Misty Reigenborn Romance Boxed Set (167 page)

“Your dad’s a cop Sen.”

Seneca laughed.  “Duh, that’s why we would have gotten away with it.  Only kidding Mol.  My dad would never hit a woman.  He’s seen way too many nasty ends to domestic violence cases to even think about it.  Besides, I think he knows that my mom could kick his ass.”

Molli laughed.  “I think you’re right.”

“So what movie are we going to watch?”  Seneca walked over to the huge shelf that housed her family’s DVD collection and started naming movies at random. 

The girls and Grant couldn’t agree on a movie, so he said he’d play video games until they were done with their movie.  Seneca went to the kitchen and handed him the two scented candles from the counter.  She kept a straight face until Grant had left the room and then burst into a fit of giggles.

“You know what he does in there don’t you Mol?”

Molli wrinkled her nose.  “Yuck.  Like I want to think about your little brother doing that.”

Seneca rolled her eyes.  “I’m sure he does plenty of that too, but I’m talking about what Mom and Dad yelled at him for all summer.  They were still yelling at him all the time when you came back weren’t they?”

“Oh, you mean leaving dirty dishes and dirty laundry in there for weeks at a time?  I thought they told him they’d stop giving him his allowance if he didn’t start cleaning up.”

“They did.  He did okay for a while but it didn’t last.  He left a half full glass of milk in there for so long once that I almost puked when he walked by my room with it and my door was closed.”

“Gross.”

“Totally.”

Seneca hit the button to start the movie.  When it was over, she told Molli to go ahead of her to her bedroom and that’d she’d be there in a minute.  Molli thought that she wanted to make out with Grant for a few minutes, but nodded and went down the hall.

She snagged an extra pillow from her friend’s bed and found a blanket in the closet.  She was getting ready to set herself up a bed on the floor when Seneca came back in the room.  She was laughing.

“You don’t have to sleep on the floor.  My man is passed out all curled up on my brother’s bed.  I kinda felt bad when I closed the window because it’s really gonna stink when he wakes up but I couldn’t let him freeze all night.  He kicks the covers off in his sleep.”

“Seneca Janise. What in the hell have you not been telling me?”

Seneca giggled.  “So we slept in the same bed a bunch of times before we did it.  He sneaks in my window all the time when his parents aren’t home and sneaks back out early in the morning.  He slept in my bed the night we had our first date.  His stupid parents got the locks changed on their house and then left town without giving him a copy of the new key.  Can you believe that shit?  He came to my window and asked me if he thought my parents would be mad if he slept in his car in our driveway, or that tent that Rain’s always got set up in the backyard.  He lives in a nice neighborhood and someone would have called the cops if he’d tried to sleep in his car over there.  He looked so embarrassed and sad that I told him to hide his car down the block and to come back and get his sexy ass into my bed.”

Molli shook her head.  “If he was anyone besides Grant that so would have been some kind of a come on line.”

“I could tell he wasn’t trying to come on to me.  If he’d been trying to come on to me, he would have showed up at my window and said my parents locked me out; can I sleep in your bed?  And I probably wouldn’t have believed he was coming on to me then either.  Everyone knows his parents are assholes.  I’m surprised that you didn’t hear about how his mom humiliated him in public after he had to take that DNA test.   I didn’t think I’d ever feel this way about a guy while I was still in high school Mol. I feel like I’m in the middle of a romance novel sometimes.”

Molli laughed.  “I wish I felt like I was in the middle of a romance novel.  I feel like I’m stuck in a loop of having sex with losers.”

“Maybe you haven’t met your leading man yet, or you have, but don’t know he’s the one for you.”

“I’ll probably be stuck with guys like Jude until I’m thirty.  Then maybe I’ll end up pathetic like Eduardo and go chasing after high school boys.”

“You’ll find a sweet guy like Grant.  I wanted to do it with him way before we did it.  He was afraid to take my virginity.  He was afraid that he’d hurt me, because he’s kind of well-endowed if you know what I mean.”

“Ugh Seneca, I did not need to know that about your boyfriend.”

Seneca laughed.  “Yeah, probably not.  C’mon Mol, let’s go to bed.”

