No Strings Read online

  My heart sank when I recognized the long blond hair set in beachy waves as she flipped it over her shoulder. I lowered my eyes and then glanced up from under my lashes trying to see who was in their group. It was everyone from last night except for my cousin Gabe and the addition of a few people whose faces I recognized but whose names I didn’t know. It took me less than a second to find Brody, and when our eyes met, I could feel him freeze just as I did, until Brody lifted the corner of his mouth, and I returned the look briefly before turning back to my friends.

  Carver and Talia were arguing about the merits of makeup contouring while looking through Instagram. When our food was put down in front of us, I looked down at my plate. I had ordered a Belgian waffle, but I had also ordered boiled eggs and sausage. I bit my lip and smiled to myself, and immediately I had the desire to peak over at the long table Brody was sitting at and send him a silent message—look! You were right about me! This is what I eat for breakfast!—to let him know that I remembered last night, that I knew I wouldn’t forget it no matter how hard I tried, but I never got the chance. I was never even able to think about it and debate it and force myself not to look because I heard Talia swear loudly, breaking into my thoughts.

  When I looked up at my best friend, I saw her looking at her phone and then whipping her head around.

  “What the fuck are they doing here?” Talia growled under her breath.

  “Eating breakfast, I assume,” Callum said.

  “Don’t worry about them, Talia, I’m fine.”

  “She fucking checked in here right after I did. I know she saw we were here. And they’re looking over here,” Talia said through clenched teeth.

  “Who cares?” I said, trying to calm her down, ignoring the burn in my stomach at her words.

  “I do!” she hissed. “They embarrassed you at that party, she posted a fucking status about you—”

  “No one knows it was about me besides the people who were there—”

  “—and now they want to laugh about it when they’re sitting right fucking by us?” Talia finished, her voice raising.

  “Talia, shh, please.”

  “Come on, Tal,” Callum said, leaning in. “Let’s just ignore them and enjoy our breakfast.”

  “Brody looks hot, huh?” Carver said, leaning in also.

  My heart clenched in my chest, my stomach burning so much that I thought I might throw up the mimosa I’d had to drink, and I tried not to let it bother me. I tried not to think about the fact that they were still laughing at me, the fact that my friends had already known this morning, and that I was probably lying to myself in assuming that only the people who were there last night knew that Holly’s post was about me. I tried to think of Brody’s words from last night.

  “It doesn’t matter if you have or haven’t had sex. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, and no one should make you feel bad for that.”

  I tried not to think about how much I’d been thinking about sex over the past few months, how I wanted to know, and I tried—most of all—not to think about the way Brody had looked at me last night, the way it had made me shiver.

  “I’m gonna go over there and say something,” Talia said, shifting slightly on her aluminum chair like she was about to stand. “Or possibly punch Holly in her big mouth.”

  “Talia,” Callum said, voice low and firm.

  “I’m fine, Talia, it’s—”

  Then I heard the loud raucous laughter coming from their table, the laughter that was undoubtedly about me, about what they all knew about me, and something erupted inside me, something caustic and fiery. A rush of adrenaline burst through my veins. Before I even knew what I was doing, I stood up and turned toward their table. They snickered and buried their faces, acting as if they were trying to hide it and deliberately doing a terrible job. I thought I heard my friends talking behind me, but I ignored them, my ears ringing, and marched toward the table. I noticed two things. When I glanced over Holly’s shoulder I saw that her phone was open on my Facebook page, which confirmed my fear that they were in fact talking about me, and I also noticed that Brody was sitting at the end of the table talking to Julian Henderson, a sweet guy that Gabe had been friends with since freshman year who was one of the only one of Gabe’s friends who was always really kind to me. He hadn’t been there last night, and he and Brody were laughing and chatting with each other, apparently unaware of what was happening at the other end of the table with Holly, her mean girls, and their pathetic boyfriends.

  As I marched toward them, I saw some of them look at me nervously, eyes widening slightly, while others continued to smirk and snicker at me, and I knew that none of them would be acting this way at all if Gabe were with them. He spent every Sunday with his parents and his siblings so he wasn’t there to stop their ridiculous behavior. But enough was enough and I had had enough. I wasn’t going to do this anymore. I wasn’t going to let this be my life.

  I saw the stunned looks on a few of their faces as I marched right past them and kept walking until I was standing across from Brody at the other end of their table, who looked up at me, a crease forming between his eyebrows and his eyes full of worry and confusion.

  “Hey, Catrina. I saw—”

  “I’m in.”

  “What?” His eyes widened a bit when I cut him off from mentioning Holly’s post. He glanced down at the other end of the table and clenched his jaw when he saw their faces and heard their snickers.

  I gave him a knowing look when he looked back at me and waited a few seconds before responding so that his brain could catch up. I saw the moment when the dawning crossed his features, and I nodded.

  “I’m in.”

  And I turned and walked away, holding my head high and keeping my focus straight ahead as I walked right past Holly and the others again, unable to hear their laughter and whispers because of the blood rushing in my ears, the pounding of my heart, and the triumphant exultations ringing in my head.

