Erin McCarthy - Sweet

“How much will you even see each other? You both work and it has three bedrooms,” Tyler said. “It seems stupid to sleep on a floor somewhere when there’s plenty of room at the house.”

“It’s up to Riley,” I said, because that only seemed fair. It was his house. “Maybe he wants some alone time with all of you gone.”

I didn’t mean that to sound quite as weird as it did.

He laughed. “Does that come right after Me Time and Circle Time?” He stood up and moved further into my space than was strictly appropriate.

It was a game of chicken, and I lost by instantly backing up. Damn it. He smirked in triumph.

“I’ll be fine. I can handle it if you can.”

I was playing right into him and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Of course I can handle it. What’s there to handle?”

He stared at me, his eyebrows raised, a challenge in his deep brown eyes. The stubble on his chin was visible, and I could smell the subtle scent of soap and a splash of cologne. He looked and smelled very, very masculine, and I was suddenly aware of my body in a way that made me seriously annoyed.

“Bring some beer.”

“I’m not twenty-one.” Not that it had ever stopped me from drinking, but I wasn’t going to give Riley anything I didn’t have to. I did not want to feel like I owed him. It was Tyler who had made the offer of a place to crash, so if anyone deserved thanks, it was him, not his arrogant brother.

For a second, Riley’s eyes roamed over my chest, like he could gauge my age by my boobs. Such a tool.

But then he just said, “You can borrow my ID.”

And I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “Because we’re practically twins.”

He nodded. “Though I am slightly better looking.”

I snorted. “I have better hair.”

“I can drink more whiskey than you.”

“I’m smarter.”

“I’m stronger. We should mud wrestle so I can prove it.”

I bit my lip so I wouldn’t throw a scathing response back at him, or worse, laugh. He didn’t deserve the attention, or knowing he’d gotten under my skin, which was what he wanted.

But for a split second I wondered if I should sleep on the couch after all. Because Riley seemed to be the one person who could get an emotional response out of me, even if it was just anger.

And emotions were dangerous.

They led to being trapped, like my mother, in the pretty prison of my father’s house.

I was never going to let that happen.

“I call dibs on the bathroom first in the mornings,” I told Riley.

Then to let him know that he did not intimidate me, and that I was always in control, I turned and walked away.

I should have taken Nathan up on his offer for a ride. Instead I had decided that in further pursuit of independence I was going to learn how to use public transportation. What I didn’t understand was that the city bus was nothing like the charter bus we took to church camp growing up. When you were a member of the New Hope congregation, you didn’t sacrifice comfort in the pursuit of your relationship with God. My dad was fond of saying that even Jesus wore sandals rather than going barefoot. I didn’t really think it was exactly the same thing to have shoes versus a six-thousand-square-foot house with a closet full of designer clothes, but when I had suggested this at the age of thirteen I had lost the use of my cell phone for a month.

Since you’re so quick to point out others’ alleged hypocrisy, he had said. Let me eliminate yours for you.

Of course, in the end, all he had done was make me the ultimate hypocrite. I paid lip service to his church and its many rules and nothing more.

Eventually, when he figured out the truth—which he would, because it was becoming harder and harder to fake who I was—he would dismiss me from his life. I knew it as surely as I knew he had a flask of vodka hidden in his nightstand drawer. So when the inevitable happened, I needed to be ready. I needed to have seen the real world, or at least a bigger slice of it than the narrow viewpoint I’d been raised in.

So the bus.

Yeah, not such a brilliant idea when you’re dragging two very large hot-pink suitcases with you and you’ve never ridden public transportation in your whole life.

A crusty old man drooled as he mumbled and gestured to me repeatedly. I slunk down in my seat, suitcases wedged against the window next to me because I couldn’t understand anything he was saying, and I totally didn’t want to understand. Two teenage boys with their jeans down around their thighs kept shoving each other and laughing as they made blow-job gestures in my direction. I ignored them. If I knew them, I would have told them off, but I figured it was possible they had guns in those insanely outdated and slouchy pants, or at the very least they wouldn’t hesitate to harass me. The bus smelled disgusting, and the air-conditioning blasting only served to float the odor around. As I compulsively checked my phone for the bus route map, I kept checking the street signs every time we turned, afraid I was going to miss my stop.

I had texted Riley to let him know I was showing up around six, and he had responded with, “Yippee.” The feeling was mutual.

By my estimates, it was only a thirty-minute bus ride to the nearest intersection to Tyler and Riley’s house. The bus chart had arrival as 6:03, and I kept glancing at the time, wishing I hadn’t worn flip-flops and shorts. I felt like bus crud was rubbing on me from the seat and floor. My heels and calves felt vulnerable.

“Hey, blond girl,” one of the teenage boys said, moving from the back of the bus to drop down in the seat behind me.

That was probably me he was referring to.

Glancing at him, I said, “Hey,” and went back to my phone. I didn’t want to have a conversation with him, but I knew if I totally ignored him he would be calling me a stuck-up bitch. Sometimes there really wasn’t a way to win as a girl.

“Where you goin’? This don’t look like your neighborhood.”

“I’m moving in with my boyfriend,” I told him, flatly. Let him think I had a big old gangbanging, drug-dealing badass of a boyfriend.

His eyebrows shot up, and he looked like he didn’t believe me. He was about fifteen, and he was more attitude than anything else, since he probably weighed less than me. I could see his ribs through his basketball jersey. “Your boyfriend lives here?”

