Beauty and the Geek (Gone Geek Book 1) (13 page)

“Uh—not so sure I know what you’re talking about, Adam.” Josh glanced at the others. “Guys? We’re good here.”

“Wait, wait, we’re just getting to know each other. We’re all going to be in the YouTube family together, we should—you know—hang out. Socialize. Do a couple body shots off Tammy’s tummy.”

“All right, that’s enough.” Stephen stood up, glaring down at Adam.

It was one thing to put up with someone’s crap. It was a whole other thing to allow that man to touch her and imply others should also take liberties with her.

“Stephen—stop.” Tamara tugged on his hand.

“Wow, man, what’s your deal?” Adam sat back and squinted up at Stephen.

“You know what—Adam?” Josh tapped the other man on the shoulder. “Can you introduce me to Chadwick? I hear you’re good friends with him.”

“Oh, sure, man. Sure. Come on. Tammy baby, we’ll catch up later.”

Josh made a face behind Adam’s back and jerked his head toward the exit.

Yeah, Stephen was more than ready to get out of here.

Tamara grabbed Stephen by the hand and hauled him out to the patio. There was almost no breeze, which made it sweltering and private.

“What were you doing?” Tamara whirled to face him. “I thought we talked about this.”

“What was I doing?” He stared at her.

“Yes. Everything was fine. You can’t just tell Adam to stop. It makes everything worse. You just—ignore him.”

“I’m supposed to ignore him telling a bunch of guys you just met they should all do body shots off your stomach?”

“Josh and those guys wouldn’t really—”

“Wouldn’t they? I don’t know anything about them. And let me tell you a thing or two about mob mentality—”

“Stop it. Will you just stop it?”  She stepped in close and pulled his hands down to his side. “People are watching. People are always watching. You’re making a scene.”

“Is that what you’re really worried about? That guy’s in there basically telling these guys to—to—”

“And I had it all under control.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. Stephen—you just met these people.”

“Maybe, but I know their type.”

“Great. Awesome. Wonderful.”

“You weren’t even going to tell that guy to stop touching you, were you?”

“Stephen—it was my knee. Do I want Adam within ten feet of me? No. But we work in the same circles. We’re going to be around each other.”

“And you have to put up with him touching you? Telling people you’re—what? Their service girl? Was that what he was implying in there? When does it stop, Tamara?”

“It doesn’t. Okay? Is that what you want to hear?”

“Don’t you have more self-respect than that?”

“Self-respect—really? Really? That’s where you’re going to take this?”

“I’m sitting there watching you just let this guy touch you, after everything you’ve been through, don’t you want—I don’t know? Boundaries? Stop making excuses, Tamara.” Fuck, it was his mother all over again, constantly dishing out excuses for men who didn’t deserve her.

“How about this boundary? Fuck off, Stephen.” Tamara crammed her clutch under her arm.

“Tamara.” He grabbed her wrist. They weren’t done having this conversation.

She twisted her arm out of his grasp so fast he wasn’t sure he’d even had her to begin with. She jabbed her finger against his chest, staring up at him with anger like he’d never seen from his mother.

“I have boundaries. I have self-respect. And it is never—never—your place to tell me otherwise. How’s that for boundaries, Stephen?”

“Yeah, well, maybe you need to man up and tell—”

“Man up? Really? Please, mansplain to me a little bit more about what I need to do with my body and my boundaries? Please? No? I didn’t think so.” Tamara turned and stalked away.

He watched her go, the mental reel of the last few moments scrolling by in his mind like his personal horror show. What had he just done?

Tamara sat in her
car, watching people come and go from the party. Her hands were still shaking, but she wasn’t sure if it was rage or adrenaline or…something else.

What in the world happened in there?

One minute they’d been talking about ideas, then Adam sat down, and everything had gone to hell. She knew how Adam was. It didn’t make it right, but she knew how to handle him, at least most of the time. If she had her way, Stephen would never have had to see that. But he had. And what had she expected would happen?

Stephen wasn’t the kind of guy to sit back and just let it go.

He’d protected her on the beach from a pushy guy.

Adam was worse than simply pushy.

Then the patio and…

She’d needed to clear her head. Get a breath. So she’d gone to the bathroom, and when she got back—Stephen was gone.

No one had seen him leave. No one knew who he was.

He was just—gone. No backward glances, no text, no see you later, just—gone.

Part of her didn’t want to see him. He’d called into question her self-respect. Instead of protecting her, he’d thrown stones. She was angry, but just because she was angry it didn’t mean things were over. It meant they talked about it. Fought a little—okay, a lot more—and then…made up. That was what couples did.

But Stephen hadn’t done that. He hadn’t even waited around to tell her he was leaving. He’d just…left.

Who did that?