  Chapter FOUR

  We were supposed to be meeting at Starbucks the next afternoon after I got done with my Music Arrangement class. Brody apparently didn’t have classes on Mondays so when I texted him that I wanted to meet and talk, he had told me to pick the time and the place.

  Arrangement was by far my hardest class in my last semester as I wrapped up my Vocal Performance major. I was preparing for my senior recital that would be next month in April, as well as the opera we were putting on around the same time, but other than that it was just this class that was causing me anxiety. Every day when I left I felt stressed and on edge. My professor was incredibly tough and she pulled no punches when critiquing our work, so it didn’t bode well that I was ordering a triple espresso while my hands were still shaking from my class and because of my upcoming… meeting with Brody.

  God, would he even come? Had he changed his mind about helping me out with my… problem? Maybe he was busy today or maybe he forgot or maybe something else came up and he didn’t get a chance to text me and reschedule. Or maybe he had had time to think about this insane discussion the two of us had had and he—probably wisely—decided that this idea was nuts at the very least, and at the very most it was self-destructive, irresponsible, and probably lent itself to the fact that I had well and truly lost what remained of my mind.

  He had seemed interested in me the other night.

  The way he had looked at me.

  I didn’t think any guy I had ever dated or any guy who had ever shown interest in me had looked at me quite like that. And I liked it. I liked that he looked at me like that, made me feel like there was something there that other people couldn’t see.

  But there had been a significant amount of beer and tequila going around the soccer house that night. Maybe the next day he had woken up in his bed and realized that Catrina Murphy wasn’t worth his time, that he was an idiot for offering to sleep with me and what was he thinking?

  I was sitting at a table in the far corner of the café, my hands tight
ly gripping a steaming cup of coffee while my legs bounced with nerves and anxiety under the small round table. I stared at the lid of my cup, a blue Red Sox hat pulled low in the hopes that no one I knew would see me. My mind was going a mile a minute, my heart was racing, and my stomach churning as I thought about the conversation I was about to have, as I thought about the stupid text message I had sent Brody last night after Talia and I had had two bottles of Pinot Grigio.

  We should meet to discuss the terms of our arrangement. When I hadn’t immediately seen the small gray bubble that indicated that he was responding, I had qualified it with, If you’re still interested, obviously.

  Ten minutes and some crazy pacing and yelling at Talia about what an idiot I was even though she had no clue what I was talking about and was just laying on her back on the couch, texting her fuck buddy, Jack, and hiccupping, Brody had responded.

  B: Definitely still interested, Catrina. Pick the time and the place and I’ll be there.

  I get done with arrangement at 2:30. Can you meet then?

  B: No classes on Mondays so yeah I can meet then. Where?

  Starbucks on Walnut.

  B: Should I bring a red rose so you know it’s me?

  Ha ha, jerk. Just don’t be late.

  B: See you then, babe.

  I know he had done it just to chide me, but seeing him call me “babe” had made my stomach flutter like crazy.

  But it was 2:40 and he was nowhere in sight, and I was chewing my nails down to stubs as I tried to drink my espresso and not stare at the front door.

  “I’m such an idiot,” I whispered fervently to myself, pulling my long, auburn hair over my shoulder and tucking a few strands up into the baseball cap on my head. As if Brody Galen would want to have sex with me. He only suggested the idea because he was drunk and had no idea what he was saying. I mean, sure, he had seemed pretty sober out by the reservoir, but I wasn’t a good judge of when people were drunk or not. Once Talia had come home and I had had an entire conversation with her about the drama that had been going on with the set crew during the fall musical last year, and the next morning she had said she didn’t remember that conversation at all. So, yeah, clearly not good at noticing that.

  I had just about convinced myself that he had just been drunk that night and had changed his mind. I was about to stand up and take off, back to my tiny apartment where I could hide away for at least a few hours and try to forget that this whole thing had even happened, when the other chair at my table was pulled back.

  I shot my head up as Brody sat down, his long legs spread wide under the small table, setting down a paper sack with the Starbucks logo on it and a bottle of water.

  “Sorry I’m a little late,” he said as he opened the paper bag. “My doorman stopped me on the way out—”

  “You have a doorman?” I managed.

  “—and I tried waving at you when I walked in but you were staring at that coffee like it was sprouting heads.”

  My mouth was hanging open slightly as he pulled a scone out of his bag, put it on a napkin and pushed it over to me.

  “You like blueberry scones, right?” he said as he pulled a chocolate muffin out of the bag and set it in front of himself. “I’m starving.” I continued to gape slightly at him as he took a bite of the muffin and looked at me.

  “I feel like I remember seeing you eat blueberry scones like every day the summer before eighth grade,” he said, mouth full of muffin. “You were babysitting for the Wagners that summer and Mrs. Wagner owned that bakery and the only thing I ever saw you eating at the Keatons was blueberry scones.” He twisted the cap off his water and took a swig before gesturing the bottle towards me as if asking me if I wanted a drink. I held up my coffee cup and stared down at my scone. I did love blueberry scones. Another thing he knew about me.

  “These aren’t nearly as good as your chocolate muffins, but still pretty good.”

