by Piper Rayne
Jax’s eyes light up. “Yeah. When she bent over to get me a bagel…” He sticks his bent finger in his mouth and bites the knuckle.
Dylan and I share another look. I want him to be prepared to act in case Seth’s knife dives toward Jax’s throat.
“The two bagel places are competitors,” I say in the hopes that Jax will read between lines.
His eyes only light up further. “Oh, I get it. So she’s like an enemy of yours.”
Seth shrugs, sawing into the steak again. “Andrews’ bagels are better anyway.”
Jax finally looks at Dylan and me and quirks an eyebrow. I don’t know anything about Dylan and Jax’s relationship, but they obviously have some sort of non-verbal conversation. Jax nods as if he’s in the loop now.
“She’s your Juliet?” Jax asks Seth.
“Owens.” Dylan shakes his head.
Seth’s gaze flies to Jax. “No. It’s not like that.”
“If you say so. You’re cool if I hit on her then?” He winks at me.
Dylan growls over his forkful of salad.
“Why would I care?” Seth picks up the salad dressing and douses his salad with it. Not one piece of lettuce isn’t covered with dressing.
“Cool.” Jax nods, stabs the piece of meat he cut, and leans back in his chair while he chews, amused.
Dylan continues to shake his head.
“So, Jax, Knox says you’re pretty famous?” Seth asks.
Dylan grunts again, stabbing at his lettuce.
“I wouldn’t say famous, but I’ve made a name for myself.”
“You’re modest. Knox showed me all your Instagram followers.”
“Really?” I pull out my phone and look him up on Instagram. “OMG, you’re friends with all these celebrities?” I show Seth then Dylan.
Dylan never bothers to look up. Does he feel competitive with Jax? Duh, Rian. Of course he does. How do I feel about Johann? I place my phone screen-side down and pick my fork back up.
“We’re acquaintances. None of them would take a bullet for me or anything.” Jax eyes Dylan, who rolls his eyes.
“Super impressive,” Seth says. “Maybe I’ll go to you for my next piece.”
He and Jax share a laugh since Dylan has yet to pick his head up from his plate. Dylan has done all three of Seth’s tattoos.
“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to get one.” I play along with the joke.
But this time, Dylan’s head raises like I just announced there’s a bullet coming right for him. He cocks his head to the side. “What?”
“I’ll totally tattoo you. Do you have anything in mind?” Jax asks. “I’ve got an entire book of just chick tattoos.”
“If you want a tattoo, I’ll give you one,” Dylan says softly, eyes focused only on me.
Jax holds his hands in the air. “Oh yeah, I’d hate to step on any toes.”
“You live for stepping on fucking toes,” Dylan says, looking him square in the eye.
My patience breaks. This dinner was supposed to help us figure out how to coexist, but if anything, it’s made it worse.
“Okay, this entire friendship-turned-hatred thing is driving me crazy. Can you please just tell me what the hell happened between the two of you so we can clear the air?” My eyes shift from Jax to Dylan and back to Jax.
“It’s Phillips’s problem, not mine.” Jax shrugs and continues to eat.
“It’s water under the bridge,” Dylan mumbles.
“Bullshit,” Seth coughs out.
I’ll second Seth. I cannot continue to live with all this animosity. My fork slams down on the table and all three of their heads pop up. Jax doesn’t look as surprised as Dylan and Seth, but then again, Jax doesn’t know me well. Which, sad to say, I kind of like.
“Talk.” I lean back and cross my arms.
Dylan wipes his mouth. “It’s shit from high school. I’m over it if he is.”
Jax scoffs. “I came here willingly. Do you really think Knox didn’t tell me you were here or that I didn’t know Ink Envy was yours? Clearly, the problem isn’t mine.”
“It’s pretty obvious you like to get under Dylan’s skin,” I say.
Jax laughs and rolls his eyes. “You need Rian to do your talking, Phillips?”
“Hell no, but I don’t control her.”
