Foreplay: The Ivy Chronicles (9 page)

Even telling myself this, I couldn’t stop myself. The time had come to retreat.

The tide of people shifted. Bodies bumped us. His grip slipped off my wrist and my opportunity arrived. I ran, using my elbows as he’d once advised me. Plunging out the back door, I spotted Emerson with her phone to her ear.

“There you are,” she said when she saw me. “I was just trying to reach you.”

“Let’s go,” I growled, latching onto her arm and pulling her down the street toward the packed parking lot.

“What’s wrong? I mean besides the obvious awkwardness of finding out we confused your hottie for the other hottie.” She laughed. “C’mon. It’s kind of funny.”

I slid her a look.

She bumped me with her hip. “C’mon. Pat yourself on the back. According to Annie, Reece is the elusive one. And
he
kissed you.”

“Reece just cornered me back there, when we got separated.”

“Ooh.” Her eyes flared. “What did he say?”

“Oh, he knew all about it.”

She winced. “Awkward much?”

“Oh, yeah, and his brother. Logan? He’s eighteen and still in high school.”

“Oh, that’s awesome.” She laughed, clapping her hands. “Wait till I tell Annie.”

“Yeah, Reece pretty much thinks I’m a terrible person.”

She stopped laughing. “Impossible.”

“Yeah. He does.” I nodded doggedly, my footsteps beating out a hard rhythm across the gravel. “You should have seen the way he looked at me.”

“Well then he’s a jerk. Screw him. Who needs him?”

She unlocked her car and I opened the passenger side door. I sank down onto the seat with a heavy sigh.

“You can hone your skills on any guy you want.”

I laughed brokenly and corrected her. “No. Not any guy I want.”

I wasn’t one of those girls who didn’t know what she looked like when she stared at herself in the mirror. I knew I was attractive enough, but with thousands of other pretty twentysomethings around who dressed much better (and in far less clothing) than me, I wasn’t anything extraordinary.

“Yes! You’re the full package, Pepper. Hunter’s already noticed. Hell, you don’t need Reece or any other guy for that matter. Maybe it’s time you just go for it, Pepper. Stop beating around the bush and go after Hunter.”

Nodding, I stared out the windshield as she pulled onto the street and left the strip of bars and restaurants behind. “You’re right. It was a dumb idea.”

“No, it wasn’t. And even if it was, I think it was my idea, so blame me.”

A smile brushed my mouth. I looked over at her. She frowned as she stopped at a red light, and I could tell she was feeling bad.

I relaxed back against the headrest. “No one made me do anything. I know you credit yourself with mad skills of persuasion, but I decided to do this.”

She sent me a skeptical look. “Really?”

“Really. It is possible to go against the Great Emerson.”

She sniffed as she turned onto Butler, the main street that cut through campus and crossed in front of our dorm. The academic buildings were quiet as we drove past. Several upstairs windows glowed with light. I envisioned the students within, buried in their lab work. They possessed too much ambition to cut loose for a wild night at the bars. A few weeks ago I would have been one of them, ensconced in my dorm room or at the library. It was crazy to think that a phone call from Lila, meeting a hot bartender, and bumping into Hunter had changed all that. I told myself it was the combination of the three, but what did I know? Maybe it was just time for a change. To break out of the shell I’d forced myself into the morning my mother dropped me off on Gram’s front stoop.

Whatever the reason, a switch had been flipped inside me.

With Reece’s face running through my mind, his light-colored eyes so sharp and scornful, I felt vulnerable and shaken. It was an uneasy sensation. Reece didn’t make me feel safe at all, which was everything I needed. Everything I craved. My lips tingled in memory of his kiss, and I admitted that it wasn’t the only thing I craved anymore. Hopefully things would work out with Hunter and then I could have both—what I craved and what I needed.

With a sigh, I rested my head against the glass of the window. The coolness seeped into my cheek. “I’ll have to go back. Apologize to him.”

“To Reece?” Emerson slid into a vacant spot in front of our building. This early, it was relatively easy to score a good space. She put the car into park and swung around to face me. “What for?”

“I was using him.”

She laughed. “Oh, Pepper. You’re too nice. You think he cares that you mistook him for his man-whore of a brother? So you flirted with him a few times. No harm in that.”

I saw his face in my mind again, the anger in his eyes. He looked like he had cared.

“I think I owe him an explanation at least. I lied . . . I denied everything and then I ran off like a coward.”

Emerson shook her head and killed the engine. “You have scruples, I’ll give you that.”

