“Good night, all,” I said.
Then I shuffled off to the bedroom where I’d slept since I moved into my grandmother’s house. It was filled with my clothes and books, but it wasn’t truly mine. There was nowhere that was mine now. My home was gone, and now my dorm room was gone. I was adrift.
It was temporary. I reminded myself of that fact regularly, but it didn’t make me feel any less lonely or lost. It simply helped me try to stay on my path—despite the all-too-recent reminder that doing so wasn’t guaranteed to get me where I wanted to be. If staying on my path was all it took, I’d be in Oregon. I’d be with my friends. I’d be at Reed.
So I was working on a new path. That was what I’d done when things were a mess after my first year of high school. It had kept life orderly for the next three years of high school and the first two years of college. Everything had crashed recently, but that was temporary too. I just needed to sort out the new version of The Plan. I hadn’t even had a real career plan—a secret I more or less hid from my high school and college friends. I was good at literature, good with words, and that was the closest thing I had to a focus. Reed didn’t require declaring a major at entry. In fact, they were opposed to it. That meant I could answer with a vague “I love lit” reply when people prompted me, and that was enough. I wasn’t sure I was cut out for teaching . . . or research . . . or writing . . . or law school. I didn’t know. What I did know was that I needed to hold a 4.0, or as close to it as possible, so when I figured out what precisely I was doing after finishing my BA in English, I’d have choices.
I crawled under the covers and went over my latest version of The Plan. I needed to get back on schedule. So I had a strategy, a good strategy to do so. I needed to stay enrolled in classes and find a job. It would keep me super busy, but that was okay. I didn’t fit in here, so it wasn’t like I had anything to do with my time other than be with my grandmother, and she had a life of her own. I’d keep dating off the schedule too. That had worked well for years; there was no reason it shouldn’t stay off this iteration of The Plan too.
Unfortunately, I still felt like I had a big sign flashing OUTSIDER over my head when I went anywhere in Williamsville, and I was just as tense as I always had been in unfamiliar places. Simply deciding to be bold wasn’t having the results I wanted, so I returned to my tried-and-true solution when I felt adrift: make a plan, implement the plan.
However, implementing my plan was complicated by the troubles in my grandmother’s neighborhood. Sheriff Patterson dismissed most of the complaints—when he actually bothered to show up to hear them—but that didn’t mean the seniors were being quiet about their displeasure. Grandma Maureen was organizing a neighborhood watch, and she was lobbying for an article in whatever newspaper in Tennessee would take her calls.
Between the seniors’ meetings and getting settled into Grandma’s house, I hadn’t explored Williamsville any further. Tomorrow, I would put my plan into motion: be bolder, get a job, start classes. I needed to get my new life on track, and I needed to do it before I did something stupid.
Chapter 2
AVOIDING STUPIDITY SOUNDED so easy, but the sad truth was that there was a pretty clear reason that I had to have The Plan. I was easily distracted by the desire to let my mind go quiet. It wasn’t something I had ever quite mastered, but I knew it was possible. For a brief blink when I was fourteen, kissing had been amazingly effective at helping me reach that peace, but that led to other problems. Kissing led to dating; dating led to trouble. Now, I sought places, art, music, or exercise to help me reach those quiet moments when my worries all curled up for a nap.
“Your mother means well,” Grandma Maureen repeated. She had already been getting ready for another meeting with the neighbors when my mother had called, and now I was sitting on the edge of her bed thinking about how much easier life had been when I was a little girl. I used to love watching my mother dress up to go out to dinner or the theater with my father. It wasn’t so long ago that they were happy. Now, my father was embarrassed about getting caught embezzling, and my mother was furious that he’d lied to her. They were so busy dealing with legal drama and divorce that I was all but forgotten.
“If she meant well, she’d stop fighting with Dad.” I took a deep, shuddering breath before adding, “And he’d stop fighting with her. I swear that between the two of them they’re like a natural damn disaster.”
