Pretending to Be Us Page 25

  My breathing sped up and I felt myself biting down on my bottom lip nervously. The hand not clutching a bottle sent fingertips to my hemline and found that my skirt had ridden up a bit. Yeah, he’d definitely just seen my ass. His cocked eyebrow and even cockier smile told me that he had appreciated it, too. I felt a hot flush burn my cheeks.

  It didn’t help that he seemed to know exactly what he did to me every time he came around, although this was only the third time I’d met him since Kate and I moved in together in August. I couldn’t hide my attraction to him at all. He teased me mercilessly at every opportunity, and it felt like he did it just to see me blush. He clearly found how bookish, quiet, and prone to embarrassment I was simply hilarious.

  I wasn’t shy for his entertainment. I wished I could be different. But I would never be an extrovert like Ward, or his sister. Even dressed up like Tinkerbell and pumped full of alcohol, I was still just doomed to be a wallflower.

  Ward and I stared across the kitchen at each other. Usually, I turned into a stammering mess whenever he was around. Thanks to the magic of alcohol, that wouldn’t be happening tonight.

  I flicked my gaze up and down his figure and then did my best to tear my eyes away again. It was all I could do not to sigh dreamily. Broad shoulders and an obviously muscled chest narrowed to a slim waist and long legs. Powerful, sinuous arms ended in large, strong-looking hands. But it was his classically handsome face, with fair skin, dark blue eyes, an aquiline nose, and dark curly hair, that made my heart pound against my ribs.

  “Who are you, the morality police?” I smiled at him confidently and floated across the kitchen floor toward him. I was buzzed and feeling good. Brave. For once I was brave. “I might be underage, but at least I follow directions. You’re not even wearing a costume.” I leveled a finger at his chest and pushed him back an inch. He laughed lightly.

  Ward was dressed up as a football player, which was not a costume, because he was a football player for the Texas Longhorns. He’d actually graduated last May, but was in town for Kate’s birthday, which was two days after Halloween.

  “Sure, I am,” he replied, grabbing my hand and tracing the logo with my finger. “This is the wrong team.”

  I thought that red color looked unusual. I shrugged and smiled up at him. “You can’t expect me to know that. I don’t have much interest in sports.” We were still almost holding hands. His enveloped mine completely. I liked the feeling.

  “Hmm. What do you have an interest in, Tinkerbell?” His voice was soft, and there was something hot and heavy in his gaze.

  “Emma,” I corrected automatically, still not pulling my hand away. I didn’t want him to get in the habit of calling me Tinkerbell.

  Ward laughed at my answer. “Oh, so you’re self-obsessed?” He shrugged. “At least you’re honest. Most girls really try to hide that, at least at first.”

  I giggled at him and my tone turned teasing. “Don’t call me Tinkerbell. And I have lots of interests. But what about you? Do you have any outside of football or is it all just visions of sweaty men with balls in your head?”

  He smirked and set the beer he was holding in his left hand down on the counter with a decisive clink. His response was slow and suggestive. “Well now, I just have all sorts of interests beyond that.” His native, Texas drawl gave the words a few extra syllables we didn’t have in Connecticut. I smiled shyly up at him and listened as he continued. “For one, I’m finding myself very interested in you, Emma.”

  My lips parted in surprise. Ward was interested in me? As in, romantically interested? Interested in sexy-fun-times with me? The fact that we were standing alone, basically holding hands in the darkened kitchen, suddenly percolated through my alcohol-soaked brain. He seemed to realize it too and straightened. He blinked like he’d just been awoken from a trance, releasing my hand, which I pressed to his chest. I could hardly believe I was touching him. I stared at the hand like it belonged to someone else, and then looked up at him.

  The look in his eyes suggested that he was thinking us through, just like me. He was Kate’s brother, no longer a student, and definitely not going to stick around. I was on the rebound from the world’s worst relationship, painfully shy, semi-drunk, and essentially wearing lingerie in public. We’d spent almost all of our time at this party until this point trading pointed jabs. But now I had a very different sort of exchange in mind.

