Waiting for a Girl Like You (14 page)

“Do you know what time it is?” Finn demanded.

“I have to go right now!” Alex screamed.

“What happened?” Angela asked.

Alex slammed her suitcase closed. A sleeve dangled out the side. Tears started to stream down her face. She had manipulated Roger. She’d made herself into his perfect woman and pursued him until he gave in. Then she’d left him high and dry. No wonder he came after her. She was foolish and feminine, a stupid little girl. “I have to go.”

“Alex.” Angela tried to hug her, but Alex pushed her away. Angela stumbled into the dresser, shocked.

“Hey!” Finn shouted, grabbing for Angela as if she might fall. “You are not getting violent with my wife in my house.”

“Then take me to the bus station. I have to leave. I can’t stay here.”

“All right, hold your horses while I get some pants on.” Finn went to their bedroom.

“Alex, I don’t understand. Did something happen between you and Marc? You were so happy before.”

Happy. When she thought she could escape her mistakes, but she was making them all over again. She was tricking another man into loving her. She couldn’t abandon Roger after all he’d done for her.

Unless she could stop it. She could bear the guilt of nearly taking Roger away from his family, but not stealing a thesis, too. Somehow she needed to stop that mess. Roger had meant well. He really had, but that was wrong on top of wrong.

Marc was better off without her. The last thing he needed in his life was another woman using him. He didn’t deserve that.

She had never deserved him.

Marc walked into the diner whistling. He’d wrapped up “Peaches” this morning and short of a title, it was pretty well done. Tessa e-mailed to ask him if he wanted the contract for the “Short Skirts” song sent FedEx, or if he’d be in L.A. within the next month to sign them in the office. Shep had called, and in a drug-addled way, had offered to let him work on his upcoming solo project, followed by a thanks for helping him out. Working with Shep might be prestigious, but it was looking like it might be even more trying than working with Jason. At least Jason was clean and sober. Now he was starved and desperate for some Alex.

The diner was full. In fact, a little more full than usual, and Junie’s mom was waiting tables. Ida glared up from where she was taking an order. Why was Ida taking orders?

“You. Sit. I need to talk to you,” she barked.

Marc pointed at his chest.

“Don’t play dense,” Ida snapped and pointed at the stool behind the register with a hot pink talon.

Marc took another look around the diner. No Alex. Perching on the stool, he checked outside. No Alex. She said she had opening duty this morning. That was why she wanted to go back to Angela and Finn’s yesterday evening. She would be off the clock in about twenty minutes, but unless she was in the bathroom, she wasn’t here. Paul was glaring at him through the service window.

“What did you do to that poor little girl?” Ida marched toward the register and Marc swore the floor trembled like a herd of
T. rexes
were approaching instead of a single late middle-aged woman.

“Where’s Alex?” Marc asked.

“She went back to school.” Ida started tapping her talons on the counter. The sound was loud enough to echo through the diner.

“Why?”

“Well, that is the million dollar question, isn’t it? We want to know what happened between you two after you left here yesterday.”

That was hardly a story he was going to tell, not in any detail. “Let’s continue this in the kitchen.”

“Let’s do it right damn now.”

Marc frowned at Ida. She liked to give a good show, but this was ridiculous. Then he noticed the set of her mouth and that she still had the order she’d just taken in her hand. Ida wasn’t putting on a show, she was livid.

“In the kitchen.” Marc pushed passed her. Everyone in the diner watched them walk through the door so Marc kept going to the storage area. Paul called Junie’s mother to cover him. The way they ran this place sometimes, he was surprised they ever got any business. “Now, what happened?”

“That’s what we want to know,” Paul said.

Fight at restaurant. Make up. Crazy great sex. Soulful conversation. Asked her to move in with him. Alluded to marriage. Convinced her to take a semester off and go to Italy. Discussed her summer job and how she couldn’t just quit because they needed her.

In retrospect, that was rich.

“I dropped her off last night because she said she was opening this morning.”

“And what happened when she went back up the mountain?” Paul folded his arms over his filthy apron. Bad morning all around if Paul had gotten that much food on himself.

