by Carrie Quest
I love them all, I really do, but would it kill them to watch a Marvel movie every once in a while?
“You can go to all the dinners you want,” Syd says. “But that won’t make you friends. You have unfinished business with him. By which I mean you want him in your lady business. Bad. Don’t even bother to deny it.”
I don’t. Instead, I change the subject.
“What’s up with you? How was Christmas with the Clauses?”
After we finished high school Syd moved to Boulder for college and her parents bought Santa’s Village, a huge Christmas-themed compound on the side of the interstate in Nebraska. The place is internationally famous and mentioned in every American road trip guide there is. Syd visits for the holidays every year and plays an elf to her parents’ Mr. and Mrs. Claus.
“It sucked reindeer balls.” Her smug look disappears. “I spent the whole time arguing with a virgin in a Jack Frost costume.”
I choke on my cinnamon scroll. “Who was he?”
“My parents decided to take on a partner and he’s her son. She made him the manager of the toy factory and he thought that made him the boss of the elves. It didn’t.” She shoots me a dark look, and suddenly I’m afraid that poor Jack Frost is buried on the Nebraska plains, his grave marked only by a wooden gingerbread man with a snowflake carved over its heart.
“So, what did you do?”
“Oh, I won in the end. I led an elfish rebellion and we monkey-wrenched his ass. Sabotaged the Polar Express and took all the freezing components out of the frost machines. He knows who’s the boss now, believe me.”
I bite my lip, trying to hold in the laugh I know is coming. “Uh-huh. And how old was this evil virgin you monkey-wrenched? Like fifteen?”
“I would never stoop that low,” she says. “I don’t harass kids, Piper.”
I snort. “Sorry.”
“He’s our age.”
“And how did you know he’s a virgin?”
Her grin is pure evil. “I spiked his mom’s eggnog at the Happy Holidays Gathering and she told me.”
I can’t hold it back anymore after that, and I laugh so hard that the last sip of marshmallow latte comes out my nose.
“Is he going to be there next year?” I ask, when I can speak again.
“Probably,” Syd mutters. “But I’ll be ready for him next time.”
I might have to make a visit to Santa’s Village next Christmas, if only to save Jack Frost from catching an elfish monkey wrench to the back of his skull.
This time Syd changes the subject, which is interesting since she loves spinning tales, and sabotaging the Polar Express with tools from Santa’s workshop has the makings of a classic. This guy must’ve really gotten under her skin.
“So Ben’s send-off party is tomorrow, right?”
“Yup. You going to make it?”
“Nope. I have to head back to Boulder tonight.”
Bummer. I was really hoping she’d be there as Adam armor. Nat will be around, of course, but she’s far too likely to get dragged into a broom closet by my brother and is not a dependable wing woman.
“Sounds like a rager, though,” Syd says. “You and your ‘friend’ Adam should have a ball.”
Shit. This doesn’t sound good. “Don’t air quote at me. And who told you it’s going to be a rager?”
“Hometown boy heading off to the Olympics?” Syd does her eyebrow thing again. Honestly, it’s impressive. Why the fuck did I bother paying attention in algebra? At least she has a skill to show for all those wasted hours.
“Ben told me he only invited a few people,” I say. “I’m sure it’s going to be fine.”
Two hours into the party and it’s not fine. Honestly, at this point we’re so far from fucking fine that we’re in another country. Scratch that. Another galaxy maybe.
Our house is packed with people I’ve either never met or knew in high school and never wanted to see again. It’s loud, Nat and Ben keep disappearing and coming back with dopey grins, and Adam has been talking to a redhead in the corner for thirty-eight minutes.
Yes, I’m totally counting.
His dark head is bent close to hers and she’s doing that thing where she pretends to not be able to hear him, so she has to lean in closer and press her breasts against his arm. Which is fine. We’ve all done it, and she’s rocking that scoop-neck sweater even though she’s got to be freezing, so more power to her. I’m sure she’s perfectly nice and there’s no reason at all I should be having a violent and overwhelming desire to throw her off the balcony.
