No Strings Attached (9 page)

Her relationship with Luke Clearwater had started as a friendship. Two outsiders bonding over poetry, writing. They'd met at Barnes & Noble. She'd been sitting on the floor, blocking the narrow aisle with Maya Angelou's inspirational
And Still I Rise
spread on her knees. People stepped around her, or over her, mumbling annoyed “
excuse
me's.” Luke had knelt down next to her, clutching a copy of
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes
. And for the next hour, shoppers had to avoid stepping on both of them.

It was through the words, then, written by others, that Harper and Luke had scripted their own love story. It had all seemed so organic.

And simple. He
got
her. Understood her passions because he shared so many of them. He wasn't put off by her moods—as her mom constantly reminded her, she was either sulky or sarcastic, serious or angry. She trusted Luke with her ideas, her own poetry, her real self. He responded kindly and constructively, admitting that “My Brother” (a poem reflecting Harper's longing for a sibling) made him cry. He'd helped her with one called “Flat,” wondering if the poem about spiritual death wouldn't be more powerful if she killed that middle verse.

Harper had taken a big breath, and a bigger chance, exposing her soul to him. It was her first time.

Harper helped Luke, too. He was a senior at Boston Latin High School and delivered pizza after school, but he had the soul of a writer. Unfortunately, he had trouble stitching his profound, but scattered thoughts into a cohesive story. She'd worked on that with him, forcing him to think through what he wanted to say. “If you can think it, you can write it,” Harper counseled.

Dude, she'd done good by him. One short story got published in
The New Yorker
magazine; an essay got selected for NPR, National Public Radio. Not that any of the kids at school would've heard of it. But both the literary magazine and the radio station were big, big deals. With Harper's encouragement,
Luke had just sent a collection to a literary agency, hoping maybe some agent would sign him up.

Their relationship had its physical side. Harper loved the way Luke kissed her—soul kisses that could last for days, as he'd written. And she loved the way he touched her, slowly, lovingly, all over.

He was willing to wait, he'd said, for the rest. He was willing to wait, he'd said, for her to be ready.

Until the day he'd casually said, “See ya,” and walked out of her life.

Stunned, paralyzed, Harper had begged to know why. It wasn't about sex, he'd assured her.

It was worse.

He'd found another muse. His
real
soul mate.

A raindrop, or maybe a tear, squiggled down her cheek, dripped onto her open journal, and pooled on the page, blurring an entire paragraph. Harper used the corner of her towel to blot it up, and dabbed her eye as well. Even alone, she did not want to cry over him. It was
not
, contrary to popular pop-psychology belief, cathartic. In spite of what she wanted, the tears kept coming. She closed her journal, and let them—and the rain, for it was drizzling now—have their way.

Sometime later, over her sniffles, she heard the squeak of the backyard fence open and close, followed by squishy footsteps through the wet grass. Harper froze.

“I looked all over, but I couldn't find an umbrella in the house. Brought the next best thing.”

Harper turned her head and squinted. Through her blobby-wet eyelashes she saw Joss, a Yankees cap shielding his head from the rain. He was offering her one with a
SPRINGSTEEN
logo. He was toting a bottle of wine and a paper bag.

He looked so ridiculous, this reedy-thin hippie longhair in his torn jeans, faded Rolling Stones T-shirt, and baseball cap coming to “rescue” her. She started to laugh through her tears.

“Was it something I said?” Joss knelt next to her in the wetly packed sand as she took the alt rain hat from him.

“Just a surreal moment.” She was grateful, and stuffed as much as she could of her springy hair under the cap. “So what, you looked outside and saw me sitting in the rain?” Harper hoped that hadn't come out as an accusation.

“Pretty much, yeah. And from experience? Girls rarely enjoy getting their hair wet unless there's a swimming pool nearby.”

“True dat,” Harper conceded. She nodded at the wine bottle. “On your way out?”

“I managed to liberate some libations, a lively little Bordeaux, along with some hors d'ouevres, courtesy of The Naked Oyster. Thought you might want.”

Suddenly, Harper was salivating. “Did you bring a corkscrew?”

