After a few minutes, his chatter moved on to sports talk. Apparently Jacob and his brothers sometimes raced their dirt bikes in competitions. As he went on and on describing his latest third-place finish, it dawned on me that he had yet to ask a single question about me. Why I lived here now, what work I did. It was annoying.
When the conversation moved back to high school friends, however, I finally had enough. Jacob asked me if there was anyone I still kept in touch with, so I told him that I had remained close with Chris and that he was, in fact, there with me that night. Jacob smirked. “That guy was always such a pansy,” he said.
“Excuse me?” I asked, the irritation that had been slowly simmering below the surface suddenly erupting into full-blown anger.
“He was always so dorky,” Jacob went on, clearly not sensing that he was on dangerous grounds. “With his nose in a book. And those glasses. What a loser.”
I stood so abruptly that my stool fell back into the bar. “I have to go,” I said, my voice cold. My hands were practically shaking, I was so pissed. Who did this asshole think he was?
“Really?” he asked, looking disappointed. “I was hoping we could really catch up.”
When his gaze, too, slid down to my chest, I decided I had been standing here way too long.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling disgusted. I threw a few bills down on the bar. I didn’t want him paying for anything for me. “Bye.” Before he could respond, I had turned on my heel and walked away as quickly as I could.
As I strode across the room, I tried to get control of my anger. Had Jacob always been like that? Had I just never noticed? I thought back to how he had been in high school. Yeah, he had always been a jock, but he had also been sweet and kind and a little quiet. Maybe it was because he was the youngest and probably spent more time with his mom than with his older brothers. Now that he was grown, though, and out of the house, it was clear he had changed for the worse.
“How did it go?” Ashley asked me excitedly as I approached the table.
“Terrible,” I said flatly. “He turned into a total ass. And his brother practically sexually harassed me. Big fat waste of time.”
Ashley’s face fell. “Man, I was really hoping it might turn out. It seemed so romantic.”
“This is real life, not a movie, Ash,” I said, snatching Ryan’s beer from in front of him and taking a long sip. “And in real life, men are pigs.”
Chapter Eight
“Is that what you’re wearing?” Ryan asked the second I walked out of my bedroom.
“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” I asked, looking down at my jeans and black sweater.
Ryan sighed. “Have we taught you nothing? Haven’t you noticed anything about the heroines in the movies we’ve been watching?”
“They all let sappy love stuff control their lives?” I asked.
He glared at me. “They all dressed like females,” he said.
“Hey!” I was offended. I may be a tomboy, but I think he was pushing it. It wasn’t like my clothes were super baggy or masculine—you could still tell I was a female, for God’s sake.
“Don’t you have anything in your closet that shows a little skin?” he asked. “A dress would be nice.”
“Ryan, can we just go?” I asked. “I didn’t even want to go to this party, and now you’re hassling me about my clothes.”
“Em, the entire reason we’re going to this party is so you can meet some guys. What’s the point if you don’t put some effort into it?”
I sighed loudly. I was getting very tired of both Ryan and Ashley. Following their advice had seemed like a good idea at the time—or, at the very least, like something that couldn’t possibly hurt me. But lately all I felt was hassled and annoyed. And, if I had to watch another stupid chick flick, I was pretty sure I was going to start pulling my hair out.
Ryan must have noticed the look on my face. “Look,” he said, his voice sweeter now. “Let me just go take a look in the closet. You don’t have to wear anything you don’t want to.”
“Fine,” I said, turning on my heel and walking back into my bedroom. Once I’d crossed the threshold, I realized Ryan wasn’t with me. I peeked out into the hallway and saw him walking into Ashley’s room.
“I never said your closet,” he said over his shoulder.
“Oh dear Lord,” I muttered, following him into Ashley’s room. “You do realize that I’m about five inches taller than her, right?”
“I’ll figure something out,” he muttered. A few minutes later he had pulled several options out and draped them over his arm. “These should work,” he said, holding up a pair of black leggings. “They’re stretchy, so they should fit your freak legs.”
“Real nice, Ry,” I muttered, taking the leggings from him. “What else?”
He handed me a grey top that looked fairly shapeless to me. “Really?” I asked.
“Just try it on,” he said. “And then you can wear your leather boots, and I’ll find you a necklace.” He saw the look on my face and raised an eyebrow. “Brooke bought you those boots, which are totally hot by the way, two years ago, and I’ve only seen you wear them once.”
“They pinch my feet.”
“Beauty is pain,” he said. “I get regular waxings, I should know.”
Ten minutes later I had put on the outfit Ryan had put together. I had to admit, it looked pretty good on me. The leggings, despite being stretchy, were still a few inches short on me, but the boots covered the gap. The grey shirt that had seemed so shapeless to me, actually draped asymmetrically across my shoulders and chest in a really flattering way. He finished the look with a long chunky silver chain and several silver bangles on my wrist.
“Admit it,” he said, looking over my shoulder at my reflection in the floor-length mirror. “You know you look good. And you like it.”
“I do feel pretty good,” I admitted. “I’m almost not dreading this night.”
“Look at it this way,” Ryan said, throwing an arm around my shoulder. “At the very least, you get to spend an entire evening with me.”
