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Chapter 03

I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I saw a lot of River-view Manor tenants at Miriam’s shop, and in the Morning-star Mocha, the coffee shop at the end of our block. I ran into them in the post office and parking garage and at the grocery store, too. Harrisburg’s a small city.

Even so, I couldn’t shake the memory of those dark eyes, that thick, dark hair. The brush of a shirtsleeve on my bare skin. Fuck. I was horny, no two ways around it, and no wonder. It had been ages since I’d had sex with anyone but myself.

We had our choice of places downtown, but I wanted to go to the Pharmacy. We took a cab since I wouldn’t drive after drinking, and the walk that was fine on a Sunday afternoon in sweatpants would be too long to make at night in heels…and shit-hammered.

The bar was packed, even for a Friday night. We pushed through the crowd toward the bar, Kira leading. She stopped abruptly and I ran into her. Someone ran into me. Someone also grabbed my ass, but when I turned to see who it was and possibly haul off and smack the shit out of them, all I could see was an ocean of possible culprits.

“Hey, Jack,” Kira said, and I turned.

Shit. Jack had been the love of Kira’s life our senior year, when he transferred in from another school. She’d plotted and schemed for months to get him to ask her to the prom, determined to get in his pants. It hadn’t worked, so far as I knew. I only knew that once Kira had keyed one of his girlfriends’ cars.

Kira didn’t know Jack and I had fucked each other senseless for about two months straight a few years ago. I doubt either of us even cared anymore. But Kira would have, so I tried to pull her away before things could get ugly.

Besides, he wasn’t alone. The woman with him had a beer and she tipped it to her mouth, eyeing us with a smile. I yanked Kira’s elbow to pull her away.

“Ow,” she said when the crowd closed behind us, cutting off the view of him. “What did you do that for?”

“Don’t cause trouble,” I told her. “C’mon. Drinks.”

“I wasn’t going to cause trouble.” She frowned and tossed her hair, not caring she’d whacked some dude across the face with it. He looked pissed. Not the way I wanted to start the night.

“There will be other guys here,” I told her.

Kira just sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, I know that.”

The Pharmacy was almost always a total sausage party—three guys for every girl, easy, and all of them horny and looking to hook up. Chivalry had nothing to do with them pulling out their wallets and plying us with booze. It was all about getting laid.

“Oh, look,” Kira said from beside me. “Talk about trouble.”

She was right. Trouble with a capital T. I stood taller in my sexy shoes and lifted my chin, straightened my shoulders. “Hello, Austin.”

Once upon a time, Austin and I had fucked like tigers. I was willing to bet he still had the scars. I did.

“Paige.” His hair was longer, but he had the same grin, the one that parted thighs like the Red Sea. He didn’t look surprised to see me.

Austin wore a blue-striped shirt and faded jeans that hugged his ass just right and hung down, ragged, at the hems. Jeans like that should be outlawed on men like Austin. His buddy, some guy I didn’t know, wore an almost identical shirt, but with brown stripes. He didn’t look half as good.

Behind me, Kira dug her fingernails into the skin of my elbow. It stung, and I shook her off. “How are you?”

“Good. I’m good.” His eyes shifted to Kira and back to me. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Haven’t been home,” I said, though home to me now was an apartment on Front Street, not a trailer or a rented house in Lebanon.

“Yeah. I know. Hey, Kira. I made it.”

My insides froze. I glared at her, but Kira gave me her best dumb look. “What?”

She’d told him we’d be here. I knew it. I could see it on both their faces, their conspiracy, and I wondered how he’d convinced her to tell him. I thought about walking out, and the only reason I didn’t was because he was looking at me. Not her.

Kira saw it, too, and she gave me a narrow-eyed glare. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have set this up purely to see the throw down between me and Austin, but I wasn’t going to do it. I was past those days. She rallied when Austin’s friend gave her a grin. It helped that he was cute. Not as cute as Austin, but then really, who was? Who had ever been?

“What’re you drinking?” Austin was already pulling out his wallet to pay.

I wasn’t going to turn down a free drink, not even from him. “Margarita.”

“I’ll take a Slow, Comfortable Screw.” Kira made sure to lean in close so he could hear her. Her lips brushed his ear.

