First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (4 page)

“In Ohio most bars have Happy Hour all week long. You walk in and they’ve got free food—you know, wings and mozzarella sticks and all kinds of things that you can munch on,” she said. “And then discounts on drinks. Dollar drafts, buy one drink, get one free, or buy one drink, get one half off—you name it. All the major cities in Ohio have it, but here....” She rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. “Nothin’. And why do the bars close at one o’clock?”

Trevor shrugged. “Beats me. I know alcohol can’t be served after two.”

“Yeah!” Darla interjected. “So why one o’clock? What’s up with being so uptight? Is it the Catholicism in this state, or what? What the hell does the Pope have against a mozzarella stick or a basket of wings? ”

“Darla,” Trevor said, pulling her in, their hips touching, his hands all over her ample ass. “You go march right over to the bar owner and give him a piece of your mind. Change the world. Free the mozzarella sticks.”

“The poor schmuck who owns this place doesn’t control any of that. It’s the voters,” she insisted.

“Run for governor. Vote for Darla!” Trevor shouted.

“Why would I do that?” she asked. “It’s so much easier to just sit here and bitch about it.”

Joe walked up in the middle of our laughter looking green and sick. I started to take off and give them a minute for what I knew was about to happen, but Liam marched over and interrupted before Joe had a chance to speak. Joe looked relieved.

Liam was taller than any of us; he towered over Trevor, and that wasn’t an easy accomplishment. When we were younger, he’d looked like a wiry praying mantis, always too tall for the society he was in. Since senior year of high school, though, he’d taken to lifting weights and had filled out a lot. Liam’s confidence reflected the change; he’d begun to manifest a certain personal authority. He interrupted Joe without apology, confidently certain that what he had to say was the most important.
 

I wanted to be that way. It wasn’t easy after my parents spent most of my childhood and teen years reminding me to project happiness at all times, as a sign of confidence, of assurance, and of contentment—none of which I really felt. While that developed, I was cocooned behind my drum kit and managed the truth by omission.

Drumbeats and measures and music are always honest, laid out plainly, page after page after page. The beats, the microbeats, the macrobeats, all of it are a kind of language that tells you—note after note, tap after tap—exactly what you need to do to get to the end of the song. How I interpret the emotional landscape within those beats, though—that’s entirely up to me. I can go heavy and deep, or shallow and wild. If only life were that simple and uncomplicated.

I studied Trevor, Joe, and Darla. I saw a complication of their choosing. No piece of music, no set of lyrics or measures or notes laid out in a blueprint, could capture what they had improvised. And they’d done it in three-three time.

I preferred two-two.

Amy

“They’re great, aren’t they?” A voluptuous, blonde woman with eyes the color of the ocean and curly, frizzy hair sat down next to me. Her personality took up two thirds of the table.

And she looked
way
too familiar.

She was wearing some sort of a cotton shirt underneath a flannel, like 1991 called and asked her to audition for a part in a Pearl Jam video. As I scooched over to make room for her, I peeked under the table—yep, I was right. Chuck Taylors. She didn’t exactly fit in with the college crowd on the Fenway. Then again, I looked around at the way everyone else was dressed and styled in this dive bar, and realized that
I
didn’t exactly fit it, either. I was wearing a cami with one of those ragged-edged jackets that you could get at J. Jill…except I got mine at the Salvation Army for $3.99.

“Yeah, they’re really good,” I said, reflexively polite. She kind of looked like a lot of the women out in Northampton. Was I being hit on? She slammed a beer bottle down on the table from a microbrewery nearby.
Good taste in beer
, I thought. I took a sip of my Amaretto Sour. It was getting close to the bottom and this was the point where I cut myself off.

“You seem like you know them. Hi, I’m Darla,” she said, holding out her hand.

I shook it. “Amy,” I said..

She wiped her hand on her hip. Or was it her ass? It was kind of hard to tell, as her curves blended together like mine, but a little bigger and shaped in a different way. “How long have you been following them?” she asked, leaning with her elbows on the table, shooting an adoring look at the stage.