“Language, lovie.” Grandma Maureen smoothed out her skirt even as her eyes lifted to meet mine in the mirror. “You need to let them be who they are, and you just be you. At the end of it all, that’s how we live real lives: concentrate on being you.”
I sighed. She was probably right. She almost always seemed to know just what to do. That’s how I wanted to be, but just then, I also wanted to smack my parents. They couldn’t go a week without one of them calling me about the other. I skipped as many calls as I could, but sometimes guilt prevailed—or maybe I was still hoping they wanted to talk to me, not at me. I’d had to give up my dream school and move to a state so unlike my home that it might as well be a foreign country, and I had no money for anything remotely close to the life I’d been living. They weren’t supporting me—which was fine—but I wasn’t eligible for any grants or loans for school either because they’d claimed me as a dependent on their taxes last year. Aid packages were based on the last year of income, and theirs was too high. That hadn’t mattered when I’d had a college fund, but without that, I was out of luck. If they would agree not to claim me on their taxes next year, I might stand a chance at getting loans, but that left me drifting for the next two semesters.
“Why don’t I drop you off down at the fair?” Grandma Maureen suggested, pulling me out of the nonstop grumbling in my mind lately. “I need the car, but I could drop you along the way.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that a small-town fair was not going to fix my mood. Being bitchy—especially to her—wasn’t going to serve any purpose, and she certainly didn’t deserve it. I forced a smile and said, “Let me change first.”
Grandma Maureen nodded, and I went to my room to change into something a bit more rural, but still nice enough to wear out in public. My jeans were fine, but finding shoes to wear to a fair was challenging. Boots or tennis shoes, that was the critical choice for my evening. I shoved my feet into a pair of battered black Doc Marten’s. They were Portland boots more than Tennessee boots, more grunge than country, but they weren’t so out of place that people would stare.
“Maybe you’ll meet someone,” Grandma Maureen said as she steered her boat of a car toward the fairgrounds.
“I don’t want to meet anyone,” I told her.
“Spending all your time with old folks isn’t very exciting, lovie.” Grandma Maureen glanced my way. “Getting out would do you good. I’m not your mother, but—”
“You’re a better mom than she ever was,” I interjected.
“Hush. She means well. Your dad made some mistakes, and your parents are having a rocky spell.” Grandma Maureen pursed her lips. “You can’t let it ruin your outlook, though. Go out and make friends. I expect you to talk to someone tonight, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I murmured meekly.
She nodded once, satisfied with my acquiescence. My grandmother was all about making the best of it, no matter what “it” was. She didn’t come right out and say that she wasn’t expecting my life to go back to normal anytime soon, but the vague nature of her plans made me well aware that she—and probably my parents—saw my move to Tennessee as indicative of an intent to settle in here. It wasn’t part of The Plan, but I didn’t hate it. I didn’t really hate anywhere. I just felt more comfortable in some places than others.
About thirty minutes after my grandmother dropped me off, it was exceedingly clear that the fair wasn’t on the comfortable-places list. There were families, couples, and groups of friends at the fair, but there was no one but me walking around alone and looking pitiful.
So when a boy in worn jean
s and a T-shirt advertising some band I hadn’t heard of walked up to me and said “Hey,” I wasn’t as quick to ignore him as I usually would be—even though his gaze dropped to my bra line quickly and obviously.
“I’m Quincy.”
“Aubrey.”
“Are you waiting on someone?” he asked, looking around us as if people would magically materialize.
“Nope.” I folded my arms over my stomach, not quite over my chest like I wanted. If I was going to be friendly and flirty, that wasn’t the right move. Instead, I smiled and told him, “I’m new here.”
“Well, then . . . These are John and Allan and their girls.” He motioned toward the two guys with him, both of whom appeared to be the same sort of nondescript, pleasantly attractive guy he was. He was more built than they were, but none of them were out of shape.
“We’re going out past the lights and crack a bottle or three.” He patted his backpack. “My date had to bail. What say you come with me instead?”
It was possibly the least flattering invitation I’d ever received, but I was alone and bored and frustrated. I shrugged. “Why not?”
