Harley & Rose

by Carmen Jenner

  “See? Our boy had it under control,” Kordell says. Out of all Harley’s team mates, I like him the most. He has to be more than three hundred pounds, but he’s a gentle giant, unless he’s on the field.

  A crowd has gathered around us, and I’m quite sure the teachers won’t be far behind, but Harley looks at me, exhausted and bleeding, his eye swelling, and I cover my mouth so my squeaking cry won’t be heard. He slowly staggers to his feet and stumbles toward me. My hands automatically fly from my mouth to his neck as my eyes roam over his face. “Are you okay?”

  He nods, a smile splitting his cut lip open farther. Harley’s teammates all seem to pour out of the gym at once, and I’m wedged in by their heavily muscled bodies as they congratulate him on a job well done. That doesn’t sit right with me, and though he’s been a complete douche all night, I’m worried about Alex, who’s still lying prone on the pavement. I glance at Kordell, who isn’t getting caught up in the testosterone.

  “Thanks for having my back, man,” Harley says, and Kordell just nods as if this was a given, which I suppose it is. The team are family, they look out for each other, but that pack mentality also means things can get out of hand fast.

  “You better get out of here before Coach catches wind of this,” Kordell warns. Harley nods and slips his warm hand into mine, interlocking long fingers with my own, and I’m tugged through the crowd of rowdy football players.

  “Watson, gimme your keys,” Harley shouts, and the ginger-haired wide receiver fishes in his pocket, pulls out a set of keys, and lobs them toward us. Harley catches them in mid-air, and for the first time I notice how busted up his hand is. “I’m taking you home.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  As if on cue, the ice princess screeches her harpy cry from behind the crowd, and her and the pussy posse push through the wall of footballers blocking their path. “Oh my god! Are you serious, Harley? You got into a fight on prom? Over her?” she asks in distaste, glaring at me. “She’s not even your date.”

  “No, but she should have been,” he whispers, so low I think I’ve misheard. When his eyes meet mine, I know I heard everything with one hundred per cent clarity. “She’s my friend. Her boyfriend was being a fucking tool and needed to have his ass handed to him.”

  “And you just had to be the one to do it.” She sneers, and then mocks me in a low baritone. “Poor Rose. She’s so lonely; she’s so sad; she’s so pathetic. If I don’t take care of her, who will?” It’s a terrible impersonation of Harley, but it has the desired effect because it cuts right to the core, just the way she intended. Harley had always taken care of me. Is that what he really thinks?

  His fingers disengage from my own and he takes a step towards her. “Quit being a bitch, Riley. I’m taking Rose home. I’ll come back for you.”

  “You leave with her and I won’t be here for you to come back to,” Ice Princess snaps, and turns on her heel.

  Harley snatches up my hand again and leads me through the school gates to Watson’s truck. He’s still taking care of me, as if I were a feeble child, incapable of functioning on my own, and Riley’s words twist in my gut like a knife. He rests his hand on my ass and helps me climb up, then he attempts to buckle my seat belt, but I slap his hands away in order to do it myself. Harley’s brow furrows. He shuts the door, walking over to the driver’s side, and climbs in, turns the key, and quickly shuts off the music. Harley puts his foot to the floor and proceeds to drive like a maniac all the way through the city.

  We don’t say a word when we pull up to my house. I just unbuckle my belt and turn to undo my door when his hand comes to rest on my knee. I feel the weight of it, the warmth of it through my layers of tulle.

  I glance up at him. “You want to come inside and have my dad take a look at that?” I ask, referring to his split lip. My dad is a pediatric surgeon at Benioff’s Children’s Hospital in Oakland. He could patch Harley up in a few minutes.

  “Nah. Chicks dig scars, right?”

  “Right.” I half-smile back, but all the humor left me hours ago. In fact, there hasn’t been a single humorous thing about this night—well, except for my stupidity in thinking Alex should be my first. “Well, thanks for beating the shit out of Alex for me.”

