Roped In (Strings Book 2) Read online

  “Keep it,” he murmured, still not looking at my face, his eyes on the necklace. “Please.”

  I turned toward the door before he could see the tear escape. I heard his footsteps as he closed the distance between us. I couldn’t turn back, couldn’t look at him or I knew I’d fall apart.

  “It was good to see you again, Talia.”

  His words tore at something inside me because I knew they were goodbye. And this time I knew it was going to be forever.

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  It was such a fucking cliché. And it still destroyed me.

  “Goodbye, Jack.”

  He watched me as I walked down the stairs, and even though I didn’t look back I could feel his eyes on me. When I got out into the chilly New England evening, I could barely see the screen of my phone as I requested my car, the tears blurring the night.

  ◆◆◆

  “Why did you sleep with him, Tal?”

  Catrina’s words made me feel even shittier than I already felt.

  When I’d gotten home after leaving Jack’s place, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned all night, stupidly refusing to shower because I wanted to smell his scent that lingered on my skin. Finally, I’d glanced at the clock on my phone and saw that it was six in the morning, so I gave up and pushed myself out of bed, sad and exhausted and regretting my life choices.

  I’d sat in the windowsill of my tiny apartment, watching the sunrise and drinking coffee. I couldn’t stomach eating anything. When I’d tried to eat a piece of toast, I’d run to the bathroom a few minutes later and thrown up. Then I’d called Catrina because I knew she’d be getting ready to go to rehearsal.

  “Because I’m a fucking idiot,” I said.

  “I mean, the stuff he said was out of line,” Catrina said slowly.

  “It wasn’t, Cat,” I whispered. “I hurt him. Again. I wish I could stop hurting him.”

  Cat didn’t say anything at first. She went so long without talking that I said “hello” to see if she was still there.

  “I’m here,” she said quietly. There was another long pause until Catrina said, “Look, Talia, I need to say something to you because I love you and you’re my best friend in the entire world, okay?”

  I braced myself. I didn’t reply to Cat but my heart was pounding. I should’ve told her I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. That if she was going to scold me about how vile I was to Jack—how vile I had always been to him—I didn’t need the reminding. I knew all of it. I knew I kept treating him like shit, but I wanted him so badly even though I knew I couldn’t have him. Didn’t deserve him.

  So I stayed silent as Cat spoke.

  “I know you have feelings for Jack. I know you’ve had feelings for Jack since college. If you want to be his friend, I think that’s really awesome. But if you want to keep doing this—sleeping with him when you feel like it, when you know he wants more and you don’t—just… Talia, just please don’t. Jack is a nice guy. And he’s been in love with you for years.” I wanted to protest and tell her that couldn’t be true because he was engaged only a few months ago, but my heart was still beating too hard for me to form a sentence. “You can’t keep doing this to him or to yourself.”

  “I know,” I finally managed, voice thick.

  “I just want to know something, Tal.”

  “What?” I croaked.

  Cat took a deep breath. “It’s been ten years,” she said, and blood started rushing in my ears. “How much longer are you going to keep pushing men away? They aren’t all him. They aren’t all either of them. Jack isn’t—”

  “Cat, I have to go,” I interrupted quickly. “Rehearsal starts in a few hours and Isaac has been a hard ass lately about being on time. So, look—”

  “Talia—”

  “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” And before my friend could even respond, I hit the end button on my phone and tossed it across my couch, unwilling to take another moment to think about both of the men who had taught me to guard my heart.

  Chapter 7

  Trying to play music with my band when all I could think about was Jack was an exercise in futility.

  And it wasn’t just Jack that I was thinking about.

  “It’s been ten years…”

  God, was Catrina right? Had it been ten years already?

  It felt so fresh and vivid in my mind that somedays it felt like it was still happening. Other times it felt like a memory of a time eons ago. Almost like a dream that I could only vaguely remember.

  Today, it was the former. I could see his face smiling at me. I could see my eighteen-year-old self—stars in her eyes—looking at this guy and thinking he could have anyone he wanted and yet for some reason he’d chosen me. I’m so lucky, I would think while I stared at him as he talked.

  It wasn’t luck that had brought us together.

  No, that wasn’t what it was at all. It was the selfish desires of a boy who fancied himself a man, who felt himself invincible. It was the reckless pursuit of a girl who was so desperate for a man to love her that she couldn’t see all the signs.

  My girl, he would call me. “There’s my girl,” he would say, or “How’s my girl today?” Being his girl made me giddy with happiness. It made me crave him—his presence, his touch, his eyes on me. When he asked me how I was, if he listened for even a moment I felt honored. Even when he would look at his phone a few minutes later while I was still talking, even that small bit of attention would carry me on a cloud for days. When he touched my hair and told me it would look good shorter, I’d gone to the salon the next week. I kept that bob haircut for years because I thought it was the only way a man would find me attractive.

  I’d let him take my virginity. When he moved over me, I ignored the pain because he told me I was beautiful. It didn’t even bother me that it only lasted a few minutes and as soon as he was done, he rolled off me and grabbed his phone off his nightstand and didn’t talk to me for another hour. He let me lay my head on his chest, though, and I kept replaying that moment when he said I was beautiful over and over. I’d given an enormous piece of myself to him and he didn’t even ask if I was okay after. But he told me I was beautiful and that’s what I’d clung to.

