by Rachel Shane
He breathed heavily. “You’re in luck! We do still have a few press passes I could set aside for you.”
My eyelashes fluttered closed and a slow smile spread across my lips. Success. And after only two tries.
“Bianca Cruz, is it? And…your companion?”
Shit. Mentioning a guy’s name would be an instant erection killer. “We’re trying to figure out which of our fabulous editors will take the gig. But I’ll definitely be there.”
“Great. I’ll actually, um, be at the Will Call box myself,” he said, which sounded like new information to himself as he thought of the idea. “It would be great to meet you.” Translation: and take you back to my bed later tonight? Good news, it’s never been slept in by anyone but me!
I fought back my cringe. “I look forward to it.” I paused one, two… “Oh!” I said as if the thought had just occurred to me. “Just to check, what access do the press passes grant? Backstage and…?”
“Oh.” The tone of his voice dropped like an anchor, along with my stomach. “Not backstage, unfortunately. Just standard concert tickets in the Press Box area. We’re not authorized to give out any other kind of access.”
I dug my fingernails into my palm. The song on the radio made the abrupt switch to a jarring, talkative commercial. “Not even this once?”
“Have you tried Clever Trevor’s publicist? She might be able to—”
“No, that’s okay. The press passes are great.”
It was a start. I’d talked my way into concert tickets with just my voice, but hopefully some cleavage in Matt’s face would convince him to tow us backstage. It was a flimsy plan at best, a night of horror flirting at worst. And if it failed, Harrison would have the fuel to truncate Rho Sig’s life for good by turning us in for the Wake and Bake.
I started to text Harrison the details when I froze. Why was I stopping here? That would be giving up, settling.
As I was flipping through Craigslist to see if I could locate anyone weirdly selling backstage passes—hopefully without a side of murder—the DJ returned to the radio. I ignored him and was focusing on my task, when the words, “…backstage passes for tonight’s sold out show…” landed in my ears. I perked up.
Within seconds I was scrolling through the radio station website. All I needed was a lead, an inkling, someone I might know from my classes. Someone I could coax into giving me two of the radio station’s contest prize stash.
My breath caught at the smiling photo of one of the graveyard shift DJs. Not something cleavage could work on, thankfully, but maybe my connections would. Dale Coleman. Nate Brewster’s ex. The guy who stole my crush out from under me. I could use my actual skills.
Looked like it was time for us to finally have a little chat.
I grabbed my purse without a second thought and strutted all the way to Beta Chi where the campus directory claimed Dale still lived. A rush of nostalgia overtook me as I stood on the porch, my finger perched on the doorbell. So many memories flooded through me: Nate and Corey’s old room and the way my heart beat with a steady pulse each time Nate glanced in my direction. Their destructive, disgusting method of decór, which mostly consisted of piling up dirty plates and watching them teeter. (Not unlike the current situation in my own kitchen.) But now my two best guy friends were relegated to backup status: awkwardness widening a gap between Nate and me and Mackenzie wedging her way into Corey’s life.
The door swung open and a scruffy guy stopped short at the sight of me blocking his path. “Wait.” He squinted at me. “I know you.”
Did he know me from last year and all the time I spent at Nate’s? Or possibly from this morning? I decided the latter was less incriminating. “Wake and bake.”
He pointed a finger gun at me. “That’s right. You killed the party before I got my good high going.” His face hardened. “What do you want?”
“Dale Coleman.” I didn’t wait for an answer. I breezed past him and stomped up the ornate staircase that was rumored to have been donated by a famous celebrity alumni.
After trying a few doors with no success, I found Dale sprawled out on Nate’s old bed. My heart pricked. I used to fantasize that I’d be the one in Nate’s bed but it had always been Dale, last year and now this year.
He startled at the sight of me and dropped his giant headphones onto his blanket.
I extended my hand. “Hi, I’m Bianca Cr—”
“I know who you are.”
“And I know who you are.”
