Catch You If You Fall (Burnouts Book 2)

by Karen Gordon

  “Just call me,” she pleaded.

  “Alright, I will.”

  She followed him to the door and tried to grab one of his belt loops and pull him in for one more kiss. He skirted her hand but grabbed it with his and squeezed gently. She held on when he tried to let go.

  “Babe,” he pleaded with her.

  She pouted again and let go.

  He took the stairs two at a time, jumping down the last five. He checked the time on his cell phone as he got on the motorcycle. He had to punch the clock in exactly ten minutes. Shit. He skipped the chin strap on the helmet and gunned the motorcycle as he turned out of the apartment complex, cutting into traffic. He was way over the speed limit and sweating bullets because he had no pink slip for the bike. He doubted his brother, Stony, had one either since he had taken it from some guy who couldn’t pay for his drugs. Steve cut across two lanes, dangerously close to a truck. He was counting down the minutes in his head, how long it would take him to park then get inside and punch in. One more time late and he might be out on his ass.

  He punched in without a minute to spare. Damn he hated cutting it this close. If this kept up he was either going to lose his job or get busted speeding on a stolen bike. And Amanda … now that the adrenaline of beating the clock was wearing off, anger was replacing it. Did she want him to lose his job? He grabbed his safety vest, goggles, and lifting brace and checked which section he was assigned to tonight. She might. If he didn’t work the night shift he would be around the apartment a lot more when she was. Then she could keep him in bed with her.

  They had been living together for six months now, since New Year’s. She had made it so easy for him to move in. (It helped that his only other choice was his dad’s apartment.) She cooked and cleaned and paid the rent and never asked anything of him. When it became apparent in February that he was staying, he insisted on paying half the rent and groceries. All she seemed to want from him was sex. Not that he was complaining about that … or was he?

  He was the only guy he knew who had this problem. The other guys at work were constantly bitching about how their wives never wanted to have sex with them. Steve kept his mouth shut and generally kept to himself, but he wanted to tell them it was probably because they were all shitty lays. He doubted most of these stupid bastards even knew where a woman’s clit was, let alone how to make her come.

  He smiled as he thought back to the first time he had gone down on a girl. He had no idea what the hell he was doing, but he was willing to learn, and he liked it so much he knew he would walk barefoot over broken glass to get to try it again and again. Shit. He pushed his hair back and put on his safety goggles. He didn’t need to start thinking about his high school sex life now. That just led to thoughts of MG and going down that road was useless. He was with Amanda now and MG was gone, period.

  He tried to put both girls out of his mind and concentrate on work, but work was so mind-numbingly dull that that didn’t last long. He thought about Amanda and how she doted on him, doing everything for him, but somehow it didn’t feel good. It felt desperate; like she thought she would lose him if she didn’t do all that stuff.

  And now she’d started with a bunch of jealous bullshit. Other women sometimes came on to him. Damned if he knew why. He didn’t encourage them. He tried not to get Amanda worried, but now every time a waitress lingered too long at their table or some girl asked him directions, Amanda went ape-shit crazy and accused him of cheating. He missed the laid-back girls he’d hung out with in high school. Back then he wished MG would get jealous. He never could figure out if MG just didn’t do jealous or if she really didn’t care that much about him. The second idea still hurt too much to think about. He turned his thoughts back to moving boxes.

  ♪ ☺ ♥

  Three weeks later he and Amanda were shopping for groceries together for July Fourth. It was one of the few days they would both be off work and able to hang out together. Amanda wanted to pack a cooler and spend the day at a lake, swimming and grilling out. It would just be the two of them, which was kind of romantic, except that it was always just the two of them. She never wanted to bring him around her friends and all his friends were girls, so they were off limits.

  They were debating getting plain hot dogs or the ones with cheese when Casey shouted. “Steve!” from across the meat section then made a full-on run to jump up and hug him.

