by Kim Karr
Peering over his shades, he removes the key from the ignition and glances over at me. “You ready to show me you can get your shit together?”
The question isn’t off the wall. The drive from Vegas to Laguna was spent with me spilling my guts about losing my job, my life, my mind, and even myself, and Cam just listening.
Not judging.
Not commenting.
Just being who he has always been—my friend.
I wanted so badly to talk about Maggie to him, but that promise we made to each other isn’t one I could break, even if I broke a million others. I get that it doesn’t really mean much; she might be with my brother right now for all I know.
Still, it’s all I have to hold onto, except for the memories of how good she felt beneath me, in my arms, and on my tongue.
And yes, I fucked up.
Fucked up big time.
The question is, can I make her see it wasn’t her? That as clichéd as it sounds, it really was me. About me, and my need to succeed. About my own disappointment. About coming down off a high I’d been on for two years and falling so hard, I didn’t know when I hit the ground.
“Well?” Cam smirks.
Snapping out of it, I open my door and look over at him with a grin. “When was the last time you climbed, or got in the ring?”
I don’t bother to wait for an answer because I already know it’s been years. Me, on the other hand, every weekend before my fall from Wall Street I was either climbing or at the boxing gym.
So who do you think is going to show whom what?
Cam might be one of those strong-shouldered dudes with a cocky smile who could definitely break your wrist arm-wrestling if he wanted to. The thing I think he has forgotten is that when I’m sober, I’m faster than him.
Always have been.
Long soul-searching talks forgotten, I’m out to show him I’m back, and boy am I back.
As soon as he turns the corner to the front of his Jeep, I grab hold of him around the neck, jerk him backward, and dig my knee right into his spine. His arms flail and he tries to roll me over his back. Not happening. I apply a little more pressure and hear him grunt.
“Who did it?” I hiss into his ear.
“Did what?” Cam gags for air.
I hold tighter as he twists. “Shot down the Knicks in the 1995 playoffs.”
There’s a twist, a useless attempt to kick my legs out from under me, and even an elbow to the gut. Yet, I still have him in my hold. “Reggie Miller, with back-to-back three-pointers,” he finally gasps.
Releasing the vise hold I have around his neck, Cam falls to one knee on the grass, sucking in air and trying to get his breath back. When he does, he looks up at me. “Fucker.”
“You’re lucky,” I say, grinning, and then put my hand out to help him up. “I was going to ask who shot the craziest game-winning buzzer-beating shot ever, and I bet that would have taken you a lot longer to remember.”
“You know, you really are a sight for sore eyes?” I turn to see my brother leaning against the handlebars of his motorcycle, just shaking his head.
“Yeah, well you’re making my eyes sore now.”
Brooklyn joins us and the three of us laugh, the way we did whenever we all got together growing up, and then we all lock hands, ghetto-style.
Once inside, though, we get serious.
Wearing a pair of Brooklyn’s nylon cargo pants and one of his Dri-FIT T-shirts because all my shit was thrown, like literally, into the back of Cam’s Jeep, I use my hands and feet to find the holds.
I move upward at a pretty good pace considering the amount of alcohol I most likely still have left in my system. The rope tied to the harness around my waist is under the control of my belay partner, who just so happens to be Cam right now.
Hope he doesn’t let me fall if I misstep.
Nah, just kidding; he is belay certified.
He wouldn’t to that.
Would he?
As I ascend the wall, I create slack with the rope, and Cam does his job keeping it tight.
Brooklyn is on a route beside me. “You’re slow today, big brother.”
I shoot him the finger.
He laughs.
“So how’s it been living with a chick?” I ask casually, probing a little for information without making it look like I am.
His fingers tighten around the handle. “Good, man, but I have to say it’s not without its complications.”
I reach a little higher, my body going live wire. “Oh yeah, in what way?” I mentally prepare myself for what he is about to say.
He rises a little and peers down. “Ever since New Year’s she’s been really fucking moody. Always making comments about the chicks I’m hanging out with and never going out anymore. You know, I think she might have a crush on me.”
Jealousy swims in my veins. I look up, trying to keep my temperament at bay. “By the looks of things last night on that table, it’s you, little brother, that has the crush.”
“Me, hell no! That’s just the way we roll. Besides, she is not my type at all. A little too headstrong, if you know what I mean?”
It takes everything I have to not burst out laughing. And I mean everything. “Yeah, chicks are complicated,” I say straight-faced, and then turn my attention back to the climb with the biggest fucking smile on my face. Talk about wires being crossed. Neither of them actually likes the other and both think they do.
It truly is a laugh-out-loud moment.
Within minutes, Brooklyn is about three feet higher than me, the little shit is moving faster than me just to show me up.
The truth is with each movement my mind is wandering farther and farther away from the climb.
Have you ever heard the phrase “The eyes are the mirror to the soul”?
People usually say this when they can see pain, anger, or confusion in somebody else’s eyes.
But what if you see yourself in someone else’s stare?
From the moment I looked into Maggie May’s gaze on New Year’s Eve, I knew she was trouble.
That I was in trouble.
Like deep, deep trouble.
