by Megan Crane
“Really, Miss Curtis!” he scolded me. “I must protest! Do you know what time it is?”
“It’s eleven-thirty,” Henry said. In an overly helpful sort of tone, as if he thought Irwin had ventured out to ask the time because he really wanted to know. I considered the fact that he was a wiseass for a moment, but then turned my attention to Irwin.
“It’s actually Ms. Curtis,” I interjected. Henry slid me a look that suggested he wished I would shut up.
“Your dog has been barking for hours!” Irwin snapped at me.
This was a complete lie. Linus the Wonder Watchdog wasn’t even barking as I stood there, talking, directly outside the door. The only things that Linus barked about were when he wanted to a) go outside while I was sleeping, b) eat while I was sleeping, or c) attack whoever was foolish enough to ring my buzzer. Otherwise, please. He was too lazy.
“He seems to have stopped,” Henry pointed out. Helpfully.
Irwin brandished his notebook at me. “I’ll be sending my complaints to the landlord! Just you wait!”
“Fine,” I snapped at him. “Go right ahead! I’m sure you’ve been doing it for months. The landlord doesn’t care what happens in this building unless it can turn into a lawsuit, though, just so you know.”
“I’ll be sure to note that remark as well,” Irwin huffed, and sure enough, rooted around in his pocket until he found a pen. He extracted it with a flick of his wrist. As Henry and I watched, he stuck his tongue between his teeth, opened the notebook, and began to write in absurdly tiny letters across the page.
Next to this, having Henry in my apartment seemed by far the lesser of two evils.
“So,” I said when the door had slammed behind us, Linus was leaping up to lick at Henry’s face, and Irwin was left out in the hallway to scribble in his journal all night long for all I cared, “this is home sweet home.” I eyed him as I flicked on the lights and saw him take in the towering mass of books. “Be careful. Some of the stacks are dangerous.”
“That’s what people used to say in college,” Henry murmured.
I decided not to answer that, and made for the bedroom. The bedroom door didn’t really close any longer, thanks to the closet’s worth of clothes on the wire rack that hung over it, but I tried to shove at it anyway.
I was aware of Henry inside my personal space in a way I really didn’t like. For a long moment I just stood in the middle of my room, picturing him standing in the living room with that superior smirk on his face, and it made me a little bit breathless. Was he judging me by my books? Because that’s what I would be doing. Had done, in fact, when in his library. He would be the sort to look down on romance novels, I fumed. And he would think I only had the latest eight-hundred-page literary tome out there to be trendy. Or maybe he would think the fat philosophy books were only displayed so guests would think I was an intellectual. I could practically hear his disparaging thoughts about my Nora Roberts hardcover collection, the snob!
I flung off my new dress and hurried into the nearest pair of clean jeans. It was way too cold out there, and I didn’t think I’d be able to confront Helen while suffering from hypothermia. I pulled on a turtleneck sweater and pulled my hair back into a ponytail. A pair of boots and I was done.
I burst out through the door, prepared to deliver a stinging defense of my reading choices, and found Henry lounging on the couch with my ecstatic—and traitorous—dog lying next to him to receive his petting. He looked completely at ease and not at all snobby or superior. It stopped me in my tracks.
“That was fast,” Henry observed.
“No need to linger.” I frowned at Linus. So much for the bond between dog and owner. Linus acted as if I wasn’t in the room.
“Someday I’m going to have to come back here and go through all these books,” Henry said in a tone I couldn’t quite place. It sounded almost . . . reverent? Impossible.
“You’re a big reader?” I realized that came out a tad too disbelieving, and widened my eyes innocently when he looked at me.
“Well, yes,” he said as if I were extremely stupid. “You’ve seen my library. Let me guess—you thought it was all for show, right?”
“I never really thought about it one way or the other,” I lied. In a lofty tone.
I thought it was probably as good a time as any to change the subject, particularly since I could feel the way he was looking at me. I wrapped my scarf around my neck. I picked up my coat.
“You ready?”
