by Viv Daniels
“That’s fine,” he said. “When do you want to do it? I have the afternoon free.”
“You’re that eager?” I asked wryly. “Really want to get me in my own apartment, huh?”
“I really want to see you,” he replied.
My mouth went dry.
“We can move your stuff in, order Chinese food, and…talk.”
“Talk?” I asked meaningfully.
“Yes,” he stated. “Talk. Like normal people do.”
“We’re talking now,” I cooed.
“You know what I mean, Hannah.” Wow, he sounded serious. “If we’re going to do this for real, I want us to be honest with each other.”
Good, because the last guy I cared about lied to me about being in love with my sister. “Me, too,” I said softly.
“Great. So, how does four sound?”
“Fantastic,” I said. “And after the dinner and the talking…?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. After that, we can see what things are like for us in an actual bed.”
I sincerely hoped that was a promise.
* * *
I arranged to meet Boone at the storage space and sat in my car at the entrance while I waited for him to arrive. I saw his white pickup pull up beside my car and rolled down the window. “You can follow me in after I punch in the code.”
He nodded and I drove through the gates. This whole thing seemed so casual. So mundane. So unbelievably weird.
I stopped the car outside my storage space and climbed out to unlock the garage-style door. The wheels of Boone’s truck crunched on the gravel behind me as I worked the lock. His door opened and shut. I opened the storage room door, then turned to face him, sticking my hands in my pockets.
“Thanks so much for doing this,” I said awkwardly.
He was leaning against the hood of his truck, lightly-crossed arms draped over his usual white T-shirt, faded, holey jeans covering his legs, dusty work boots on his feet. His pale eyes surveyed the contents of the storage space, as if mentally rearranging the furniture to fit in the back of his truck.
“I think I can put most of the boxes and the end table in the back of my car…” I began.
“How were you planning on moving this stuff in?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I was going to hire some kids. I paid a few freshmen to move me out last December.” And last fall, Dylan and my father had helped me. We’d rented a U-Haul. But that was back then.
“So I can save you a little cash, at least,” he said, and shot me a grin. Oh, that grin.
“Yes,” I replied. “You know how much I like to pinch pennies. That’s surely why I’m being so nice to you now.”
“Clearly.”
I rolled my eyes at him and started into the space. “So there’s the bed and the couch and the coffee table…”
He followed me inside and squeezed the mattress. “Nice.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, buster,” I warned him. “No using the mattress until we’re all moved in.”
He pulled it away from the wall. “I’ve never had sex in a storage space.”
“For all I know, you’ve never had sex on a real bed,” I shot back.
He gave me a look that made me shiver even in the summer heat. “For all I know, neither have you.”
Together, we made short work of emptying the furniture out and loading it onto the truck. What had taken three of us to accomplish last fall Boone managed almost single-handedly. Mattress, box spring, head and footboard, and the sofa all made it up onto the bed of his truck. He slid the coffee table in near the back and tied everything down with tarps and twine. One of my boxes he loaded in the front seat next to him and helped me fit the rest and the end tables into my backseat and trunk. In no time at all, we were set.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” I said to him after I rolled down the door.
He shrugged. “My pleasure. I can’t help you with homework or anything, but moving I can handle.”
“Check,” I said, coming closer and sliding my hand up to cup his cheek. “I won’t bug you with school stuff. Except poetry. You’re good with poetry.”
He inhaled sharply and for a second I thought I’d messed up, but then his expression softened. “I don’t know if I’m good at it so much as you really suck. Voltaire.”
I bit my lip and shrugged sheepishly. “Oops.”
“Oops.” He dipped his head and kissed me softly. “Come on. Let’s get going.”
“I have to pick up a few more things at the house,” I explained. “Do you want to go straight to my apartment and wait for me there?”
“Do you need me to squeeze anything else on the truck?”
I considered this. The way things were packed now, my suitcases might fit better on his truck than in my car. I’d love not to have to make more than one trip. On the flip side, swinging by the house vastly increased the likelihood that Mom would see Boone and ask questions.
Though, to be honest, I wasn’t sure that mattered to me anymore.
“You’re right,” I said. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Let’s drop by the house.”
If Boone was really going to my boyfriend, then I needed to stop caring who knew.
Nineteen
Boone and I pulled into driveways side by side. I gave him a questioning look when I got out of the car. “You do realize that’s my neighbors’ property, right?”
“Force of habit,” he explained. He looked up at the Gardners’ house and frowned. “Hannah…”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. I think…um, as long as I’m here, I’ll poke my head in and see how they are doing.”
“Okay,” I said, shrugging. Who was I to question Boone’s interest in drumming up more handyman work? “I’ll just go get my bags.”
“You sure you’ve got it on your own?”
“Positive. The suitcases have wheels.”
He gave me his million-watt grin and headed up to the Gardners’ front door.
This was good. If he didn’t come in the house, I wouldn’t have to introduce him to my mother yet. Not that I minded, I just didn’t want to go through the whole song and dance with her. I’d rather just move into my apartment and finally get some alone time with Boone. In a place with air-conditioning. And running water. And a real bed.
