“But you’ll let him make you come instead?” Brandon retorted. His eyes flashed, and a large vein throbbed at the side of his neck. “I guess I know what kind of girl you really are, Red.”
Before I could control it, my hand flew forward and slapped him hard across the face. The leather of my glove left an angry red crease mark across his cheek, and he stumbled backward in shock, holding his own gloved hand up against his face.
“Fuck you, Mister Sterling,” I said in an eerily even voice just loud enough to be heard over the plane’s engines and the flights taking off from Logan. I was angry enough to have passed the point of shouting. It stung beyond belief that my fears about getting physical with him so soon were obviously correct, and so soon after I had made myself so vulnerable. Clearly I was making the right decision.
I tugged my purse, which had fallen down my arm in my struggle, back over my shoulder, and shoved my hair away from my face again with an angry swipe.
“Don’t ever fucking contact me again,” I hissed. I turned on the heel of my shoe and stalked away, leaving him standing next to his fancy car at the curb.
“You’ll regret this,” he called after me. “You know you will, Skylar!”
I didn’t answer, just held one finger up in an extremely rude gesture as I continued to walk to the main terminal, eager to get all vestiges of Brandon Sterling away and out of my mind as soon as I possibly could.
~
Chapter 15
It took me nearly two hours that night to walk around half of Logan airport to find the T shuttle and then take two more trains back to Harvard Square. I got more than a few strange looks as I muttered to myself like a crazy woman, occasionally punching a fist into the down of my parka at a particularly caustic thought. Every time I thought I had calmed myself down, a new wave of fury swept over me as I remember his words, remembered the way I was essentially confirmed as a foregone conclusion. Fuck him. There was nothing else to say about it.
At one point another passenger on the train, a cocky-faced man who looked three sheets to the wind with his friends, asked to smile at me from across the car. The suggestive leer brought out my inner New Yorker in full force as I snarled, “What the fuck are you lookin’ at?”
He didn’t reply, just murmured “bitch” as he and his friends stepped off at the Kendall Square stop. Yeah, the way I was feeling right now, he had no idea.
It was nearly eleven by the time I walked back into my apartment to find Jane sitting on the couch in the dark, drinking from a bottle of wine in her lap while another sat unopened on the coffee table in front of her. There was no glass in sight. A rerun of Mork and Mindy was playing on the small TV set in the corner, and Jane chuckled in the dark while she rubbed smears of mascara beneath her eyes.
I flipped on the lights. “What’s up, Howard Hughes? Bad date?”
Jane groaned. “The absolute fucking worst.”
“I bet I can top you.” I stripped off my parka and glove and flopped them on the kitchen table before joining her on the couch.
“You’re on,” she said, and took another swig directly from the bottle. “So, Physics student, right? You’d think he’d be shy and sweet, an egghead type. But when I tell him I need to go to the bathroom, he follows me and tries to convince me to give him a blowjob right there in the club. Like, in the fucking hallway. He even started to unbuckle his fucking pants.”
“Sounds like a real winner,” I replied sarcastically as I pulled the bottle from her lap and took a long drink myself.
“I said no, of course, considering I’d rather not have a record for indecent exposure going into my first year as an ASA. And when I got back from the bathroom, he was sitting with another woman with his hand up her fucking skirt.”
She looked up, and I could see the marks of tear stains trailing through the mascara under her glasses and over her cheeks. Immediately I scooted over on the couch and pulled her head onto my shoulder.
“Aw, Janie, I’m sorry. What a shit,” I murmured as I smoothed the uneven spikes of her messy bob. I took a long drink of wine.
“It wasn’t even just some chick he picked up at the bar,” Jane said. “Turns out he had a whole other date planned for the night, Skylar. He double booked us in case I wouldn’t put out.”
“Did you at least throw a drink in his face before you left?”
She sat up, grabbed the bottle back from me, and took another long slug of wine, burping loudly after she was done. “Two, actually. His and his runner-up’s. God, men are scum.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice. What is this sludge we’re drinking?”
“Good old Chuckie Shaw,” she giggled. She held it back to me.
I grimaced. Wine wasn’t my drink, and this was bottom of the barrel crap. But I took the bottle, another several gulps.
“It really must have been bad,” Jane said as she watched me gulp away.
I handed the bottle back to her. “You have no idea.”
I proceeded to tell her everything about my night with Brandon, from my impromptu double orgasm to his insane plans for the rest of the evening. By the end, she was staring at me with her mouth open in disbelief, all thoughts of her own shitty night long gone.
“I can’t believe he said that!” she said after I recounted his parting remark about the kind of girl I apparently was.
She handed me the bottle as if she knew I really needed it. She wasn’t wrong.
“What a dick,” Jane continued. “I mean, first of all, who even thinks about sex like that anymore? This isn’t nineteen fifty-fucking-seven, you know? A, you’re not a girl, you’re a woman. And B, you have every prerogative to have any form of sex with whomever you want without worrying about some ridiculous code of purity. We’re not virginal damsels protecting our fucking flowers, am I right? You should be able to do whatever you want without that kind of condescending judgment, especially from the partner you chose to fucking do it with in the first place!”