Adam is allowed to talk to whomever he wants, no matter how gorgeous and busty, and I’m going to have to learn to deal with that. Tequila will help. It’s never let me down yet.
I hid the good stuff in my room before the party, and I should probably stop torturing myself by watching Adam’s seduction technique anyway, so I tear myself away and head downstairs, stopping to talk to a few people along the way. But when I open the door to my room, I find Ben’s friend, Big Tom, about to be castrated by my cat. He’s sitting on my desk chair with his pants around his ankles, and there’s a girl on her knees in front of him bobbing her head up and down enthusiastically and moaning.
Neither one of them notices me standing in the doorway, and they’re way too busy getting busy to realize that Chuckles has crept up onto my desk and is about to launch an aerial assault on Tom’s dick.
“Chuckles,” I hiss. “Get down. Now!”
Tom and his friend are still oblivious, but Chuckles hears me all right. He doesn’t get down though, he narrows his glowing green eyes at me and twitches his fluffy orange tail faster as he prepares to pounce.
“You wouldn’t dare,” I whisper, but who am I kidding? Chuckles fights German shepherds for fun. Two drunken idiots in the middle of a blowjob won’t even make him break a sweat.
I back up, planning on crashing through the door to alert them to my presence, but Chuckles is too fast for me. He swipes the girl’s cheek and she screams and chokes on Tom’s dick. She’s not moaning anymore. She’s coughing and flailing her arms around and there are tears streaming from her eyes.
“Jesus! Teeth!” Tom yells. Then he pulls away, which is a mistake, because her teeth are nothing compared to Chuckles’s claws, and at least when his dick was in her mouth, she was providing him cover.
Now he’s exposed.
And now I know why his nickname is Big Tom. I always thought it was because he was tall, but nope. Interesting.
Tom tries to run away, but he’s hobbled by the pants around his ankles and he goes down like a mighty sequoia, fast and heavy, with barely enough time to break his fall with his hands. He’s lying there, bare ass in the air, when Chuckles pounces.
“Motherfucker!” Tom twists around, flailing his hands and trying to hit Chuckles, but my cat digs his claws into the poor guy’s cheeks and growls.
“Release the buttocks,” I growl back. Chuckles stares at me, considering how serious I am, and I point toward the water bottle on my bedside table. “Get off or get the squirt,” I say.
Chuckles hisses, then slashes a few lines on Tom’s ass like a demented feline Zorro before leaping off and scuttling under my bed.
Tom’s girl pushes past me, sobbing, her hand cupping her cheek, and slams the door to the bathroom. Which leaves me staring at the lines of blood welling up on the full moon rising in front of me as Tom struggles to his feet.
He leaves his jeans unbuttoned, holding them loosely around his waist, and turns to me. We stare at each other for a couple minutes, letting the silence stretch, both of us ignoring the wailing coming from the bathroom.
“Hey, Piper,” Tom finally says. His tone is casual, like we’ve played out this blowjob/cat attack scene a million times before.
“Hey, Tom.”
“Nice cat.”
“Nice penis.”
His lips twitch. “Thanks. Guess I’d better…” He trails off and points toward the door.
“You’d better sta
y out of my room next time?” I suggest.
“Won’t be a problem,” he promises, then slides by me, still holding up his pants, and shuffles down the hall.
Right past Adam, who’s standing in the door of his room, arms crossed, not looking at all friendly. Tom nods at him but wisely doesn’t stop, just books up the stairs and away, leaving me in another staring contest.
Adam’s cheeks are flushed, and his hair is in a dark cloud around his head, like he’s been pulling it. Or maybe someone else has been pulling it for him. A picture pops into my mind of Adam on his knees in front of the girl from upstairs, his face buried between her legs, her fingers tugging on his hair as he makes her come, grinding her ass all over the cushion I fucking picked out for his desk chair.
