by Karina Halle
Moments later, as I’m catching my breath, Blake rounds the corner.
“So sorry,” he apologizes, looking as white as a sheet.
“What the fuck was that?” I practically gasp.
“That was Fluffy,” he says.
“He’s a fucking tarantula!”
“I’m very aware of that.”
“Why do you have a tarantula as a pet? Oh my god, what’s wrong with you?”
A shiver runs through him which he tries to shake out. “And oh my god,” I say, remembering his posture in the room, hearing that womanly shriek, “are you afraid of him?”
“It’s true that I am deathly afraid of spiders,” he says, heading right for the fridge and bringing out two beers. As he deftly pops the caps off both, he says, “But Fluffy is Kevin’s and I said I’d take care of him. Turns out it’s indefinite.”
He strides over to me and hands me a beer, his fingers brushing against mine as he does so. I’m so on edge that my skin feels electrified by his touch.
“I don’t get it,” I say, softly now because he’s nearly invading my personal space.
He runs his hand over the stubble on his strong jaw and nods, smiling to himself as he looks elsewhere. “I don’t get it either. I guess Fluffy was an escape artist and Angelica, that’s Kevin’s mom, said he couldn’t keep him anymore.”
“I don’t blame her,” I say, feeling like a million spiders are crawling all over me right now. “And you willingly let an escape artist tarantula into your home?”
He sighs and leans back against the kitchen counter, legs crossed at the ankles and swigs his beer. “Yeah. Bloody brilliant, isn’t it? But Kevin really loved that ugly abomination and he was in tears when it happened so I told him I’d care for him until his mum has a change of heart. And I’m pretty sure now that’s never going to happen, so it looks like I’m stuck with the damned thing until Kevin forgets about him. Or loses interest. Or develops arachnophobia.”
I have to admit, this is extremely sweet of him to do this for his stepbrother. “You must be close with him. Kevin, I mean. Not Fluffy.”
He scratches at his cheek. “Not really. I’m trying. His mum has been working more and more, she’s a lawyer, and I feel like I’m the only one he has lately that seems to care. My dad is so invested in the shop and trying to save it and…” He trails off and clears his throat, as if he’s said too much.
And of course I can’t help but bite. “Is the shop in trouble?”
“Nothing to worry your pretty little head about, peach,” he says dismissively.
I raise my brow. “I told you not to call me peach.”
“What’s with your hatred of nicknames?”
“I don’t have a hatred of nicknames,” I argue. “I have a hatred of your nicknames. Believe me, I’ve had plenty.”
Oh great, now I’ve said too much.
“Such as?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say quickly. “We should get back to work.”
“You can work after meeting Fluffy? It usually takes me a pint afterward to calm down. I’m supposed to feed him tomorrow and I usually have to get pretty bombed in order to work up the nerve.”
So that explains the chirping box in his car. “Crickets?”
“Yeah, live ones. It’s pretty barbaric.”
“And how does your revolving door of women handle Fluffy?”
His head jerks back as he stares at me quizzically. “Revolving door of women? Who says that? And why do you care?”
“I don’t care,” I tell him, looking away. “It’s just something you’re very proud of. You’ve slept with nearly half the class.”
“Not you,” he points out.
“Because I’m not a fucking idiot.”
“Not Rio either,” he says.
“Because she’s not stupid either.”
“I don’t think a girl has to be stupid in order to have a good time,” he muses, tapping the top of the bottle against his lips. “Rio does seem like a lot of fun. It’s a wonder the two of you are even friends, she’s like sunshine and you’re just this angry red windstorm that knocks down trees sucks the juice out of everything.”
I can’t help but grumble at him. “Rio is way too good for you.” I don’t need to point out if he pursued her enough, she’d probably give in. She does like a good time and she’d probably be the only one in class to not pen an anti-Blake poem. Still, I add, “You stay away from her.”
“Forbidden,” he says with a sharp nod. “I like those ones the best.”
“I’m serious. She’s not your type.”
“You don’t know my type,” he says. “I bet you don’t even know your own.”
What is with this question lately?
I straighten my shoulders, raising my chin an inch. “I know exactly what my type is, what kind of person I need and want.”
“Need,” he repeats, lightly mocking. “Will you listen to that, the All Powerful Oz has just admitted that she needs things from time to time. I thought you’d be entirely self-sufficient.”
“Oh I am,” I shoot back. “You should see my vibrator collection.”
His eyes widen and I refrain from clamping my hand over my mouth. I’ve said too much. Way, way too much.
I clear my throat, looking down at my beer. “Any smart young woman should always have a range of suitable man substitutes.”
“Or you could just get a boyfriend.”
“Not interested.”
“Or a fuckbuddy.”
“Not interested,” I repeat.
“Eating carpet?” He snaps his fingers together. “Rio!”
I sigh, rolling my eyes. “Why does every fucking guy have to assume a girl is a lesbian because she’s single and not sleeping around? I don’t have to explain myself to you; you’re nothing but an alcoholic with a tarantula. Go ahead and think I’m a lesbian if it appeases your ego, I don’t care.”