“Here, here.” I held the bottle up in silent agreement to her statements before I took another welcome slug. The bottle was almost half empty when I arrived, and we were already nearly done with it. My head was fuzzy, but I welcomed the oblivion if it would block out the twin faces of Patrick and Brandon that kept filtering though my mind. I had done the right thing. I had.
“Was he at least good?”
I closed my eyes, downing the rest of the bottle before opening them back up to answer. “Unfortunately, he might be the best. At what we did, anyway. He literally had me screaming, Janie. Like, the way those idiots in romance novels do, but you know that no one actually does in real life? Yeah, I was doing that. Best orgasm of my life, bar none.”
“Oh, that is a shame,” Jane remarked with genuine remorse. “Why is it always the assholes who are good in the sack? Practice, you think?”
I cringed, not wanting to think about just how Brandon had accumulated his skills in the bedroom. It only made me feel more stupid for letting him use them on me. I’m shit at dating, he’d said. Yeah fucking right.
“I can’t believe you turned down a free trip to Paris, though,” Jane said with a giggle as she leaned over to open the second bottle of wine. “Girl, it’s Paris.”
“Shit.” I giggled and fell back in the sofa with my eyes closed. “I know, right?”
~
After nursing a hangover on Saturday morning by swimming at the pool, I spent the weekend buried in reading assignments for my classes and other case studies on domestic violence. There was no word from Brandon, and with a mild sense remorse, I released that we had still never exchanged cell phone numbers. But every time I recalled his comment at the airport, a satisfying wave of rage would flood my system, effectively barring other, more melancholy reminiscences.
“Skylar! Hold up!”
I turned around from where I stood on the cobblestoned street after exiting the student athletic facility on Sunday after another swim. I tried to swim an hour or so most days of the week, finding
it helped me clear my head after hours of studying and work. It was a habit I had done since I was a child, when the pool was the closest place for Bubbe to take me to for after school activities. Swim team was the cheapest sport I could participate in. I was too little to ever be any good, but it was a good habit to keep.
Jared bounded down the steps of the facility to stand next to me on the sidewalk, the ease of his actions betraying an obvious history as an athlete. Despite the cold weather, he was only wearing a pair of fitted track pants and a t-shirt that outlined strong shoulder and a lean, toned chest.
“A little underdressed, aren’t you?” I asked as he caught up to me and continued to jog in place. Both of our breaths were visible in the cold air, although it wasn’t supposed to snow again for at least a week.
“I jog to and from my apartment,” Jared said with a smile.
“Oh? Whereabouts do you live?”
He nodded in the direction of Mass Ave. “Down by Porter Square. I’ve had the place for a while.”
“Just you?” There was something in the way he said it that made it sound like he didn’t live with the usual ménage of roommates the rest of us dealt with.
“Just me.”
I repressed the urge to raise my eyebrows. Jared couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than me, and Porter Square, another small enclave of Cambridge, wasn’t cheap.
“So listen,” he said. His light brown hair flopped charmingly on his forehead as he bounced up and down. It looked very soft. “I was thinking about that date.”
I blinked, trying for a moment to remember what he was talking about. Our last interlude at the bookstore came rushing back to me; with everything else that had happened over the past few weeks, I had completely forgotten about my promise to contact him.
“God,” I said. “I’m so sorry; I totally forgot to call you.”
He shrugged. He was so easygoing that I found myself smiling back at him for no reason.
“No big deal,” he said. “The start of the term is always busy. But I was hoping you might want to go out sometime now that things are settled.”
Despite the allure of Jared’s obvious normalcy when compared to the fiasco of last night, I found myself hesitating. I was really close to finishing school, and after that I’d have the bar exam, not to mention most likely a new job that would take up nearly all of my free time. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to be getting involved with anyone, drama-free or not.
“Nothing too much,” Jared pressed on, stopping his bouncing around to reach out to touch my forearm. “I know you’re busy. I am too. I was thinking brunch, maybe? Next Sunday?”
I pursed my lips, considering. Jared didn’t exactly give me the same stomach-clenching butterflies I had been experiencing of late, but maybe that was a good thing. Unlike an evening date, there wouldn’t be the pressure to go home with him after or to bring him up to my apartment. The date could be as little as an hour, after which we would both certainly need to go home and prepare for classes the following day. Jared was in the exact same position I was; he would understand the fact that neither of us could afford much to give the other. He was cute and nice. Maybe he was just the thing to put this whole messy two weeks behind me.
“All right,” I relented. “Sunday it is. Can you text me the details? I’ll meet you there around ten.”
I received a face-splitting grin in response, and couldn’t help but respond in kind. Jared’s joy was contagious.
“Great!” he said, and started to back away. “See you Sunday!”
~
After finishing my week’s classes, I arrived at Family Law Services on Wednesday to find Kieran on the phone, frowning and talking broadly in a way that was uncharacteristic for her usually stoic demeanor. She gestured that she’d only be a minute, and waved that I should take a seat at my small desk.
