Roped In (Strings Book 2) Page 2

  Despite how much I wanted to get Jack Harding and my conversation with Catrina—“maybe he broke it off with his fiancée because he still has feelings for you”—out of my head, I knew there was no way in hell I was going to be able to go home with Isaac tonight. Not when the image of dark green eyes and a chiseled jaw kept swimming into my consciousness.

  “Catrina isn’t your biggest fan,” I said flirtatiously, hoping that I could humor him a bit before gathering up my stuff in the back room and slipping out the side door.

  “Oh, no?” he said, leaning his elbow against my table and bringing his face wickedly close to mine. “I’ve always been a fan of red heads.”

  I sighed inwardly and gave him another flirty look. “Maybe they aren’t fans of you.”

  Isaac threw his head back and laughed, and I cringed inwardly. Guys like Isaac, they always commented on loving how “blunt” and “honest” I was. They said they thought it was sexy and funny and charming. They almost never liked it when the bluntness and honesty became about them, though. One thing I’d learned about men over the last couple years—they wanted you to be just right. Reserved but not too shy, sexual but not slutty, honest but never when it applied to them. It was why every guy I dated since college ended up kicked to the curb before things could even get serious. It was why I’d never make things serious with Isaac, who always threw a fit when I corrected him or gave him constructive criticism during our rehearsals.

  I stood up from the stool.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m a fan of dirty blondes, too,” he said, obviously thinking his emphasis on the word dirty would make me drop my panties.

  Little did he know, that tack wasn’t going to work on me because it just reminded me that I hated my new hair color. Raven had convinced me to go lighter for the last month of the summer. She’d lightened it with ashy blonde highlights that I wasn’t at all used to, and I couldn’t stop myself before I ran my hand through the choppy layers. I missed my natural deep brown that bordered on black. And even though Raven kept trying to convince me to give it a chance, that it would look good with my olive skin tone, I just couldn’t get used to it.

  “I’m sure you are,” I said to Isaac, who had taken my standing as an invitation to move closer.

  “You heading home?” he asked, intention clear in his eyes.

  “Yep.”

  “Think I could join you?”

  A memory of the last time he’d been at my place flashed quickly through my mind. He’d pounded into me fast and hard for about four minutes before he came, rolled off me, threw the condom in the trash, and promptly fell asleep without even asking if I’d finished. I’d gone to my bathroom, stared at my caramel-colored, bloodshot eyes and wished I could kick him out. Instead I’d hopped in the shower before getting back into bed next to him. He’d tried to go down on me in the morning, but he wasn’t figuring out where to put his tongue or his fingers so I’d just laid there for what felt like an eternity before I decided to fake a moan to get him to hurry up and finish down there. Then I finished him off with my hand and told him I’d see him at our rehearsal later that night. He’d kissed me sloppily at my front door, and I’d told myself I would never hook up with him again.

  “Sorry, not tonight,” I said with a pasted-on smile. “Have to be up super early to take my abuela to the doctor.” Of course, he’d never bothered to ask me about my family and didn’t know that my abuela lived in New York.

  He nodded in understanding and ran a hand down my bare arm. “Next time then.”

  I nodded and felt like I was swallowing down vomit. “Next time.”

  Chapter 2

  I washed the smell of the bar and the lingering sweat from being on stage off me when I got back to my apartment a little while later. I lived in a studio apartment in Back Bay with exposed brick and a fireplace I had no idea how to light. It cost me a fortune for the size, but I loved it so much I didn’t care. It was adorable and the neighborhood was my favorite in the city, so if I had to pay a limb for it, then I would.

  I switched the lamp on that sat on my end table and switched off the overhead lights before I slid into bed in just my underwear. Usually I wore a large t-shirt or something to bed, but I had a pile of laundry sitting by my front door that I planned to lug to the laundromat while I waited until I was ready to go meet Catrina the next day. So tonight I would just be sleeping in old, rarely worn underwear. The life of glamor you lead, Talia Emery.

