Wherever You Are (Bad Reputation Duet Book 2)

by Krista Ritchie

  “Willow!” Garrison must sprint because he’s next to me in a hurried second. “What happened? What the hell?”

  I can’t see him. I can’t see anything in here.

  I start to ask, “Can I—”

  He knows what I want. Garrison immediately catches my trembling hand and helps me to my feet. I edge closer to his frame, and his other palm rests on my waist. My heart beats so fast.

  If I start picturing their faces, emotion threatens to well and glass my eyes. It’s not even that I met real hatred for the first time. It’s that they feel this boiling disgust towards someone I love.

  Garrison keeps me close. “Do you have an extra pair of glasses in your backpack?”

  “No, just in my room.” My throat swells closed, but before he asks again, I start briefly explaining the encounter. He scans the arcade for signs of “preppy” guys, but he says it looks like they’re gone.

  Of course, I can’t read his expression, but his body radiates with heat, angry and upset. Instead of hunting them down, thankfully he stays beside me.

  My hand in his hand, he guides me out of the arcade. My backpack slung over his shoulder. (I ask to make sure he hasn’t left it.) But I’m too nervous to ask if the cameraman is still looming.

  “Escalator,” Garrison says, pulling me back as I try to walk forward. His arm is wrapped securely around my waist.

  Oh my God. Through everything that’s happened, I still heat from the new touch. I can’t help it. I’m stiffer than him. I’m unbending and hardly breathing properly.

  Focus. I start to whisper, “I can’t tell Loren what happ—”

  “I hate The Omen too,” Garrison cuts in, raising his voice. “There are so many better horror movies than that one.”

  I understand the hint. The older man with the camera phone—he must be right behind us. Riding down the escalator. Video-recording our conversation. Our every move.

  I shudder. And this is just a taste of what Lily and her sisters deal with every day.

  We both stay quiet until we reach the parking lot. Once inside his Mustang, Garrison locks the car doors. Lily dropped me off at the mall on her way to Superheroes & Scones, so my car is still at my brother’s house.

  The plan had always been to leave the mall in Garrison’s car, but not…this soon. Not like this. I struggle with my seatbelt, unable to find the hole for the metal tip.

  “Here.” Garrison stretches over the middle console and helps, his hand on my hand. My nerves flutter. He guides the buckle, and I hear the click.

  Secured.

  Garrison places my backpack on my lap, and I hug the jean fabric to my chest. He pauses before starting the car. I feel him studying my features.

  I replay what happened, and I go numb. My skin tingles as I try to submerge emotion like my mom taught me to do. Don’t let it out for other people to see. Bottle every last bit.

  He breaks the silence. “Did they touch you?”

  I shake my head, the motion heavy. “Just my glasses.” I swallow again. “I’m fine.” It could’ve been worse. Partly, I think I’m in shock, throttled by the “could’ve beens” and the regret of not trusting my gut.

  Garrison lets out a tense breath, his keys jangling like he’s about to start up the ignition. He stops short. “What can I do to help?”

  I open my mouth to speak, but I have no clue what to say.

  “Will holding you make you feel worse or better?”

  I shake my head again. Unsure. “I don’t know.” Tears threaten to rise, overwhelmed by everything: what happened, this moment, how nice he’s being to me.

  “You know I’m here for you,” he tells me.

  I nod and instinctively try to push up my glasses—which do not exist right now. “Thanks.” We make a game plan to fetch my spare glasses at my place in Philly, and then we’ll head to his house. I assure him that I’m not too shaken and that I still want to hang out.

  He acts like his birthday means nothing to him, but he once mentioned that all his birthdays were spent with lots of friends. I imagine the crowds resembled the ones at Nathan’s party—the one I crashed on my search for Lo.

  Now Garrison is down to just one friend. Me. He has no extravagant party. No adoring crowds. He just has Willow Moore from Maine, and I hoped this would be a birthday he wishes to remember, not one he craves to forget.

  I can’t really replace his old friends, and I worry, in time, he’ll only yearn for them more.

  9 PRESENT DAY – August

  London, England

  WILLOW HALE

  Age 21

  “What’d you say?!” I try to yell over the thumping bass, a phone pressed to one ear while I plug the other ear with my finger.

