No Strings Attached (19 page)

“Harper.” They said it together—Katie angrily, Luke still in shock, softly.

“Her name is Harper Jones,” Katie said, “and in case you didn't get the subtext of the little drama, she and your boyfriend used to be involved. Very involved. Very recently.”

Luke coughed self-consciously, unsure if he should confirm, deny, or bail.

“Fine.” Lily brushed her lustrous hair back. “Now I know her name. But I don't know why your thong is in a knot. I'm not some villain.”

Katie stared at Luke. It wasn't hard to see what Harper had fallen for. Luke Clearwater was obviously of mixed heritage. As in Harper's case, it worked. Luke's full lips, high, wide Johnny Depp cheekbones, and slight build hinted at an American Indian father (as did his last name). His height, swimming-pool-blue eyes, silky blond hair screamed Scandinavian. The total effect
was
admittedly doable—if you were into the whole soft-spoken sensitivity vibe.

So what was Lily was doing with him? Lily was all about status conquests, jocks who rock, studs with style, popularity princes, and, lately, older guys just to piss off her parents.

What Luke saw in Lily? Duh. Katie herself had shouted the reason to a house full of partygoers:

Lily put out.

“I like sex, so what?” she used to justify her behavior to Katie, who had cautioned selectivity. Lily had called her bluff: “Pul-eeze. Sex is currency with you. You'll give it up, but only when you can get something you want badly enough in return. I'm not calculating like that.”

Katie suddenly felt stupid standing over the treacherous twosome. She settled on the floor against the wall and folded her arms. She spoke to Luke. “You never told Lily about Harper?”

Lily spoke for him. “Luke might've mentioned it. Did you, sweetie?” Lily ran her finger along his thigh. “If he said her name, it totally didn't register. It's not like she's someone I even knew.”

Katie's stomach twisted. Once, she would have said the same exact thing.

“Anyway, how were we supposed to know she was here? It's not like you gave me a clue,” Lily challenged.

She had a point, Katie supposed. Still, the damage was done. Katie couldn't imagine what Harper was feeling right
now. But her heart went out to her roommate.

“So would you like us to leave?” Lily posed the obvious question.

The sad truth was that Katie did not. She'd missed Lily desperately, their friendship, their “best of breed” lifestyle. That's what she was fighting to hold on to! That's what this summer was all about. If not for the Luke/Harper complication, she might have welcomed the olive branch visit, after a few grumbling minutes forgiven Lily, even asked for her (belated) help. Katie's capacity for holding a grudge just wasn't that large. Not unless there was something to be gained by withholding.

Lily saw Katie caving. “So how ya like being seventeen so far?”

Katie grimaced. “I barely noticed the date.” Which was a lie. Being alone (and still poor!) on her birthday made her sad, so she'd chosen not to think about it. If Plan A had panned out, she would've bagged a kick-ass boyfriend with cash and cache by now, would've worked out a way to recoup her old life, secure her future. There would have been a reason to celebrate.

Lily nudged the shopping bag at her feet toward Katie. “Don't you want to see what I got you?”

Before Katie could answer, Luke rose. “I'll go hang in the car. Probably better if you two talk without me.”

Lily sprang to her feet and wrapped her arms around his
neck. “You don't mind, baby? You are sooo sensitive!” She kissed him openmouthed, way more suggestively than the scenario deserved. It was a very Lily moment.

“You want to know what I'm doing with him,” Lily declared, like that was the most important of the million things on Katie's list.

“He's hardly your type,” she acknowledged.

Lily smiled wickedly. “Oh, but he
is
. I'm in a new phase, and he's just so young and delicious. So … mmmm … innocent. So
summer
. Y'know?”

Katie did, nauseatingly. Lily had lured this boy, was toying with him, playing the bad girl to his adoring naïf/virgin. She was test-driving a new power role, nothing more.

“I'm teaching him everything he needs to know,” she confirmed with a wink. “It's so fulfilling. And—bonus: He writes me love poems.”

“You're going to dump him after the summer,” Katie stated.

