No Strings

  No Strings

  STRINGS #1

  J.C. Hayden

  CONTENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  TITLE PAGE

  TRADEMARK ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  DEDICATION

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Epilogue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  No Strings is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright (c) 2018 by J.C. Hayden

  Published in the United States by J.C. Hayden

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsover without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  no strings

  J.C. Hayden

  TRADEMARK ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following trademarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Harry Potter series

  Carmen

  The Boston Globe

  My Fair Lady

  Sex and the City

  OutKast

  Pride and Prejudice

  Facebook

  Starbucks

  Twitter

  Uber

  Jane Eyre

  Snapchat

  Connect 4

  Katy Perry's "Firework"

  For my mom (even though she's not allowed to read this), who has always supported everything I've ever wanted to do, no matter how weird.

  Chapter one

  Truth or dare.”

  I kept my eyes on the bottle of beer that I had been nursing for the past half hour.

  There were mismatched bottles scattered in the middle of the aimless circle we had created. Bottles that Ben and Bryant Teagen had smuggled out past the front desk of their dorm, bottles that had probably been gathered randomly after a party their older brother had had in his apartment on Beacon Hill, bottles they had probably begged for, and bottles that I, having an older brother myself, understood had probably come with some steep promises of how such treasures could be paid back.

  It wasn’t that I had anything against drinking or against the parties that this group had almost every weekend with such contraband, I just wasn’t really used to it—the taste, the way it affected my brain. So, this was only my second bottle, and it wasn’t even nearly halfway finished.

  And, okay, some things had changed. I had grown into my body over the last few years. I went from being a tiny, shy girl with not much to speak of in the looks department to—finally, mercifully—having curves and angles in my face where my baby fat had been. Last year I wouldn’t have even considered spending any significant amount of time with my cousin Gabe’s group of friends. Gabe was the captain of the soccer team at Klein University, a small liberal arts school just outside Boston, and all of his friends were either athletes or cheerleaders or otherwise beautiful and glamorous people. Klein was a prestigious school, and a lot of the people that came here had trust funds and stock portfolios and things Gabe and I had never had growing up. But Gabe was tall and handsome and talented and everyone loved him, so no one seemed to care that he hadn’t grown up with an opulent lifestyle. If we were in high school, I would’ve designated his friends as the “popular crowd.” Reserved, book nerd, Harry Potter, jazz music, and opera and musical loving me would not have dreamed of sitting in this circle as a freshman. But now I was a senior. I was confident. I was attractive. I was bright.

  And Gabe had coerced me into coming, so here the hell I was.

  Because, also, some things hadn’t changed. Gabe’s friends were still taller and blonder and hotter than me (the girls), or they were so far out of my league it wasn’t even funny (the boys). They were still the people I’d met freshman year that I could barely speak in front of. And they were still playing a stupid game that I had played when I was sixteen years old.

  And back then I had hated it, too.

  It would be reckless of me not to try and have a clear mind in a room with people I barely knew, playing a game that was most likely going to embarrass me, with people who still probably thought of me as Gabe’s awkward cousin who was hardly worth a second glance.

  So, yeah, I was trying to keep the imbibing to a minimum.

  And at the mention of Truth or Dare, I was extremely thankful to myself for staying as sharp as possible because God only knew what was bound to happen.

  “So who wants to go first?” Holly Goldsmith, a friend of Gabe’s since freshman year, said from her spot in the circle, a sly smile on her pretty face.

  I felt my gut clench, but I kept my eyes down, trying not to let my nerves show.

  “Just don’t show any weakness in front of them and everything will be fine,” Gabe had said while he was convincing me to come to the party that night.

  “Gabe!”

  “I’m kidding, honestly!” Gabe said, laughing, holding up his hands in front of him protectively when he saw the crazed look in my eyes. “But…” His smile slipped only a little bit. “Look, they’re my friends and they’re great—most of the time—but sometimes they can be a little… ruthless.”

  “You’re doing a horrible job of making your case.”

  He laughed again. “I know, but we haven’t hung out in weeks, you and I, and with finals and the tournament coming up it’ll be impossible, so…” He put a hand on my shoulder. “Just come. And as long as you don’t let them bother you—or as long as you don’t show you’re bothered—you’ll have an amazing time.”

  “What the hell am I getting myself into…?”

  So now I was sitting next to Gabe, in a big circle in the middle of the living room of a big house that was rented out by several members of the Klein University soccer team. I was gamely ignoring the sympathetic and apologetic smile he flashed my way and smiling down at the floor in front of me, trying to show Gabe that I was making an effort, that I wasn’t worried about the game, that I was having fun, that I wasn’t running through a list of excuses to leave in my head.

