Beguiling (Tempting #2) (12 page)

T
he next several days
, things with Leo had cooled so dramatically that we weren’t even speaking apart from “See you at three,” and “I’ll be a little late today.” By the time Friday rolled around, I was feeling like a giant piece of shit for ruining our Tuesday evening at the amusement park.

I was so out of my league that Liza—being the best friend she was—must have sensed it, because she showed up on my doorstep Friday night with a large tote bag over one shoulder and a bottle of wine in each hand.

“Don’t you have to work?”

She pushed past me into the house as if she lived there, because during our years in middle and high school, she practically had. I followed her into the kitchen and watched as she picked up the bag and set it on the counter, sighing in relief.

“I switched shifts with Jenny tonight.”

“Jenny?” I asked, because Liza had made the name sound familiar.

“Yeah, Blowjob Jenny?”

I cringed. Liza and her nicknames for people took getting used to. “That’s not a very nice nickname.”

“That was her Snapchat username, remember? She likes being Blowjob Jenny—tell me that when I say Blowjob Jenny you don’t know who I’m talking about.”

It was hard to forget Jenny, with her trademark fuchsia lipstick and penchant for bragging about her talents in the supreme art of fellatio. We’d seen her at a few off-campus parties over the years and her lipstick had never changed. Once, when we’d been locked in the bathroom at a party Liza had dragged me to, I’d asked her about the lipstick and she had illustrated why she used it by putting a finger in her mouth, wrapping her lips around the base and pulling the finger out and holding it up for examination. “Dudes love that purple ring,” she said, smiling her bright white, perfectly shaped teeth as she twisted her finger in a circle.

Blowjob Jenny intimidated me just about as much as every female who was comfortable in their skin did. Leo’s best friend, Adele, was like that. Oozing confidence and sexual power—it was completely out of my comfort zone and part of the reason I’d pulled away from Leo. I wasn’t Blowjob Jenny or Adele or even Liza. I was Scarlet, preacher’s daughter, who was just scratching the surface of her sexual appetite.

“Anyway, Jenny caught her boyfriend defiling the dishwasher and now she’s stuck paying rent by herself.”

“Wait. Jenny’s boyfriend was having sexual relations with a dishwasher?”

Liza nodded and started unloading the giant tote bag she’d brought with her. “Yeah. Right after the anniversary party we threw a couple weeks ago. In his car. Can you believe it? What a scumbag.”

“Wait.” I held up a hand. “You’re talking the dishwasher person? I thought you meant,” I grasped the handle of my kitchen dishwasher and opened it, “dishwasher, that you load dishes into.”

Liza raised an eyebrow. “Well, he certainly loaded
that
dishwasher, if you catch my drift.” She gave me an exaggerated wink. “But no, I was talking about the person. Not the appliance. Susie, I think? But anyway, Jenny has a date next Friday so we swapped shifts.”

“She already has a date?” This was exactly why I was intimidated by women my age. I kept waiting for someone to ask me out, but considering the fact that my head was always buried in some book, the chances of that happening for me were not even measurable.

“Yeah, I mean, she’s Blowjob Jenny. Dudes like her. Pretty sure she hooked up with Leo once.”

The sting of jealousy from that was so strong that it felt like a slap to the face. Imagining Jenny, all that gorgeous brown hair draped over Leo was, well, distressing. When I looked up and saw Liza staring at me, waiting for my reaction, I narrowed my eyes and said, “So what. He’s hooked up with a lot of people. I’m just another notch in his belt.”

“Whoa.” She set down the DVD she was holding. “What’s with the Negative Nelly talk?”

I held my arms out. “It’s not negative; it’s reality.  Leo is experienced and I’m not.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like you, or that he didn’t have fun with you. Maybe he bounced on a lot of mattresses waiting for the right girl to bounce with him. Or something.”

I laughed at Liza’s analogy. “We’ve only done it once. And I was so drunk…” I thought of that night, hated that I only remembered it in bits and pieces. “Well, it doesn’t matter because I’m pretty sure I pissed him off enough that he won’t want me in that way ever again.”

“I think we need alcohol before we start talking about your issues—”

“I don’t have issues,” I retorted.

