by Carrie Quest
Liquid heat pools below my waist and I press my thighs together. He hasn’t touched me or even spoken to me, but if he comes over here and so much as breathes on my clit, I will come harder than I ever have before. I’m that turned on.
Then I hear a thump upstairs, and my eyes fly open. Shit. Piper. What if she comes down here? What if she sees?
Ben’s still standing there, waiting, but the spell is broken, and I shake my head. He shrugs and smiles, and when I notice the dimple on his left cheek, I actually groan at what I’m giving up. He strolls into the bathroom, giving me a glimpse of his tight ass, and shuts the door. He’s not limping anymore. Maybe sex hormones have magical knee-healing powers.
I drop down and grab the Band-Aids before I follow him into the bathroom to observe him further (for SCIENCE, people), then run up the stairs like I’m being chased by the devil.
If the devil had dimples and the power to make you orgasm from across the room.
I burst out the basement door, hot and bothered and hoping like hell Piper doesn’t have the bright overhead lights on in the kitchen. But the only one here is Chuckles, who’s sitting on the floor near the fridge and staring at me with unblinking eyes.
I lean against the counter, breathing hard. The thump wasn’t Piper at all. Only her fat, stupid cat leaping down from his perch. I don’t know whether I should dump a glass of water on him for interrupting or give him one of his disgusting fishy treats for saving me from my own lust. Hooking up with Ben would’ve been a fustercluck of epic proportions. My head knows this, even if my girl parts are probably preparing to go into deep mourning.
I was right to leave.
No guys. No distractions.
It would’ve been a huge mistake.
But I still stand there until the shower stops running, picturing Ben touching himself in the steam and the water. Then I tiptoe back over to his door and leave the first aid supplies on the floor where he’ll see them in the morning.
Finally, I go upstairs and make myself come five times in a row with my favorite vibrator. I’ve sworn off men, not orgasms, and if Ben Easton’s going to be my roommate all summer, I’m going to have to stock up on batteries.
4
Ben
I wake up sprawled on the sofa with the dog on my legs and Piper flicking water at my face.
“Wakey wakey,” she calls in the same sing-songy voice she’s been using to wake me up since we were kids.
I groan and tug the blanket over my face. She’s pulled the curtains open and the sun is streaming through the huge windows.
“I should’ve stayed in the basement,” I grumble. I’d thought about crashing out on the floor after I got out of the shower, but the thought of seeing all that snowboarding equipment first thing in the morning was too depressing. Plus, the floor was fucking hard.
“Man up,” Piper says. “It’s almost noon, I have somewhere to be, and you owe me a talk.” Her voice has an edge, and I know she’s not going to let me out of it this time.
I shake my head under the blanket. “Five more minutes.”
“I brought you a Moe’s bagel and a coffee,” she says. “Let’s go.”
I love those bagels, and coffee might actually make me feel human, so I yank the blanket down and haul myself up to sit. The dog rolls over onto the floor with a little yelp, but he’s a puppy and basically made of pure energy and rubber, because he bounces right up and goes to sit near Piper, eyeing the bag of bagels in her lap.
She hands me one wrapped in paper. “Sundried tomato with veggie cream cheese.”
“Thanks.” My stomach growls. I can’t even remember the last time I ate anything that wasn’t some kind of fried potato product. I rip out a bite and then take a huge sip of coffee while Piper feeds little chunks of a plain bagel to the dog.
“What’s his name?” she asks.
“He doesn’t have one yet,” I mumble around another bite.
“Say it, don’t spray it,” she says.
I swallow and laugh. “You’ve been saying that since you were five and I was eight.”
“And I’ll probably be saying it when I’m eighty-five and you’re eighty-eight since your manners don’t seem to be improving any.”
I shrug. “You love me this way.”
“Most of the time,” she agrees. The edge is back in her voice and suddenly I’m not so hungry anymore. I put the rest of the bagel on the table, sit back with my coffee, and wait. It doesn’t take long.
“You’re an asshole, Ben.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Piper narrows her eyes. “You’re not getting out of this one with a simple ‘I’m sorry,’ mister. I’ve been calling you for weeks. Mom has been crying on the phone to me pretty much daily.”
That one hits me in the gut for sure. My mom got breast cancer when I was in high school, and it came back a few years after she beat it the first time. She’s in remission now, but we’ve spent years trying not to upset her about anything, and I feel super shitty that I’ve caused her pain and stress. One more thing on the list of reasons Ben’s a dick.
“I’ll call her today,” I mumble, avoiding my sister’s eyes.
“Yeah, you will. And you’d better talk to Grandma. She called Royal Crest Dairy and asked them if they would put your face on a milk carton.”
I can’t help but snort at that. “Shit. What did they say?”
“According to her, you’re on the waitlist.”
“Go, Grandma.” I pick at some loose threads in the blanket, not wanting to meet her gaze. It’s shitty she’s had to deal with all of this, and I really have no defense.
Then her voice goes soft and quiet, which is a million times worse than when she yells at me. “I was really scared, Ben.”
I look up, expecting to see tears, but her face is calm. She’s perched on the very edge of the chair next to the sofa, though, her body braced like she’s expecting a blow.
