Fling Club (Serendipity Book 1)

by Tara Brown

  She was so smart. “Do you think I could just go pay the tuition and not tell him and just leave it at that, or do you think he needs the money? Andy’s giving him, like, twenty grand.”

  “Wow. To tolerate us all summer, that’s not enough. That doesn’t even cover tuition.” She grabbed my arms and turned me as I was midbite, staring me down with her bright-blue eyes. “Honest to God, I thought you were a goner for a long time. You got together with that shithead last winter, and I thought, okay, she’s going full Stepford. We’ve lost her. Andy and I had a funeral.”

  “Dicks.”

  “Right. But the point is that you’re back. You’re lost, confused, crazy, and unsure about your future, and yet this is the brightest I’ve ever seen you. Your eyes are clear. So maybe it’s Ashley. Maybe it’s just seeing how much of the Kool-Aid you’ve been drinking over the years. Maybe it’s getting some distance from Cait and all her poison.” She stepped closer, hugging me, something she rarely did. We were a nontouching family. “Whatever it is, don’t let it get away. If you have to pay Ashley to be with you, whatever. It’ll make a fun story for when you’re old.”

  I sighed into her embrace, hugging back. I loved how she smelled, like rose oil and self-assurance.

  “I’ll let you get back to staring like a pervert. Try not to touch yourself while you’re doing it. Mom could walk in, and it would end her. On second thought . . .” She patted me on the arm and stalked off after taking her ice cream back.

  “You could have left the ice cream,” I said.

  “Not a chance. I’m not wasting it on you. You’re not even tasting it, just eating your feelings.” She lifted a middle finger and rounded the corner, leaving me with her wisdom. It was a half solution, but she was right. What did I care about the money? Or the revenge?

  I was over it.

  I’d found something better. Something that had the chance at being real. He didn’t check a single item on my list.

  He was a new list.

  Honest, check.

  Funny, check.

  Outgoing, check.

  Self-confident, check.

  Gentlemanly, check.

  Smart, check.

  Self-sufficient, check.

  Amazing in bed, check.

  I wasn’t done with the list, though.

  There were things I still had to learn about Ashley. Things like loyalty, respect for his parents, and plans for the future.

  But for the first time in my life, I wasn’t worried about those things. I wasn’t trying to get too far ahead.

  I wanted the journey to last a little longer. I wanted to be sure before I was anything else.

  But Ella was right about another thing: I needed to say goodbye to the old me, the one who was part of the Fling Club.

  Did I walk away and forget my revenge, or did I finish what I started?

  Maybe taking down Fling Club once and for all would be the final nail in the coffin that held the old me, now buried six feet underground.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  STRIP CRIB

  Cherry

  Getting ready for bed the next day, I was startled by a knock at my bedroom door.

  No one in my family knocked. My brother knock-opened. Ella opened. My father didn’t come in here. And my mother sent word that she wished to speak to me.

  So the knock was foreign.

  When I opened it, I was surprised by the coy smile of a cute guy waiting outside my door.

  “Hi.” His eyes said far more than his words.

  “Hi.” I pressed my lips together. It was weird seeing him here. I wanted to grill him about his dates with Cait and see if he’d fallen for her, but I needed to trust that he was what he said he was. It was hard.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Yeah.” I opened the door wide and stepped back, letting him in.

  “I spent the entire day having drinks on a yacht with the worst people I’ve ever met. It was awful. They passive-aggressively mock everyone. They’re rude in ways I haven’t ever seen before. I need a shower.” He had on pajama pants and a shirt with some nerd symbol front and center.

  “Did you change into jammies and then come here?”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t wear my boating clothes. They smelled like sunscreen and sleaze.”

  “So, you spent the entire day with Cait in a bathing suit?” My heart cracked a little.

  “Yeah. Which is a bit of a sin. ’Cause I got a good look at her, and I will say, for being the worst human on earth, she has that extra five pounds I was talking about before.” He winked.