“Good answer, beautiful. Just keep saying that.” Quincy smiled in a way that I suspected I was supposed to find sexy.
Despite that, he was sort of cute and I was blue, so I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and joined the small group. Quincy’s hand caught mine, and I followed him into the shadows. Maybe it would be fun. I remembered kissing in the shadows as being fun.
We could still hear the music when Quincy motioned for everyone to stop. There were two weathered picnic tables, both partially hidden by trees, and a grill that looked like at least a decade had passed since it had been rust-free.
“Ladies first,” Quincy announced, filling a red plastic cup of something that smelled more like paint thinner than a drink.
I took it, but I wasn’t quite ready to swallow the noxious stuff. A few moments later, everyone had a cup.
“Bottoms up,” John—or possibly Allan—said.
Everyone else drank, and after a brief pause, so did I. My eyes watered, my throat burned, and I was fairly certain that my stomach lining was getting a big searing hole. I cleared my throat to keep from coughing and held my cup out.
“Good, huh?” Quincy poured another splash into my cup. “Tennessee moonshine. Bet they don’t have that out in California or wherever.”
I didn’t bother correcting him. I just nodded and tossed back the nastiness in my cup. I wasn’t here to make friends, not really. I was here to feel a little bit numb, and unless the poison in my cup killed me, numbness wasn’t too far off.
A few cups of moonshine later, I was drunk, but still not having fun. All I really knew about Quincy was that he worked contracting, framing houses right now, but he had plans for a bigger role in the future. It wasn’t the sort of thing I could imagine doing, but he sounded passionate about it. That was his most interesting trait, but he grew less and less interesting the more he drank. He wasn’t a great kisser either.
“Come on,” he insisted.
I shoved him as hard as I could, not that he moved far as a result. Shoving anyone wasn’t particularly effective when I was sober. Drunk? My best effort was enough to push Quincy a few inches.
His arm was still around my waist, keeping me near him—not that I’d have moved far anyhow. The tree behind me was as much a prop to keep me from swaying as a barrier that trapped me against a guy I’d met just a few hours ago, a guy who wasn’t any better at kissing than Groping Dave in ninth grade.
“Don’t be like that,” Quincy said, but he wasn’t able to excite me, even as uninhibited as I was at the moment. He’d tried, but it did about as much for me as my annual gynecology exam. Hell, if Dr. Anderson weren’t pushing seventy, he might have had better luck than Quincy. I told myself that later, when I wasn’t falling-over drunk, I might need to think about that more carefully. Sometimes I thought the problem might be me. Maybe I just wasn’t wired for lust like I’d thought I was five years ago.
Apparently, I wasn’t exactly wired for drinking either.
Quincy was working on my nerves. It wasn’t that he’d really done anything wrong, but he sure as hell wasn’t doing anything right. He was supposed to be a good distraction, a way to let myself get lost for a little while. Instead, he was boring me.
I stared out at the lights of the midway while Quincy muttered compliments I didn’t care to hear. The lights seemed so far away from our impromptu party—not that going over to them was any more appealing. I looked past Quincy at the other girls. They looked happy. I still wasn’t—and I didn’t care enough to fake anything. Worse yet, I wasn’t sure how to fake it.
“Want to go home,” I said.
I shook my head briefly, trying to shake my hair out of my face. It was at that irritating length where it seemed impossible to contain—or maybe that was partly because of the drinking too. Honestly, I couldn’t be sure of a whole lot just then. What I knew for certain was that I wasn’t where I wanted to be.
I laughed at that realization, startling Quincy. I wasn’t anywhere I wanted to be: not in the right town, not with the right people; nothing about my life was what I wanted, what I’d planned.
Quincy must have misunderstood my laughter. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to tickle you.” He moved away from my ear and kissed my throat.
“Home,” I repeated in a stronger voice.
“You don’t want to go home yet. Stay here with me.”
My mind wandered again. Forming words, especially anything near coherent ones, seemed ridiculously difficult. My brain, however, felt like I’d been chugging espresso. Random thoughts swirled around my mind—about being stuck in this lame little town, about my friends on the other side of the country, about what I was doing in the dark with a drunk guy whose last name I didn’t know.