Austin leaned away a little, not enough that Kira would notice. But I did. He introduced us both to his friend, Ethan, who managed to tear his gaze away from Kira’s tits long enough to nod toward me without a trace of recognition. Well, what had I expected him to do? Say, “Oh, so this is Paige?”

“So what are you up to now?” Austin asked me as Kira and Ethan eyed each other.

“I work for Kelly Printing.” The last time we spoke I’d still been finishing the degree I’d started when we were together and taking care of some rich couple’s kids. I didn’t ask him what he was doing, not for work and not here in Harrisburg. I didn’t want him to think I cared.

“What about your mom?” Austin moved closer, his arm on the bar. “She still working for Hershey? I haven’t been to the shop for a while.”

My mom owns a tiny sandwich shop she inherited from her dad when I was in high school. I’d worked in that shop almost my entire life, running errands as a kid then graduating to making subs and running the cash register. Now I only helped if she had a big order to fill and deliver, or a party to cater.

“She still has it. She was working for Hershey but got laid off.”

Austin nodded. “I’m working for McClaron and Sons.”

I had no idea who or what McClaron and Sons was, but the fact he was working for someone other than his dad surprised me into a reply. “What about your dad?”

Austin shrugged, then grimaced, and only because I’d once known him so well it had been like knowing myself did I catch his hesitation. “It was time I got out of that job.”

“But you’re doing the same thing, right? Construction?” Kira popped into the conversation and drew both our attentions.

“Yeah, and some other stuff,” Austin said, but didn’t elaborate.

Interesting. Austin had worked for his dad’s business the way I’d worked for my mom’s—summers and after school since he’d been old enough to carry a hammer. It had always been the assumption that he’d take over the business when his dad retired, and become a full partner some time before that. I’d figured he already was.

“What about you?” Kira sipped her drink, eyes on Ethan. For someone with a boyfriend, she certainly seemed interested in him, but then Kira was just one of those girls.

You know. The slutty ones.

“I’m a mechanic,” he said. “For Hershey.”

“Oh, that’s a good job!” Kira sidled in between Austin and Ethan.

“It is a good job,” Ethan agreed and drank from his cup while his eyes wandered everywhere on Kira’s body but her face.

It was so easy, really. They wanted to seduce us. We wanted to be seduced, for a few hours anyway. I knew what we looked like to them. Two girls in slinky outfits, sucking back drink after drink and letting the crowd push us closer and closer. There’s no such thing as social distance in bars. The music makes conversation impossible unless you lean across to shout in someone’s ear. The crush of people means you have to fight for your own small space, and sharing it doesn’t seem so bad after a drink or four.

When Austin’s hand ended up on my ass, I didn’t even blink. It felt good there. Heavy, warm. He had strong fingers to go along with those biceps. He smelled good. Drakkar Noir. Despite myself and everything that had happened with us before, I’d missed him.

Austin said into my ear, “Wanna dance?”

Our bodies had always worked just right together, whether we were dancing or fucking. I was ready for both. Leaving Ethan and Kira, he took my hand and pulled me up the stairs to the third floor, where the songs ran into one another without stopping and all sounded the same. We found a spot in the middle and started dancing.

The booze had made me soft and melty, but the music wasn’t. I wanted to slow dance. Austin wanted to grind. We compromised with a little hip action that brought us groin to groin, but when he tried to flip me around and get up on me in the back end, I pushed away with a smile.

“You don’t answer my messages,” Austin said.

It was easy to pretend I didn’t hear him with the music so loud. I smiled and shook my head. He took me by the arm, up high in the soft part that bruises easily. His fingers closed all the way around it.

He moved in to brush his lips against my ear. “I’ve really missed you.”

I inched away from him, but Austin grabbed my wrist just as a bazillion watts of supernova bright light lit the entire dance floor. Austin still looked good. I must not have looked like Frankenstein, because he reached to brush my hair from my forehead. He smiled again as the lights went down and the beat of the music started its rapid thump-thumping, the same as my heart.

It was different when he kissed me. I felt different. His mouth opened and I let him inside me. His tongue stroked mine as his hand came up to curl in my hair. He didn’t pull it, though my body tensed in anticipation.

