther into the car window.

I give him a look and he rolls his eyes. “I just need a ride
home,
Chloe. I rent an apartment off El Camino Drive. It’s only ten minutes from here.”

I jerk my head in the direction of the passenger side and move my purse to the backseat as he comes around the side of the car.

“Okay, but I get something in return,” I say.

“You’re not going to make a hooker out of me, are you?” he asks, dropping his duffel into the backseat before sitting beside me. He moves the seat all the way back to accommodate his long legs.

“Tempting,” I say. “It
has
been awhile since I’ve felt the crispy texture of the male body.”

Michael stares at me. “Crispy?”

I wave my hand in the vicinity of his long torso. “Body hair.”

Actually, it’s been for sort of like
ever
since I’ve put my hands on a guy in that way, but I’m not about to tell a guy who probably lost his virginity before the rest of his grade hit puberty.

With dark, moody eyes like that, I bet something as simple as a wink from St. Claire makes panties just melt right off.

Too late, I realize I’ve said all that out loud, and instead of clamming up like I expect him to whenever I try to engage him in conversation for more than two straight minutes, Michael grins at me. “Want to find out?”

For a second I’m dazzled, because damn if he doesn’t have a little dimple in his left cheek. “Find out what?” I ask.

“If my winking makes panties fall off.”

“Don’t bother,” I say, pulling out of the parking spot and heading out of the Cambridge lot. “I’m not wearing any.”

Michael makes a choking sound, and I give him a nervous look out of the corner of my eye. “Sorry,” I say. “These things just sort of come out. . . . I forget that what’s sexy from other girls doesn’t always translate.”

Beefcake stares straight ahead and opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but then he shuts it and remains silent.

I tell myself I’m not disappointed that he clammed up. I mean, Michael’s not a friend; he’s just my personal trainer and probably a total womanizer, and yet . . .

“Are you hungry?” I ask.

He moves his eyes to me without actually turning his head. “Tell me you’re not asking me on a date.”

“Yeah,” I reply, stopping at a light and turning my head to face him. “I’m feeling
real
sexy in these here man shorts with dried sweat on my face, and I was thinking now would be the perfect time to seduce you. Is it working?”

Michael’s eyes crinkle a little at the corners. “You really going commando in those shorts?”

I wiggle my eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you like to know? Also, hurry up and decide. I’m starving.”

His top teeth dig into his bottom lip for a half second, and holy crap is that a sexy move.

If you like that type of thing, of course.

“Okay,” he says. “But only because it’ll give me a chance to see if you’re eating habits are as bad as your exercise habits.”

“Oh, you’re in for a treat,” I say, making a U-turn and heading toward my favorite hole-in-the-wall BBQ place.

And Michael actually brings up a good point about watching me eat. As hideous as the prospect is, there’s nothing like a ripped, zero-body-fat personal trainer to help you limit yourself to one piece of cornbread instead of the usual four.

And that’ll help distract me from the real reason I asked if he wanted to go to dinner.

Because he’d looked lonely.

Or the
real
real reason.

Because I’m lonely, too.

Chapter 7

Michael

I kind of can’t believe I’m saying this, but watching a woman enjoy food—
really
enjoy food—is surprisingly sexy.

Not that Chloe Bellamy is sexy.

She’s a mess, and I don’t just mean her horribly ugly shorts or out-of-control hair, or the fact that she has BBQ sauce on her chin.

Mentally, she’s a cluttered train wreck, and emotionally . . . I don’t even know.

But when she takes a tiny nibble of cornbread like it’s better than sex?

I shift in the uncomfortable booth seat and try to think of something else.

I try to think of the way Kristin felt in my arms for that brief minute when I’d helped her with her swing.

Chloe licks a piece of BBQ sauce off her full top lip, and my thoughts of Kristin and her tiny tennis skirt scatter.

“So what’s your story, Beefcake?”

I sigh and give up on thinking about Kristin.

It’s damn hard to think about anything other than the girl who’s currently helping herself to one of my ribs.

I let her have the rib, but pull my cornbread closer, because it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever tasted, and that includes dishes from every fancy restaurant in New York you’ve ever heard of.

“My story?” I ask warily.

She waves her rib in my direction. “Well, you’re not from around here. You’re all Yank. Boston?”

“New York. Boston accents are a whole different thing.”

She shrugs. “Sounds the same to us.”

I lean forward a little. “Well, having driven through all of the South on my way here, I can say that you Texans sound an awful lot like the folks in Atlanta, and sort of like all of Louisiana, and you Texans sound just like—”

“Stop!” she shrieks in her Texan accent, which is very distinct, by the way. “You wound me. And what do you mean, on your way here? You
drove
to Texas? From New York? Just for kicks?”

I take a sip of beer and look at my plate.

Chloe leans back against her seat, and though she doesn’t rub her stomach, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she patted her belly in a satisfied manner. She has the look of a well-satiated woman.

“Let me know when you’re over it,” she says.

“Over what?” I ask, distracted by the way her shirt strains across her chest.
Jesus,
am I actually checking her out?

Yes. Yes, I am.

“Your stoic phase,” she says. “You move in and out of these waves of mute alpha and caustic charmer. I can work with the sarcastic version, but the cranky mute is no good to me.”

I take a bite of cornbread and chew slowly, not saying a word.

