by Tara Brown
“Griffin, darling, how are you?” Norma, the front desk girl, squealed as she rushed over. She hugged him and gushed, “Do we have you on the books today? How did I miss this?”
I leaned forward slightly to get a better view of their interaction in the mirror.
“No. Just here to see Cherry.” He forced a smile, but his dark eyes darted in my direction as his body straightened, as if the hug she was giving him was completely foreign to him.
“Oh, of course. Silly me. We see you next week, don’t we?” She giggled and sauntered back to the counter. Watching how she fawned all over him made me wonder how much of her he’d already seen. No wonder he was so awkward in front of me. They’d likely been having sex too. Maybe that was why Andy liked this salon so much; it was full service.
“Can we talk?” Griffin asked me as he stepped around the foyer, suddenly becoming a real person instead of a mirror image.
“Not a chance.”
“Is—” His eyes darted around the salon. “Is Andy here?” He sounded nervous, almost. Griffin didn’t do nervous. His voice didn’t tremble, and he didn’t get emotional. But he was close.
“Go away. I said no.” I shook my head.
“Look, Cherry?” he pleaded. “You need to hear me out.”
“I don’t, actually.” I wished I had a magazine or a friend or a task I could pretend to be busy with. All I had was my phone—the very phone I’d been pretending I wasn’t holding all day as he called and texted nonstop.
“Cherry, please.” He lowered his voice, begging. He was close to making a scene, something he wouldn’t care about, but I didn’t want Norma the blonde bumpkin to know any of our business. Salons were gossipy, and this one was the most popular for men traveling in our circle.
“If I give you one minute, will you leave me alone?” I conceded.
“No.” He offered a sad stare. “I need more than that. I need you. I miss you.”
“You now have forty seconds.” My voice cracked. It was going to betray me along with my eyes. I almost never cried when I was sad and almost always cried when I was pissed off.
“Cherry, come on.” He opened the door and held it for me, letting in more of the cold spring air.
“And . . . you’re down to thirty seconds,” I huffed, then got up and stomped past him, barely containing my fury. My fingers dug into my palms, and my jaw trembled with all the things I wanted to say. Things I would likely not say. I usually bit my tongue.
“I’m not going to beg for forgiveness; I know you’re never going to forgive me.” He started smart at least. He was right about that. I was never going to forgive him. Ever. “But if you could just give me a second chance. A fresh start. A new relationship as new people. I would be different. Don’t forgive old me, but give new me a chance. Please.” He stepped close to me, flooding my nose and memories with the scent of him. I loved the smell of him. It was home and soft kisses and—no!
He smelled like Cait now. She’d tainted him.
“No.” I stepped back, but his legs were longer, so he was able to take a second step and press my back into the wall behind me as his torso pushed into my chest.
“Cherry.” He looked down at me, his dark eyes swimming with emotion, something I had a hard time resisting. “I love you. I made a mistake. There are no excuses. I will never be sorrier than I am right now. Please, give me a second chance. Let me be your fling this summer so I can prove to you I’ve changed. This breakup has changed me. I never realized just how much you meant to me until you left.”
“No repeats, Griff. You can’t be my fling.”
“Fuck the rules.”
“You mean fuck the rules so you can fuck other girls?” I mocked him with bitterness dripping from me. I was mentally chanting all the things I needed to remember as he stared down into my eyes.
“Cherry, please don’t do this.” He lowered more, like he might kiss me. I inhaled, catching a strong whiff of him. He was intoxicating and yet disgusting. “I can be different,” he repeated, whispering as he bent to kiss me. “Don’t do this.”
“Do what exactly?” I shoved him back. “Get some self-respect and stop letting you treat me badly?” I stepped to the side, breaking from his attempt to hypnotize me. “Stand up for myself and defend my own honor? Something you should have done instead of betraying me.” It was happening. I was saying all the things I wanted to. It felt foreign, but I kept going. “What else should I do, just roll over? Just let you sleep with other girls? Just look the other way? Is that the girlfriend you want? A doormat who pretends it’s just sex and doesn’t bother about the details? You want to date someone like our moms? You want me to have my own affairs and live with the fact our life is faked for the world and we live as roommates?”
