Her gaze swung back to me. “Pearl Frank? Right?”
“That’s me,” I gritted out. “Boyce isn’t here, Brittney. He’ll be back in an hour or two.”
“Whoa. I didn’t know you and Boyce—” She snorted a giggle. “Ah, this explains a whole helluva lot! But I thought you were away at college or something?”
“I graduated.” What explained a lot of what?
“Cool. And you decided to move back here… for Boyce? That’s kinda—”
“No, that’s not—”
“—sweet.”
“—why.” Sweet? Was she high? Knowing Brit, that was entirely possible. “I just needed somewhere to stay, and Boyce has a spare room since…”
“Since his worthless turdass of a father kicked it, finally. That guy was barely a step above my old man.”
A step above?
“So when will Boyce be back? An hour, you said? Because my piece of shit truck is shaking like a tweaker between hits.” She pointed a thumb over her shoulder at the beat-up pickup in Wynn’s driveway. “I dunno what I did to it, but it’s pissed. I gotta have that thing to get back and forth to work or I’m screwed.”
Even Brittney Loper was employable.
That’s uncalled for, my conscience tut-tutted. “I have the opposite problem. Working car, no job.” Small talk? Shut up, Pearl.
“But your mama is married to Dr. Frank. Don’t they, y’know, give you money?”
My face warmed.
Before I could answer, she added, “If you and Boyce ain’t getting busy then why are you living here instead of there? I haven’t been to the Frank place since we graduated, of course—what was that, four years ago? But shit, girl, they’d have to pry my ass outta there with a crowbar if I was you.” A crease popped up on her forehead. “Unless Dr. Frank—”
“God. No—no. He’s great. I just had a little disagreement with them about what I’m doing next. They expected me to go to medical school and I… don’t want to.” Why was I telling her this?
“You know you’re an adult, right?” she said slowly, as if I were dense. “You went to college even! Not married, no kids… You don’t have a kid, right?”
“Uh, no.”
“Free as a bird. And look at you—you’re a cute little thing. If you wanted Boyce, you could land him. Honestly, if you’d been a bitch in high school like your best friend was—no offense—I wouldn’t point this out, but I mean be real. Plenty of the dipshits we went to school with are still living with their mamas, but Boyce has his own place and his own business. Sure, he was a fuckup in high school—weren’t we all—well, not you—me and Boyce and Rick, etcetera. But Boyce turned out pretty decent I’d say, and Lord-have-mercy hot to boot.”
I snapped my mouth closed once I realized it was ajar. “I thought you and he… uh…”
She laughed, displaying a mouth full of white teeth. I meanly concentrated on her small overbite. “Well, yeah, but it’s never been anything serious between us. You, though. You’ve got the goods. He’d be an idiot not to go for it. Just make him work for it. Boyce doesn’t set store by anything that comes too easy, if you get my drift.”
• • • • • • • • • •
Boyce was silent when he returned, dropping the box in his room, checking the fridge and shutting it without removing anything. Unless he’d eaten while he was out, he’d missed lunch.
“How’d your meeting go?”
He shook his head but didn’t reply, staring out the window into a backyard that had been allowed to go wild.
“That bad?”
“I’ll figure it out.” His eyes shifted to mine and away. Just as I meant to press him to let me listen or help, he said, “I missed my workout this morning. I’m gonna go do that.”
He left his room five minutes later and headed straight outside wearing unlaced sneakers, mesh shorts, no shirt, and dog tags I’d never seen him wear. My body threatened mutiny at my self-imposed celibacy while sharing quarters with that. As soon as the door shut behind him, I went to stand six inches from the AC unit in the window, which couldn’t blow cold enough to cool my feverish skin. I’d handled Boyce Wynn in bits and pieces all my life, but living with him was testing every bit of willpower I had.
My body didn’t get it. I couldn’t deny that I wanted him on a purely physical level, but if I gave in to that, my heart would wake up and want more. I couldn’t play that game with Boyce. He would break me.
Even if I’d experienced brief moments of wishing I could be more than a friend he found attractive, I had never let myself imagine him falling in love with me. Exception: those few hours between our only time together and seeing him on the beach with a girl on his lap—a temp fuck—that’s what he and his friends called the tourists’ daughters they hooked up with.
Playing house had put relationship mirages in my head where none existed before. Or maybe I’d just been able to repress them before now. Damn Brittney Loper and her cruel promptings to land the boy I’d loved all my life.
Nine weeks, two days.
“I forgot to tell you—Brittney Loper came by for you,” I said when Boyce came inside.
He paused before pulling the fridge door wide and staring inside. “What did she want?” The waistband of his shorts was damp with perspiration.
“She said her truck was shaking.”