Crushed (6 page)

Chloe tilts her head, sending the curls tilting to one side. “What about it?”

I glance down at my hands, not sure how much I want to give away. “It’s just . . . it seems harmless now, but in the long run, you’ll hate yourself for it.”

She taps her nails against the glass thoughtfully. “More cryptic ramblings from the Beefcake. Methinks there’s a story there.”

“No story,” I lie. “Just . . . don’t settle for being the third wheel.”

She pushes her empty glass toward me to refill and leans forward, studying me as I began making her another drink.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asks.

“Talk about what?”

“About the time you spent as a third wheel before getting burned?”

I grab a cocktail pick and stab three cherries with more force than necessary, dropping it into her drink before sliding it back to her. I ignore her question, because the last thing I want to think about, much less talk about, is how much time I spent trailing after my best friend and his girlfriend for most of my life.

“Look, you need friends, Chloe.”

I say it a little gruffly, not quite wanting to hurt her feelings but also wanting to get through to her, but the girl’s like freaking rubber. Everything bounces right off her. She blinks at me. “I have friends.”

“Well, you need friends that you can go to a bar with on Friday night,” I snap, annoyed that I have to explain everything for her.

Again with that damn head tilt. “Why? And why do you care? Maybe I’m an introvert.”

Why
do
I care?

And no, she’s not an introvert. I give her a look, and she gives a sheepish smile. “Okay, so I’m definitely not. But it’s weird enough that you inserted yourself in my life as a personal trainer. Now you’re trying to be my social director?”

Her eyes go wide and she holds up a finger as though she’s just had a brilliant idea. “You have a crush on me!”

Oh, Jesus.

I lean across the board, gently folding my fist over her finger. “I
don’t
have a crush. Guys don’t get crushes past the age of eight, and I can tell you right now that someone who never shuts up is not my type.”

She purses her lips. “Right, right. You like ’em cool and bony.”

I say nothing.

“You should know, Devon and Kristin have been together, like, six years,” she says, jerking her head over her shoulder in their direction. “They’re probably going to get engaged soon.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

It’s sick that I’m even thinking that way. I’ve talked to Kristin Bellamy for all of a few weeks and haven’t even seen her off the tennis court until tonight. I don’t even know the girl, other than the fact that she is pretty, refined, and reminds me in every way of the girl I can’t have.

I think that’s why I want her. Kristin represents the first time I’ve been interested—even a little bit—in someone other than Olivia.

I need to prove to myself that I’m not hung up on a girl who rejected me outright.

But it’s not just about Kristin. Or Olivia.

It’s about Devon, too, and the fact that the guy he knows as his father actually
is
his father. There’s no chance that
he’s
going to walk in on his mother discussing his parentage mere hours after his entire personal life falls apart.

Devon didn’t have to deal with being crushed
and
finding out he’s a bastard all in an afternoon.

When life deals you a blow, it goes for the fucking jugular.

At least it went for mine.

I turn back to Chloe, trying to remember that she might be my best shot on getting information on the Pattersons. “And how do you feel about that? The almost engagement?”

From anyone else it’d be an innocent question, but I know how she feels about Devon, and it’s a dick move to rub it in her face.

But as quickly as her face crumples, the sun comes out again, and she winds a finger into a curl with a shrug. “It is what it is.”

“I hate that phrase,” I mutter, grabbing a stack of napkins and shoving them at the patrons to Chloe’s left who’ve just managed to slosh their beer everywhere.

“I get the weekend off, right?” Chloe asks, when I turn back to her. I don’t know why I keep doing that. Coming back to Chloe. She’s annoying as fuck, and yet there’s something strangely calming about her manic personality. “From your slave-driving training sessions?” she clarifies.

“Yeah. You get two whole days without me forcing you to
walk
on the treadmill.”

“Hey, I jogged today!” she says, chomping on a cherry. “How long do you think until I have a six-pack?”

I open my mouth to tell her that it doesn’t work that way, but she’s sliding off the bar stool, fishing some money out of her wallet.

I frown. “Where are you going?”