  Before I could overthink anything, I leaned up and up—he was much taller than my five-two—and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around my waist, crushing my stupid wings and then mumbling an apology against my lips. I could hear his heart beating hard as he pressed me closer into his chest, and he teased my tongue mercilessly with his until I was breathless. A dull, throbbing ache was starting in my core, and any silly things like consequences receded in importance. I only needed to fix that needy ache. The sound of someone laughing in the room beyond pulled us back to the moment. We needed to get out of this kitchen.

  “Come on,” I told him, pulling him towards the hall. “My room is this way.”

  He hesitated. “Emma, in three days I have to go back to—” he started to say. I shook my head and cut him off with another kiss.

  “I know,” I told him when I pulled away. I leaned up to play with the soft tendrils of dark hair that curved around his ear, and then leaned up to whisper, “I’m not asking you to go steady.” He shivered and squeezed my waist.

  “Are you sure?” he asked again. Distantly, I admired his willingness to be honest about what he was offering me and to obtain my consent. He wasn’t offering love, or friendship, or even companionship. Just… right now. Just tonight. Impulsively, I decided it could be enough.

  In that moment, I didn’t care that this would be very, very temporary. I was taking a risk and part of me knew I’d pay for it later, but at that second… I wanted to be the sort of girl who did fun and spontaneous things. I wanted to be brave. I wanted to be the girl who could recover from the last asshole I’d been with and come out swinging. I’d never done anything remotely like this before, but I found myself more excited than scared. Maybe I was channeling my inner, plucky Tinkerbell. Or maybe I was just dumb, drunk, and horny.

  Whatever the reason was, my desire was simple. My answer was simple too.

  “I know when to admit what I want, Ward. Do you?”

  He smiled a slow, crooked smile, and then followed me back to my room.

  Chapter 1: Emma

  Three years later…

  I’d gone to twelve years of primary and secondary school. Four more years of undergraduate university. One year of graduate school. Almost two solid decades of formal education and what was I doing on a sunny afternoon in September? Mopping the filthy floor of a bar. All because my landlord wouldn’t let me pay my rent in poems and essays. Such was the life of a starving artist and student.

  My new boss and old friend, Kate, was easing me into my first day at the Lone Star Lounge with a little light manual labor. We’d been roommates a few years ago when we were both undergrads and had been friends ever since. I was lucky she could hook me up with this waitressing gig when I really needed it, even if it wasn’t exactly my dream job.

  Coming back from my extended study abroad in the UK to find my grad school advisor on maternity leave had meant a sudden lack of stipend for me. I was planning on working as a teaching assistant this semester and had to scramble to find something last minute to make ends meet. I may have been a bit over-educated for bar work, but I could still mop and scrub with the best of them. I’ve secretly always found cleaning to be very satisfying.

  “The early afternoons are usually super dead during the school year,” Kate told me from her position behind the register. She wasn’t kidding. There were only a few patrons, all nursing drinks or happily ensconced in their laptops. “I’m going to go work on some stuff in the office for a few minutes. Will you be okay by yourself for a while?”

  I resisted the urge to be sarcastic or snippy and put a pleasan
t smile on my face. “Sure. I got this.”

  It wasn’t Kate’s fault that I was sulking and irritable. She was a great friend. She’d also been a great teacher so far, instructing me in the little particulars of serving patrons and tending bar here. No. It was something else that had me all worked up. With Kate in the other room, and Willie—the other employee—distracted by his newspaper, I couldn’t resist the masochistic impulse to tune the TV behind the bar into the source of my foul, irrational mood.

  I was probably one of only a handful of people in the world that knew that CSPAN was playing the award ceremony for the United States Poet Laureate today. It’s also probable that I was one of only a handful of people who cared. But there I was, caring so deeply about who would be selected as this year’s national poet that my blood pressure was high, and my face was flushed.