“No! That’s not what I want!”
“Just stop!”
“No, I want you.” He lunged forward as a voice broke our private moment.
“Cherry?”
I glanced past Griffin to where a god stood before me. It was the moment Clark Kent became Superman in those ridiculous movies Andy always made me watch.
I exhaled everything, losing all my fury and rage.
I forgot my name and Griffin’s reason for being near me.
I took a step toward Ashley, letting him suck me in like he was the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Who are you?” Griffin moved in front of me, cutting my fantasy short by knocking the wind from my sails and blocking my view.
“I might ask you the same thing,” Ashley responded, sounding like he was annoyed.
“I’m her boyfriend,” Griff remarked, folding his arms and stepping in front of me even more. “You’re him, aren—”
“Ex. You’re my ex-boyfriend, Griffin,” I managed to say as I pushed past him, choosing the light in front of me.
The light was dressed like a proper boy now. He wore a Tom Ford Japanese felt officer jacket and straight-fit black corduroy jeans, with a tight white T-shirt and Blundstone boots.
But it wasn’t just the clothes; it was the fit body and toned arms and perfect haircut and the separation of his eyebrows.
No more straggly, greasy hair or coffee-stained teeth. No. They were bright white and almost blinding.
His face was clean shaven, so much so that I wanted to rub my hands over his cheeks and smell his aftershave.
Without the glasses, his dark eyes were stormy and menacing. I could almost see the clouds moving in them as he focused on Griffin.
“So, you’re the dipshit?” Ashley chuckled.
“Cherry?” Griffin warned me with his tone.
“This is Ashley,” I offered, almost laughing with nerves.
“And what are you doing with him?” Griffin’s eyes narrowed. “Is this the guy she told me—?”
“I’m not really one to kiss and tell, friend. But I will say I think you should leave the lady alone.” Ashley winked at Griffin but squared his shoulders, looking taller and wider. More like a door Griffin wasn’t getting past.
“This is why you ended it so suddenly? Cait was right. Instead of telling me you were seeing someone else, you made this all my fault.” Griffin’s eyes were on fire, and his words were lava. “You slut! I fucking knew it. I knew there was another reason you broke up with me!”
“Whoa!” Ashley barked, cutting him off and stepping forward.
I pulled him back, shouting my defense. “I didn’t even meet Ashley until after we were through! Unlike you, I like to close one door before I open the other!”
“And that’s that. Door’s closed.” Ashley nodded. “We’re done here. It was not nice meeting you.” He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and spun me, heading to the sidewalk. His accent was fully English now. He was doing his Oxford act perfectly. He never wavered and went back to being an American, not since he arrived at the town house.
“Are you kidding me right now?” Griffin shouted, and grabbed my arm, sending me stumbling to his side. I staggered in my boots and barely caught
myself. He spit his words at me. “I deserve a fucking explanation!”
“Wrong.” Ashley pulled his arm back and swung, connecting with Griffin’s cheek, making a horrid sound. Griffin stumbled back, and part of me wanted to run to him, but I didn’t. I stayed with the light. I let the light wrap an arm around my shoulder again, pulling me into him. “You stay away from her. I won’t tell you again.” He turned us and walked up the sidewalk, squeezing me. “You okay?” he asked softly.
“Yeah.” I wasn’t. I was shaking and confused on a lot of issues. The warm nest Ashley’s arm made was one of the issues. As we rounded a corner, I pulled away, hugging myself. “I can’t believe him.”
“He’s a prat. What did you ever see in him?”
“I don’t know.” That was also a lie, but I didn’t want to say the truth. I didn’t want to say that he checked all the items on my list. It didn’t even sound okay to my own ears anymore.