We got out of the car. It beeped locked after us as Emerson continued. “Men use girls all the time and never apologize. My own father is at the top of the list. He’s the king of players, even at fifty-four. I went through half a dozen nannies because he usually ended up sleeping with them and then fired them afterward because things got too awkward.” Emerson fumbled for her door key. “And don’t let me get started about my mother and the prize shit she married. And my stepbrother.” Her shoulders shook with a visible shudder. “I won’t even go there.”

We stepped into the harsh fluorescent lighting that buzzed like an incessant gnat. I studied her almost warily as she punched the
UP
button on the elevator.

She rarely talked about her father, and her mother was a dead subject. I didn’t even know she had a stepbrother. This gave me new insight into her and confirmed what I’d always suspected. There was more beneath the surface. She was more than the carefree party girl who fooled around with a different guy every night.

I wasn’t going to push her to talk. After my father died, there had been a string of loser guys in my mother’s life. She never hooked up with the decent, settle-down types. Some of her boyfriends were so mean that I learned to be grateful for the ones who didn’t see me at all. The ones who looked through me like I wasn’t there.

Yeah. Em could keep her secrets. I had mine.

As we stepped inside the elevator, her eyes swung my way, the brilliant blue there as hard as I’ve ever seen. “You don’t owe him anything, Pepper.”

“Maybe,” I allowed. But I still had to see him again.

Chapter 11

H
ey, Gram, how’s it going?” I sandwiched my phone between my shoulder and ear as I kicked off the khaki pants that were regulation for all Little Miss Muffet Daycare employees.

“Oh, Pepper, dear, when are you coming home?”

It was the same question she always asked. Even though I wrote the dates of my breaks on the calendar beside the fridge, she never referred to it.

“Thanksgiving week. I’ll be there the Wednesday before. I have to work that weekend.” I winced at my reflection in the mirror as I unbuttoned my blouse. The tightly constructed braid had deteriorated hours ago. It hadn’t held up well against wrangling toddlers. I tugged the band loose from the already unraveling mess.

“They need an accurate count for Thanksgiving dinner.”

I shook my head at her reprimand, but said nothing. “Well, RSVP for two.” Dinner was usually catered by Hardy’s, a local cafeteria that did a decent roast turkey and dressing. The seniors packed into the hall as early as 10
A.M
. I would be the only one in the room under the age of seventy. But at least I didn’t have to worry about my grandmother cooking a huge meal anymore.

My first Thanksgiving with her she insisted on cooking everything herself. She was going to fry the turkey. Fortunately, a daughter visiting her mother next door to us noticed Gram setting up the fryer outside and came to investigate, stopping Gram seconds before she dropped a
frozen
turkey into the pot of boiling oil and burned down our house—and us.

“I will. Just two?”

I hesitated. She had never asked that before. “Yes.”

“Because Martha Sultenfuess’s granddaughter just got engaged. You don’t have a boyfriend yet, do you?”

“Isn’t Mrs. Sultenfuess’s granddaughter in her thirties?”

“Is she? I thought you were about the same age.”

“I’m nineteen, Gram.”

Rosco started yapping in the background. I could picture the Yorkie standing at the screen door, begging to be let out. “Your father married when he was nineteen.”

I fell silent, stunned she had even said that. Was she honestly holding up my parents’ marriage as some sort of example I should follow?

I took a deep breath and reminded myself that Gram had always been a little flighty. Once, in eighth grade, I opened my lunch sack to find a can of green beans, a bottle of prune juice, and the remote control inside. That had gotten a lot of laughs and earned me a few unpleasant nicknames. But lesson learned. I packed my own lunches after that. By my freshman year, I took care of her more than she took care of me. Leaving home for college hadn’t been the easiest decision, but I’d forced myself to do it. I couldn’t devote my life to her. She didn’t want or expect that from me.

Now, at seventy-nine, there was no predicting what she would say or do. The latter was a very real point of concern for me. I worried that she would soon need to move into a full-scale nursing home. I hated to consider it. And so did Gram. The first and last time I mentioned it to her, she started crying so hard I hadn’t had the nerve to bring it up again.

I’d watch her over Thanksgiving and decide if we needed to revisit the conversation.

“I’ll meet someone someday,” I assured her. For some reason the image of Reece flashed across my mind. What would Gram think if I brought home a pierced, tattooed bartender? She’d probably think I was a lot like my mother.

“Well, I won’t be around forever, Pepper. I’d like to see you settled before my time comes.”

“Oh, Gram. You’re going to live forever.” It’s what I always said whenever she brought up dying.

She laughed. “God, I hope not.”

