Reading Between the Lines

by Katrina Abbott

  “So I’m sure you’re getting better. You couldn’t not get better, right?”

  “Nice double-negative there, Mr. Writer.”

  He chuckled. “Busted. But tell me...” his voice got low and trailed off.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you wear those beige pants with the knee patches and the high boots?”

  A laugh erupted from me. Apparently I wasn’t the only one to appreciate equestrian attire. “Why would you ask such a question?”

  “I’m just trying to picture the whole experience.”

  “Right. The whole experience. You didn’t ask about the color of my horse.”

  “I don’t want to make out with your horse,” he said without hesitation.

  “Pervert.”

  “Guilty,” he said, obviously unashamed. “So, do you? Please tell me you do.”

  I laughed again. “Yes. I do.”

  If it was possible, his voice got even lower and smoother. “Are you wearing them now?”

  I looked down at my pajama shorts and bare feet. “Of course,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I left them on after practice knowing you’d be calling. They’re really tight, though. I can’t wait to get out of them.”

  “And what about the whip. Do you have one of those?”

  “Of course,” I said in a low voice, kind of loving how powerful I suddenly felt.

  He groaned into the phone. “You’re killing me.”

  Suddenly there was a knock at the door. “Brooklyn? Can I get in there?”

  I pressed the phone to my shoulder so as to not deafen Jared and yelled, “Out in a sec,” to Emmie. I rubbed the last of the lotion into the skin of my right calf and stood up. “Sorry,” I said to Jared, trying not to ruin the moment. “So...what do you have on?”

  “A lamp.”

  I snorted. “You’re funny.”

  “What? That’s not sexy?”

  “Very,” I said as I opened the bathroom door and nodded at Emmie as we traded rooms. “Are you wearing the shade on your head or...er...other places.”

  “I’m not wearing the lamp. Unless you’re into that.”

  “No, I can’t say I’ve had too many lampshade fantasies.”

  “But you do have fantasies?” he asked in a suddenly very serious voice, making me feel like maybe I was in over my head with this conversation. We were dating, but this felt just a bit too intimate, too soon.

  “Umm,” I said, freezing on my way to climbing into bed.

  There was a long silence. “Sorry, Brooklyn. I shouldn’t have gone there.”

  I tucked my feet under the covers. “It’s okay. It’s just...”

  “Too soon?”

  “Too soon,” I said, thankful he seemed to understand.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “I just really like you and I guess...”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, my heart fluttering at the ‘I just really like you’ comment. “I’m not very experienced at this stuff.”

  “What stuff? Lampshade fetishes?”

  See? This is one of the things I really liked about him. I laughed. “Thanks for understanding.”

  “Of course,” he said without hesitation. “Anyway, I’m not exactly a Romeo, you know,” he added.

  I found that hard to believe when he looked like he did and had grown up in Hollywood. He’d probably lost his virginity at a scandalously young age, but I wasn’t about to bring that up—we weren’t quite there yet. Though I was curious. I blushed as I wondered if it was in his manuscript. Good thing he couldn’t see me.

  Pulling the covers up to my chin and angling the phone against my ear, I yawned as I tried to think of something else for us to talk about and realized halfway through that I’d done it right into the phone. “Oh, sorry,” I said. “That was rude.”

  “What’s rude is keeping you up. I’ll let you go. I just wanted to hear your voice to hold me over until tomorrow.”

  “Mmmm,” I said, starting to nod off.

  “Don’t forget to hang up, sleepy girl.”

  “Okay,” I muttered. “Goodnight, Jared.”

  I think he said goodnight, but I was pretty much already asleep.

  So That's Awkward

  Saturday morning was my one day to sleep in and then catch up on homework.

  Usually.

  Until Robert showed up and threw my whole schedule out the window. It started with a text at seven. I was pretty much awake, dozing and allowing myself the luxury of staying in bed, but still didn’t appreciate the early interruption.