  “Dick!” I shoved him, but he caught me and pulled me in, kissing my smile.

  “I’m kidding. You’re perfect. And she’s evil,” he muttered against my mouth. “Never change from being the girl I know you are.” He kissed me again, sealing all the sweet things he said into me.

  His hands ventured, cupping my ass and lifting me, but I wiggled free.

  “There’s something we need to discuss.” I pulled from his octopus arms.

  “You wanna play hard to get?”

  “No.” I tilted my head, contemplating that. “Maybe. But not right now. First we need to talk about the finances part.”

  “No one wants to talk about finances. Especially in your bedroom.”

  “Right, but we need to consider the fact that as of now, it looks like my family is paying you for sex, and that’s—”

  “Creepy.” He took the word from my mouth.

  “Precisely.” I folded my arms, trying not to notice the way the groin area of his pajamas was bulging.

  “What are we going to do?” He cocked an eyebrow, cooling off.

  “Be friends and coconspirators for the summer until the transaction is completed. Take it slow and see if this is genuinely what either of us wants. I could use the time to get to know myself, the real me, and break free from the conformity of my family’s expectations.” I’d practiced this part a lot.

  “You want me to hang with you, date your awful friend, watch you date some male model, and not touch you all summer long?” He sounded dubious of the whole thing and completely ignored most of the points. “After I’ve already had you?”

  “Yeah.” I gulped.

  “No.” He said it without even thinking. “Not a chance. I want to be here for your spiritual and emotional growth, like a shaman. So maybe I’ll quit. It’s that simple. It’ll be volunteer work.” He stepped close again, pulling me into his arms and kissing my neck. “I’m putting this on my resume, though. So I expect you to answer questions about the level of effort I put into my volunteer work.”

  I giggled as he kissed my neck and then lifted me into his arms, carrying me to my bed. “Seriously, stop!” I laughed and squirmed.

  “Are you playing hard to get now?” He tossed me on the bed.

  “No.” I waved my hands. “I was thinking maybe we should get to know each other better before we—I mean, maybe we could go on a date or play another board game. The slow-it-down part of the story.”

  “Another board game.” He nodded. “I like it. Not chess this time, though. You cheated.”

  “I did not!”

  “Let’s play cribbage. You have a crib board?”

  “No.” I folded my arms.

  “No, you do. Every family has one. You’re just the wrong person to ask.” He held a finger out. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” He turned and left the room, leaving me smiling and yet worried. It was a natural state for me.

  How was he going to pay his tuition if he didn’t have a summer job?

  Likely he would have to get two summer jobs to even come close to helping his parents with tuition and bills. Instead he was having fun here on the shore, just to be near me.

  He was dedicated, I had to give him that.

  He returned five minutes later with a weird-looking piece of wood that had pegs sticking out of it and a deck of cards. “What a score. Your dad has this old vintage one.” He showed me the wood carving, displa
ying the funny-looking shape. It took me a second to recognize it was New York State.

  “You seriously have never played this before?”

  “No.” I didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “Well, we’re playing strip crib. I don’t know that it’s been done before—might be a bit of a sacrilege—but I don’t care. I’m throwing caution into the wind.”

  “Strip crib?”

  “Do you wanna put on some layers? ’Cause this is going to be a serious ass whooping. And once you’re naked, the game’s over, and I win. And I get to pick my prize.” He winked.

  “Beginner’s luck is kind of a thing of mine,” I lied.

  “We’ll see.” He sat and explained the game to me. I liked listening to his half-American, half-English accent with weird Scottish inflections every now and then. He was such a mix of everything. Worldly. The opposite of me. I traveled the world, but I never took any of it with me, not the way he did.

  Half an hour later we were playing our first real hand after several practice rounds.

  He won, gloating with a grin. I stripped my pants off first, sitting in my boy shorts underwear. I decided to try to play to my advantage and rolled over onto my stomach, displaying my ass. The way his eyes darted there, watching less of the game and more of me, was amusing.