Molli yawned and got up on the bed.  “Night Sen.  You know I love you, even if you are a silly pervert.”

“I love you too, Mol.  Goodnight.”  Seneca reached over and turned the light out.

Chapter 4

When Molli woke up the next morning and it wasn’t Seneca in bed beside her but Grant, she almost fell off of the edge of the bed.  Then she sat up enough to peek around his broad shoulder, and saw her friend’s head curled up against his chest and almost laughed.  They looked so adorable together.  Grant was so big, and Seneca was so small and thin that it was hard for Molli to believe that her friend had ever been even a little chunky.

She got out of bed and used the restroom and then went to the kitchen and made herself a bowl of cereal.  She was almost finished when Grant came into the kitchen, stretching and yawning. 

“Good morning Grant.  Did you sleep well?”  She hid a smile.

He blushed.  “I’m sorry that I crawled into bed with you two, but you were on one edge of the bed and Sen was on the other.  It looked like there was plenty of room between you.  I didn’t kick you in my sleep did I?  Sen says I’m always kicking her.  Oh shit, I don’t know if she told you about that.”

Molli smiled.  “It’s okay Grant.  I know you love her and she loves you.  Any other guy would have taken advantage of her a long time ago, since she’s been letting you sleep in her bed all the time.  Was she really even a little fat in Jr. High?  It’s hard to believe that she was.  She’s so small.”

Grant laughed.  “She wasn’t fat really.  She looked so hot in eighth grade even if she didn’t brush her hair all the time.  All the guys wanted to go out with her.  Phil and my other friends gave me crap because they all wanted to go out with her too, and they knew she’d never go out with any of them.  I felt terrible when I said those things to her.  She looked like she wanted to cry.  I did cry.  I went into the boy’s bathroom and bawled like a bitch.  Don’t tell her I told you that.”

Molli smiled.  Seneca had walked up behind Grant halfway through his story and had put her finger to her lips in a ‘shh’ gesture and winked at her.  “I won’t tell Seneca Grant, I promise.”

“Thanks Molli.”

Seneca put her arms around Grant from behind and said “Seneca already knew anyway silly.  You took shit for weeks because some seventh grader caught you crying and went and told a teacher remember?  It was so soon after you said all that stuff to me that I knew that you felt bad.  I did cry a little, but I got over it after you started being nicer to me.  When you helped me with my homework freshman year, and walked me home, I thought you were going to kiss me.  I wanted you to kiss me.  I liked you since sixth grade.  I really didn’t think you liked me back then though.  Girls don’t always understand the difference between when a boy is being an asshole to her because he secretly likes her, and when he’s just being an asshole.  And if we’re not sure, we’re not gonna make a fool of ourselves and make a move on you.”

“How come you never told me any of that before?”

Seneca laughed.  “I didn’t want you to get a big ego.  No really, it’s kind of embarrassing how much I liked you.  Me and my friends used to dare each other to call up the boys we liked and hang up when somebody answered without saying anything.  So if you got a lot of hang ups from sixth grade to last year, now you know why.”

“Damn, we could have been together this whole time?”

“Maybe you needed to go through that whole almost being a dad thing for a reason.  They say that everything happens for a reason don’t they?”

“I guess.   Cassie got pregnant for a reason, that’s for sure.  She wanted the child support.  I think she was embarrassed that she had to put my name down on her list.  She sure didn’t want a high school kid with a part time job to be the dad.”

“You’re gonna be a great dad someday.”

“Uh uh,” Molli said.  “Stop it right now Sen, or you two are gonna end up back in your bed doing what it takes to make a baby.  I don’t wanna hear it.”

Seneca laughed.  “Didn’t you say that you needed to take a shower before you went back to school Molli, since it’s creepy taking one in front of those creepy closet and not so closet lesbians?”

Molli shrugged.  “There is this girl that stares at me all the time.  You know that she uses the shower when it’s busiest because she wants to see naked girls.  There’s a shower room on all three floors, but we can use the one that’s not on the floor we live on if that one’s full or for whatever reason you know.  And girls do that sometimes of course, but there are some girls that you know do it for dirty reasons.  Like those two that I’m always telling you about Sen, the ones that shower all the time and still smell, and the girl that looks like she’s always undressing me with her eyes.  I think she wants me way more than she wants her girlfriend.  I try not to judge people and I’ve never really had a real conversation with her.  I want to think that’s she’s probably a really nice girl, but she creeps me out.”  Molli laughed when she thought of how they’d been talking about Seneca not always brushing her hair in Jr. High.  “And I think she took a lesson from you in Jr. High on how to brush her hair.”