“Tell me what happened,” she says. “All of it. Now.”
My mind races because I can’t tell her all of it. Not now and probably not ever. Not only because of what I did, either. It’s always a little awkward talking about Adam with her. Too many big-ass elephants in the room. Not because I have some weird older brother hang-up that Piper should stay pure until she’s thirty-five and married, but because I still see Adam every day. He’s still my best friend. I’m not sure exactly what happened between them, but I’m the one who dragged his drunk ass out of that pipe in Japan and then listened to him cry in between puking sessions. He was gone for her and she crushed him.
At the same time, I know she still cares about him a lot. I don’t want to burden her with too many details. But I have to filter fast because if I pause too long, she’ll figure out I’m holding back, and I know my sister; she’ll keep at me until she thinks she’s got it all. Then she’ll make it her mission in life to fix me, because that’s how she rolls.
So I drop in. “We were at Mammoth, in the half-pipe. Just a regular day. Adam decided to try the triple cork.”
I stop for a second, pushing back the voice in my head saying tell her why he decided to try it, asshole.
“We’d all been practicing it with the airbag, but none of us had tried to land it yet. He dropped in. At first, I really thought he was going to make it. The first few rotations were tight, you know?”
She nods, and I know she’s picturing the trick in her head. Triple corks are some crazy shit. You have to hit four complete rotations while also flipping, so you’re pretty much completely upside down three times. Fucking terrifying, especially since you go into the last flip while you’re already on the way down. The guys who do big air competitions have been landing triple corks for ages, but it’s a lot tougher in the half-pipe. Less air time. No room for error.
My words come faster now, trying to get through this without thinking too much. Without picturing the actual crash.
“But he didn’t quite make the third. He rotated a little too far and basically
landed on the side of his face. Didn’t even have time to get his arms up or anything. I saw it happen, but I was too far, and by the time I got to him, he was out.”
Truth is, the aftermath is crystal clear: Adam sliding down the pipe. Adam’s body twitching as I held him. Ski patrol pushing me out of the way and calling for a helicopter. I remember all of that perfectly. But the crash itself is a little fuzzy. I know Autumn caught it on her phone, but I haven’t spoken to her since that day, and she’s not the type to let that shit loose on the internet. Hopefully she deleted it immediately because I don’t ever want to see it again, and I certainly don’t want Adam watching it.
“He was in bad shape.” I pause again, because I’m not going to tell her about the blood. All that blood streaming out of his mouth and his nose and even his eye. Turning the ice into red slush.
I clear my throat. “Really bad shape. They took him to Mammoth Hospital first, but they’re too small to deal with injuries like that, so they flew him to Reno pretty much right away. He was in a coma. Then critical care for, like, a month. His parents flew out and I’ve just been there, trying to help with whatever I can.”
“And you couldn’t call because…?”
“Because I’m an ass. I thought we already established that.” I give her a small smile, but she just stares at me, her face totally blank. She wants more.
“Because it was intense, Piper.” I blow out a breath. “I was up all night, sitting with him so his parents could sleep. I was running around during the day, trying to get them food and help them figure out stuff at their place back east, like who would watch their dog and get their mail. The only free time I had, I was asleep.”
Or drinking, since that’s the only way I could actually turn off my brain enough to close my eyes.
It’s a bullshit excuse and we both know it, but after studying me in silence for a few minutes, Piper nods. Her face is still blank, but she’s not going to push.
“It’s in the vault,” she says, which is what our mom used to say after we’d apologized for doing something wrong. It means she won’t bring it up again.
“What happens now? Why are you in Boulder?”
“They’re moving him to Craig Hospital for rehab today.” A weird expression flits over her face—almost like panic.
“Oh.”
I wait for her to go on, but she doesn’t. “His parents are going to stay up there in the family housing, but I figured I’d come back here so I’m close enough to help.”
“What about training? Aren’t you supposed to be going to New Zealand this summer?”
I point at my knee, which is sticking out from under the blanket. “I had a little crash.”
Shit, now there’s definitely panic on her face.
“Nothing big,” I reassure her. “I’m okay, really, but they don’t know about the knee. My coach said there’s a guy in Boulder who’s like, a knee guru or something. I’m gonna take the summer and see if I can get myself healed up right while I help out with Adam.”
She eyes my knee, which is looking a little swollen but otherwise perfectly healthy. I move it under the blanket. Sometimes I forget that Piper knows a lot about injuries. I don’t want her examining me too closely.
“What do you mean ‘they don’t know about the knee’?”
I shrug. “I might be done.”
She’s been really strong throughout this whole depressing conversation, but now her blue eyes fill with tears and she buries her face in her hands and sobs. Fuck me. Seeing her cry always takes me back to the moment Mom was diagnosed and freaks me right the hell out. It rarely happens because Piper and I both learned to lock down our own feelings during all those hospital visits. Piper especially. I ran away to the mountains and she focused on taking charge and solving problems, which is her go-to response for just about everything these days.
I pull her onto the sofa and hug her. Bagels go flying and the dog snatches the biggest one he can find and runs toward the kitchen with a triumphant look on his dopey face.
