Bad Reputation

Tucker

I woke up in a panic, then lay there in the dark, trying to calm my racing heart and isolate the source of my worry. It took a few moments, but as my pulse normalized and my sleep fog lessened, I was able to grasp it.

I’d been dreaming of my mother, and a promise she’d had me make when I was twelve years old.

I’d been holed up in the coat closet at our apartment while my parents argued about money, about unmet dreams and about God knows what else. I drifted in and out of doziness as the screaming went on, jerking awake when it finally reached its crescendo. My father stormed out, drunk and angry, with our grocery money in his hands, ready to hand it over to his preferred dealer. It had been very quiet for a few a moments after that, then my tearful mother had dragged me out of the closet and sat me down on the couch.

“Promise me,” she said.

“Promise you what?” I replied resentfully, not wanting to meet her mascara-smeared eyes.

“Swear that you will never settle for less than you deserve.”

“I will never settle for less than I deserve,” I repeated automatically.

“Tucker. Look at me.”

And I forced my gaze to her face. She looked feverish, and very nearly frightening.

“Okay, Mom,” I agreed.

And then she laid out a list. Her list of more. She made me repeat it until there was no way I could forget it.

Ten years from now, I will have gone to Europe at least once.

Ten years from now, I will have met the love of my life—a kind, smart, generous man. He will value me.

Ten years from now, I will have a successful career. It will be one that matters.

We never talked about it again, but the memory struck me sometimes, and when it did, it would fill me with the panic I was feeling at that exact moment. Because I was right on the cusp of my twenty-second birthday, and I had not accomplished a single thing on that list.

“Liandra!” I hissed.

She muttered an incomprehensible response.

“Liandra!”

“Tucker,” she groaned from across the room. “What do you want?”

“What if I never amount to anything?”

“You’re not even going to make it until morning if you don’t leave me alone,” she grumbled.

I waited, knowing that any second she would remember how many times she’d woken me up over the past year for things far less significant than a crisis of self-faith. She sighed resignedly.

“What’s this about?” she asked.

“I just thought I would have it all together by now,” I replied.

“Does this have anything to do with the fact that you’re turning twenty-two in three months?”

I nodded, even though she probably couldn’t see me in the darkness of our shared bedroom.

“And because you got that letter this past week, asking you to declare your major?”

“More like demanded it,” I told her.

She ignored my comment. “And because of what happened with Mark…an awfully long year and a half ago?”

“Are you trying to make me feel worse?” I asked.

“No,” Liandra said. “I’m just gathering all your points so I can accurately refute them.”

“And now you’re resorting to lawyer speak?”

“I’m not a lawyer.”

“Not anymore.”

“Tucker.” My friend sighed. “How old am I?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“I’m thirty-four!”

“I know,” I told her. “I was trying to soften you up so you’d be nicer to me.”

“Well, stop it.”

“Sorry.”

“How many boyfriends do I have?” Liandra asked.

“None.”

“None,” she repeated.

“But at least you’ve been married,” I reminded her.

“None,” she said a second time, this time heavily.

“But—”

She cut me off. “So. I’m a thirty-four-year-old woman with one failed marriage, one failed career, living off a student loan that I will probably never pay back, in some run-down, all-girls dorm with a self-pitying twenty-one-year-old who is sad because she has never been to Italy.”

“You are trying to make me feel worse,” I accused.

“I’m giving you perspective,” she corrected.

And truthfully, what she was saying did make me feel better about my situation. When I had come to Liandra, I’d been in the lowest state of my life, and she had helped me rebuild. She’d had her share of hard times, and she understood loss. In fact, it was often what she had been through herself that inspired me. She’d left those details out of her little rant, but my mind went to them immediately. I thought of the fact that she’d battled breast cancer for eight years, and that the radiation treatment had resulted in infertility. And how her boss at the law firm where she’d worked had also been her husband. And that he’d fired and divorced Liandra after impregnating his office assistant.

“Liandra?” I said softly.

“Is it working?” she replied.

“Is what working?”

“My evil plan,” she said. “Are you lying there thinking about my crappy life instead of yours?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

She chuckled. “Good. And you’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” I said belatedly.

She was quiet for a minute, and I wondered if she had drifted back to sleep. Then she leaned across the space between our beds and squeezed my hand.

“Your mom would be proud,” she told me. “I know it.”

My heart ached for a single beat, and I pushed the pain aside. I’d come eight-hundred miles away from home so I could put the past and all that pain that went with it behind me.

“Do you feel any better?” Liandra wanted to know.

“A lot.”

There was a pause, and I thought she might call my bluff, but instead she just said in a teasing voice, “Good. Now can we please get some rest? It’s 2 a.m.”

“Today is Friday,” I reminded her. “You don’t have any classes. And neither do I.”