Please don’t say off to insert yourself at your sister’s table. Don’t be so damn desperate.

She slides a twenty across the bar and gives me a wink that’s surprisingly cute in its awkwardness. “My friends are here.”

She hitches a thumb over her shoulder at a table of rowdy newcomers, one of whom spots her and shouts her name.

Realization dawns. “Ah. You didn’t come here as the third wheel with your sister, did you?”

She smiles. “A couple of my high school friends are back in town. Kristin and Devon just gave me a ride.”

I sigh and slide her money back across the bar at her. “Keep it. Your bastardized gin and tonics are on the house.”

Chloe grins. “Why, because you feel for bad because assuming I’m a friendless loser?
Orrr
”
—
she wiggles her eyebrows—“because of that crush?”

I don’t bother to respond, but when she flounces away, chestnut curls streaming behind her . . . damn it . . .

I’m smiling.

Chapter 6

Chloe

Barf alert.

I’ve been watching Kristin and Beefcake at their “tennis lesson” for nearly twenty minutes and I don’t know whether I’m shocked or just plain disgusted.

I mean, for starters, Kristin doesn’t even actually
need
tennis lessons. She plays in college, for God’s sake. Surely we can stop with the theatrics.

And, sure, she needs someone to play with over the summer to keep her sharp, or whatevs.

But someone to help her with her
serve
?

Please.

The only reason Kristin signed up for these lessons in the first place was because Jackie Zender told her the new tennis pro was hot and “into her,” and Kristin can’t stand for five minutes that a hot guy would be into anyone but
her
.

I’d almost feel sorry for Devon, but if the guy hasn’t figured out by now that Kristin likes male admirers more than I like Snickers, then he’s beyond help.

I turn my attention back to my own court and swing at a ball so hard I nearly fall.

People do this for fun?

For the hundredth time, I try to remember what I’m doing, disguised in a hat (shudder) and trying to make contact with balls shooting out of a machine on a semi-regular basis.

Why am I pretending to be athletic in eighty-something-degree heat?

Because I’m worried about Beefcake. Of all things.

The guy may have
lady-killer
written all over his sulky gaze, but I saw his expression when he’d locked eyes on all of the sweet perfection that is fakey Kristin.

I know that look. I know what she does to guys.

It has always been this way.

When I was in tenth grade, my lab partner—along with the rest of the school—had a killer crush on Kristin. I’d asked him what it was about her, and poor smitten Bobby had explained it to me:

She’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, and you know you have no chance. . . . But then she looks at you for the first time, and there’s this surprise on her face, like she’s been waiting for you.

Uh-huh.

Did I mention Bobby Burns wanted to grow up and be a poet?

I sure hope he succeeded, because he sure as hell wasn’t any good at helping me dissect that frog in honors bio.

But, anyway, the point is I think Bobby had a point.

As far as I know, Kristin has never cheated on Devon. She knows they’re the perfect couple, and she wouldn’t risk that for anything.

But she’s pretty damn good at letting other guys think she
might
cheat on Devon.

At least that’s what I’m seeing happening with Beefcake. There’s more accidental touching than an eighth-grade coed birthday party.

Kristin gives a pathetic excuse for a backhand and giggles nervously as Michael wraps his arms around her to fix her pretend-bad form.

“Ouch,” I mutter as I swing and something in my shoulder pops. I have this ball machine set to the slowest setting, but it still has absolutely no respect for the fine art of spying on one’s sibling. That, and hand-eye-coordination’s never really been the shining star on my résumé.

I needn’t have bothered with the hat. Neither of them have looked over once to see the inept chubby girl chasing balls around the court.

Talk about hiding in plain sight.

Plus, it’s not like it would occur to either one that I’d be willingly active.

I watch as Beefcake’s hand moves toward Kristin’s hair, plucking what I’m sure is an imaginary something-or-other from her ponytail. Yeah, right. Like anything could actually get stuck in all that glossy silk.

I bet he’d never manhandle
her
hair into a ponytail. Kristin’s hair doesn’t have an impressive track record for breaking rubber bands whenever it’s threatened with containment.