He wasn’t even my type, not that I had a type. I didn’t date. Not now. Not ever, really. Hookups in my freshman year of high school and occasional nights out with guy friends didn’t count. If I hadn’t felt like the world was crumbling around me, I wouldn’t be here at all, pushed up against a tree and trying to figure out how to leave. I didn’t even belong in Williamsville, which meant that there weren’t any friends I could call to come get me. That left calling my grandmother or finding out if there was a taxi service here.
I tried to focus on my words and said, “I’m sorry. I need to find a tax—”
Quincy kissed me again, cutting off my words. It was a decent kiss this time, not as clumsy as his last few. His kisses were okay, but they sure as hell weren’t enough to make me change my mind about anything.
“Audrey—” he started.
“Aubrey, not Audrey,” I muttered.
“Sure, baby. I knew that.”
This time, I shoved him harder. He didn’t even know my first name. What was I doing here?
“Let go,” I slurred.
He didn’t.
“I said, let go,” I repeated, much louder and clearer this time. I jerked my head to the side when he leaned in to kiss me again. Even if I couldn’t push him away, I could at least dodge him.
But then Quincy was gone so suddenly that I stumbled.
I half slid, half fell to the ground, my butt hitting the dirt hard and my back still against the tree. Standing in front of Quincy was a dark-haired Renaissance angel in jeans, a T-shirt, and a leather jacket. For a brief moment, the angel looked at me, and I was glad I was already on the ground. If I ever did have a type, I wanted him to be it. He looked familiar enough that I could swear I’d seen him before—or maybe I just wished I had. He studied me like I was some sort of maiden he’d pulled from the claws of a dragon.
If I were sober, I’d be offended.
If I were back home in Portland, I’d be outraged.
I wasn’t. I was drunk and in the middle of nowhere, in a town so small I was fairly sure that they had to date outside the town limits to avoid marrying relatives. I was far from offended or outrag
ed. I was . . . intrigued.
I realized as I watched the angel that he and Quincy were arguing. Words blurred into trading punches, which was strangely attractive. Quincy wasn’t as drunk as I was, but from the looks of it, he was drunker than I’d thought—or a remarkably uncoordinated fighter.
I was vaguely aware of other people coming toward us, but I couldn’t look away from the fists. Maybe fighting helped people feel better. Drinking hadn’t. Kissing Quincy hadn’t. I wanted to feel better, but all I’d achieved with alcohol and a stranger was a little numbness. I felt untethered—which was not okay. I was better than this, stronger than this. I might not feel like it right now, but I would. First, though, I needed to get out of here, away from both the uncoordinated Quincy and the delicious-looking angel with the wolf on his jacket.
I pushed myself to my feet, using the tree for support.
“Your dad will have a fit if he finds you fighting again,” one of the guys said as he tugged Quincy away from the angel.
“Screw my dad,” Quincy snapped. He jerked his arm away from his friend and held a hand out to me. “Come on, Audrey. You need to come with me.”
“Aubrey. Aw. Bree,” I corrected again. Maybe if I said it slowly, he’d finally get my name right.
“Right.” Quincy shook his hand at me like I was a pet he was calling to him. Any remaining attractiveness he might’ve had evaporated at that.
“I’m staying here.” I patted the tree. “You go on.”
“Whatever,” Quincy muttered before turning and stomping away with his friends.
I watched him go and sighed. “Idiot.”
“Then what in the hell were you doing with him?”
I blinked, focusing my eyes on the man frowning at me, the angel who had punched Quincy. He was awfully pretty, even though he was scowling at me now.
“Oh,” I managed to say. “You’re still here.”
He stared at me, and I had the sudden urge to shoo him away too. Boys were trouble. I knew that. This one . . . well, this one looked like trouble far, far out of my league. I would bet that his kisses were the sort to make me forget everything, though. He was so outside The Plan that he needed to vanish. Right. Now.
Undaunted: Knights in Black Leather Page 2