Some Boy (What's Love? #1)

by Jenna Cox

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah. Of course. You can…uh, you can leave the jeans to dry if you want. If you’ve got to go.”

  My heart might actually have stopped while I waited for him to react to that. Moment of truth. If he took the jeans and ran, that would say it all. If he left them… well, I didn’t even know what that meant. What should it mean? What did I want it to mean?

  Shit, I barely knew the guy. Had it even been an hour since he first dripped water all over the place in Student Services? I still hadn’t established anything concrete about him other than his name and the fact that he was disorganised enough to get locked out of his room and miss an exam wearing wet clothing. And no shoes.

  And then come back to my house to drink and fuck me. Then leave again. Running late for… he didn’t even say what.

  And all this ran through my head in the few seconds between my suggestion to leave his jeans, and his response. Which was, “Yeah, alright. Cheers,” as he pulled the trackies back on and left the jeans hanging on the chair.

  And then he was leaning over me, kissing me. “I’ll be back for them.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Okay.”

  He grinned at me, looked me over, and then was heading out the door leaving me alone, still naked, in the bed.

  “Fuck,” I murmured. And then I rolled over and buried my face in the pillow while my body still burned with the feel of his skin.

  two

  “KAT?”

  “HUH?” I sat bolt upright. “I’m awake.”

  Izzy laughed, and I turned my face to where the sound was coming from. Her blonde hair was up in a messy bun on the top of her head, leading the way as she poked her head through my doorway.

  “Hiya, Sleeping Beauty. There’s someone at the door for you,” she said.

  I pushed back the covers and sat up, perched on the edge of the bed for a moment while the dizziness faded. Then I got up. “Who is it?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. It’s a boy.” She dragged the last word out in a sing-song voice.

  I’d been reaching for my trackies, but now my hand drifted to my jeans, also laying over the end of my bed. Izzy didn’t pretend she hadn’t seen that.

  I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I wouldn’t even bother putting trousers on, though,” she said, and then ducked back out before I could ask her what the hell that meant.

  I did put jeans on. And then I poked my head out into the hallway. Which was empty. But that didn’t mean Izzy and Justin weren’t eavesdropping behind one of the closed doors.

  Why did I even care?

  I straightened my shoulders and strode to front the door, pulling it open too quickly in my effort to seem confident. And I was looking at someone’s back.

  He turned as he heard me there, but I wasn’t looking at his face. My eyes had drifted lower.

  “I came to get my jeans,” he said.

  “Huh. So you did.” And I dragged my gaze up, finally, from where I’d been staring at his cotton, striped boxer shorts. Brendan was grinning at me. I laughed, but it was an incredulous sound. I couldn’t help glancing back down at his lower half again. And his bare legs. And his grey socks. Then I noticed he was hopping back and forth on those grey socks, his hands tucked under his arm pits.

  “Come inside,” I said quickly. It wasn’t so much that I thought he was going to die of cold, but that he was going to die of cold on my doorstep. In his underwear.

  He didn’t hesitate, sidestepping past me before I even had a chance to move out the way. I could feel the chill of his body as he did. I shut the door and turned, then started. I was face to face with him — or nose to collarbone. He just grinned down at me, and looked like he was thinking about kissing me.

  “They’re in my room,” I said, giving him a little shove on his arms — his bare arms, since he only wore a T-shirt — to turn him around and march him there. I heard a giggle from somewhere up the hallway and then a door clicking shut. I marched him a little bit faster. “God, you’re an icicle. Why didn’t you at least wear shoes and a jacket?”

  “Then you wouldn’t have invited me in,” he said over his shoulder, as we passed through the doorway into my room. I shut it behind me and leant back against it.

  “I might have,” I said. He raised one eyebrow at me. I looked over him again, and he just stood there, quite happy to be on display. “What if I hadn’t been home?” I said, dragging my eyes away and moving to turn the radiator up. Brendan moved closer, ostensibly to warm himself, but the side-effect was that his half-dressed body was close to mine again. I couldn’t make myself move away.

  “Then I guess I would have had to come back another day.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  Brendan just shrugged and held out his hands over the heater. “I’m fucking glad you were home, though. It’s cold as shit out there today.”

  I almost wasn’t home. I would have been in visiting my mum at the hospital, but when I’d gone, they’d told me she was getting X-rays and tests done and would be hours. And to go home and they’d call me when she was back in her room.

  And so I’d done what I always do when I’m overwhelmed and agitated. Gone to sleep. There were three things I did when I felt agitated. One, sleep. I could check that off. Two, drink. There was probably vodka in the kitchen. And three, well, that wasn’t on my radar until Brendan showed up with no pants.

  Actually, who am I kidding. Number three had been on my radar since Brendan was first in my room two days before. Also with no pants.

  I stood side-by-side with him, warming my hands over the radiator on the wall like it was a campfire, even though I wasn’t cold. I just needed something to do with my hands. And my eyes; I was staring down at my fingers because I could feel Brendan looking at me and didn’t want to meet his gaze.

  “Were you sleeping?” he asked.

  “Did Izzy tell you?”

  “No. You just look all flushed and pretty,” he said. “And you have bed hair.”

