“Most guys hate talking on the phone. Don’t you text?” she asks without a greeting.
“Meg,” I say, relaxing into my pillow. “I text just fine. I prefer the phone because I’ve never had someone forward a phone call to someone else. But texts seem to go rogue on me all the time.”
“Do you have girl trouble, Nordstrom?”
“Not now, but once two girls played me, sharing my texts between each other. I just prefer old school phone calls.”
“You were sleeping with both of them, weren’t you?” she says.
How does she know this stuff? It’s like she reads me right through the phone line. “That was the biggest problem with them sharing notes. Transparency in that type of situation never works out.”
“What do you regret more, the texts or sleeping with both of them.”
“Both. What’s your biggest regret?”
“Why do you always ask such personal questions?”
“Obviously, I want to get to know you better. Answer the question.”
“Why do you want to know me better? Is it your thing? I mean, did you know the text sharers?”
“No.” I laugh. “Why would I want to know them better?” They were completely plastic. “I was sleeping with them. You’re different. So just answer the question.”
“I try to live my life without regrets. I don’t have any.”
“Bull! Stop holding back. Just tell me. Everyone has regrets.” She’s obviously hiding something.
“I don’t.”
I wait silently for her to give me a real answer. She’s clearly faking.
“This might not be my biggest regret…but my last breakup didn’t go the way I wanted it to go.”
“Break ups never go the way you want them to go. You have to be more specific.”
“I’m starting at the beginning so I hope you have a couple of hours.”
“We can talk all night. I have tomorrow off.”
“I don’t, but I’ll survive. Okay. I ran into my ex from high school—the one with the drug problem.”
“Failed intervention guy?”
“That’s the one.”
She explains all the details of her last break up with a frat boy—every mistake she made, every aspect she wished had been different. I listen silently even though it kills me she is telling me about sleeping with other guys.
“Okay. Yes, Peterson and I were sleeping together, but it was casual. I thought it was just casual. I didn’t even realize he thought of it as a relationship until he went all caveman on me about Chase. Why do guys always act as if they don’t care until you sleep with them and then all of a sudden they own you?”
“Meg, you sound like a guy. Guys say girls lure them in with sex and then act as if you’re getting married.”
She laughs. “That’s what guys always say, but I think it’s just the opposite. Do girls lure you in with sex and then act as if you’re getting married?”
“No. I’m up front with them. I tell them straight up I don’t do relationships. It’s just sex and they know it from the start. Maybe you need to be up front with guys, tell them all you want is sex.” She sounds like every guy’s dream.
“I don’t just want sex. You make me sound like a complete ho-bag. I’ve only slept with four guys, total. What’s your number?”
“Only four guys, really? Am I in that four?”
“No. I mean all the way. Our non-hookup doesn’t count.”
“Girls always throw out numbers and in reality they mean that number times ten.”
“It’s my actual number. What’s yours?”
I blow out a breath. “Honestly, I don’t even know. A lot.”
“And I let your tongue in my mouth. You make me want to wash my mouth out with bleach.”
“Yeah, now that I think about it—me too.” We both laugh and then I continue. “What about Chase? What’s he want from you?”
“Chase thinks we should pick up where we left off four years ago as if nothing has changed. But I’ve changed.”
“You’re not going to get back with him?”
“I don’t trust him, but we have chemistry. My mother always said finding a true spark with someone is rare and it’s something to be cherished. I’m worried if I let him go, I’ll never have it again.”
“It can’t be that hard to find. What are you twenty-one? Twenty-two?”
“I turned twenty-two in January.”
“You have so many frogs to kiss before you bring one home.” She’s too young to worry about never finding a guy.
She laughs. “I’m not looking for someone to marry. I just want to find someone I have chemistry with. Because without chemistry, sex sucks.”
I wish I could act on the chemistry we have. Our non-hookup was incredibly hot. “Are you still in love with Chase?”
“I don’t know.”
