by J. D. Brick
Contents
Dedication
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE A Boy Named Blue
CHAPTER TWO Some Kind of Sizzle
CHAPTER THREE Blue to the Rescue
CHAPTER FOUR Bar Girl
CHAPTER FIVE The Sweet Spot
CHAPTER SIX Dreams
CHAPTER SEVEN Fort Peace
CHAPTER EIGHT On the Roof
CHAPTER NINE Make A Memory
CHAPTER TEN Caution to the Wind
CHAPTER ELEVEN Dangling
CHAPTER TWELVE Cave Man
CHAPTER THIRTEEN P.I.G.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN The Waltz
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Mojo
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Kaleidoscope
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Truth
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Show Me a Hero
CHAPTER NINETEEN Snakes
CHAPTER TWENTY Confrontation
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Fragile Feelings
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Five Minutes
MORE INFORMATION
To Andrea, my beta reader.
Copyright 2015 © J.D. Brick
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages embodied in critical articles or in a review.
Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, names are used in an editorial fashion, with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor the publisher shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
CHAPTER ONE
A Boy Named Blue
Keegan
I just can’t win for losing. The horrible voice that threatened to kill me a few hours ago is still scalding my eardrums when I pull up to my new home and see a tatted-up bunch of trouble sprawled on the front porch. He’s lying on his stomach, wearing only jeans, his forehead pressed into sagging boards, his body blocking the front door. He’s got a beer bottle hooked over one finger. He’s got a great ass.
Even though I’m staring at him through the windshield, I can tell he’s got a great ass. And sculpted arms, crawling with ink. And why the hell am I even paying any attention? I want nothing to do with guys like him. I’ve already been driving around for hours. Kendra, the only one of my new roommates I’ve spoken to, told me not to show up too early. The clock in my car says it’s exactly 10 AM. Surely that’s late enough. All I want to do is move my stuff into my room and go to pieces without anybody seeing me.
I hear Mr. Hot Drunk Mess calling out as soon as I step out of the car.
“Max. C’mere Max. It’s okay. You can come out now.”
He doesn’t really sound drunk. His voice is tender, deep, melodious. It’s a nice voice. I close the car door, maybe a little harder than necessary, and stand there squinting as I look toward the house. Even with my sunglasses on, the bright sunlight seems to magnify my hellacious headache. Lack of sleep always makes me miserable.
It takes me a minute to focus, and when I do, I see that Great Ass is on his feet, his hands wrapped around two of the porch posts. The bottle sits on the railing. He gives me this warm, mischievous smile that moves from his lips through his five o’clock shadow to cobalt blue eyes, and my stomach flops around like a fish out of water. My stomach’s never done that before around any guy, not even the preacher’s son who took my virginity the night of my high school graduation. Especially not him.
“You our new roomie?” Great Ass asks me. Oh God. He lives here. I hadn't even bothered to ask about the other roommates. I'd just assumed they were girls.
“Um, yeah, I guess I am.” I can’t stop staring. He’s all washboard abs and jacked-up biceps. There’s a tattoo right in the middle of his chest, but I can’t see it clearly. His grin deepens, and he steps off the porch and walks toward me, sticking out his hand.
“I’m Blue. Blue Danube.”
I stand there stupidly, not moving, freaking tongue-tied until I finally force myself to whirl around and yank open the rear car door. I pull out an overstuffed egg crate and turn back around. My new roommate is still standing there with his hand out, an amused expression on his face.
“Oh, sorry. I’m Kee… Did you say your name is Blue Danube?” My face is burning, and my brain seems to only be working at half-speed, so his earlier words are just now registering. “Isn’t that a dance or something?”
“It’s a song, actually, one that people used to dance the waltz to about a million years ago.” His smile fades, and a muscle twitches in his jaw. “It was my old man’s idea. You know, kind of a Boy-Named-Sue thing. I guess he figured if naming his son after an 18th-century ballroom dance didn’t toughen him up, nothing would.”
His name is Blue, and he’s got these ridiculously blue eyes? He’s got to be wearing colored contacts. He startles me by tucking a stray piece of hair behind my ear. My ponytail is barely hanging on, but I don’t have a free hand to fix it.
“Kendra said you’d be moving in today, but she probably didn’t expect you this early. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one up.”
“Oh. Sorry. Should I come back later?” Why did I say that? No way I want to come back later.
“No, no. You’re good.” Blue Danube smiles disarmingly, and I break into a sweat. Even though it’s the end of October, it’s hot outside, and I’m wearing shorts and a tank top. His eyes saunter over my body, obviously checking me out. “You’re certainly an improvement over the last girl who was in your room. Not to be mean, but she was, um, not as easy on the eyes as you.” He’s not even trying to be subtle. But it won’t do him any good. I’ve got enough insanity in my life. No way I’m adding falling into bed with a horny roommate to the list. Even if he’s a hot horny roommate.