He’s coming out of his room, after all. Maybe she’s still in there. Maybe he’s getting her a glass of water before they tumble into bed for round two.
My stomach roils at the thought and I take a step back, like putting physical distance between us can somehow cancel out the nausea and panic I’m feeling at the thought of Adam hooking up with someone else.
“You and Tom?” His voice is low and hoarse.
“You and the redhead?” I counter, waving at his closed door.
He twists around, like he’s looking for someone behind him. “What are you talking about?”
“The girl from upstairs.” I cross my own arms and stand a little straighter. “The one who was rubbing herself all over you.”
“Jessica?”
“I don’t need to know her name!” I press my hand to my stomach and clench my teeth together. How long is that girl going to be in the bathroom crying over a cat scratch? I’m going to need to puke if this conversation doesn’t end, like, now, and I’d rather not end this stunner of an evening by scrubbing vomit out of my carpet.
Syd was right. This is never going to work.
“I didn’t fuck Jessica,” Adam says. “She’s a marketer and she follows me on Instagram. She kept talking about building a brand and how I should be doing all this shit to get more followers.” He sighs. “She finally clued in that I don’t give a damn about any of that stuff. I only ever started posting because I wanted—”
He trails off and swallows hard. “Anyway, she left with her boyfriend.”
Relief floods through me and I sag against the doorjamb.
“I didn’t fuck Tom,” I say. Adam’s eyes close and he bends over, his hands on his knees. The girl in the bathroom has finally stopped sobbing, and in the sudden silence I can hear Adam’s deep exhales as he tries to get hold of himself.
“We’re not friends,” I whisper. I’m mostly talking to myself, but Adam hears me. He glances up at me, his dark eyes impossible to read behind the wild tangle of his hair and shakes his head.
“Not even close,” he agrees. “Come with me.”
He holds out his hand and I don’t hesitate. I grab on with everything I’ve got and let him drag me up the stairs and through the door to the garage. I wait while he rummages through a basket of random winter gear and hold out my arms like a little kid while he slips one of my mom’s old jackets on me and pulls a fuzzy wool hat down, so it covers my ears.
Then I follow him outside, away from the warmth of the house and sounds of the party, into the ice-bright glow of the moonlit night.
8
Adam
Piper doesn’t say a word, just trails after me as I lead the way through the parking lot to the trail that dumps skiers out in town. I stop at the edge for a minute, remembering the hundreds of times I cut through the trees right here on my way back to the condo at the end of the day. Or sometimes in the middle of the day, to grab lunch or meet Piper in her warm bed while everyone else was still on the mountain.
“You and Ben could ride all the way to the front door,” Piper says. “I couldn’t keep up. Always ground to a halt at the edge of the parking lot.”
She reaches for my hand, which is already halfway frozen. I rigged her up but forgot a hat and gloves for myself. Shit. I’d like to blame a brain glitch but in truth I was desperate to get away, to take Piper somewhere quiet and breathe with her, even if the air is icy.
I keep hold of her hand and pull her onto the trail. The groomers have been through and the packed snow crunches under our feet as we start to hike up. The trees on either side of the trail are shadowy, but it’s a clear night and the moonlight reflecting off the snow lets us see well enough. We hike fast, trying to keep warm, our breath puffing out in little clouds. It’s all so completely familiar: the way the tips of my ears and nose go numb, the smell of the trees and the snow, the bite of the cold, dry air as it hits my lungs. Someone could drop me on this trail in ten years, blindfolded, and I swear I’d be able to tell them exactly where I was in five seconds.
I know this place, and after the endless onslaught of new over the last fifteen months it’s tempting as hell to let myself slide into the easiness of that familiarity. To open the gates and let the memories come, because it’s only been five days and holding them back has already exhausted me.
Like staying away from Piper has exhausted me.
