Infatuated (4 page)

W
ith the smile in place, I went to my room and took off Kale’s jacket. I hung it in the closet next to my stuff, then grabbed out a change of clothes. I still wanted my bath. I ran the water, warmer than it needed to be, and then soaked until my muscles relaxed.

I nearly fell asleep, and only the thought of drowning in my sleep had me dragging myself out. I wrapped a towel around me as my cell rang. Automatically, I thought—hoped—it would be Kale.

The display showed a blocked number. No one I knew or talked to had one, so I grinned and answered. “Hello?”

I heard breathing.

I laughed. “Kale?”

More breathing.

“If this is your idea of phone sex, I think you’re missing a few steps.” When I still didn’t get a response, warning bells went off in my head. I clicked End on the phone and held it away from me.

It was Kale. Or just a joke—

The phone rang again.

“Who is this?” I snapped, answering it. “This isn’t funny.”

There was more breathing, this time heavier. “Ally,” the voice said, followed by a sickening grunt.

I turned off the phone and tossed it away from me. It bounced off the bed and landed on the floor. I stood frozen to the spot, staring at it, waiting for it to attack or do something. My palms went sweaty, my mouth dry.

After a minute, I realized it couldn’t have been Kale. Even if I thought he was the type of person to prank someone (and I didn’t think he was), he’d put
his
number into my phone—not the other way around.

Hearing voices outside, I dressed quickly and then ran to double check the locks. I did the same for the windows, and closed the blinds and curtains. Then I rechecked the door again.
I’m overreacting. It was just a stupid prank call.
I’d had them before when I worked at a hotel.

“Just a prank,” I muttered out loud, standing in the middle of the living room. Slowly, I turned off the lights and made my way back to my bedroom. For one weak moment, I debated leaving the light on in my bedroom before I made myself turn it off, plunging the room into darkness. Crawling into bed, I tucked the covers up to my chin.

Shadows danced along the walls. My imagination ran wild, picturing people, men—Earl—in the silhouettes. Every sound that I’d spent months learning seemed different, louder, closer, ominous. The drip of the sink, the water heater creaking.

I’d been so happy when I moved out and got a place of my own. Moving across country to go to school with my best friend Maxine had been the biggest adventure. Getting my own apartment had been bigger, more important. It was my place. All of it. I worked my ass off to keep it, to not have roommates.

I thought living alone would be peaceful. I thought it’d be freeing, liberating.

But I was wrong. It was loud.

It was suffocating.

I
didn’t sleep well. Every sound, every strange light, had me gasping for breath and my eyes popping open. The few times I did manage to fall asleep, I had nightmares that left me shaky and scared. When I got out of bed the next morning, I stepped on my forgotten phone. The screen shattered, leaving me with a pretty three-hundred-dollar paperweight, and the glass cut my foot. I left bloody footprints in my wake.

I was late for class in a bad way. I spent an hour trying to get the carpet clean, and then, because I couldn’t live without my cell phone for long, had to take it in to be repaired. The guy who fixed them had been out and I’d been told it wouldn’t be ready until the next day.

My class was miserable. My instructor, Mr. Erickson, caught me sneaking in late and glared at me, and then I struggled to stay awake the whole time.

“What’s your deal, chica?” my friend Maxine asked after class. Her brown eyes were full of concern. “You were late. I thought that was a physical impossibility. And you almost slept through Mr. Erickson’s lecture, boring though they are. That’s not like you.”

Besides Kale, Maxine was the only one who knew—and believed me—about Earl.

She hissed when I told her about the calls. “Ugh. I’m only hearing about it secondhand and I’m seriously freaked out. I can’t imagine how you feel. That sucks, Als. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not fun, that’s for sure. I know it’s him. It has to be. Who else would call me and do…that?” I frowned. “I wonder if it has anything to do with Kale confronting him.”

She made a face at me. “You had a vegetable talk to him?”

“No.” I snorted. “Kale, as in the guy I met—”

“Met?” She gaped at me. “You met someone?”

“Oops. Did I forget to mention him?”

“Yes, Ally. Yes, you forgot to mention him.” She squealed. “It’s about time, you recluse! Tell me everything! Is he hot? Is he good in bed?” Her eyes closed. “Tell me he’s good in bed. I need to live vicariously through someone—even if it is you.”

I laughed. “Ouch.”

“You know what I mean. Nuns get more action than you. It’s your choice, I get it, but still.” She shook her head. “Stop trying to distract me. Gimme the details.”

“I just met him. As in last night.”

Her eyebrow shot up. “And?”

“It’s been barely fifteen hours. Things haven’t gotten that far.” Though I had a feeling they would get there faster than expected. Kale…had a way about him. A smooth, buttery one.

“Okay, so you’re still a nun. Tell me about him. Give me all the details, leave nothing to the imagination.”

“He’s funny. Sweet. Sexy as hell.” He exuded sex until it, and he, were the only things on my mind.

“Bad boy or good boy?” She closed her eyes and linked her hands together. “Please let him be a bad boy—if anyone needs one of those, it’s you.”

“Hey, I don’t need a bad boy.”

“Oh, please. As your best friend of ten years—and I say this with love—you need a bad boy. You need someone to help you unwind. You’re all work and no play. You’re a poster child for Sainthood. So which is he?”

Okay, so maybe she had a small point. I
wasn’t
very adventurous or a risk-taker. “He’s somewhere in the middle, I think. Bad boy looks, good boy attitude.” I grinned. “Great kisser.”