  I still can’t hear my best friend over the flat party. Beer pong cheering, thumps of drunken bodies, and house music cranked to head-splitting levels—I’m in a noisy tunnel of collegiate pandemonium. Who throws ragers on a Wednesday at seven p.m.?

  My roommates, apparently.

  A little earlier, Sheetal popped her head in my room. “We’re having a proper get-together, like. Need anything, a bevvie or a ciggy?” The party was already underway.

  It was nice of her to remember that I’m here. I’m not invisible to my friends-turned-new-roommates: Sheetal, Tess, and Salvatore.

  But I would’ve preferred an hour’s notice, and if I’m being really honest with myself, I would’ve wanted a full day’s preparation knowing we’re hosting a house party.

  After declining drinks and cigarettes, I keep thinking it’ll die down, but it’s only grown. I keep hearing the main door open. More bodies piling in. More voices amassing.

  “Hold on a sec!” I raise my voice over the music and speak into my phone. “I’m gonna find a quieter spot, Daisy!” I scan the small room, more cramped than my old dorm. A light blue comforter is wrinkled on a twin-sized bed, hugged against a white wall.

  Most of my crap is still in a few cardboard boxes. But I’ve had some time to tack up a few X-Men posters and unbox photos of my brothers, the Calloway sisters, and of course, my boyfriend. I did put my Gravity Falls Funko Pop! collectibles on the dresser. No room for a desk.

  Still, I’m lucky that I have all this space to myself, and I only share a bathroom and common area.

  I eye the tiny closet.

  Bingo.

  I snatch the laptop off my bed before heading to the closet. It’s not a walk-in. So I bend down and sit beneath hanging overalls and plain T-shirts. Wedged under the clothes, I pry my fingers under the doorframe and scoot the door towards me until it’s pretty much shut.

  Darkness.

  And finally, some muffled quiet.

  I let out a sigh.

  So this is sort of what Harry Potter must’ve felt like. I bet he had more room under the Dursley’s staircase.

  I push up my drooping glasses. “Can you hear me?” I ask Daisy and open my laptop, the bright screen illuminating the closet with a blue tint.

  “A ton better,” Daisy tells me. “Where’d you go?”

  “The closet. Maybe Skype will be louder.” I’m about to ask if she has time to video-chat, but she’s already dialing me on Skype.

  My lip twitches in a smile, one I haven’t felt much tonight. I click into her Skype call, and her radiant, photogenic face pops on screen.

  “Hey there.” She bites on a red Twizzler, blonde hair hanging against a crop top that says, yeehaw! “If Garrison wasn’t coming, I’d totally fly out there and whisk you away from the madness.” She tucks her long legs to her chest. “We’d ride off into the sunset away from the loud and into the quiet.”

  I touch my silver pinky ring, and through the computer screen, I see the identical one on her finger. My lips keep rising. “Sounds nice.” I fix my glasses again. “I’m not bothering you too much, am I? I know the summer just ended, but camp stuff has to still be eating your time.” She’s the founder of Camp Calloway, and she’s spent so much energy building this adventurous getaway for kids in the
mountains.

  “Camp stuff has been dying down, and I like catching up with you.” She twiddles with a frayed string on her crop top, not able to sit still. “I don’t want you to think…that you can’t call or anything.”

  Daisy has a baby now, a husband, a new career, and an ocean is between us.

  Sometimes it scares me too that we might drift apart, but I know, deep in my heart, that she’s the friend I’ll have forever. Not just because she’s married to Ryke, my half-brother.

  It’s what she said: if she were here, she’d help me escape the party, not try to pull me deeper into it.

  Daisy loves the quiet as much as me.

  “I don’t think that,” I say softly. “I’ll always call when I can.”

  She’s about to smile, but she flinches as screaming blasts on my end. Screaming that usually accompanies sports games.

  “I hate beer pong,” I murmur under my breath.

  “You can ride it out with me until Garrison gets there,” Daisy suggests. “I’m just at the cottage for lunch.” The cottage is her quaint stone house at the end of the cul-de-sac, down the street from Lily and Rose in Philly.