“Geez, look at me just standing here like an asshole. Let me help you.” He reaches for the crate, rubbing his arms against mine as he pulls it away, and I start tingling in places people don’t talk about at parties. Crap. Blue sets my crate on the porch. Some of the porch’s boards are rotted through, and the siding on the house looks like it is about to fall off. It doesn’t look anything like the online ad. No telling what shape my room is in.
I’ve heard of the house, of course. Everybody on campus knows about The Canadian Embassy, although no one seems to have a clue where the name came from. Embassy parties are legendary, which is why it’s so ludicrous that I am moving in. Me, pretty much a party virgin. Pretty much a regular virgin too, if you don’t count that one time. And I don’t. But I’d been so desperate to move out of the dorm, I would have taken anything. Off-campus housing is notoriously hard to find at Ikana. I didn’t have much choice in the middle of the semester.
“I assume you have more stuff in your car?” Blue ignores the steps and jumps the short distance from the porch to the bricked-over front yard. “Man, it’s so damn hot. You’d think it was August instead of October.” He wipes an arm across his forehead, and my eyes, without any permission from my brain, register the way his fine abs move up and down. For a boy named after a waltz, Blue Danube sure has a rockin’ body. That tingly
place inside me flares up like it’s been splashed with propane.
“Uh, yeah.” My old Nissan Maxima has all my worldly possessions inside. I’d just thrown everything into it in the middle of the night, frantic to get away before another threat sent me right over the edge. I only had one egg crate and no time to get boxes and pack up my dorm. I figured I could organize everything once I got into my room at the Embassy. I hadn’t counted on a swoon-worthy guy wanting to carry my stuff over the threshold.
Blue opens the passenger door and a whole embarrassing pile of stuff—including the 50-page police report I’d wasted time printing—spills out on the ground. Blue draws back for a moment. “Whoa,” he says. “You, uh, don’t believe in boxes, I guess.”
“I had to leave in a big hurry. It’s a long story.” I rush over to where he’s standing, then crouch down and begin picking things up, avoiding his eyes. Blue squats besides me and put his hand over mine. He’s so close I can smell his aftershave or whatever it is that’s giving off this musky, citrusy scent that makes me want to bury my face in his chest and breathe deeply.
“Hey, roomie,” he says, quietly, “it’s cool. Boxes are overrated.” Then he scoops up an armful of my stuff and gives me a smile that sends a shiver through my soul. Blue’s face gets a little blurry. Say something, you idiot. I’m making a fool of myself before I even set foot in the house.
“You still with me, roomie?”
I shake my head, then start nodding rapidly. “Oh yeah, yeah, I was just, um…” And then he hit me with that smile again, and I can’t even finish my sentence.
Blue turns toward the front porch. “Let me introduce you to your new home.”
I grab as much as I can carry and follow Blue up the porch steps, shaking my hair out of its ragged ponytail. As he bends down to add my crate to the other stuff in his arms, I notice the scars all over his back. Holy shit. What happened to him? I also notice the tattoo on his right shoulder: dog tags, with something written on them. And then I hear what sounds like a dog whining.
Blue stops short and looks down at the hole in the porch where he’d been lying when I first pulled up.
“There you are,” he says to the hole, and I twist my head to see who he’s talking to. A long black snout sticks up through the boards and a pair of brown eyes look up at me.
“Oh. Is that who you were talking to when I first got out of the car?”
“Yeah, that’s Max.” Blue’s voice is tender again. “I forgot to lock him in my room last night, and all the noise scared the shit out of him.” He whistles and raises his voice. “It’s okay, Max, come out of there.”
The dog disappears from sight. Blue chuckles. “He has to go back out the way he got in there. He’ll show up in a minute.” He shifts the load he’s carrying to free up a hand, then opens the front door with a flourish. “Welcome to The Canadian Embassy.”
He waits for me to go in first. But then he holds up his hand to stop me.
“Wait. I just realized I don’t know your name. I need to announce you properly.”
Another adorable grin. This guy is not going to make it easy to stick to my brand-new, No Hookups with Roommates Policy.
“Keegan,” I manage to answer. “Keegan Crenshaw.”
“Keegan. I like that.”
I smirk. “It’s the name of the bar where my mom and dad met.” I roll my eyes and shake my head. “My parents.”
He laughs, then tries to bow as he ushers me in, dropping about half of what he’s carrying. “The Canadian Embassy welcomes Keegan Named-After-A-Bar Crenshaw.”
I step through the door, and my feet touch hardwood floors that are dusty and dull, but still have enough character to give me a pang of nostalgia. The huge main house at the Cooke Ranch, where I spent most of my childhood, has gleaming wood floors that my brother and I used to love to slide along in our socks. My grandmother would get so angry at us, like we were doing any harm. The woman can get mad over almost anything.
The living room floor squeaks with each step we take into the house, and my flip flops stick to the boards. “I guess there’s no sneaking in or out of this house,” I crack. I sound nervous.
We cross the room and set my stuff on the stairs that rise from the middle of the far wall. To the right of the stairs is a breakfast nook with a small table and a couple of chairs that look like they might collapse if sat on. Beyond that is the kitchen, with a lot of dishes piled in the sink. To the left of the stairs, I see what I assume is a bedroom. The door is closed, but I can hear someone singing, if you could call it that, with a voice that reminds me of the bullfrogs we used to hear at night when all the windows were open at the ranch.
