by Jenna Cox
Then he pulled his phone back out of his pocket and hit a few buttons. I felt my purse vibrating against my thigh and glanced down at it. He pressed another button and put his phone away, and the vibrating stopped.
“There. Now you have my number. You’ve got me on your chain. Yank it and I’ll do your bidding.”
I started to protest. “I don’t want you to—”
“I’m kidding,” he said with a grin, learning in closer to me. “Sort of.” His hand was going to my face and he drew himself to me and kissed me. I was still frozen, my head spinning.
“Brendan,” I said against his mouth, and he drew back, waiting for whatever was coming next. But I had so many things swirling in my brain, that I couldn’t pluck out any and actually speak. So instead, I said, “Take me home?”
And he did.
six
I DIDN’T SNEAK out of bed this time. One, because I was trapped on the wall side of my single bed, while Brandon’s body took up most of the space where he lay on his stomach, one arm dangling off the side. But I didn’t begrudge him that, because my second reason for not getting up was the visual appreciation of Brendan’s body in my bed. The night before, I’d got up, showered and put on a T-shirt and pants before going to sleep, but he slept naked.
And I wasn’t complaining.
I leant down and kissed his bare shoulder lightly. And breathed in his scent. He hadn’t been drinking at all the night before, so there was no stale alcohol smell to mask his goodness.
My phone buzzed on my bedside table. Trying not to disturb him, I raised myself on one arm and my knees and tried to balance and lean over to reach it.
But then I saw his eyes pop open just as I was hovering over his face.
“Hey,” he said and grinned.
“Hey.” He flipped over underneath me and pulled me down on top of him.
“I was awake while you were sniffing me,” he said, still grinning.
“I was not sniffing you,” I said, indignantly. I straddled him and grabbed his arms off me, pinning them to the mattress above his head. Then in a quieter voice, I added, “You just smell good.”
“Good enough to eat?” I laughed at the hopefulness in his face, then I looked closer at a mark on his neck, taking one hand off his arm to run a fingertip over it.
“Looks like I already tried,” I said. I dipped my head and kissed the hickey. He tilted his head back, giving me easier access, and I kissed lower, down to his collarbone.
“You won’t hear me complaining.” I could feel his total lack of complaint coming to life underneath me. I was kissing down his chest now and tweaked his nipple between my teeth.
“No?” I said, looking up at him.
“Tit for tat,” he said, and flipped me over. Then he lowered his face to where one of my nipples raised the fabric of my T-shirt. He was just closing his mouth over it when my door burst open and Izzy slipped in, shutting it behind her and leaning against it.
Brendan turned his head to the side to stare at her, and we all froze in a strange tableau.
“Uh, Izzy?” I said eventually. “What the fuck?”
“Sorry, guys, it’s just…ah, Kat…”
“Yes,” I encouraged, nudging Brendan off me, and sitting up to look at her.
She whispered something that I couldn’t hear. I frowned. “What?”
“Your parents are here.” It wasn’t much louder the second time, but I heard her clearly and I think my heart stopped for a second.
“What? Like, in the building?”
“Yeah. Like, in the kitchen.”
“What the hell are they doing here at…eleven o’clock? Shit, how’d it get so late?”
I was scrambling out of bed and hunting my room for something—anything—clean that did not need ironing. “Why didn’t they call first?” I mumbled to myself, then checked my phone and saw that I did actually have three missed calls. “Fuck.”
“You’re okay for a minute; Justin’s entertaining them and he barely looks hungover. And Steph. How cool is she, by the way. So sweet.”
“What are they doing here? After my mum deigned to visit the first time, when I was moving in, and turned up her nose at everything, I thought I was safe from her ever stepping foot in here again.”
I was so flustered that it barely occurred to me that I was getting changed in front of an audience. Not that either of them hadn’t seen it all before.