We shared a nod, an unspoken secret, both of our lips still clamped about the truth so obvious, I was an idiot for never seeing it before. I waited a beat, for him to ask if I’d say anything, for him to denounce my integrity before I even got a chance to prove it. But he didn’t ask if I’d tell because maybe he realized I never would. Nate was too important to me. Which meant Dale was too. Nate was out now, but Dale still wasn’t. Or at least, I hadn’t heard any rumors about him other than from the source this morning.
“You here to do his dirty work?” Dale raised a brow, so sculpted and perfect I almost switched allegiances and crushed on him instead.
I lifted my own brow. “Dirty work?”
Dale crossed muscular arms. “To try to win me back?” No trace of hope in his voice, just annoyance.
I squinted at him, confused. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Dale must have taken my silence as confirmation because he added, “Tell him he hurt me. I’m not willing to get hurt again.”
I sank onto Dale’s made bed, the mattress sighing under my weight. Everything about the room seemed neat and tidy and out of place from the world as a whole. The liquor cabinet Corey and Nate proudly showcased now contained stacks of books, a colorful array of every genre. The clothes that had once littered the floor now hung in neat rows in the closet. Even the dust Nate and Corey never bothered to scrub had been banished along with them. “He hurt you?”
Dale gave me a sad little laugh. “So he only told you half the story then?”
I nodded, pulse pounding. Nate lied to me? Maybe I really didn’t know him.
Dale rubbed the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids and gave a heavy sort of sigh that made his broad shoulders dance. “I loved him,” he finally said after a moment.
My stomach flipped, a knife twisting deep into my gut. There was a beat of silence that begged me to fill it. But claiming Nate loved him back seemed inappropriate when I had no idea how far his feelings ran.
“We were even talking about coming out. Together.”
My mind rushed through the timeline, trying to figure out when this had all happened. The hayride? Formal? The night Nate delivered my love eviction notice after I spilled my feelings to him?
“And Nate confessed he loved Corey. Not me.” Dale hitched a sob and then slammed a fist on his desk, the composed studious persona slipping away in an instant. “
I reached over and placed a comforting palm on his shoulder. “If it makes you feel better, I know how you feel. I liked him for a long time. He broke my heart, too.”
Dale let out a small laugh. “Yeah, we both knew. You were kind of obvious about it.”
Fire ignited my cheeks. I’d always prided myself on being coy, getting what I wanted without the other person even realizing I was taking it. But maybe I was delusional.
“He still likes Corey, you know.” Dale drummed his fingers along his gleaming desk. “They moved in together, even after I asked Nate to be my roommate. And then today…Nate couldn’t keep his eyes off him.”
I suspected the roommate part should have contained air quotes. “Nate couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”
“Corey was directly behind me.” Dale straightened, shrugging my hand off his shoulder. “So if Nate sent you to find out if I’m still interested. I’m not. I’m done. I’m—” And then he burst into tears, a weakness so apparent it made my breath rattle. I flung a tissue at him from the box on his desk and he snorted into it with a sad kind of defeat. On the ou
tside, Dale appeared strong and mighty, but thanks to the guy who hurt me, he was crumbling on the inside. I wrapped him in a hug and he dribbled snot all over my shirt.
I had a lot more work to do to get them back together than simply pushing the fates in their direction. I’d planned to tell Dale Nate liked him and consider it a victory, but it wasn’t that simple. They did still have residual feelings, but those feelings were being tempered against the hurt they both caused each other. All the trust they once had was gone.
“I’m sorry to make you upset. That’s really not why I came here.” I stood up, smoothing my shirt down. It wasn’t fair of me to waltz in here to a guy I didn’t know, break his heart all over again, and then demand compensation in return. I turned to leave.
Dale caught my arm. He tilted his head, chiseled cheeks catching a beam of sunlight. “Why did you come then?”
I bit my lip. The words waited behind my tongue but I swallowed them down. “It’s not important.”