She loved him. When you loved someone, you fought with them. It was just what happened. They’d never fought before though. Maybe Stephen didn’t like to fight. He’d said…his mother. And father. Fuck. This was all still too new to throw in the towel.

She was too hurt to be angry anymore.

Guys like Adam would get their day. She’d put them on their ass for the kind of shit they pulled—at the right time.

But this was Stephen… Beautiful, intelligent Stephen. Did she have to measure up to the great intellect of the naughty professor before she was rated good enough? No wonder some of those women had left him. Not because of his face, but because she couldn’t be good enough for him.

What should she do?

What if he was out there? Walking up and down the streets?

Part of her felt responsible for him. For making sure he made it home.

Should she drive the neighborhood again? She hadn’t found him when she’d gone up and down the roads earlier. He was gone. Just—poof. She wasn’t done with this fight, but he was.

His suitcase was still in her car.

So where was he?

She tried his phone again, but it rang straight to voicemail.

Tamara had texted. She’d messaged. She’d emailed. She’d done just about everything except a smoke signal, and he wasn’t answering. She couldn’t even get an acknowledgement that he’d gotten the messages.

Was he done with her?

Was this it?

It was creeping into the later hours. She needed to head home before it got much later.

She started the car and pointed it toward the highway. Her shattered heart ached. How could someone she’d just met hurt her so badly? How had that happened? She’d thought Stephen understood, that he got it, but he hadn’t. Not really.

She swiped at her cheeks and nearly drove off the road when her hand came back wet.

Was she—did she actually have the ability to cry?

She sobbed and slowed the car. She jabbed at the screen before she could think better of it.

The call rang through her stereo. It was late. Way too late to be making any sort of phone call, but she needed her girls. Her friends. The only people who’d ever been there totally and completely for her.

“Oh my God, someone must have died,” Miranda’s voice was slurred, her words thick with the accent few heard.

“Miranda?” Tamara’s voice broke, cracking as she spoke.

“Oh my God, Tamara? Are you—crying?”

“Y-yeah.”

“I didn’t know you could cry. I’m sorry! What happened?”

“S-stephen left me.”

“He what?”

“He left me.” Tamara steered the car off the road and stopped. She couldn’t drive like this. She couldn’t even think like this. It was all so…so…unexpected.

“He left you—where? Hold on—Rashae’s online. I’m patching her in.”

For a moment the call went silent, then there were two voices.

“Hello?” Rashae said.

“Tamara, where did Stephen leave you? Are you okay? Where are you?” Miranda was completely awake and at the helm.

“He—what?” Rashae’s voice reached ass-kicking levels of shrill.

Tamara stammered out the whole story, from Adam’s inappropriate behavior to the full-on screaming match they’d had outside. That was going to make the rounds for sure. Her luck, it’d be all over YouTube. She pulled her feet up into the seat and clutched her knees to her chest. How was it one person could hurt her like this?

“Oh, honey, honey, honey,” Rashae muttered.

“What do I do?” Tamara asked. She didn’t know how to manage herself, much less the situation or the car.

“You’re going to stay on the phone with us all the way home,” Miranda said without missing a beat.

“I’m putting on some coffee, and then I’m going to sharpen my shears.” Rashae’s tone was fierce and everything Tamara needed to hear. “Dick Pic is about to lose his balls.”

Tamara hiccupped and smiled at nothing.

God, she had the best friends.

13.

Stephen opened the medicine
cabinet and reached for his shaving cream—that wasn’t there. And why would it be? He’d packed it for the weekend and left the whole damn bag of toiletries in his suitcase.

Tonight—tonight he would make it out to the store to get what he’d lost.

Or maybe he’d come home and rewatch
Daredevil
.

That sounded like a better plan.

Who needed to shave?

Clearly, he didn’t need to shave, brush his teeth, or comb his hair. Or even wear underwear.

His new sketchbook should be at the school by noon, so he could stop scrawling over every damn receipt and scrap of paper.

He’d rewritten every word of that last conversation with Tamara a dozen times, both the way it’d gone down and how it should have happened. Why had he said that? Why hadn’t he bothered to stop and think?

He slammed the medicine cabinet shut and stomped out to the living room. The students had picked up on his piss-poor mood and hadn’t given him shit, but that was bound to change. A few of them were setting up to make stellar mistakes and when they fucked up…

Stephen paused at the door and inhaled.

He’d had a shit week, and he was not looking forward to the weekend.

Almost five days. Five full days since he’d left Tamara at the party so she could do her own thing without his fucking it up, and he’d hated every minute of it.

But what right did he have to go back there and ask Tamara if he could take it all back?

He couldn’t.

And now she had his sketchbook and…what if she read it? He hated himself for some things he’d written, but he’d needed to get them down, to ask the questions.