“Hey.  It’s not like you were perfect in Jr. High or middle school either.”

Molli shook her head.  “Of course not.  That’s when I started getting called a slut, because I had sex before I really understood what it was all about.  Be glad you didn’t walk out of Jr. High with that kind of reputation Sen.  I would much rather have been called fat and had people say that I never brushed my hair.”  She laughed.  “Though with as manageable as my hair tends to be, I’m not sure you can tell that I do brush it.”

“You can always tell Mol.  I’m sorry.  I forgot that you got called names where you used to go to school.  I don’t think of you like that and I never have.  Do you want me to go to Cheston and find all of those kids that talked crap about you and beat them all up?  I’ll do it.  You know I will.  I’ll take the girls and Grant can take the boys.”

Molli laughed.  “No thank you Sen.  I doubt that most of the kids remember that they talked shit about me.  And a lot of them weren’t doing the greatest when I left.  My emotional problems weren’t the only reasons that my parents didn’t want me to go to the public school in Cheston anymore.  They also have a pretty high teenage pregnancy rate and dropout rate.  With as much as I like school, I think my parents were more afraid of me getting fed up and dropping out than they were of me getting pregnant.”

“Like girls don’t get pregnant while they’re going to Crestview.  I bet there are plenty of pregnant girls there right now.”

“Probably.  I’m glad that it’s not me.  I don’t think that I want to be another annoying baby mama for Eduardo.  I don’t think I’d be too cool with having Jude’s kid most of the time either.”

“I thought you quit doing it with Eduardo.”

“I’ve tried to tell him we’re through.  He won’t listen.  I don’t do it very often with him anymore.  I don’t want to and wouldn’t even if I wasn’t with Jude.  I do have to give him credit for one thing though.  He taught me that sex can be very enjoyable.”

Seneca made a face.  “Poor Molli had to find a creepy thirty year old to do it with to find out that she liked sex when all I had to do was finally convince my man to do it with me just once to find out that I liked it.”

“You two are in love.  I think it feels different when you’re in love.  It felt different with Jude at first, but then it went back to feeling like sex.  And he’s not that good at it.  I have to do most of the work to make sure that I get off.”

“Now you’re giving me TMI Molli.”

Molli laughed.  “I had to get you back for that totally uncalled for comment that you made about Grant last night didn’t I?’  She winked at Grant.  “Now that was really TMI.  I will take a shower so that you two can have some alone time before your family gets back.  I’ll use the same towels that I used last night and then throw them in the laundry room.  Let me grab my clothes.”

As she walked back toward Seneca’s bedroom she heard Grant say “What did you tell her Sen?”

She didn’t hear Seneca’s response but she heard Grant exclaim “I cannot believe you told her that Seneca.”

She had to laugh when she heard Seneca say “Well, it’s true isn’t it?”

As she walked back through the kitchen, she could see that Grant was blushing. 

“I am so sorry that she told you that Molli.  That WAS totally uncalled for.”

Molli laughed.  “I think I’ll live.  And no, I’m not going to look at you differently because she told me that.  I’m not that big of a pervert.”

Seneca laughed.  Molli could hear them talking again as she went into Seneca’s parents’ bedroom. 

“It’s really not as true as you think it is Sen,” Grant said.  “Or at least I don’t think so.”

Seneca laughed.  “It is true and you know it’s true.  I’d love you even if you weren’t so, you know.  Now let’s make good use of the time that Molli’s in the shower.”

Molli rolled her eyes as she shut the bathroom door.  She took a quick shower and then dried her hair and brushed it out.  It took forever like usual.  It looked like Seneca and Grant had just gotten out of the shower themselves.  Both of them had wet hair when she finally went out to the living room.

Seneca grinned at her.  “It is so nice sometimes to have a best friend that has a lot of hair.  You should let me straighten your hair for you sometime Mol.  I bet it would go way down past your butt if you let me straighten it.”