  “You don’t have to thank me. I’ve been wanting to beat that shithead’s face in since the second the two of you hooked up.”

  I nod, because this isn’t news to me, but I still haven’t figured out why. Why does he care if I sleep with Alex? Was it over between him and Riley now? “Sorry for ruining prom. I bet Riley’s not too happy with either one of us right now.”

  “Riley can wait. She’s not important.”

  My brows crease with surprise, and a little bit of annoyance. If she’s not important, why the hell did he take her to prom? Before I can read too much into that, Harley leans into my personal space, so close we breathe the same breath. We’ve done this a hundred times over since we were thirteen, but we’ve never crossed that line again.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper.

  “He’s wrong about you, you know?”

  “What?” I ask, but my question is cut short by his lips as they come crashing down on mine. His tongue pushes into my mouth and a surprised moan escapes me, but it’s swallowed by his. Harley’s hands cup my face, and mine slide to the back of his head. I kiss him back, warm and wet and full of need, and then fireworks explode behind my eyelids, the way they did the first time we kissed. The way it should have been all that time with Alex.

  Too soon, he breaks the kiss and leans his forehead against mine. “Rose,” he whispers breathlessly.

  “Yeah?” I sigh, just as winded. I wish he’d shut up and go back to kissing me, but Harley pulls back, and his face turns white as a sheet.

  “Shit.”

  My heart sinks because I can only imagine what that means. He hadn’t meant to do that, and I … had.

  My thoughts are interrupted by a knock on my window, and I jump about twenty feet in the air when I see my father standing on the other side of that thin pane of glass. For a moment I’m tempted to tell Harley to floor it, but then I’d be in even more trouble. We both would.

  My dad makes the international symbol for ‘roll down your window,’ and I gulp because not only does he look as dumbfounded as I do right now, but he also looks mad. Really, really mad.

  “Oh shit, he is pissed,” Harley says.

  “Yup.” I roll down the window.

  “What the hell are you two doing out here?”

  “Harley drove me home.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” Dad scowls. “I mean what are you two doing out here, in this car, necking like a bunch of—”

  “Ew, Dad, necking,” I say. “Really?”

  This obviously doesn’t win me any points with him because his scowl deepens.

  “Sorry, sir,” Harley says, and the part of me that isn’t terrified of my father carving Harley up into little pieces with his bone saw is ecstatic because my best friend kissed me and those lips were as warm and pillowy-soft as I remembered, and oh my god, now is really not the time to be staring at Harley like I want another taste.

  “Sir now, is it?” Dad says. Harley has never called him ‘sir’ a day in his life. Dad’s an open book, and a gentleman through and through. Usually, the minute anyone calls my dad sir or Doctor Perry, all slights were forgiven. That’s not happening here though. “What happened to your face?”

  “Alex happened,” I say, reaching for the door handle, but since my dad is leaning his body against the car, it appears I’m trapped and going exactly nowhere.

  “And he did this because you were kissing my daughter?”

  “Harley beat the crap out of him because Alex was being a douche. Jeez, Dad.” I yank on the handle again, panicking a little despite my teen angst because I know my worst fear is about to happen, and then as if she were summoned, my mother opens the front door of our house and shouts, “Herb, who is it?”

  “It’s R
ose,” Dad says, and then he glares at Harley. “And her very good friend Harley. You’d better come inside, and I’ll fix that cut.”

  “Dad, he’s fine.”

  “No. I have to get back—”

  “They’re home already?” my mother yells all of this from the front porch because she’s in her pajamas and couldn’t possibly be seen in the street in her sleepwear, but standing on the porch is apparently fine. “Well, what are they doing sitting out there in the dark? And whose car is that?”

  “He’s just coming inside to have me take a look at his face.”

  “What happened to his face?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, though I know that he knows how they get.

  “Apparently Harley beat the crap out of Rose’s boyfriend,” Dad deadpans, never once taking his death glare off of us.