“She didn’t. At least I didn’t see her. I dropped her off and planned to pick her up about now. What did Angela say?”

Ida touched her hair in that nervous gesture she used when things weren’t working the way she wanted them to or when she was flirting. She wasn’t flirting. “When Alex didn’t show this morning, we called over. Angela said you dropped her off last night and about a half hour later she came tearing out of her room wanting to borrow the car. She went up the mountain and was gone maybe half an hour before she came back and demanded to be taken to the bus station so she could go back to school.”

Marc scratched his head. “I don’t know what happened. I’ll see if I can reach her.” He walked out feeling like there was a white-hot spotlight on his head. In the car, he called her but wasn’t surprised when there was no answer.

To text or not to text.

She could only be running away from him. The last thing he wanted was to end up as a Twitterverse wonder because she posted a screen shot of his pathetic attempt to contact her. Poor Marc Wells, chasing a woman who was too young for him like a washed up old man who was never very talented in the first place. Next stop, a reality show with Andrew Ridgely, John Oates, and Art Garfunkel.

Marc swallowed and slid the phone in his pocket.

He was supposed to be the guy in the band with his shit together. Ty was the charismatic one. Jason was the artist. Brian was the friendly one. Bear used to be the fun one, but since he married Maureen, he’d become the romantic one. Marc had always been the strong, responsible one. The one who read the contracts, made the connections, and didn’t screw up.

Who had just fallen flat on his face over a woman. A woman too young for him. The band was going to give him shit about this for years. If the tabloids got ahold if it, Twitter would be the least of his worries. They’d hunt down every girl he’d ever dated for comments. Dez would have no money worries for a while because she’d demand top dollar for her insight as his ex-wife. He was going to be publically humiliated on every channel.

The only feasible plan was to pretend like Alex didn’t mean that much to him. A little summer lovin’. Go home to California where he could make himself busy and hope Alex’s magic touch hadn’t worn off. Ronnie was depending on him to keep Shep from looking ridiculous, and if he failed, he’d never get another chance like this again. He’d spend the rest of his life as the other guitarist in Touchstone.

* * * *

Alex opened up her dorm room. Fucking elevators. Who closed both elevators at the same time for maintenance in a ten-story building? People who thought no one would be in the building, that was who.

All the way here, she’d been looking back down the road, half fearing, half hoping to see Marc’s car chasing down the bus. She’d imagined him stopping the bus and carrying her off, promising to fix everything. Convince the dean that she had nothing to do with the thesis Roger submitted in her name. Tell her he didn’t care that she’d pursued a married man. That it was Roger’s choice, too. And that he still loved her. Most importantly, that he still loved her. Marc could do that. He’d waded into the utter disaster at the diner and fixed it all. If he could do that, he could make all this go away.

Like that was going to happen. Roger was right. She’d made herself into a siren, designed for him, and lured him away from his wife. Now he had to keep her by whatever means necessary, even if it meant the destruction of her career.

And causing her to lose Marc.

Not that Roger cared about that. As long as he had what he wanted, he didn’t care about the aftermath. She’d been blind to never notice that before. He wanted to be worshipped. Someone to bring him coffee, write his papers, and play captive audience to his tragic story. All this time she’d believed he loved her. Fool didn’t even cover what she was. In the next few days, she needed to get the smarts to extricate herself from this mess.

Not that she’d been planning on the relationship with Marc going anywhere. If he hadn’t thrown her out the moment she told him the truth, it would have grated between them like sand in an oyster shell. In an oyster that became a pearl, but between people, it could only be a festering wound. And if she had to tell him the whole truth? The ice cream analyzing, Googling, short skirt and high heels wearing sham she’d created to lure him into her clutches?

Nothing short of disaster. Complete, humiliating disaster.

The whole thing had nearly come unraveled last week at the diner.

Not last week. Two days ago. Alex sat down on her unmade bed and rested her forehead on her knees. Two days ago.

A soft knock interrupted Alex before she dissolved. Her shirt had ridden up her back so she jerked her it back into place, hoping the act would pull her brain back together, too. It didn’t. Neither did the pause to check her face in the mirror on the way to the door.