“I know.” She yawned. “But you’ve got that rally thing in the morning, and work in the afternoon. And let’s face it, if you’re tired, you’re cranky. And if you’re cranky and tired, then you’re noisy.”

“It’s not a rally, it’s a business meeting! And now that I’m thinking about that, I’m all anxious again.”

“See?” she said. “Already cranky.”

I threw my pillow at her, and grinned to myself when I heard her responding squeak.

“Good night, Liandra,” I called out sweetly.

“Good night, Tucker.”

After a few more silent moments, my roommate’s breathing became even and slow, and I knew she had fallen asleep. But I was still wide-awake, thinking of my immediate future instead of my long-ago past.

The project I’d taken on was a big one, and close to my heart. In fact, it was the biggest thing I’d ever undertaken. And the most personal. This wasn’t just some cause I’d read about, or some park that needed to be cleaned up. This was about me.

A full year earlier, when I’d still been more or less picking up the pieces of my life after my parents had died and I’d left Mark, I’d heard that a local community center was being shut down. At first, I’d just felt a little sad that a place so similar to the one where I’d spent so much of my youth was going to be turned into high-rises and a mini mall. But the more I’d thought about it, the more it had upset me. And when I’d decided to visit it, I’d seen the number of kids there, and something in me had snapped. I couldn’t let it close.

So I did the only thing I could. I volunteered to fix the whole damned thing. So I’d started researching. I invested quite a bit of time looking over the details, finding out how I could save it, or even if I could. The city owned the land and the community center, but the building was old and expensive to maintain, and someone in the line of officials had decided it was no longer worth the amount it cost. So the bottom line came down to one thing. Money. Of which I had little.

I couldn’t buy the land, or even the building. But I could bring it back up to code. If I could come up with the thirty-thousand dollars.

And then came the windfall, painful as it was.

A fifteen-thousand-dollar insurance settlement from my mom. The lawyers had originally told me that my mom’s policy had been voided by the arson, but further investigation revealed that it was still valid.

I couldn’t keep the money. Not for selfish reasons. But for the community center…it was just the bump I needed. Half the money I needed, ready to go. It gave me sway with the city officials and validated my proposal enough that they gave me a year to come up with the other half. Which led to the birth of my not-for-profit gardening service. With Liandra’s help, a generous grant and the assistance of many patrons of the community center, I was damned close to my goal of raising the other fifteen-thousand dollars.

And the whole thing was a bonus I hadn’t counted on. The work distracted me from Mark and all the pieces of my heart he’d left behind. I didn’t need him, or romance or anything but my own cause. I felt good about myself. I could be happy on my own terms.

Then, only just this week, I received a call that made me think it might all have been for nothing.

Some bigwig developer wanted the land. Whoever he was, he thought we needed something better. Something bigger. Something profitable.

With only six weeks left to raise the money, the city officials wanted to meet with me. Tomorrow.

* * *

I rolled over in my bed, found my phone squished under my face and realized immediately that my alarm hadn’t gone off.

“Crap!” I yelled, then clamped my hand over my mouth as I remembered what Liandra had said about me making a lot of noise.

She stirred, but didn’t wake up. I peered down at my phone. I was forty-five minutes behind schedule. And I’d done quite a number on my phone while I’d slept.

Sometime during the night, I’d acquired a new low score on my Bejeweled game, turned off my alarm and sent Mark a nonsensical text.

I’ll be paying for that one.

I got out of bed as quickly as I could, trying hard to keep quiet.

I struggled to get dressed in the dark, rushing as best I could while trying to prove Liandra wrong. I slid into the black skirt I’d preselected and attempted to button my blouse correctly. It was hard to be fast and silent at the same time. I cursed myself for needing to be right, cursed my roommate for making me feel that need.

I finally brushed my curly hair out of its braid, wound it into what I hoped was a tidy bun and got my feet into my shoes. I stuck my tongue out at Liandra’s sleeping form and glanced at my phone again. If I was going to make the bus on time, I was going to have to run.

I swore at myself as I made my way through the narrow hallway, past the long strip of dorm room doors.

Damned stubbornness. Damned roommate. Damned cell phone alarm.

“Hey!”

I stumbled as I swerved to avoid smashing into the source of the deep and surprised voice. I flailed as I tried to stay upright, grabbing the nearest wall to keep from falling. My hair flew out of its bun, blinding me as I wobbled.

“Dammit!”

I willed myself to stand up, and glared at my feet. That was when I realized that I was wearing two distinctly different sandals. One was gold and dressy—the pair I’d selected to wear—but the other was a sporty number with a Velcro toe strap. The only thing they had in common was that they were both on my feet.

“How did I not notice that?” I muttered to myself.