  When I got under my warm, heavy covers, I picked up my phone off the end table and immediately opened Instagram. I scrolled through for a while, saving a bunch of pictures of makeup looks that I liked and wanted to try before I looked through a few more apps.

  That was until my skin started to itch with the need to read Jack’s message again. I kept telling myself no over and over, but before I even knew what I was doing, I was opening messenger and reading every word even though I’d basically already memorized it.

  Cat was ridiculous. Jack didn’t break up with his fiancée because he still had feelings for me. I hadn’t seen or talked him in over six years. The only glimpse I’d gotten of him since that morning I broke things off was the small icon of his picture next to his message.

  God, I wanted to see more of him. I wanted to enlarge the picture, zoom in, take in every single feature of his face that I’d managed to forget over the years. Which, if I was being honest, probably wasn’t much. He was a difficult guy to forget.

  Just like when I was in the bar with Isaac and I remembered the night we spent together, a memory of my last night with Jack came blazing into my consciousness in a way I hadn’t allowed it to since then.

  Cat and I had just moved into our new apartment, but she was over at Brody’s for the night. She’d just texted me that she wouldn’t be back until the morning when I heard a knock at my door. He’d barely gotten in before Jack was all over me. He’d turned me against the door so he could rub his front against my back. We didn’t say a word as he peeled every stitch of clothing off me and then sank to his knees.

  I’d been a quivering mess against my brand new front door, gasping and moaning his name and practically begging when I’d heard the rip of a foil packet. He was still fully clothed when he slid inside me, and just the thought of that had me racing toward orgasm. But he didn’t let me come. In fact, that night, he’d brought me to the brink so many times that it started to hurt. I’d felt tears sting my eyes as I was begging him—begging him for more, begging him to stop, begging him to let me come, begging him to end his torture.

  Somehow, we’d made it to my bedroom, and it was almost midnight before he turned me on my back and sank deep, deep, deep inside me. He never took his eyes off me—not when I came, not when he followed only seconds later, not when he pulled out and threw the condom away, not when he rolled to his side to watch me until he fell asleep.

  I knew I was in too deep. I knew I’d fallen.

  So the next morning I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore.

  He hadn’t even been angry. It was almost like he was expecting it, like he knew that the night before would be the end, and that’s why he dragged it out for as long as he had.

  It was like he knew it was goodbye.

  And when he kissed me goodbye, I knew this time he wouldn’t come back, not like all the other times I told him we couldn’t see each other anymore and he came back and convinced me to keep going for a little while longer. This time it was different. This time was the end.

  I was mindless as I searched his name on Facebook. My hands were shaking as I tried to push the memory of that last night out of my mind. And when he popped up, I clicked on his profile picture, knowing I shouldn’t.

  If possible, he was about ten times sexier than he’d been in college. His hair was slightly longer on top and buzzed on the sides, while in college it had been buzzed all over. Somehow—impossibly so—it looked like he’d gotten even bigger and taller. His face had shaped and molded with age, making the line
s of his face sharper and cleaner, the prominence of his jaw more stunning than ever. I couldn’t stop staring at the picture. It was just a simple picture—it looked like someone had snapped it while he was at a bar—his fiancée maybe?

  I clicked through more profile pictures and when I got a little bit further back I saw the picture of him with a woman. They were standing next to each other, arms around each other’s waists standing in front of a Christmas tree. She was tall and thin with long, brown, wavy hair and classic features. She was wearing a green, long-sleeved, turtleneck dress that showed off her long legs—legs I couldn’t possibly compete with. He was wearing an almost matching green sweater, tight around his muscular arms and chest, and a pair of khakis.

  They looked happy, smiling at the camera, in matching green. I clicked through a few more of them together until I got to the one that made my stomach flop uncomfortably.