Seth looks as happy as a child watching Tom Brady and Peyton Manning throw a football back and forth.
“She’s right though. You haven’t been Mary fucking Poppins since you got here.” Dylan pushes away from the table, rising, and grabs another beer out of the fridge.
“Why would I be nice? You act like I’m Jack the Ripper!” Jax yells.
Maybe this was a bad idea.
“I’ll have a bee—” Seth raises his finger, but Dylan shuts the fridge and sits back down. “Never mind.”
“Because I know how you are and things around here don’t work that way.” Dylan unscrews the top, flicking it into the garbage can and makes it.
“Don’t act like you know me. We haven’t talked in years. You have no idea who the fuck I am now.”
I look at Seth. His eyes widen and he stands, holding his arms out toward both of them. Although neither of them have stood up, so they both look at him like he’s a dumbass. “Let’s just calm this down now.”
“Sit down, Andrews,” Dylan says. “I’m not going to fight him.”
Could have fooled me.
Dylan stands and puts his plate in the sink, calmly finishes his beer, and tosses the bottle into the recycling container. Jax keeps one eye on Dylan the entire time. I’m so out of my league with these two. Am I going to come home one day to a crime scene?
“Thanks for trying, Rian, but our friendship died a long time ago.” I open my mouth to respond, but Dylan keeps going. “And Owens, you stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours. Got it?” Without waiting for a response, he grabs his keys and walks out the door.
“He’s such an asshole.” Jax heads toward his bedroom. “Thanks for planning the dinner, Rian. Sorry it’s ruined.” Then he shuts his bedroom door.
Seth and I look at one another. My gaze detours to the untouched chocolate-on-chocolate cake sitting on the counter. I pick it up and place it on the table between us. Seth’s fork digs right in without me cutting a piece.
“Remind me to thank Knox for this,” I say. Seth smiles at me over the cake. “Not.” I dig my fork in the cake.
Chocolate cake always makes things better.
Chapter Six
Dylan
I pack a change of clothes in my workout bag this morning because I need to head into the city afterward. But first, I scribble a letter to Rian to apologize for last night. She started the shower already, so I can slip it under her door and hightail it out of here.
I have no idea why I allow Jax to use up my last ounce of patience. What happened between us is so far in the past.
When I walk out of my bedroom, the kitchen is spotless as usual, so I notice the math problem on the table right away. I wonder what time she woke up to start working on it. I glance at it as I grab a water, but all the numbers and symbols and letters make no sense to me. Which shows how different Rian and I are. She’s uber smart. The girl teachers loved and colleges begged for an application. Me, on the other hand, not so much.
Instead of sliding my note under her door, I decide to stuff it in her book. Anyone who knows Rian knows that now that she’s started, she’ll be obsessing over this problem until she figures it out.
The shower turns off. That’s my sign to leave, so I quietly open the apartment door and shut it behind me, turning to find Knox in the hallway.
“Shit, man.” I grab my chest.
Knox is a big guy and intimidating at first glance. Plus, he holds that whole cop persona like “try me and see what happens.”
He yawns. “Sorry, but I wasn’t gonna miss out this time.”
Like clockwork, Seth walks out of the apartment behind Knox while Ethan slowly shuts his apartment door dow
n the hall, locking it behind him. We all look like shit—our hair up in different directions, except for Knox, who wears a baseball hat.
“Extra big bag there,” Ethan says as we file into the elevator.
“I’m heading to the city after,” I say.
No one says anything, but Seth shoots me a look like, “you’re going to have to talk about your outburst yesterday at some point.”
“Where you headed?” Knox asks after we’re on the bottom level, as though his brain isn’t working at full speed yet.
“The neighborhood. I need to find another artist for the shop.”
We begin the short walk toward the gym, Knox and me in front with Seth and Ethan behind us.
“What about Jax? I get the history and shit, but he’d be good for Ink Envy,” Knox says.