  Emmie, also a strong supporter of the Saturday morning sleep-in, groaned. “Tell Jared to get lost.”

  “It’s not Jared,” I said, my voice thick with sleep as I squinted at my phone. “It’s my stupid brother.”

  “What the hell?” the rustling of sheets and accompanying big sigh signaled Emmie’s exit from her bed. She padded away toward the bathroom and closed the door loudly enough that the girls in the next room over were going to be none too pleased with us.

  Robert wanted me to come downstairs to meet him in the lounge. What for? I texted back.

  Hang out, show me around. We should talk.

  I poked at the phone: Later. More sleep first.

  I’ll text you in an hour after a jog.

  Fine.

  Love you, little sister.

  Hate you, big brother.

  He sent me back a winky face.

  Brothers.

  But now that I had engaged my brain enough to have a text conversation, I knew I wasn’t getting back to sleep no matter what happened. Throwing off the covers, I got out of bed and waited for Emmie to get out of the bathroom, dancing a little in place.

  She came out a few minutes later. “I haven’t even met your brother yet, but he’s not making a very good impression,” she said. “Did he have a good excuse, at least?”

  “No,” I said stepping around her so I could get into the bathroom. “But he just got here yesterday. I’ll let him know Saturday mornings are off limits.”

  My phone sounded again and both Emmie and I rolled our eyes. “I’m desperate for a pee,” I said, pointing at the phone on my nightstand. “Can you please text him back and tell him to sod off? Feel free to pretend you’re me.”

  “With pleasure,” she said as I ducked into the bathroom.

  When I came out a few minutes later, Emmie was standing there holding my phone, staring at it.

  “Is he giving you a hard time?” I asked.

  She looked up at me. “It wasn’t him.”

  “Jared’s up early,” I said, walking toward her with my hand out to take my phone so I could text him back. I thought it was cute that he was up and already thinking about me, even though we’d see each other after lunch.

  She shook her head, her face serious, her brow furrowed. “Not him, either.”

  I swallowed, the look on her face making me very nervous. None of my friends knew about that kiss in the supply closet. Not that they would have judged me (much), but it was so complicated, especially now with Jared and me being official. “Brady?”

  She put the phone in my palm; it was warm from her hand. “Dave. He says he needs to see you.”

  We stared at each other for a long moment that seemed to stretch out into eternity before I shrugged, dropped my eyes and said, “After the other night, we’ll need to catch up on getting the food drive sorted.”

  “Right,” she said.

  I looked down at the screen. Need to see you. Can I come today? He’d sent.

  I had half a second to decide. Ok, come with Jared after lunch. We can work on food drive. I had a feeling that was not what he had in mind, but I couldn’t deal with this now. Not with Emmie standing right there and my brain barely functioning.

  As soon as I finished typing back to him, I turned the sound off and put the phone on my nightstand before turning to Emmie. “You will help with the food drive, won’t you?” I added stupidly.

  Emmie pursed her lips. “I don’t kno
w. It might be weird.”

  Might be weird? It would definitely be weird.

  “No it won’t,” I said, imagining myself as an Egyptian queen on a boat floating down denial river. I even added a “Don’t be silly,” to make it that much more ridiculous.

  “I’ll see,” she said noncommittally. Which I hoped meant no. But I really could use her help with the drive. Dave and I hadn’t had a chance to come up with a plan and we needed to figure out how to top last year’s tally of food and money donations for the local food bank. Charity events were definitely Emmie’s forte.

  She sat down on her bed and nodded toward mine, so I got in, pulling the covers over my legs; if I couldn’t get back to sleep, I may as well at least be comfortable.

  “Had you come up with anything when you thought you were going to be running the drive?” I asked. It would be kind of crappy to steal her ideas, but knowing Emmie, she probably wouldn’t care, as long as the event was successful. And since she’d started the school year thinking the food drive would be her event, she had to have given it some thought.

  A slow smile spread across her face. A slow wicked smile.