“I might start straightening it myself after I leave Crestview.  I always wanted straight hair, and it would be so much nicer if it didn’t take so long to brush through all of the tangles.  I don’t want you to straighten my hair.  I don’t want it to turn out like the whole tattoo fiasco did.  ‘It won’t hurt Molli.’  Then ‘It will only hurt a little Molli, and I promise it will look really good when I’m done.’  You’re lucky that I ever trusted you after that.”

Seneca laughed.  “It does look good though, doesn’t it?  Mol, show Grant your tattoo.”  Molli shook her head.  “Not that one, the one I gave you.  I’m not gonna ask you to show my man the tattoo you have on your butt.”

“It’s not on my butt, it just happens to end on my butt.  And like everyone from Brentwood High hasn’t seen it anyway, between Jude and Brendan.”

“I never saw pictures but they were supposedly going around.  Grant better not have looked at them if he had a chance either.  That would be like you looking at dirty pictures of my sister Grant.”

“I never looked Sen.  I promise.”

Seneca kissed him.  “Thank you.  Show him your tattoo Mol.  I think it’s really pretty.  I’d try to give myself one but I don’t think I could sit still that long or take the pain.”

Molli rolled her eyes.  “That’s why most people get them done at tattoo parlors Sen.”

“Not if you’re broke or not old enough or your parents won’t give you permission.  You’re lucky that Eduardo has connections and they didn’t care that you weren’t eighteen or didn’t have parental permission when they pierced your tongue and your belly button and gave you the tattoo on your ass.”

“It is not on my ass.  It is on my back and happens to end on my ass.  The drops of blood weren’t my idea.  And I think some places you can get piercings when you’re sixteen without parental permission.”

“Her other tattoo is on her ass Grant.  You can’t do that stuff here at sixteen without parental permission and you weren’t sixteen when you got your piercings anyway.  Eduardo convinced you to pierce your tongue right after you started doing it him because he wanted you to do nasty things to him with your tongue.  You were already having sex with Eduardo when we met and that was before your birthday.  Did I tell you how I met Molli Grant?  I saw her in town.  She looked so lonely and lost that I had to take her under my wing.  I brought her home with me.  My parents loved her at first sight and my little brother wanted to marry her.”

Molli gave Seneca a dirty look.  “If you don’t stop telling your boyfriend my tattoo is on my ass, I’m gonna show it to him and prove to him that it’s not.  And you were pretty damned lonely yourself when we first met, since your best friend from grade school had just moved away.”

Seneca stuck her tongue out at Molli.  “Ha, if your tattoo wasn’t on your ass, it wouldn’t be a big deal if you showed him, now would it?”  She laughed.  “I’m just kidding Mol.  Only part of
her tattoo is her on ass Grant.  But a girl gave it to her, and since it was her idea to put the drops of blood on your ass, you know what she wanted to do to you Mol.”

Molli rolled her eyes.  “I think I would rather have had a girl draw drops of blood on my ass than a guy, because then I really would have known what they wanted to do to me if it was their idea.”  She sat down on the other end of the couch and pulled up her pant leg and showed Grant the tattoo Seneca had given her on her ankle.  Grant gave her an admiring nod.  “Just because it does look good, don’t think about letting her give you one Grant.  Knowing Seneca, she’d probably give you a tattoo on YOUR ass that said ‘Seneca’s man’ or ‘property of Seneca’.”

Seneca laughed.  “That’s a good idea.  Hey Grant?”

Grant shook his head.  “No way.  If somebody is going to tattoo your name on me, it’s not going to be you and it’s not going to be on my butt.”

Seneca laughed again.  “You’re no fun Grant.”

“Uh huh.”

Seneca made herself and Grant eggs for breakfast, and convinced Molli to eat again too.  They drank more cocoa and were in the living room watching a movie when Seneca’s parents got home with Rain.

Mrs. Price looked at Grant and then at her daughter.  “I’m assuming that Grant came over this morning and did not spend the night Seneca Janise.  I had better be correct because I don’t like to think that I’d ever have to forbid you from seeing him.  I know that you two care so much about each other, but baby, I am too young to be a grandma.”