Crushed (10 page)

At least she’d
better
not be cashing in. If she cheats on Devon, there will be some fighting words between us.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, the car ride with Beefcake?

It’s kinda nice.

I mean, granted, I had to practically bribe him to get him to speak. And he’s still a good ways off from sharing whatever’s made him so guarded and haunted.

And, yet . . . I like his company somehow.

Even if he is sort of stingy with the chips.

The second my flip-flops hit the gravel, I stretch, still humming
The Book of Mormon
sound track I’d been regaling Michael with on the latter half of the trip as he goes to pull our bags out of the trunk.

I walk around to the back of the car, not to help him, but because my eyes have caught on the black ink creeping beneath the hem of his blue T-shirt. I’m used to seeing Beefcake in his Cambridge Country Club uniform, which means the mysterious tattoo is always covered up.

I hook a finger under the sleeve of his shirt, inching it upward just as he starts to pull out my pink bag, but he realizes my plan before I can see what the tattoo is and jerks back before dropping my bag ceremoniously in the dirt with a
damn it, Chloe
.

“If you don’t want people to see your tattoo you should have gotten it on your ass,” I say, my hand already reaching out again. “Or your taint.”

He dodges with a snarl and I relent. For now.

“Taint,” he mutters, leaning down to retrieve my bag. “Really?”

“Nice,”
I say, reaching for his arm again, this time to squeeze the biceps that had flexed rather enticingly as he lifted up a bag made heavy with the books I hoped to read.

He drops my bag again, his finger jabbing in my face. “Carry your own bag.”

“Oh, come on,” I call after him. “I was just admiring you!”

He turns around with a semi-snarl, but at least he pauses. Although I suspect that’s mostly because he doesn’t know where we’re going.

“Someone needs to carry the snacks,” I say, ignoring my bag and going around to retrieve the food from the backseat.

“Of course,” he mutters, coming back toward me but keeping his distance. “Mustn’t forget the snacks.”

He puts my bag over his shoulder as I scoop up my grocery bag full of chips and other processed-food delights. He reaches out his free hand for the handle of the small cooler and I hand it to him.

With his hands all full like that, now’s my chance to check out that tattoo, but I manage to refrain.

Eventually he’ll take his shirt off to go swimming, and I’ll check it out then. Plus, a weird part of me sort of wants him to
want
to show me. Willingly.

What can I say? I’m a girl. We’re weird like that.

So instead of checking out his ink or fondling his biceps, I settle for linking my arm through his, mostly so he can’t run away once we get inside and my parents start asking parenty questions like, “Who are your people?” and “Are you enjoying the summer?”

“This will be fun,” I say, smiling up at him.

He doesn’t smile back. Just looks at me for a long moment with a
don’t bullshit me
expression.

“Chloe?”

I jerk my gaze away from Beefcake’s glower to see Devon standing in the driveway.

Devon’s wearing only swim trunks, flip-flops, and aviator glasses that make him look like one of the hotties in that
Top Gun
volleyball game, and for a minute all I can do is stare.

Maybe drool a little.

Beefcake clears his throat.

“Devon! Hey!”

But Devon’s attention is focused on Michael. “Hey, aren’t you Kristin’s tennis coach?”

“And my personal trainer,” I hasten to add.

I’m not sure either guy hears me. They’re doing the staring contest thing that dudes do.

“Devon, you remember Michael. You met him for about six seconds in between exploring Kristin’s molars.”

Devon’s attention comes back to me and he smiles, easy and agreeable as ever. “Right. Sure. Nice to see you again, man. Didn’t realize you and Chloe are friends.”

“Best,”
I gush, before Michael can respond.

I can’t see Devon’s eyes behind the glasses, but it seems to me that he stares at Michael a few seconds longer than necessary, and I resist the urge to tell him that if he thinks Michael’s a threat now, just
wait
until he sees how his girlfriend turns into a Beefcake groupie.

“Can I help you carry anything?” Devon asks, coming toward us. “I was sent to fetch more beer for the cooler, but I can help you guys if you need it.”

“We’re good,” Michael says just as I start to say, “Sure.”