I expected her to say no and I hate that it bothers me she didn’t. I don’t mind competition. I enjoy it sometimes, but knowing she is still in love with him irks me, because I can’t do anything about it. I can’t get involved in the competition.
“What about the girl you used to live with, are you still in love with her?”
My relationship with Kelsey seems like a lifetime ago. “I didn’t love Kelsey. Both parties have to be willing to share their worst before you can be sure of another’s unconditional acceptance and that’s what love is about, right? That’s what the movies say. Love isn’t real unless honesty exists. Chemistry and love are separate. You can have one without the other. Kelsey didn’t even tell me she was married. Even though we lived together, I didn’t know her at all. You can’t really love a person unless you know them. I don’t even know if real love exists. People use each other for what they want, what they need. Look at my parents. They coexist because they each benefit from being in a relationship. They don’t even sleep in the same bedroom. They’re not married. It’s like a merger of two companies. My brother and I were just a way for them to expand their business.”
“Wow. That’s sad. Do you really believe that?”
“I’ve been in relationships. It’s not as if I haven’t tried to fall in love like in the movies. I just honestly don’t think love is real. I think people fake it. They may think it’s real, but it’s not.
“In some ways, you could be right. I think love has different levels. People can fake anything, can’t they? Maybe movie-level love doesn’t exist in the real world. My parents had a shotgun wedding. I doubt they were in love when my brother Braden was born, but it seemed as if they loved each other when I was growing up. Maybe they were faking it. Their chemistry wasn’t great. Maybe it was just my mom faking it.” She pauses for a few seconds and I wonder what her clarification means.
“If love is based off of knowledge and trust, then I was never in love with Chase. We barely know each other,” she says.
She gets it. How many people in the world would get my understanding of love? I like this girl.
Nak’s words about getting into a girl’s head burn in my ears. I’ve never met a girl I’ve wanted to know that well, until Meg. She’s complex. There is so much I don’t know about her, and if I could get inside her head, our first time together would be mind-blowing. Yes, I’m still thinking about being inside her. How could I not? The chemistry we have is scorching, and her dancing blew me away.
She’s off-limits and I’m trying to respect that, so I’m also still hoping she will say something or do something that turns me off to help me erase her from my mind. I’m afraid the more I get to know her the less likely it’s going to happen, though. I need to remember friends is all we can be. With her in Minnesota, it’s not as if we can do more than talk anyway. At least she’s starting to let me in and I enjoy our conversations.
“You don’t trust Chase, right? Why? Other than lying and messing up your non-relationship with Peterson, what makes you hate him?” I ask because she’s got to see the guy’s a dick and if she doesn’t see it now, she needs to.
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“I don’t know if I want to admit it to you.”
“Just tell me.”
“When we were dating, he cheated on me with six different girls and those are the ones I found out about.”
“Did he wipe his feet on you after sex?”
“Shut it. I was not a doormat.” She pauses. “Okay, I was kind of a doormat. But I was sixteen, stupid and in love.”
Wow. I didn’t even have to explain my comment to her. She got it right away. “You’ve grown up. But, you’re still stupid if you’re toying with giving him another chance.”
“What do you know? You’ve never been in love. You just spend your nights hooking up with blond chicks. What kind of guy decides who to date based on the color of a girl’s hair?”
I must have struck a chord with her because she sounds pissed. “How do you know I only date blondes?”
“I saw it on the internet.”
“You’ve been checking me out, huh?” A smile spreads on my face because I like that she’s checking up on me. That means she’s thinking about me when we’re not on the phone.
“No, Chase brought it to my attention.”
Now I really don’t like the guy. “I have my reasons for not dating brunettes.”
“Like?”
“Every brunette I’ve dated has burned me. There was Val Marquez in sixth grade. She told everyone I drooled when I kissed. It was a whole year before I got my mojo back.”
“You’re basing it off a sixth grade crush?”
“There’s more. The nanny.”
“You orchestrated that. Did she get revenge?”
