Some Boy (What's Love? #1) (7 page)

And though I was stoically staring at the coat-check window, I could feel his presence getting closer. In my peripheral vision, I could see him staring down at a phone in his hands as he walked. So much for not having one.

He passed behind me, not looking up. It was possible that he actually hadn’t seen me, he seemed so engrossed. A few more steps and he’d be at the door into Mine, the club I’d just exited.

“Brendan,” I said at the last minute, mentally rolling my eyes at myself. But the sight of him with a phone had snapped something in me, and instead of avoiding any awkwardness, I was ready to create it.

His head whipped around, and then he grinned, turning to face me. “Kat. You
are
here.” Then he glanced at the coat-check window and the girl there shaking my jacket at me impatiently. “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah,” I said tersely. I grabbed my jacket and started wrestling with it, clumsy in my drunken annoyance.

“Glad I caught you then. Though to be honest, if I hadn’t been able to find you here, I was going to just go sit on your doorstep till you got home.” He’d come up close to me, and he reached around to grab the shoulder of my jacket so I could slip my arm in. His hand lingered, straightening my collar, and he was still smiling at me.

“Maybe if you had my phone number, you wouldn’t have to be waiting on doorsteps,” I said. Now he was there in front of me, I was experiencing a strange mix of lust and anger. It was the anger I was acting on.

“Uh. True,” he said. “I was trying to call Justin, but he hasn’t been answering all night.”

I was just frowning at him, and then I turned to walk away. Brendan jogged a little, turning backwards for a few steps to get in front of me. He put his hand on my shoulder to stop me, and as I stared at it, I remembered the first day I had met him, when he had done the same thing.

“Have I done something wrong?”

“I don’t want to be a booty call anymore. And it’s not even a call, since you never asked for my number. You just think you can show up at my door and get laid.” And then I sighed, heavily. “Which you’re perfectly entitled to think, because that’s exactly what has happened. Forget it. I just want to go home.”

But I didn’t move. I stayed watching him, wondering if I was so drunk that I wasn’t actually articulating the words I thought I was saying, because Brendan was just staring at me bewildered. I was starting to feel dizzy.

“That’s not how I thought of it,” he said.

“Not how you thought of what?” I was feeling a little sick and I wanted to sit down, but there were no chairs in the hallway.

“Do you want to come outside?”

I nodded. When he tried to put his arm around my back to lead me out, I shrugged him off and stalked on, leaving him to trail behind. And once I was outside, I sank down onto the low concrete wall around a garden bed. Brendan sat, too, but at a safe distance.

Somewhere in my sozzled brain I was aware my behaviour was sliding towards crazy, but not in control enough to stop it. The fact that I still just wanted to crawl into his arms and kiss him was making me mad, too. I wrapped my arms around myself and pouted a little.

“Why did you never ask for my number?” I said, drawing my knees up to my chest to get into a tighter self-protective ball. I was stuck on that. I couldn’t work out if it was actually a big deal or not, and I couldn’t let it go.

“Fine, what’s your number, Kat? I’ll put it into my phone now.”

“It’s too late now,” I was saying, but Brendan was still talking.

“Into my
new
phone, which I only got
today.
After not having a phone for years and doing just fine. What is it, Kat? I’ll put it in right now, to this phone I bought specifically so I could get
your
number. Look, there’s Justin. The only other person in there, just so I could call him to find
you
. And, look, now I’m putting in your name, see.. K…A…T. Or should I just put you under Booty Call One?”

I was staring at him open mouthed. Then I uncurled, grabbed his phone out of his hand, where he’d been shoving it in my face, and I jabbed at it for a minute. He frowned a little, but just watched me with a stony expression.
 

I handed it back.

On the screen, in the new contact form he had opened up I had typed my number. And in the space where my name should have been, I’d typed
The Crazy Drunk Girl.
And as the surname,
Who Is Really Sorry.

His mouth twitched into a half smile.

“I’m leaving it like that, you know,” he said, locking the phone and sticking it in his pocket. Then he looked at me.

“Good. You’ll probably need to refer to it again. Many times.”

“Will I?” he said, and grinned. “And by that, I assume you mean you want me around to berate more often?”