He isn’t wrong. If I could tolerate Jax for more than a nanosecond, I’d ask him to come on for the short interim he’ll be in Cliffton Heights. But no matter how much I love Ink Envy, I cannot work around him.
I shake my head and Knox blows out a long breath. “You gotta get over it, man.”
“What exactly does he have to get over?” Seth’s head pushes between our shoulders.
I turn to put my hand on his face and push him back. “Nothing.”
“That’s like physical abuse, dude,” Seth says from behind me.
Ethan mumbles something and they both laugh. I have no interest in dealing with their shit.
“For your information, I am over it. He’s the one who showed up with a chip on his shoulder.”
Knox’s gaze holds steady on me for a moment as he opens the door for us to enter the gym. “We both know that’s not all of it. You guys were like brothers. There has to be a way to find your way back there, and I think him working at Ink Envy is a great start.”
Seth and Ethan walk in, and I stop as we dig out our cards to scan in. “Hell will freeze over, pigs will fly, and Seth will nail Evan before we’re ever like brothers again.”
“Why are you bringing me into this?” Seth asks, handing his card to the girl at the front desk. “Just FYI, Evan is a girl,” he whispers to her.
She looks at him like, “whatever, guy, keep moving.” After scanning my card, she hands it to me, and I stuff it back into my wallet.
“You’re being a stubborn jackass.”
I ignore Knox.
I’m quiet the entire workout. Ethan and Knox talk about all the sex they’re getting while Seth groans that there are no available women in Cliffton Heights. I want to call him out on his bullshit. There’s just one woman in Cliffton Heights who isn’t available to him and that’s what he’s pissed about.
But I can’t very well cast stones when I’m living life in a glass house myself right now, so I keep my mouth shut.
The train is about to pull away from the station when I arrive, so I use my last reserve of energy after my workout to chase it down. Lucky for me, I catch it, but the conductor gives me a nasty look. Like I give a shit.
My footsteps halt when I enter the train cab. I was going to use this hour and a half to nap. Now that’s not going to happen. Not that I’m complaining.
“Rian,” I say.
She looks up from whatever she’s reading, her smile immediate. No one can put me in a better mood than Rian. Maybe because she always seems happy to see me.
“What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” I sit down in the seat across from her.
She shuts that math book, the same one I saw on the table this morning, and holds my note. “Thanks for the apology.”
“I shouldn’t have reacted that way,” I say.
“No. I shouldn’t have pushed the two of you. It’s none of my business.” Her smile dims.
I owe her an explanation. I get that everyone wants to know the story of me and Jax, but it’s embarrassing, which is the only reason I’m not open to share.
“Do you mind?” I nod at the empty space beside her.
She slides closer to the window. “No.”
I place my duffle bag between my feet on the floor. She’s wearing jeans and a jacket, her gray hat with the giant pom-pom on it still on her head. Spring will hopefully arrive soon.
“Where are you getting off?” I ask, losing the nerve to tell her about all the shit with Jax.
“The city. I have a brunch with”—she lifts the math book in her lap—“Johann Frederickson.”
“Sounds like quite the intellectual,” I say.
She giggles. “He’s the guy my parents constantly compare me to.” She rolls her eyes, looks out the window for a second, then sets her gaze on me. “Whose child is smarter? That’s all my parents and his parents talk about. They’re not obvious about it—that would be uncouth. It’s all done covertly with a comment here, a comment there. I feel bad because my parents got the short end of the stick—Johann is way smarter than me.”
I pat her thigh. “Not possible.”
She laughs, but it doesn’t make my heart warm. There’s something off. “Johann is a math professor at Columbia. He went to an Ivy League college while I was at NYU. He’s already working on his doctorate and I never even considered getting mine, much to my parents’ disappointment. He’s single, but I am too, so that doesn’t really hold weight in their arguments. That’s why my parents want me to win this contest, because it’ll prove something to them.”
One thing I’ve always liked about Rian is her way of laying out her cards like a treasure map. There’s no gold or jewels hidden layers deep in the sand. There’s no game with her.