  “Alex? Well good, that little dipshit deserved it. Who does he think he is, showing up late to pick up my daughter for prom? Did you see her face? She was devastated.”

  “Mom!” I shout, and then I give up because just when I think it couldn’t get worse, everything snowballs from there. My dad sends Harley another death glare and to make matters even worse, Rochelle and Dean come wandering out of their front door and across our drive to see what all the commotion is about. This bolsters my own mother’s courage and she comes tottering down the stairs in her fluffy kitten-heeled slippers, her satin robe billowing behind her.

  “Harley, what happened to your face?” Rochelle asks.

  Mom answers for him, “He beat up Rose’s date.”

  Harley flops his head back on the seat and exhales loudly. I know just how he feels. “He was being an asshole.”

  “Language,” Rochelle warns.

  “He was being an A-hole, Mom.”

  “Well, what did he do?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Son, this could be a potential law suit waiting to happen.” This comes from Harley’s dad, Dean. “Now if I’m going to get a call from this boy’s father in the morning, or worse, a warrant for your arrest, I’m going to need all of the details.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Harley mutters under his breath, and Rochelle chastises him again. “He was pressuring her for sex, okay?”

  Dean mutters a curse. My dad’s face turns outright murderous. The moms gasp simultaneously, as if they themselves had never once been teenage girls. My heart settles heavy inside my chest and my stomach sinks with their reactions. I feel like a fool. Why am I not more outraged on my own behalf, and why do we live in a society where boys are pressuring girls for sex at all? Why are girls only valuable to boys if they put out? And why was I so willing to give away my virginity to some asshole who could have replaced me with any one of those girls in that gym and not given a single shit?

  “Thank goodness Harley saved the day by driving Rose home and making out with her in the front seat of a borrowed car,” Dad seethes, and I know that it’s going to take some time for him to get over the fact that he caught me kissing the one boy he thought he could trust with his daughter.

  “Making out?” Mom and Rochelle say at the same time, and both of them look far too happy. Heat licks at my cheeks, and I could just die because I had no intention of telling my parents about the situation with Alex, and I certainly wasn’t planning on telling them about Harley and me. I also know that now Mom and Rochelle will never give up on making sure this becomes a thing. I’m surprised they haven’t already sent out wedding invitations.

  “Okay, well fun as this was, I’m going to bed.” I turn from the window, and our parents’ expectant faces, and smile at Harley. “Thanks for driving me.”

  He doesn’t reply, just tilts his chin in my direction as I open the door, practically barging my dad out of the way, who’s still giving Harley the stink eye. I hop down from the truck and breeze past my parents. Though I know Dad is eager to get his hands on Harley and make him pay just a little with rubbing alcohol and possibly a few stitches, Harley tells his folks that he’s fine and he roars off into the night.

  Inside my room, Mom hovers like a gnat as she helps me unzip my dress. She asks me several times about Alex, and whether or not I’m okay, and how far I let him take it, and the relief is written all over her face when I tell her that Harley stepped in before Alex had caused any damage. I think she knew I wasn’t all that interested in Alex to begin with, so she knows I’m not brokenhearted. She tries several times to glean details about my kiss with Harley, but I choose to keep those to myself. I feel as if I talk about it, somehow it makes it less special, so much to her disappointment, I keep my mouth tightly shut.

  After taking the pins from my hair and removing my makeup, I sit on my bed and read as I wait for Harley to return home and sneak in my open window, but he doesn’t. At least not before I fall asleep, and the next morning, when I finally work up the courage to climb in through his window, I find his bed empty and untouched. He didn’t sleep here at all last night. My heart sinks as I realize where he was. He spent the night with Riley, in a hotel room charged to her mother’s card. And I’m a fool for thinking that kiss meant anything to him just because it meant everything to me.