  “What? What does that mean?” I asked, a little afraid of that smile because I’d already seen a glimpse of what Emmie was capable of as far as putting plans together. At least she used her powers for good. Most of the time.

  “Last year we just stood outside of the grocery store and asked for donations, which was okay, but then a couple of the firefighters from the station next door came over to see what we were doing. Suddenly we got a ton more donations when they started to help. So I was thinking that if we partnered with them, we could really make a killing.”

  I just stared at her blinking until I was able to form a sentence. “So you’re going to objectify a bunch of firefighters to raise donations?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I crossed my arms. “That doesn’t strike you as sexist?”

  “Not if you take Chelly with you and dress her up—then you’d have all your bases covered.” She gave me a once-over look. “And it wouldn’t kill you to wear something low-cut and put on some makeup.”

  “So you’re going to be an equal opportunity objectifier?”

  “No,” she said with a decisive shake of her head. “You are. This is your project, remember?”

  “And where will all the Westwood guys be in all of this?”

  She rolled her eyes. “They have short attention spans. The ones that even showed up last year goofed off and were no help.”

  “Even Dave?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t as soon as his name was out of my mouth.

  She looked up, thinking before she said, “No, I think he was actually helpful. But the rest of them sort of scattered. Anyway, soccer moms will be much more interested in firefighters than teenage boys.”

  I expected that much was true.

  She leaned over with a grunt, reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a business card which she handed to me. It had the fire department’s logo on it. “The chief’s already on board. Tell him you’ve taken over for me.”

  “What about Dave? You think he’s going to be into this whole fire department thing?”

  She shrugged. “Has he come up with something better?”

  “Nope.”

  “Well then? It’s next weekend, isn’t it?”

  Good point. I was about to say as much when my phone vibrated.

  “Ugh, who is it now?”

  “Robert, bugging me to meet him downstairs again.”

  What happened to an hour? I texted.

  I lied. Come on.

  Did you call Mom?

  Yes. Now get ur ass out of bed.

  Fine. Give me 10.

  Hey, he texted after I threw the covers off again. Do you have any cute friends you can bring? :)

  I looked at Emmie who had grabbed her own phone and was texting with whoever. She was definitely cute with her pixie cut hair that she’d dyed raven black for the masquerade ball, and her sweet face and blue eyes. But would she be interested in my brother? He sure wasn’t the type she’d talked about wanting—a guy who had a bit of bad boy in him, unless you considered someone who flunked out of Yale a bad boy. More like stupid boy. Which wasn’t him, either. Someday he was going to have to tell me what really happened. But until then did I want to be setting up my brother with her or any other of my friends?

  I texted him back: nope.

  The Two Dollar Tour

  Despite my protest, Emmie did come down with me to meet my brother. I warned her on the way down the stairs that he’d asked me to bring a cute friend, but she waved me off and told me she could handle him. I had no doubt she was right, but had felt I needed her to know he was probably going to assume I was bringing her for him. Which I really wasn’t—the last thing I needed was more complications. My own love life was complicated enough, thank you very much.

  “It’s all good,” Emmie said. “I won’t give him any signals or anything, but I want to meet him. Is he hot?”

  “You’re asking me if my brother is hot? Seriously, Emmie?”

  “I’m not asking you if you would date him, Brooklyn. You can’t be objective?”

  “No,” I said as we got to the second floor landing. “And anyway, didn’t you just break up with Dave like five seconds ago? Shouldn’t you be sad or at least pretending to be sad?”

  She glanced over at me, all traces of her smile gone. “I am sad. Truly, Brooklyn. I hated hurting him. But I guess I have to admit I’m relieved it’s over. I feel horrible about stringing him along, but I knew even from the first time I saw him this year that something was different. I just wasn’t sure what. Or maybe I thought it would get better—we’d get back to the way we were last year.” She shrugged. “I guess not.”