I didn’t answer because I realized the bus driver wasn’t slowing down, and the street that was supposed to be my stop was just a few feet ahead. “Isn’t he going to stop here?” I said, freaking out, starting to sit up and slip my purse over my head like a cross-body bag. It was too short to do that, and it cut into my armpit, but I needed both hands for the luggage. And maybe to tackle the driver if he didn’t stop, because my little social experiment was over. I didn’t want to be on this bus anymore. My armpits were sweating even though it was freezing from the air-conditioning because I was a little stressed, I had to admit.

The kid looked at me like I was a complete moron. “If you want to get off, you have to pull.” He reached over and yanked on a laundry line–type cord above the windows and I immediately heard a ding.

“Oh.” Duh. Guess the driver wasn’t psychic. “Thanks.” The bus started to slow down, so I started to tug my bags into the aisle, regretting the “Stop following me. Follow Jesus.” sticker Kylie had bought for me as a joke and slapped on the front of my suitcase.

For some reason, I expected the kid to offer to help, since he was so clearly interested in flirting with me. But he actually slipped around my bag like it was a nothing more than an obstacle, even as it fell sideways into the opposite seat. His friend followed him. The bus stopped, and I stumbled forward as I managed to haul both bags down the aisle, yelling, “I’m getting off at this stop!” to the bus driver in case he didn’t glance back.

He glared at me in his large rearview mirror, obviously impatient with how long it was taking for me to exit.

“Thanks,” I said, breathless, basically falling down the stairs in an avalanche of hair and luggage. Once on the curb, I readjusted so I could pull each bag with one hand and tried to ignore the fact that the two teenagers were just standing there on the corner, looking in no particular hurry to go anywhere, belts barely holding up their pants, arms already sporting a couple of tattoos. It was hot on the sidewalk, the air a humid mix of gas fumes from the bus and a chicken restaurant. The back of my neck got damp as I started walking.

Immediately, I knew the boys were following me. So I paused and pulled out my phone, confirming the direction I was going in. Then I took a gamble and called Riley, propping the phone on my shoulder so I could keep walking. I didn’t think he would answer, because I didn’t know any guy who answered his phone, but I was starting to get weirded out. The neighborhood was what I had expected, and while it didn’t seem anything other than a little tired and lower income, I felt very obvious as an outsider. There were empty shops, a dingy restaurant, a tattoo parlor, a Check ’n Go kiosk, and potholes the size of a Volkswagen Beetle in the road. On the side street I turned down, the houses were close together, small, some of them run down. If anyone had grass, it was burned out, brown and dusty, or it was a breeding ground for pricker weeds. Some were as high as my knees as I trudged down the sidewalk, my purse bumping my breast with each step.

Riley actually answered. “Hello.”

“Hey! It’s Jessica. Um, I’m almost at your house. I, uh, took the bus, and I’m on your street and well . . .”

I could practically hear his eyebrows shooting up in disbelief. “You took the bus?”

“Yeah. And I think these dudes are following me,” I murmured in as low of a voice as possible.

“What? Shit.” There was rustling. “Keep walking. I’ll come get you.”

“’K.” I dropped the phone on the sidewalk when I tried to end the call with my finger still hooked around the suitcase handle. Bending down to retrieve it, I looked back at the guys.

One had a baseball hat on sideways, and now that they were off the bus they had both stripped off their T-shirts in the heat. One was tanned, the other glowing so starkly white, utterly hairless, and blinking against the sun, he looked like a baby mole. Now that I knew Riley was just a minute or two away, I felt more irritated than scared.

“Why didn’t your man pick you up?” the one with the hat asked.

I stood up, spotting a car coming up the street. “He is.” Relieved, I saw it was Riley as he pulled up and put the car in park.

Leaving it running, he opened the door and got out. He wasn’t wearing a shirt either, and I shook my head to try to get my sweaty hair out of my eyes, wishing I could fully appreciate his chest. But I was more concerned with getting in the car and away from Beavis and Butt-Head. I was already dragging my bag off the curb when Riley stepped up, barely giving me a nod before grabbing the other one.

“Wassup,” he said casually to the guys, but I could see his shoulders were stiff as he rolled the suitcase behind him and made a point of turning his back on them. They didn’t look like any particular threat to Riley, given he was twice their width, and I felt better.

“Your bitch is fine,” the scrawny one said.

Gee. Now my life was complete. They thought I was attractive. I rolled my eyes as I opened the back door of Riley’s car and shoved my suitcase in.

“Thanks,” was all Riley said. I realized he was gesturing with his left hand for me to go around and get in the car, so I did. He loaded my other bag in the backseat.

Then he stood and spoke to them in a very casual, friendly tone. “If you ever see her walking in the neighborhood again, you cross to the other side of the street, do you understand me? You don’t look at her, you don’t talk to her. Stay at least fifteen feet away from her, or I will fuck your shit up, no questions asked.”

“Hey, we don’t want no trouble,” one of them said, holding up his hands and looking alarmed.

I almost felt bad for them. Almost. But the truth was, their intention had been to harass me, and that was bullshit. A woman should be able to walk on the sidewalk without taking crap.

“Good.” Climbing back in, Riley turned the car around in the nearest driveway, while I yanked my purse off and stuck my right arm out the window to air out.