I pulled on a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt that was hanging in my wardrobe. Hanging, because I never usually wore it. But it was the cleanest, most unwrinkled thing I currently owned. I hadn’t done laundry all week. I was twisting back and forth in front of the mirror, combing my hair with my fingers, when my eyes flickered over to Brendan, and I did a double take. He was still lounging in the bed, looking amused and with a sheet barely covering him.
I noticed Izzy glancing appreciatively.
“Ah, shit.”
“Who, me?” Brendan said with a grin. “Want me to hide here?”
“She’ll probably want to come in here,” I said and then bit my lip. Apart from Brendan’s and my clothes strewn around, it was okay—I’d been trained long-sufferingly into being tidy by habit—but still probably not up to my mother’s standards. When I had first moved in, she had asked if I wanted our housekeeper to come around and clean the place weekly. The whole place, not just my room.
I’d said no, of course. Even though occasionally I regretted that, once I found out how messy Justin and Izzy could be.
“Want me to sneak out, then?” Brendan was saying. I looked at him.
“No, stay.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Sure?”
“If you’re up for it?” A little smile was creeping on to my face, wickedly.
Brendan narrowed his eyes. “Are you using me to make your parents freak out?”
I bit my lip again. “Maybe?”
“I’m cool with that,” he said. “Just need to know how to play it.”
“What, on a scale from choir boy to car thief?” I grinned. “Just be yourself.”
“Okay,” he said. “You asked for it.”
I had a momentary flutter of apprehension, but I ignored it.
Brendan sat up and started getting out of bed. Izzy was staring.
“Thanks, Iz. Tell them I’ll be out in a sec. Iz?”
“Ah, yeah. Okay.” She snapped her eyes to me, gave me an eyebrow raise with a grin, and then departed.
I stood where I was in the middle of the room and watched Brendan myself. My gaze flickered over him, down the lines of his lean back, the way his muscles flexed as he leaned down to pick up his shirt from the ground, and I felt a smile creeping on to my face. Then I spotted the hickey again.
I made a face and Brendan noticed. “What?”
I flickered my fingers on the side of my own neck, grimacing.
“I thought you wanted to freak them out?”
“Yeah, but not make my mum die of a heart attack. My cousin had one, once, and Mum wouldn’t shut up for a week about how obscene it was.”
Brendan just shrugged. “Not much I can do about it.” Then he saw me glance at the make-up on my dressing table. “No fucking way.”
I put my palms up in surrender. “Okay, okay. Forget it. Let’s just get out there. Are you sure you’re up for this?”
“I’m fine. Are you?”
“Nope.”
I led the way to the kitchen feeling slightly sick. It was only once my hand was on the door handle that I suddenly wondered, with a flutter of panic, why they were here. Like, really wondered and had all sorts of drastic scenarios enter my head about why on earth they would come to see me on a Saturday morning. They’d gone bankrupt. Someone had cancer. Someone was dead.
“Kat?” Brendan was whispering in my ear, and I realised I had just been standing there for a long time.
“Yeah,” I breathed, and then I pushed on the door. Just as I started walking through, Brendan linked his fingers with mine. I squeezed tightly, both grate
ful and terrified.
As I suspected would happen, my mum’s appraising eyes honed right in on those linked hands, my hand in Brendan’s, this slightly scruffy boy I’d never mentioned before. Though it didn’t feel like my hand, since I was having an out of body experience, my psyche wanting to distance itself from the crackling tension in the room, mostly centred around my mother. I saw her nostrils flare, the clear signal that she was not well pleased.
I took my hand out of Brendan’s to kiss them both in greeting. They were standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, my mum clutching her handbag to herself like she was afraid it would be infected if she set it down.
“Mum, Dad. This is a surprise. Won’t you sit down? I’ll make some tea.”
“What kind do you have?” my mum asked, as she inspected the bench seat I had gestured them to, before sitting stiffly.
“Ah, tea bags,” I said.
“None for me, thank you.”
“Do you have coffee?” my dad asked.
“Only instant.”
