Parker starts laughing his head off like I'm the best female comedian in all of Grover. I shift uncomfortably. I do not like being the butt of jokes. I hate the sensation of someone teasing or schooling me, because it didn't happen often.
"Are you blind or just dumb? Or just really selfish. My best friend, Clint, is not simply getting ass from you." He uses his fingers as air quotes when he says getting ass. "Have you even taken the time to ask why he lost all of the weight? Probably not since the world revolves around you. Especially his world. From the day you stepped foot in this house two years ago, he's been batshit crazy, head over heels in love with you. Anyone with a pea for a brain can see it. Christ, Kelsey he bought you a fucking kitten! And you're a bitch for exploiting his feelings just so he can be the next notch on your very long bed post. So yes, excuse you, you freeloading piece of crap."
If my mouth was wide before, my jaw had now definitely detached and was laying somewhere by my feet. Shame and heat crept through my system in a slow burn, and a lump of unshed tears formed at the back of my throat.
"What do you mean 'Why he lost the weight?'" It was the one thought I was allowing to penetrate my brain. The rest of Parker's insults were too raw for me to take right now.
He had turned back around and spoke over his shoulder without addressing me. "Seriously? The first time you met at that party when you girls were still in high school? He was like a puppy following you around, and you wouldn't give him the time of day. Eventually you let him into the friend zone, but even then you didn't give him a passing glance if some guy with a six-pack was nearby. He wanted to be good enough. For you. Lord knows why. That's why he's been eating grass and doing two-a-days in the gym until he almost passes out. So that you would finally look at him."
Parker looked back at me in disgust. "Guess it worked. Your shallow self took notice finally.”
I felt like I'd been whacked upside the head with a two-by-four. He changed who he was, what he looked like, for me? I backed out of the kitchen, away from Parker and his scathing accusations.
Clint called out from his room. "Be there in two seconds Roo!"
Shit. I couldn't sit there and have a movie night with him. I ducked into the bathroom and tried to get my breathing under control.
Was I really that bad of a person? Parker spoke to me like I was worse than scum, and right now I definitely felt like it. He was right. I hadn’t taken notice of Clint, not in a sexual way, until he looked like he did now. I had put him in the friend zone, only allowing him to be of best friend status when I was in Africa. And so he’d changed. He’d killed himself to get me to notice. I was such a bitch.
And was I really too blind to notice that he was in love with me? Of course I wasn’t. Deep down I’d known it all along. Guys like Clint didn’t do hook ups and friends with benefits. He’d been trying to turn this into something permanent from the start, and I’d been too selfish to cut him loose, let him down at the beginning. Secretly, I liked that he was in love with me. It meant I was a person that could be loved, at least by someone.
I splashed my face with cold water trying to calm down and get the tears to stop pricking my eyes. This was my mother’s fault. My whole screwed up family’s fault. Maybe if I hadn’t been raised by robots. If I hadn’t been lied to my entire life just because my mother didn’t believe in emotions. If I’d known my real father, if he’d been a decent person.
But I hadn’t had any of those things. And it had led me to be the fucked up person I was now; unable to get too close to someone to ever let them truly hurt me, or truly love me.
If it wasn’t evident I needed to cut this off before, it certainly was now. I took a deep breath, steeled myself and walked out to go shatter the heart of the one person in the world I might actually love.
Parker darted down the hall in front of me, threw me a bitchy glance, and walked out the front door. I knew Minka and Owen had gone home for the weekend to meet with his new agent. So it was just me and Clint. I already felt the guilt begin to roil in my stomach.
“Okay. James Bond or that movie about the guy who follows that band around with Kate Hudson?”
I smile. “Almost Famous? That movie rocks, I can’t believe you’ve never seen it. I used to dream that one day I’d become Penny Lane, going on tour with famous rock bands and making lead singers my bitch.”
Clint laughs. “That would be your idol.”
I bit my lip until I felt blood and then licked it away. I already despised myself for saying what I was about to. Might as well get it over with.
“So listen, I’ve been thinking…it’s time we put my teaching skills to the test.”
“Hmm?” Clint is only half listening to me as he sets up the TV.
“I think you need to fuck someone else.”
He stops, his sharp gaze coming up to meet mine. “If this is a joke, I don’t think it’s very funny.”
“It’s not.” I squirm. “I think you need to experience other things, and I’ve been a stellar teacher so, it’s time to let the baby bird fly free!”
I try to smile and act like this doesn’t feel like I’m taking a knife to my own heart.
“What the…where is this coming from? I don’t want to be with anyone else.”
“Oh come on, Clint, you can’t sleep with your best friend forever. Eventually we need to find you a nice girl to impress with your new moves.”
Clint’s face is pure anger now, his stubbled, sharp cheekbones flooding with color. “I have a girl right here that I happen to like a whole lot, and she seems impressed by my new moves. What’s this about, Kelsey? Let’s get to the truth of it. You always say honesty is the best policy, well let’s have it.”
I feel fragile, like if he raises his voice at me on more time, I might break. “Why did you lose all of the weight?”
