Some Boy (What's Love? #1)

by Jenna Cox

  I loved snow. I enjoyed the benefits of living in a place where it rarely snowed hard, so it was still fun and mostly not a pain in the arse.

  But Brendan looked unimpressed. More than that, really, but I couldn’t read his reaction. Then he seemed to rouse himself. He looked at me and smiled, but a flatness stayed in his eyes.

  “Catch you later, then,” he said. He leant in and kissed me lightly, then left my room. I stood where I was watching the back of his head until it disappeared through the door. And it was only when I heard the front door click shut down the hallway, too, that I realised I still didn’t have his number.

  It occurred to me that Justin probably did, but it seemed strange to have to ask someone else for it, instead of Brendan just giving it to me himself. Or asking me for mine. I looked at my laptop on the desk and considered, for about a split second, searching for him on Facebook, but that would have been even more stalkerish. And what did I want to do? Update my relationship status to Fuck Buddies with Brendan Holt?

  I sighed and turned back to the window, leaning into the window sill to watch the snow. The glass fogged up in front of my face, and I wiped it away.

  Several stories down, Brendan was crossing the lawned area that stretched in front of my housing building, leaving green foot prints in the whiteness that dusted the ground like icing sugar. And as I watched him push his unruly hair to one side, I realised that the movement felt familiar to me. He must have done it often. And yet, even after asking him questions, I knew almost nothing about him. He’d neatly dodged them, giving just enough to distract me, but never any real answers.

  He disappeared behind another building and I frowned. I didn’t know him at all, and yet I’d fallen into bed with him three and a half times, now. I didn’t even know when or if I’d see him again. I could still feel the contours of his muscles under my hands, I could probably draw his face, his eyes, from memory, but I didn’t even have his phone number. To contact him I’d have to do my best stalker impression and either get his number from Jason, track him down online, or show up at the student union on the chance that it was the job he was working that day.

  Or just wait around for him to pull some stunt and show up in my life again.

  I turned away from the window just as Izzy poked her top-knotted blonde head in.

  “Hey, chickadee,” she said.

  “Hey. How long have you been home?”

  “Long enough,” she said, waggling her eyebrows at me.

  “Ah.”

  “You okay?” She brought the rest of her body into the room and let the door shut.

  I was going to brush her off, but then I just shrugged. “I like him too much,” I said.

  “Is there any such thing?” Izzy grinned, but it wavered.

  “There is when you know nothing about him. Not where he lives. Not even his phone number.”

  “Oh.” Izzy sat down on my bed and drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. “Do you know his last name? I still don’t know Tom’s.”

  “Salsa guy?”

  She nodded and flushed as she smiled. I laughed.

  “He does have my phone number, though. Said he’d call me, but we’ll see about that.” Izzy looked me up and down. “Are you starkers under there?”

  “Uh, yeah. Kinda.” I tightened my grip on the duvet and came to sit next to her on the bed. “Want to do something?”

  “I’ve got an exam I’m meant to be studying for, so, yeah. For sure. What?”

  “Snow angels?”

  Izzy grinned. “I’ll go put my boots on,” she said and jumped up. But she paused at the door. “Don’t stress, okay. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. And for what it’s worth, I saw him with you last night, and there is no way he is not into you.”

  “How do you remember last night and I don’t?”

  “You haven’t had as much practice as me,” she said.

  And for a while, as we channeled our inner children and made pitiful excuses for snow angels in the thin snow, laughing like loons, everything was okay.

  And I didn’t even think about Brendan Holt for like, a whole five minutes.

  five

  I WAS LOOKING through Justin’s contacts. He’d left his phone on the table next to my purse while he went to the bathroom. And the thumping music from the speakers behind me hid any sound of his return.

  Suddenly his face was right beside me as he leant down to peer over my shoulder.

  “What are you doing?”

  I had frozen and tried to think of some plausible reason I would be snooping, but my tipsy brain wasn’t up to it.