He studied me with an intense gaze. “I think it is. Tell me. Please.”
It was the please that ripped the words from my throat. Not a beg, but a hand reached out to help pull me out of the rubble. “I need a favor.” I explained the PR position and the quasi-ultimatum Harrison dangled over my head despite claiming he wasn’t giving me one. The radio station was my last resort.
Dale nodded and held up a finger to indicate one-second. He left the room, cell phone in hand, and I wallowed in both nostalgia and the new information swimming through my veins. Nate had been the one to break up with Dale. So why was he acting like Dale had ruined his life?
A few minutes later Dale returned. “Two backstage passes will be at Will Call. Pretend you won the contest, okay?”
My heart leaped. I’d gotten the passes without any use of cleavage. I grabbed Dale’s hands and squeezed. “Thank you.”
He shrugged, just a nice guy bonding with the other girl caught in the Nate crossfire. Now my mission to get the two back together wasn’t just a personal win. It was the least I could do to repay Dale for his generosity.
A HONK BLEATED IN my driveway at seven on the dot. I boosted my push up bra, readjusted my low cut skirt, and swiped more vaseline across my teeth, a pushed my hips out in a leftover pageant walk a I strutted to the door, earning a whistle from Erin. Sure, I’d vowed not to use my looks to get what I wanted…so it was a good thing I didn’t want Harrison. “Looking sexy, mama!” she called from downward dog position on her yoga mat in the living room. With the other girls spending the night at their boyfriends’ and the lingering effects of this morning’s high parade, Erin had decided on a night in doing her very favorite thing: staying limber while watching reruns of daytime talk shows. For research, of course.
“Sexy?” I asked. “Or intimidating? Because I’m going for the latter.”
“Harrison’s going to want to eat you…r heart out.” She grinned.
My hands flew to my flaming cheeks. “Oh my God. You did not just say that.” Ever since I told her about our kind-of-flirty-but-mostly-snarky conversation in his closet, she’d been teasing me that our animosity toward each other was actually latent sexual tension. She was delusional.
“If you still haven’t tried it, now’s your chance. Enemies with benefits. Make him be the submissive one.” She raised her brow a few times in succession.
Last year during a game of Never Have I Ever, I made the rookie mistake of playing truthfully. On some questions, anyway. So when Erin had raised her cup in a lie and declared she’d never had someone go down on her—I drank. I was the only one who did that round and everyone had made fun of me for being uptight. But that wasn’t it at all.
I wrenched open the door and let the icy fall breeze cool my flaming cheeks. Harrison leaned against his expensive black car, legs crossed at the ankles in a ruggedly aloof way. The pinks and yellows streaking across the sky dropped colorful spotlights on his wind-tossed hair. He’d traded his usual do-no-wrong Mama’s boy outfit for leather pants and a tight-fitted shirt that showed off the bumps of his abs. My breath caught at the sight of him. It was unfair to waste such good looks on someone so unworthy. His brow lifted.
“Leather pants?” My voice cracked so I quickly rushed in with an insult to save face. “You’re not pulling them off.”
A smirk stretched his lips. “Your initial reaction proved otherwise.” He mocked my sucked in gasp.
My cheeks burned. “That was me gasping at how ridiculous you look.” I kept my voice steady, hoping he’d believe my words. Erin’s suggestion flashed in my mind, and I ducked my head to hide by blush.
“Well, I figure we may have to talk our way into these passes, so…might as well show off the goods.” He patted his sculpted ass. “We can’t all use cleavage to get what we want.”
I bristled. His words were a sharp knife plunged into my gut. He had no faith in me. He expected me to fail.
I pulled myself up to my full height and invaded his personal space. His heavy musky cologne attacked my nose as I pressed a finger against his chest. “For your information, tickets and backstage passes are waiting for us at Will Call.” I shot him my most triumphant smile. I’d earned half of that based on quick thinking and connections like a true PR whiz.