Lily shrugged. “He goes to Boston Latin. Public school. What do you think? And don't go all righteous on me. Denial does not become you—you'd do the same exact thing.”

Katie reddened. “I have something more serious on my mind just now. Hello? Do you even remember why I'm here?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then how could you just leave me stranded like that? And then, show up suddenly, expecting me to forget all about it?”

Lily shrugged, and pulled a cigarette from her bag. “Don't put me on the defense, Katie. You know it doesn't work with me. Luke showed up at my door one day, delivering pizza. And what can I say? You saw him. It was lust at first sight. And the … ahem … heart”—Lily patted her heart, but cast her eyes in a more southerly direction—“wants what it wants.”

“That's your reason for abandoning me? You wanted to get laid?”

Now it was Lily's turn to pump up the volume. “How long have we been friends, Katie? And when, during the entire duration of our friendship, have we not put guys ahead of our plans? It's unspoken, but it rules: A hookup with a guy trumps plans you had with a girlfriend. I thought you'd understand.”

“I didn't just hear that, Lily, because if I did, I don't even know you. This is not the same as canceling a trip to the mall for a hookup. There's a little more at stake here.”

Lily leaned in toward her. “Don't push this, Katie.”

“Don't
push
it? Consider yourself shoved. How could you turn your back on me like that?”

Dramatically, Lily lit her cigarette and inhaled. On the exhale, she said, “Maybe I gave your whole situation some thought. And maybe I realized that this summer, this whole getting-out-of-Boston thing was all about you. All about
The Kick. And not for nothing, Katie? Maybe I got tired of being ‘The Side Kick.'”

Katie gasped. She'd never known Lily was jealous of her. And that envy had led her to screw Katie the very first time she really, really needed a friend.

Katie sprang to her feet and yanked the cigarette from Lily's grasp just as the girl was exhaling, causing a coughing fit. She threw it into the fireplace.

Lily recovered quickly. “Look, I know you think your life is about to be over, your dad's business dealings and all that. But hello? You're Katie Charlesworth. I knew you'd figure something out. With or without me, you'd deal. So it's not like I was worried about you.”

Katie thought her head would explode. She'd wanted to know how Lily had found her—had someone blabbed?—but at that moment, she was too enraged to care.

“Anyway, I really thought you'd have forgiven me by now,” Lily said softly.

Katie barely heard her; she was screaming now. “How could you have the gall to think I would forgive you? You walked out on me the first time something serious in my life happened. After promising you would help. You swore! And you changed your mind, left me flat, because all this time you've been jealous of me? Impeccable timing, bitch!”

Oh shit, Katie was crying. Bawling.

Harper's brain curled up into a fetal position. It would not
allow her to process what she'd just seen. Unfortunately, she couldn't erase it either.

Luke—her Luke.

With Lily—Katie's bff Lily (
that
figured).

Luke and Lily, together as a couple, at the share house. Her hideaway.

After slamming the refrigerator, she'd fled, raced out the back door, down the beach to the water's edge.

Back in Boston, the awful day Luke had told her he'd found somebody else, Harper believed that if she saw him and his new “soul mate” holding hands and swapping saliva, the sight would send a knife to the heart. A pain so deep, death would be welcome. So she'd left Boston, avoided any
possibility of running into them. Apparently, escape wasn't in the cards.

But a funny thing happened on the way to death-by-heartbreak, or maybe it just happened on her sprint from the house to the beach: She didn't die. She didn't even feel like dying. She'd seen her ex, she'd taken in Lily's skinny arm coil around his waist, and yeah, it reminded her of the way she and Luke used to walk with their hands slipped into each other's back pockets. That sight alone should have
flattened
her. But here she was, still standing. Digging her toe into the muddy sand, kicking it into the water.

She could breathe just fine. She could breathe
fire
.

Harper turned her back to the water and stalked toward the house. She needed a word with Luke, a little face time. She needed to barge right in on their reconciliation scene, Katie's and Lily's—and yank the boy away. “You don't mind if I borrow him?” she'd ask, not intending to wait for an answer.