“You kissed him? Holy shit, Ally.” Her voice reached an all-new high pitch.

“For one, he kissed me. Two, it was barely a brush of the lips. And three, kissing isn’t a big deal—”

She snorted. “For most people, no, it’s not. For you? It’s a BFD. Big Fucking Deal.”

“It was barely a kiss,” I repeated. And that had me frowning. Not the barely-kiss, because that had been pretty great, but the fact I wanted more in a bad way.

“Fine. Whatever. So, Kale told Creepy Guy to back off?”

“Yeah.”

“That takes balls, to defend someone you barely know.”

I agreed, one hundred percent.

“What else? What’s he like?”

“We didn’t really hang out that much, but when we were, I was too busy smiling or laughing to think about…other stuff.” And that was something else I liked about Kale. When he was around, I didn’t think about anything else. I didn’t want to or have a chance to, because he took over my thoughts.

“Damn. Sexy, funny, a good kisser, and he defends damsels in distress?” Maxine let out a dramatic sigh. “Does he have a brother?”

“I don’t know.” If he did, I didn’t think he’d be like Kale. Kale was unlike anyone else.

“When are you seeing him again?”

“I don’t know that, either. He asked me out, though.” And I just remembered that I’d never actually given him a straight answer.

“And you said, ‘Yes, please, and thank you’, right?”

“Er.”

She dropped her head and shook it. “How are we friends? How can you hang around me and still know so little about guys and relationships? Are you actually a nun? I mean, really. I was kidding before, but sometimes I wonder about you, Ally…”

“I’ll see him again, sometime, I’m sure. He let me borrow his coat and wouldn’t take it back.” It made me smile when I remembered he’d left it with me for that reason, so I’d have to see him again.

“Something just happened that I never thought would happen. I thought it was even more impossible than you falling asleep during a class.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“I’m actually jealous. Of you.” Her gaze traveled up, as if staring at something she didn’t understand. “The world has officially turned on its side. Up is down, down is up, front is back, and back is front. I woke up in a weird, bastardized version of
Freaky Friday
or
The Twilight Zone
and didn’t even know it. Or maybe I flew over the Bermuda Triangle and this is what happens to people. They wake up the same, in their normal lives and bodies, but everything else is different. Is the sky still blue? Am I still a sexy redhead?”

“This isn’t
that
weird.” Was it?

“No?” She pierced me with a hard, blue-eyed stare. “What was the first thing you thought about when you woke up yesterday morning?”

“Erm.”

“Homework or something equally responsible, right?”

I felt my cheeks heat.

“And the first thing you thought about this morning?”

“He wasn’t the
first
thing. I mean, I didn’t sleep well, so I woke up kind of grumpy—”

“Fine. So he wasn’t your first thought, but I know you like him already. You’re practically related to Rudolph you’re blushing so much.” She smiled smugly when I only blushed more. “You’ve been my best friend since middle school, and even back then, you were a big nerd. When your place was getting painted a few months ago and you slept over? You almost blew a gasket when you thought you’d be five minutes late for class. In fact, you woke up yelling about some report you had to turn in. Two weeks from then.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

Only she wasn’t. But to be fair, it had been an important assignment that’d been worth half my grade. I worked my butt off to get into the class because it’d been full. I worked my butt off at Hanson’s to make sure I could pay for what my scholarships didn’t cover.

“I don’t need to exaggerate the truth—it’s written all over your adorably red face. Did you give him your number, at least? Did he give you his? Come on, Ally. You’re like a mutant from another planet who doesn’t know human customs!”

“He gave me his number.”

“I’m not even going to ask if you called him, because the frown on your face tells me you didn’t even consider it.
Are
you an alien?”

“Are you really surprised by my reactions?” I shot back.

Her mouth opened, then closed. “No. But you’re calling him. Now.”

“I can’t. My phone is being repaired, remember?”

“Well, damn. Fine. But if he asks you out again, you’re saying yes. And if you don’t, I will knock you unconscious, steal your cell phone, and then do it for you. If I can’t live vicariously through you, then I can live vicariously
as
you, which might be even better now that I think about it.” She waved her hands. “The point is, I’ll do it, don’t think I won’t. You remember Peter’s party, don’t you?”

The memory of said party made me cringe. Peter was a guy I’d liked in high school but had been too shy to talk to. So Maxine, in her infinite female wisdom at fifteen, had locked us in a room together—literally. The only good that came of it had been me learning that Peter was
not
Mr. Right. He wasn’t even close. “And you remember what I did after you did that, don’t you?”

Now she cringed and I smiled.

I may not have been a big party person, but I did get my revenge on when the situation called for it. I locked her in a room with Daniel—a guy who had the biggest crush on her and made puppy eyes at her whenever she moved. Or breathed. He hadn’t needed much incentive.

She shuddered. “I still hate you for that.”

“Ditto.”

Huffing, she turned to face me. “God, I need to get laid.”

I laughed. “Which reminds me. Why are you living vicariously through me, exactly? It’s usually the other way around.”

“Because I called things off with Robert.”

“The bad kisser?”

“No, that was James. Robert was the dorky-but-cute one.”

Amused, I said, “And what was Robert’s flaw?”

“Momma issues. Big ones. Gigantic, Texas-sized issues.” She shot me a quick look. “What is Kale’s fatal flaw?”