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a Swiss Army knife.

“A Boy Scout,” Harper said, making room for him on her blanket. “Who'd a thunk?”

“Never made it past Cub Scouts. I'm not big on anything organized.”

Harper peered into the paper bag. “All right! Real imitation cheese-food. And one hundred percent artificial Doritos. Perfect.”

“Hey, the price was right.” Joss freed the cork from the bottle.

Harper grinned and took the wine from his outstretched hand. She wasn't much of a drinker; a random beer pretty much summed up the extent of her experience. Time to widen her horizons. She closed her eyes, hoisted the bottle to her lips, took a swig, and nearly spit it out. “Vinegar, much?”

Joss laughed. “You should see your face.” He handed her a cube of cheese. “Can't be that bad. We charge something like eight dollars a glass for this.”

“Dude, your customers are getting robbed,” she said, wiping her mouth and watery eyes on her sweatshirt sleeve. “But as long as it does its job, I'm all over it.”

“Self-medicating?” Josh guessed.

“I'll let you know if it works.” She handed it back to him.

“It will—temporarily, at least,” he assured her.

“Temporary will do. For now.”

“So, anyway,” Joss said, “I'm thinking you came out here to be alone. I'll split. Unless you feel like talking. There's a strict code of bartender-client privilege. What goes in here”—he pointed to his ear—“stays in here. If not, they revoke my license.”

Harper giggled. He was trying to be cute. But on the real, Joss must be privy to a whole mess of sagas. A summer's worth of lonely hearts confessionals. Boozy babes coming on to him, loser dudes confiding their frustration at “never getting any.” Harper could hear it all now. She would trust him? Not so much. But she
was
curious. “You like bartending?”

“It's cool. Between the gig and the share house, I get to stay put for a few months.”

Harper was about to ask what he did when he wasn't staying in one place, when the loud crash of smashing glass made them jump. It came from behind them—the house. And now Mitch yelling, Ali pleading, and Mandy bursting her vocal cords.

Joss leaped up. “Better see what happened. Be right back.”

Harper thought about going with him, but what could she do? Alefiya's laissez-faire attitude was going to rile Mitch all summer.

Joss returned about ten minutes later. “It seems, in a gross violation of house rules, the ferret got free—and, as usual,
Mandy lost it. One freaked-out ferret, and one large table lamp. You do the math.”

“Equals,” she quipped, “one apoplectic Mitch, one pissed-off bitch, and one Hindu pitching excuses about how the Not-a-Rodent just got scared?”

“That's rich.” Joss kept the rhyming beat. “Poetry and irony—comes naturally to you, does it?”

Harper squirmed. “And what part did Katie play in today's episode of our daily domestic drama?”

“Bailed. I saw her duck out the door just as I got there.”

“Typical.” Harper tsk-tsked. “The queen of control doesn't like when things get messy. Her game is strictly passive-aggressive.”

“I thought you were her friend.”

“Not even remotely,” Harper confessed. “She goes to my high school, she posted a Web ad, and I answered. End of story.”

“So you and Katie are two agendas passing in the night, huh? I'm guessing you didn't like her much back in high school,” Joss speculated.

“I don't like her much now. She's a self-centered, materialistic, lying, manipulative opportunist. A conniving witch in Abercrombie clothing who brings her own designer toilet paper to a crappy share house.”

“But tell us what you really think, Harper,” Joss cracked, taking another swill of the wine.

“Oh, come on, tell me you like her,” Harper challenged. “Word to the wise, if you do—you're not her type. She's all about the money, honey. Working slobs need not apply.”

Joss paused, as if crafting his answer required careful thought. Finally, he said, “I don't really know Katie. But I know her type. She probably feels she has to pretend everything's groovy even when things totally suck. It's a hard ruse to keep up.”

Harper mimed playing the violin.

Joss laughed. “Point taken.”

“Katie can fend for herself; girlfriend has got it all under control. It's Alefiya I'm worried about. Granted, she's messy, spacey—and forgetful. But she's good people, compassionate, generous, just real.” Harper looked to Joss for validation. She found it in his furrowed brow. “The others can't stand her—I'm worried they might drive her out, do something really hurtful.”