I fell silent at this. I didn’t want to think about losing her. When Gram was gone, I’d be truly alone. Emotion welled up in my throat. When I first went to live with her, the thought of losing her terrified me. I’d already lost everyone and everything. No one ever stayed. I assumed I’d eventually lose her, too. It took a few years for me to accept that she wasn’t going to abandon me. I used to freak out every time she caught a cold. When she broke her leg and had to stay a few days in the hospital, I couldn’t eat or sleep until she was back home.

“I gotta go study, Gram.” I managed to get out without sounding too choked up.

“All right. You be a good girl.” Gram said that at the end of every call.
Be a good girl
. If she only knew that I was on a path of sexual exploration.

After hanging up, I finished changing clothes. Dressed in comfy sweatpants and a Dartford Uni sweatshirt, I fell back on my bed with my copy of
Madame Bovary
. I was almost finished with it, which was good considering I had a test in World Lit tomorrow.

Highlighter and pen in hand, I lost myself, following the exploits of Madame Bovary and vowing never to become a slave to my credit cards. It was bad enough that I had school loans. As I continued to read, I felt an uncomfortable similarity between Madame Bovary and myself. Just like me, she was so committed to an idea of what she thought her life should be.

Shaking my head, I told myself my infatuation with Hunter wasn’t shallow and unhealthy. He was good. Kind and reliable and safe. He was all of those things. I was no Madame Bovary.

“Hey, there.”

I looked up at Georgia leaning against the doorjamb. She was in her running clothes. Earbuds dangled from around her neck. “Hi. How was your run?”

She fell onto the bed beside me. “Brutal. Paying for my weeklong junk food binge. I really stress-ate while studying for my finance exam.”

Em breezed into the room then. “You should major in studio arts like me.”

“You still have to take your core classes,” I reminded her.

“And I’m almost through with those.” She shrugged one slim shoulder. “I’m into the stuff I enjoy now. Which is definitely not finance.” She made a face and shook her head at Georgia.

“Maybe if I was a genius artist, I wouldn’t need to major in business.”

Em flashed her a smile. “You’re sweet. I hope my stuff ends up in a gallery someday, and I don’t end up teaching middle school art.”

“As if that would happen.” Georgia laughed. “Daddy will save you.”

Some of Emerson’s smile faded, and I couldn’t help remembering what she had shared about her father. I guess Georgia wasn’t aware of that or forgot about it.

Deciding to change the subject, I asked, “What are your plans for the night?”

Emerson brightened. “I’m all yours.”

“Harris has a project to work on.”

“Yay!” Emerson clapped. “Let’s go out. Just the three of us.”

“There’s a new Thai place over on Roosevelt. It’s supposed to be really good. We could try that,” Georgia suggested.

I nodded. “That sounds good . . .”

“And that new Bourne movie—”

“We can watch a movie anytime,” Emerson pouted.

“We can go to a bar anytime,” Georgia returned.

I inhaled. “I want to go back to Mulvaney’s.”

My friends fell silent for a moment. I knew from Georgia’s uncertain expression that Emerson had filled her in on everything—specifically my humiliation at discovering Reece wasn’t the bartender I had hoped to hook up with. No, that was his kid brother. The embarrassment of that still stung.

“You want to go back?” Georgia asked. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I need to talk to Reece.”

Emerson stared at me, and I braced myself, expecting her to remind me again that I did not owe him an explanation. Thankfully the words never came, because I couldn’t leave this alone. I didn’t want him to think I was like every girl to walk through those doors, drawn by rumors of Logan and ready for a taste. He’d thought I was different before. That’s what bothered me the most. He no longer thought there was anything special about me.

“Then we’ll go,” Emerson finally said, her expression unusually solemn. She moved toward my closet. “Okay. What are you going to wear then?”

“Something hot,” Georgia supplied.

“Of course,” Emerson replied, sliding hangers one after the other. “We’re going to make him regret he ever let our Pepper go.”

“He didn’t let me go exactly. I ran away.”

“That’s because he was being a jerk. So you wanted to use him to increase your sexual prowess? Big deal. What guy isn’t eager for a no-strings-attached hookup?”

Reece, apparently.

“I think the key here is that his ego was wounded,” Georgia explained. “Pepper thought he was his brother.”

“Well. Then you need to make him forget why he was so offended.” Emerson paused, and turned around, studying me. “Wait. I’m assuming that’s what you want to do. Are you still hot for him? Is he the one you want to show you the ropes?”

I should be accustomed to Emerson’s directness by now, but she could always catch me off guard. I stared from her to Georgia, who looked so calm and self-assured. Like she already knew the answer.