Austin nuzzled at my earlobe. “You still taste the same.”

Fortunately, I remembered the reasons I’d broken off our relationship. Unfortunately, I still remembered all the reasons we’d ever hooked up. When Austin ran a fingertip down my bare arm along the sensitive inside flesh to press his fingertip just over the pulse at my wrist, I knew he felt the way my heart sped up at his touch. Time hadn’t changed that. Maybe it never would.

Maybe that was okay.

“Come home with me,” Austin said.

“It’s too far.” Forty minutes I’d have driven in a heartbeat back in the day, just to get in his pants. It wasn’t too far. Just too long.

“Paige,” Austin said with a grin like a shark. “I moved to Lemoyne.”

Just across the river. Fifteen minutes, tops, if you drove really slow or got stuck in traffic. The world fell out from under my fuck-me pumps, but Austin was there to catch me. The crowd moved and danced around us, but we stayed still. I looked deep into his blue, blue eyes, made bluer by the strobe lights.

“What the fuck,” I said evenly, “did you do that for?”

“New job,” he reminded. “Remember?”

I tried to recall if he’d said where McClaron and Sons was, and couldn’t. He should’ve told me, I thought, and hated myself for being irrationally angry. I tugged my arm from his grip. “I have to go check on Kira.”

“She’s fine. She’s with Ethan.”

I tried to level him with a glare, but I’d never been able to level Austin. He’d laid me out cold a thousand times with a look, but though I’d practiced and perfected my steely-eyed look of cold disdain, it slid off him like oil. I bit my lower lip and lifted my chin.

“If he’s anything like you, I’d better make sure she’s okay.”

“Paige.” Austin’s hand snagged my wrist. Pulled me close. “If she’s anything like you, she can handle him.”

The night it ended between us, we’d fucked up against the wall of our shitty, third-floor apartment on Cumberland Street in Lebanon. The red-blue lights of a cop car outside on the street had painted the ceiling and wall over our heads. He’d torn away my panties, tossed them to the side, used his body to pin mine to the wall while his hands held my ass.

I bore the marks of that last encounter on my back for a few weeks where a nail from a fallen picture had gouged me. I hadn’t noticed the pain or the blood while we were going at it. I never had found my panties.

It had ended but wasn’t over. The plain truth is, with a few drinks in me there was little chance of my resisting Austin. Not drunk. Not sober, either. Why else had I moved so far away?

“Hell, no,” Kira said when I found her downstairs and brought up the subject. She shook her head and looked over my shoulder to where I was sure Austin was watching. “You told me to never, never, never let you fuck him again!”

I made myself stare at her, not look back at him. “I know. But that was before.”

“Before what?” Kira’s lip curled.

“Before you thought it would be fun to invite him out with us. I haven’t talked to him in months. Since before I moved here. But now here he is.”

“And looking utterly fuckable.” Kira didn’t lose the sneer, but her gaze flickered back and forth to my face and over my shoulder. “You know, Paige, I’ve known him as long as you have. He moved up here, wanted to know where the good places to go were. I told him we were coming here. I didn’t know you were going to go home with him. I thought you were over him.”

“I am over him!” I looked over my shoulder and caught his gaze, then turned away with hot cheeks and fast-beating heart.

“Whatever.”

“I’ll give you my key.” I looked back at Austin, now bent in conversation with Ethan.

“Fuck, no. I’ll get Tony to come pick me up!” Kira shook her head and stumbled a little bit.

I reached to steady her and she clutched at my hand. “Will he come for you?”

“He will if I fucking tell him to.” Kira straightened, then swiped at her hair.

“I’ll wait with you until he comes.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Kira said, then slung her arm around my shoulder. “Paige. Don’t forget what happened.”

As if I ever could. “I’ll be fine!”

“Don’t let your pussy get you into trouble,” she continued, warning me off what she’d fallen prey to many times herself. “He made you cry.”

“Yeah.” I let Austin’s gaze catch mine when it turned toward me and didn’t look away. “Well, he won’t make me cry anymore.”

“He’ll always make you cry,” Kira said. “But go. Whatever. He’s got a magic cock. I get it.”