“Lucky me.”
* * *
The party was at a loft downtown. The expansive space was sparsely furnished, with exposed brick walls and stainless steel appliances and fixtures. It felt a little cold to me, but Ryan was in transports of delight over it.
“This is so cool,” he babbled excitedly in my ear. “Don’t you love the play on function and form here? The blending of the hard lines with the stark space. Really impressive.”
“It looks like a yuppie’s overpriced loft,” I muttered. He ignored me.
For a while, Ryan stayed by my side, leading me around as he mingled with his friends. But it wasn’t long before he zeroed in on a prospect—not for me, but for himself. The guy looked to be about twenty years old, thin as a rail, and dressed in baggy pants and a white undershirt—totally ick, in my opinion. But then, it wasn’t very often that Ryan and I agreed on men.
In no time at all Ryan had cornered the kid by the bar, laughing uproariously at his every comment. “Pathetic,” I muttered, grinning to myself as I watched from the other end of the granite counter. Ryan was, without a doubt, the most shameless flirt I had ever met.
“Emily?” A familiar voice said behind me. I spun around and was pleasantly surprised to see Elliot standing at the bar.
“Hey! What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I came with a few friends,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder at a group of people near by. “What about you?”
“My friend, Ryan,” I said, pointing him out. “Who has abandoned me to go flirt with some twenty year old. An art student.”
Elliot laughed, pushing the sleeves of his shirt up onto his forearms. Nice arms, I thought automatically, noting the trail of goldish red hair dusting across his skin. I looked him over briefly. He was dressed in a pair of dark-wash jeans and a black long sleeve T-shirt. I realized that I had rarely seen him in anything other than his khakis and Vi
taLife Polo shirt. He looked good in normal clothes.
“Do you need a refill on that?” he asked, pointing down at my empty beer bottle.
“You’re not going to lecture me?” I asked, feigning shock. “Not gonna give me some long diatribe on the way alcohol chokes off the nutrients in my body?”
“Beer is an essential nutrient,” he said, winking at me. He took the bottle from my hand and set it down on the counter, picking up a fresh beer and handing it to me. “So Ryan abandoned you, huh? That’s kind of lame.”
“What’s lame is that I didn’t even want to come here in the first place,” I said. “I was looking forward to a night home alone when Ryan called and told me he was dragging me here.”
“Why didn’t you just say no?”
“He can be very persuasive,” I muttered, glancing down the bar at my friend, who was now leaning in close to art school boy, whispering something in his ear.
“I can see that,” Elliot said drily.
“It’s a shame,” I continued. “Tonight was supposed to be the first night in ages I didn’t have Ryan or Ashley forcing me to watch some stupid romantic comedy.”
“Ah, the research project,” Elliot said, and I thought I detected a slight grimace on his face before he took another pull of his beer. “How’s that going?”
“I’ve about given it up,” I said. “I knew it was silly from the word go.”
“But Ryan can be very persuasive?”
I laughed. “Yeah. And so can Ashley.”
“Let me guess, he dragged you to this party so he could help you put some of your research into practice?”
“You got it,” I said. “But as he seems to be otherwise engaged, I guess I’m off the hook.”
Something in Elliot’s face seemed to ease a bit; his smile seemed much more normal when he asked me if I wanted to find a place to hide out in case Ryan should remember his purpose for bringing me.
“You’re a lifesaver,” I told him.
“Just follow me.”
We ended up sitting on the floor, leaning against the exposed brick wall in a quiet corner of the loft. With a large group of obnoxiously loud hipsters in front of us, I was reasonably sure we would be safe from Ryan’s observation for the foreseeable future.
“Do you know the guy who owns this place?” I asked.
“No, my friend Kyle does; they work together. What do you think of it?”
I looked around. From our vantage point in the corner I could see most of the loft—it was one of those open floor plans where there aren’t even full proper walls between the bedrooms and the living space. The ceilings were high with exposed ductwork and one entire wall was windows—overlooking an overgrown field and not much else.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, if you like this kind of thing.”
“Not your cup of tea?” he asked, smiling at me.
“I just think people try too hard to be urban sometimes.”
“Did you know this used to be an old department store?” Elliot asked. I shook my head. “The company went under, and the building was abandoned for a while before David Barker’s people came in and refitted everything. They kept all the original stonework and the wooden fixtures in the lobby, but made the space into something usable.”
David Barker was a big-time developer in the city. I knew he had a reputation for doing a lot to revitalize some of the harder hit neighborhoods in the city. “I guess that’s pretty cool,” I said.
Elliot laughed. “You’re so not a city girl, are you Emily Donovan?”
“Oh, you’re one to talk!” I said. “Mr. I Go Camping and Hiking Every Weekend.”
“You’re right,” he said, smiling. “I just think architecture is pretty cool. So I dig that they kept this place true to its original form.”
“Point taken.”
“So what is it about city life that you don’t like?” he asked.
“I like the city,” I argued. “It’s just very different from where I grew up.”
“And where was that?”
“Alpena,” I said, checking his face for any recognition. When none came (not surprising), I went on. “It’s a little city up north. Right on Lake Huron.”