“Come on, Scarlet. Humor me a little. How many times have we been in the reverse positions here? I’m pretty sure you’re due for a girls’ night with whine, wine, dip and chips and Brad Pitt.”

“Brad Pitt?” I asked, because even though he was more than twice my age, he was a total fucking babe. And Liza knew he was my weakness.

Liza held a DVD in each hand. “
Fight Club
or
Moneyball
?”

“Just those two?”

She nodded solemnly. “Yes. And the choice you make matters and will determine how our conversation will go tonight.”

I looked at her like she was off her rocker. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“Nope.” She pushed the movies to me. “Pick.”

I debated between the two. I’d seen them both once, often choosing movies like the
Oceans Eleven
or
A River Runs Through It
over either of those two. But I pointed to
Moneyball
and grabbed two wine glasses from the cupboard.

“Excellent choice,” Liza purred. “This means good things.”

After handing her the wine opener I asked, “How do you figure?”

“Well.” She paused dramatically, as was her way. “If you chose
Fight Club
, that would mean you were still angry with Leo and if you chose
Moneyball
, that would tell me you’re willing to watch a movie about sports because you want to understand him a little more.”

“Or…” I said, ready to refute Liza’s psychoanalysis, “I’m still scarred from what happened when my mom caught us watching
Fight Club
back in middle school.”

“Oh, yeah, I still have nightmares about that. Who knew your mom would make us watch all eighteen hours of
The Ten Commandments
? I can still hear her voice, ‘If you want to watch violent movies, watch this one.’” Liza shuddered, her lip curled.

“Eighteen hours,” I laughed. “Not so much, but it sure felt that long.” I held my wine glass across the island and she filled it. “But I chose
Moneyball
because,” I lifted the glass to my lips, pointed a finger at her, “men in tight pants.”

“Ahhhh,” she sighed. “There’s my Scarlet.”

Bringing the wine and dip and Brad Pitt with us, we decided to watch the movie in the family room that my father had built over the garage. As Liza set up the DVD, I chanced a glance out the window that looked across the street and saw the light in Leo’s room. His blinds were up, so I had a clear view into his room, but he wasn’t there.

“Are you pining?” Liza asked, coming up and wrapping an arm around the tops of my shoulders.

“No.” I didn’t even know what pining was. “You know, I used to spend most of my weekends over at his house, watching movies and riding bikes.”

“Yeah, I know. And then he became a giant asshole in high school.”

Back then, it’d been easy to think of him as an asshole. But he wasn’t, really. When his voice had deepened and he’d joined the football team, his status had changed overnight. But I’d always been the bookworm, and when Leo became the popular guy, I didn’t fit in. Our weekends suddenly stopped because he was always gone, at parties I wasn’t invited to or hanging with people who didn’t want to hang with me. And in our distance apart, a sort of antagonism had grown. Once we’d gone away to college, he’d never once looked me up or texted me or made a single effort to spend any time with me. In the six years since we’d been close, there’d been a lot of resentment on my side for him abandoning me for everyone else.

“He wasn’t an asshole, Liza. He just had more friends than I did.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining. He made room for me to sneak in and corrupt you to the point of no return.” It was something my mother had once said, and we’d often joked about it together. In the last couple years, when my mom would ask Liza and I what we were up to I’d quipped, “Corrupting me to the point of no return.” We’d always dissolved into a fit of giggles at the look of my mother’s exasperation written plainly on her face.

As we settled into the couch, both of us reclining the seats, I told myself not to look out the window at Leo’s light.

“So tell me what happened.” Liza clicked the play button on the menu screen and then shifted so she was facing me.

“Well, he found the bucket list—thanks for all the purple glittery hearts around his name, by the way. Not embarrassing at all to explain
that
.”

“Here to serve,” she said, doing a lazy bow on the couch. “And what did he say?”

“He wants to help me tackle the list this summer. And I wasn’t ready to be like, ‘Sure, should you drop your pants right here so I can blow you?’” I sipped my wine, relaxed back into the cushions. “And so later that night he texted me—well, actually, he sexted me.”

“Oh my God.” Liza reached over and clamped a hand on my forearm. “Was it hot?”