After what just happened, I was starting to think I needed a new list.
We rounded another corner, and Ashley cringed. “Sorry for that,” he offered, not sounding very sorry at all. “Not very gentlemanly to fight in front of ladies.”
“I’m not sorry,” I muttered, holding myself. I knew I sounded weak. It wasn’t just that; I was also incredibly embarrassed. I wasn’t one to cause public outbursts and men to fight. Guys didn’t grab my arm and drag me around. This was all new and upsetting.
We walked, and my stomach ached with the feelings I had. Seeing Griffin punched didn’t bring me satisfaction; honestly, it was devastating to see someone hurt him. But it was as if Ashley, being a near stranger yet more gentlemanly than Griffin had ever been, shined an obvious glare on Griffin, exposing his flaws.
What had I been thinking dating someone like Griffin?
He was horrid.
My attraction to him had faded along with my resolve to never forgive him. Everything I once felt for him, the good and the bad, waned, getting lost in the dissolving feelings.
With every step I took toward home, I left another piece of my sadness on the street, like a breadcrumb trail that stopped short in the middle of the city because I ran out of sorrow.
By the time we’d arrived home, I’d run out completely.
Chapter Ten
DON CORLE-ELLA
Cherry
“I still can’t believe this is just your city place.” Ashley turned in a circle when we got back to the house. “This is insane. I also can’t believe people live like this,” he joked. At least I assumed he joked. “Do you have more money than the Rockefellers?”
“My parents do well—my father does, at least.” I didn’t want to say old money or blue bloods or anything else. I didn’t want to bring up the country club or the rest of it, but I knew I would have to eventually. At some point in the next couple of days we were going to have to talk about the club and how life among the rich worked. “I want to thank you again, for defending me.”
“The guy’s a wanker.” He said wanker.
“Are you English, by the way? I realize I don’t know much about you when you already know so much about me.”
“No, Scottish. Jesus. Easy on that one. Most Scots don’t take lightly to being mistaken for Brits,” he joked, and his eyes did that dazzling thing again, but now with his eyebrows separated and his teeth glistening white and his glasses gone, the whole expression was different. Where it made my stomach tight before, now it took my breath away. He was beautiful.
“But your accent; it’s English. And before when we met it was American?” I tried to understand.
“It’s a long story, which is why I use the American accent when I meet people. I’m tired of the story.” He sighed, staring at the house.
I stared at him.
He could have been a model.
He was handsome before this moment, but now . . . groan . . . he was perfect. I almost sighed out loud but reminded myself that regardless of his fighting for my honor, he was essentially the same person as Andy. Same breed of nerdy womanizer and haughty asshole. He’d already mocked me with my jerk of a brother, lumping me in with all the other “rich girls.” The problem was that Ashley was a much hotter version of Andy. And not related to me. So being annoyed didn’t change the fact I was slightly smitten with his looks. Slightly more than slightly.
Seeing how attractive he was, I wanted to laugh manically, knowing Cait was going to fall for this one hook, line, and sinker. But I also dreaded him being around her. What if he fell for her too? What if all I accomplished was finding Cait another guy to ruin?
No, I couldn’t think of that now.
“So, we should get to know one another.” I tried to smile, hating the chill in the air. With Andy gone, I wasn’t entirely sure how to steer the conversation.
“Yeah, that sounds like a plan.” He sounded indifferent, not excited about getting to know one another at all.
“What are you studying?” I knew he was an engineering student.
“Robotics.” A one-word answer.
“Cool. Where do you think you’ll work after school?”
“NASA.” And another one-word answer.
“And are your parents in America as well, or the UK?”
“UK.”
He wasn’t going to make this easy.
“Oh, they’re not in the States anymore?” I felt like a reporter.
“My parents moved to America to work at Brown. They’re literature professors.” He spoke like an American again. He wasn’t kidding, he could turn it off and on. “They’re home in England for the summer.”
“But you’re Scottish?” I was lost.
