Mean Crush

by K L Wood

  Tabitha cleared her throat as she went to the cabinet and handed me a plate. She started picking grapes off the stem and arranging them on the dish. I stole one and popped it into my mouth. “Mmm. So sweet. Juicy.”

  She stilled a bit at my innuendo but otherwise pretended she didn’t hear it. It took significant willpower not to burst out laughing.

  I decided to take it to one more level. I slowly slid the outside of my finger down her bare arm. “Look at you, all grown up.”

  Her back arched slightly at my touch, and she moved away, tugging at the ends of her hair. “You know, I thought I was awake, but whooo…” She let out a sharp breath. “It’s kind of hitting me now.” She half-covered her chest with her arm. “I’m gonna get some shut-eye. Do you want me to clean up, or do you still want it?”

  Oh, I wanted it all right, but it was good to see Tabitha being more herself. She was never really the game-playing type.

  “Go.” I gave her a soft smile and meant it. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thanks,” she said quickly before heading through the living room and up the stairs.

  I let out a long, slow breath, knowing I’d played with fire. If Tabitha had responded, I didn’t think I could’ve stopped it if I tried.

  Time to lighten things up and bring it back to the old days.

  18

  Mr. Savage

  Tabitha

  Last night was a disaster. At first, I thought I was getting to him, but it turned out just as it always was with Reed and me: him teasing me or flirting with me or being so damn aloof or mean or making me laugh until my stomach hurt. That guy had spun my mind and heart round and round most of my life, and I hated that he still had that power.

  At least Reed was generous enough not to make fun of me and give me some alone time. I spent most of the morning reading, but I could barely concentrate on the words, still embarrassed about what I attempted. No bra… Ugh. What was I thinking?

  I would have never done anything that spontaneous with Mark. With him, everything was planned and rational and reasonable. But it was stable and safe and what I needed.

  I had to figure out a way to truly move on from my former mean crush before I ended up alone the rest of my life.

  Reed walked through the door, and I did my best not to look his way, but I could smell the soil and his sweet sweat from here.

  “I’m gonna head up and take a shower…if that’s all right with you.”

  “It’s your house,” I said without looking up from my Kindle. “Do what you want.”

  Yes, I knew I was playing his aloof game. But whatever. He deserved a taste of his own medicine.

  As the shower sounded, I did my best not to visualize him completely naked. But that was an impossibility. It’s a scientific fact that if you told someone not to think about something, then that’s precisely what they’re going to think about. But not everybody wallowed in that visualization and kept going with it. I read more than my fair share of romance novels, so my mind went there naturally. I could see the suds rolling down his perfect, muscular ass. His hands gliding over his chest, down his stomach, following the trail that led to his rock-hard…

  I shifted in my seat and fanned myself.

  Bunnies. Think of bunnies. Babies laughing. Puppies popping bubbles while babies laugh.

  Ah. Much better.

  Okay, back to the novel.

  Clarissa went to stand beside him in the elevator, her body slightly brushing his. She wanted him so badly that her hands trembled. Her eyes fell on the emergency help button, and she found herself tempted to pull it just to see what he would do. She imagined her dominating jerk of a boss hiking up her skirt, ripping off her soaked panties, and taking her right there at eight in the morning.

  Hmm. Let’s skip this part.

  I scanned through the sexy parts until I came to something not so explicit. Soon the bathroom door opened, and Reed thumped down the stairs. My shoulders stiffened as I pretended to be engrossed in my novel.

  “Mind if I read here?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Like I said, it’s your house.”

  “What are you reading?”

  “Guess.”

  “I know it’s romance, but what’s the title?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Maybe I want to read it.”

  I let out a sigh and set my Kindle in my lap. I looked over to see Reed on the other couch wearing a girl’s pink spaghetti-strap tank top and boxer shorts. The tank top would’ve been swimming on me but was skintight on him.

  The jerk was making fun of me.

  He lifted his legs on the couch like I did last night, leaning against the arm. He pushed out his chest as if he had boobs.

  I wanted to be angry and indignant and tell him to grow the hell up, but all I could do was full-out belly laugh.

  He faked a female voice. “See how hard my nipples are?” He leaned closer. “That’s because I’m not wearing a bra.” He duck-faced me and then winked, and I was in near stitches. I could barely catch my breath.

  I threw a couch pillow at him. “Go change. You look ridiculous.”

  He pointed at his chest in surprise. “Me, ridiculous? That was you last night.”

  “Look who’s talking!” I deepened my voice, mocking Reed. “Mmm, so sweet and juicy.”

  He laughed. “Hey, you started it.”

  “And it’s over, so can we move on now?”

  He pulled off the tank top. “Done.”

  “And maybe put on some clothes?”

  “What? These tight pecs tempting you too much?”

  I grabbed the other pillow and threw it at him. “Go change and be normal for once.”

  “Normal is overrated.”

  I stole a glance at him as he started up the stairs, and he was swaying his hips from side to side, looking back over his shoulder once to blow me a kiss. I rolled my eyes and tried to hide my smile, but I loved every second of it.