  “Case!” He hugged her back, lifting her off the ground, before he saw Amanda’s questioning look over Casey’s shoulder. He set her down. This would not be good. He took a step away from her, closer to Amanda.

  “Amanda, um, this is Casey.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” Her eyes stayed on him, ignoring Casey, wanting more of an explanation about the girl who hugged her boyfriend.

  He had made the massive error of telling her that he slept with a lot of girls who were his friends in high school when they had a conversation about exes. Since then she had been sure that every girl they met was one of his exes. Sometimes she wasn’t too far off the mark. He had slept with Casey, more than once.

  Steve grabbed for a lifeline. “So, where’s Pat? He here with you?” If she was with her boyfriend Amanda might not throw a fit.

  “No, we broke up.”

  Crap!

  “I couldn’t deal with his jealous bullshit anymore.”

  Double crap!

  “He even accused me of cheating with you.” Casey smirked and laughed it off but Steve knew there was no getting that idea out of Amanda’s head now.

  “Fuck, yeah, that’s funny.” He couldn’t believe how nervous his voice sounded.

  “Where do you know Steve from?” Amanda didn’t even try to make it sound like a friendly question.

  Casey caught her tone and gave Steve a questioning look before answering, “Uh, high school.”

  “So did you two, date?” The last word was loaded with venom.

  Casey shook her head but looked at Steve for clues as to why his girlfriend was acting this way.

  They stood in awkward silence for a minute. Amanda, arms crossed, glaring at Steve, who was apologizing to Casey with his eyes.

  “Well, uh, gotta go.” Casey wasn’t sure what to say with psycho girlfriend there. “Maybe I’ll … see you around, sometime?” Amanda turned her glare on her. “Or not …” She turned and made a beeline for the bread section.

  Steve sighed and shook his head. “She’s a friend.”

  “That I’ve never heard of before …”

  “We’d lost touch.”

  She turned her back to him and walked away, the opposite way that Casey had gone. He grabbed the first pack of hotdogs he put his hand on and followed her, hoping her silent treatment wouldn’t last through their day off tomorrow.

  ♪ ☺ ♥

  Casey got a hold of him, like he figured she would. She got his cell number from his dad then waited till Amanda was at work to call. She always was a really smart girl.

  “OK, what gives with her?”

  “Fuck, I don’t know, she wasn’t always that way.”

  “Where’d you meet her?”

  “Chuck’s house.”

  “Well that says a lot right there.”

  “Funny.” He shook his head and smiled, god he missed his friends. “She totally took advantage of my drunk ass on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “No, seriously. She tried to corner me with some mistletoe then starts telling me how some girls she met there before told her I had amazing fingers and a magic dick.”

  Casey laughed hard. “Oh my god, that had to be MG.”

  “You weren’t part of that?”

  She was still laughing. “I don’t know. I don’t remember most of the parties at Chuck’s house, but that’s too funny.”

  “What, why? You saying I don’t have amazing fingers and a magic dick?”

  She was really laughing hard now and Steve felt a little piece of what they all had back in high school.

  “We
ll?” He was laughing now too.

  “OK, OK, you do.” She paused to catch her breath. “Damn, too funny. OK, so we know why she’s sticking around and fighting every girl that looks at you, but what about you? Is she worth the trouble?”

  And that was the million dollar question. He breathed out while he thought how to answer. “I guess … I like the ones who are trouble.” There was so much implied in that statement. Casey got it.

  “You hear from her?”

  He knew she meant MG. “No.”

  Casey dropped it. His one word answer said it all. “I’m not going to tell you what to do, but that jealous shit, it just gets worse. And there is no way to convince them that you’re not cheating. You can’t win for losing.”

  He knew she was speaking from experience. “You’re right.”

  “So, what are you going to do about it?”

  “Move back in with my dad, I guess. She’s not going to make it easy.”

  She could hear how hard this was for him. “Well, call me, if you want to talk, or hang out. Don’t worry, I won’t let her find out.”