  Jack was wearing a suit that fit him perfectly. She—Rachel, I’d learned from scrolling—was wearing what looked like a very expensive black evening gown. They were at an event of some sort, a few people milling around and looking at the them all dressed similarly, white table-clothed tables all around them, a chandelier in the middle of the room, and Jack was down on one knee.

  I closed out of my Facebook app quickly and laid there for a while, staring at the ceiling.

  Dammit.

  Shit.

  I should have brought Isaac home.

  I knew it would have been a bad idea. I knew I would’ve regretted it. But if he was here at least I’d be getting laid instead of laying here thinking about Jack.

  ◆◆◆

  I tossed and turned for what felt like hours, but when I looked at my phone I saw only about an hour and half had passed since I’d put my phone down.

  Images of Jack kept floating in and out of my mind. The morning I’d ended things. The night he took me ice skating and looked so happy that I hadn’t stopped smiling for a week. The night he asked me to his sister’s wedding and I’d flipped out. The look on his face when I told him it was over for good. Him down on one knee.

  Fuck, why was I still thinking about him? I’d been successfully blocking him from my memory for six years. I never let thoughts of him creep up, but one fucking Facebook message and I was off the rails.

  I knew what it was.

  It was the unknown. It was wonder about what he wanted or why he wanted to reconnect. The wonder about how he was.

  I just needed to eliminate the unknowns so I could move on.

  I pulled my phone to me again and pulled up Messenger.

  Jack, I wrote.

  No, this is stupid.

  I put my phone back down, stared at the ceiling for another ten minutes, and then picked it up again.

  Jack,

  It’s good to hear from you. I’d love to grab lunch. You still live in Boston, right? How’s Sunday? I know a place.

  “Fuck!” I shouted in the silence of my apartment. I felt like an idiot. A stupid, stupid, stupid, pathetic idiot who couldn’t stop thinking about her ex and who was lying in her underwear Facebook messaging him at two o’clock in the morning.

  A few seconds later, I was still berating myself when my phone binged.

  Talia, I’m so happy to hear from you. Thank you so much for responding. To be honest, I didn’t think you would, so this is a really nice surprise. Sunday is great. I’m still in Boston. You name the time and the place and I’ll be there.

  Shit.

  Chapter 3

  Iwas sitting cross-legged on Cat’s couch, staring at the credits screen of Bridget Jones’ Diary when Cat walked back into the room, grinning at me and holding two mugs and a bag of cookies between her teeth.

  Our girls’ nights always went something like this. I’d go to her place or she’d schlep to Back Bay from Brookline (although it wasn’t really schlepping because Brody always insisted she drive his BMW rather than her beat up Toyota Camry), we’d cozy up on the couch and giggle and watch movies that our other best friends, Callum and Carver, hated and would never allow when it was the four of us hanging out.

  On tonight’s agenda was the entire Bridget Jones series, which were, hands down, Cat and my favorite movies, although I was still somewhat a skeptic when it came to Bridget Jones’ Baby.

  Cat dropped the cookies between us, handed me a mug, and sat so she was also cross-legged and facing me. There was a box of unfinished pizza crusts on the coffee table, my empty wine glass, her empty glass of passionfruit juice that she only drank when Brody wasn’t around because he couldn’t stand the smell of it, and the DVD cases of the Bridget Jones movies.

  I sniffed at my mug and arched an eyebrow at Cat over it. “You’re trying to get me drunk aren’t you?”

  “Please,” Cat said, feigning annoyance. “As if either of us could get drunk off Bailey’s and Kahlua.”

  I leaned forward to smell the contents of Cat’s mug before she could pull it back with an unabashed grin on her face.

  “I have rehearsal in the morning,” she said with a shrug, as if that was an enough of an explanation as to why her drink was entirely devoid of booze.

  “Whatever, Murphy,” I said before taking a big swallow.