  Chapter Eight

  Rose

  I sip my Mai Tai and look out over the ocean as the sun sets. The waitress Brittany gives me the side eye again because I’m taking up precious space at one of the couple’s tables without ordering anything more than a few cocktails. Harley was supposed to be joining me for dinner, but after the magic of Kauai yesterday it was as if he’d done a complete one-eighty by the time I came back from acquiring our morning coffees. I don’t know whether it was bad news from home, or whether Alecia had tried to contact him, but he threw his phone against the wall and stormed into the bathroom as I was coming through the hotel suite door.

  I’d bombarded him with questions, but he wasn’t talking. He wasn’t doing much of anything but lying around the room drinking. Ordinarily, I’d have been all for that, but I knew when my best friend needed space, so I kissed his cheek and left him to his misery. That was hours ago, and I’ve been back to the room twice since, but he was nowhere to be found. I texted him, reminding him of our dinner reservation, but as I’m sitting alone at our table, avoiding the glares from the not-so-sweet-tempered Brittany, who keeps dropping by every two seconds to ask if I’m ready to order, I know that wherever he is, he’s not coming.

  Coming here was a bad idea, and just as I’m preparing to signal the ever-watchful Brittany for the check, I hear a familiar voice from behind.

  “One moment,” Dermot tells Brittany as she prepares to lead him past my table. I stand up to greet him, and he pulls me in for an awkward cheek kiss/hug. This is new for us. Dermot is a client, and though I’ve always known that he’s a colossal flirt, we’ve never disrupted our distributor/consumer relationship with touching of any kind. “Alone again?”

  “Looks like,” I say with a tight smile.

  “You know I’m beginning to think you’re making up this runaway bridegroom.”

  I really like Dermot. My checkbook and my accountant both really like Dermot and his regular contribution to my business, and yes, even though my heart is hung up on my unattainable best friend, my lady parts really, really appreciate Dermot—on a purely aesthetic level, of course. However, that was an extraordinarily douchie thing to say.

  Like I would honeymoon in Hawaii, by myself.

  “You know I’m beginning to think you’re making up a wife in order to cover the fact that you’re gay. What’s that they say about the successful, good-looking men in SF? They’re either married or gay.”

  “Oh Rose, I am definitely not gay,” he murmurs, his gaze rolling over me from head to toe and though I was just teasing, I’m inclined to believe him.

  Feeling parched, and a little shaken up, I raise my glass in a toast. “You are married though.”

  “You got me.” He grins and indicates to the unoccupied seat at my table. “May I?”

  “Of course,” I say,
and shoot Brittany—who’s been watching our exchange this entire time with her eyes bugging out—a look. She turns her attention to Dermot, laying the cloth napkin in his lap for him and asking if he’d like something to drink. He thanks her and orders a Jameson, while I order another Mai Tai, and Brittany then sets down menus for us both and bounces away to fill our order with her ponytail swinging.

  “So where is this mysterious best friend?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be keeping tabs on him, making him feel not so alone?”

  “That was the plan, though it’s not working out so well today.” I try to keep the hurt from my voice, but I know Dermot hears it because when I glance up from my chipped fingernail polish, he’s studying me closely. His deep brown eyes penetrate mine, and they seem to search for more than I’m willing to give. “So what about Mrs. Carter?”

  “Hard day at the spa. She wanted to order in.”

  “Shouldn’t you be ordering in with her?”

  “If you knew Mrs. Carter, you’d be asking why I bother going back to the suite at all,” he says, not looking at me but at the ocean. “I keep wondering why we do this—celebrate anniversaries when we can’t stand to be alone together for a single night.” He straightens his collar and glances at the bar. Clearly this is a man in need of a serious drink. “My apologies. You’ve been stood up by your best friend, who still in no way wants to fuck you, and my wife would rather fuck her gynecologist than her husband, so where does that leave us, sweet Rose?”

  Poor Dermot. I guess we’re both chasing after people who don’t want to be caught. The only difference is Mrs. Carter said ‘I do’. Man, she sounds like a complete bitch.