“Housemates,” Josh deadpanned. “Can't live with 'em. Can't set 'em on fire.”

Harper broke into peels of laughter, slapped the sand. “Good one.”

Joss started to bury the now drained wine bottle. “My money's on Mitch, for the one with the troubled road ahead.”

“Why? He's probably the most together of us.”

“That's what he thinks too—and that's the problem.”

Harper looked at him quizzically. “Do you know something?”

“Just what I feel,” Joss admitted. “T'ain't pretty.”

Maybe it was the buzz of the wine, or that Joss actually worried about other people—including herself—sitting out in the rain. But for the first time, she took real note of him. “Where are you from?”

“Nowhere in particular.”

“Everyone's from somewhere,” she scoffed, hoping he'd say New York.

“Mostly, I travel.”

“A real wanderer,” Harper mused, “from place to place, bar to bar, supporting yourself as it comes?”

“Something like that.” Joss pointed to her journal. “And you? Poet? Writer?”

“Something like that.”

The rain, never more than a steady drizzle, had settled for full-out mist, from which moonbeams now poked. And Harper found herself opening up—just a crack—to Joss. She admitted to writing, and yes, poetry was her thing. Why? No concrete reason. There was something about the way he looked at her, and who it
didn't
remind her of. Luke had been full of passion. He'd been smitten by Harper, and wore it on his sleeve. Not Joss. Joss seemed genuinely curious. Interested.

She found she was too.

The night Joss joined Harper on the beach was not the first
time he'd spied her out there alone.

It was the first time he had an excuse to go to her, be alone with her, get to know her. He wasn't into her in a sexual way, he didn't think. It was more an itch he couldn't scratch: Something about her continued to intrigue him. It seemed important to figure it out.

For her part, the sarcastic and contrary roommate—the one he'd nicknamed Angry Young Babe—was grateful for his company. He still couldn't nail who she reminded him of, but sitting close to her, talking, joking, swilling some wine, he'd learned a lot.

Someone had broken her heart; she didn't need to come out and tell him. But she was grieving. Still, she'd been funny,
and smart and creative. Instinct told him that she was musical. Poetry, yeah. Put it to music, you call it lyrics. He'd bet anything she played
something
. Piano, possibly; guitar, more likely.

Lying in bed that night, Joss suddenly had a hunch about Harper. He decided to follow up on it in his spare time.

Not that he had a lot. Mostly, he was working, or otherwise engaged. Late nights he was at the bar, and even later nights he found plenty of distractions. Or rather, they found him.

Women had always told him he was sexy. How many of his father's bimbettes had secretly come on to him? Joss had stopped counting long ago. With girls his own age, it was the same deal. All through prep school, he'd been the catch, the meat, the prime, grade-A hunk. The big “get.”

It did nothing for him. It was like this macho joke his dad used to repeat: A sexy young starlet approaches a big-time Hollywood agent at a party. She says, “Come upstairs and I'll give you the best b.j. you've ever had.” The agent replies, “Yeah, but what's in it for me?”

Joss could not conceive of being that cruel to anyone, but like so many charismatic guys, he got the joke. He'd walked out on that life. No one knew him here, and yet women were drawn to him just the same. They found him mysterious, intriguing. That was cool. There were no strings, expectations, or pretenses. Just fun flings, safe and anonymous.

The one he regretted was Mandy. “Never shit where you eat.” Another of Father's Favorite Filthy Clichés. Meaning, getting involved with someone at work, or who lived nearby, was doomed to end in disaster.

Between him and Mandy it was like this: Nights she came home disappointed, frustrated, pissed off—pretty much her three main moods—she came knocking at his door. A booty call.

It had only been a few times, but Joss was ready to knock it off. The momentary pleasure—he'd always been a sucker for redheads—wasn't worth the potential complications. For one thing, it prevented him from bringing another girl to the house, should he want to. It'd be too weird. For another, secrets weren't likely to remain so for long. The walls were paper thin, Mandy's mouth anything but.