Finally,
finally,
their handsy session is over, and they linger over their water bottles for too long before Kristin heads back up toward the clubhouse. I don’t miss the little over-the-shoulder glance she gives Beefcake, although she makes it fast, as though she’s embarrassed to be caught looking back at him.

I’m about 89 percent sure that whole impression is manufactured.

I’m pretty sure it
all
is. Everything about her rings fake to me.

It’s an awful thing to say you don’t like your sister, huh?

I mean . . . I would never say that out loud.

And I love Kristin; I really, totally, do. I’d jump in front of a train for her, I’d give her a kidney, and I’d hold her hair while she puked up Jäger shots. And, actually, that last one’s not a hypothetical.

But sometimes I also feel like I’m the only one who really
sees
her.

She came out of the womb looking like a freaking Gerber baby, and with the exception of all things academic, she sort of just floats through life easily.

I don’t even blame my parents for keeping her up on that well-deserved pedestal, and I don’t blame Devon for choosing to see her sweet and funny side instead of her manipulative and caustic side.

But for some messed-up reason, I
do
blame Michael St. Claire for making a move on what is clearly someone else’s girl.

I mean, sure, am
I
trying to get my shit together and lose the cellulite so that Devon will notice me?

Yes.

But
my
crush is old enough to have its own driver’s license. As naïve as it sounds, I want to give Devon a chance to see that he’s with the wrong sister, because I believe in my heart that he is.

But unlike skeevy Beefcake,
I’ll
never make an actual move.

I promise myself that. The ball will always be in Devon’s court.

To punctuate that thought, I take a decisive swing at the next ball that comes my way, and for once I hit the ball squarely, only I hit it too hard and it sails toward the back fence instead of landing neatly within the lines.

“You want some pointers?”

Great.
Just
great
.

Beefcake’s recognized me.

I tilt my head back toward the sky in exasperation, which is idiotic, because the next ball comes and thwacks me in the boobs.

“Son of a—”

I throw my arm across my chest, leaping out of the way, and very seriously considering launching my tennis racket at a laughing Michael St. Claire, only I’m pretty sure I’d miss and make him laugh harder.

Instead, I go to turn off the ball machine, rubbing my throbbing boob as I move past him, chin held high, although I’m not sure if the snub is embarrassment that he witnessed my mishap, or disappointment that he’s the latest in a long string of dudes to fall into my sister’s web.

“Hey, Chloe, come on!”

I keep walking.

I swear I’ve only walked five more steps when he jogs up beside me. “What’s up your tennis skirt?”

“Please. Like I’d wear that glorified version of underwear,” I say, stopping to face him, forcing myself not to continue rubbing my boob in his presence.

He sucks in his cheeks a little, and a lock of dark hair falls over his forehead. He’s sweaty, but not in the gross, midlife crisis way, but in the hot, active guy way. “Yeah, I noticed the, uh, shorts,” he says. “Are those men’s?”

Maybe.

I tuck a frizzy curl behind my ear but it pops right back in my face. “You said I had two days off, right? You get to criticize me from seven to eight a.m. on weekdays, and that’s it. Today is off-limits.”

I hadn’t planned on coming anywhere near the club today, since it’s Saturday, but Kristin had announced to my parents that she “needed” to schedule an extra tennis lesson for weekends.

If you smell something fishy, it’s because Kristin doesn’t need once-a-week lessons, much less twice-a-week. She’s after something.

I’m pretty sure that something is Beefcake.

So what choice did I have, really, other than to follow along and go all Jason Bourne on their asses?

Something weird passes his face, and he crosses his arms. “Is that what you think I’m doing? Criticizing you?”

I stare at him, aghast. “Seriously? You don’t do anything
but
criticize. I mean, you were already trying to fix me within five minutes of meeting me.”

“That’s not—”

I wave a hand at him. “I know, I know. You’ve got to do something to keep yourself busy at this go-nowhere job for the summer, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be toning all of those housewives’ butts that have already seen two decades’ worth of Pilates. But just . . . save the lectures for when I’m passing out on the treadmill, okay?”