“How come I’ve never heard of this guy?” I ask, wondering if Johann looks like his name suggests.
“Because he’s not my friend. I think he secretly likes that our parents banter back and forth about who’s better. I don’t much care for him. He’s egotistical and a jackass, truthfully.”
“Then why are you having brunch with him?”
A blush fills her cheeks. A clear sign there’s more to this little brunch. “I wanted to get into his condo and see if he has any notes.”
My mouth opens. “You’re going to cheat?”
She’s quick to shake her head. “No. I just want to see if I even stand a chance.”
I tilt my head. This is so not like her. Maybe I put Rian too high up on the morals platform, but I’m more likely than her to be a cheater. She’s pure. “Where’s your phone?”
She narrows her eyes but retrieves her phone from her bag. I grab it, and she allows me to thumb through her phone to retrieve his contact.
I hand the phone back to her. “Cancel the brunch.”
“What? No.” She holds the phone and glances at his name.
“Rian, you won’t be able to live with yourself if you go through with this plan. We both know it.”
She opens her mouth but quickly shuts it.
“You know I’m right. Plus, you’re the smartest person I know. You can solve this problem and grab that prize well before him.”
“The problem is impossible. I’ve tried and—”
“You wouldn’t even feel good about winning if you cheated to get the right answer.” I grip her thigh and shake her leg.
Her shoulders slump and she nods. “I’m just going to disappoint them.”
I’ve met Mr. and Mrs. Wright once. They came to the apartment on a surprise visit, so Rian wasn’t able to shuffle all of us away. They took one look at me, all four eyes slowly perusing me from head to toe, and it was clear—I wasn’t what they liked for their daughter, even as an acquaintance.
“Who the hell cares? You have a job, you’re self-sufficient. What do you still need from them?” My voice is angrier than normal, and Rian’s wide eyes say I’ve surprised her.
She glances out the window, watching the landscape breeze past. “I’ll never be enough.”
I fucking hate that she feels that way. It makes me want to dial up Mr. and Mrs. Wright and tell them how much they’ve fucked up their daughter and if they can
’t see how damn perfect she is, then they’re the ones who need to have their IQ tested.
I put my arm around her shoulders, pulling her into my chest. The smell of her shampoo, which I’ve discovered since sharing a shower with her, hits my nostrils. I’m not sure if it’s because we share an apartment now, but it feels like home. “You are enough. You’re an amazing woman.”
I pluck her phone from her hand and hammer out a text to Johann.
She sits up, seeing I canceled on her behalf. “Dylan!”
“Time for a Dylan and Rian day out, don’t you think?”
Rian smiles as if I’m the keeper of her happiness. That look scares the shit out of me. I’m no one’s keeper of happiness. I may hate Mr. and Mrs. Wright, but they’re not wrong. I’m not who their daughter needs in her life. She can do much better than me.
Chapter Seven
Rian
I probably need a support group. Hello, I’m Rian, and I’m addicted to Dylan Phillips. I’d tell my story of falling in love with a boy who will surely break my heart without ever knowing he did. The problem is that just like any addiction, there’s only one thing you can do to keep clean—abstinence. The fact that I just agreed to spend the day with Dylan is the complete opposite of what I should do.
He takes me to a bagel place to kill time. It’s his favorite, and I see why—though I’d never admit that to Seth.
At eleven o’clock, we approach a tattoo parlor near NYU, my old stomping grounds.
“I remember this place,” I say, nostalgia hitting me. Sierra always had at least two reservations here that she canceled last minute.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve never been inside, but a lot of the students came here.” I glance down the street at some bars that I only went to when Sierra dragged me out. Rarely did I not have my mind solely on my grades.
“I worked here,” he says. “Too bad you never came in. We’d have been friends way before.”
Truth is, I remember seeing the artists and customers smoking outside. I’d put my head down and walk by, trying not to be seen. At the time, those people seemed so sure of themselves and comfortable in their own skin. That quality has always scared me. Probably because I never felt the same.