I practically ran into the house and started gathering up my suitcases, laptop bag, toiletries and other items I was taking with me to my apartment.
“Hannah!” Mom appeared at the door as I came back from one trip. “Are you moving already?”
“Hey, Mom,” I called as I sailed past. “Yep. I have everything loaded. Just need to get it in the apartment.”
She looked out the door at Boone’s pickup, piled high with my belongings. “Did you hire some help?”
“No, I’ve got a friend giving me a hand,” I replied vaguely, disappearing into my room for the next load. Maybe I should have said yes, and I’m paying him in sex.
“Oh.” She followed me. “Well, I’m glad I caught you. That fundraiser last night was fun, huh?”
“Sure was.” Not a lie. There had been insanely good and entirely unexpected sex. The kind that I hoped I’d soon be repeating, except without all that awkward ending stuff this time around.
Boone and I may have gotten off to a rocky start, but I wasn’t going to let any stupid misgivings or misunderstandings screw things up this time. He’d been through hell—it was only natural he had a few trust issues. And who was I to judge? I, too, was loaded down with baggage after all my experiences with Dylan and my father.
That was a story I wasn’t looking forward to telling him. I dreaded it almost as much as how, as soon as school started, it was inevitable that I’d run into Dylan—and Tess—again.
“I met Suzanne Gardner’s son Ronnie,” Mom was saying now. “Ronnie Nesbit? I wanted to introduce you but I couldn’t find you.”
Oh, right. Of the Newport Nesbits or something. Mom had been nagging me about him f
or a while. “No more setups, Mom, remember?” Okay, toothbrush, make-up bag, hair stuff…was I forgetting anything?
“I just wanted to introduce you,” she insisted. “And Suzanne did, too. You know, Ronnie’s new in town and doesn’t know a lot of people.”
“I thought we’d decided I was supposed to be concentrating on school work.” Okay, I’d packed my laptop, my Wi-Fi router, my printer…
“Where did you disappear to, anyway?”
I blew a strand of hair out of my face. “When?”
“Last night.”
Oh. Then. “Um…I don’t know, Mom. I was there the whole time. We had dinner together.” I lugged my printer out to the car and wedged it between the front seat and the dash. Mom met me when I returned to the front door.
“Well, anyway, I know you said no more setups, and I would agree with you, but I actually think you and Ronnie would get along. He’s kind of like you, you know. Still figuring himself out.”
I grimaced. “I’m figured out. You and Dad figured me all out. Comp lit major, finish Canton. Game, set, match. Remember?”
“You know what I mean, Hannah,” she said. “And he’s really cute, too.”
I shuddered to think what Mom considered really cute on a guy named Ronnie. Probably preppy to within an inch of his life. I wondered what she’d say if I told her I had a boyfriend, also really cute, but had no name or pedigree to recommend him.
“I have to go, Mom,” I said. “I have someone waiting for me…”
“I don’t think it would kill you to have coffee with the guy. Doesn’t even need to be a date. Just help him get to know some young people in town. He seemed so alone last night. I felt bad for him.”
Oh God, some loser named Ronnie, no less. He had to have been pathetic in the extreme to rouse my mother’s sympathy for a man from as exalted a family as the Newport Nesbits. “Fine, Mom, whatever. I just have to go.”
She clapped her hands. “Fantastic! I’ll tell Suzanne then?”
“Sure.” I slung my laptop bag over my shoulder. “Whatever.”
I couldn’t wait to be back in my own space, where I didn’t have my mother breathing down my neck all the time. One last coffee date with some starched suit was possibly more than I could handle.
Of course, I could probably avoid it all if I just introduced her to Boone right now. Hey Mom, sorry, but I can’t go out with your neighbor’s dorky son. I’m dating your neighbor’s hot handyman instead.
After loading the last of the bags and sundries into wherever they would fit in my car or Boone’s truck, I stood back to make sure everything was firmly fastened in. The last thing I needed was for a suitcase of clothes to fly out of the back of Boone’s truck and decorate the highway with designer duds. But it all looked pretty secure.
I checked my watch, then looked at the door of the neighbors’ house. I hoped Mrs. Gardner wasn’t putting him to work already. The sooner we got on the road, the sooner we’d be moved into my apartment, the sooner we’d set up my bed, the sooner we could use my bed… I blushed just thinking about it.
The door to the Gardners’ house banged open and Boone strode out, his face like a storm cloud.
“Hey!” I waved.
“What the hell, Hannah?” he cried, stalking toward me.
I backed up a step. “What?”
“You’re dating other guys?” He shook his head in disgust, and his face looked like a stranger’s. I’d never seen him like this.
I blinked at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He kept coming toward me and I backed up another step, until I could feel the warm metal of his truck against my back. “Not three hours ago you told me you wanted—” he stopped. “Oh, shit. You didn’t, did you? You let me do all the talking and you never came out and said you wanted to be my girlfriend. How convenient. I’m an idiot.”
“No!” I reached for him. “I mean, no, you’re right. I guess I didn’t say it, exactly. But I meant it. I do want to be your girlfriend—”
He jerked away. “I’m not the most educated man on the planet, Hannah, but where I come from, that means you don’t go out with other guys. And apparently, not five minutes ago, you made a date with one.”