“Hmm,” he said, scrunching up his face. “I don’t think I’ve heard of it. Is it close to the Upper Peninsula?”
“Not really,” I said. “It’s down the coast a bit. On Thunder Bay.”
“What’s it like?”
I thought about that for a minute. When I had been a teenager it had been easy to dismiss my home as small town and boring, the ultimate backwoods, middle of nowhere, podunk town. But with distance came a recognition of all the things I missed.
“It’s nice,” I said. “Quiet. It’s actually kind of a big town by northern Michigan standards, but there’s not much around. Farms, woods, that kind of stuff. Being so near the lake was awesome.”
“I bet,” he said. “Lake Huron is really beautiful, at least from what I’ve seen.”
I nodded eagerly. “It really is. And there’s a bunch of smaller lakes and a pretty big river near by. We used to spend so much of the summer on the water.”
I felt a little pang. I was referring to my high school friends, but it was hard not to remember the long summer days when my parents and I would take the sailboat out into the bay. Dad and I would handle the sailing while Mom lounged around reading. We would stay out until we could watch the sunset over the trees before we would head back home, where Dad would grill burgers.
“Emily,” Elliot said softly. I looked up, feeling a little dazed. “You went away there for a minute,” he said, smiling. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head a bit. “Just thinking.”
“I’m surprised you won’t join the Adventurers Club,” he said. “Seeing as how you seem to miss living out in the woods so much.”
I grinned. “Who says I miss it?”
“Your face just did,” he said.
“Well maybe you have a point,” I said. “Okay, what am I missing by not taking part in the Adventurers thingy? That’s a totally lame name, by the way.”
Elliot nodded sadly. “We used to be the Outdoorsmen,” he said. “But our female membership didn’t like it much.”
“I don’t blame them.”
“We do all kinds of stuff,” he said. “Hiking, kayaking, snowshoeing in the winter. We do some camping when it’s nice out. We’ll go down to Lake Erie when it’s warm, have cookouts, and go swimming. That kind of thing.”
I suddenly realized that, as we had been talking, we had moved slightly closer together, to better hear over the hipsters arguing the merits of some band I had never heard of. It wasn’t entirely uncomfortable to be sitting so close to Elliot. There was something so easy about being in his presence. Like I didn’t have to try.
“I think you would like it,” Elliot was saying. “You should really come out sometime.”
“Maybe I will—”
“Emily!”
I looked up to see Ryan pushing his way toward us, an excited look on his face. “I found him!”
“Who?” I asked, totally confused.
“The guy! For you to go hit on.”
“Oh dear God,” I whispered. Next to me, Elliot laughed softly.
“I’m talking to my friend right now, Ry,” I said emphatically. “You remember Elliot, right?”
“Sure,” Ryan said. The two had met at my clinic a few times over the past year. “Hey, dude,” he said, nodding at Elliot before turning his attention back to me. “Em, though, seriously, this guy is totally perfect for you. You have to come meet him. He’s really handsome and quiet. I think he totally goes along with what we were talking about before.”
“Here it comes,” I muttered.
“You know, how we watched all those movies where the guy had hidden depths? I think Bruce totally does. Come on!”
Beside me, Elliot was shaking with suppressed laughter.
“I better go, or he’ll never
leave me alone,” I told him.
“Of course,” he replied, managing to keep a straight face. “Research calls, and all that.”
“Thanks for keeping me company,” I told him, standing up.
“It was my pleasure,” he said, some of the amusement slipping from his face. I wondered if he was annoyed that Ryan had interrupted us.
“See you Monday?”
“Yup,” he said, smiling again. “See you then.”
Ryan led me across the room to a large water feature—it appeared to be made of old pieces of chrome and bent pipes. My first thought was that it was pretentious, but I tried to remember Elliot’s attitude. Maybe it was made from like, recovered bathroom fixtures from old abandoned houses, or something like that.
“Hey, Bruce,” Ryan said, pulling on my arm gently to keep me from walking past the man. He was drinking from a coffee mug on a modern, armless, white and chrome couch that had probably cost about four months of my salary. He appeared to be alone.
“Emily, this is Bruce. Bruce, this is my friend, Emily.”
“Hello,” I said, trying to smile through my growing embarrassment. Could Ryan be any more obvious?
Bruce smiled slightly and nodded in my direction, before directing his attention back to his coffee cup. He was good looking, in an artistic, lanky sort of way. Even seated I could tell that he was tall, maybe even taller than me, with dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Not exactly my type, but not at all bad.
Next to me, Ryan raised his eyebrows and mouthed, “Cute!” I made a face at him, but Ryan was determined. “Bruce comes from Traverse City, isn’t that amazing?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, bewildered. “It’s pretty there.”
“And you’re from Alpena!” he continued. “Isn’t that a coincidence?”
I just stared at him. Besides the fact that they were both in the northern half of the state, Traverse City and Alpena were really nowhere near each other.
“Anyhow,” Ryan said. “I thought you guys should talk. Bruce looks so lonely sitting over here all by himself, doesn’t he?”
In Search of a Love Story (Love Story Book One ) Page 7