It wasn’t her name, the song, or her belief that it somehow reflects who she is, as if the song was written about her even though she hadn’t been born yet.
It wasn’t the fact that she is attractive as hell. Sure, I’m a guy, but attraction I can fight.
It was the look in her eyes—the one that matched mine.
A hunger that is never quite satisfied.
An itch incapable of being scratched.
A need so deep, no one can ever fill it.
Ignoring it, avoiding those eyes, would have been my best course of action considering the fuck-up that my life is right now. But no, I had to agree to come to California, to take on this job on a trial basis, and without knowing I had agreed to work with her. I can’t believe who she worked for never came up in conversation those three days we talked, but then again, it was all about the sex.
Now who’s screwed?
The whole ride over here today I tried to discourage Cam. Told him I was a big boy and could learn the ropes on my own.
Maggie is anything but ready to work with me—shit, she doesn’t even want to look at me. And I get it. But Cam and his brilliant ideas.
The stubborn fucker wouldn’t back down.
As soon as I suggested I do this on my own, I had to listen to how Maggie is the best person to introduce me to the company. How she loves her job, and how well she knows men’s fashion. How smart and dedicated she is. Blah, blah, blah.
Does he not see the very basic issue here? She’s a woman and I’m a man, and nothing but trouble can come from the two of us working together, especially since she hates me.
I mean, have you ever felt a lust so strong that it threatens to topple the wall you’ve very neatly built around yourself?
If the thought isn’t pretty, the reality can only be ten times worse.
Right?
&nb
sp; Just then my foot slips and I start to fall.
Fanfuckingtastic.
Bouncing midair, I glare down at my belay partner.
“Hey Keen,” comes Cam’s smart mouth.
“Yeah,” I bark.
“Payback is a bitch,” he says, letting me hang like a wrecking ball in the middle of the gym.
“Fucker,” I mutter.
Brooklyn peers down at me from the top of the wall. “Losing your edge, big brother?”
My head snaps in his direction. “No, little brother, not at all—I’m just warming up.”
Not even close. My edge. “Yes, my edge is something I plan on keeping for a long time. A very long time, Maggie,” I mumble to myself.
And that’s something to hold onto.
12
RED
Maggie
When apprehension hits you like a ton of bricks, the only way to combat it is with some good food for the soul. And nothing screams remedy like a wheatgrass shot or two, although looking at the face Makayla is making as she finishes hers, I think she begs to differ.
San Shi Go is a Japanese restaurant located in an avocado-green building not that far from where we live, which is why I insisted we walk, and that I meet her just beyond Ryan Gerhardt’s house. Ryan is the famous mystery novelist who lives in the large, ultramodern beach house next door to me with his wife and two Yorkies.
Even though Keen is staying with Makayla and Cam, who live on the other side of me, I didn’t want to chance her asking me to swing by and get her, or running into him outside. Or anywhere, for that matter.
It was the safest way. I just can’t see his face or that “Maggie, I’m right here” look without letting my wall down a little.
You know?
It seems so easy to say I hate him, but then I see him, and I don’t. I don’t hate him. I miss him. I want him. I just want him. And I shouldn’t. Not after what he did to me.
“I’m not really understanding the problem here,” Makayla says around a mouthful of the plain chicken and rice she special-ordered.
Yesterday she was gone all day. And this morning she and Cam took Keen out to breakfast, so tonight is the first chance I’ve gotten to talk with her, and even so, she can’t possibly understand because I have yet to speak the whole truth, which is why I take a moment to sidetrack the conversation. “And how could you when you look so cute with rice falling out of your mouth,” I tell her.
She laughs and dabs up the fallen pieces with her napkin. “It’s hard to eat.”
Before dipping a piece of spicy broccoli into the wasabi mixture, I point my chopsticks at her. “That’s because it has no substance to it.”
“It’s sticky,” she protests, pouring one of the sauces all over her food and stirring it around on her plate.
“That’s way too much,” I laugh and then get back on track. “How do you not get it?” I ask. “He and me. Him and I. We have to spend at least the next two weeks together. Just shoot me.”
Pointing her chopsticks at me, which by the way are stained with so much soy sauce that I have to wonder how she will taste anything, she tries to understand. “And that is a problem because he’s an arrogant ass and you want nothing to do with him.”
I stop with a piece of vegetable halfway to my mouth. “See! You do understand.”
There—I didn’t have to tell her about our night, and how he led me on, and how I let him when I never do that, and then how he dumped me afterward. I was able to omit that whole part and she still came to the same conclusion—that he’s an arrogant ass.
She sets her chopsticks down and fixes me with a typical Makayla stare—raised brows, narrowed eyes, and pouty lips. She got that from me, by the way. “You talked to him for what, all of about fifteen minutes almost two months ago, and maybe ten minutes yesterday morning, and you got that opinion from not even thirty minutes of conversation?”
Not quite, but it has to work for now. I made a promise and for some reason I can’t break it, even though I owe him nothing. “Yes. And don’t tell Cam,” I add, with another point of my chopstick.
