ROCK HARD (A BRITISH ROCKSTAR BAD BOY ROMANCE) (22 page)

I
grew concerned
when Dalton didn’t answer my texts all weekend. It wasn’t like him to ignore me, and I was beginning to think that something was really wrong.

It was Sunday night when he finally rang. On misguided principle, I almost didn’t answer.

“Hello, stranger,” I greeted him bitterly.

“Clara,” he replied over the phone. Something was wrong with his voice. “I’m sorry that I’ve been distant the last few days, I’ve just been… dealing with something.”

“Oh? What might that be?”

There was a pause over the line.

“My grandfather is dying.”

Regret instantly panged inside my heart. Here I was, furious that he hadn’t been in touch since leaving early Friday night, and he was grieving the coming loss of his grandfather?

Way to fucking go, Clara.

“Oh my god. I’m so sorry, Dalton. Is there anything that I can do?” I asked tenderly, trying to quickly kill the residual frustration inside.

“I want company. Can you come over?”

I paused. This was a big step.

“Are you… are you sure that’s what you want?” I asked, swallowing my hesitation. I had a faint idea of the kind of
comforting
he’d want if I drove over there, and I wasn’t quite prepared to give that. “I mean, I just don’t want you to be disappointed or anything…”

“You’re right. Forget it,” he replied tersely.

Second time I’ve fucked up today.

“No, Dalton, I didn’t mean it like–”

“I said
forget it
,” he insisted. “Anyway. I’m going to just watch some TV and go to sleep. Have a good night. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

With that, he hung up.

I stood there, holding the silent phone to my head like an idiot for a couple of minutes. All sorts of thoughts spiraled through my head –
How could I be so cold? What would really happen if I went? Would he even open the door if I did?

Lowering my phone, I stumbled out into the apartment like an emotionally drained zombie. Natalie was lying on the couch with her boyfriend, Jared. Her head was in his lap, and he was absentmindedly stroking her hair while they watched something together.

As if she had some sort of Super Roommate ESP, she bolted upright as I came out.

“Hey. What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing,” I replied apathetically, glancing up at her.

Her eyes slid from mine down to the phone in my hand. “You finally got him on the line, didn’t you? And you heard something you didn’t like?”

“He, uh, his grandparents are dying. I mean, just his grandfather, I guess,” I responded mindlessly. “He asked me to go over, but I didn’t think it was a good idea. When I said that, he got mad at me.”

“Of
course
he’s mad at you, you big, dumb oaf,” Natalie chuckled, shaking her head. “Look, so you’re not exactly the most comforting chick on the block. Whatever. You know where he lives, right? Go see him.”

Jared nodded quietly, trying to contribute to the conversation in some way.

“But he’s angry.”

“So what? He’ll be
fine
when he sees you. Maybe not
immediately,
but if you work some of your feminine charm on the guy… eh, he’ll come back around.”

“You want me to sleep with him?”

“
You
do
you
, girl,” she smiled cheerily. “If that’s what you want, then yeah. Just don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with. I don’t think he’ll exactly be ready to totally jump your bones if this is still sinking in.”

“That sounds reasonable,” I agreed.

“Good. So, get out of here and go to him.”

“You just want me out of here so that you two can fuck,” I grinned sort of slyly, placing my hand on my hip. “Because you guys are.
Loud. As. Fuck.”

“If
fuck
had a volume, I guess it would have to be pretty loud,” Natalie nodded to herself. “But the loud sex is how you know it’s
great
sex. You’re totally right, though. I want to take this beautiful, stupid boy to
Pound Town
until the night’s halfway gone.”

“Did you just call me
stupid
?” Jared raised his eyebrow at her.

“Oh, baby,” Nat replied with a high, cooing voice, caressing his cheek. “Of course I did. Honey, you’re as dumb as a burlap sack of crap. But you’re cute, and your cock fits
so good
inside me…”

“I am
not listening to this
,” I loudly reminded.

“You sure as fuck
are
if you’re not getting pretty and hopping in that rust-bucket car of yours!” She replied airily, turning towards me and ignoring Jared’s contemptuous look. “Go forth, young padawan. Your man doth require thy supple, womanly figure! Fulfill thine destiny and fuck until the sun rises!”