  I really did miss these kinds of moments with Reed. They were very few and far between, especially in the last five years or so, but it was nice to see that side of him again.

  He was soon back down in cargo shorts and an old Pink Floyd T-shirt. I remembered that shirt from the night he picked me up on my disastrous prom night.

  The night I believed that maybe he was in love with me, too.

  But I’d been wrong.

  Reed plopped down on the couch with his Kindle in hand. “So, you never answered. What’s the title of the book you’re reading?”

  “You’re seriously going to read it?”

  “Yup.” He tapped through his Kindle. “Title, please.”

  “Mr. Savage.”

  He made a face as he typed. “You left out the nifty trope subtitle, A Hot Alpha-Male Billionaire-Boss Romance.”

  “There are millions of books on Amazon. We romance readers tend to know exactly what we like or what we’re in the mood for. The subtitles help us narrow down the search.”

  “You like cliché tropes?”

  “Oh, because spy novels and mysteries and fantasies and every other genre don’t have tropes or clichés or formula plots ever. They are so superior.”

  “Point taken.” He nestled against the couch pillow and started reading, and I went back to the story. It was kind of nice reading with him again…until he opened his mouth about fifteen minutes later.

  “Oh, please.” He let out a sarcastic laugh. “There is no fucking way anyone would get away with acting like that in the workplace without being slapped with a major sexual harassment lawsuit.”

  “Unless she wants to be harassed,” I quipped.

  “She hates his damn guts, and I don’t blame her. He’s an asshole.”

  Don’t I know it.

  “Crazy how anyone could fall for an asshole.”

  He narrowed his eyes, as if understanding that I was talking about him. Well, he wasn’t an asshole all the time, but when he was one…he really was.

  Ten minutes la
ter, he snorted out a laugh. “‘She imagined him ripping off her soaked panties.’” He looked over at me in awe. “This turns you on? Has anyone ever tried to literally rip panties off of you? I can’t imagine that it’s a pleasant experience.”

  I giggled. “Will you please let me read in peace?”

  “Fine.”

  Not even another ten minutes went by before he spoke up again. “I’m sorry, I can’t.” He sat up and stared as if dissecting me with his eyes. “Can I ask you a serious question?”

  I set down my device. “What?”

  “Is this what you want?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone that forceful to take you like that?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think of it that way. I mean, I can imagine it. But I can also imagine fighting off zombies or becoming a wizard in Harry Potter, helping to fight off Voldemort. It doesn’t mean I actually want to do that stuff in real life. I read romance because I like all the ups and downs until the happily ever after. The sex is just part of that tension…the passion. I do like the passion.”

  Not that I had ever experienced anything quite like a romance novel. While they were flaming fires, my version was a lit candle, if I was lucky.

  He smirked. “So, you don’t want an asshole boss to molest you and take you from behind in an elevator?”

  “Of course I don’t…unless he looked like Chris Hemsworth, then maybe I’d reconsider.”

  A couch pillow flew in my direction, hitting my arm. I turned to find a soft smile on Reed’s lips, almost like the one from last night when he offered to clean up.

  I looked down at my Kindle. “What about you? What do you like?”

  “Sexually?”

  “Yes, sexually.”

  “It’s been so long, I’ve almost forgotten.” A frown touched his lips.

  I sat up to face him. “How long?”

  “Just over seven months”

  My mouth nearly fell from its hinges. “Reed Walker actually went seven months without a late-night booty call? Amazing.”

  He tilted his head, but he wasn’t joking about this. “I never liked those, you know.”

  “You never liked free sex with no strings attached? I find that hard to believe.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoy sex, but my relationships have always been hard. After a while, the sex just loses its charm.”

  Reed was actually having a grown-up conversation with me…and my heart couldn’t help but open up a little more to him. It was rare to see him so vulnerable.

  “What made your relationships so hard?” I asked.

  “We could never connect on a deeper level, like we were almost strangers, only knowing the basic things like how we like our coffee or our favorite movie genres. Nothing with real depth, you know?”

  “I do.”

  “You’ve never connected with your boyfriends?”

  “Only one.”

  “Mark?”

  “Yeah, and I screwed it up.” The tears welled, and I tried to swallow them down.

  “He shouldn’t have asked you to marry him in front of complete strangers watching on a Jumbotron.”

  I hated that Reed saw that video, but I never really thought about how Mark asked me. I was too busy feeling so guilty about humiliating him and ruining everything.

  “If you ask me, Mark acted out his dream engagement, not yours. You were never a baseball fan, and I doubt you would’ve like sharing the moment with strangers even if you had said yes.”

  “I didn’t ask you.”

  I expected him to say something snarky, but instead, he went back to his Kindle.

  Mark loved baseball since his father took him to games when he was little. It meant something special to him, so of course I wanted to try and share that experience with him. I didn’t love the game, but I did care about Mark. And why did engagements have to be all about the woman? Couldn’t guys have their dream engagements, too?