Remembering the times she’d left me stranded so she could go home with someone she met in a bar, I didn’t feel nearly as bad as she wanted me to. “I’ll wait until Tony gets here.”

I could do that, at least.

Going to Austin’s place was one thing, driving with him another. I wasn’t going to get in the car with him after he’d been drinking, for one, and for another, I wasn’t going to be stuck at his house without knowing for sure I’d be able to get home.

He grinned when I went over to him, but I fended off his kiss. “I have to wait for Kira to get picked up. I’ll meet you there.”

Austin pulled me close and nuzzled my neck exactly how he knew I liked it best. “Just come with me.”

“No.” I pushed him slightly away. Drunker, I’d have given in. More sober, I’m sure I’d have gone home alone. Stuck in this midway point where I wanted to taste him again and knowing lust is never as pretty the morning after, I shook my head. “I’ll meet you there. Give me the address.”

Maybe things were different, after all.

Austin kissed me again, harder, and this time I let him. He knew just how to do it, where to put his hands and his tongue and how to bump me with his groin to make my breath catch in my throat. My nipples throbbed, poking the silk of my shirt.

“Don’t take too long.” He stepped back, steady on his feet and not slurring his words. He reached as I turned and at the last moment, captured my wrist with his fingers. I let him tug me closer. “You’re not going to bail on me, are you? Like last time?”

Last time I hadn’t had Kira to remind me that I’d vowed never to go to bed with Austin again. Not that it was stopping me. Last time I’d called him just after two in the morning and told him I wanted to come over, but when I hung up the phone, good reason had won over the desire for his hands on me. That had been months ago, before I moved here.

“Are you still angry about that?”

“I wasn’t mad. Just disappointed. Do it again, I’ll be mad.” He grinned and dipped his head to kiss me but stopped short of my lips, just brushing them. “And disappointed.”

His blue eyes bore deep into mine, and for half a minute nothing else mattered. I felt Kira at my elbow, but I didn’t turn to look at her. I looked right into Austin’s eyes when I replied. “You won’t be.”

He let me go with another kiss and a nuzzle that sent shivers marching along every nerve. I found Kira waiting for me by the door. Oblivious to the crowd buffeting her, she held her place instead of stepping aside until I showed up to pull her by the elbow onto the sidewalk.

“You sure you’ll be all right?” The chilly night air had done a pretty good job of sobering me up, but I wasn’t reconsidering my rendezvous with Austin. At least not yet.

Kira nodded. “Fine.”

She didn’t look fine, she looked pissed off. I glanced out onto the street. Lots of cops. No cabs. I’d only turned away for a few seconds, but when I turned back to face her, Kira’s expression had turned stormy.

“You asshole!” She took a couple of steps forward, her heel catching on a crack in the sidewalk, and stumbled.

Jack.

With an inward sigh, I went after her. Jack was with the same woman from earlier and he did his best to ignore Kira. I saw him give his date a pained glance she answered with a shrug, and they started walking.

“Hey, Jack! Jackass! Don’t you walk away from me!”

“C’mon, Kira, don’t.” I didn’t blame him for ignoring her. I was a little less pleased he was also actively ignoring me, even though I knew it was really for the best, all around. “He’s not worth it!”

“Fuck you, Jack!” Kira couldn’t let it go, apparently.

Jack grimaced and pulled his cap from his back pocket. He put it on, but didn’t look at her. We hadn’t gone more than another few steps down the sidewalk when Kira launched herself at his back.

Jack stumbled forward as she slammed into him, her legs and arms flying. She didn’t actually manage to hit him more than once or twice, but the spectators leaped out of the way of her drunken tornado performance. She was shrieking insults, mostly stupid and incoherent ones.

Jack gave me an angry look that pissed me off. It wasn’t like I’d told Kira he and I had hooked up or anything. Her issues with him were his own problem and had nothing to do with me. He pushed her off him firmly and grabbed her arm at the same time so she wouldn’t fall. She kept trying to hit him and missing.

“Stop it,” Jack told her and gave her arm a little shake before letting her go. When she flew at him again she managed to knock his cap off. I stepped forward, wishing I’d gone with Austin and left Kira to her theatrics alone. This was a scene I really didn’t want to see.