His own breath caught and his mouth hung open as I circled around the car and settled into the passenger seat with a satisfied grin. Even the interior was neat and pristine, Pine Sol fresh without a speck of dust.
He plopped beside me and gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. When I glanced over at him, I noticed a gift bag wedged into the center console. I nudged it. “What’s this?”
He flicked his eyes to me before starting the engine. “Open it.”
I dug through the bag and pulled out one of the Clever Trevor tour t-shirts. A woman’s tour t-shirt. I eyed him strangely. An hour before he picked me up, I’d updated my status on the campus social media site to say how much I wanted to complete my Clever Trevor t-shirt tour collection tonight and posted a link to this very shirt. But some asshat had commented that he heard they were all sold out of this particular style.
Harrison kept glancing in my direction, clearly waiting to see my reaction. I had so many questions. How did he get it? Why was it in a gift bag? But instead I asked the most pressing one. “Is this for me?”
“I saw your status.” He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke. “My friend went to the New York City concert last night and picked up a few before they sold out. I bought one off him.”
Still skeptical, I ran my finger over the tour dates on the back, embossed in white. “This better not be a bribe.” Though I couldn’t think of what he might possibly need me to keep my mouth shut about.
“No, Bianca,” he said, sounding serious. “It’s a thank you gift for your help tonight.”
That shut me up. Somewhere buried under all that mischief, Harrison Wagner had a decent bone in his body. I was deeply touched.
He kept his eyes focused on the road ahead and not my stunned expression. I tucked the shirt back into the bag, saving it for tomorrow when I planned to parade around campus wearing it. The silence was too much, like energy crackling around us, so I reached to the touch screen console to turn on the radio. My hand slipped, and I accidentally pressed speed dial number four. The sound of ringing filled the car through the bluetooth, and as Harrison scrambled to hang up, an answering machine picked up on the other end. “You’ve reached the law offices of Levine, Baker, Da—”
The call ended abruptly and Harrison flicked on the radio. A Clever Trevor song invaded the silence as I squinted at him. “Why do you have a lawyer on speed dial in your car?”
His jaw clenched. “I like to be prepared.”
“For…all those times you need someone to bail you out of jail?”
“For none of your business.” He raised the volume on the radio in the universal sign for: this conversation is done. For now, Harrison. For now.
At the venue, people were decked out in a range
of weird outfits in order to impress Clever Trevor or pay homage to his fashion dissonance. Some girls sported tattoos of his face painted on their bare bellies. Harrison shook his head at that. We weaved through the thick crowd, bypassing the layman’s lines to get to the Will Call booth. My feet stopped dead at the site of it. There, pacing back and forth in front of the window was Matt, my arena benefactor, exploded zits on his face and all. His picture on the website gave an air of authority but I must have been catfished. Because he was no authority. He couldn’t be older than, well, me. His name tag announced the truth: intern. A five foot two intern.
Harrison stopped too, squinting at me, as Matt’s head perked up. He gasped. Actually gasped. And not the breathy shocked kind that I had done upon seeing Harrison earlier, but the uncool, uneducated, uncouth kind. The fact that he ran up to me with his hand outstretched, knocking into a girl on the way, proved the same.
“Bianca, right?” He ripped my hand from where it dangled at my side and waved it up and down, all while peering up at me with a goofy love drunk grin, his face directly level with my boobs. Harrison’s six three stature for once seemed like a relief instead of intimidating.
Matt squeezed an envelope filled with our passes as his eyes traced the length of Harrison’s leather pants, swept up past his ab-revealing t-shirt, and landed at the hazel eyes I dared never to look directly at, as if they were the sun. “And you are?”
A smirk danced on Harrison’s lips. “Not who you expected to see, I gather.”
I glared at Harrison before turning my head and pasting a smile on my face for Matt. “This is the editor I told you about.”
“Investigative Journalist,” Harrison corrected.
I stomped on his foot. Hard. He was not helping matters, and I was sure my therapist would approve using my anger in this manner.