“I’m not fucking him tonight!” I declared, covering my ears and retreating from the room.

Natalie was loudly continuing her awful old English accent and reciting pseudo Shakespearean gibberish, but I playfully muffled out the noise as I changed into something more flattering than loose pajamas.

Confident in my selection, I modeled it off for her beside the couch.

Natalie responded in her most outlandishly regal voice, accentuating practically every syllable: ““Oh,
darrrling
, you look
magnificent
.”

After a smug, countering smile, I snatched up my keys and bid them goodnight. As far as I was aware, I was coming back, but I didn’t want to make any presumptions about the night.

Especially when Dalton was mad at me.

Pulling up the directions on my smartphone, I kicked my car into drive and navigated into the streets. It was awfully convenient that he didn’t live very far at all. Even with some congestion, it was insisting that I could be knocking on his door within a tentative fifteen minutes.

After a few red lights, some jackass almost sideswiping me to get into my lane, and a flock of pedestrians stalling traffic for a moment, I was pulling in front of his home.

Dalton appeared to be renting a small house, located on the edge of the city. There was enough room for maybe two cars in the driveway – I could see his motorcycle, as well as a car I didn’t recognize.
Makes sense that he has one of each,
I figured to myself.

Instead of trying to fit in there, I found a spot a couple of houses down and parallel parked out in front.

My confidence wavered for the first time since leaving my apartment. Confronted with actually
seeing him
again within a matter of seconds, I wasn’t precisely sure what I was going to say to him.

Way to think this through, Clara.

I double-checked the address twice before knocking on his front door. His house was wrapped in white wooden siding, with his front patio receding beneath the overhang of the roof. There were a couple of windows, with the curtains drawn, but I could see light filtering out.

A shadow moved. The curtain drew apart slightly, and I couldn’t make out who was behind it. But the silhouette moved back into place without greeting the door.

Oh great,
I thought to myself.
I’ve gone through all this effort, and he just doesn’t want to see me at all?

Swallowing my frustration, I knocked again. This time, the silhouette moved out of sight, and there came the sound of creaking footsteps from just on the other side of the door.

I noticed the peephole, and stepped back from it to give a better look, although I fully expected to be recognized.

“Hi?” I heard from the other side of the door. The voice belonged to someone else – a guy, somewhere between both our ages.

“I’m here for Dalton?” I replied, guessing I was speaking to a roommate. “Do I have the right house? This is where he said he lived.”

I heard the sound of the door unlocking, and it creaked open enough for a grimy face to peer out. The stranger was clearly trying to grow out a beard, but he wasn’t getting anything more than a thick, scruffy mess. His eyes were jittery, and he could stand to wash his face off.

“For Dalton? Who’re you?”

I sighed.

“My name’s Clara. Is he here?”

The guy looked at me suspiciously before shouting over his shoulder. He conspicuously kept his eyes glued to me, as if
I
were the shady one here.

“Hey, Dalton? Some
girl’s
here for you. Clara? Ring a bell? Want me to make her go away?”

A muffled response came, and the guy looked over at me with a half-sneer. “Uh, come in, I guess. Make yourself at home. Don’t touch my stuff.”

“This is my first time here,” I told him in barely-covered exasperation. “How am I gonna know what things are
yours
?”

The strange roommate froze, apparently contemplating that. “You know what? Don’t touch
anything
then. My stuff is mine. Not yours.”

“Duly noted,” I replied crisply, following him inside. He pointed me towards the couch as he took up residence in a comfortable recliner, snatching up the remote. He turned the volume back up on a TV that practically
dwarfed
even our own, and I glanced around at my surroundings.

The house was decorated sparsely, but it was surprisingly clean for a place where
this
character lived. Clearly, I didn’t have to worry about touching any of his things… there’s no way that any of this belonged to him.

The furniture was nice and reasonably expensive, with the exception of the filthy chair that the stranger occupied. There were some throw pillows on the couch and a folded blanket, lying over the back; it seemed like it had been bought without much consideration, just to fill the space and look good.