“Yeah.” I nodded, feeling my cheeks warm up. If I was going to get lessons on foreplay, I wanted it to be from him. I hadn’t been able to forget that one kiss. I certainly wasn’t about to renew my search and go after some new guy. A stranger. It was either Reece or no one. I would just have to wait and hope I attracted him in my own fumbling way.

“All right then.” Emerson looked at me with understanding. Only what she understood, I wasn’t too sure.

“I still want Hunter,” I said, making sure there was no confusion.

“Of course. Of course.” She nodded, and then turned back to the closet. Propping her hand on a slim hip, she studied the contents a moment longer before she pulled out a pair of dark jeans. “Georgia? What top do you think?” She lifted an eyebrow, waiting for advisement.

“Blue cowl-neck sweater. Right side of the closet.”

“Thanks.” Nodding, Emerson went off to search in their room.

“You know, Pepper,” Georgia said, crossing her Lycra-clad legs, “the world won’t end if you end up with someone besides Hunter.”

Everything in me tightened, resisting the idea. “But I want Hunter. I always have.” I’d always wanted to be a Montgomery. “And for once it doesn’t seem like such an impossible thing.”

“I never thought it was impossible. Especially not now that he’s single. He’d be lucky to have you. Any guy would.” She uncrossed her legs. Pressing her knees together, she scooted to the edge of my bed and looked at me earnestly. “But sometimes the thing you want isn’t what you really need.”

“You sound like a fortune cookie,” I teased, but her words created a hollowness inside me. I couldn’t explain why I wanted Hunter. I just did. I just knew he was it, that thing I had been reaching for since . . . since forever.

Like she could read my thoughts, she asked, “Why does it have to be Hunter?”

The question pried too deep. It brought to mind my mother and a stuffed bear, two things I could never get back. “Oh, I don’t know.” I cocked my head and sharpened my gaze on her. “Why does it have to be Harris?”

She blinked, startled by my quick retort. I sighed and glanced to the window, regretting my defensiveness.

“I’ve been with Harris since high school,” she answered evenly.

I nodded. I wasn’t trying to imply her relationship with Harris was somehow lacking. What did I know about relationships? From everything I had seen, Harris was a great guy.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you’ve been here going on two years now without a date. And you never dated in high school. Maybe you should go out with other guys rather than pinning all your hopes on Hunter.”

The words were hard to hear . . . especially considering how accepting Emerson and Georgia had always been of my determination to have Hunter. Suddenly I felt cornered. I drew my knees up to my chest and scooted back on the bed until my spine aligned with the brick wall.

“They haven’t exactly been lining up to ask me out, Georgia.”

“Because you haven’t wanted them to. Guys need a little encouragement, and you haven’t exactly been putting out an ‘I’m available’ vibe.”

I crossed my arms, unable to deny that but still not liking to hear it. “Well, I am now, aren’t I?”

She angled her head. “With this bartender? He’s supposed to count? I thought he was just a hookup.”

I buried my head in my hands and groaned. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

“I found it!” Emerson sailed back into the room. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “Now hurry up and shower!”

Georgia smiled. I grabbed my shower caddy and robe, content to leave the quasi-serious talk behind.

Emerson did a little dance. “We’re going to break some hearts tonight!”

Just as long as it wasn’t my heart.

T
he bar was its usual meat market for a weekend night—meaning standing room only. Clusters of guys and girls milled around, talking and drinking. But their eyes were always moving. Scanning. On the hunt. As soon as we entered, guys made eye contact and tried to engage us in conversation.

Emerson stopped just inside the front room, where the aroma of fried pickles enticed me even after the dinner we’d just had at the new Thai place. “What’s your plan?”

I glanced from her to the hot press of humanity all around us. Even as cold as it was outside, the faces were flushed from the warm room. And perhaps the free-flowing alcohol had something to do with it, too.

I stood on my tiptoes, trying to see to the bar. “I think I’m just going to walk right up to him.”

Emerson arched an eyebrow. “That’s direct. And not exactly you.”

“No point delaying.” Not after the last time I was in here. I wasn’t going to fake memory loss. I ran away from him. He was probably finished with me now.

“Good plan.” Georgia nodded. “No games.”

We made our way toward the bar. I glimpsed Reece through the shifting cracks between bodies as we got in line. I stood on tiptoe, trying to gain a better view, catching only the curve of his head, the dark shadow of his closely cropped hair.

Gaze still on him, I spoke to my friends. “I can handle it from here.”

“You sure?” Em didn’t sound convinced.

“Yeah.” For some reason, even though they knew everything that had transpired up until now, humbling myself before Reece was something I didn’t want to do in front of them.