Clint pales. And I know for certain it has something to do with me. “You didn’t do it for yourself, right? You were always fine like that before. Did you…did it have to do with me?”
He faces the TV, refusing to look at me. “Where would you get that idea?”
“Parker told me.”
“Fucking, Parker,” he mumbles. “Do you know you didn’t even give me two glances the first time we met? I had to go out of my way that entire first weekend to even get you to remember me? Do you know how hard it was to pester you until you finally even considered me a friend?”
I bit back a sob and tried to keep my face composed. “I always liked you! No matter what you looked like!”
“But you only started sleeping with me when I had this body, right?” He turned to me then.
“I…I’m sorry. Do you want me to admit I’m a shallow, disgusting person? I’ll gladly do that. I’ve never been anything but that, Clint. You should know that. I know we’ve been hooking up for a while, but I haven’t changed.”
That was a lie, but I needed him to want out. I had to break myself off from him now, or soon it would be too late.
“Come on, Kelsey. We haven’t just been hooking up. We’re practically dating! Neither of us has even looked at another person since we started having sex. We eat meals together, we talk on the phone. We fucking live together. That’s a relationship! You can’t deny it.”
“Actually I can. Because I told you from the start, I don’t do boyfriends. This was a friends with benefits situation only. If anyone was lying to you, it was yourself. You wanted to make this into something it wasn’t, I never led you there.”
That was such a lie, and I knew it.
“Don’t do this, Roo. We have come so far from where we were. And I know you feel it too.” He grasped my hands now. “I know this scares you, but we can take it as slow as you want. We can go back to no sex, and see where it goes. Just don’t let yourself cop out on this one. We could be great together. We already are.”
Those aquamarines plead with me. A small sliver of me wanted to say yes, to try and be with him for real. But I couldn’t do it. I’d already caused him pain he didn
’t even realize yet, and if I kept doing this, I would only cause him more. Parker was right.
“I can’t. It’s just not me. I’m not built for love, Clint, and I never lied to you about that. We need to stop this, find other people to hang out with. I don’t want to hurt you anymore than I have, and I just don’t feel the same way.”
The look on his face cut me deep. His beautiful, sharp angled features were drawn in sorrow. His built, masculine form wilted like a dried up flower. It was like a blunt knife being stuck into my gut over and over again.
Even so, I managed to get up off the couch and walk out, leaving him.
17
Clint
And we’re back to where we were on the first night of the summer all over again, when Kelsey was drunk as a skunk and sucking face with some loser.
Okay so this time she doesn’t have her tongue stuck down a guy’s throat, and she’s only on her second beer, but I still want to throttle the guy she’s making flirty eyes at in the corner of Sammy’s.
Hook up with someone new. That’s what she’d thrown at me three days ago. I didn’t know if this was a test, if she was really breaking whatever this thing was off, or what was going on. All I knew was that I didn’t notice any other girl in the bar except for her, and that I was going to punch this tall hipster in the throat if he made any more effort to subtly graze her arm.
I ordered another shot of Jack, thinking that if I could just get drunk enough, I might have the guts to go over there and start something.
“Slow down, killer.” Parker smiled his shit-eating grin from the stool next to me.
“Fuck off.” I still wasn’t fully talking to him. I couldn’t believe he’d said something to Kelsey. In Parker’s messed up brain, he was only trying to be a friend, but in reality, he’d fucked everything up.
“Come on, bro. You have to let this go sometime. Look at her, anyway. She didn’t waste one minute finding her new Mr. Right Now.”
“That’s because you scared her off! Instead of slowly trying to coax her into a relationship, like I was doing, if you’d ever bothered to ask, you sent her fleeing like a scared gazelle.”
He shrugged. “A leopard don’t change its spots, buddy. Lie to yourself all you want, but that one is not relationship material.”
He pointed at Kelsey, who was shimmying in her short grey t-shirt dress. I think I bared my teeth.
“If she can do it, so can you. See that brunette over there? She’s been eyeing you all night. Best way to get over someone is to get on top of someone else. Go get ‘em, tiger.”
Parker slapped me on the shoulder and shoved me in the brunette’s direction.
She wasn’t bad looking, but she was just typical. She was a pretty girl, nothing unique or striking about her. She wasn’t Kelsey.
And speak of the devil, out of the corner of my eye I saw Roo notice my movement toward the other girl. Was I scorned enough to make her jealous? Absolutely.
I walked up to the brunette, who immediately began thrusting out her chest and batting her eyelashes. It was all so obvious, and when I asked her to dance and took her elbow to lead us to the floor, she molded herself into my body.
Feeling Kelsey’s eyes on me, I put my all into the act. I grabbed the girl’s hips, leaned into her neck and even ran my hands up and down her thighs. After two songs, I felt someone smack me on my back.
Kelsey eyed me with narrowed slits. I kept my position, feeling glee that I’d actually forced her to come over here.
“Yes?” I said this with a cocky-ass smile on my face.
“I need to talk to you.” She crossed her arms over her perky chest.
“I’m busy with a new friend here.” I motioned to the brunette, who waved like an idiot at Kelsey.