God, he was a miserable excuse for a human being.

Stephen grabbed his bag and hit the road, clinging to his mantra all the way to the university. He went directly to his lab, but paused outside the doors.

His suitcase sat up against the wall. It hadn’t been there last night at eleven when he’d left. Which meant she’d been there sometime between eleven-ten—because he’d had to come back for his stupid phone—and now. He glanced down the hall, peering outside at the walk for her form, but she wasn’t there. And it crushed him a little that she wasn’t.

But why should she want to see him?

She was probably glad he was gone.

He couldn’t blame her.

Instead of doing as she’d asked, he’d…he’d made a mess of everything and he hadn’t quite puzzled out how to make it right.

Fuck, if she saw the stupid test list… He had to go through the bag, see if the notebook was still there, if she’d kept it, if she’d burned it.

He hadn’t contacted her once since returning.

Not once.

Which meant he was a junkie jonesing for a fix of her. And she’d been there. Here.

They’d never gone this long without talking. Not when she was in crunch mode, not when he was working a contract, not even during finals. They’d always chatted. Emailed. Something.

He didn’t deserve her.

Those three words pounded into his head.

He grabbed the handle, unlocked the lab and headed for the back of the room. He laid it down and rummaged through the contents, but his sketchbook wasn’t there.

She knew his secrets. His thoughts. And yes, she’d seen the test. All of it.

Fuck.

This whole thing was wrong.

Who was he to tell her what to do? And what kind of fucked up crazy had he been thinking to ever make that list? To check things off?

Christ, he didn’t know what to do, but he couldn’t go on like this.

Tamara was operating on
auto-pilot. Her hands moved, she pressed buttons. She’d beta tested and broken a hundred games. This one was no different, and there wasn’t anything special about it. Decent graphics. A meh story. The music was to die for. But all in all, it would rate somewhere in the middle of the pack for the year’s releases. Rating it wasn’t her job, just beating it. Noting all the bugs.

She could do this in her sleep.

Which was what she’d been doing instead of going horizontal.

Gaming her way through her grief.

Fuck Stephen.

Fuck him in his perfect fucking face.

She’d read his journal. All the questions he’d wondered and never asked her. The observations about her mannerisms, his psychoanalysis of her and how she handled her trauma. Burning his stupid list hadn’t made her feel better. She had it memorized now.

“I can hear you about to murder another controller,” Miranda said through the headset.

God bless the girls.

Both Miranda and Rashae had switched off being on constant call with her, which meant the other was on-call for Piper. Fuck, they were amazing. The crying had really alarmed them—to the point that there’d been some discussion about flying in. But CosCon was in less than a week and they’d all fly in early anyway. Making another trip was just silly, though Tamara appreciated the thought.

“Tamara? You mute yourself?”

“Sorry, no, just in the zone. I wish I could tell you how much this game sucks. When can I test another one of yours?”

“Hush. No telling me about the competition.” Miranda laughed.

“I won’t. Just saying. It’s not one of your games.”

“You’re going to love the spin-off game Crystal and Andrea are working on—and that’s all I’ll say!”

“You are cruel. Evil and cruel. Die, you fucking bastard!”

“Wow, hey, you talking to Stephen over there?”

“He’s not a bastard. I just…never mind.”

“I get it. Hey, Piper moved her flight up a day so she could go see family, but they all have boring day jobs like me. Think you could pick her up?”

Tamara missed a beat and her avatar took a couple mana hits. She loaded up on spirit grenades and lit the little monster’s asses on fire.

“You want me to pick Piper up?” She paused the game once she hit the waystation to better focus on Miranda.

“Yeah, I thought I could get away early, but I’m not. Can you pick her up or are you busy?”

“Will she get into my car?”

“I—yes. Yes, she will.”

“I’m not so sure. Miranda…if I show up and she’s still pissed at me…I don’t know if I can do it.” She scrubbed her face.

Was that smell her?

Yuck.

When was the last time she’d showered?

Last week maybe?

“She wants to talk to you,” Miranda blurted. “This stupid set-up was her idea. She feels totally guilty and trapped and she doesn’t know how to fix it and she’s worried sick about you, especially now—just like the rest of us. Did you eat yet?”

“No.” Tamara smelled her shirt. “Do you know when I last showered was?”

“If you have to ask me, then you need to shower.”

“You’re probably right.” She wrinkled her nose. “How’s Piper been? I’ve missed her.”

“I think she’s been working through things in her own way. You know how Piper is, but you’re both hurting each other by not talking, and right now you need your friends. And she knows that.”

“Agreed.”

“How you doing?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“You sound terrible.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Just being honest.”

