Just a Boyfriend Read online

  He was perfect. And I fell hard without ever even speaking to him.

  The thing is, when you become that obsessed with someone as a teenager, you manage to learn a lot about them. I don’t mean just, like, their schedule (which I had memorized, naturally), but you watch them interact with their friends. In class. Hear them talking and find out what they like and don’t like.

  He was like a religion to me, and I was one fanatical cultist.

  My friends were also constantly feeding me tidbits about him and supporting my delusion—“Bash is going to Jason’s party this weekend, and he said he loves club music,” or “Bash was so cute in English today where he talked about this time in third grade when he fell and broke his front tooth.” They were the kind of friends who understood that when I said, “I saw my boyfriend today,” they all knew that I meant Bash, who had no idea I existed.

  Or when I said, “We ate lunch together,” that no, we hadn’t sat at the same table and had a conversation, but since we were in the same giant room at the same time, it counted.

  And things stayed that way up until one day in my junior year. It was a couple of hours after school had let out, and I was in the process of trying to break into my mom’s classroom.

  Bash found me, kneeling in front of the door with the lock-pick tools I had ordered off the internet. “Hey, Ember. I never figured you for a cat burglar.”

  The entire world came to a screeching halt. My blood turned slow and thick while my heart hammered so hard against my chest, it was like a hummingbird trying to break out of a cage.

  Bash.

  Talked.

  To.

  Me.

  And he knew my name.

  And instead of having some witty response, I actually said, “You know my name?”

  He leaned against the wall, all sexy-like with a charming grin. “I make it a point to know the names of all the pretty girls at school.”

  I died. Literally died and left my body and hovered above our conversation watching it happen like some scene out of a movie that could not be real.

  “Why are you breaking into your mom’s classroom?”

  “You know who my mom is?” This was all starting to feel a bit like a fever dream. Or a hallucination.

  If so, my imagination was awesome.

  “Yeah.” He said it like I had asked a really weird question. “And you still haven’t answered me as to why you’re breaking and entering.”

  My brain started to function again, which was very helpful. “Well, so far I’m just messing around with the lock, so I haven’t broken anything and I definitely haven’t entered yet. But it’s because my mom took my cell phone a week ago, and I’m on a mission to liberate it.”

  “Why did she take it?”

  “Annaliese texted me, and I was responding because that’s just good manners. I mean, my mother is the one who taught me to be polite. But did she see it that way? Noooo.”

  “And where did you learn to pick locks? Or attempt to pick locks, since you haven’t actually done it yet?”

  “Duh, YouTube.” And the patron saint of unrequited love must have been smiling down on me because I heard that clicking sound that meant I had unlocked the door. I shot a smirk at Bash, as if I’d known exactly what I was doing and was actually that cool.

  He was suitably impressed, letting out a low whistle as we entered the room. I was floating around on a runner’s high and went over to my mom’s desk. I opened her bottom drawer and saw my phone. I grabbed it, feeling a sense of relief. Similar to how I figured a drug addict would feel if they’d opened the drawer and found a big bag of cocaine.

  “Won’t she get mad?”

  The sound of his voice shocked me as I’d momentarily forgotten he was in the room, since I was so excited to be reunited with my phone. I knocked a jar of pens and pencils to the floor.

  I crouched down to pick them up. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?”

  As he bent down to help me, his fingers brushed against mine, and I jumped, as if he’d scalded me. It wasn’t something I could play off. It had been really obvious.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I guess I’m feeling a little flustered.”

  He gave me a half smile. “Flustered? Are you saying I fluster you?”

  Why was he like this? Boys in high school were supposed to have acne, braces, dandruff, and questionable body odor. They were supposed to be in the AV club and really into some online game. They were not supposed to be handsome and charming and flirt with you like they’d been taking classes in it.

  Then he reached for my hand, and my whole hand pulsed and pulsed, like a giant heartbeat, while tingles ran up and down my arm.

  “Maybe,” he said, “we could go out some time and see if the fluster is just school related, or if I can fluster you in the real world, too.”

  The fluster was real in every situation. We watched a Jane Austen movie for English. I’d used it as an excuse to contact him, and we started dating from there. I’d always been close to my mom, but I didn’t tell her about Bash. I didn’t tell my friends, either. They would have thrown me a party if they had known. They would have created a holiday called Bash Day to commemorate the momentous occasion of us going on a real date.

  But I kept him to myself. I didn’t want to share him with anyone else. I didn’t tell anyone that we had cutesy nicknames for each other. He called me E and I called him B. Yes, they were for the first letter of our names, but they were also short for breaking and entering. Which was when Bash said he started to fall hard for me.

  I knew eventually I would have to tell the world, but I liked it being just the two of us.

  We dated for months, and I was grateful that I hadn’t told anyone about us dating because I didn’t have to deal with their pity when it all fell apart.

  It was nearly prom, and we had decided it would be our coming-out as an official couple. Bash planned to ask me in a really extravagant way, in front of the entire school. He wouldn’t tell me what he had planned, but I was excited to spring our surprise on all our friends.