  The day he left for New York after graduation, I’d sobbed into his chest. He rubbed my back, told me it would be okay, that we would see each other soon, that absence made the heart grow fonder. I swore I would come visit, and I regretted that I’d taken an internship at the Boston Conservatory instead of going back home to Queens for the summer, despite what an amazing opportunity it had been. I just wanted to be with him.

  When he didn’t answer his phone for the first two days, I attributed it to him being busy after just moving. Catching up with friends, having dinner with family, unpacking all of his stuff. He’d call me the second he got a free moment.

  After a week I started to worry. My calls started going straight to voicemail so I started texting him frantically asking if he was okay. I called his friend Stephen who sounded taken aback when he heard my voice on the other end. He sputtered out a reply, saying something about having Vince call me if he heard from him.

  It was two Saturdays after he left Klein that I got his text.

  Hi. I can’t see you anymore. Distance is too hard. Wish you all the best.

  Seven fucking months. He and I were dating for seven fucking months and he had the nerve to send me a break up text that ended with wish you all the best.

  And what I’d found out later had destroyed any remaining trust I had for men.

  It was ten years later and it still hurt like hell.

  “Jesus! Talia! I called your name like four times.”

  I looked up from the keyboard and saw Chuck, the guitarist of Flora and Fauna, watching me with annoyance clear on his face. Isaac was giving me a sympathetic look.

  “Sorry.”

  “You’ve been distracted all day,” Chuck said angrily. “Do you want to get this song perfected
or not? Because you seem you like you couldn’t give a shit.”

  Chuck and I had been friends once. Back when we started the group, Chuck and I were both doing open mic nights with nothing much to show for it. He was funny and charming and cute in a nerdy jock type of way. He was still a talented guitarist, but he was also a complete asshole who was addicted to cocaine and pills. When he was high he was manic—wanted to write a million songs and exude all of his energy—and when he wasn’t, he was pissed off that he wasn’t and that made him a jerk.

  “Cool it, Chuck,” Isaac said from behind the drums. “We all have our off days.”

  “Whatever,” Chuck said, putting down his guitar on its stand. “I’m gonna take a break.”

  “I.e. get high,” Isaac murmured as soon Chuck walked through the studio doors and out of earshot. He put his drumsticks in their holder and walked over to where I was still sitting at my keyboard, absently playing a random string of notes.

  “That sounds nice,” he said from behind me. “What is it?”

  I looked up at him and stopped playing. “It’s not anything,” I said with a shrug. “Just messing around.”

  “Scooch.”

  Isaac sat next to me on the bench and began playing a harmony with the notes I’d just been playing. I wasn’t lying to him when I said it wasn’t anything. Chuck was right. I was distracted. I couldn’t stop thinking about my past that I wanted to keep buried and the look of hurt and anger in Jack’s eyes the night before. I was exhausted from not sleeping, and my entire body felt like an exposed nerve—raw and stretched too thin.

  We played together for a few minutes. Eventually I started humming a melody and Isaac responded by humming an answering tune. He occasionally sang harmony on some of our songs, but I always forgot how nice his voice was. We sat like that, playing and humming together until the chords started to flow in a way that made sense, until we’d basically sat together and written a song.

  I didn’t know how much time had passed, but we kept playing as Isaac glanced over at me.

  “You okay?”

  This was the Isaac I adored—the guy who cared more about me, his friend, than he did about hooking up or flirting.

  I sighed. “Been better.”

  He nodded. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I’d rather just play this song with you,” I said after a moment.

  “That I can do,” he said with another nod.

  When Chuck came back in, his eyes were glassy and he was jittery and bouncy. Isaac and I exchanged a look, and Isaac went over to talk to him while I drifted over to my bag to check my phone. I shouldn’t have even hoped for it, but I was desperate to hear something from Jack. But he’d said everything last night, and I was sure he never wanted to see me again after that. That didn’t stop me from opening my text and Messenger app to see if he wrote anything.

  When I opened my text app, I had texts from Catrina and Carver.

  Catrina’s text was apologizing for what she said on the phone earlier, so I shot off a quick response. No need to apologize, Kitty Cat. I’m just tired and fucked up and I don’t want to think about it anymore. Still love you. She was at rehearsal so probably wouldn’t respond for a while, so I moved to look at my friend Carver’s text.

  Carver Hicks was one of my best friends from Klein, along with Catrina and Callum Jeffries. He worked for Boston Public Radio and lived in an adorable townhouse in the suburbs and also had a shitty boyfriend that I despised.

  Wanna get drinks tonight? Michael’s being a fucking ass.