Kieran and I had quickly found an easy rhythm of working together, having built a rapport based on our similar backgrounds. I discovered that we had a lot in common, including a certain mentality that was a product of growing up in working class neighborhoods with single parents who were civil servants. Apparently her mother worked for the Boston Metro as a conductor after her father left them when she was a kid. I gathered that her experience was what fueled her desire to do so much pro-bono work, although she was equally determined to be successful in order to support her mother. I could understand. One of my biggest goals was to make enough so that my dad wouldn’t have to empty trashcans anymore and could spend all his time on his music. Exactly how I was going to do that wasn’t as clear.
“You’re ridiculous, you know that?” she barked to whoever was on the phone with her. “When are you going to learn to just relax? Seriously, Brandon, you’ll do better if you just stop with the fucking bravado.”
I stiffened when I heard that name. How likely was it that she knew two men with that name?
“Okay, tell me what she says,” Kieran said quickly as she noticed me in the doorway. “Good luck. I’ll talk to you about it next week, all right?”
She hung up, and turned to me, quickly burying the obvious smile on her face. “Sorry about that, Skylar. Just a friend who needed some advice on girls.” She couldn’t help the smirk that reappeared, as if she were enjoying some private joke.
“Brandon Sterling?” I couldn’t help myself.
Her eyebrows rose. “Oh, that’s right, I forgot that you know him.”
I nodded, hoping to God that my normally glass face wouldn’t flush and betray just how well I knew him. “Well, not really. How do you know him again?”
I knew I shouldn’t pry, but my curiosity was getting the best of me. While I knew that I was the one to leave him standing on an airport curb, for some reason the idea of him talking to another woman—which was clearly what they were discussing—really ate me up.
“We grew up together as kids,” she said simply. “In the same building in Dorchester. At least, until we were twelve or so.”
“Did his family move away or something?”
She looked at me curiously, and I focused on maintaining my features in the blandest expression possible, as if it didn’t really matter to me what the answer was.
“No, he went into foster care,” she said carefully, observing me in the same way I’d seen her observe clients to gauge their reactions, usually to determine whether or not they were lying. Kieran didn’t usually care if you were guilty, but she wouldn’t represent you if you lied to her. “His dad was a rough son of a bitch until he was locked up, and his mom was a junkie. He had it kind of bad, and used to spend a lot of time in my family’s apartment.”
I balked. I’d forgotten about that. “I’m surprised he’d be all right with you telling me that, considering how private he is.”
Kieran shrugged. “It’s a pretty well known fact. Not on his Wikipedia page or anything, but one of the worst kept secrets in Boston. It’s why his firm devotes so much pro-bono work toward child advocacy cases. He actually donated the money that allowed Harvard to fund this center. Half the volunteer attorneys here are from Sterling Grove. He got lucky with his foster parents, but a lot of kids don’t.”
I blinked, unsure of what to say. This was more than I knew about Brandon. He’d mentioned his time in the system, but I hadn’t pressed him on it.
“I think that’s why he always has a hard time with women,” she continued, uncharacteristically chatty as she gestured at the phone. “Especially lately. He goes on these dates and he just does too much, you know? Hang-ups from when he was a kid, so he’s always trying too hard to make people like him. I keep telling him that not everyone worries about that like he does, that he’s much more likable when he doesn’t go overboard with money and gifts and things, but he just can’t seem to rein it in. Attracts too many gold-diggers and scares off a lot of the good ones.”
Kieran peered at me with one raised eyebrow, as if expecting me to own up to something. I gulped, praying my skin wouldn’t betray me now with a
n obvious flush.
“What happened to his folks?” I asked with a carefully controlled voice.
She furrowed her eyebrows. “Well, I know his mom is dead, and I think his dad is still in jail. Why are you so interested in him?” she asked. It was a direct call to my bluff.
This time I was unable to stifle the flush that ran up my face. “Just curious,” I said, hoping to pass off my facial color as just being embarrassed by being put on the spot. “He’s an interesting…character, you know?”
“Interesting. Mm-hmm,” Kieran said. I couldn’t tell if she believed me or not. “Do you have that file on the Chang case?”
With that, our conversation left the topic of Brandon Sterling, and reverted back to work. But even as I tried my hardest to focus on the briefs in front of me, all I could see was a pair of bright blue eyes, staring at me with a longing I was trying so hard to stifle in myself. Date that weekend, hadn’t she’d said? It was exactly as I’d thought—there was nothing special about our interaction. To him, I was just “that kind of girl.” Eager to rid myself of the sinking feeling taking root in my stomach, I took out my phone and texted Jared to confirm our date for Sunday. I needed to stop thinking about the one person I knew wasn’t any good for me.
~
Chapter 16
I had never been asked on a date in the morning before, so I found myself unsure of what to wear when I got up at nine to get ready for brunch. Jane stumbled into my bedroom with a mug of coffee and a cup of tea for me after I got out of the shower.
“I don’t know what is wrong with this boy that he thinks Sunday morning is a good time for a date,” she grumbled as she took a seat on my bed. She laid back into the set of four down pillows stacked against my headboard, her thin frame sinking into their plush creases. “He’s basically telling you he has absolutely no interest in fucking. Does that sound like someone you want to get busy with? Someone who’s like, eh, my penis can wait, so let’s just have some scones instead?”
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 16