I considered him for a moment and his face sobered. “Did you really only just buy that phone today?”

“Yeah.”

“And just for my number?”

He didn’t say anything. I don’t think he’d planned to tell me that, but I could read the truth of it in his face as he looked at me.

“I’ve never made any promises to be good at this, but I though you knew how I felt,” he said, shifting closer to me.

“How the fuck would I know that?” I said, then I looked down as his hand found mine on the concrete below us, his fingers covering mine.

“You think I show up in my underwear for just any girl?”

“I don’t know what you’d do. I barely know you,” I said, glancing at his face and then back down at our fingers. I felt the flaming heat in the pit of my stomach, but I felt afraid too.

“Well, get to know me, then.”

I looked up at his face to tell him that I’d tried, that he wouldn’t answer my questions, but I was distracted by his amber eyes so close to mine.

Then he pulled his phone back out of his pocket and hit a few buttons. I felt my purse vibrating against my thigh and glanced down at it. He pressed another button and put his phone away, and the vibrating stopped.

“There. Now you have my number. You’ve got me on your chain. Yank it and I’ll do your bidding.”

I started to protest. “I don’t want you to—”

“I’m kidding,” he said with a grin, learning in closer to me. “Sort of.” His hand was going to my face and he drew himself to me and kissed me. I was still frozen, my head spinning.

“Brendan,” I said against his mouth, and he drew back, waiting for whatever was coming next. But I had so many things swirling in my brain, that I couldn’t pluck out any and actually speak. So instead, I said, “Take me home?”

And he did.

I
DIDN
’
T
SNEAK
out of bed this time. One, because I was trapped on the wall side of my single bed, while Brandon’s body took up most of the space where he lay on his stomach, one arm dangling off the side. But I didn’t begrudge him that, because my second reason for not getting up was the visual appreciation of Brendan’s body in my bed. The night before, I’d got up, showered and put on a T-shirt and pants before going to sleep, but he slept naked.

And I wasn’t complaining.

I leant down and kissed his bare shoulder lightly. And breathed in his scent. He hadn’t been drinking at all the night before, so there was no stale alcohol smell to mask his goodness.
 

My phone buzzed on my bedside table. Trying not to disturb him, I raised myself on one arm and my knees and tried to balance and lean over to reach it.
 

But then I saw his eyes pop open just as I was hovering over his face.

“Hey,” he said and grinned.

“Hey.” He flipped over underneath me and pulled me down on top of him.

“I was awake while you were sniffing me,” he said, still grinning.

“I was not
sniffing
you,” I said, indignantly. I straddled him and grabbed his arms off me, pinning them to the mattress above his head. Then in a quieter voice, I added, “You just smell good.”

“Good enough to eat?” I laughed at the hopefulness in his face, then I looked closer at a mark on his neck, taking one hand off his arm to run a fingertip over it.

“Looks like I already tried,” I said. I dipped my head and kissed the hickey. He tilted his head back, giving me easier access, and I kissed lower, down to his collarbone.

“You won’t hear me complaining.” I could feel his total lack of complaint coming to life underneath me. I was kissing down his chest now and tweaked his nipple between my teeth.

“No?” I said, looking up at him.

“Tit for tat,” he said, and flipped me over. Then he lowered his face to where one of my nipples raised the fabric of my T-shirt. He was just closing his mouth over it when my door burst open and Izzy slipped in, shutting it behind her and leaning against it.

Brendan turned his head to the side to stare at her, and we all froze in a strange tableau.

“Uh, Izzy?” I said eventually. “What the fuck?”

“Sorry, guys, it’s just…ah, Kat…”

“Yes,” I encouraged, nudging Brendan off me, and sitting up to look at her.

She whispered something that I couldn’t hear. I frowned. “What?”

“Your parents are here.” It wasn’t much louder the second time, but I heard her clearly and I think my heart stopped for a second.

“What? Like, in the building?”

“Yeah. Like, in the kitchen.”

“What the hell are they doing here at…eleven o’clock? Shit, how’d it get so late?”

I was scrambling out of bed and hunting my room for something—anything—clean that did not need ironing. “Why didn’t they call first?” I mumbled to myself, then checked my phone and saw that I did actually have three missed calls. “Fuck.”

