Spectacular Rascal: A Sexy Flirty Dirty Standalone Romance (15 page)

Cliques within the club and private runs, especially those divided along gender lines, are against the rules, PDP. But I’m willing to pretend I don’t know about your forbidden chick gatherings as long as you text me the minute you pull this note out of the soldier’s ass.

While it’s still warm from his cheeks, Panties. Still. Warm!

Kidding aside, I’m not a fan of the disappearing act. Really not a fan.

If I don’t hear
from
you or
of
you by Sunday, I’m going to take whatever steps are necessary to make sure you’re okay. If that means finding out your real name, where you live, and making contact with your dad or whoever else you have at home, I’ll do it.

I’d rather you be pissed at me for invading your privacy than have you be in trouble somewhere and no one know about it.

Hoping you’re okay,

Curve

Text to Curve from Panties: Just got your note. I’m fine. Back on campus and ready to run tomorrow.

Curve: Where the hell have you been? We’ve been worried.

Back End Bonus went by your dorm room, and your roommate said you haven’t slept there for a week. I was headed to Student Affairs first thing tomorrow morning to report your ass missing.

Panties: I’m surprised my roommate noticed that I wasn’t around, considering I spend most nights couching it in the study lounge while she’s having the loudest orgasms in the world.

I’m going to buy a muzzle and give it to her boyfriend. Tell him it’s to help protect him from long-term hearing loss. It can’t be safe for him to be that close to her mouth when she starts going off.

Curved: Again, I’ll ask: where have you been and why didn’t you text me? You did get those twenty messages I sent asking if you were okay, right?

Panties: Let me see…

Yep. There they are.

I like the one where you pretended you were locked in the bathroom with a giant spider outside the door and you needed me to come kill it.

I almost texted back—

Panties is gone. I ate her. You’re next. Love, Spider.

—but I figured if I did, then I’d have to keep texting or you would get mad at me. So I didn’t.

Curved: Yeah, I would have been mad, but at least I wouldn’t have been scared for you. Or as fucking pissed as I am right now.

Vanishing for a week and not telling a fucking soul that you’re okay is a dick move, Panties. I thought you’d been fucking kidnapped. Or something worse.

Panties: If I’d been kidnapped they would have brought me back. I’m too much of a pain in the ass to commit to a long-term torture or imprisonment relationship.

Curve: This isn’t funny.

My freshman year, a girl in my sociology class hitched a ride home from a bar downtown. Her friends saw her get into a white pickup truck and drive away, and no one ever saw her again.

You realize that could have been you, right? Because I fucking do.

And I was sitting here texting you and writing you notes and trying not to freak out because I know you can usually take care of yourself, but this voice in my head kept saying—but what if this time she can’t?

What if this time she’s in trouble and you’re wasting time trying to play it cool and not annoy her, and meanwhile she’s tied up in a psychopath’s basement?

Panties: I’m really good at getting out of ropes, too. You’d have to tie me with a constrictor knot to have a chance at keeping me cooped up in a basement or anywhere else.

Curved: Fine.

Fuck you very much, too.

Glad you find the fact that you scared people who care about you amusing.

Panties: Wait! I’m sorry. Really I am. Or I will be.

Honestly, I’m a little drunk right now.

Probably more than a little drunk. After six days with my dad, I needed all the beers to take the edge off. Now I’m feeling no pain and everything seems funny, but I know it’s not.

Curved: What were you doing with your dad?

Panties: Helping him pick up my mother’s body in Northern Ireland and bring it back to Washington to be buried. For some reason he thought that would be a great way to introduce me to the mother I’ve never met—by giving me the unique privilege of escorting her corpse across an ocean and through customs and to a depressing-as-shit funeral home outside of D.C.

Curved: Shit. I’m sorry. If I were you, I’d be drunk, too.

Panties: Thanks. Though, apparently my mom was an alcoholic. A high functioning alcoholic, but she really loved her Irish whiskey. So I guess I should cut back on the beer unless I want to die before I’m fifty-five.

Though, she didn’t die of alcohol poisoning or liver disease—she died of getting run over crossing the street while she was one-hundred percent sober—so that really doesn’t make much sense.

Like I said, I’m drunk.

But I’m getting lots of things done. In between pulls on my flask on the train, I managed to get caught up on my homework from all the classes I missed. Drunk Panties is amazing at doing homework. She’s also great at texting without making spelling mistakes.

Are you fucking bowled over by how fast I’m texting right now, or what?

It’s like my thumbs have a mind of their own.

Mind thumbs. Mind. Thumbs. Thumb minds. Mind over thumb.

I don’t know what I’m saying, but the words “thumb” and “mind” together are cracking my shit up right now.

Curved: Where are you? I’ll bring you a burrito to help you sober up and we can talk Mom stuff.

Panties: I don’t want to talk Mom stuff. I don’t care about my mom.

I guess that sounds terrible, but it’s the truth. She left before I could walk because she wanted to be a spy and a drunk more than she wanted to be a mother.

And that’s fine. Whatever. I got over it a long time ago.

I’m more upset with my dad for making me go with him to get her. He should have let her friends cremate her body the way they wanted to because I’m never going to visit that grave.

Ever. I’d rather eat spiders. Live spiders.

Curved: Are you sure? I’m a good listener.

And I’ve got Dad and Mama drama in my past. Nothing like what you’ve been through, but enough that I can definitely lend a sympathetic ear.