Tamara sighed and burrowed deeper into the pile of blankets she’d been living in for the last seven—or was it eight—days? She hadn’t taken off—or washed—the shirt of Stephen’s that had been crammed under the seat in her car. It smelled like sunscreen and brine, but it was his. She wasn’t up to admitting the theft to anyone. It was her very dirty secret.

“I’ve never seen you this…sad…before…”

“I’m human.” Tamara sighed and stared at the screen.

“You really liked him. I’d have figured you’d be pissed by now.”

“I am pissed but…not in the way you think.”

“Okay, so talk to me. Why are you angry?”

Tamara tossed the controller onto the sofa.

Where to start? That was the real question.

“He was angry at me for not standing up for myself. And honestly? I’m pissed, too. It shouldn’t be that way. I’d have never let Adam get away with that shit any other time. I just…I wanted the HitPoint job so bad. And…I guess he was right.”

“Okay, so…are you ready to talk about the notebook? You haven’t really talked about it.”

“It’s…his. It’s private. I should have given it back.”

“Probably, but what about what he said about you, in it?”

“The list. I wish he would have talked to me about it, but Stephen doesn’t talk. He looks at you and then writes what he’s thinking down a dozen times until he’s ready to say it.” She rolled her eyes, leaned her head against the back of the sofa, and the scent of sunscreen brought those days back into sharp focus. “Going to the beach was his idea, but it was obvious he was uncomfortable being there. So, why go?”

“Maybe…”

“Maybe he went with a girl once and she treated him like crap because of the way people looked at them?”

“Sounds possible.”

“Then what about the other things? We talked one night about people staring. What if the list…what if it wasn’t really about me? What if…what if it was about him, but he had it framed all wrong? And didn’t know how to talk to me about it?”

“I don’t follow.”

“There are all these things he hasn’t done, or doesn’t do, because of how people look at him. And he wanted someone to…be normal with him.” Tamara swiped her fingers under her eyes. They were leaking. Again.

“Okay, I can see that.”

“It makes me feel really rotten for keeping the sketchbook. I just saw the list and…flipped.”

“What about the drawings?”

“I don’t know. I mean, he’s super talented, but it was weird seeing me like that. But…I guess that’s how he processes things. He makes lists and sketches what’s in his head. They weren’t pornographic, so it’s not like he was…objectifying me…but…I just wish he’d have, I don’t know, talked to me about it.”

“What else is in that sketchbook?”

“Stuff. It’s personal.” Tamara laid her hand on the leather cover. There were lines, fragments of thoughts, things she knew were about her. Some came earlier in their relationship, when they were just handles to each other, and some were later. From last week. The weekend. They were private. Kind of like a diary, but without the heart shaped lock and Lisa Frank glitter. Bits of him she shouldn’t be privy to, and now she was, and it felt like a violation.

“How much have you been stalking him?”

“I haven’t stalked him.” Tamara glanced at her laptop and phone, so very close with all their evidence…

“Yeah. And the sky isn’t blue.”

“I just look at his Facebook. Every once in a while. He’s not a big updater.”

“But he didn’t unfriend you?”

“No.”

“Hm.”

“I also haven’t heard from him. He hasn’t responded to anything, but he’s not as direct as I am. I think he’s a bit like Piper that way.”

“Did you drive by the university?”

“…yes.” Tamara winced.

“And you saw him?”

“Just his car. I had to know if he was there, and I dropped off his bag anyway.”

“Tamara…”

“I know. I know. I’ll get mad at him again tomorrow. I just…miss him. I didn’t realize how much we talked until he wasn’t there anymore. I mean, next to you guys? It was him.”

“You never had video chat sex with me.”

“You never asked.”

“Would you?”

“Nothing personal, but I’m not into pussy.”

“Good to know.”

“Are you?”

“No. I swear, my love life would be easier if I were.” Miranda sighed.

“Maybe we need to take one of those singles cruises and just get laid.” Tamara rolled to her back and stared at the ceiling. She had no desire to see any other dick. Just one. And it just so happened she had a gif of it to keep her company. Too bad it wasn’t enough anymore.

Nine days.

Stephen needed to see her.

He reached for his phone, but it was dead. Why was it dead?

Oh, right, because he’d unhooked it to order a pizza…when? He glanced around the apartment until he spied the day-old, empty box with handwriting all over it. The floor was littered with sheets of paper, some of them stuck to the wall with masking tape and sticky notes.

Fuck. No wonder he was in a fog. He hadn’t eaten today.

What was today?

Wednesday.

Shit.

What time was it?

Half past noon.

God damn it.

He’d finally done it. Missed class. No call. No show. What the hell?

He’d fucked it up with Tamara. Now he was going to screw himself out of a job. Well, not screw. Nothing was screwing, least of all him.