“Ah.” That was a no then. And so there was nothing for it. I just slid onto the bench seat opposite them, and smiled too brightly through my anxiety. Brendan slid in beside me and lay his arm across the back of the seats, around my shoulders. My smile tightened but didn’t falter.
“Mum, Dad, this is Brendan. He’s… he’s, ah, studying, ah, science and maths?” I said, realising I didn’t know exactly what he was studying, and the words were coming out as a question. “Same as Justin. You remember Justin, right?” I said, latching on to a new path, and nodding at him.
“We’ve been having a well nice chat,” Justin said, and my eyes widened at his slight but noticeable Yorkshire accent — an accent he didn’t normally have, being from West London.
“And Steph, Justin’s girlfriend,” I added, with a nod and smile towards the small, dark haired girl entering with a mug in her hand. She beamed at this introduction and I saw Justin pale slightly. Served him right.
“And you know Izzy,” I said. Strangely enough, my parents actually seemed to like Izzy. She’d been home with me several times to have dinner with my parents, and she always charmed the pants off them. Especially my dad.
But they’d obviously already said their hellos, because the attention was squarely back on me again. I was still smiling like a loon.
“So, ah, what are you doing here, guys?” Guys? Since when did I call my parents ‘guys’?
“Just visiting our one and only daughter,” my mother said, trying to smile. Which made me worried. ‘Just because’ was never a reason for anything in my parents world. “Well, we wanted you to come to lunch today, also.”
My mouth was opening and closing like a fish, as I processed this. Then I nearly died when Brendan replied.
“We’d love to.”
It was my parents’ turn to gape like mullets. But they didn’t say anything. My dad just looked kind of red in the face and nodded tersely. I could see the inner conflict between his deeply ingrained politeness in public and his shock at someone else’s lack of decorum. Especially when that someone was a strange boy with an arm around his one and only daughter.
I looked at Brendan sharply myself, but I couldn’t blame him. He was just doing what I’d asked him to. And I needed to say something, before the lawyer in my dad woke up and overtook his manners. “Sure, okay,” I said briskly. “Should we go now? Let’s go.”
“Are you going to get changed first?” my mum asked, looking me over.
“Uh, yeah. I’ll just be a minute.” I pushed Brendan along so I could scoot off the bench, too, and headed to my room, ignoring the faintly alarmed looks on my parents’ faces at being left alone again. I’d taken Brendan’s hand and pulled him along with me, which didn’t help put them at ease. But at least it meant my mum wouldn’t dare follow me and try to help pick out clothing.
I didn’t know if they’d seen the hickey or not, but there could hardly be any doubt in their minds that he’d been in my bed, even if they were experiencing severe cognitive dissonance trying to remain in denial about it.
In the safety of my room, I flopped down on said bed and sighed. Brendan leant against my desk, opposite.
“How’d I do? Want me to dial it up at lunch?”
I laughed. “Nice work on that, by the way. Inviting yourself.”
“Thanks,” he said and beamed ridiculously. “I don’t actually have to come, though,” he added more seriously.
“Do you want to come? I’m happy for you to be there—you’re kind of a nice buffer—but I wouldn’t want to be there, if I was you.”
Brendan shrugged. “It’s kind of fun to watch them squirm. And besides, free lunch.”
“True. And a nice one. Make sure you order something expensive. And some booze, too, something fancy.”
I stood up and moved closer to him, and he brought his arms around me and pulled me in.
“You got it,” he said, and grinned. Then he stood up straighter, tightening his arms, and he bent his head to kiss me. I cursed my parents even more then, wishing I could just strip off my clothes and crawl back into bed with Brendan. But instead I had to strip off just to put on something stuffy and straight-laced.
I moaned a little, and Brendan deepened the kiss, his hands roving suggestively. He flicked open two buttons on my plaid shirt before I’d even realised. I grabbed his hand in mine to stop him as he tried for the third.
“I’m just helping you get changed,” he said.
“Sure you are,” I said, but when he tugged his hand out of mine, I didn’t try too hard to stop him. And he undid the rest of my buttons, slowly, his amber eyes never leaving my face. And with every one, the heat in my body intensified until I was surprised I wasn’t a puddle on the floor.