  My shoulders loosen, less tensed. She doesn’t pressure me to go “mingle” and try to have fun with strangers. I know who I am, and I know it’s not my cup of tea. Daisy never makes me drink the anxiety-inducing concoction.

  “Thanks, Daisy.” I try to stretch my leg in the cramped closet, the laptop swaying on my thighs. I lift my neck, and overalls smack my face. I push them aside. “I’m hoping this party is just a first-week ‘welcome back to college’ celebratory thing.”

  Bass intensifies and vibrates the floor beneath me.

  Let this be a one-time occurrence.

  Please.

  I’m not made for house parties. I might’ve found college friends in London, but I’m still the same girl who lurks in corners of comic book shops and tries not to bump into shelves or strangers. I don’t want to be in anyone’s way, even with my roommates.

  I’m an introvert at the core, and after one big group outing, I feel like I need to recharge alone for a whole week.

  Staying in and watching Netflix sounds better than hitting the bars or inviting people to throw back shots and chitchat.

  The latter is…exhausting.

  “Are your roommates partiers?” Daisy wonders.

  “I don’t think they are. I’d go with them out to Barnaby’s, but that wasn’t every weekend.” I frown, thinking. “It was…chill. Just the three of us, and if they ever went bar hopping afterwards or met up with larger groups, I usually declined.” I pause. “Tess is super popular though. She knows almost everyone on campus, and Sheetal loves staying out late. So does Salvatore…” Oh no…

  Could I have really misjudged what it’d be like to room with them?

  “You’re probably right,” Daisy consoles. “It could just be a welcome back party.”

  “CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!” The chanting sounds close, like a foot away.

  I focus on my computer. “I can’t even tell them to keep it down—I’ll ruin their good time and be the stuck-up roommate.” It feels unfair to ask everyone to be quiet. I’m just one person. “And I already felt badly because I didn’t warn them that Garrison is coming tonight.”

  “They still don’t like him?” Daisy asks into a bite of Twizzler.

  I shake my head.

  I officially moved into the flat only a few days ago, and I wanted Garrison to see where I live, even if that means running into my roommates. He’s in a much better place since he’s been living with Lo for eight months now. But the last time Tess and Sheetal saw my boyfriend, he was swinging a fist at Salvatore.

  “We just don’t talk about Garrison,” I explain to Daisy. “I think they’re trying to be supportive, but…it’s also like we’re avoiding the awkwardness of what happened.”

  I thought about not rooming with them after the winter party, but they hugged me and said they still wanted me here, no matter what.

  Garrison was also happy they didn’t abandon me over his actions, but living with college friends feels different than living with the Calloway sisters. It’s starting to feel like a challenging game boss on a new console that I’ve never played before.

  “Your roommates might warm up to him tonight. I have a theory that the worst first impressions can be the mark of a really great person,” Daisy says optimistically. “So hey, there’s hope yet.” She swigs a water. “Are you escaping the party with Garrison once he gets there?”

  I frown, realizing everything is all messed up. “That wasn’t the initial plan.”

  “Do you plan on ravishing each other to the bone?” Daisy teases with the wag of her brows.

  My neck reddens. “Um…sort of.”

  “Willow,” she gasps into a bigger smile. “What’s ‘sort of’ mean here?”

  “I want to give him a blow job tonight—the first one I’ve ever given. And I’ve already been nervous about it.”

  “Nervous about what?” Rose asks icily, and on the screen, I see Daisy looking off to the side, like her sister just entered the cottage.

  “Hey, Daisy,” Lily greets.

  Make that sisters. Plural.

  I’m just glad they walked in and not my older brothers. After a few minutes of catch-up, Lily and Rose join Daisy on a couch with boxes of Thai take-out. They fit into the Skype box, so they’re visible and ready to take part in my awkward dilemma.

  I’m in a closet.

  Avoiding a flat party in my own flat.

  And discussing blow jobs. “I already Googled how to give one, and it’s not a lot of help. They just talk about being confident. I’m more worried about the mechanics of a blow job. I want to be sure I’m not awkwardly going down on him or hurting him.”