  Only, we were the ones surprised when our parents told us they had met, fallen in love, and eloped after dating for three weeks.

  And that I was moving into Bash’s house.

  I tried calling him that night, but he didn’t answer.

  Two days later, when I moved in, suddenly he was never around. There was no more mention of prom, no response to my texts or emails. He basically ghosted me even though we were living in the same house and going to the same school.

  For three weeks, the same amount of time it took our parents to have an entire relationship and decide to get married, Bash ignored me.

  Until one night when I was supposed to have been home alone. Bash was out with his friends, like always. Doug and my mom had gone to see a play in downtown Seattle. Lauren and Marley had gone to a sleepover birthday party. And I had plans with my friends but at the last minute begged off so that I could stay home and enjoy having the house to myself for once.

  I decided to eat a sleeve or two of Oreos and take a bubble bath. I was a pathetic excuse for a teenager. I had an empty house, and the worst thing I could come up with was bathing and being reckless with sugar and gluten.

  It was nice, wearing my earbuds and listening to my favorite songs while I blocked the whole world out. I didn’t have to think of the crushing heartache that had become my daily companion because my boyfriend had ditched me, or how uncomfortable I was in the Sebastian house that did not feel like home. I could just zone out and relax.

  I finished my bath and my Oreos and wrapped a towel around myself to go back into my room.

  Only when I got there, Bash was in the game room with three of his buddies. I hadn’t heard them come in, and I could tell from the look on Bash’s face he had no idea I was home. I had to walk past them to reach my room. For a second I just froze, taking in his friends’ expressions. They were mocking me, but there was a hint of interest there. Holding m
y head up, I hurried as quickly as I could into my room and locked the door. I still had my earbuds in so I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but I knew I didn’t want to find out.

  I waited a minute or two before I removed my earbuds, hoping that they would have forgotten about me and gone back to their games. I heard noises, but it sounded far away. Like, downstairs. As I hurried and got dressed, the front door slammed shut. I went over to the windows and saw Bash’s friends leaving.

  I didn’t see Bash.

  When there was a knock on my door, I realized why.

  “E, please let me in.”

  I had a moment where I wanted to refuse. To say nothing so that he could see what it felt like to be frozen out and ignored.

  But my heart couldn’t resist him. I unlocked the door. “What do you want?”

  “To apologize. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were here. If I had—”

  “If you had, you wouldn’t have come home,” I finished. “Or, more accurately, back to your house. This isn’t my home.”

  “But it should be. I want you to feel comfortable here. We have to figure out a way to make this whole thing work.”

  I turned around and walked over to my bed, sitting down. “There’s no way for any of this to work.”

  He followed and sat next to me. “There has to be.”

  Sitting so close to me, he smelled so good and was so big and taking up all the space in my room. My heart had gone light and fluttery, like a giant butterfly, beating inside my chest. All I wanted to do was turn to him and have him hold me like he had so many times before. Without thinking, not able to help myself, I twined my arms around his neck and buried my face there.

  I felt his hesitation, but it only lasted for half a moment before his arms were around me, squeezing me tightly. I had missed this so much.

  “E. Ember. We can’t.”

  We could. I pressed my lips against his throat and felt his Adam’s apple bob, hard. There was some token resistance, and then he turned his face to mine, capturing my lips in a kiss. My entire body rejoiced in the feeling, like an internal chorus of angels sang in celebration of his mouth against mine.

  It escalated quickly. I hadn’t touched him or kissed him in weeks, and I was desperate for him. We went from zero to sixty in about one and a half seconds. There was no slow ramping up, just foot to the floor, immediate acceleration and speed.

  Then he started to pull his head back, as if he intended to stop. I wasn’t going to let him. I deepened the kiss, and he instantly responded, his mouth hard and driving and amazing. I had missed him, and I wanted to show him how much. He wouldn’t talk to me, so this was the only way I had to communicate that to him.

  We’d made out before. Lots of times. But it had never felt like this. There had never been so much . . . ferocity. Intensity. I reveled in it even as part of my brain whispered this probably wasn’t a good idea.

  I told it to be quiet.

  Instead of listening to reason, I crawled into his lap so that I could kiss him better. He ran his hands up and down my back, and I could feel the strength of his touch, the warmth of his palms through my thin hoodie.

  He hadn’t shaved since that morning, and his stubble was scraping against my chin. It was rubbing my skin, turning it extra sensitive so that when he began to kiss along my jaw I nearly passed out from how good it felt. He had the world’s most perfect lips, and I loved every single kiss I ever got from him.

  As he moved his mouth down, I leaned my head back so that he could nibble along my throat. I let out a low sound of appreciation and pleasure and felt his hands tighten against me in response. Bash might not have been the world’s best student, but he was a freaking genius when it came to kissing.

  “E.” He said my nickname against my collarbone, and that pleading sound was gone. Instead there was nothing but confidence there and a promise. A promise of things to come.

  And I wanted those things more desperately than I’d wanted anything in my entire life.