“Touchy,” he surmises. “It’s okay. I get it. We all have our issues. I think yours is the fact that your eyelids are nearly glued shut.”
I ignore him. “Can we get back to work, because if not, I’m getting a cab back home.”
“All right, we’ll call a truce,” he says, holding out his hand, a sly gleam in his eyes. I don’t trust him at all but I’ll pretend in order to get this done. I shake his hand quickly.
We both sit down on the couch, me beside him this time and try to work through the changes to the chapters. We bounce ideas off of each other and even though I have Susan’s POV, which is as interesting as I want to make it, I can’t help but feel a bit envious over Blake. Not only does he have a phenomenal appreciation for Forrest’s character, but he’s got so much material to work with. His character is heavy, layered and complex and I can see the fever burning in Blake’s eyes as he discusses him, like he’s coming alive in ways I’ve never seen before. If I didn’t hate the guy so much, I think I might be getting a glimpse of the real him—and liking it.
But he still drives me mad and when we’re done for the night, he goes right back to pissing me off.
“Ali,” he says as we head for his door.
“What about her?”
He shrugs. “Not much, but she got to meet Fluffy.”
“Willingly?”
“He escaped. At a…bad…time.”
My skin prickles. I can only imagine. “Well I’m glad you’re telling me this now.” I grab the front door and rip it open, happily stepping into the hall where big hairy spiders aren’t potentially running amok. “No wonder she was so pissed at you in class the other day,” I say under my breath as we get in the elevator.
“Oh, she wasn’t pissed about that,” he says, folding his hands in front of him and staring up at the elevator lights as they go down. “It’s because I didn’t call her when I said I would.”
“Did you ever call her?” I ask.
He gives me a lazy grin in response.
“Once again, pig,” I tell him.
And just lik
e before, the insult doesn’t seem to bother him. “They all know how they stand with me. I tell them from the beginning I’m just looking for a quick shag and nothing else. I can’t help it if they all start planning our futures together the minute I get them to come. Though perhaps I shouldn’t deliver so many orgasms in one session.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mumble to myself, shaking my head in disbelief as we head to his car.
“I joke about a lot of things, but not about sex.”
Then it’s too bad you don’t take the rest of your life as serious as your sex life, I think as we speed away through the dark streets.
But soon, he won’t be my problem anymore.
There’s some solace in that.
6
Blake
“Something on your mind, bro?” Heath asks me, snapping me out of my haze.
Actually it’s not so much as haze as a violent storm cloud that’s kidnapped my brain, prodding it with lightning bolts. The Heart Thief —maybe not the most original title, but it’s stuck —has taken over my life, and I’m pretty sure Amanda’s as well. In fact, I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks working either with her or by myself on the project, constantly writing and brainstorming, as well as reading as many good books as I can to help my prose along.
I haven’t seen Heath once, haven’t even gotten a good shag. The brunette with Mr. Mercedes called me the other day and I managed to go out with her for the sake of getting laid but she turned bashful by the end of the night and I was too distracted to try and take it any farther. We both went our separate ways and though I told her we should meet up again, it’s getting harder and harder for my brain to focus on anything but the story.
The best part of all this shit is that working at the store now is something I look forward to. Despite my ambitions as a writer I had never really taken advantage of the fact that I have a world of books at my fingertips, that this world of books will soon be my life. Now I’m finding inspiration down every shelf and I’m interacting with customers more and more, rifling through their brains to figure out just how to craft the best work that I can, what exactly they’re drawn to in the books they read. It’s even made me more inspired for my own work-in-progress and I find myself gravitating toward that when I have nothing else to do.
“I’m here,” I tell Heath, sitting back in my chair and watching the traffic flow down Wharf Street, the glittering blue harbor on the other side. In two weeks, spring has become an onslaught and even though it’s late March, the cherry trees are in full bloom and everyone is wearing shorts. Right now it’s t-shirt weather and knowing it could go back to being cold and rainy tomorrow, we’ve snagged a table on the patio in the square to have a few pints.
“You’re not,” Heath says. “You might as well be on your phone like everyone else.” He glances around us and indeed, most people are staring at their phones instead of the view or their company. “Last time I saw you, you were present.”
“I was drunk,” I remind him. “We both were.”
He studies me over his beer before taking a sip. “So then tell me, what’s the real reason you’ve been holding out on me these last few weeks?”
I look at him frankly. “It’s the truth. Sorry to disappoint you but there is no other reason. I’ve been writing. I’m caught up in it.”
He doesn’t believe me. “I’ve never seen you get so wrapped up in an assignment before.”
“I’ve never had an interesting assignment before.”
And, to be honest, I’ve never had an interesting work partner before.
I’m shocked at how much I’ve come to enjoy working with Amanda. Maybe enjoy is too plain of a word. I can do better: challenging. The whole thing is challenging. She keeps me on my toes. Not just in terms of writing and trying to better myself, because, let’s face it, if she’s competitive then I am too. We’re both trying to outwrite each other, which is kind of working in our favor (though I’m sure Professor Dumbass will be the judge of that).