“Sure,” Henry said with a soft drawl, but he didn’t move.
We looked at each other across the postage-size space, which seemed smaller by the second. Suddenly it seemed as if he wasn’t lying there on the couch so much as waiting. His clear eyes seemed to see right through me, and the more they saw, the hotter my cheeks grew.
So naturally, that was the moment I noticed how good he looked, which maybe I’d overlooked before in the dark. His blond hair gleamed against the deep brown of the coat he wore open over a gray sweater and black pants. That last, fateful night, he’d been in jeans and a T-shirt and he had smelled like rain and spice. I imagined I could smell him again, and it made my body feel like liquid. Or maybe that was just because I knew the killer six-pack was hidden away there, just out of sight.
“Are we going?” I asked, but something happened and instead of sounding annoyed and brisk, it came out breathy.
Henry smiled slightly and got to his feet. He never broke eye contact.
“Where are we going, exactly?” he asked, but his attention seemed to drift then. To my mouth.
“I have to go kill Helen,” I told him, entranced as he moved across the small room and stood in front of me, his hands outstretched to rest on either side of the archway that led into my minuscule foyer. I felt crowded. And also mesmerized.
“Why don’t you forget about Helen,” Henry suggested.
“Well, I would,” I replied, watching him warily. “But it’s imperative that I punch her. Maybe in the face.”
“Gus, Gus, Gus.” He said it in a sigh. Almost like a song.
“ . . . What?”
“You know I’m not going to let you punch Helen in the face,” he said.
“Like you can stop me.”
“I’m bigger than you,” he pointed out, unnecessarily, since I had to tilt my head back to look at him. “Also,” he almost whispered, “I’m the one with the car.”
It was like everything went still. Like I tipped forward and got lost somewhere in the way he was looking at me.
I knew, in the back of my head, that this was wrong. It was a betrayal of Georgia. It was Nate I wanted—Nate I missed. Wasn’t it? Even if he had been a jackass at the party.
But nothing seemed to matter next to that knowing gleam in Henry Farland’s eyes.
I didn’t know what I was going to do until I did it.
I reached out and splayed my hands open across his chest, enjoying the kick of his heart and the feel of his sleek muscles beneath my fingers. I watched his eyes widen and then narrow as I traced my way down his glorious six-pack and beneath his sweater so I could feel his skin. I felt as well as heard him suck in a breath, but he still held on to the doorjamb. It was as if I’d tied him there.
This was definitely an image I enjoyed.
“I think,” he said in a hushed voice, “that that smile should be illegal.”
I smiled wider. Then:
“Kiss me,” I ordered him, because there was no doubt at all in my mind that right then it was what he wanted more than anything else in the world. Because I did, too. “Make it good, too.”
“I always do.” Like he was warning me.
“Well?” I cocked my head to one side and dared him.
I saw a strange expression flit across his face. Second thoughts, maybe. But the hunger there won out, and without a word he leaned forward to press his mouth over mine. One of his hands slid around my back and pulled me closer, tighter.
It was revenge. It was getting back at Nate.
I felt powerful and wicked and hot.
And he tasted like magic.
chapter twelve
I jolted awake.
Outside my window, the sky was turning that deep almost-blue that meant another day was coming, and Henry was in my bed.
I remembered the night before immediately and in full HDTV with surround sound.
Needless to say, I didn’t feel anything magical any longer.
Something else, something hot and heavy, snaked its way down my throat and into my belly. Maybe it wasn’t just shame. Maybe it was a little self-hate, too. Either way, it was bitter and left a trail.
Next to me, Henry slept with the same sort of easy arrogance with which he did everything else. He sprawled across my bed as if he belonged there, and murmured something not quite in English when I sat up. It sounded sweet.
I wanted to cry.
I shook that off—along with Henry’s hand, which was curled around my hip, and crawled out of the bed. I didn’t look back at him—I made directly for the shower.