  I won the second hand, and he pulled off his shirt, displaying his freshly tanned skin.

  I took a deep breath, trying not to let him distract me.

  He won the third hand, and I pulled my underwear off, flinging it at him. He caught them and took a deep inhale of them.

  “You’re weird.”

  “And you smell like honey.” He tucked them in his pocket. “For now. In half an hour you’re going to smell like me.”

  “You’re being too cocky. That’s bad luck.” We played the fourth hand, and I won. He removed his pants, sitting in his underwear.

  I sat back on my butt, spreading my legs just slightly.

  He cleared his throat, his gaze stuck between my legs and his cock getting hard in his underwear. “Looks like we both have a single article of clothing.”

  “Nope.” I lifted my shirt, revealing a bra. “I have two.” I spread my legs a little more.

  He whooshed the air from his lips, pursing them and trying to focus on his cards.

  We played the fifth hand, and he won. I slipped my bra off from beneath my shirt and tossed it to the side of the room. He was rocking a slight erection in his gray underwear until I slid my free hand down between my legs. I started swirling my fingertip, rubbing and making myself breathe faster.

  “Come on, Cherry.” He inhaled sharply. “That’s cheating.”

  “Is it?” I slid a finger inside of myself, closing my eyes and moaning into it.

  “Fuck this.” He threw the cards to the side, grabbed me, and lifted me into his arms. He carried me to the bed again before laying me down savagely and jumping on top of me. He kissed my neck, lifting my shirt up and burying himself in my perky breasts, inhaling them one at a time.

  He didn’t waste time. He dragged his underwear down as he crawled between my legs, shoving himself into me, desperate. Never before had anyone been this anxious to get inside of me. No one had ever wanted me more.

  We both cried out with the first thrust, carrying on through the next and the next until we were moaning into each other.

  His mouth found its way to my face again, sucking my lip and biting gently as he rocked us both.

  “Cherry,” he whispered into our kiss. “I’ll never get enough of you.” He fucked me this time. Not like in the shower where we’d made something resembling love, without the love.

  This was savage and desperate, answering an animalistic call in us both.

  When we finished I didn’t know my name or the date. Just that the guy clinging to me was mine.

  He lifted me, carrying me with him to the bathroom before starting the shower yet again. I didn’t know when I’d ever been this clean. He carried me inside before the water was completely warm, but I didn’t mind.

  I clung to him the way he did me.

  We held each other, kissing and caressing as the water washed over us.

  He grabbed a washcloth and lathered it with soap, then paid attention to every inch of me, massaging as he went.

  When he got between my legs, he cleaned gently and rinsed before bending a knee and placing a kiss on my inner thigh.

  “I never knew redheads were red everywhere.” He lightly grazed my landing strip. “I mean I heard the drapes matched the carpet, but I wasn’t sure it was true.”

  “All my body hair is reddish.”

  “Is your family Scottish too?”

  “No.” I took a knee with him, sitting down and letting the water pour all over us. “My dad’s family is Irish, obviously: Kennedy. My mom’s family is Romanian.”

  “Your mom’s Romanian?”

  “Yeah. My great-grandma came to America before the Second World War, fleeing the Nazis. My grandma was a little girl. She didn’t know what was happening. Just that they were leaving before things got bad. My great-grandma worked three jobs to put my grandma through Wellesley to make certain she was spending her time with the right sort of people. When she finished school, my grandma married into a wealthy East Coast family and lied about her heritage. Being Romanian wasn’t good enough for my grandfather’s family, I guess. So, my mom isn’t from some rich, old-money family. Her dad was, but the rest of her family were normal people. Poor, actually. Had my grandma not been friends with my great-aunt Karen, my grandpa and grandma wouldn’t have ever met.”

  “And yet your mother shuns the normal people the most?”