“Sorry if I was an ass back there,” I say quietly. “I shouldn’t have asked about you and Tom. It’s none of my business, it’s just…”
She squeezes my hand. “Just that you wanted to smother his perky breasts in a puffy snowsuit and then throw him off the balcony?”
“Something like that, but it was less a perky breast issue and more of a dick meets butcher knife kind of thing.”
“Yeah, well, Chuckles took care of that. He interrupted Tom and a friend at an intimate moment and it wasn’t pretty. Tom won’t be sitting down for a couple days and he might be off blowjobs for life.”
I wince. “Harsh. That cat does not fuck around.”
She opens her mouth to answer, but a pack of kids come around a corner and whizz past us on snowskates, laughing and tossing shouted insults back and forth, and when it’s quiet again, the moment is gone, so we just keep hiking.
At first we can see the light of other condos and houses twinkling through the barren trees, and occasionally catch scattered voices of people heading inside or lounging around in hot tubs on their decks, but after a while we pass out of the populated area and into the resort. Total silence except for the soft crunch of our footsteps and the huff of our breath. Then Piper gasps and pulls me to a stop. She silently points to the trail ahead, where a fox is slipping out of the trees, head to the ground as he glides across the snow.
We follow him up the hill, keeping up with his lazy pace for a few minutes until he suddenly cocks his head and takes off into the forest.
“Wow,” Piper breathes.
“Yeah,” I answer. But I’m not looking at the gap in the trees where the fox disappeared. I only have eyes for the girl in front of me.
She pushes the heavy hat back on her forehead and stares back at me. Her face is winter-pale and the reflected light from the snow makes her light blue eyes shine an otherworldly silver.
“We’re not friends,” she says again.
I shake my head.
“So what are we?”
“What do you want to be?” I ask.
She shivers, and I fight the urge to pull her into my arms. We keep staring at each other, and I watch my own feelings play out on her beautiful face. The longing. The desperate hope. The resignation.
“I don’t think it matters,” she finally says, and her voice breaks my heart. “I’m staying in Colorado and you’re leaving. We’re heading in opposite directions.”
“We’re here now,” I say. A wild bird of reckless hope is beating its wings against the cage of my chest, demanding to be let out into the world, no matter the danger.
She lowers her eyes and stares at her boots, stomping her left foot to make a peacock tail pattern in the snow. “It’s not enough,” she says. “Syd told me today that I never got over you, and she’s right. I should probably start moving forward. We both should.”
>
“I’ll go stay with my parents tomorrow,” she adds. “It’ll be easier for both of us.”
A short scream echoes out of the trees. The fox found her dinner.
“Should we head back?” Her teeth are chattering and the spot on my toes where I once had frostbite is aching, but I’m not quite ready to go back. Not yet. I take her hand again and pull her across the trail, searching for the trail sign nailed to a tree. When I find it, I run my hands down the gnarly trunk, brushing snow aside when I near the bottom.
“What are you looking for?”
“Ben and Brody and I hiked up here for a little moonlight riding that night,” I say.
Her breath catches, and I know she remembers exactly which night I’m talking about. The night I knocked on her window, still in my gear, and was so desperate to get inside that I forgot my board in a snow bank until morning. The night we made love for the first time.
There’s just enough light for her to see the initials I carved on the tree while Ben and Brody went back for one more run. She takes off her glove and reaches out to trace the first letters of our names.
“That was a good night,” she whispers.
“The best.”
“Why did you bring me up here?” she asks.
I watch her fingers go over the letters, again and again, for a long time before I can find the words to answer.
“I wanted to remember what it felt like,” I finally say. “To be at the beginning of something. I’m sick to fucking death of endings.”
Her fingers still and she places the palm of her hand on the crooked heart I carved into the tree all those years ago. When she looks up at me, tears are running down her cheeks.
“I wish I knew what to say to make it better,” she whispers. “That I had some awesome deep quote about endings being beginnings in disguise or something, but I don’t. I’m sorry. I had this plan that I’d help you, you know? That I’d be able to—”