After some unnecessary thinking time under the hottest spray I could handle, I found myself in the living room once again, my hair wrapped in a towel and my mind reeling around as if the apartment’s disarray was finally getting to me.
I sank down on the couch, shoving in next to Linus, who pretended to be asleep and immovable. I wedged myself in under his rump, and stared at the evidence spread out across my apartment. Henry’s coat and sweater in a haphazard pile near the archway. My turtleneck a foot inside the living room. Various other items of clothing festooned about the couch and nearby floor. And sizzling, embarrassing memories to go with all of it. Apparently, there were some compensations that went along with being Satan. And this time I could remember each and every one of them.
I forced myself to swallow past the lump in my throat.
Then, a few moments later, I reached down to dislodge the lump under my butt.
It was my cell phone. I picked it up and frowned as I tried to make sense of the LCD screen.
Seven missed calls.
How could my phone have rung seven times without my noticing? Confused, I looked at the sound menu and saw that the ringer was turned off. I usually kept it on around the clock, the better to receive dramatic phone calls from friends at inappropriate hours.
But tonight it was off, in defiance of my entire history, and so, naturally, tonight was the night I’d missed seven calls.
I felt my stomach give way when I looked at the missed calls menu.
All of them were from Nate.
“Hey, Gus,” he said the first time. “I’m really sorry that things got a little weird, that wasn’t my plan at all. Amy Lee said you bailed, which I hope didn’t have anything to do with me. Because the truth is, I kind of had a fight with Helen and saw you and blew stuff out of proportion . . . The fact is, she doesn’t really see things—I mean, you would understand where I was coming from better. I don’t want stuff to get messed up again with us, because I really do want us to stay friends. I really meant that. God, I’m rambling, aren’t I? Call me and maybe I’ll come have a drink with you wherever you are. Okay, later.”
“It’s me again,” he said the second time, an hour later. “Where did you go? I’m back at my place and I was hoping we could talk. Call me.”
“I think you’re screening your calls,” came the third message. A half hour later. “I know you love doing that. It’s not going to work, though. I know where you live.”
The fourth message, forty-five minutes later: “You’re leaving me no choice here, Gus. I hope you realize that.”
“Okay, I’m obviously too lame to be a stalker,” he said in number five, in a whisper. It was a good hour later. “I’m standing outside your building and there’s definitely no light on in there. It occurred to me that you might not have a sense of humor about me showing up like this, at like 1 a.m., but then I figured it would be fine, and now I just feel like kind of a jackass because it’s colder than balls out here and I think your freaky neighbor might have called the cops. I’m calling you for bail.”
“You thought this was a bail call, didn’t you?” he asked in his normal voice in the sixth message. “Don’t worry, I’m perfectly fine, just cold. I really wish you were home, or answering your phone, Gus. I really need to talk to you. I really think—” He broke off, and sighed. “I realize you’re just out or something. Maybe you don’t even have your phone with you, maybe you’re just sick of my shit, and I can’t blame you. Please call me when you get this. I don’t care what time it is. Seriously. Just call.”
The last call came in just before four. Nate’s number, but no message—just the phone hanging up. Like he’d given up.
My head spun, and it was suddenly hard to breathe. Nate had called me, repeatedly. Had he and Helen broken up? He would have said that, wouldn’t he? No—they probably weren’t broken up, exactly, but things certainly couldn’t be good if he’d spent so many hours calling me, showing up at my apartment, leaving me increasingly emotional messages. I’d thought that Helen had outplayed me, but maybe not, maybe Nate had finally seen the true Helen and realized—
“What’s going on?”
Henry stood, clad only in his boxer-briefs, in the bedroom doorway. He looked rumpled and sexy and too good to be true.
I’d forgotten all about him.
I looked down at my cell phone, and then, just like that, I knew.
Henry must have turned off my ringer. I didn’t really understand why he would do that, but he must have. Nothing else made sense. I couldn’t possibly have missed Nate’s calls all on my own. Life couldn’t be that cruel. Henry had to have done it.
“Did you turn off my ringer?” I demanded.