She laughs so loud the other diners turn their heads and stare. “Uh…no, I don’t think I’ll tell him that. He’s more of a fact guy, you know. Like if I were to tell him Keen made a move on you and you said no, but he won’t let up, and you won’t give in since you aren’t interested in him because you’re still hung up on Brooklyn, and now he’s making your life miserable, Cam might see why you’d think the way you do, but from a conversation, not so much.”
“Wait. What?”
“Sorry, but I had to get that out. I saw the men’s clothes in your room New Year’s morning. And when I knocked on Brooklyn’s door, he wasn’t in there. I know he stayed in your room. I’ve been waiting for you to tell me, but obviously neither of you is going to come clean.”
Shocked, I stare at her. I want to laugh. Really I do. Life would be much easier if I’d fucked the other brother because these feelings I have wouldn’t be there, and I’d be able to move on.
Just then my cell buzzes with a message. The number is unfamiliar, but the message is crystal clear.
Unknown Caller: I’ll pick you up at 7 a.m. sharp.
Me: Who is this?
Okay, so I know who it is, and I’m being a little immature.
Unknown Caller: Maggie, it’s Keen.
Me: Oh. Sorry, the number is unfamiliar. But since I’m showing you around tomorrow, I’ll pick you up at 7 a.m. sharp.
Unknown Caller: No, I’m driving.
Me: No, I am.
Once there is no further response from him, which isn’t unexpected, I put the Brooklyn conversation on the back burner and hold out my phone for Makayla to see. “Here, proof of what I’m trying to tell you. He is an arrogant ass.”
She takes it and after she reads it with a smirk on her face, she starts tapping the keyboard.
“What are you doing?”
“Adding him to your contacts.”
Reaching for it, she holds it tighter. “You don’t have to do that,” I tell her. “I don’t plan on talking to him much.”
Besides, Keen Masters isn’t the name I’d be assigning him.
Her laugh is loud enough to garner the attention of the whole restaurant—again.
“It’s not funny. I’m not going to let him drive tomorrow.”
She hands me back my phone. “Okay, then you drive. But you always say how much you hate the commute, which is why you stay at your mother’s, so why not let him drive?”
Horrified, I look at her dumbfounded. “Because then he wins.”
“Bingo.” She winks, setting her napkin on her plate of mostly uneaten food.
Flabbergasted, all I can do is sputter my lips as I covertly change his name to Asshole, for the second time in my life. At least he got a new phone number or Asshole would have popped up when he texted me minutes ago, and then I’d have had some explaining to do.
Makayla raises a brow again. “Maggie, you know I love you, and that I am always on your side, but it really isn’t that hard to figure out what is going on here.”
“And what do you think that is?”
“I’m going to be honest with you. Keen is the male version of you. You are the female version of Keen. You clash because you’re so much alike. That’s why I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Besides, he’s a really great guy going through a hard time.”
Hard time?
“What kind of hard time?” I interrupt.
She shrugs. “I don’t know everything, but apparently he was fired from his job and kind of went off the deep end.”
My entire body starts to shake. His job was his life. “Why? When?”
“All I know is it happened just a couple of days after we left New York. No one realized it for weeks. Then late last week his mother got a call that he was in Vegas, and sent Brooklyn to get him. I told you that yesterday.”
“You did?”
She laughs. “Well, you were in you
r own world over the party details. Anyway, Cam truly respects and trusts Keen. I have no doubt that he will be professional, and that you will too. At the end of each day you can both go home to your own places and that will be that. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll like each other enough to go for a drink and talk about all your conquests. Like I said, I just don’t see the problem.”
Reaching for a second wheatgrass shot, I don’t know what concerns me more: the fact that my best friend thinks Keen Masters and I come from the same mold, or that she doesn’t see Keen Masters as a problem…
Because honestly—both terrify the hell out of me.
13
I KNEW YOU WERE TROUBLE
Maggie
The clock ticks six fifty-five and there is no sign of Keen Masters.
Brooklyn took him out last night to the Underground and he isn’t home yet. Obviously Brooklyn scored at the dance club. And I’d bet every fish cracker in Laguna Beach that his brother did too. He’s probably in bed with some bimbo right now while I’m waiting for him in my grown-up clothes ready to do grown-up things.
Six fifty-six. I check the big silver zipper in the back of my black shift dress to make certain it is all the way up. This one I borrowed from Makayla last night once I knew the coast was clear at her house. For no reason, really, other than I was tired of skirts, and skirts and blouses are the only clothing pieces my mother owns.
Six fifty-seven. Sighing, I fiddle with the low bun I rolled my hair up in and stare out the window.
Six fifty-eight. I bet a cab pulls up within the minute and he gets out in those insanely sexy black jeans of his from Friday night, smelling like sex and asking me to wait while he takes a quick shower.
That is so not happening. He can get in my car smelling like sex or stay home on his first day on the job.
I really don’t care.
He can explain to Cam why. Or better yet, I can.
A quick glance at my watch alerts me it is six fifty-nine. Determined to not be late, I grab my purse, my keys, my bag with a change of clothes for the party tonight—oh, and my pride, you know, in case I need it.