  “Uh…looking for Brendan’s number,” I said and hung my head in shame. He plucked the phone from my fingers.

  “I don’t have it anyway,” he said, sliding onto a stool beside me. “I don’t think he has a phone.”

  I screwed up my face. “Who doesn’t have a phone these days?”

  “Huh?” Justin leaned closer to hear me over the music, which had just escalated raucously.

  I flapped my hand, telling him to forget it. Then stared morosely into my drink.

  “He hasn’t been at lectures, either,” Justin said close to my ear. I looked at him and he leaned back again, shrugging.

  “Is he okay?”

  “Huh?”

  I leaned in closer. “I said, is he okay?”

  “Probably just busy. Or in jail,” Justin shouted back to me. Then he laughed at my wide eyes. “Kidding. Henry got it all sorted. He’s fine.”

  I rolled my eyes at him, then drained the last of my drink. If everything was fine, then why hadn’t I seen or heard a thing from him in five days? That’s what I thought, but I didn’t say it. Because even as I was thinking it, I was berating myself for being ridiculous — we’d been to bed, we weren’t in a relationship. Five days was nothing, considering he had no obligation to ever see me again.

  Except I’d told him I liked him. That little fact was wound up tightly in my chest. Maybe that small confession shouldn’t have come weighted with any expectation in my mind, but it had. It did. I expected something more.

  Maybe that was the very thing keeping him away. All he’d said was that he liked it when I said his name — in comparison, I must have sounded like I was declaring my undying love. No wonder he had split.

  I shook myself and stuck out my tongue, like I’d just tasted something bad. My own ridiculous emotions, perhaps.

  I scanned the room for Izzy and Steph, dancing in the crush, then I turned my face to Justin and smiled widely.

  He frowned, suspicious, and I flicked my eyebrows in the direction of the object of his affection, then waggled them. I was truly happy for him, and I pushed away my own melodramatic misery. I saw his mouth twitch, even though he tried to keep a straight face, and I jumped to my feet, punching him in the shoulder.

  “Come on. Dancing time,” I said. I grabbed his hand and pulled him off his stool too, leading him to the dance floor where I handed him over to Steph. Who was at the floppy drunk stage already. She threw her arms around Justin’s neck, hanging off him while she made an attempt at sexy dancing. Attempt being the operative word. But I had never seen Justin happier. The look in his eyes, when she had arrived at our place earlier in the night, had shocked me, but also given me warm fuzzy feelings. Justin had never looked at anyone like that before, that I had ever seen, or ever expected to see.

  That she wasn’t a stripper and wasn’t even wearing a low cut mini dress and fake eyelashes would have been enough to tell me something was different about this girl. And that she was a lightweight, giggling, flushed and drunk before the rest of us had barely arrived at tipsy, was just another point in her favour. She’d admitted that she rarely drank, and that Justin was a bad influence on her, but she said it with so much adoration in her eyes that Izzy and I had made gagging faces behind her back.

  I turned my back on them now, turning to dance with Izzy who was whipping her undone hair around dangerously. She was drunker than
I thought — once we’d ventured into the hair whipping stage, the crying in the bathroom stage was never far behind. I could see the frowns of nearby dancers as she flung herself around with abandon, but I knew better than to get in her way. I just laughed, and shrugged apologetically at a few people. Then joined her, getting lost in the music and the strobing lights.

  Izzy disappeared and came back with shots for each of us, but while she was distracted by the song that came on — “This is my favourite song, ever!” — I took hers off her, and downed the rest of what she hadn’t already spilled. She didn’t even notice, confirming my thought that she really didn’t need it.

  Not like I did, either. I was definitely moving beyond tipsy now.

  I caught sight of Justin and Steph being lovey in the corner, and I thought of Brendan, and Justin’s comment to me in the kitchen the morning after about dirty dancing in the corner.

  I missed him.