My gaze flashed to the house behind him. “She told you?” Mom must have called Mrs. Gardner the second I left the room. “It’s not what you think. My mom was nagging me. It’s nothing. I’m not interested in any other guy. I just wanted to get her off my back…”
He didn’t look like he believed me, though. He wasn’t even looking at me anymore. And I was babbling, making excuses. It’s not what you think. I wondered if my father had ever used that line on my mom, all the nights and days he spent with his mistress, all the secret payments that went to her and Tess. I thought of how many times I wanted to believe it myself, last year. My eyes began to burn.
I’m the thing you do in the dark, the one you can never let anyone know.
“It’s not a date—it’s coffee with some guy who is new to town and doesn’t know anyone. I’m being nice. I’m being civilized.”
“Oh, and I’m not civilized?”
“Honestly?” I said. “No. Right this instant, you’re kind of acting like a possessive jerk.”
The words fell like a thunderclap. He winced, and the anger drained from his face, replaced with anguish.
“You’re right,” he said abruptly. He reached a hand into his short hair, grasping the strands in frustration. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I should have cut my mother off. She always pulls this setup shit. I should have just told her about you.”
He looked up at me, his eyes raw. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I can’t believe what that brought out of me. I almost sounded like…”
I pressed my lips together. Was he thinking of his father, too? “It’s okay,” I said. Neither one of us wanted to be our dads.
“It’s not okay,” he went on. “It was completely out of line. And it wasn’t about you, either. It was about me. About thinking I’m not good enough…that the life I’m trying to build is nothing.”
“You are,” I insisted, but he looked unconvinced. “Look, I don’t want to go out with anyone else. Certainly not Mrs. Gardner’s dorky son.”
He blinked at me. “Dorky son.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I mean, I’m just assuming. Why, have you met him?”
He covered his face with his hands. “Hannah,” he murmured. “Hannah.”
“What?” I said.
He sighed, then raised his face to mine. “Don’t you get it?” he said, agonized. “I’m her son.”
Twenty
My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I tried to breathe, but my lungs did not want to inflate.
“What?” I sounded like an idiot. I felt like one, too. My mind could not make sense of this.
“Suzanne Gardner is my mother,” he said, his voice utterly flat.
No. That was not true. He was poor. He was a runaway. He was named Boone. Okay. I’d start there. “You told me your name was—”
“Byron Oscar Octavius Nesbit,” he bit out. “The Fourth, actually, but who gives a shit? Not me. I changed my name when I turned eighteen. Legally. It is Boone. Boone Smith.”
“Ronnie Nesbit,” I breathed.
He cringed. “I fucking hate that name. I hate that my mother tries to call me that.”
“You…” I choked on the words. “You lied to me.” Why did everyone lie to me?
“No,” he insisted, his hands coming down on the truck to either side of me. “I never lied. Everything I said was the truth. My father is an abusive bastard, my mother lied to protect him, I ran away from home, I changed my name, the boat’s my grandfather’s, my mother wants to—”
“You lied!” I screamed, and shoved his arms away. “You kept acting like I was some rich bitch from another world… You’re a freaking Nesbit. You grew up in some mansion in New York or Newport or—”
“That was
a lifetime ago,” he said. “It’s not who I am now, or what my life has been like since I was a kid…” He shook his head. “I was going to tell you,” he said. “I was going to tell you tonight—I almost told you fifteen minutes ago…”
“And then you got mad at me?” I went on, incredulous. “For saying I would have coffee with….with you?”
“Yes. I know, I know, it was stupid. But you have to understand, I am not Ronnie. And for a second I thought that’s what you wanted…”
“Shut up!” I stomped away. Dammit. All my stuff was in his truck. I turned around. “I need my stuff.” I could call U-Haul or something. Pay someone money just to move my stuff and not lie to me or get in my pants or fucking mess with my head.
“I’ll move you in,” Boone said. “Please, let me explain to you…”
“Explain how you’re a liar?” I scoffed. “Great. Get in line.” But what could I do? I got in my car and slammed the door as hard as I could, which did nothing to calm my temper. And he’d accused me of playing games with him?
I drove to my apartment with Boone following behind. This was ridiculous. This was ridiculous. The whole time I’d been treating him as some bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, he must have been laughing his ass off. And the things he’d said to me that night at the Monroe House—it was an even more twisted game than I’d thought. He’d had sex with me then left me alone to clean up the damage while he’d gone downstairs to talk to my parents. All tuxedoed up and calling himself Ronnie Nesbit. What must he have been thinking?
Good evening, Mrs. Swift. Your daughter’s pussy was especially wet tonight.
Ah, Mr. Swift, you’re so lucky I didn’t tear Hannah’s dress off the way I threatened to. It’ll still be a while before she can walk straight, though. I fucked her pretty hard.
And then he’d just…disappeared.
That bastard.
I pulled into the garage of my apartment building without even checking to see if Boone was still behind me. You know what? Screw my sofa. I could buy a new one. I had money, like a few other people I could mention.