“Hey, does whoever's in that room,” I point toward the bedroom door, “make a habit of. . .”
I don’t even finish the sentence because I’ve stopped and am staring in amazement at one corner of the living room, where two beer kegs sit surrounded, as if in homage, by dozens of red plastic cups. The cups are in various stages of the typical red-cup life cycle; some are crumpled or smashed, others lying empty on their sides or still standing half-full.
With the unscreened windows that line two sides open and a hot wind blowing through, I can smell the stale beer left in the cups and, obviously, all over the floor. Nothing else in the living room. No furniture, not even the battered, mismatched thrift-store stuff you see in most college residences.
“So, you had a party last night, I guess?” I look at Blue as I pull off my sunglasses and tuck them into the front of my shirt. “You moved the furniture somewhere?”
Blue seems to choke on something, slapping his hand to his chest and looking down at the floor with a weird expression on his face. Then he slowly bends down to pick up a drum stick. “Sam will be looking for this.” He sticks it into his jeans pocket and gives me a tight smile. “No furniture in this room, makes it easier for the bands to set up.”
He laughs when my jaw drops. “You do know we have parties here on weekends with live bands, right? Even sometimes during the week. The Embassy’s known all over campus for its parties. You have to have known that.”
“Well, yeah, I knew it was a party house. But I didn't really know it was every weekend. Or that you had live bands. Wow.” I sound less than thrilled.
“Last night’s band was really a good one,” he goes on. “The lead singer’s kind of a douche, but he’s got a great voice. We must have had 100 people just in this room.”
Shit. I’ve made a huge mistake renting a room in this place. It is going to be very hard to keep up my straight As and do a kick-ass job as editor of The Daily if I am living in a 21st-century version of Animal House. I’ve fought too hard to get the top job at the campus newspaper to screw it up now. I always do bone-headed things when I’m in a panic. I must look dejected because Blue taps me lightly on the chin with his fist.
“C’mon Keegan. Surely a girl named after a bar knows how to have a good time.”
Every time he turns that flirty grin on me, the one that lights up his eyes, I get that tingly feeling again. It’s really starting to irritate me. And I don’t like that he's already felt free to touch my face twice, within a few minutes of meeting me. The guy seems kind of pushy.
Blue yawns and stretches. “Only problem with Embassy parties is cleaning it all up the next day,” he says, rubbing his stomach. My tongue almost jumps out of my mouth, deciding on its own that it wants to trace the muscles on that stomach. I can feel myself blushing. Blue grins again as if he knows what I’m thinking.
“What did you mean earlier when you said 'a boy named Sue thing'?” I need something to say.
“You know. . .Johnny Cash.” Seeing what must have been a blank expression on my face, he begins to sing in a gravelly voice. “My name is Sue. How do you do.”
No idea what he’s talking about.
“Come on now, girl. Wait. You’re telling me you’ve actually never heard of 'A Boy Named Sue'? The song? The song by Johnny Cash? It’s about a father who tries to
toughen up his son by giving him a girl’s name? There's no way you haven't heard of it. No fucking way.”
I shake my head. It’s hard not to enjoy his playful horror. I’m pretty sure I've heard of Johnny Cash, if only in a vague, my-parents-might-have-mentioned-him kind of way. But I haven’t heard of the Sue song Blue’s talking about. I’m kind of having fun playing dumb, though. “Johnny who?” I ask. All on its own, my face spreads out in this absurdly big smile.
Blue sighs and puts on a cowboy drawl. “Well, little lady, you are in need of some teachin’ and you’ve come to the right place for it.” He turns toward the stairs. “Come on. Let’s get you unloaded, and then maybe I’ll go back to cleaning up all this crap. That's what I was doing when you pulled up. Well, that and trying to find Max. It'll probably be hours before our other two lazy-ass roommates are awake.”
We’re about halfway up the stairs when I ask him who lives in the room with the blaring music. A couple of steps behind him, I am trying not to stare at his perfect butt. Naturally, I can’t take my eyes off it. “I hate to be rude,” I say, “but whoever's in that room should maybe stick to singing in the shower, if at all. Ugh. Sounds like a dying cow.”
Blue freezes, then very deliberately sets my belongings down again on the stairs before turning to glare at me. “Okay, Keegan Crenshaw, let's get one thing straight right up front. No one criticizes the great Bryson, not in this house.” He doesn’t look like he’s kidding. “In case you haven’t figured it out, that’s my room. And anytime I’m home, my room will be bathed in the dulcet tones of The Great One.”
“Who?” I am bewildered.
Blue looks at me with what seems to be genuine outrage. “You’ve just been pulling my leg this whole time, right? You know who Johnny Cash is and you. . You. . .” he seems to have trouble getting the words out. “. . .you absolutely have to know, how could anyone not know who Frasier Bryson is? You’re kidding me, right?”