  “I know you wouldn’t.” Casey was a fighter and would be happy to stir it up with Amanda if Steve wanted her to, but she was his friend first. She would always keep his secrets.

  Chapter 6

  Steve moved out of Amanda’s apartment in late July, then back in mid-August. She didn’t make it easy for him to leave and living with his dad made it easy to go back to her. They became one of those couples that everyone wondered why the hell they stayed together. Amanda was all about drama. She showed up in the parking lot at his work, crying and begging him to come back. He did, then she texted him incessantly when he was supposed to be sleeping, professing her love for him.

  She started to use her lunch hour to check up on him. He never would have known except she followed him when he went to Casey’s house to pick up some concert tickets he was going to scalp for her. Amanda banged on the front door, demanding to be let in to talk to “her cheating, fucker boyfriend.” There was no way Steve could talk Casey out of a fight with Amanda on her own turf, so he had to physically hold her off while Amanda was being held off by some guy who worked with her who must have come along to watch the show. After that incident, he had Gina bring her huge boat-of-a-car by to take him and his stuff back to his dad’s apartment the first week in October. He felt like a coward, moving out while Amanda was at work, but he had reached his drama limit.

  This time they were apart for a month and a half before he moved back in. In late November his dad gave away his room at the apartment. Jim’s new girlfriend moved in with her kid, and his dad told him to get the hell out and get his own place. Which is what he wanted to do, but his salary would just barely cover rent on an apartment. He had to have a roommate and Amanda was right there, begging him to move back in with her.

  When they were together Amanda drove him nuts with her jealous fits. When they were apart he felt bad for how much she hurt without him. She might be bat-shit crazy, but he wasn’t exactly a great catch either. Women wanted to sleep with him, but none but Amanda were sticking around afterward.

  He finally found a solution when he overheard a guy at work talking about needing to get a roommate. He was getting divorced and needed to get an apartment, but full rent plus child support was going to kill him. Steve offered to split a place. The guy agreed but said he didn’t want to move out ‘til after Christmas. He wanted one more at home with his kids.

  He hated to hurt Amanda again, but their sick cycle had to end. By New Year’s, 2001, they would be over, one insane year after they began.

  ♪ ☺ ♥

  MG stared out the window of the café, watching students pass or meet at neighboring tables. She studied them: their clothes, purses, jewelry, shoes. If her time in Manhattan taught her anything it was that designer clothes weren’t what set these people apart from her; it was who they were, old money. They had a style and demeanor that she could never buy. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

  Randy watched his daughter watching them. “So, what do you think?”

  “I’m still not sure.”

  He had hoped seeing the school would seal the deal. The campus was beautiful. It’s stately old stone buildings surrounded by trees spilling their vibrant fall leaves were the stuff college dreams were made of -- if you had college dreams.

  Since their first lunch Randy had been meeting with MG every few weeks, slowly adding himself to her life. He had also sat down separately with Amber and worked out a plan for him to pay MG’s way through college, as opposed to him giving her a lump sum of money she might burn through in a few months of Fifth Avenue shopping. Now he just needed to convince MG that college was her best option.

  “The burgers are great here. How ‘bout I order a few?” He knew the restaurant and the school because he lived less than an hour away, and he and Camilla made annual generous donations to the theater and music programs. MG nodded, but she was focused on a table of girls to their right. He had anticipated this might happen. Moreland College was expensive as hell but worth the cost. As the top-rated liberal arts college in New England, the student population was mainly New York debutants, with a sprinkling of other New England debs, rounded out with a few international debs. MG would be a fish out of water, at least ‘til she found her spot in the pond.

  Even he could see how much she stood out as not one of them. Today she had on one of her “if you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em” outfits–a homemade camo mini skirt, torn tights, combat boots, and a white school girl blouse. Her wheat colored hair hung in an artfully messy way halfway down her back. Her latest thrift-shop find, a WWII Navy pea coat, hung on the back of her chair. She had her own style, which he liked. She would fit in with the dress code at his work.