  Up on the screen above the bar, the camera found the man I was looking for: Adam Barnstead, PhD. Brilliant writer. Gifted scholar. Consummate liar. Total asshole. And finalist for today’s prize. An esteemed professor of literature and my former mentor. My former lover.

  Everything in my life seemed to keep drawing me back into his destructive orbit like a comet around a black hole. His gravity well was too deep, and my inertia was too weak to escape. Even watching him now felt like a personal failure of will. Like an aching, open wound or a burst blister, seeing him caused me physical pain. All these years later and my heart was still raw and bleeding over Adam.

  If he wins Poet Laureate while I’m working as a glorified janitor, I’m going to fucking scream.

  As I watched, the announcer smiled and congratulated all the finalists. He extended his handshake and the award, however, to an older woman with graying hair. She beamed and cried as she accepted, fanning her hands elatedly like she’d just won an Oscar. I could hardly believe my eyes. Another writer had just won the position Adam coveted. He lost. The bastard lost. Today was Adam’s turn to stand on the sidelines while his hopes and dreams burned up and compressed into a singularity of empty nothingness. His turn to feel his pride get ripped in two. It was clear from his face that he’d been sure he would win.

  Adam’s almost-handsome and ever-smiling face turned shocked. Then anxious, confused, and ashen. Then, at last, utterly blank. Although his smile returned after a beat, it now looked painted on. Mine, however, had never been more genuine. He would have to start his new job at the University of Texas without this feather in his cap.

  His expression made me remember when he made me feel like that: small and insignificant, weak, and fragile. Stretched so thin by shame, failure, and mortification that I might tear apart. Adam ran his hands through the salt-and-pepper chestnut hair at his temples and looked, for once, his age: forty-three.

  Behind his horn rim glasses, his eyes were focused murderously on the winner as disappointment gave way to something more malignant. Dark, envious energy glittered in his hazel eyes. In answer, pure schadenfreude suffused through me like a drug, electrifying every synapse with vicarious, uncharitable pleasure. There wasn’t a thing he could do.

  He deserved to lose. In fact, he deserved to lose everything. At least this was a decent start.

  I’d been a freshman in college when he used me. Just nineteen years old. I thought I’d been in love with him, and he said he was in love with me. I was really just a toy. Another pretty coed who was too naïve, too proud, and too dumb to listen when a grad student tried to tell me what Adam really was. Like a fool, I’d told her she was just jealous.

  My humiliation was a distant and unimportant memory as I watched Adam squirm on the podium.

  While I was basking in the glow of heartfelt revenge, I heard the door behind me swing open. What started as a slight turn of my head became a fully-fledged three-hundred-and-sixty-degree rotation of my body when I realized who had just walked in the door. My battered little heart did a somersault.

  Ward Williams. Kate’s brother. I knew this was coming—he owned this bar—but I was still unprepared. He hadn’t noticed me yet. I prayed it would stay that way for a while longer. I hadn’t seen him since our one-night stand several years back, and still felt awkward and ashamed about the whole thing. I’d known what I was getting myself into, but I’d still cried the next day when I woke up and he was gone.

  I wished it had never happened. The night I spent with Ward was the night I’d learned that I wasn’t the type of girl who could do ‘no strings.’ It might work for some girls, but it just made me feel empty and unwanted, especially after the earth-shattering sex we’d had. I hated feeling like I was disposable. I’d promised Kate I could handle seeing Ward again, but now that I was seeing him, I wasn’t so sure.

  Kate had told me all about Ward’s early retirement from the NFL and the collapse of his relationship with his fiancé. She told me that these days he drifted from hookup to hookup, never dating or getting attached. Just for a second, I fantasized he was going to walk right over to me and strike up a conversation and things would pick up right where they left off.

  Ward joined a group of guys at a table to my left, poured himself a beer from their pitcher and settled in with fist bumps and friendly teasing. I didn’t even attempt not to stare. He was attracting my focus like a sailor looking for a lighthouse in a hurricane, even though I had been so intensely interested in the Poet Laureate ceremony a moment before.

  He deserved to be stared at.

