She opened her mouth again, and I worried she was going to give me a speech about how Liam had a girlfriend and I would be no better than Amber if I hooked up with him again. “Please don’t,” I said. “Not right now. Just get the number. I promise you can try to talk me out of it later.”
Emma gave a sigh of resignation. “I will ask, but you cannot text him tonight,” she said. “Your head’s not on straight, and you’ve been exhausted all week. What you need to do is change your passwords, go into my bathroom, take a long, hot shower, and climb into my bed. I have an air mattress that I can pop up for the night.”
“Look at you, being decisive.” For a moment, my tears were forgotten.
“Oh please,” Emma rolled her eyes. “I’m just treating you like one of my students. Now get to it. I’ll text Oliver, and then I’ll email the school and tell them we both got food poisoning and can’t make it in tomorrow. After what they served us in the cafeteria today, I have no doubt they’ll believe it.”
I only had two bank accounts I shared with Ben. Within three minutes, I had changed the passwords on both. On the first I changed the password to “ImGonnaFuckLiam” and on the second, I changed the password to “GonnaScrewLiamsBrainsOut.” I knew Ben would never guess either one.
Liam
Oliver was texting furiously, which pissed me off because Star Wars was on, and not only did we watch it together every Halloween, but last year, he had paused the movie and given me a twenty-minute lecture for sending one goodnight text to Nicole. This year, I’d made sure to text her before the movie. I never heard back, but I figured she was busy studying again.
This time, it was me who paused the movie. “I gotta break up with this girl,” I said.
“This is what I’ve been saying.” Oliver didn’t look up from his phone.
“It’s just not working.” I sighed.
“Right. Not working. Mm hmm,” Oliver mumbled.
I rolled my eyes. “Emma again?”
“Yeah. I’m trying to get her to forgive me for the whole fight thing.”
“You mean, the whole, going ape-shit and breaking her ex-boyfriend’s nose?” I said.
“He’s not her ex.” Oliver shot back.
“Didn’t you invent the app that allows you to just speak your texts?” I wondered. “Why bother typing?”
He finally looked up. “I perfected speech to text. I didn’t invent it. I just invented the algorithm that better understands the hundreds of accents and dialects of the American people.”
“This again,” I said. “Oliver, there are not hundreds of accents in America.
“Eastern New England, Brooklyn, Bronx, Long Island, Boston, Mid Atlantic, Coastal Southern, Inland Southern, Appalachian, Florida Panhandle.” He ticked off on his fingers. “And that’s just a few on this coast. Not to mention the—”
“I get it. I get it,” I said, waving a hand at him this time. “Getting back to Nicole.”
“Do it. Do it quickly. Nicole lives hours away. You hardly ever see her. Like you keep telling me, it’s not a real relationship anymore. I hate to tell you this, man. I really do. But you and I both know you haven’t been happy. Not for a long time.”
“I guess I didn’t realize that until…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Until you saw Katie at the party?” he finished for me.
“Yeah,” I admitted, leaning back into the couch. “She was gorgeous. And, I didn’t get to talk to her for that long, but she seemed sweet, too.”
“Something your girlfriend is not,” Oliver said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I sat straight up, glaring at him. I might be lukewarm on Nicole, but we’d been going out for three years. He couldn’t talk about her like that.
“It means that Nikki is kind of uptight,” he hedged.
“Uptight?”
“You know what I mean. I’m not saying anything here you haven’t told to me at least twenty times yourself. She’s ambitious, which would be fine, but she tromps on every person she can, trying to make her way to the top.”
I relaxed back into the couch. “Yeah. You’re not wrong,” I acknowledged.
“Also, she has no sense of humor. She doesn’t even laugh. If she thinks something’s funny, she says, ‘Huh. That’s interesting.’ Or ‘You’re too funny.’ I have known that girl as long as you have, and in the five years I’ve known her, I’ve never heard her laugh once.”
“That can’t be true,” I said. As I thought back, and racked my brain trying to think of one time when she had laughed, I could not come up with anything. The only thing I could think of was the way Katie laughed when I told her I broke my diet at the party—that gentle, light laugh that sounded almost like windchimes tinkling in a breeze. Something fluttered in my stomach again.
“Can’t think of anything, can you?” Oliver smiled smugly.
“No,” I lied.
“Well, if I’m being honest, those aren’t the reasons I don’t care for your girlfriend,” he said. “The real reason is she called me a troll.”
“What?” I sat bolt upright again.
He finally put down his phone and looked at me. “When we first met, we were all friends, right?”
“Yeah. I was seeing a few girls here and there, and Nicole was dating Tom. But we all hung out together— in the quad, the cafeteria, study groups, parties, whatever.” I thought of those days as the “good old days” with Nicole.
Oliver sighed. “I know you think of that time as the good old days,” he said, seeming to read my mind, “but as soon as you hired Jim as your personal trainer and started getting into shape, Nikki changed. I know her ex Tom might have been a cheater, but she set your eye on you and decided to conquer you just like she’d conquered every test in school.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.” I had met Becca first. She and Nicole were roommates. I quickly realized Nicole had a crush on me, and it flattered me that she’d made the first move. Most girls I had known in high school and college were too shy, and I could never tell exactly what they wanted.