Cheryl, the resident director, stood outside with her usual pleasant smile. “Hey, Alex, I thought I— What happened?” She stepped inside, closing the door behind her as if there were anybody in the entire building to eavesdrop. “Alex, what happened?”

“Bad romance.” That summed it up well enough.

“Honey, are you sure? You look like the world ended some time yesterday. Do you want to talk about it?” Cheryl put her hand up in anticipation of Alex’s protest. “I know you like to keep to yourself, but it’s just the two of us in this big old building.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All right. I just noticed that you’d come back early. The elevators are going to be out for at least a week so you’re going to be hoofing it up and down the stairs if you plan to stay here.”

“That’s fine. I like the idea of starving in my garret. Maybe I’ll get my thesis done before classes start.”

Cheryl frowned. “I thought you were done with that.”

Shit. Shit! Did the whole world know? “How did you know?”

“I had lunch with Gerald Vukovich yesterday. He said he was surprised you invited him to be on your master’s committee. He thought you were doing Eliot.”

Gerald Vukovich? Roger was putting together her thesis committee? She needed to get into her e-mail and find out what else he’d done in her name. Oh, and change her password so he couldn’t do it again. “Things have been a little crazy this summer. That’s why I had to come back. Right now, I’m on a bit of a deadline. Can I catch up with you later?” Alex maneuvered Cheryl back toward the door and pulled it open.

“I bet you are on a deadline trying to get that dissertation defended by the end of the third summer session.” Cheryl leaned on the door jamb. She wasn’t known as Captain Oblivious for nothing. The woman could not take a hint spelled out in twenty-foot tall burning letters in the middle of the student center.

“I’d love to chat, but let me get situated, and I’ll drop in on you later today. Okay?” Alex closed the door in Cheryl’s face. She heard Cheryl jump back. Well, those who had no clue when to take a hint sometimes had to get a door in the face.

Alex turned to her desk. Since she was the returning floor supervisor, she hadn’t had to empty her room like most people, but nothing had been updated since her life started falling apart around spring break. The calendar still read April. Her syllabi had either fallen off the wall or were hanging by dried-up tape. Old papers littered the floor. It might have been better if they’d made her clear out her room. She set her laptop on a pile of papers and opened it.

According to her sent mail, Roger had submitted the Plath thesis to the university shortly after Marc ordered him out of the diner for grabbing her. By the time they were at his house making love, Roger had been sequestered in his cabin at the campground next door, polishing the paper, hacking her e-mail, and submitting it.

Damn it, she hadn’t changed the password yet. She veered into the settings and created a password that looked more like cartoon physicists swearing than English.

Back in sent mail, she found e-mails written, which sounded eerily like her, to six professors including Vukovich, asking them to be in her thesis committee. None of them were Plath scholars except Diana Gregor, who had been Melanie’s advisor. Which begged the question, what did Roger have on Dr. Gregor? Not that Alex needed to know, but it did add to Roger’s image of a bottom-feeding bloodsucker.

What had she been thinking in chasing him? He’d appeared to be so intelligent and wounded, trapped in his unhappy marriage. She’d just wanted to make him happy. Which she had done too successfully based on the way he was pursuing her now.

In her inbox, she found that Dr. Gregor had accepted within an hour of the invitation, and three others had accepted since. The senile Dr. Whittier had asked in a moment of lucidity why she wanted him on a committee for a Plath thesis when he was a Norse scholar, and she’d never had a class with him. His e-mail signature looked like it could have been created with sticks, and she hoped it wasn’t some kind of Norse curse. She had no answer for him. She guessed Roger had chosen him to add gravitas to her committee since he was the oldest professor on campus and very respected in his unrelated field. She only needed four. And the four who had accepted were either easygoing types who would have approved her thesis if it had been written in crayon on a freshly painted wall, or in the case of Dr. Gregor, were probably being blackmailed by Roger.

She grabbed the phone off the wall and dialed Roger’s house. He’d be home by now, waiting to meet with her in his office where they could “straighten all this out, darling.”