Henry rubbed a hand across his face, and then eyed me. Warily.
“It was good for me, too,” he said. “I particularly like that thing you do with your—”
“My phone!” I brandished it at him. “It was on the couch. Did you do it? Did you maliciously turn off the ringer?”
“I’m very rarely malicious with phones, Gus. This is because they’re inanimate objects.”
“Damn you!” I shouted at him, and winged the phone at his head.
Luckily for Henry, I had about as much aim as I had maturity. Which was to say, none. The phone missed him entirely, hit the wall, and split apart. Linus barked in the direction of the battery case, but otherwise didn’t move.
The moment the phone had left my fingers, I realized I was acting like a crazy person. Of course Henry hadn’t messed with my cell phone. Why would he? I had probably sat on it. But it was too late to do anything about that now. I was just another one of his lunatic girls. I wasn’t sure why that made me feel worse.
I hid my face in my hands, and wished that one of us would disappear. I didn’t care who.
It was quiet for a long time.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” he asked eventually.
I really didn’t.
“It has nothing to do with you,” I mumbled.
“I know that,” Henry bit out. Surprised, I looked up to see temper written all over his face. “Do you want to know how I know it has nothing to do with me? Because I was asleep.”
I wanted to apologize, but I couldn’t seem to form the words. He looked at me for a long moment, and when I couldn’t take it any more I muttered something about my hair and fled to the bathroom.
When I came back out, the sun was up and he was gone.
I took a long nap on the couch and when I woke up, I still felt that heaviness, like I might cry at any moment.
I shouldn’t have let things happen with Henry. Again. I could rationalize accidentally sleeping with Henry when out of my right mind with grief and Jack Daniel’s. It had been a bad mistake, but understandable under the circumstances. But how could I rationalize last night? How could I possibly have done such a thing to Georgia?
It didn’t matter that she had never touched Henry, that he had never though
t about her that way, that she wasn’t even a blip on his romantic radar. The fact that those things were true made what I had done worse. Cardinal rule number two was that you didn’t touch the men who caused your friends emotional trauma. Ever. No matter what.
No wonder I felt bad about myself. What made it all hurt a little bit more was that there had been something sweet about everything that had happened with Henry. I could still see that look he’d had from time to time—if I hadn’t known better, I might have thought it was tenderness.
But that was impossible. That wasn’t who Henry was.
I shook it off and called Nate, which was what really mattered. Or anyway, was the only thing I had the tools to deal with. I would just file Henry away and forget about it. He and Helen were just a phase Nate and I once went through. Just a phase that didn’t bear repeating, and one Georgia would never hear about.
Nate picked up on the third ring.
“Hey there,” he said.
“Hi.” I felt shy and giddy all at once.
“I think I owe you an apology,” he said, his voice ripe with merriment. “I drank way too much last night and I have the terrible feeling I left some drunk, incoherent message for you. I did, didn’t I?”
“Well,” I said, taken aback. “There were seven messages, actually, and they weren’t incoh—”
“I told Helen this is what happens when she’s not around to keep me on a leash,” Nate said with a chuckle. “Sorry, dude!”
He was with Helen at that very moment. And he was pretending I was a guy.
I was so stunned by this, I fell silent.
I could hear Helen laughing in the background. The familiar horsiness of that laughter made my stomach twist.
“Okay then,” Nate said, as if I’d continued to joke about the drunken message he’d left in some parallel reality where this awful conversation wasn’t breaking my heart. Again. “Just delete it, and we’ll pretend it never happened, okay? Cool. Later.”
And he hung up.
For the first few hours I rationalized, which I was clearly getting good at. I figured he was mid-breakup with Helen (her confusing laughter notwithstanding) and that as soon as he could get away, he’d call or come over and explain everything. Because otherwise, nothing made sense. He couldn’t call me seven times in a row, say the things he’d said, hint the things he’d hinted, and then wake up the next morning feeling . . . nothing. That wasn’t possible. That wasn’t even within the realm of possible. Was it?