  “You don’t have to give him a blow job,” Daisy reminds me. “I don’t love giving them that much.”

  Lily blushes a little as she says, “I think they’re fun.” Quieter, she adds, “It’s hot.” Her shoulders rise as she nods to herself.

  “At times, definitely,” Rose agrees, popping open a container of what she said is Pad Kee Mao. “Other times, it’s a pain in the ass, and I avoid.”

  “I want to try,” I say more confidently. “Just to see if I like it or not. Garrison won’t pressure me, one way or the other, he never has.”

  “You should practice,” Rose coaches.

  “With…like a banana?” I look around the closet for something phallic.

  “Just wing it,” Daisy suggests.

  Rose cringes at those words.

  Daisy mock gasps and says dramatically, “The disgust.”

  Lily laughs.

  My heart does a weird nosedive. I miss them. Being around them. Living with them. Even if they’ve all moved into separate houses, they live on the same street from one another.

  And Rose raises a hand to both of her sisters before scooting closer to the screen. “Willow, I was a lot like you.”

  “You were?” Fearless, fierce Rose Calloway, who makes men shrivel and quake. I know her better than when I first moved to Philly. She’s not just a face on a Forbes magazine or the star of the short-lived Princesses of Philly to me. She’s complicated and complex, and so I’m not too shocked.

  “Nervous about giving a Grade F blow job, yes.” Rose loves to succeed.

  “What made you feel better?”

  Rose takes a breath as she says, “Connor. He was patient and made me feel…” She rolls her eyes. “Like we were practicing together and that I had nothing to prove but everything to gain. So you don’t need to practice alone beforehand. You can practice with Garrison.”

  Lily pops open a can of Fizz. “That’s good advice, Rose.”

  “I know.”

  We laugh.

  Daisy nods. “See, even if it’s awkward, it’s awkward with someone who makes you feel comfortable, therefore the awkwardness is nullified, and all shall prevail.” She extends her arms theatrically.

  “F
or…” I trail off, my thoughts dying as music grows ten octaves louder. Like my door has just opened…

  I stiffen.

  Oh no.

  “What’s wrong?” Rose asks, straightening up.

  “Willow?” Daisy and Lily say at the same time.

  “I forgot to lock my door,” I whisper and strain my ears. Floorboards creak, accompanied by giggling. “I think someone’s in my room.”

  “Kick those motherfuckers out,” Rose snaps, yellow-green eyes pierced like she’s two-seconds from crawling through my laptop screen and fighting them for me.

  “What’s going on?”

  Oh, shit.

  That voice, that question—it’s coming from their end. I watch their heads swerve at the sound of Loren Hale.

  My brother.

  And he’s not alone. He stands behind the couch with Ryke Meadows. Both of my brothers bend over to peer at the Skype session.

  “Willow?” Ryke’s face darkens. “What the fuck is happening?”

  Daisy explains everything quickly. Thank you. I use the time to listen to the intruders. The music dies down, and I’m guessing they shut my door.

  My pulse speeds.

  Okay.

  You can handle this, Willow. They’re just partiers. They probably don’t know that this room belongs to a semi-famous person. I’m on the periphery of fame.

  They won’t steal your things.

  Just…let it pass.

  “Willow,” Lo says sharply, grabbing my attention.

  “Yeah?” I nudge up my glasses for the umpteenth time

  “Are they gone?”

  I shake my head. “I hear…” I cringe. No, no. “…slurping.”

  Daisy’s mouth falls. “They’re making out.”

  “Abort,” Lily says. “Abort.”

  Nervous heat pricks me at the thought of a confrontation. “I can’t…”

  “Go tell them to get the fuck out of your room,” Ryke says harshly. I’m not him. I’m not Rose or Lo.

  The hot-tempered triad (Lily coined the term) could resolve this fast and efficiently.

  My face contorts at the sound of my bed squeaking and mmms. I look up at the darkness of my closet. “Just my luck,” I mutter to myself, “two strangers are desecrating my bed when Garrison is supposed to be here soon—and how can I give him a blow job for the first time on the same place where strangers just touched?” Wait. I freeze.