“I am.” He chuckled but didn’t warm up.
“Why don’t you go to Brown? Wouldn’t it have been free for you to go there?” I had a friend who was doing that at Wellesley.
“Why would you assume money’s an issue?”
“You took this job.”
“Right, well, free or not, robotics engineering isn’t exactly their strong suit at Brown.” He nodded. “And I did get a scholarship for a lot of my tuition at MIT. Not all, but most. Next year is my last year, and my parents are feeling the financial strain. Hence this new makeover.” He winked and held his arms out, but there was something in his tone that suggested that was not the whole story. “I feel like one of those movies where the girls are made to be hot to fit in with the popular crowd.”
“Yeah.” I smiled and nodded, grateful he spoke a string of sentences, even if they were somewhat mocking. “Your American accent is almost perfect.”
“I was twelve when we moved here. It’s been over a decade. I’ve had lots of time to work on it.” He sauntered into the dining room, running a long finger up the table. “So, is this going to be like Pretty Woman where you teach me how to eat and act?”
“No.” I laughed nervously at his mocking me. “More like explain who everyone is so you aren’t confused or surprised by anything. You need to be able to infiltrate Fling Club and convince Cait to date you. I think it’s a bit more like Cruel Intentions, and you’re Reese Witherspoon’s character.” I muttered to myself, “I just don’t know if I’m Ryan Phillippe or Sarah Michelle Gellar.”
“What?”
“The movie. Cruel Intentions.”
“Never saw it.” The comparison was clearly lost on him. “So, you have always belonged to this Fling Club?” His eyes narrowed, disappointedly. Like Andy’s.
“I have.” I reminded myself I wasn’t going to let him or Andy make me feel ashamed of it anymore. It was a bit of fun in an otherwise boring summer of the same old, same old. No one got hurt. Physically, at least. No matter how I felt about it this week, I wasn’t going to let them make me out to be less for it.
“Interesting,” he said, like it wasn’t so much interesting, though, as enlightening. Like he suddenly knew everything he needed to know about me.
“You mean offensive, don’t you? Offensive that women would dare play the same game as guys? Or even worse, cont
rol the game?” I couldn’t help myself. I’d been defending Fling Club and my own involvement in it for years. My brother was merciless when it came to tormenting me and the other “it” girls.
“No, more like why does there have to be a game at all?” His eyes sparkled the way my brother’s always did when he was mocking me.
“You know the saying: hate the game, not the players. You guys invented casual and serial dating. We just perfected it,” I mocked back, throwing the words he and Andy had used against me back at him. “Wearing cotillion dresses and all.”
“I didn’t invent anything,” he scoffed.
“Well, guys like you did.” I gave him that, so as not to be too impolite.
“Not guys like me, Cherry.” The glisten in his eyes changed, becoming serious and making me uncomfortable again. “You’ve been dating the wrong kind of guys,” he scoffed, and sauntered past me. “I’m going to go make a call. I’m sure we can take up lessons at dinner.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” He walked up the grand staircase slowly. “Dinner’s at seven?”
“Yes,” I muttered as I watched him walk away.
He was exactly like Andy. Smug. Smart. Quick witted. Judgmental.
This was going to be a brutal summer. Two Andys.
Dialing Ella, I walked in the opposite direction and sat on the sofa in the parlor.
“Has the eagle landed?” She answered with a question.
“Yeah. He’s here.”
“Good.”
“But we’ve already had an issue.”
“Oh, come on, Cherry. It was simple. Get him cleaned up and pretty so that Cait takes the bait. How could you screw this up already?”
“I didn’t!” I snapped, losing my cool quickly. “We ran into Griffin at the salon.”
“Oh, shit! How? He had the nerve to come and find you?”
“Yeah. He tracked me. I forgot I’d shared my location with him, and he decided to treat me like a sitting duck—” I didn’t even really know how to say it. “Ashley took him. Like, ‘took him.’” It sounded as crazy as it was.