  My hand flew to my head, and I tried combing out the tangles with my fingers. I frowned at him.

  “I wasn’t expecting half-naked company.”

  “It’s okay. I like you like this,” he said. And he lifted one of his hands to smooth some of my hair down. I just watched him, my breath caught in my throat. And then his hand drifted lower and touched my cheek.

  “Bloody hell, your hand is freezing!” I yelped, grabbing it away from my face. And then because I was holding one of them anyway, I took the other one too, between both of mine, and rubbed them. Vigorously. And with all my focus, because Brendan had moved a little closer to me, and the flush I was feeling then was not from sleep.

  When he leaned his head in to kiss me, I stepped back. I was still holding his hands, but now using my grip on them to keep him at a distance.

  “What are you doing here, Brendan?” I asked. What was I doing? I’d thought of nothing but him for the past two days, and now he was in front of me again, I was holding him back.

  “I just wanted to see you,” he said. This took me off guard. I’d expected him to make a joke again. That would have been easier to brush off.

  But why did I even want to brush him off?

  And then I thought of my mum and realised why. Because I felt guilty. Guilty that I’d been spending so much time thinking about Brendan while she was in the hospital. On top of the guilt I already felt for putting her there.

  And all this thinking was about a stranger who kept showing up in various modes of undress.

  I wasn’t surprised at myself. I did this, especially when I was stressed. But I always felt guilty about it too.

  “I can go if you want. If I misread this,” Brendan was saying. He had pulled his hands from mine, and was moving away.

  “You didn’t,” I said, and he stopped. He was just watching me, waiting for me to make up my mind, obviously. Everything in me was wavering, unable to decide what the sensible course of acti
on was here. “I’m just not in the best place right now,” I said. “I told you, my mum, and everything.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m not trying to complicate your life. To me it’s kinda simple. You’re here. I’m here. I’ve already got my pants off.”

  I couldn’t help laughing, and the grin he’d been stifling broke out. And then I felt the punch of guilt in my gut again, that I was here laughing like this while my mum was in hospital. It must have been plain on my face what I was thinking.

  “This is the way I look at it,” he said, coming closer to me again. He ran his thumb over my collar bone, then curled his fingers around the back of my neck. “Life is shitty. It always will be. So you just roll with it and find the good where you can. And where I’m standing now, there’s something pretty fucking good right in front of me.”

  I didn’t bother analysing that any more. His argument was good enough for me. I was won over — easily, I knew, because I wanted to be. And my arms were snaking around his neck as I pulled his mouth down to mine.

  He didn’t need any more invitation than that, either. And by the time he was falling down on to the bed with me, he’d already flicked open the button on my jeans. I gasped and laughed against his mouth as his fingers slipped down inside my underwear.

  “Still cold?”

  “Fucking freezing,” I murmured, and then gasped again as he moved them against me.

  “Want me to stop?”

  “No.”

  The sensation of his hot tongue in my mouth and his icy fingers against my skin was making me dizzy.

  And just then the door opened.

  “Izzy!” I hissed, simultaneously yanking Brendan’s hand out of my pants, and floundering with the blankets to cover us up. I wasn’t very successful.

  But the fact that Izzy hadn’t yet made a joke or laughed or even raised an eyebrow had the alarms ringing in my head, and my stomach clenched. I wriggled myself out from under Brendan’s body and sat up.

  “What is it?”

  “Your phone was out in the kitchen and it rang. I answered it.” Her forehead was creased. “It was the hospital. It sounded serious.”

  I was on my feet, buttoning my jeans and then trying to jam a shoe onto the wrong foot. “What did they say, exactly?”

  “Just that you should come now,” she said.

  “But why? What did they say, Izzy?”

  “Nothing. They’re not going to tell me anything, are they. Just that you should come.”

  The transition from lust to panic had been startling, and I’d obviously jumped up too fast. I had to squat, then, holding on to the edge of my desk until I stopped feeling like I was going to faint.

  Then I took a deep breath and got up. This time I sat in a chair and focused on putting my shoes on properly, trying to breathe evenly.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Izzy was saying.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “Sure? I can just come on the bus ride with you, but not come in?”

  “I’m just going to drive,” I said.

  “Kat.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have your car.”

  “Shit.” Of course I didn’t. My car was getting repaired. That was the whole reason I needed to go to the hospital right now.

  “I can drive you.”

  I looked at Brendan. I’d almost forgotten he was there. At some point he’d put his own jeans on and was standing by the bed.

  “You have a car?”

  “I’ll meet you on Clarendon Road, just down behind here in five minutes, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. There wasn’t a question of me refusing the offer. It would take me at least half an hour to get the bus. Barely ten minutes by car.

  He left, and I found the nearest clean jumper and scarf, without even looking at whether they went together.

  Izzy gave me a hug and handed me my phone and my purse. She had a million questions in her face, mostly about the guy I had never mentioned to her who had just been in my bed and was about to drive me to the hospital, but even she knew it wasn’t the time.

  And I’d barely stepped up to the side of the road to wait, when a car pulled up in front of me. A sleek silver BMW just like the one my dad drove.