“God fucking damn, I want to take you back to bed right now,” he murmured, dipping his head to kiss my neck and run his tongue along my collar bone. I wasn’t wearing a bra, and he pulled back my undone shirt, one half at a time, kissing each breast as it was revealed.
I swallowed thickly. I was literally weak at the knees and had to grip his shoulders to stay standing. “I don’t think I could stop you,” I murmured, smiling down at him when he looked up from kissing my skin. His eyes were dark. And then he stood up and kissed me, pressing my lips open with his, pushing me back to the bed. Flicking my jeans open. Tugging at them, and then his own as I shimmied mine the rest of the way off, along with my underwear.
He lowered back down to me, already hard and pulsing, and pushed into me suddenly. I stifled my gasp against his shoulder, but I was already rocking with his thrusts. We moved together in tightly entwined rhythm. I bit down harder to stop myself from crying out, as I reached the peak rapidly, forcefully, and Brendan met me there with shuddering exhales. We collapsed onto the bed, panting. And I was laughing.
Brendan leaned over me, eyebrows raised. “I’m glad I amuse you.”
Still laughing, I shook my head, but I was too breathless to speak. Brendan was grinning. I lifted up and kissed him, then dropped my head back down with a sigh. And then I opened my mouth to say something, not entirely sure what, but I could feel some rush of emotion coming on. And I didn’t like it. It made my heart thud even harder in my chest than it already was.
So instead of saying anything, I shoved him out the way and jumped up, ducking into the bathroom, snatching up my underwear on the way.
And when I reemerged, I avoided looking directly at him as I searched through the dresses hanging in my closet for something suitable. Brendan was already dressed again, since he only really had to button his jeans and he was done. I stifled the urge to mention the wrinkles in said jeans, and his T-shirt, from lying crumpled on the floor overnight. It would drive my mother even crazier than me, and wasn’t that what I wanted?
And when I felt the urge to put on a purple, bohemian maxi skirt, I sighed and leaned my head against the edge of the closet.
“What’s up?” Brendan asked, watching me.
I rolled my head to the side to look at him. “Why do I have this urge to totally fuck with my parents? I mean, a week ago I was crying myself to sleep because I thought I’d killed my mum. Now I want nothing more than to totally piss them off.” I chewed on my lip. “Do you feel that? With your parents?”
“My dad, yeah. But he’s an arsehole.”
“Well, if I can ever return the parental-pissing-off favour on your end,” I said, “I’ll do my best.” I grinned at him, and he half smiled back, but there was something in his expression that was dark, like a cloud passing in front of the sun.
“That would require my dad giving a fuck about what I do with my life,” he said. My smile faded completely then.
But a knock at the door distracted me from probing further.
“Kat?” It was Izzy, through the closed door this time. “Your mum was going to come looking for you, but I said I would. Probably can’t hold her off much longer, though. Even Justin is running out of steam.”
“Okay, thanks, Iz. Sorry. I’ll be right there.”
Purple, bohemian skirt it was.
*-*-*
The silence was so awkward that I think even Brendan had started feeling nervous.
Once we had ordered our food and the drinks had been poured—Dad ordered wine for us all—the silence had descended like an impermeable haze. I literally could not think of a single word to say, even something inane, or trite, which I normally did whenever I wanted to ruffle my mum’s feathers.
Eventually Brendan started talking, expounding on some mathematical concept he had been learning in one of his classes. None of us understood, though we all nodded and mm-hmmed at appropriate moments, just to avoid a lapse back into nothingness.
Brendan was finally exhausted, and we picked up our glasses and took gulps of wine. Brendan stared at me over his wine glass. I put my hand out and squeezed his knee under the table. I could feel his nervous tension, and wondered if perhaps he was rethinking how much he was willing to pay for a free meal, after all.
“How’s school going, Katherine?” my mum finally asked, almost sighing as she said it.