“Okay, well, come on around back when you get settled into your rooms,” Devon says with a last flash of white teeth before ducking into the garage, where my parents have a fridge for overflow booze.

“You caught that, right?” Michael asks as I lead him toward the front door.

“Caught what?” I use my hip to shove the door open.

“The way he emphasized
rooms
. Plural.”

I roll my eyes. “He did not.”

“He’s protective of you,” Beefcake says, taking in the foyer. It’s not fancy, but it’s huge. Most people look intimidated, or at least impressed. Michael looks neither.

“Well, of course he’s protective of me. We’re friends and you look like you collect virgins for a living. He’s probably worried.”

“About your virginity?” he asks.

I set the bag of food by the foot of the stairs and head up. I’ll put the food away later.

I’m up only two stairs when Michael’s hand wraps around my arm and pulls me back, his expression irritated.

“Are you?” he asks. “A virgin?”

“Not your business.”

His fingers tighten on my arm. “Chloe.”

“Okay, totally not your business,” I say, a little thrown off by the weird intensity on his face. “But because I’m not really the sweet, secretive type, no. I’m not.”

His eyes search my face as though looking for a lie, and my pride stings.

I jerk my hand away. “I know, hard to believe, right? Trust me, I get that I’m not exactly oozing sex appeal without jerks like you reminding me.”

He releases my arm, his gaze dark.

“I was just making sure,” he says gruffly.

“Making sure of what?”

“That you weren’t waiting because you were hung up on a guy who’s unavailable.”

“Well, good thing that’s not your problem to worry about,” I say sweetly before proceeding up the stairs. “But for the record, first choice would have been someone that I, you know, loved. But a girl can be curious and horny without needing to have her heart all tangled up in it.”

I can practically hear him shaking his head behind me. “You’re a weird little creature, Chloe.”

“Why, because I’m not opposed to having sex like a man?”

“Hey, don’t get huffy. I’m hardly one to judge about casual, meaningless sex.”

I spin around, surprised to realize that he has followed me so closely, and is now only one step below me.

The step neutralizes our height difference and we’re eye to eye. “You have sex with women you don’t care about because you can’t have sex with the one you want?”

He shrugs but doesn’t deny it.

“All of those housewives that feel you up at the club. They’re stand-ins for Kristin?”

His dark gaze flits away, and my eyes narrow. There’s more to that story, but his stubbled jaw is doing that grindy thing that tells me he’s not going to tell me what.

I turn around again, moving down the hallway until I halt in front of the guest room that my parents always put my “projects” in. “This is you.”

He shifts my pink bag higher on his shoulder. “Where’s your room? I’ll take your bag.”

I take four steps backward. “Here.”

He rolls his eyes. “We’re next door to each other.”

“Yup. And Kristin’s bedroom is one more door
that
way, so if you try to sneak into her room, you’ll have to walk past mine, and I’ll know.”

“How will you know? I’m pretty sure you sleep like a log.”

I frown. How would he know that?

But it’s true. There’s no way I’d hear a grenade outside my room much less a late-night lothario out for an illicit hookup.

I push open the door to my room, and Michael follows me inside. “Thanks for carrying my bag, workhorse,” I say. I reach out to pat his biceps again, just on principle, but he’s onto me now and sidesteps.

“What’s that?” he asks.

“Hmm?” Damn, I’d
almost
gotten a glimpse of the tattoo.

He points toward my bed.

I turn and see the offending garment carefully laid across the yellow bedspread.

I sigh. “That, my new friend, is Bellamy Fourth of July garb.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “It’s . . . small.”

“Tell me about it.”

For as long as I can remember, the younger Bellamy females have thought it’s “fun” to wear matching red, white, and blue bikinis.

I have yet to partake.

Michael picks up the halter top. “I think I like the Bellamys.”

“Don’t get too excited,” I mutter. “I’m not wearing that. Or, on second thought,
do
get excited, because Kristin will for sure be wearing that and only that
all
weekend.”

“Don’t tell me you’re one of those girls that doesn’t wear swimsuits in public,” he says.

Well, not if I can help it.
But he looks grumpy, so I relent. “I own a swimsuit.”

“Sure, but did you bring it?”

Damn, he knows me well. How did that happen?