  I stooped down to check it was actually Brendan. And when I slid into the passenger seat, I turned my face to him and opened my mouth to ask him about it, but then shut it again, thinking twice.

  It didn’t seem polite to admit to him that I hadn’t expected him to own anything so expensive. His jeans had been in my room for two days — I’d looked at the label. I paid more for dinner most nights than those jeans would have cost.

  And then I felt like a brat for even having those thoughts, especially since he was driving me to the hospital where I feared my mum was dying. Why was I even thinking about money?

  Because I was my parents’ daughter, that’s why. My dad hadn’t even ended his business trip early when I’d called him about the accident. He’d just spoken to the doctors on the phone and, convinced it wasn’t urgent, said he’d be back as scheduled. And asked me if I needed the credit limit on my card increased, like being able to buy new shoes was what I needed right then.

  And then I was crying. Or at least my eyes were leaking. I didn’t make any sound. And I wasn’t sure if it was overflowing fear or anger causing it, because I felt both in equal measure. Before I turned my face to the window, I saw Brendan glance at me. But he said nothing, offered no platitudes, didn’t tell me it was all going to be okay. And I loved him for that.

  He just put his hand on my thigh, squeezed it, and then took it away again. And drove me towards whatever shit was coming.

  three

  “KITTY-KAT,” MY mum cooed. “Did you bring my robe from home yet?” My mouth had dropped open, cartoon-like, as I stood in the doorway. “Katherine,” she said, in a more pointed tone, and tapped on her own chin. I snapped my mouth shut.

  “What happened?”

  “Hmmm?” she had gone back to flipping through a magazine, and barely looked at me. “Come sit down, honey. What’s the matter with you?”

  “The hospital called. It sounded urgent,” I said, taking one uncertain step towards her. Everything seemed strange — but strange because absolutely nothing seemed wrong. I’d been preparing myself for something horrible, but everything was calm. There was golden afternoon light bathing the room through the slatted blinds, hitting the flowers on her bedside table in a way that cast beautiful contrasting shadows over the petals of the rainbow bouquet.

  It was all so serene and lovely, it was surreal. I actually dug my fingers into my leg just to check that I hadn’t fallen asleep on the car ride over.

  But, no, I was awake. Brendan had dropped me off and I had run up three flights of stairs instead of waiting for the elevator. I had started to feel weird from the moment I asked a nurse where my mum was and she had pointed me sedately in the direction of her room. Of which, of course, I already knew the location. I had just been expecting something bigger to be going on.

  Or anything to be going on at all. Instead, my mum was just reposed peacefully in her bed looking better than she had since the accident happened, asking about the silk robe I was meant to bring her from home. Which I had forgotten about.

  “Well, I don’t know what that was about,” my mum was saying. “I’m a model patient, they say. I’ll most likely be going home tomorrow.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I might still hire a nurse for a few weeks, though. Your dad won’t want to be waiting on me hand and foot, and it’s not like I can make my own cups of tea for a while, is it.”

  She was running her good hand gingerly over the cast on her broken arm, managing to sound both pitiful and accusatory at once.

  “Or get groceries. God, could you imagine me going out like this?” And then she actually picked up a little hand mirror off the side table and examined her face in it, pursing her lips and tossing her hair a little. “What a mess.�
��

  I refrained from mentioning that she had not once done the grocery shopping in at least the last five years. Probably longer. That we already had a housekeeper who did it, and made her tea.

  Basically, life would go on as normal for my mum, just without the salon appointments until the bruises on her face healed enough to be covered with makeup.

  “I’m sure Abby would do a house call,” I found myself saying, referring to her hairdresser. And my tone was snarky. But she didn’t seem to notice.

  “What a brilliant idea. I wonder if she’d come to the hospital? My hair is a sight,” Mum said, giving herself a last once over, then replacing the mirror. And then she looked me up and down. “So, no robe?”

  And I saw her look twice at my purple and pink floral scarf where it clashed against the kelly green of my sweater with a moth-hole in one elbow, something I usually only wore at home. Or on late night runs to the takeaway curry place.

  “Sorry, I forgot,” I said. “Like I said, the hospital made it sound important so I just rushed over.”

  “Did they,” she said. Her tone was flat, the disappointment at my forgetfulness plain. “Oh, well. Now that you’re here, could you go down the street and get me a decent latte? The muck they have here is unpalatable.”

  She smiled at me, then went back to reading her magazine. I was dismissed.

  And I walked back downstairs and out into the street in a daze. My mum was fine. I should have been relieved. Yesterday when I had visited, she’d seemed in so much pain, telling me that she might have to have an operation. I hadn’t extracted from her ramblings exactly what sort of operation, but she’d been so overwrought that I hadn’t pressed it. I’d just comforted her and held her hand like she was small child until she’d fallen asleep.

  It was so unlike her. The nurse had told me she was on pain killers and not herself, but still, it had frightened me and I had gone home and cried myself to sleep, thinking that I’d destroyed her.

  And now she was sending me off for coffee like she was at a day spa and I was a waitress.

  So, business as usual. Just another drama to tell her friends over drinks and cards. I didn’t know if I was more annoyed at her or at myself for wasting energy worrying about her.