  He broke off the kiss, his breathing fast and uneven. “Why can’t I stay away from you?” he asked.

  “Why would you want to?” My lips felt swollen and neglected.

  Bash shook his head. “Everything’s changed.”

  “This hasn’t.” It didn’t take much to get his mouth to return to mine, and his kisses became more deliberate. More exacting. Like he knew exactly what he was doing to me. He was drugging me with his touch. My limbs turned heavy, my brain turned completely off. Bash was the only thing in the world that mattered.

  He leaned me back on the bed and then braced himself over me. I opened my eyes to see him looking at me, and he looked at me like . . . he loved me.

  I loved him.

  I pulled him to me, letting his weight crush me in the most delightful way possible. I intertwined my legs with his so that I could keep him in place, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He kept drugging me with fire and pleasure until I became mindless with need.

  I wanted more of his warmth, more of his touch, more of his skin.

  Tugging at his shirt, I whispered, “Take it off.”

  He pulled back. “Are you sure?”

  It was further than we’d ever gone. “Yes.”

  That was all he needed, and he reached over his shoulder to tug his shirt off with one hand, leaving his impressive chest on display. I’d never seen him like this, and I was fascinated by his muscles, by the planes and ridges that curved and straightened back out. I ran my fingers over them, loving his harsh breaths and how his breath would catch when I touched a sensitive spot. There was so much strength under his soft skin. His abdomen clenched when my fingers brushed against it.

  “You’re so beautiful,” I said, my voice full of wonder.

  Then his mouth was on mine, and I continued my exploration, the smooth but strong warmth of his skin heating up my palms. Fire coursed through my veins, a fire that burned hard and strong but didn’t die out. It just burned and burned until I knew that the fire was going to consume me. I didn’t care. I wanted it. I wanted him, like this, forever. And in that moment, it was enough.

  Until it wasn’t. Until I wanted his skin against mine.

  As if he’d read my mind, it was his turn to explore. His hands moved over me like liquid flame, burning and igniting my skin everywhere he touched. I felt his fingers against my stomach, trailing a path down to my hips. He lifted the band of my yoga pants and took my hip in his hand, squeezing tightly and rocking me against him.

  The sensation was incredible. I gasped.

  “Is this what you want?” he asked in a voice so low and sexy it was hypnotic.

  “I want you. Just you. I love you.”

  I was breathing so hard I wondered if I might actually pass out.

  But it stopped.

  Everything just stopped.

  I opened my eyes and couldn’t focus for a second. Bash was sitting at the foot of my bed, his head in his hands. It took me a minute to get control of all my limbs.

  “B?” I moved over to him and put my hand against his shoulder. He jerked away from me. Without even looking at me, he grabbed his shirt and left.

  I was too stunned to chase after him. I sat there, unable to catch my breath, my entire body pulsing with need for him. What had just happened?

  I never got the chance to ask him.

  He moved out the next day.

  “Wow,” Jess breathed. “That’s like Greek suburban tragedy stuff right there. Didn’t you ask him why he stopped?”

  “No, it never came up in the three and a half years we weren’t speaking to each other.” I tried but couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

  “You are beautiful and snarky, which is my personal favorite combination. We are going to be really good friends. And as your future good friend, I think you and he should have a conversation.”

  “Nope. I prefer the let’s-pretend-everything’s-fine-forever method of dealing with this situation.” My frontal lobe had been so you
ng and stupid back then. The best thing was to just move on.

  Jess gave me a serious look. “Trust me on this one. Avoidance is never the way.”

  “It has been so far.”

  She nodded and then said something totally unexpected. “I’ve never had a stepsibling before, and I’m not much of an expert on those kind of relationships. Like, the only thing I can think of right now is the story of Cain and Abel.”

  “What? You want me to kill him?”

  “No. I mean when I heard that story in church last week, I thought maybe if they’d talked out their issues, the bad stuff wouldn’t have happened.”

  “I don’t know how you came to that conclusion, but I think something may be a little off with your religious education. Also, he’s not my brother.”

  Jess didn’t look the least bit offended, for which I was grateful as my mouth had often landed me in hot water when I spoke before I thought.

  “Do you still have feelings for him? Or are you over him?”

  Wow, that was a loaded question. Part of me wanted to shrug it off and remind her about the tutoring, but the other part figured I’d already told her the whole sordid story so I might as well be honest. “I do. Is that crazy, given everything that’s happened between us and our current family situation?”

  “I mean, there are probably some psych majors who’d have fun with that.”

  I smiled at her gentle teasing. “But our situation makes it so that it doesn’t matter. I have to move on. You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep rereading the last one.” There was no need to confess that I’d been stuck in the old chapter and couldn’t figure out how to turn the page.

  Jess had fallen silent, and I wondered why. I had to ask. “So, what do you think about all this?”

  “I was just thinking you’re amazing, and you’re awesome, and I’m so impressed by how willing you were to be open and share your story with me. And I was also thinking . . . poor Bash. He is so screwed.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BASH