“Being a little assertive wouldn’t be a bad thing, except that she cornered me in the library one day and told me I was a ‘troll’ who was ‘holding you back’ and I’d never be anything more than ‘the best friend of the guy who gets the girl.’”
I winced. This was the same thought I’d had about Emma the other day. Was that who I was inside? A judgmental asshole? And what did it say about Nicole that she’d not only had the thought, but said those horrible things to my best friend?
Oliver’s phone buzzed as another text came in. “Holy shit!”
“Did Emma finally come around?” I reached for the remote. My mind was filled with too many conflicting thoughts, and Star Wars wasn’t going to watch itself.
“You’re not going to want to do that.” Oliver motioned to the TV. “At least I don’t think so. Emma just texted me that Katie broke up with Ben tonight. And she wants your number.”
Katie
The morning after the breakup, Emma came into her bedroom, gently shook me awake, and handed me a cup of coffee. My head was pounding, something that often happens when I cry too hard. The light from the window seemed to shoot right into my tired eyes.
“What time is it?” I yawned.
“Eight,” she said. “I would have let you sleep in longer, but Ben texted you to say he’s coming back for his stuff at nine, and I thought you’d want to be there.”
“He told me not to,” I said.
Emma bit her lower lip. “Right.”
“But?” I drew out the word before taking a sip of the steaming, hot coffee.
“But are you really going to listen to him?”
“I don’t know.” I put the mug onto the side table and slid back down under Emma’s down comforter.
“He might take some of your stuff, too.”
“Who cares?” I rolled over. I hadn’t really dated anyone seriously in high school, and Ben was the first guy I’d gone out with in col
lege—the first and only guy I’d ever slept with. I thought we’d be getting engaged in maybe a year or so. My whole life was falling apart. What did I care if he took something like the TV with him when he left?
“You really don’t care?” Emma sounded concerned. “Even about your books?”
I rolled back over to face her. “You don’t think he’d take my books, do you? They’re kids’ books. He barely even reads the business section of the paper.”
“They’re kids’ books, but some of them are valuable, aren’t they?”
They were. When my grandmother passed away, she gave much of her estate to my cousins, but knowing my love of children and my love of books, she left a fairly sizeable and eclectic collection of first-editions to me. Many of them were signed, including C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, H.A. Rey’s Curious George, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and, my prized possession, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
I jumped out of bed. “I don’t think Ben would touch them, Emma. I could charge him with theft, if he did. But…” I trailed off, and tears came to my eyes again.
“But, if you can’t trust him with your friends, you can’t trust him with your money or your possessions, either.” Emma said.
I moved to pull on my jeans, but faltered. “Do you think Amber will be there, too?”
She shook her head. “I called the school to confirm they got my email last night. Janet, in the front office answered, and I asked whether Amber had come in. I said, ‘She wasn’t feeling well either. Did she call in today?’ Janet said she saw Amber taking her class to gym just a few minutes before I phoned. So, no worries on that front.”
“You’re a smart girl, Emma.” I stepped into my jeans. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here for me.”
I ran a brush through my hair and slapped on some makeup. Because fuck Ben if he thought I was going to show up to the apartment crying and looking like a mess.
When we pulled up to the complex, Ben’s car was already parked in front of the door. Two suitcases were sitting in the back seat, and a black trash bag took up the passenger’s side.
Ben came out, carrying another trash bag and stopped halfway down the sidewalk when he saw us. Looking at the blue eyes that had so often gazed into mine made a pain rip through my chest. I was even going to miss his crooked nose, I realized. Emma reached out and pat my shoulder. I took a shuddering breath, trying not to cry all over again.
“Hey,” Ben said. His voice was softer than I’d heard it be in months. He put the bag down and came over to us.
“Hey,” I said. I turned to my friend. “Emma, can you give us a few minutes?”
She looked dubious, but nodded and walked back to the car.
“I’m sorry about the texts last night,” he started.
“Just the texts?” Tears came to my eyes, and my voice warbled.
“Sorry about everything. But the texts…” Ben paused, “Amber told me you cheated on me the night of Becca’s party. I was angry. Then, Amber said that since you were so angry after catching us, you might go postal and do something crazy. I thought you might drain all the money from our bank accounts or set my shit on fire or something.”
“Does that sound like me?” I wiped a tear from my eye.
“No.” Ben looked at his feet.
“So, you slept with Amber because she told you I cheated? I kissed a guy at a party, Ben. I had a few drinks. We played Seven Minutes in Heaven, just like we do every year. He and made out. If I’m being completely honest, we did a little bit more than make out. He put his hands on my chest. But that’s it.” That wasn’t it, but after what I’d seen, I didn’t feel like I owed Ben a full explanation.
He winced. “I don’t want to hear all the details. I don’t need to picture—”
“Picture me riding his dick the way I saw Amber riding yours the other night?” I snapped.
“I’m sorry about that, too.”
“Sorry that you did it, or sorry that you got caught?”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled.
“You don’t know. Right. So, let me ask you one more time. Did you sleep with her because you thought I cheated on you?”