  “So?” she said before she tore into the Milanos. She dunked one into her hot chocolate as I reached for one. “Did you go home with Isaac last night?”

  I shook my head. “Seriously, what is your deal with Isaac? Can’t you just let me get some?”

  “Of course I’ll let you get some,” she said, feigning incredulity. “But obviously you forgot what you told me the last time you guys slept together.”

  “I know, I know—”

  “Because your exact words were, ‘never again, Cat.’ And as your best friend, it’s my job to hold you to that.”

  “Fine,” I conceded. “But you’re the one always going on and on and on about me finding someone.”

  “Someone you deserve,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Someone I deserve. God, how sad was it that I wouldn’t even know what that looked like at this point?

  “Yeah, well,” was all I could manage in response.

  “So…” Cat started slowly. And before she even got the question out, I knew exactly where it was going. “Did you respond to Jack?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled without looking up at her.

  “YES?!” she shouted, bouncing on the couch cushion under her. “Yes? Oh, my god, Tal, and you kept it in this long? That should’ve been the first thing you said when you walked in the door, like, hey I’m here to watch Bridget Jones, also I messaged Jack back.”

  “Oh, my god.”

  “Tell me everything.”

  With a sigh, I pulled out my phone and handed it to her so she could read my message and the ones that followed. After Jack had told me to name the time and the place, I suggested this café in Cambridge that had amazing vegetarian sandwiches and was big enough that we would be able to have a small modicum of privacy while we talked. I’d thought about going somewhere in my neighborhood or even taking him to the little Italian restaurant, Gia’s, I worked at part-time, but I was terrified about Jack being on my “turf.” What if things went sour and all I could remember at my job or at any of the places I loved to go was him being there? So, it would be the Green Hornet because I only went there maybe twice a year and I could live without it if Jack’s presence inside it ruined it for me for all eternity.

  “Green Hornet?” Cat asked after she read through the messages and handed me back my phone. “I love that place, but it’s super out of the way for you.”

  I shrugged, and before I could reply, she said, “But I get that. Can’t have him sullying your favorite spots if this lunch date goes south.”

  “It’s not a date,” I said quickly, ignoring how well my best friend understood me and my reasons why I’d chosen where I had.

  “Relax, it’s just a figure of speech.”

  “Whatever,” I said. And after a pause, “It’s not a date.”
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br />   Catrina rolled her eyes at me. “It’s like you’re allergic to that word.”

  I faked a shudder. “Maybe I am.”

  She rolled her eyes again and then sat up straighter. “So, what are you gonna wear?”

  “Probably nothing,” I said dryly. “I was thinking of showing up to this super hipster place in nothing but my birthday gear.”

  Cat laughed loudly and shook her head. “Okay, seriously though. You have to look good, but not too good like you’re trying too hard. And you have to look sexy but not like you’re trying to be sexy. And you have to look sophisticated like you put thought into your look but you aren’t trying to impress him. You have to look like you’re secure and confident and like you totally don’t care what he thinks but that if he thinks you look good that’s fine.”

  “Jesus Christ, are you hearing yourself?”

  Cat giggled. “Okay, that definitely sounded crazy.”

  “And you know how I hate how women have to be perfectly perfect for men.”

  “Okay, you’re so right,” Cat said, trying and failing to put a serious face on. “Feminism. Women’s empowerment. All that. So screw it, just show up in a trash bag and he can deal with it.”

  Both of us rolled with laughter at that, and the subject was effectively changed. I wouldn’t dare tell Catrina that I had been thinking all day about what I was going to wear to lunch with Jack. When I’d gone to the laundromat to wash my clothes, I’d been mentally and physically sorting through them and mixing and matching to see what might look good, and all those things Cat said—confident and secure but not like I was trying too hard—had been at the forefront of my thoughts.

  It had also been at the forefront of my thoughts to message Jack and cancel, but every time I opened Messenger I forced myself to toss my phone to the side. I could do this. It was just lunch.