  Holly—in her black miniskirt and tight, black, sparkling crop top that exposed most of her flat stomach, an outfit that was way too New York club scene for a night in—decided who would go first, of course, and giggled wildly and obnoxiously when Bryant Teagan dared her to give Brody a massage until it was his turn.

  I looked up when Bryant said his name, and I tried not to gasp when our eyes met.

  Brody Galen.

  King of the school.

  Goalie of the Klein soccer team.

  Tousled blonde hair.

  Piercingly clear gray eyes.

  Tall, broad shouldered, gorgeous.

  Cocky.

  Arrogant.

  Asshole.

  And Gabe’s best friend.

  He’d been around—painfully, obviously, blaringly around—since Brody had transferred to our grade school back when Gabe and I were in the third grade. The two of them had been inseparable ever since.

  It wasn’t that the Galens were enemies with our families or with anyone who had lived in West Concord, but it was fair to assume that nobody exactly welcomed the Galens with open arms when they moved in back then. Brody’s father Marsha
ll was a fairly well known defense attorney from Boston, and he had defended some incredibly notorious criminals, including a man who had been accused of running a crime syndicate in the city for several decades. My aunt and uncle always tried to be open-minded and fair to everyone they met, but inviting Brody to Gabe’s birthday parties had taken a bit of an adjustment on their part, knowing that his father might possibly be in attendance.

  Their family had moved to West Concord after Marshall Galen had decided to retire from criminal defense (no doubt after accruing an enormous fortune if the size of their house was any indication) and work on his book and his smaller private practice, but that didn’t make the transition into our small community a whole lot easier. People around town were still suspicious of him, still whispered when they saw him in the supermarket, still didn’t invite his wife, Clara, to social events, and didn’t ask them to participate in the annual town fair, when every local business was invited to have a booth on Main Street. No one in our big family had really expected that our families would pretty much be intertwined after years of seeing Brody’s father on the news. No one definitely ever expected to have any interaction with a man that was once named by the Globe as the Most Hated Man in New England.

  As it were, Brody ended up spending large chunks of every holiday with the Keatons—Gabe’s family—and likewise Gabe with the Galens, to the point where I knew the sound of Brody’s bellowing laugh more than I knew the sound of my own. I knew the way he looked—red and bright-eyed and windblown—after arriving running to the Keatons from his mansion across town like he so often did, even in winter. I knew the way he never called Uncle Conrad and Aunt May anything other than Mr. and Mrs. Keaton despite their protestations, the way he and Gabe snickered together in the corner, annoying just about every person in the room, other than all of the invariably perplexed adults who regarded them.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t like Brody. He just… he was so different from me. Popular and good looking—fist bumping nearly everyone he walked by while I spent most of my time with my tight knit group of theater geek and musician friends. I wasn’t shy, per se, I was just focused on other things, like upcoming productions and trying to pass my arrangement final.

  I knew Brody, but I guess I didn’t know him. I knew he followed the Patriots religiously, but not because we had ever talked about it, but because he and Gabe always got into arguments about football since my cousin was a fierce supporter of the Bills since my Uncle Conrad had grown up in upstate New York. I often overheard Gabe and Brody arguing about the two teams, but how they could both agree that Roger Goodell needed to be fired. I knew he wore a lot of maroon, but I didn’t know if it was because it was his favorite color or if it was because it was one of the school colors and he had a lot of school pride or if it was because he happened to look fantastic in maroon. I knew when his birthday was but only because he and Gabe played elaborate pranks on each other every year for each other’s birthdays that often had twists and turns like a telenovela and multiple players and layers and most often ended up with injuries to either one or both of them.

  But I’d never heard any of this from Brody because the number of conversations we’d had over the years could probably be counted on two hands.

  Sometimes things just happened that way, and truly, what would we even talk about? So when he looked at me, I all but gasped at the unexpected look. When he smirked and his glance quickly shifted to meet Gabe, who was sitting next to me, I looked quickly down, and began, once again, to run through the list of excuses to leave like they were my mantra.

  As each person had their turn, closing the gap until the turn would fall to me, the list of excuses began to pound in my head urgently. Come on, Catrina! Any excuse will do! Just say it! I had just opened my mouth to deliver the one I had landed on—my best friend Talia was having boy troubles and needed me back in our apartment before she went nuts, ha ha ha—when I heard the sickeningly sweet voice call out to me.

  “Cat, truth or dare?”

  I ignored the fact that I hated when anyone but my family or best friends called me Cat.

  Holly smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her calculating eyes, and leaned forward, exposing a significant amount of cleavage.

  “Um—”

  “It’s just a game, Cat,” Holly said, laughing. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Catrina, you don’t have to play if you don’t want to,” Gabe tried to say quietly just to me, but, of course, Holly had dog ears to go with her sneaky cat eyes.