No, she keeps me on my toes because every time I’m with her I’m not quite sure what’s she’s going to say. She’s completely predictable until she isn’t. She’s entirely too serious, uptight and while I retract anything prudish I’ve thought about her after she admitted she had a large stack of vibrating penises, she’s incredibly stiff at times.
And yet, sometimes the strangest things slip out of her mouth.
Her mouth.
Which I can’t help but focus on every time she speaks.
Those lips I keep imaging sucking my dick, slowly, loving every wet second of it.
Ignore it, Crawford.
Right. Where was I? Oh yes. She’ll occasionally say something that makes me think I may have pegged her wrong. With her penchant for fantasy, I knew she was already on the nerdy side but I had no idea how deep it ran until she admitted she slept outside the movie theatre in order to be one of the first to see the new Star Wars.
“My boyfriend thought I was crazy but I did it anyway,” she had said.
“Your boyfriend?” This was the first I had heard of him.
It turns out she did have a boyfriend, someone she was with for four years but they’d recently broken up. I tried to get more info out of her but she clammed up, something I noticed she does a lot whenever the conversation becomes about something personal.
And fair enough. I’m not exactly opening up to her either. After all, we’re just class partners and most of the time our conversation is entirely about the novella. It works for us anyway, at this rate we’ll be done the project long before it’s due, which will give me more time to work on my own stuff.
As if he can read my thoughts, Heath asks, “So have you pushed aside your book in the meantime?”
I take a long sip of my beer and tilt my head back to the sun. After a long and dark winter, the early spring feels good. “No, I’m writing it on the side. If anything I’m more motivated.”
Heath is one of the few people who know I’m trying to finish my science fiction horror novel, Blood Aurora, something I’ve been working on for a few years now. When Amanda poked fun at my Lord of the Rings reference at the library, I had to laugh it off even though it’s not something I advertise. Believe me, as much as women love a good fucking shag and a British accent, there’s something about nerd boys that turn them off. I thank the Big Bang Theory for that.
He runs his hand through his shaggy hair and smirks. “I’m guessing it’s the company you’re keeping that’s really motivating you.” His head swivels as two fit blondes in yoga pants walk past the patio and take a seat at the bar adjacent. “Two for two,” he comments.
The blondes don’t interest me. I mean, they should. One looks like she does porn to fund her education, the other has small tits on alert and skin that gives off the “I spent winter vacation in Cabo San Lucas” glow. But it’s Heath’s comment that has my attention.
“You mean Amanda?” I ask, bringing his attention back.
“Maybe she’s good for you. You still haven’t fucked yet?”
I snort. “Right. Like that’s on the agenda.”
“Still a stick in the mud?”
“Uh, still something that hasn’t even crossed my mind.”
Not really.
“I’m impressed,” he remarks, his eyes going back to the blondies. “I think.”
“She’s become easier to be around,” I admit. “But in this situation, we’re strictly partners.”
“Are you just saying that because you’ve already tried to get in her pants and you failed miserably?”
“Heath, dear, you know I don’t try anything. I just do.”
“That sounds borderline rapey.”
I ignore that. “All I have to do is be myself and the rest is up to them. Why do you think I’m not making eyes at the girls over there? It wouldn’t be fair to you otherwise.”
“You’re full of shit,” he says, flipping around his coaster. “I think I liked you better when yo
u were with Rachel.”
“Of course, less competition,” I say glibly even though his remark felt like a hot poker to my gut. There were a lot of things that were better when I was with Rachel.
Heath lowers his sunglasses and waggles his eyebrows and I glance over my shoulder to see one of the girls giggling behind her menu. “Seriously,” I say. “You’re going to woo her from afar?”
“Whatever works,” he says, flashing her a grin before turning to me. “Hey I’m renting the cabin near Sooke again this weekend, Watchtower and Damon are coming. You in? You can borrow my spare drysuit again, you practically stretched it out last time.” I open my mouth. “Not in the cock area,” he quickly adds. “That would be impossible.”
Even though I’m not as good at surfing as Heath and his surfer buddies Watchtower and Damon, I’m a fast learner and have been picking up the pace each time I go. The last time we packed up Heath’s jeep with the boards and rented a cabin up north on the coast, we discovered a cabin of surfer chicks nearby. There was a bonfire, loads of booze and drugs, and things got pretty out of hand. I ended up having sex with two of the girls at low tide. It was pretty fucking magical – until one of the girl’s boyfriends showed up. I’m not proud of my naked run down the beach and to safety but he was wielding a piece of driftwood like a fucking baseball bat.
“This time will be even better,” Heath says, trying to tempt me.
“I’m sure it will. But I have to pass.”
“Dude, what? Why?”
“I have plans,” I say and hope he’ll leave it at that but of course he won’t.
“Don’t tell me it’s because of that bitch.”
I’m surprised to find myself glaring at him. “She’s not a bitch, she’s just…prickly. And yeah, I do have plans with her. We’ve both got exams coming up – as do you, by the way – and we need to get together on Sunday to start finalizing things while we can. One more chapter each and it’s almost done.”
He groans and leans back in his seat, shaking his head. “It’s like I don’t even know you, man.”
“That’s because I’m Bruce Wayne.”