“You’re okay for a minute; Justin’s entertaining them and he barely looks hungover. And Steph. How cool is she, by the way. So sweet.”

“What are they doing here? After my mum deigned to visit the first time, when I was moving in, and turned up her nose at everything, I thought I was safe from her ever stepping foot in here again.”

I was so flustered that it barely occurred to me that I was getting changed in front of an audience. Not that either of them hadn’t seen it all before.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a plaid shirt that was hanging in my wardrobe. Hanging, because I never usually wore it. But it was the cleanest, most unwrinkled thing I currently owned. I hadn’t done laundry all week. I was twisting back and forth in front of the mirror, combing my hair with my fingers, when my eyes flickered over to Brendan, and I did a double take. He was still lounging in the bed, looking amused and with a sheet barely covering him.

I noticed Izzy glancing appreciatively.

“Ah, shit.”

“Who, me?” Brendan said with a grin. “Want me to hide here?”

“She’ll probably want to come in here,” I said and then bit my lip. Apart from Brendan’s and my clothes strewn around, it was okay—I’d been trained long-sufferingly into being tidy by habit—but still probably not up to my mother’s standards. When I had first moved in, she had asked if I wanted our housekeeper to come around and clean the place weekly. The whole place, not just my room.

I’d said no, of course. Even though occasionally I regretted that, once I found out how messy Justin and Izzy could be.
 

“Want me to sneak out, then?” Brendan was saying. I looked at him.

“No, stay.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Sure?”

“If you’re up for it?” A little smile was creeping on to my face, wickedly.

Brendan narrowed his eyes. “Are you using me to make your parents freak out?”

I bit my lip again. “Maybe?”

“I’m cool with that,” he said. “Just need to know how to play it.”

“What, on a scale from choir boy to car thief?” I grinned. “Just be yourself.”

“Okay,” he said. “You asked for it.”

I had a momentary flutter of apprehension, but I ignored it.

Brendan sat up and started getting out of bed. Izzy was staring.

“Thanks, Iz. Tell them I’ll be out in a sec. Iz?”

“Ah, yeah. Okay.” She snapped her eyes to me, gave me an eyebrow raise with a grin, and then departed.

I stood where I was in the middle of the room and watched Brendan myself. My gaze flickered over him, down the lines of his lean back, the way his muscles flexed as he leaned down to pick up his shirt from the ground, and I felt a smile creeping on to my face. Then I spotted the hickey again.
 

I made a face and Brendan noticed. “What?”

I flickered my fingers on the side of my own neck, grimacing.

“I thought you wanted to freak them out?”

“Yeah, but not make my mum die of a heart attack. My cousin had one, once, and Mum wouldn’t shut up for a week about how obscene it was.”

Brendan just shrugged. “Not much I can do about it.” Then he saw me glance at the make-up on my dressing table. “No fucking way.”

I put my palms up in surrender. “Okay, okay. Forget it. Let’s just get out there. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“
I’m
fine. Are you?”

“Nope.”

I led the way to the kitchen feeling slightly sick. It was only once my hand was on the door handle that I suddenly wondered, with a flutter of panic, why they were here. Like, really wondered and had all sorts of drastic scenarios enter my head about why on earth they would come to see me on a Saturday morning. They’d gone bankrupt. Someone had cancer. Someone was dead.
 

“Kat?” Brendan was whispering in my ear, and I realised I had just been standing there for a long time.

“Yeah,” I breathed, and then I pushed on the door. Just as I started walking through, Brendan linked his fingers with mine. I squeezed tightly, both grateful and terrified.

As I suspected would happen, my mum’s appraising eyes honed right in on those linked hands, my hand in Brendan’s, this slightly scruffy boy I’d never mentioned before. Though it didn’t feel like my hand, since I was having an out of body experience, my psyche wanting to distance itself from the crackling tension in the room, mostly centred around my mother. I saw her nostrils flare, the clear signal that she was not well pleased.

I took my hand out of Brendan’s to kiss them both in greeting. They were standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, my mum clutching her handbag to herself like she was afraid it would be infected if she set it down.