Chloe huffs. “How about you just give me the
TV Guide
version?”

“The what?”

“You know, like sum up your life thus far in a sentence. Example: Mine would be ‘Fat yet clever girl patiently waits for the guy of her dreams to realize that he’d rather have a lifetime of laughter and conversation than a lifetime of great sex with a twig who doesn’t appreciate him.
’”

“You’re not fat,” I say automatically. And I’m pretty sure she’d be
great
at sex if the way she’s licking the BBQ sauce off her finger is any indication, but I’m not going there. Not even in my head.

She ignores me. “Okay, so your turn. I’ll give you a prompt. How about: ‘Sexy bad boy from wrong side of the tracks flees rough life in the Bronx to find himself in small-town Texas’?”

Chloe snags a corner of my cornbread at the end of her pitch. “How’d I do?”

Her assessment is so completely off base I almost laugh. And she forgot the most important part: She made it seem like it was about where I was fleeing
to,
when really it’s what I’m fleeing
from
.

Who
I’m fleeing from.

“Pretty close,” I say, tilting the beer bottle back.

“Well,” she says, slurping the rest of her soda through her straw. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but since I’m a big nerd at heart—”

“Just at heart? Not on the outside, too?” I interrupt.

She makes a face. “
Anyway
. . . have you thought about going to college? I mean, assuming you don’t want to be a bartender and personal trainer forever, of course. But if you do, that’s totally fine—”

“I went to college.”

That shuts her up.

“Oh! Cool. Did you, um . . . finish?”

“Yup.” In three years, no less, but I don’t tell her that.

Ethan, Olivia, and I had always been the golden children of Manhattan. Kids of the richest parents, good students, good athletes, all with easy admittance to NYU—together, because that’s how we’d done everything.

But of the three of us, only two graduated (Olivia dropped out before senior year thanks to yours truly), and only Ethan walked across the stage at graduation.

Me? I took the coward’s route. After the shit went down at the end of junior year, I knew there’d be no going back to the way things were. I knew that Ethan and I couldn’t go back to being roommates, and Olivia and I couldn’t go back to being platonic friends.

And my being around campus that last year would have been unbearable. For all of us.

So I crammed what few remaining credits I needed into the summer courses and then slunk away into the night with a degree I no longer was sure I wanted.

I tell Chloe none of this.

Obviously.

But she prods anyway.

“So is it like a personal health major, or . . . ?” Chloe prods.

“Finance.”

“Finance?”
Chloe grabs the table dramatically like there’s just been an earthquake. “What the hell are you doing pouring shots of Fireball on Friday nights when you have a finance degree from . . . ?”

“NYU,” I say reluctantly.

Chloe slumps back in her seat. “My world has been rocked. Beefcake, honey . . . not that I’m not grateful that you’re trying to banish the wobble from my butt every morning, but don’t you think you’re a little overqualified? Couldn’t you get a job in business?”

I pick up another rib even though I’m not hungry. Anything to prevent me from having to actually talk with the nonstop chatterbox.

Her eyes narrow and she leans forward. “You didn’t even
try
to get a job in business, did you?”

I take a bite of rib and chew unenthusiastically.

Said eyes narrow even farther. “Where are you from, Michael?”

“Told you. New York.”

“No, I mean, where are you
really
from? What part of New York?”

I set the rib aside, relenting. “Manhattan.”

“Dodgy hole-in-the-wall Manhattan, or uppity brunch-set Manhattan?”

Another sip of beer.

She lets out a huge laugh. “Dude. You’re not from the wrong side of the tracks; your family probably
built
the tracks, huh?”

Now is probably not the time to tell her that I’m loosely related to the Vanderbilts on my mother’s side.

“Beefcake,” she hisses in a whisper. “Are you a rich kid?”

“Recovering rich kid,” I say, giving her a firm look to indicate that the conversation’s over.

She ignores this. Of course.

“Cool,”
she says in an awed voice. “Did you do some dastardly deed to get you cut out of the family?”

For years, I’ve been good at hiding my emotions. It’s sort of a necessary acquired skill when you’re secretly in love with your best friend’s girlfriend.

And when it all went to hell, I’d gone from hiding my emotions to not even
feeling
them.

But I guess I’m wrong about that, because Chloe Bellamy’s cheeky, off-the-cuff question feels like a knife in my chest. Even worse, I can tell by the way her too-big smile falls from her face that she knows it.

“Hey.” Her voice is gentle, and I hate that. “I didn’t mean—”

“Can we not?” I ask. The question comes out as an order, and I hope she doesn’t hear it for what it really is: a plea to drop it.

And although it probably pains her—
anything
involving silence probably pains Chloe Bellamy—she simply gives a little nod. “You got it, Beefcake. No prying. But only because we have better things to discuss, like exactly how many millions of miles I am going to have to run to get rid of the calories from this dinner.”

My shoulders relax.

I’ve got to give her credit. She’s got a way of putting me at ease. When she’s not drilling into my past with a power drill, of course.

“Remember, it’s not about what the scale says; it’s how you feel,” I say out of habit.

Chloe snorts. “Please. Quit that skinny-person babble. You said you wanted me to have confidence, right? Well, how about we make that a little more tangible? How about you get me to the point that I’m confident enough to trade in these man shorts for a flippy little tennis skirt?”