My cheeks warmed as I nodded. “And he sent me pictures.” I chewed on my lip.

“You little hold-out. Are you going to share the love?” She batted her eyelashes at me, but I shook my head.

“No, definitely not.” I didn’t feel comfortable explaining why not, because it felt very private and personal to me. And I’d feel betrayed if he did it to me. “So then nothing after that for a couple days until Tuesday.”

“When he took you to Six Flags,” Liza filled in, having known that much.

“Yeah. He wanted to cross off another item on the list, something that wasn’t sexual and then, right after the rollercoaster I practically ate his face.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah. I initiated it. And then I felt stupid. Like, he took me on a rollercoaster. It clearly wasn’t a date because we are
not
dating, but then I kissed him like it was more than just him doing something nice for me.” I set my wine glass on the coffee table and buried my face in my hands. “And then I told him we should go home and said something really bitchy about me being responsible—insinuating that he’s not.”

“Oh, geez Scarlet. You are beating yourself up over something
so
little.”

I shook my head. “No way. It’s kind of a big deal to him, the fact that I made him sound irresponsible. He hasn’t spoken anything other than the necessary to me all week.” I turned to the screen as the first baseball player came onto the field. I pointed and Liza and I admired it for a moment before she turned back to me.

“When you kissed him, did he act … repulsed?”

“I was eating his face; didn’t really have time to see how he was reacting.”

“Dudes are into The Walking Dead, he probably thought that was super hot.” Liza picked up my glass and pushed it back into my hands. “But did he touch you back?”

I thought of the hand that had crept up my shirt and covered my breast. “Well, yeah. But he’s a guy—it’s not exactly astonishing that he’d react.”

“Come on, now you’re making him sound like a guy who only thinks with his dick.” She drained her wine glass. “And while they probably do seventy-five percent of their thinking with that particular head, it’s not all the thinking they do. Leo Madsen is not going to kiss you back if he doesn’t want to.”

I gently shook my wine glass, letting the wine swirl around. “I guess. I just don’t want him to feel obligated to, I don’t know, make all my sexual dreams come true.” I said it with a lot of sarcasm and earned an eye roll from Liza for it.

“Stop it. You’re coming back to the same issue. Whose idea was it to tackle your bucket list?”

“His.”

“And who sexted you later that night, so that you could cross it off your list?”

“He did.”

“And who took you to an amusement park so that you could cross off your near-death moment?”

“He did. Look, I know what you’re saying. It’s all his idea.”

“Exactly. So stop calling yourself an obligation. I’m pretty sure Leo has never felt obligated to do a single thing in his life, so stop worrying about it. So what, you kissed him. He kissed you back. And then you acted super weird about it. Oh well.” She lifted her glass to her mouth, but realized it was empty. Grabbing mine, she finished it off. “I’m sleeping here tonight, by the way.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding.

“You need to be the one to initiate now. Since he’s been doing it all this time and the one thing you initiated, you fucked up.”

“Thanks,” I replied morosely.

“Ease into it. Don’t jump into something sexy right away, but initiate another bucket list item.”

“Like what?”

“Where’s the list?”

“Downstairs, in the kitchen. Probably somewhere on the island still.”

“’Kay,” she said, standing up and holding our wine glasses. “I’ll get us a refill and grab the list. Eat some chips.”

I opened the bag and scooped out a generous amount of dip before shoving it into my face. It was so freaking good. I forgot how good it felt just to relax with wine and junk food. For such a long time, I’d been so completely focused on studying that I hardly ate—a banana here, a spoonful from the peanut butter jar there. I had all this time to myself, that I didn’t know how to fill. And yet, right across the street was a guy who wanted to make my summer fun, give me something to remember.

Liza was right—and it was something I grudgingly admitted—I needed to loosen up and not screw it up this time.

“Here,” Liza said, her voice muffled as she came into the room, wine glasses in each hand and the list hanging out of her mouth. I pulled it out and made a face at the clear bite impression on the sheet. “You should take a picture of the list, because it’s hanging on its last legs.”

She had a point. It had been folded over and over so many times that all the creases were soft, worn, the words that crossed over the creases getting harder and harder to read. I pulled out my phone and took a picture of the list. “Which one should I do next?”