  “Of course not, Cat,” she said, flipping her long, blonde, wavy hair off her shoulder, smiling still. “We”—she gestured to the room—“don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  Gabe looked at Holly sharply, who shrugged, and then he was saying something to Holly. For some reason, in that moment, I glanced up and saw Brody regarding me, a slight crease between his eyebrows, and for just a brief second, he flashed a small, genuine smile in my direction, not encouraging or discouraging me to do anything, just… smiling. Kind, friendly, not a trace of his usual cockiness. It was probably the way that smile—just for me—made my stomach flip that jolted me into action.

  I shrugged as casually as I could, hoping for anything to stop that fluttering feeling in my chest—a flutter of nerves, surely—and Holly and Gabe abruptly stopped their argument as I said, “Truth.”

  I didn’t look up to see Gabe’s concerned frown or Holly’s triumphant grin. Instead, I waited, staring at Holly as her grin continued to widen.

  “Okay, then,” Holly said slowly.

  I exhaled.

  Okay. I could do this.

  “Let me think,” Holly said. I held back the urge to roll my eyes at her.

  I could deal with anything Holly threw at me. What did I have to hide?

  Tabitha Bentley, the only other girl in the room, who happened to be another tall, thin, hot blonde, leaned over to whisper in Holly’s ear, but Holly brushed her off and leaned forward again so far that I thought one of her boobs might just slip right out of her top.

  When the devious smile slowly slid across her angular face, I knew that this wasn’t going to end well.

  “Where is the weirdest place you’ve ever had sex?” Holly asked slowly, mischief thick in her voice.

  The room erupted in chatter as almost everyone started laughing and talking amongst themselves, sharing memories and stories, while I sat still.

  Frozen.

  Ben, Bryant, and Tabitha were talking loudly and animatedly to each other, while Gabe and Brody were laughing, exchanging knowing looks, while Kent slapped Xavier proudly on the back.

  I remained frozen, trying to come up with some excuse, something to say other than the obvious truth.

  “Cat?”

  Holly hadn’t taken her eyes off me, looking maddeningly smug, as if she knew what my answer had to be, while the room around us quieted down, and my mind moved a mile a second, trying to come up with something.

  “Well…”

  “You don’t have to—” Gabe tried.

  “Come on, Cat, you can tell us,” Holly said happily. “You’re among friends.”

  I felt every single eye on me, every single expectant gaze, every single judgment, every single question, every single curiosity, and all I wanted to do was crawl inside myself or run like the wind.

  “I…” I started, staring at the floor. “I don’t—”

  “Catrina.”

  Gabe put a hand on my leg, and for some stupid reason, it made me want to cry.

  “I haven’t—”

  “Oh my God, Cat!” Holly gasped, looking positively gleeful. “Don’t tell us you’re a—Cat, are you a virgin?”

  “Holly,” a voice said sharply.

  And when I heard Gabe saying my name quietly, again, I realized the person who had snapped at Holly wasn’t my cousin, and I looked up and saw Brody glaring daggers at Holly.

  “I can’t believe you’re a vir
gin, Cat!” Holly said with what almost seemed like sincere confusion. “Someone as beautiful as you? And you’ve never—”

  “Holly.”

  Brody’s voice was louder, firmer this time, and it silenced everyone in the room until all that remained for me was the sound of my blood rushing in my ears, the feeling of heat everywhere on my face.

  Abruptly, I stood, toppling my empty beer bottle, and I huffed a humorless laugh, not looking at anyone in the room. “Well, I actually have to get going. My friend Talia—she—well, you know—boy troubles—all that, so I should—thanks! Had a great time.”

  And all the way out of the living room and down the hall to the front door of the house, I praised the self-control that enabled me to hold in the burning tears of embarrassment until I was safely outside the suffocating walls.

  Chapter TWO

  Iwas sitting by the reservoir, close to the edge, so close that when birds would duck onto the surface and bounce into the water splashing around, I could occasionally feel the spray on my face. But I didn’t mind. The night air was crisp and the occasional droplets of water on my face were soothing, refreshing, cleansing. Each time I felt the wetness, I could imagine that it might be able to wash this entire night away.

  The reservoir was gorgeous at night. It was a large, manmade expanse that covered probably the length of an entire city block, maybe more, and glowed with both moonlight and the beams of light from the lamps along the path that enclosed the body of water. The Klein Reservoir had been one of my favorite spots to go since I had started here my freshman year. It had been one of the things that had drawn me to the school when I had taken my first tour, and since then it had been the spot I went to read, to relax, to sometimes meditate or do yoga with Talia. I had even once gone on a date at the reservoir. The guy had been sweet but we had absolutely nothing in common and didn’t see each other after that. I hadn’t even thought of him since. And maybe I was only thinking of him now because suddenly I was wondering about all the missed opportunities. All the chances I had had to—