  He knew those chocolate muffins were mine? I thought… well, he had never said anything in all the years that I’d been bringing them over to my aunt and uncle’s house. I just assumed… My God, what the hell was happening to me? I felt winded, almost like I couldn’t catch my breath. And I could smell his shampoo when he ran a hand through his light blonde hair and frowned at me.

  “What?”

  I started, not even realizing that I was staring at him, frozen for those moments because I hadn’t expected to see him, not here anyway. Maybe around campus, days from now, while I averted my eyes and tried to pretend that he didn’t exist while I hid my embarrassment that I had agreed—put myself and my damn dignity on the line—and he had called it off before it even got started. And I definitely hadn’t expected him to know that I liked blueberry scones and that he would tell me he knew the chocolate muffins were mine and that he was sitting here, looking at me.

  He hadn’t called it off. He was here. Sitting right there across from me. Looking at me. Popping a hunk of muffin in his mouth like this was any other day, like it was completely normal to meet me in Starbucks in the middle of the afternoon on a Monday, instead of utterly bizarre.

  But he was here.

  “You’re here,” I said before I could stop myself.

  Brody smirked and I blinked, then looked down at my scone, trying not to let my glee show.

  “Did you think I bailed on you?” Brody asked. “It was my idea. If anyone was going to bail, it was going to be you.”

  A stupid, nervous giggle escaped when I thought how right he was, how unsettling it was when he looked at me and when he spoke to me like he knew exactly what I was thinking, like he could read my mind, see right through me. I kept my eyes on my scone and my hands on my coffee cup, my grip on it unnecessarily tight, trying to keep my hands occupied so he couldn’t see how nervous I was.

  “Well, I texted you,” I swallowed.

  “And I responded…”

  “… but you may have changed your mind since our conversation.”

  “God, you’re nervous,” Brody said, laughing through a mouth full of muffin. “You don’t have to be. I’m not gonna bite.” I looked up at him and he grinned, arching an eyebrow, looking impossibly handsome, something I refused to acknowledge. “Unless you want me to.”

  I flushed and looked down at my scone—the scone he had bought for me after probably looking and thinking what might Catrina like?—the implications of his sentence making my imagination run way more wild than I wanted it to with him sitting right in front of me and smirking. I couldn’t even look at him for fear that he would see too much, get too much inside my head when he had been doing nothing but swimming on the edges of my consciousness since the other night.

  I felt this odd thrumming underneath my skin, causing a jittery feeling to erupt across my limbs, but I tried to focus on the scone that I was picking at. I tried to focus on anything but the feeling of his eyes on me.

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know how to start this. How did one have a casual conversation about having her virginity taken by a guy she hardly knew—not really—simply because he had offered and, yeah, I was interested and wanted to know what it was like. I didn’t want to wait anymore, and he was here, looking at me, and I was eating a scone like it was any other Monday? How did that conversation begin?

  “So about the whole virginity thing…”

  “You mentioned that you were interested in helping me out with a… situation…”

  “You’re basically the hottest guy I know and we’ve only exchanged about ten words in our entire lives, but I was thinking it would be a good idea if—”

  “You knew I made those muffins?”

  He took the last bite followed by a drink of water. “Hm?”

  “The chocolate muffins at my aunt and uncles?” I said quietly. “You knew I made them?”

  He laughed. “Of course I knew.”

  “But you never said anything.”

  He shrugged, twisting the top of his water back on and leaning on his elbows on the table, bri
nging him closer to me. I felt his knee brush against mine and my leg tingled.

  “I didn’t think you liked me very much. I thought if you knew I knew you made them then you wouldn’t anymore. And I loved them too much to take the risk.”

  He just kept surprising me over and over. Every word he said seemed to be a shock to my system. Who was this person? Who was this guy that I had always thought of as my cousin’s cocky best friend? Who was this guy who knew I liked scones, knew what I ate for breakfast, knew I liked the Cowboys even though I thought I had done a pretty good job of hiding that over the years?

  “So what made you change your mind?”

  My head shot up from where I was sitting across from him to find Brody regarding me. He was putting his fingers into the crumbs of his muffin and licking his fingers while his eyes locked with mine. I tried not to look at his fingers or his tongue, and I managed pretty well despite how much my eyes were trying to pull down to his mouth. He was dressed as casually as I was. I was wearing a green, floral, cotton sundress with black tights, a black sweater, and black heeled ankle boots. He was in black jeans and a tight gray hoodie, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, drawing my attention to his muscled forearms. The color of the hoodie brought out his gray eyes, making them look even clearer than usual. My eyes landed on the tattoo on the inside of his left arm, small cursive script that I couldn’t make out, and suddenly I badly wanted to know everything about the tattoo—what it said, when he got it, who was there, what made him get it, if his parents approved.

  “Just curious,” he said, completing his thought with a shrug.

  I swallowed, leaning forward and resting my elbows on the table, mirroring his position. I uncrossed my legs under the table and crossed the opposite leg over the other just as I spotted his eyes flickering down to the small amount of cleavage that my dress revealed and then met my eyes again.