“Yes.”
Reluctantly
.

He sets his duffel bag on the ground by his feet and sits on my bed. “Let’s see it.”

“You want to see my bathing suit?”

He crosses his arms and waits.

“Fine,” I mutter, leaning down and unzipping my bag, rummaging around until I find the dreaded ensemble.

I hold up the sensible black Speedo one-piece. It’s one of those kinds with the “slimming technology” in the torso, which is really just a modern way of saying
waterproof girdle.

And I will be wearing a cover-up that covers all of it, but I don’t tell Beefcake this.

“No,” he says.

“No what?”

“You’re not wearing that.”

“Um, actually—”

He stands, ripping the swimsuit from my hand and tossing it aside.

I watch as the enormous swatch of black shiny fabric settles in a puddle on the ground. “Rawr. That was sexy. Is that how you disrobe women, because—”

He points toward the bed. “You’re wearing
that
.”

I peer around him. “It’s a glorified pile of string.”

“I thought we were supposed to be working on your confidence.”

“Um, sure, confidence to wear skinny jeans, not a star-spangled G-string. Plus, my cousin Heather always buys mine too small. I think she doesn’t want to insult me by buying my real size, knowing that I’ll be mingling with a bunch of XS stick figures.”

He walks back to the bed and picks up the top in that reluctant way guys have with women’s clothing. “Medium.”

I hold up my hands, as though to say
point proven
. “I don’t wear a medium.”

Good on me for not cringing as I admitted it.

“Maybe you didn’t
last
summer.”

“Um, this summer is just like last summer. All the summers are the same, actually. Think of my summers as supersized, not medium.”

He shakes his head. “
Last
summer you hadn’t spent an entire month with a personal trainer.”

I roll my eyes. “Look, Beefcake, you’re good at your job, but you’re no miracle worker.”

“You’ve lost weight, Chloe. You just don’t know it because I forbid the scale and because your clothes are all elastic, baggy, and terrible.”

I’m torn between wanting to defend my wardrobe and asking him to repeat that first bit.
You’ve lost weight.

Was it true? My mom had made a couple comments to that effect, but, um, hello. It was my
mom
. Nothing mothers say about their daughters’ appearance, positive or negative, should be taken entirely seriously.

But the thing about Beefcake . . . he’s not really one for kindness. And he doesn’t lie.

Reluctantly I reach out and touch the bikini.

“It’s not going to be a pretty sight.”

He puts his hand over my mouth, taking a half step closer, and even though he’s pulled this move about a million times in our short acquaintance, I feel a weird little awareness at how close he’s standing.

Very slowly he removes his hand. His eyes locked on mine.

“Tomorrow,” he says gruffly. “For the Fourth. Wear it.”

I cross my arms. “So let’s say I play along, and figure out a way to get these tiny triangles to somewhat cover my boobs. You get eye candy. What do I get out of it?”

His eyes never leave mine. “I’ll help you get Devon.”

Chapter Eleven

Michael

On a scale of
awesome
to
I want to kill myself,
the situation at the Bellamy lake house isn’t nearly as bad as I’d been expecting.

Granted, it’s the day before the actual party, and the majority of party guests won’t show up until tomorrow, but, so far, the snobbery level is surprisingly low.

Gary and Gemma Bellamy in particular surprise me. For some reason I’d been expecting them to be more Kristin’s people than Chloe’s: gorgeous, pretentious, and all too aware of their status at the top of society.

Instead, they’re somewhere in between Kristin’s polished self-awareness and Chloe’s infectious warmth.

They don’t flinch upon learning that a country club employee is lurking in their midst. For that alone, I give them credit.
My
parents would have shit a brick had a lowly bartender crashed one of their summer parties.

But Chloe’s parents barely blink. In fact, I get the distinct feeling that they’re used to Chloe bringing around all manner of lost creatures.

Not that I’m lost. Or, if I am, it’s deliberately so.

Chloe tells me that tomorrow will be catered, “very red, white, and blue, very creepy,” but tonight Chloe’s dad is gearing up to throw burgers and hot dogs on the grill and it all feels strangely . . . normal.

“Mr. Bellamy, can I help?”