  Those deep blue eyes finally flicked my way a moment later. I suddenly became extremely interested in the patch of floor I was mopping. I pretended not to notice that he elbowed one of his friends and inclined his head in my direction. Whatever the question was, the other men at the table shook their heads. I struggled to avoid tripping over my own two feet. Ward was watching me. They all were.

  Ward continued to stare at me as I mopped, long after his friends had lost interest. He was drinking me in above the rim of his beer, and I felt a hot blush creep across my face. I stole furtive glances at him, and in between, I could almost feel the weight of his gaze on my body as I moved.

  Was he drawn to me like I was to him? Did I make his pulse race? Did I make his breath burn?

  Why does this guy who I haven’t seen in years command my attention?

  The frustration reminded me of the spectacle of revenge I now sought to enjoy.

  I glanced back at the television and Adam still looked miserable on the live feed of the awards ceremony. His face was still deliciously pained. I hardly got to relish it, however, because one of Ward’s buddies crossed the room, reached up over the bar and changed the channel to football.

  I was sure he didn’t realize I was the one who turned on the ceremony. I weighed my desire to bask in my ex’s misery with the possibility of coming into conflict with a customer.

  “Excuse me,” I said, forcing my voice to be as honey-sweet and friendly as I could when I wanted to get back to watching Adam’s misery as quickly as possible. “I was actually watching that.”

  The guy shrugged. “Really?”

  I nodded seriously. “Yes.”

  “Well, can you watch it later on YouTube?” He seemed mystified by the idea that I might not want to watch football.

  I bit my lip and said nothing. I didn’t need to get into an altercation with a customer, but I really wanted to watch the ceremony. Ward arrived next to his friend a second later. He cast his glittering sapphire eyes over me curiously. He was even better looking up close.

  “Hello there, Emma,” he drawled, grinning. “It’s been ages. What have you been up to?”

  He did remember me. Should I be flattered?

  “I just got back from studying in Europe.” The way he was looking at me made me feel feverish and lightheaded. I looked at Ward’s dumb friend who turned off my show. “Could you please turn the channel back?”

  Ignoring the issue at hand, Ward was smiling at me. “So, you haven’t been avoiding me these past few years?” His tone was teasing.

  Of course, I’ve been avoiding you.


  “Don’t flatter yourself.” I said with a nervous grin. I turned to his friend, “Could you change it back to CSPAN, please?” I pointed up at the screen.

  Ward looked up at it in fake-looking surprise and then down at me, shaking his head. “You can’t be serious. I didn’t know anyone actually watched that channel.” Ward looked over to his friend and must have telepathically communicated with him, because the guy returned to his chair, leaving us alone. Ward was wearing that teasing look that he’d worn at that Halloween party four years ago. I got the feeling he was trying to get a rise out of me, to test me or mess with me. He must enjoy seeing me blush and struggle to stick up for myself. I could only imagine that I was as red as a lobster now, but I wasn’t going to let myself melt in front of him. Not this time.

  What makes you think I’ll just give up on what I want? I didn’t say it. There was no point in arguing with Ward. He was as stubborn as his sister. I simply smiled, leaned my mop against the bucket, and climbed atop the bar to turn my program right back on. I wasn’t going to give Ward what he wanted.

  Behind the bar, Willie looked up from his newspaper and raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged and scrambled back down. Ward could stick his condescending attitude right up his hot, amazingly toned butt. Willie frowned and returned his attention to the paper. A wise choice.

  “Emma, sweetheart, please turn that back to the channel it was on. My friend wants to watch the game.” Ward was now back at my elbow. His voice was a bit less teasing than it had been. All across the room, patrons were beginning to tune into our little clash. Ward was now grinning from ear to ear. He was definitely enjoying seeing me get flustered.

  Sweetheart?

  I forced my clenched teeth open to smile at him again. “Ward, sweetheart, I don’t really care for football. I want to watch the poet laureate ceremony.” I affected an innocent face and played with the end of my ponytail.