  He wasn’t sure how fatherly advice was going to go over, but he felt like he needed to try. “You look great.” He leaned down to look her in the eyes, “Don’t try to be one of them.” He gestured to the girls at the next table with his chin.

  “I guarantee you there will be a few others here who are right now wishing there was someone different here, like you.”

  ♪ ☺ ♥

  MG looked down and pretended to study the menu but she gave Randy a nod that she understood. She had to admit, if anyone knew how to buck the tide and be his own man it was Randy. She smiled at the shirt he had on today. It looked like something Elvis would wear to go bowling, but somehow he pulled it off. How did he seem like he belonged here, even though he looked like none of them? It was like he carried his own cool, fun space around with him that drew people in no matter where they were. He assumed that everyone liked him and wanted to hang out with him, and they did. At least MG did. She hadn’t let her guard down completely, but he was scaling her wall one lunch, one laugh, one weird shirt at a time.

  But even if she could find some friends, it still seemed like such a waste of money. She had no idea what she wanted to get a degree in. Randy and the admissions counselor assured her that she would need to take general education classes her first year so she still had time to find a direction. They seemed so sure she would find a direction. It was kind of nice to know they thought she might have potential to do something. It felt like going to college was moving forward, going somewhere, only she had no idea where that somewhere was.

  MG was pushed out of her mental debate by a luggage-sized Prada purse bumping her in the head. The girl carrying the bag kept walking by, a cloud of perfume in her wake, not noticing or seeming to care. But the guy behind her did notice. He was wearing a pair of shorts with little whales on them that looked a lot like a pair Carrie’s four-year-old brother wore. Did they make Garanimals for adults? She couldn’t help but wonder if his also came with matching whale sandals and sunglasses. He called to Prada-bag girl.

  “Alex, watch where you swing that thing. You hit this girl.”

  She turned and looked at MG like she was seeing her for the first time. “Oh.” She shrugged and looke
d a little embarrassed. “Sorry.” She pulled her bag in closer and kept walking toward the back of the café. The guy followed, but not before smiling, briefly, at MG. Was that an apology-smile? A flirt smile? Either way, it was the first time MG hadn’t felt invisible or completely unwelcome in their world.

  ♪ ☺ ♥

  Randy included ten grand in her college fund for her to “get supplies” for her dorm room and school. At first that seemed like a fortune. MG had visions of a designer wardrobe and a decked out room, until Amber sat her down and gave her a reality budget. The Prada bag that had smashed her in the face in the café was over three thousand dollars. What the hell? With the money in her account she did feel bold enough to go back to the designer stores that had intimidated her before and actually look at the prices. Then she boldly walked back out. Now that she could buy a two hundred dollar tee shirt she just couldn’t bring herself to actually do it.

  She did get a Blackberry phone, and she splurged and got a really cool red case for it. She put it in the Prada-knock-off bag she got from the guy at the corner of Delancey and Suffolk then took the subway to SoHo to shop for some funky Moroccan-looking bedding and wall art for her room. The best thing she found was a hookah pipe made from a lava lamp. Not that she had ever smoked one, but it looked like something she would try to do after a night at the bars. It also reminded her of some of the crazy shit Carrie had used to decorate her room in high school.

  She desperately wanted her best friend and decorator right now. They should be starting school together, decorating a dorm room together, sharing that almost psychic connection they had formed in high school. MG finally had a phone plan that allowed her to call back home, only Carrie wasn’t there, and the last time they had talked hadn’t gone so well. The psychic connection was dying the longer they were apart.

  Carrie was moving in with some guy named Nick who got her pregnant, who MG had never even met. What about Ben? They were amazing together–exactly what MG secretly hoped she would have someday. It was stupid, but Carrie moving on with her life, without MG or Ben, almost felt like some sort of betrayal. Like she should have stayed in St. Louis, waiting for either of them to come back to her? Carrie had moved on and MG needed to, too. She and her hookah pipe were going to Moreland.