“Yep. The part I didn’t tell you was we kept sleeping together—a quickie here or there in an upstairs bathroom, or if no one was home, the kitchen counter. We’d sneak into each other’s rooms at night. I had sex anytime I wanted. I was living a sixteen-year-old’s dream. On my seventeenth birthday, she told me she was pregnant. Happy birthday to me, right? She was Catholic and was going to keep it, so I needed to man-up and marry her.” Meg’s quiet and I wonder what she is thinking. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the kitchen counter or maybe she’s wondering if I’m divorced with a kid.
“I denied it for a while. I was in shock. I never thought it would happen to me. After a month of her eating constantly, I noticed she was gaining weight, and I figured it wouldn’t be long before she was showing. I didn’t know what to do, so I confessed my problem to my dad. I didn’t want to tell him, because he’s kind of a force to be reckoned with, but I knew the longer I waited to tell him the angrier he and my mom would be.
“Right away, he wanted proof of the pregnancy. He made me go to the drugstore for a pregnancy test and then stay in the room while she peed on the stick. James Nordstrom, attorney for the stars, wasn’t going to take the word of a nanny. I sat on the tub while she cried. She said she couldn’t do it while I watched. We were in the bathroom for almost two hours before she wet the stick. It turned out she wasn’t pregnant. She’d lied, and had been trying to get me to not wear a rubber since she told me about the pregnancy. I didn’t understand why, but I always wore one and in that moment, I realized she was trying to get pregnant after the fact. The nanny was brunette.”
“Two brunettes? That’s all you’ve got? And I didn’t really need to know about the quickie on the kitchen counter.”
“All right. Last year, an underage brunette accused me of statutory rape, but I didn’t even know her and definitely never slept with her. The police brought me in for questioning, but eventually dropped the case because of lack of evidence. Do I need to keep going?” I don’t know what it is about her, but I want to tell her everything about me, even the bad crap.
“No need. I think I get it. What happened to the nanny?”
“She got sent home to her parents.”
Meg gasps.
“What? I’m supposed to feel sorry for her? She lied to me. Technically, it was statutory rape. I was underage.” I can picture Meg’s eyes rolling and her head shaking.
“Or sexual harassment in the workplace,” she adds. “How’s the intervention planning going?”
“I’m meeting with the rehab people tomorrow to get Seth help before he becomes a statistic. The intervention is going to be on Tuesday. I have a couple more people to talk to, but it’s coming together.”
“Do you think he suspects?”
“I don’t think so. Dad told him he had to be home to sign some papers for his trust fund. His eighteenth birthday is Sunday and he can’t get into his trust fund if he doesn’t sign the papers.”
“If he signs the papers then he will have unlimited funds for his habit?” she asks.
“It’s not that easy. He only gets a certain amount of money every month. If he goes to school, he gets more and it pays for his classes and room and board. It’s complicated. With my dad, nothing is straightforward.”
“Why didn’t you do the intervention before his birthday? I was told it would have been easier to do Chase’s if he was underage, but his birthday is in October so he was already eighteen before I figured out he needed one.”
“He may be seventeen, but that doesn’t mean he does anything he doesn’t want to do. He knows my parents are on to his drug problem, but the lure of money is too great to ignore and he doesn’t think they will do anything because they would be too embarrassed to have it come out in the press. My mom is sort of an activist against drugs and suicide. Her father had a coke problem and killed himself. So she’s on the board of a bunch of foundations and it would be really embarrassing for not only her first son to go through rehab, but her second one too.”
“Oh.” She’s quiet for a long minute and then adds, “I’m sorry about your grandfather.”
“Thanks. From what I’ve heard of him, he was kind of a dick.”
She’s quiet again. She must be getting tired.
“I’m here if you need someone to practice your intervention speech on,” she says softly.
“I still have to write it. I think I’ll base it off what Jon told me when he confronted me about my prescription drug problem. It got me in. I should let you get some sleep now, though. You have class tomorrow.”
