Believe (True Believers #3)(9)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Neither was me breaking up with Rory on Christmas.” He gave me a smile. “I mean, that was a huge mistake.”

I gave a watery laugh. “That wasn’t your finest moment, I’ll admit that.”

“I know you think you’re doing the right thing for Kylie, but seriously, the right thing is to stick to the plan.”

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do anymore, but I did appreciate that he wasn’t screaming at me that I was a drunken slut. “Thanks, Tyler.”

When I got out of the car, I paused on the big, wooden front porch and watched him back out and pull away. Sitting on the steps, I let the hot sun seep into my skin, and I twisted my hair up into a messy bun that I tied off with my own hair. Then I pulled out my phone and answered Phoenix, unable to resist, bad idea or not.

There was too much time in my own head, too many minutes to turn around and around what I had done and why and what it said about me. Too much time to feel the guilt weaving its way into the fabric of me, so that if I tried to tug it out it would unravel all of me.

The urge to talk to someone who was a total stranger, who knew nothing about me, was irresistible.

Milk does a body good.

Then I immediately thought maybe that was too flirty. So I added a second text.

What are you doing?

Which then seemed like a stupid question to ask. What was he going to say? Nothing. And would he think that was suggestive or something? And why did I care?

It seemed like I didn’t remember the rules anymore, the normal way to talk to a guy without parties and booze and hookups. Or maybe it was just I didn’t know how to talk to a guy like Phoenix.

It was ten minutes before he responded. I wasn’t doing anything, just lolling in the sun, cradling my phone and trying to work up ambition to take a shower.

When he did respond, it surprised me.

Working out. Thinking about you.

A shiver ran through me. There was no mistaking that message.

Thinking what?

That I want to see you. Busy tonight? Want to hang out?

There was no question that I wanted to. But should I?

I glanced out at the street, at the cars lining up and down Ludlow Avenue. We had the second and third floors of an old house, and I did like the neighborhood. But it was lonely living in the house solo for the summer, and I had no plans for the night. I could go inside and watch a movie by myself or I could watch a movie with someone else. Someone who just might understand what it felt like to be lonely.

Sure. Want to come over? Watch a movie?

I didn’t think he had any money and I didn’t have any ambition to change my clothes. I didn’t want to go out out. I didn’t want it to feel like a date, and I didn’t want there to be alcohol around. I just wanted to feel comfortable again.

He sent me a picture back. It was a cat, leaping through the air. THIS, it said.

I laughed. He had a quiet sense of humor that I liked. Is that yes?

Yes. Address? I’ll take the bus.

I can pick you up.

Maybe that sounded a little pathetic or overeager, but I was exhausted with the games I had been playing with guys since I had turned thirteen and sprouted br**sts. I was tired, hot, and I wanted company, and he was offering it, so why I wait an hour and a half for him to take the bus when I could pick him up? The key to successful distraction was to not have time to talk yourself out of taking the distraction.

So while I felt a reflexive twinge that I shouldn’t make it easy for Phoenix, I got over it.

You have a car?

Yes.

K. Meet me at the corner of Riley’s street in the CVS parking lot in an hour.

He wanted me to pick him up at the drugstore? So he clearly didn’t want anyone to know he was going to be with me. My first instinct was to be insulted, but then I thought about what Tyler had said to me about Phoenix and staying away from him. It didn’t make any sense for me to piss off the one person who knew the truth about Nathan, so I probably shouldn’t be seen with Phoenix anyway. It felt weird that after worrying all summer that someone would find out, I now knew that Tyler had known the whole time.

It made the shame feel fresh and throbbing.

I wanted to run away from it.

Ok. See you then.

With forty-five minutes to kill, I flipped through a magazine but it bored me and I wound up staring into space again, biting my fingernail as my thoughts absorbed the time. Glancing at my phone, I decided I should leave or I’d be late. Not bothering to change or even put on lip gloss, I walked down the driveway to my car. I wasn’t going to primp for him. This was it. Me. Sober. Hanging on by a thread.

When I pulled into the parking lot at the drugstore, he was leaning against the wall, waiting, one foot back on the stucco. His hair was in his eyes again, and he was wearing a black T-shirt and the cargo shorts he had pulled on earlier, when I had been cataloguing his tattoos. I noticed now there was another one on the back of his calf, but I couldn’t tell what it was. He wasn’t my type at all. I was usually into guys who had a lot of bulk, who made me feel petite and feminine next to them, and who were loud and chatty, the communications and marketing majors.

Phoenix looked dangerous. An elderly woman gave him a wide berth when she shuffled from her car to the store, eyeing him with suspicion. Unlike his cousins, though, he didn’t have any accessories, no chains, no studded bracelets. Riley and Tyler would make the metal detector at the airport lose its shit, they were always that covered in hardware. But Phoenix was bare except for his tattoos.

There was something beautiful about him. I knew I shouldn’t think of a guy in those terms, but he was. He had a strong jaw, cheekbones that a model would kill for, and that dark hair that fell with an ease that normally required a pro blowout, when I knew in reality he had probably just finger-combed it. I wasn’t sure if what I felt as I watched him was attraction, or simply appreciation that he was good-looking in a different way, one that spoke to me now, at this particular point in my life.

The outsider intrigued by the outsider.

Because that was how I felt—a self-imposed outsider in my former life.

I waved, and he pushed himself off the wall, raising a hand back in greeting.

When he opened the door and got into the passenger seat, he nodded slightly to the right, the corner of his mouth turned up in amusement. “Woman in the car next to you is debating calling the cops. She thinks you’re here to buy drugs from me.”

Glancing past him, I saw there was a middle-aged woman with two kids in the backseat, and she was shaking her head in disgust, cell phone in her hand poised in front of her face, like she was debating whether or not it was worth it.