Suddenly I was being pulled out of the bar by my ear.
“OW! Fuck!” She was squeezing it so tight, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had hearing damage after this.
When we made it to the sidewalk, she finally let go.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shout at her, walking down the street away from her and rubbing at me bruised ear.
“Want to explain what you’re doing chatting up that basic bitch in there?”
So I did make her jealous! I laugh at the irony of what’s going on right now. “If I heard you correctly, you told me to hook up with someone else. Isn’t that right?”
I couldn’t resist throwing her words back in her face. My anger was quickly tainting everything I was thinking.
“Well…I did! But not with some plain looking brunette! Come on, you can do better than that!”
“Oh, like the definition of a pussy hipster who keeps trying to leer at your tits?”
Kelsey scowls at me. “Why did you even have to come to Sammy’s tonight? We need to make a schedule or something so we aren’t here at the same time!”
We are both yelling at each other in the middle of the crowded downtown street. Other graduated seniors and summer-course students stop to stare at us before drunkly laugh and keep walking.
I grab her arm and pull her towards the other side of the street to the parking lot behind the building. I’m not stepping anywhere near that goddamn alley.
“What is this really about, Kels?”
“It’s about you trying to hook up with some basic bit—“
“No it’s not. This is about you having feelings for me and trying to deny it. This is about you being jealous of me putting my hands on another girl. This is about the fact that you never should have tried to end what we had.”
“That’s not it at all—“
I wasn’t letting her get away this time. I was going to make her be with me whether she liked it or not. “Friends don’t lie to each other, right? Especially us.”
I gave her the wisest “I know you” stare that I could, trying to make her spill her true feelings without having to pull them out of her. She stubbornly crossed her arms.
“You never wanted to stop this. Deep down you have feelings for me. And I like you. A lot. Let this happen. Be with me. Trust me. This is me, Roo. No one else. Let me show you how good we can be.”
I can see the tears pooling in her eyes, her lower lip wobbling. Taking her hands, I stoop down so I’m on her eye level.
“I don’t want to hook up with basic bitches. I don’t want you flirting with random hipster douchebags. I want to watch bad 80’s movies with you. I want to split seven containers of Chinese food and be amazed when you eat even the hottest of General Tso’s. I want to take you on a real live date without being afraid that you’ll be so scared, you fly to Brazil. And I really want to have sex with you and only you. I want you to want those things with me. And I think you do.”
Kelsey shakes her head, still fighting the inevitable. This is going to happen. Her eyes are red-rimmed and I can see her holding back the sniffles.
“We wouldn’t be out here right now if this wasn’t what you wanted.” I hold her face in my hands.
“What if I hurt you? What if I screw this up?” The words are barely above a whisper.
“You won’t. Sure, we will both be idiots. No one is perfect. But you know the great thing about falling for your best friend? We already know each other’s faults going in. I know when you’re scared shitless, and you know when I need a good smack on the ass.”
She still isn’t smiling. “My parents…they’re miserable Clint. I’ve never…I’ve never told you just how bad they are. But they’ve been married for over 20 years and I’ve never even seen them touch each other. I have no model of what a healthy relationship looks like. And there’s more. Turns out, I don’t even know who my father is. My mother kept that secret from me my whole life.”
She laughs and shrugs, even though none of this is funny at all. Her voice is a one continuous broken sob. “I have no idea how to love other people. I come from a family of cold-hearted scientists who don’t even believe in it. And what if my biological father is worse?”
I try to soak in all o
f the information she’s just thrown at me and process it. I need to comfort her, but I had no idea the weight she’d been carrying on her shoulders for so long.
“Roo, you should have told me. First of all, stop with this ‘I don’t know how to love’ bullshit. You’re an amazing friend. You have had almost 15-year friendships with both Minka and Chloe. You love them as if they were your own sisters. And they love you. You fall in love with a new animal every single day. Jackson! You love Jackson! Your parents are shitty people who don’t deserve a daughter as amazing as you are.”
Finally, I got a small smile. “I can’t disagree there.”
“And as for your biological father…you don’t know what kind of person he is until you meet him. And you don’t need to make a decision on whether you want to do that right now. You are the sassiest, sweetest, most caring person that I know. And that’s of your own doing. We decide who we want to be. So choose to be with me.”
I let my declaration hang in the air, praying that she says she will. I hope she can’t see how much I’m sweating right now.
“When I say I want to be alone, you have to leave me be. And I always get the last garlic knot. And I refuse to be dragged to the gym, and we aren’t doing any of those stupid couple things like wearing matching Halloween costumes.”
My face must light up like a Christmas tree, because she giggles and tilts her eyes to the sky. “Does this mean you’ll be with me? Exclusive? We are a couple?”
Kelsey hugs her arms around my waist. “Yes, but you don’t get to drop the girlfriend word like it’s the only one in your vocabulary.”
“Okay.” I nod solemnly. And then remember one caveat I have. “But I get one thing as your new boyfriend…”
She rolls her eyes, waiting for my rule.
“I won’t date a smoker.”
18
Kelsey
Catching to Win (Over the Fence #3) Page 12