“I—” I started slowly, choosing my words carefully.

She peered at me with narrowed eyes, an intelligence washing over her face, making me realize that I’d underestimated her. “Hold on. I know you. Where have we met?”

My mind searched through the database of faces I knew. This one was recent. Why couldn’t I remember?

“I know!” she shouted. And then, in an electronic, robotic voice, she said, “I wish it were my mouth. My pussy and clit need to be touched. Please move three licks to the right.”
Snicker.

Oh, shit.
She was the blonde from the subway this morning. A red cloud of shame plumed on my face and I felt my heart slam against my ribs.

“You remember the words?”

“And something about a little red nub, ecstasy, and—”

A group of guys behind us went silent and leaned toward us, clearly eavesdropping.

“It’s not my fault my eReader malfunctioned.”

“Hey,” she said, putting her palms up. “What you do with electronic devices in the privacy of your own mind is your business.”

“You make me sound like a perv!” Even a chance at watching Sam wasn’t worth this.

She lowered her voice and shot the guys behind us an eyeroll. “
I
never said that.
You
said that. I actually want to know the name of that book. Sounds right up my alley. Better than the cheesy historical romances my mom reads.”

“How on earth did you get from being on that subway car to being here?” I asked, a prickly heat rising inside me.

“It’s pretty random, isn’t it?”

I groaned. She frowned, then realized why and laughed.

She took a swig of her beer and then looked back as the band reassembled, getting ready for the next set, as relaxed as I was tense. “I’ve only been following them for about a year,” she said, quietly. The sudden shift in conversation was abrupt, but I’d take it. Just get the focus off me.

Oh, if only you knew
, I thought. “Are you a fan?” I asked.

“I’m...” She paused, and got a funny look on her face, like there was a correct way to answer that question, and it was on the tip of her tongue, but she wasn’t sure whether to choose a lesser option. “Yeah.” Darla nodded. “I’m a fan.”

What had she decided NOT to say?
I wondered. Whatever it was, I wanted to hear it. That was probably more interesting than the banal, politely expected response. Darla didn’t strike me as the conventional type, so maybe there was something about
me
that made her say that.

“What’s your favorite song?” she asked me.

“I Wasted…” I began, and she squealed along, “…My Only Answered Prayer!” we said in unison, and then laughed.

She kind of did that backhanded, playful smack thing that a good friend does. It reminded me of Erin, my best friend. You can still call someone your best friend even if they live 3,000 miles away, right? Because Erin had just left for orientation for a PhD program at Berkeley. Not Berklee College of Music here in Boston. No, the
other
Berkeley. UC Berkeley. She was going into History, Women’s History, no less, and had gotten in with full funding. For the next two weeks she was at some archive in the middle of Canada doing research.

I was getting my master’s in Library Science here in Boston at a college known all too well for that. Library Science was safe, contained, simple, orderly—everything I wanted since I’d realized it was everything that Sam
wasn’t
. Everything that Darla
clearly
wasn’t.
 

She stood, shoved two fingers into her mouth and whistled the kind of wolf whistle that had eluded me my entire life.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“Do what?”

I motioned at my mouth. “That whole...thing...you did. You know.” I moved my hand around, trying to come up with the idea.

She mimicked me, joking. “You mean give a blowjob?”

“No! I don’t mean that,” I said, my cheeks burning.

“Then what the heck is this?” She waved her hands around wildly.

“This,” I said, waving mine around, “is two Amaretto Sours in me in an hour.”

An arched eyebrow answered me. “Maybe you need three.”

I laughed, my eyes taking in Sam as he walked across the stage, the way his legs ate the floor. I was talking to her, but my attention was elsewhere.

She picked up on it, fast. “Which one’s your favorite?” she said.

Her tone remained super chummy and chipper, but there was a look in her eyes that told me there was a right answer to her question— and a very
wrong
one. I went for safe because I always go for safe, right? That’s what I do. That’s why I was sitting here in the back of a dark bar, staring at Sam, talking to a complete stranger about someone I didn’t have the guts to walk up to and say ‘hi.’