  It came over me with a pang of longing in my chest that took my breath away. I missed him. I wanted to be dancing with him now. Or falling into bed with him, stripping off his clothes and feeling his skin against mine.

  I wanted to be mad at him. Blame him for making me feel like this and then disappearing. But it wasn’t his fault. I was the one who had invited him in. And kept inviting him in. I’d never asked him for anything more, he’d never offered it.

  And if it was just a hot guy’s body I wanted against mine, then I had plenty to choose from here. As if proving something to myself, I turned to the nearest one and gave my best come-hither-stare. I probably failed miserably, but he was drunk enough not to notice. It gave him the message, at least, because he was beside me immediately, his hands on my hips as I writhed and twisted them against him.

  I even let him kiss me. I responded at first. But then suddenly his tongue in my mouth felt horribly slug-like; I pulled away abruptly. I mumbled something about the bathroom and escaped, and when I glanced back, pausing at the bathroom door, I could see tongue-guy already grinding with someone else.

  I was both disgusted and relieved.

  I locked myself in a a cubicle and sat on the closed lid of the toilet with my head slumped down to my knees. But that made me feel dizzy and sick, so I sat up again.

  It wasn’t just anybody that I wanted. It was one specific body. And the way I saw it, I had two options — go home now, and go to sleep, hope that he showed up sometime. Or get so drunk right now that I’d just take someone home, anyway, even if I didn’t want to. And then I’d still hope that Brendan showed up someday, just with a lot more shame than the first option, but also more sex.

  I blew air out of puffed cheeks. Neither option felt that appealing. Both came with a creeping loneliness, but one also came with an extra-helping of self-loathing. Why did I always lean towards the choice that came with self-loathing?

  “Time to go home,” I heard someone say outside the cubicle. For a moment I stared at the closed door, disoriented, like the person had read my thoughts. But then I could hear someone else, crying and jabbering drunken nonsense. “Come on, Livvi,” the first voice said again, in the patient, slightly bored tones of the least drunk friend, her default reward for moderation being the charge of her legless companions.

  It made me think of Izzy, and I thought I’d better at least check on her. And then leave. It was like a sign, and I was surprised to find myself not needing much encouragement to actually just go home. Alone. I emerged from my cubicle, gave an empathetic smile to the girl picking Livvi up off the floor, and went out.

  Izzy was fine, of course, and when I tried to ask her if she wanted to come home with me she just laughed me off and kept dancing with a guy who was trying to make his move, but being thwarted by her oblivious and enthusiastic movements. Justin was also occupied, so I just made for the door.

  It was when I was waiting for the girl in coat-check to find my jacket that I saw him. Just out of the corner of my eye, and then I stayed staring straight ahead in panic. I didn’t know whether to acknowledge him or not; if he just happened to be there, and didn’t want to run into me, I didn’t want to make it anymore painful than it needed to be. If I pretended I hadn’t seen him, then he could sneak past and go on with his life.

  And though I was stoically staring at the coat-check window, I could feel his presence getting closer. In my peripheral vision, I could see him staring down at a phone in his hands as he walked. So much for not having one.

  He passed behind me, not looking up. It was possible that he actually hadn’t seen me, he seemed so engrossed. A few more steps and he’d be at the door into Mine, the club I’d just exited.

  “Brendan,” I said at the last minute, mentally rolling my eyes at myself. But the sight of him with a phone had snapped something in me, and instead of avoiding any awkwardness, I was ready to create it.

  His head whipped around, and then he grinned, turning to face me. “Kat. You are here.” Then he glanced at the coat-check window and the girl there shaking my jacket at me impatiently. “Are you leaving?”

  “Yeah,” I said tersely. I grabbed my jacket and started wrestling with it, clumsy in my drunken annoyance.

  “Glad I caught you then. Though to be honest, if I hadn’t been able to find you here, I was going to just go sit on your doorstep till you got home.” He’d come up close to me, and he reached around to grab the shoulder of my jacket so I could slip my arm in. His hand lingered, straightening my collar, and he was still smiling at me.