“I hope your Prince Albert fucking rips out and you have to piss through three holes!” Kira screamed.

“Kira, c’mon.” I reached for her.

Kira allowed herself to be led away, still shouting insults. By the time we got to the parking garage the crowd had thinned and we had a better shot at hailing a cab. I rubbed my bare arms and shivered, but Kira had anger as her cloak and she danced back and forth on the nubbly pavement, waving her hands and muttering curses.

“He’s not worth it,” I repeated. “Jesus, Kira. What’s wrong with you?”

“He’s a jackass,” she said sullenly. Her makeup had smeared, her hair tangled. She needed to be in bed.

Fuck. I wanted to be in bed, and not alone. Yet here I was, instead, babysitting her while she had a tantrum about some guy she’d had a crush on a million years ago but had never even dated.

I didn’t correct her, even though I didn’t agree. “You’re drunk. Call Tony. Go home.”

She sniffed and crossed her arms. “Oh, you don’t care! You’re going to screw Austin. What difference does it make to you if my heart is broken?”

I laughed and knew I’d made a mistake by the way her brows pulled low over her smeared eyes. “Your heart’s not broken. You didn’t even go out with him. He doesn’t even have the Prince Albert anymore.”

She glared at me. I thought suddenly she was maybe way less wasted than I’d thought. “Did you fuck Jack?”

“It was ages ago.”

“You fucked Jack?” Kira’s fist clenched at her sides, then opened as her shoulders slumped. “I thought you were my friend!”

“Kira, it was years ago, and you weren’t—”

“That doesn’t matter!” she cried, and I knew she was right. “You knew how I felt about him! I loved him!”

I’d never loved him. At least there was that. “I’m sorry.”

Kira whipped her phone from her purse and stabbed the buttons with her fingernail. She turned her back to me. I should’ve counted myself lucky she didn’t try to punch me in the face the way she’d done Jack. As it was, I was cold and my stomach had begun to churn.

“Your sorry is shit.” Kira spoke into the phone next. “It’s me. Come pick me up. Yeah, I know what time it is. I’ll be waiting at Tom’s Diner on Second Street. Harrisburg, you ’tard.”

She hung up and stalked off down the sidewalk without looking back.

“Kira!” She flipped me the bird without even pausing. There was no way I was going to run after her, not in my four-inch fuck-me pumps. I managed a hobble, though. “Kira, c’mon. Wait.”

“You’re supposed to be my friend,” she said, and the quiet affront in her tone was worse than an insult or a punch. “God, Paige. Just because you can doesn’t always mean you should, you know? This isn’t high school anymore.”

I stopped trying to follow her. “No shit, really? And calling out some dude on the street when he’s with another girl, that’s not straight out of high school?”

“That’s different!”

“How is it different?”

“You knew how I felt about Jack!” Kira shouted.

We’d have attracted more attention if it wasn’t Friday night just after the bars all closed, but as it was we were just two more drunk sluts fighting over a guy. In high school I’d have shouted back at her, maybe even done a little hair pulling.

But as we’d already established, we weren’t in high school anymore.

I trapped my tongue between my teeth to stop myself from shouting back, but even then my voice came out clipped and sharp. “I said I was sorry. You weren’t with him. You never even dated him. And you weren’t even speaking to me at the time.”

She faltered for a moment, her lashes batting and her mouth working as though she meant to say something really awful but could only come up with “…Yeah, well. You shouldn’t have.”

I didn’t point out the number of boys I’d liked that Kira had fucked, or tried to fuck, or lied about fucking just to needle me. I said nothing, just stared, and she at last had the grace to cut her gaze from mine. She shrugged instead of speaking.

If you’re lucky, the friends you make when you’re sixteen stay with you for the rest of your life. If you’re smart, you know when it’s time to let them go. I stopped walking. I watched her walk toward the diner, where drunk and hungry people would order eggs and stiff the waitress and steal the silverware. I let her go there, even though she’d been drinking and she needed a ride home and I couldn’t be sure the person she’d called would come to get her.

Yeah. Some friend.