  She could have saved me a whole lot of guilt and heartache if she’d broken up with him right away (or better yet, last year before I’d ever met him) but there was nothing for it now. Maybe by the end of the year, she’d give me her blessing to date him. Although I wasn’t exactly sure of the statute of limitations on dating a roommate’s ex. It’s not like I was about to bring it up to find out, either.

  And anyway, I was with Jared, I reminded myself.

  Why did I have to remind myself?

  We got to the first floor lounge which was empty due to the early hour and every normal girl being still in bed. Empty except for my brother who wasn’t even wearing workout clothes nor did he look freshly showered, so obviously he’d been lying about going for a jog. Figures.

  Robert was sitting at a table with two to-go cups in front of him as we walked through the doorway. He stood up, frowning as he looked from me to Emmie and then back again.

  She hummed appreciatively, just loud enough for me to hear. Ugh.

  “Oh, hi,” he said to my roommate. “I didn’t realize...” he nodded at the coffees.

  “It’s okay,” Emmie said back, giving him a big smile. “I invited myself. Emmeline Somerville,” she said, extending an elegant hand toward my brother.

  “Rob Prescott,” he said with a polite nod and a very charming smile, reminding me how pretty much all my girlfriends who’d ever met him had had major crushes on him. And now he was going to be working here. Awesome.

  “How do you take yours?” he asked, still standing and staring at her like I wasn’t even there. I wanted to clear my throat to interrupt him, but didn’t; I’d never admit it, but it was kind of entertaining to see him attempt to flirt with her. He’d always been popular with girls, but I’d never really seen him operate; until now, all my friends had been way too young for him.

  Emmie cocked her head and asked, “What’s that?”

  “Coffee,” Robert said.

  “Oh. Same as Brooklyn,” Emmie said with a laugh, her voice sweet as sugar.

  Predictably, Robert offered her the coffee he’d brought for me.

  “Hey!” I said.

  Robert looked at me like I was the one who was being ridiculous
. “What, B?”

  With a broad smile, Emmie waved off the coffee, effectively saving our friendship. “It’s okay,” she said to Robert. “I need some food anyway. I just walked down with Brooklyn on my way to the dining room; I’ll leave you two to catch up.”

  “Sit with us,” Robert said, not missing a beat as he pulled out a chair. He was charm personified.

  She looked from him to me as though asking if I minded. I guess I didn’t, as long as she kept her hands off my coffee, so I shrugged.

  Emmie dropped lightly in the chair. “So,” she said as Robert and I took our seats. “Brooklyn tells me you’re working here now.”

  He took a sip of his own drink and nodded. “Yeah. For now. I’m taking a year off from school.”

  “He flunked out,” I corrected, regretting it as soon as it was out of my mouth. It seemed whenever I was around my brother, I sort of reverted back to what I was like when we lived together and were at each others’ throats. Maybe I needed to work on that; it was hardly mature.

  He narrowed his eyes at me and then looked at Emmie. “It got really intense and I wasn’t prepared for it. I’m going back in the fall. This is good for me anyway,” he said, spreading his arms around. “It’s a nice campus and being close to my baby sister is always a treat,” he said, only sort of sarcastically.

  Still, I snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  Emmie kicked me under the table. Not hard, but it was enough to remind me I was being a bitch.

  I was about to apologize when Robert cocked his head and said, “So, B. Want to tell me about what’s going on between you and your coach?”

  Direct hit. I supposed I deserved that.

  “Brady?” Emmie’s head snapped toward me and I could feel her eyes boring into the side of my head. Crap. I didn’t want anyone to know about that kiss. Things were so much more complicated when people knew things. And with the thing between Brady and I being an impossible situation, the last thing I wanted was my friends bringing it up all the time. It was hard enough just going to practice almost every day.

  “Nothing,” I said, my face heating up to contradict my total lie.

  “Liar,” Robert said.

  “Nothing’s going on. I told you. He’s just my coach,” I said, trying to sound breezy.