The walls were a soft opaque tan color, which worked well with the furniture selections and the sprawling Persian-style rug. It seemed that the whole house bore beautiful hardwood floors, which probably meant that it was going to be
chilly as fuck
when the winter finally came.

As for mental stimulation, a nearby bookcase carried a number of interesting books, including a lot of literary classics and authors: Mark Twain, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Isaac Asimov, and a number of others whom I barely recognized.

While I remained seated, glancing around my new environment and taking in a few pieces of art on the walls, I heard a lazy clamoring from deeper into the house.

A door opened, and heavy footsteps brought someone our way until Dalton’s face finally peered in around the doorway.

“Pete, I thought you said Clara was–”

He looked surprised when he saw me on the couch. “Wait. Clara, why didn’t you just come back here?”

“I, uh, was pointed this way?”

His face settled on his roommate. “Look, Pete, the next time I tell you to
let someone in and send her my way
, I’d like you to
actually
let them in and send them my way.”

Pete shrugged, his eyes glued to the screen.

Covering his face and sighing, Dalton motioned for me to follow him. He led me down a long hallway and towards the light of an open door, presumably his bedroom.

“You’ll have to forgive my, uh,
guest
,” Dalton replied tersely.

“Is he your roommate?” I asked.

“For a little while, I guess,” he conceded. “This place is mine alone, but Pete is an old marine buddy of mine. He’s suffering from some flashbacks from his days in the service… something I can sympathize with.” He paused a moment, changing his tone. “Pete’s getting back on his feet, and I told him that he could stay here a month or two. Turns out that he’s a bit skittish of unfamiliar company, I guess.”

“He was giving me the third-degree, that’s for sure. Ignored me when I knocked. I thought that was
you
peering at me through the curtains.”

“It was that bad?” He sighed. “Alright… I’ll have a word with him about that. I don’t need my weird friend scaring away the company and not opening the door for guests…”

Dalton held his door open for me, and I stepped into his bedroom. A large king-sized bed dominated the space. The walls bore a couple of posters – mostly models, sexily strutting for the camera. In the corner, there was a desk, set up with a computer; a display nearby had some awards on it, along with what looked like his Marines graduation gear.

There was another flat-screen TV on an entertainment stand, facing away from the bed. Although smaller than the living room set, it was still almost as big as our own television in Natalie’s apartment. He had it paused on some sort of nature documentary.

“I know it’s not much, but with this whole house to myself, I never know how to fill the space,” Dalton shrugged.

“No, I mean, it looks nice.”

He smirked. “Yeah. Nice.
This
looks nice. I’d hate to see what you think
bad
looks like. Anyway, what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to apologize for earlier,” I told him quietly. “Sorry if I came off a bit rude. And I just wanted to see you.”

“You wanted to
see me
, huh?” Dalton chuckled, although his eyes told me that he was pleased to hear this. “Come on over, then. The bed’s warm. Hope you don’t mind a little
Meerkat Manor
.”

“You’re watching
Meerkat Manor?
” I asked, amused. I didn’t really know that much about the show. From what I recalled, it dramatized the lives of a pack of meerkats in the Serengeti.

“Totally. This is my jam when I need a pick-me-up,” Dalton smiled. He kicked out across the huge bed, his back up against the wall. I settled down beside him, keeping just enough distance between us.

“This is so plush,” I thought aloud as I got comfortable on his bedding.

“Memory foam,” he chuckled.

“You’ve got a rental house, expensive TVs,
and
memory foam mattresses? What kind of crazy inheritance do you have?”

Dalton coughed involuntarily.

“Oh, I just have a big bank account, thanks to eight back-to-back years in the Marines,” he answered. “I mean, yeah, I probably splurged a little much, but I figured I’d treat myself now and get it all out of the way.”

“I see that,” I replied, looking around briefly.

The computer in the corner didn’t look particularly impressive, and besides some nice furniture and the televisions, it seemed like everything else was just here to fill the space attractively. Even the vehicles outside weren’t too crazy, although I was guessing now that the car probably belonged to his roommate.