Panties: Thanks, but no thanks. I’d also rather eat spiders than cry on your shoulder about my shitty life.

Are you really afraid of spiders? Even a little bit? Or was that bullshit designed to get me to text you back?

Curved: I’m not afraid of spiders. People are the only animals that scare me.

Panties: Me, too. So much.

I have a black belt in jujitsu and trained with the best self-defense experts in the world, but people still scare me. They just don’t make any fucking sense, you know? I mean, I can beat just about anyone in a fight, but if some psycho decides to strap a bomb to his chest and sit down next to me on the train, what the fuck can I do? How do I prepare for that?

I can’t. So spending ten years of my life learning to pin men twice my size to a sparring mat was a huge waste of my time.

I almost told my dad that this weekend. I almost told him that I wished he’d let me stay with my grandmother instead of taking me with him on his deployments and turning me into a freak as big as he is. But I didn’t.

Because learning to fight might have made me strong but it didn’t give me courage.

Curve: Where are you? You shouldn’t be alone right now.

Panties: I’m a coward. I really am.

But Drunk Panties is less cowardly than Sober Panties, so I’m going to ask you why you thought I was mad at you.

Curved: I didn’t think you were mad at me.

Panties: Yes, you did. You wrote it in your note. That if you were on my shit list for some reason I should contact one of the girls. You wouldn’t have written that unless you had some idea why I might be mad at you.

Curved: I don’t know. You seemed weird at the last party.

Panties: Weird, how?

Curved: You didn’t want to try my beer. You always want to try my beer.

Panties: Well, yeah, because you bring the best beer. I never knew beer could have so many tastes until I met you.

Curved: So? What was up?

Panties: I thought I might be coming down with a cold. I didn’t want to infect you. But I didn’t want to tell you I might be coming down with something because I knew you would make me go home and rest.

You’re very bossy.

Curved: But you like it. Admit it. You like it that I boss you around every once in a while.

Panties: I guess I do. As Drunk Panties I can admit that, even though the Panties of tomorrow will be pissed at me for it.

But I do like it. It means you care, that I’m special enough for you to waste your time trying to tell me what to do.

Curved: I do care. So let me bring you burritos and be the bossy big brother type who insists you need food in your belly to go with all that beer.

Panties: Whiskey, actually. In honor of Mom. May she rest in peas.

Curved: And carrots.

Panties: Thanks for that. Dumb jokes are…good.

Shit, now I’m crying…

Curved: Tell me where you are. Right now.

Panties: I can’t. I don’t want you to see me like this. I might say more things I’ll regret tomorrow.

Curved: You don’t have to regret anything you’ve said or will say. You get a free “my mom just died” pass to act like a complete fool. I just need to make sure you don’t pass out, puke, and choke on your own vomit.

You’re too good to go out that way, feral squirrel.

Panties: Aw, you remembered my pet name.

I love you, too, Curve.

See you at the race tomorrow. I’ll be the one with the hangover, puking on her shoes on the switchbacks.

Curved: Take care of yourself, Panties. And call me if you decide you’d rather I take care of you, instead. There’s no shame in needing people now and then, you know.

Panties: So I’ve heard. So I’ve heard…

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I wake up a little after three a.m., going from sleeping deep and dreamless to wide-awake, ears straining, without knowing why.

Pushing up on one arm, I glance down at Cat, who has curled into a ball on her side with her cheek resting on her folded hands and a half smile on her face that makes me wonder what she’s dreaming and hope it’s something about me.

Or at least my cock.

She looks catlike and beautiful, and my heart does weird things in my chest when my eyes land on her face. But I don’t give in to the urge to curl my body around hers and go back to sleep, or kiss her until she wakes up and gives me a second shot at finding her G-spot.

Something woke me up—I’m a sound sleeper unless I’m disturbed—and I need to figure out what it was.

Cat armed her security system before we went to sleep, and she assured me that Nico never knew the code to disarm it. The chances that someone is in the apartment are slim, and after several moments of listening, the air is still as quiet as it ever is in the city, with only the faint drone of late night traffic on the Avenue to disturb the peace. There are no drunks digging through the recycling on the sidewalk, or married couples screaming abuse at each other in languages I can’t understand, proving Cat’s neighborhood is significantly swankier than mine.

She has a very nice, security-system-protected apartment in an even nicer part of town, and by all rights she should feel safe. But she doesn’t, and that’s enough reason for me to slip from between the covers and reach for my clothes. I tug on my boxers and jeans and scan the darkened room for anything that might serve as a weapon.

My eyes have adjusted to the shadows, and light filters in through the lowered blinds, but there’s not much to see. Aside from the brushed silver lamp on the bedside table, there’s nothing remotely dangerous in the uncluttered space. Cat’s decorating style runs to contemporary and minimalist. It’s clean, efficient, and sexy, like the woman herself, but sorely lacking in heavy tchotchkes good for knocking intruders over the head.

“Fists it is, then,” I whisper as I pad silently across the room in my bare feet. I grip the door handle carefully, cracking the door without making any noise.

I’m equally careful as I ease out into the short hallway, checking the bathroom on my left to make sure no one’s lurking in the shower before moving on. My heart is beating faster than usual, and my senses are on high alert, but deep down I don’t think I’m going to find someone snooping around in the living room or the kitchen.