“They all are.” I grinned back as ferociously as I could.

“Liar.”

“But I’m a good one, aren’t I?”

That got her laughing. “I’ve known too many good liars in my life,” she said, “I could use a few people who tell the truth.” The first chords of a song reverberated through the building and Darla sprinted away. “Come backstage when it’s over,” she shouted, waving over her shoulder. “I’ll make sure you can get in.”

A new song, one I’d never heard before, started to trickle out from the instruments onstage. The melody and harmony intertwined like tendrils from a vine growing with little buds, eager to reach the sun and bloom. I could feel my heart slamming against my chest and then a flood of warmth, then heat, then
fire
as Trevor opened his mouth and everyone came together in perfect harmony.

Sam

I don’t know why we never thought to record a song called “Random Acts of Crazy” before. Then again, how many bands record a song with their name as the title? It made sense, though, when you looked at what happened to Trevor. How many people wind up naked, on the side of the highway, nothing on them but a guitar, and end up falling in love?

Damn, if that guy didn’t have all the luck.

As the song progressed, I could feel myself shifting, the way that I always did when I was playing. The beat came naturally—when to pull back, when to lean in, how to keep time with the improvisation that Trevor threw into it, how Joe and Liam knew to keep up. We were all working together, and the word ‘team’ seemed so cheesy, like something out of a class we’d had to take in high school.
Team
was the most overused word on the planet when it came to educational institutions.

Funny how
flow
was never uttered.

I didn’t often look out into the crowd when we were playing; normally the lights were too bright or the place was too dark. Some sixth sense, though, told me to look up, and so help me God, it was like seeing a ghost in the crowd. She sat at a table alone with empty glasses in front of her. Turned away just a little, her eyes not on us, but on some spot over to my left. Was that really
Amy
? Why was she here? Gorgeous. Look at her. The long brown hair that spilled over her shoulders was styled differently, bringing out those eyes, wide and round, underscored by cheekbones that made me want to plant kisses on them every hour, on the hour. She had a smile that turned the regular world into a weak facsimile of truth. She was the only girl—
woman,
now—who had ever made my mind echo with the word ‘love.’

I had loved Amy from afar all through high school—too scared to approach her for what turned out to be exactly too long, finally taking the plunge four and half years ago when the stakes were too high. Just as I worked up the nerve to step up, I found all I could do was walk away.
 

High school seemed like another life, not just my past, but an entire separate lifetime lived out in some sort of fuzzy dimension that ran parallel to who I was.

It came back now, a deep, heavy macrobeat that thrummed in half-time with my heart, making me slow down, making time slow down—because with someone like Amy, you want time to tick one thousand years per second.

And it still wouldn’t be enough.

The song was wrapping up and my brain fused back together, the two pieces integrated, my hands itching to feel her cheekbones, her jawline, that soft spot on her neck where I had buried my nose in a stolen embrace. She’d thought I had been comforting her, but I had just been reaching out, wanting to enter her world. It had turned out that she had wanted to enter mine.

And then I shattered everything.

Amy

Here’s the thing about bookish girls...we know a lot more about sex than you would ever imagine. We
read
. Our eyes flit to anything with words assembled on a page, from the backs of cereal boxes to brochures at the pharmacist’s, to our mother’s hidden
Penthouse Forum
magazines, and copies of
My Secret Garden
and Madonna’s book
Sex
.

We read
.

Reading opens up a whole new layer of existence when it comes to our bodies and sexuality. It fuels our fantasies, gives us concrete ideas for what a sexual fantasy even
is
, and creates this tantalizing layer of existence where we know so much, have read so many ways that people relate to each other intimately, erotically, sexually, and yet, we have so little physical, tangible experience.

Do you see the problem? It’s pretty obvious, right? Which brings me to the next thing that you really need to know about bookish girls, and it’s this—librarians are
hot
. Really hot. Most of us wear glasses because our eyes are blown from taking in so much information about the core of human existence that we just can’t handle it all without help. Plenty of us look boring and dull on the outside, but again, you’ve got to realize, we
read
.