Somehow, some way, Luke was going to give it up, explain to her what went wrong, why exactly he'd dumped her. What had she done to make him leave without warning, to render undone everything they had together?

And for Lily? How had this spoiled superficial bitch become his soul mate, his muse, forcing him to discard Harper like some crumpled-up verse that'll never be a poem, that isn't working?

It almost didn't matter what he said, she reflected, stomping onto the backyard deck. Just getting him to admit he'd shafted her was enough—and that the reason could
no way
have been sex. That would be just so trite, such a cliché! The Luke she knew and adored was just deeper than that; their relationship had meant so much, hadn't needed sex to prove it.

Harper had her hand on the back doorknob when she stopped suddenly. There was music playing. Norah Jones's jazzy romantic song: “Come Away with Me.” The song had been this huge hit, could've been coming from any radio, anywhere. But Harper knew exactly where it was coming from. This was the live version, from the CD she'd bought for Luke.

She walked around the side of the house, to where Lily had parked her gas-guzzling status-symbol Esplanade SUV. Luke was in the driver's seat, his head bent forward, fiddling with the CD player. Had he meant for Harper to hear it? Was he summoning her?

No, this was
her
deal now. She flung open the passenger door and climbed in the car. She was confronting him—not the other way around.

“Harper!” His voice caught in his throat. Good, he hadn't seen her coming. The next thing he'd do was run his fingers through his silky hair; it's what he always did when he was nervous. That much hadn't changed.

But she had. Once, Luke's lopsided smile would've sent
her reeling. Now, it just looked dumb. He mumbled, “I had no idea you were here. That was so not cool. I'm really sorry.”

Not, “How are you?” Not, “I was such a shit.” Not, “I've made a huge mistake, and now that I see you, I realize it.” What had she expected? Harper was in shapeless, oversize cutoffs and a ratty T-shirt; Lily, decked in a sexy designer mini that left little unexposed. When she'd been with Luke, it had been a total mind-meld, the solace of true understanding of each other, combined with the rush of creating something together.

Lily offered him …? Obvious, much?

What she'd needed to know only a few minutes ago—What are you doing with her? How could you leave me for her? What does she have that I don't? What did she use that I didn't?—was painfully clear. As transparent as Luke's trite little heart. Sex. All along it had been sex.

Harper's eyes flitted to the dashboard, to a piece of folded-up paper. It was familiar-looking, the orange crinkly border distinctive. Funny Lily would have the same kind of paper as her old journal. Harper's heart seized as understanding dawned. Before Luke could stop her, she grabbed it.

 

Some people come into your life,

and are gone forever.

Some people come into your life

and stay forever.

Some people come into your life

and leave footprints on your heart,

and you are forever changed.

 

He'd used … Wite-Out? At the top, where she'd written “Dear Luke,” he'd substituted “Dear Lily.” And where she'd signed it, he'd whited out her name and signed his own.

“Wait!” Luke frantically tried to wrest the poem from her. “That's not—”

Harper didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

And then she knew everything she needed to know: Luke Clearwater wasn't worth wasting any emotion on whatsoever.

She was shivering. It wasn't just the goose bumps raised on her
bare arms and uncovered shoulders, or her fight to keep her teeth from chattering; Mandy Starr's chills ran to the bone. Something was not kosher in downtown Denmark, or whatever that expression was.

“Perfect! Oh, per-
fec
-tion, you are de-
lec
-table!” Joe Lester, the photographer Tim had introduced her to, was practically salivating as he ogled her through his camera lens. The emotion—if you could call it that—was seconded by Joe's “assistant,” Skeever, who leered on approvingly. “Ain't she sweet,” drooled the balding lump of lard, staring at her from the corner of the room. “Ain't she a treat.”

Mandy stifled the urge to march up and drop him.

What was this mound of shit doing, anyway? Weren't
assistants supposed to adjust the lighting, futz with those umbrella-things? Or at the very least, brandish a hairbrush, offer her a bottle of mineral water, or hello, lip gloss, anyone? Weren't they supposed to be assisting? The schlub leaning against the wall, hairy belly protruding from his too-short T-shirt, was a just a pig.