“Yep.”
“Call me after class. I should have my rough draft done by then.”
“Goodnight, Nordstrom.”
“Sweet dreams.” I smile as the words leave my mouth. It sounds so corny and she doesn’t even call me on it. She must be tired. We hang up and all I want to do is get her back on the line. I peel my ass off the bed and drop to the floor. I didn’t make it to the gym today, meaning, I have three hundred crunches and twenty rotations of curls to do before I can go to bed.
I’ve finished my crunches and am halfway through my curls when thirst completely overtakes me. I set my barbells down, not bothering to push them under the bed. I’ll have to finish before I can sleep.
After grabbing a giant glass of water, I head out onto the deck to rehydrate. The sun set hours ago and the air is starting to cool. I love spring nights on the coast. There’s something about the salty air that’s fresher in the spring. Nak looks up from his tablet when I close the door behind me. He’s sitting at the table. We haven’t talked much since he and Leslie got back together three weeks ago. She’s been here every night.
“Who was that on the phone?”
I don’t want to tell him because he’ll tell Leslie and Leslie will tell Jonathan. I shake my head and shrug as I sit down next to him. I stretch out and take a deep, salty breath.
“You talked for a long time. Is there a new girl on the rotation?”
“Shut up about the rotation. There’s no schedule, no organization, and no planning to my hookups. They just happen.”
“Okay. How does a girl know you’re looking for a hookup? Do you send out a multimedia text? A powerful hookup signal in the sky? Or, is it just a pheromone thing they can smell?”
“Again, shut it. The girls text me or find me at the club. It’s not rocket science. It’
s organic,” I say rolling my eyes.
“Here’s the thing. You haven’t been to any clubs in three weeks, no girls have spent the night, and you have been home every night talking on the phone. It makes me think you’re either having phone sex because you’re waiting for an STD to clear up, or you’re in a relationship with a virgin. Which one is it?”
“Neither. You make me sound like a manwhore. I’m very selective. Girls are drugging me to ride on my dick. Remember?”
“Is that why you’re not going out? Because Tina slipped you ecstasy?”
“I don’t know. I just haven’t felt it.” I really haven’t. The thought of going to the club and waking up next to some girl who only got with me because she wants to use me as a tool isn’t that appealing. Honestly, I’m twenty-four years old and I’ve probably had sex in every position possible. Where do I go from here? Maybe Nak was right when he said it is worth getting to know a girl. Maybe that’s what I’m lacking. The only person to intrigue me mentally is Meg. And maybe it’s because I’m not supposed to like her that way, but it feels different with her. I don’t feel the pressure to be someone I’m not with her. I can show her the real me and not worry she’s going to expose me. If what Sarah says is true, she doesn’t even use social media. I checked. It is strange though. It’s almost as if Meg is hiding from someone or something.
Chapter 15
Liam
I SPENT THE last three days writing my speech for Seth’s intervention. Meg helped me hone parts of it so I didn’t sound like a condescending big brother. “You’re not his parent,” she said, and I’m not. I need to deliver my words as if I’m talking to a peer, not a little kid, or he’ll tune me out immediately.
She’s really insightful and not shy about pointing out discrepancies in the world others avoid. Like two days ago, when I mentioned my grandfather’s suicide for the second time, and she told me I needed to separate myself from him. “You never even met him so don’t take on the guilt of his suicide. It had nothing to do with you,” she said. And I guess it doesn’t, but with the way my parents have looked at me since my motorcycle accident, I am starting to wonder if someday I won’t be a coked-out junkie on the verge of suicide. It’s common in my industry. Then Meg reminded me I was the one in charge of my own choices. I’m in the driver’s seat and make the decisions, not my grandfather and not my parents. It’s my life. I’m getting attached to this girl. And, I haven’t hooked up with anyone since our non-hookup. I wonder what that says about her.
Between Friends (Between the Raindrops #3) Page 14