  “Trying to cover up the fact she has old-fashioned red blood like the rest of the population. But my dad—the true blue blood, the true old-money family—is the cool one. He lives in the city most of the time, away from her. He and his brother are super casual. He volunteers and does tons of pro bono work.”

  “But they want you to be a snob like them?”

  “My mother does. She’s got expectations about me marrying well. You heard her speech about the leaders and wives. She actually believes that shit. We’ve had to give her multiple lessons on humanity as far as the staff are concerned. She still considers them the help.”

  “Jesus.”

  “You have no idea. If she knew we were in here and you were a regular guy with scholars for parents, she’d lose her mind. We would have to medicate her,” I joked, kinda. “Meanwhile she coasted through college, taking only easy courses, and can’t even tell you where Romania is on the map.”

  “What is she going to say when she finds out you’re dating a mere mortal? Like at the end of the summer?”

  “Is that what I’m doing?” I teased, still scared of the revenge plot we’d already put in motion.

  “Yeah. It’s what you’re doing, Cheryl Kennedy. We’re dating. You’re my lady.” He flashed me that grin, the one I liked. “And you’re going to have to slum it and come meet my parents.”

  It was just like Ella said it would be. “It’s not slumming. I’d be happy to meet your family. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “’Cause I’m not Griffin what’s-his-nuts.”

  “No, you are not.” I’d never laid a better compliment on him. I leaned into him, taking a deep inhale as the rain showerhead poured down on us.

  “And I acted terribly toward you. The other night. I was upset, and I shouldn’t have said any of that.”

  “You were right.” I pulled back and stared him in the face. “You called me out on my shit and demanded more from me, for myself. You were right.”

  “No, I don’t know what it’s like being out here, being one of these people and having those intense expectations placed upon you. I have no idea how hard it is.” He was giving me too much leeway, and for once, I didn’t allow myself the extra rope.

  “I had choices.” A slow, humble smile slipped across my soaking-wet face. “I didn’t have to be this gi
rl or stay here. You know, when my sister had to start high school, she went straight to my dad and demanded a different school.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t even know that was a possibility. I’m three years older than her; by then I was already a senior. It never even crossed my mind that I had other options, whereas she demanded them. She saw what Andy and I went through, trying to fit in at Paulson, and she said ‘not a chance.’”

  “Your sister has got some brass balls.”

  “I know. And smarts. I mean Andy and I, we never even considered going against the grain. But Ella never considered going with it. I could have been like her.” I said things I’d never said before, never felt safe to say before. But the shower was like our own personal safe place, a pod no one else had access to. “I wish I’d been more like her.”

  “I don’t.” He reached up and cupped my face. “This revelation makes you more beautiful.”

  “Thank you for seeing me.” I blinked and wished for tears, but I was touched, and that wasn’t what my body used tears for. So my chest and throat burned with no release.

  “You’re welcome.” He didn’t try to explain it or talk himself away from the awkward feelings I’d forced on us both.

  He’d seen me. We both knew it. As uncomfortable as that fact was, it was the truth.

  I cleared my throat and changed the subject, asking the dreaded question. “What’s your plan after college?” I didn’t know enough about him. We’d skipped all the beginning stages of a relationship and dived headfirst into the good part. But now there was backtracking to be done.

  “Work for NASA at the Ames Research Center in California. I already have an internship. I start in June next year after I graduate.” He pulled me back. “What about you?”

  My lips parted and words wanted to come out, but there was nothing. How did I explain that I had essentially hoped I’d marry and have kids and take care of other people, which was ironic now, judging by how well I was taking care of myself? I’d always told myself that considering who my mother was, I was doing okay. I should have been a bigger mess. But maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough at how messy I actually was.

  “You have no idea, do you?” He laughed, brushing my wet bangs away from my face. “Well then, I fear you’ll have to bartend in Australia or Ireland and possibly take the train through at least four countries in Europe before the answer will hit you.”