  Of course he was. Carver and Michael had been on again/off again dating since college. Carver was a year older than Catrina and I, and Michael was four years older than Carver. They’d met at a bar Carver’s sophomore year and had been seeing each other pretty much ever since. In college they would always date for a few months until Michael decided to break things off for some ridiculous reason—he needed to focus on work, he needed to help his family, his cat died and he needed to reevaluate a few things. A few months after Catrina and I left Klein, Carver had been the one to break things off. I’d thought it was the real thing this time, and it was for about a year. And then one night Carver met up with me, Catrina, and Callum for drinks, and when I saw Michael trailing behind him, I almost got up and left.

  That was the longest span of time they dated—almost a year and a half—until Michael said he wanted to be with someone more serious. Someone who was going somewhere with their life. I thought that was Carver’s final straw because I could see how hurt he was when he told me what Michael had said. As far as I knew, they didn’t speak at all for almost three years. And then three months ago, Carver dropped the bomb on us that he and Michael were giving it another go.

  As much as I wanted to let loose tonight and stop thinking about Jack, I didn’t think I had it in me to pretend to care about whatever shitty thing Michael had done this time.

  Can’t tonight. Maybe Thursday or Friday? I replied to Carver. By then, though, he and Michael would’ve probably already resolved this current fight and moved on to the next one.

  ◆◆◆

  A few weeks later, I was right. Carver and Michael were sitting across a high-top table from me, arguing quietly with each other. I had no idea what they were arguing about, but I kept exchanging glances with Cat and Callum who were sitting on either side of me.

  The three of us were squished around a round table with Carver, Michael, and Brody. I had just finished playing a set and we were taking a break. Isaac was flirting with an emo looking guy at the bar, and Chuck was nowhere to be seen, even though I knew exactly where he was and what he was doing.

  I knew that eventually Isaac and I were going to have to have a conversation with Chuck, but tonight I didn’t want to think about that. I’d finally gotten my afternoon and evening with Jack Harding out of my head, and I was prepared to focus on making music.

  The song Isaac and I had played together was really coming together as well as a few others he and I had been working on over the past few weeks. Over the years, we had released several EPs and one full length album. Because studio space was so expensive, we spent most of our time playing at different venues rather than spending time recording, but I was excited about what Isaac and I had done together and hoped to have a conversation soon about getting in the studio again for the first time in two years. Isaac may have been a total sleaze when it came to people he slept with, but he was a talented musician and I loved making music with him.

  “And he’s a complete ass, right?” Callum was saying. He was telling Catrina, Brody, and I about a student in one of his classes. “Every time he comes to my office hours, he swaggers in and plops down like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world. I’m not even sure why he bothers to come because I don’t give them any credit for coming to see me, but he does. Every week. And here’s the thing. The stuff he writes is really good. Like really, really good. When we were covering Hardy, he wrote this poem that gave me chills.”

  “Well, I know it seems like he doesn’t care, but he obviously does,” Brody said. Brody was a writer and Callum was an English Literature professor at Klein, so they often ended up swapping stories or talking about different books they were reading.

  “Why would he show up to office hours if he didn’t care?” Cat added.

  “What do you usually discuss when he meets with you?” I asked.

  “That’s the thing!” Callum said, leaning forward on the table. “We hardly ever discuss the class or his assignments. He usually points out something he’s read that week, asks my opinion on it, and then leaves after about fifteen minutes.”

  Cat and I exchanged a glance and Brody just shook his head.

  “Weird, man,” Brody said. “Maybe he doesn’t care about the class then.”

  “He doesn’t,” Cat and I said at the same time.

  Brody and Callum looked at us, and I looked at Catrina. “Do you want to tell him, or do you want me to?”

  Catrina lo
oked like she was trying to contain a smile when she turned to Callum.

  “What is it?” Callum asked, frowning.

  Catrina did grin then. “Cal, the kid’s got a crush on you.”

  When Brody laughed, it finally got Carver and Michael’s attention. Michael continued to pout, but Carver turned to us while I tried not to roll my eyes at the two of them.

  “Who has a crush on Cal?” Carver asked.

  “A kid in his intro class,” I said.

  Callum was shaking his head furiously. “That—well, that’s not—you guys, that’s not true. He doesn’t—”

  “Really?” I said exasperatedly. “He seems like he has no interest in the class. He barely pays attention and when he comes to office hours he doesn’t actually want to discuss the class. He wants your opinion about the stuff he reads because he thinks you’re smart and interesting. It helps that you obviously enjoy his work and I’m sure he knows it because you probably leave praising comments on his stuff.”

  “Oh, my god, that—” Callum sputtered. “No. He doesn’t—no.”

  “He totally does,” Carver said with a grin. “Oooh, I’m excited! A boy’s got a crush on you.”

  At Carver’s show of excitement, Michael got up from the table and walked in the direction of the bathrooms. Carver—to my delight—ignored him completely and scooted his chair closer to Callum.

  “Tell me everything about him.” Carver rested his chin in his hand and looked at Callum with wide, playful eyes.

  “I refuse to get into this,” Callum said. Even in the dark of the club I could see that his face was red.

  “I think it’s awesome,” Brody said with a shrug. “The kid clearly admires you and values your opinion.”

  “And he’s hot for teacher,” Catrina said.

  “Totally hot for teacher,” I agreed.

  “Is he cute?” Carver asked.