  “Baseball isn’t all that bad,” I said.

  Reed didn’t take his eyes from his Kindle. “If you say so.”

  Anger boiled inside of me. “Why do you do that?”

  He looked up in surprise. “What did I do?”

  I threw my Kindle down on the couch and jumped off the cushion. “Get inside my head and make me question everything.”

  “That’s a bad thing?”

  “Yes! Every relationship I’ve had, you went out of your way to try and screw it up for me.”

  Reed got up, that icy look in his eyes. “It’s not my fault that your taste in men sucks.”

  “Yeah, and it started with you!”

  His cold stare melted after that, but I refused to let it get to me. I grunted in frustration and headed up the stairs, slamming the door to my room behind me.

  Reed

  I sat down on the couch and rested my mouth against my steepled hands. I’d planned this day to go a lot differently; instead, it ended with us fighting because I didn’t know how to stop being a prick. She needed time to sort this out for herself, and I pushed her too hard.

  I had to fix this, and we only had so much alone time together, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Tabitha was packing her bag to get away from me. I wouldn’t blame her.

  I went upstairs to her room and knocked on the door. She didn’t answer.

  “Tabitha, you’re right, and I’m sorry.”

  Still no answer.

  “Can we please just talk?”

  The door flung open. She was still pissed but calmed down to a simmer. I had to be careful not to turn up the heat.

  I rubbed at my shoulder. “Do you mind if I come in, or should we take this downstairs?”

  She held the door open wider, and I stepped across the threshold. I took the chair by the window. Tabitha sat down on the edge of the bed with her arms folded across her chest.

  I leaned forward. “I know I’ve been an asshole.”

  She huffed like it was an understatement. The urge to say something smart ate away at me. It’s not like she didn’t join in on our banter herself.

  I held in a breath and tried to ease the tension in my shoulders.

  This was about Tabitha right now.

  “I don’t think Mark is a bad guy,” I admitted.

  “Oh, please, out of all my former boyfriends, you hated him the most.”

  Because you went out of your way to become the perfect woman he wanted.

  “Did you really love Mark?”

  She looked back at me, eyes red. Her mouth opened, and she hesitated. “He was good to me and never once made me cry.”

  That one got me straight through the heart.

  But she hesitated, couldn’t even answer the damn question. I may not be the best man for her, but Mark sure as hell wasn’t, either.

  “How would you have proposed to him?”

  Her brows furrowed. “Huh?”

  “You loved him, right? Maybe still love him?”

  Another pause. “Yes, like I said, he was good to me.”

  Fucking great. That’s her love barometer now?

  “An engagement isn’t just a declaration of love. It’s a promise and a commitment. It’s a statement where one person tells the other, ‘You are my world, my partner, my life, and there’s no one else on this earth I’d rather share it with.’”

  And I meant every word of it as I stared into her eyes.

  Her lips parted, and I ached to kiss them, a pain I knew all too well.

  “I’m a little tired,” she said. “I’m going to lie down for a while.”

  I nodded and pushed myself off the chair. “I’ll go back to the RV if it makes you more comfortable.”

  “No.” A faint smile brushed her lips. “You can stay.”

  19

  Orgasms and Dinner

  Tabitha

  I stared down at my phone, reading through all the text messages Mark and I had shared the past year and a half. We didn’t have any significant ones, mostly thi
ngs about where to meet or asking to grab something at the store. Sometimes it would be some news about someone we knew or something we heard. I tried to remember the first time we said, “I love you.” Was it through a text message? I think it started out as “love you” and grew from there.

  Mark was a good guy; even my dad loved him. Predictable, comfortable, safe, and loyal and had his shit together…I knew what to expect with Mark. I knew he would be a good husband and father.

  But neither one of us looked at each other like that couple on the cliff.

  And honestly? I didn’t like the way Mark proposed. I always felt that it should be a private and meaningful moment between two people.

  What Reed said about what an engagement truly was…it stunned me. I had no idea he even thought that way or had any idea of what love meant.

  And what scared me more? That a part of me wanted to hear him say those words to me…and mean them.

  After a halfway normal dinner together, we both settled on separate couches with our Kindles. I looked over at him, remembering our reading days here in his lair…and that day he first let me stay.

  “You never told me if you like Anne of Green Gables.”

  He smiled, and it wasn’t snarky or mean or condescending. It reminded me of that grin he gave me after I told him why he should read the book:

  Because she loves books as much as we do.

  “I’ll never tell,” he finally said.

  I snuggled my head against the pillow and turned on my device to finish Mr. Savage. “That means you liked it a lot. Otherwise, you would say it sucked.”

  There was that grin again.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  “Mr. Savage, billionaire boss asshole extraordinaire.” He rolled his eyes before focusing back on the screen.

  “You don’t have to read it.”

  “Oh, but I do. I want to know what you’re imagining.”

  I chuckled. “Well, it’s definitely better than my sex life.” I flinched after the words left me. Way too much information he didn’t need to know.