“It’s really okay, Pipes. I’ll be fine, even if it’s over.”
“But the Olympics,” she hiccups out. “You missed out last time because of your collarbone and 2018 was supposed to be your year.”
Yeah, that stings. The Olympics has been my goal since I was a kid, and watching from the sidelines with my arm in a sling last time sucked. I didn’t begrudge Adam the gold or anything, but I sure as hell wanted to be in there myself, breathing down his ass and giving him a high-five on the podium when we took out the top two spots.
Still, even the Olympics doesn’t mean shit to me at the moment. Not after everything.
“You love it so much,” Piper says. “What will you do?”
“I’ll find new stuff to love.” I hate that this is upsetting her so much, but the knee injury seemed like the easiest out once I knew I’d never get back on a board again. Nobody can argue with a blown-out knee.
She stops crying and grabs some napkins from the mangled bagel bag. “Like what?”
Fair question. I’ve lived and breathed snowboarding since I was a kid. Every spare moment, every thought, every goal has been about becoming the best and then staying at the top and feeling the weight of that gold medal around my neck. Without boarding, I have no idea what I actually like. No idea who I am. For a second, the pain of giving it up cuts into me, and it hurts so much that I suck in a deep breath.
“You used to like building models,” Piper says when I don’t answer. Her tone is encouraging. “And Lego.”
We stare at each other for a minute and then crack up.
“I guess I’m a bit of a one-trick pony, huh? Maybe I should’ve stuck it out with those tap classes.”
That makes her really laugh, and I know she’s picturing me in those damn patent leather shoes, but I don’t even care as long as she’s happy again.
“So, I guess you’ve got a new roommate for the summer,” I say, knocking her shoulder with mine. “Think you can handle it?”
“I won’t be here this summer,” she says. “Which you’d know if you’d ever picked up your phone.”
“I thought we vaulted that.”
She sighs. “I know. Sorry. It’s just, I’ll actually be doing an internship at Craig this summer, and it’s going to be intense, so I’m staying with a friend who lives right there so I don’t have to drive a lot.”
Shit. “At Craig?” I repeat. What are the odds?
“It’s a big hospital,” she says quickly. “I’m sure I won’t, you know, run into him in the halls.”
I hold my hands up. “Your business,” I say. And here are those fucking elephants again. Luckily Natalie chooses this moment to come running down the stairs. She’s wearing a not-short-enough jean skirt and a red tank top, and I have to adjust the blanket again because the sight of her bare shoulders goes straight to my dick.
“I’m late,” she says to Piper. “And I can’t find my other shoe.” She curses and disappears into the hall closet.
“Take mine.” Piper kicks off her flip-flops and Nat rushes over and shoves her feet in them. She’s avoiding looking at me and I don’t really blame her, considering the way I acted last night. I probably shouldn’t have invited her into the shower like that, but I was so tired and when she appeared right after I’d been thinking about her, it felt more like a fantasy than real life.
A fantasy I expanded on in the shower. A couple of times.
I should apologize to her I guess, but she left me those Band-Aids at the door, so she can’t be too pissed.
“What are you doing today?” Piper asks me. “I already walked your dog.”
I grin. “Excellent. Thanks. That clears me up to go back to sleep.”
She punches my shoulder. “No way. Get your ass up, Benjamin Anthony Easton. Go buy some Legos or something.”
Natalie squeaks, exactly the way she did last night when she caught me touching myself. I look over and her face is bright red. Maybe she has a Lego fetish.
/> “Need a ride?” Piper asks her.
“Thanks, but it’s faster to walk,” she says. “Bye.” She gives a vague wave in our direction and pulls on a sweater as she heads for the door.
“Good luck!” Piper yells.
We both watch her rush down the front path, wincing in tandem when she trips and nearly takes out the mailbox.
“Those shoes might be a little big,” Piper says. “Whoops.”
“Does she have a job interview or something? Why did you wish her luck?”
I focus on gathering up the bagel trash and my empty coffee cup, so I don’t have to look at her. I don’t want her to read the real interest in my eyes when it comes to Natalie. I don’t know why I’m even interested anyway. Nothing’s going to happen. Piper and I have an unspoken agreement that fooling around with each other’s friends is okay as long as we keep the drama out of it, but Natalie isn’t just any old friend. She and Piper are tight. Plus, she’s now my roommate.
And she might’ve eyed my dick like it was an ice cream cone in the desert last night, but she still rejected me.
“Her parents are in town from Boston to meet her for brunch.”
“They came all the way from Boston for brunch? They’re not staying?”
Piper shakes her head. “They got into Denver early this morning for a conference, but this is the only time they have to see her. They’re busy.”
She doesn’t sound impressed and neither am I. That’s cold.
“I’m actually glad you’ll be here,” Piper says. “I was kind of worried about leaving. Her parents are coming down on her pretty hard. She might have a tough summer, so look out for her, okay?”
My mind races immediately back to my fantasy from the shower last night, but I push the thoughts back. I’m not in Boulder to fool around this summer. I’m here to do penance.