“No.” He looked at his feet again.
“Has this been going on the whole time?” My hand flew to my heart. “The whole time we’ve been together?”
“No!” Ben finally moved his brown eyes up to meet mine. “No. Once in college. Once. A few days after we went on our first date—before you and I even slept together.”
“So, we went out. I started falling for you, and then you had sex with my best friend?” I felt like I was going to be sick. Like our whole relationship was built on a lie.
“Amber and I got drunk together. There was a party. You went home for the weekend. Amber and I ended up hooking up. She wasn’t the kind of girl I wanted to date.”
“You are truly sick. You know that, right? I am no fan of Amber’s… not anymore, but you don’t fuck a girl and decide she’s not good enough for you to take home to Mom and Dad, Ben. That’s just not right!”
“I know,” he mumbled again.
“When did you start back up again? The next week? The next year?”
“Only since you started art class,” he said. “The first night you were out, Amber came over with a bottle of wine.”
“Of course, she did. So, you’ve been cheating on me for four weeks.” I considered a moment. “And the trips out of town?”
He grimaced like he didn’t want to say. “All but one was legitimate. Once, two weeks ago, I spent two nights at Amber’s place.”
“Two nights,” I echoed. “Do you love her?” I couldn’t help the tears from falling now, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to hide the fact that what he did hurt me. He wasn’t getting out of here without knowing that.
Ben paused for longer than he should have before letting out a slow, “No.”
“Either you’re lying, or you don’t even know,” I said, “which just makes me feel sorry for you, Ben. You’re a sad man trapped in a horrible job, working too many hours, making money for a future that’s so uncertain, you don’t even know if you love the woman you’re sleeping with.”
Now, I could see tears coming to his eyes. Good. I was glad to see that throwing away a four-year relationship actually meant something to him… unless he was just crying over Amber, which was so sick and wrong, I couldn’t even think about it.
“I know what I did was wrong, but do you think—”
I let out a harsh laugh. “Are you trying to ask me if I’ll try again? No. No way, Ben. Absolutely not. Not after what I saw. Not after I heard you continue fucking when I closed the door and ran out of our apartment in tears.”
He looked properly ashamed at this. “You heard that?” he mumbled.
“Yeah. And after what our love life’s been like lately, the idea of you have three-hour fuck sessions with my best friend is horrifying. You’re the only guy I’ve ever been with, Ben. I won’t say this isn’t going to be difficult, but it’s over.”
“Emma’s going to come up to the apartment and help you pack up,” I said, turning away. “I need a few minutes to myself.”
I heard Ben pick up the garbage bag again and remembered something else I wanted to tell him. “Oh, and Ben?”
“Yeah?” He looked at me, hopefully.
“Amber’s a slut. She screwed our yoga teacher Noah last week, and slept with a cowboy at Becca’s Halloween party. So, you may want to get tested. I know I will.”
I left him there, standing on the sidewalk, gaping like a codfish.
That’s all the revenge I need. I thought. Except maybe some hot and heavy revenge/rebound sex with a strong, sexy fireman, which is something I plan on doing as fast as I can.
Liam
I got Katie’s number from Oliver the morning after Halloween. We did end up watching Star Wars, but Oliver was busy texting Emma the entire time, and I was busy trying to decide what
to do about Nicole.
On the one hand, Oliver was right. She didn’t have the best sense of humor, she had more ambition than I could handle, and the distance was killing me. On the other hand, although Oliver said Nicole had been mean to him once, I couldn’t think of one time when she’d been mean or cruel to me. A little controlling, maybe, but typically, Nicole was nice. And she was beautiful and smart, and I thought I’d be an idiot if I threw that all away.
And the thought of Katie was tempting. Very tempting. But I didn’t know Katie, and Nicole and I had a history together.
Besides, I figured, even if I met up with Katie again, nothing would ever match the chemistry she and I shared in the closet at Becca’s party. Her mouth on mine, her hands wrapped around my neck, her legs wrapped around my waist, pulling me into her, grinding against me. My hands on her breasts—teasing her nipples until she moaned my name. No way we could ever repeat a performance like that.
The night was just going to have to stay as it was—a near fantastical kiss between two attractive people who knew enough not to take it too far. No matter what happened with Nicole, I was going to have to stay away from Katie.
That’s what I though, anyhow. And I really believed it. Well, sort of believed it. Her number was in my phone, and every now and then when I was bored at work, I’d look at it, wistfully, thinking about Katie’s cute cate ears and the freckles speckled across her upturned nose. Then, I’d put my phone away, open my email, and troubleshoot whatever IT issues came up, even though my answer was usually “Turn off the computer, restart after about three minutes, and see if that fixes everything.”
I was distracted at the firehouse too, which was becoming dangerous because the people there actually depended on me, just like I depended on them. After I stumbled while doing an agility test, Captain Willis called me over. “You’re off your game today, Bryant,” he said, calling me by my last name, as he always did. I wondered whether he knew any of our first names.
“Sorry, Captain. I got a lot on my mind.” I couldn’t make eye contact. I hated disappointing him.
Hot & Heavy Halloween (Hot Holidays Book 1) Page 7