  “Maybe if you had my phone number, you wouldn’t have to be waiting on doorsteps,” I said. Now he was there in front of me, I was experiencing a strange mix of lust and anger. It was the anger I was acting on.

  “Uh. True,” he said. “I was trying to call Justin, but he hasn’t been answering all night.”

  I was just frowning at him, and then I turned to walk away. Brendan jogged a little, turning backwards for a few steps to get in front of me. He put his hand on my shoulder to stop me, and as I stared at it, I remembered the first day I had met him, when he had done the same thing.

  “Have I done something wrong?”

  “I don’t want to be a booty call anymore. And it’s not even a call, since you never asked for my number. You just think you can show up at my door and get laid.” And then I sighed, heavily. “Which you’re perfectly entitled to think, because that’s exactly what has happened. Forget it. I just want to go home.”

  But I didn’t move. I stayed watching him, wondering if I was so drunk that I wasn’t actually articulating the words I thought I was saying, because Brendan was just staring at me bewildered. I was starting to feel dizzy.

  “That’s not how I thought of it,” he said.

  “Not how you thought of what?” I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to sit down, but there were no chairs in the hallway.

  “Do you want to come outside?”

  I nodded. When he tried to put his arm around my back to lead me out, I shrugged him off and stalked on, leaving him to trail behind. And once I was outside, I sank down onto the low concrete wall around a garden bed. Brendan sat, too, but at a safe distance.

  Somewhere in my sozzled brain I was aware my behaviour was sliding towards crazy, but not in control enough to stop it. The fact that I still just wanted to crawl into his arms and kiss him was making me mad, too. I wrapped my arms around myself and pouted a little.

  “Why did you never ask for my number?” I said, drawing my knees up to my chest to get into a tighter self-protective ball. I was stuck on that. I couldn’t work out if it was actually a big deal or not, and I couldn’t let it go.

  “Fine, what’s your number, Kat? I’ll put it into my phone now.”

  “It’s too late now,” I was saying, but Brendan was still talking.

  “Into my new phone, which I only got today. After not having a phone for years and doing just fine. What is it, Kat? I’ll put it in right now, to this phone I bought specifically so I could get your number. Look, there’s Justin. The only other pers
on in there, just so I could call him to find you. And, look, now I’m putting in your name, see.. K…A…T. Or should I just put you under Booty Call One?”

  I was staring at him open mouthed. Then I uncurled, grabbed his phone out of his hand, where he’d been shoving it in my face, and I jabbed at it for a minute. He frowned a little, but just watched me with a stony expression.

  I handed it back.

  On the screen, in the new contact form he had opened up I had typed my number. And in the space where my name should have been, I’d typed The Crazy Drunk Girl. And as the surname, Who Is Really Sorry.

  His mouth twitched into a half smile.

  “I’m leaving it like that, you know,” he said, locking the phone and sticking it in his pocket. Then he looked at me.

  “Good. You’ll probably need to refer to it again. Many times.”

  “Will I?” he said, and grinned. “And by that, I assume you mean you want me around to berate more often?”

  I considered him for a moment and his face sobered. “Did you really only just buy that phone today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And just for my number?”

  He didn’t say anything. I don’t think he’d planned to tell me that, but I could read the truth of it in his face as he looked at me.

  “I’ve never made any promises to be good at this, but I though you knew how I felt,” he said, shifting closer to me.

  “How the fuck would I know that?” I said, then I looked down as his hand found mine on the concrete below us, his fingers covering mine.

  “You think I show up in my underwear for just any girl?”

  “I don’t know what you’d do. I barely know you,” I said, glancing at his face and then back down at our fingers. I felt the flaming heat in the pit of my stomach, but I felt afraid too.

  “Well, get to know me, then.”

  I looked up at his face to tell him that I’d tried, that he wouldn’t answer my questions, but I was distracted by his amber eyes so close to mine.