I stared accusingly down at the guy who was sitting on the floor. The mismatched shoes might not be his fault, but he had nearly made me break my leg. I had a snarky comment on the tip of my tongue, until he flipped his blond, boy-band hair out of his face, and I found myself gazing into the greenest eyes I had ever seen. They were breathtaking; they were filled with concerned sincerity and a hint of something else I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

My heart raced. His hand found mine and squeezed it firmly, confidently, like he was put on the planet to keep me upright. My palm tingled at his touch. Want licked through my hand to my wrist and across my chest. In two seconds flat, I was breathless, almost panting.

When was the last time someone touched me like that? When was the last time I reacted to a man’s touch with such fervor? I answered myself immediately. Never.

I knew my eyes must be open wide in surprise. I looked away and I pulled my hand from his grasp, then planted myself firmly on the ground.

What just happened? What did that kicked-in-the-gut moment mean?

“You okay?” he asked, breaking the spell.

“This is a girls’ dorm.”

I spun around and forced myself to walk until I hit the end of the hall and could run again without feeling those green eyes on my back. I fled down the stairs, glad to get away before I could be sucked in by the inevitable story he would tell about how his girlfriend was afraid of the dark, or how his sister was sick and needed him to stay over. I’d heard every lame excuse in the book. With an averagely aged population of about twenty-five, it was inevitable that guys were often found stashed throughout our residence.

I didn’t normally care. As long as they stayed out of the shower and refrained from dropping dirty boxer briefs in the common areas, it was fine. But my mood was bad, and getting worse by the second.

When I hit the final step, I flipped my shoes off and tossed them into my backpack.

At least it’s sunny, I thought.

I twisted my hair back into its bun, this time giving it a tug to make sure it was secure, and sprinted across the lawn.

I moved more quickly now that my feet were free, and I even enjoyed the sensation of grass beneath my feet. It was dry enough to be springy and pleasant, and for about forty-five seconds, I felt completely liberated.

When I got close enough to see the bus stop, I reined myself in, slowing to a hurried walk. Moments after I planted my bare feet on the cement pad, the bus wheezed up. I boarded it breathlessly, and tried to fill my head with thoughts of a rebuilt community center rather than a green-eyed boy.

Man, I corrected mentally, remembering the way my body lit up when our palms touched. Definitely a man.

I shrugged off the residual desire, and focused my mind on the upcoming meeting.

* * *

I crossed and uncrossed my legs nervously. I was already getting a headache and I hadn’t even started my presentation yet.

“You don’t need to be worried.”

I glanced up at Keith Bomner and frowned. He was so quiet and nondescript, it was easy to forget he was there. He had a face that would blend into a crowd if it wasn’t hidden behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, and his clothes were plain. My own outfit looked slick beside his. But Liandra had assured me that he was the best person to help me with my plea to the city, and so far he hadn’t let me down. Today, he was going to help me remind the city officials that that they had a legal obligation to let me continue my quest, at least for another six weeks.

In fact, he was in my good books because he’d met me at the bus stop with a pair of shoes.

“How’d you know?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Liandra called. She said she found a pair of mismatched sandals on your bed. It seems she knows you well.”

I’d slipped on the flats gratefully and followed him into city hall.

Now I was tapping them nervously on the floor. Keith put a hand on my knee to stop me.

“This will be an easy meeting,” he said.

“I’m not worried,” I lied.

“Relax. This is a sure thing.”

“How do you know?”

“Because going back on their word would make for bad press.”

My heart beat nervously. “The press?”

“Liandra told me how you feel about the spotlight and I’ll respect it, even if I don’t understand it,” he let me know.

I let out a breath, and ignored the lawyer’s briefly curious expression. My mistrust of the media wasn’t without reason. For months after my parents’ deaths, reporters hounded me, begging for the inside scoop. The last thing I wanted was my name aired in public once again. The city officials knew who I was, of course, but the bulk of the fundraising was carefully hidden behind my not-for-profit business, and virtual anonymity suited me just fine.

“Thank you,” I said gratefully.

“But just because I know about your media ban doesn’t mean that they need to know about it.” Keith inclined his head toward the boardroom.

On cue, the door swung open, and a bald man wearing an ill-fitting suit cleared his throat and invited us to join him and his colleagues. I followed Keith into the room with my head down and my stomach churning. I noted in a vague way that there were several men and no women at the long table, and that all of them were dressed in similarly grey suits with similarly unremarkable ties.

I wondered if Keith hadn’t received the memo about the dress code. But he didn’t seem bothered by it all. He nodded at the group and dropped his briefcase onto the table.

One of the men stood up and reached out to shake my hand. I stared at him, thinking of how he was going to react to my sweaty palm wrapped in his. Thankfully, Keith intercepted and gripped the man’s hand firmly.

“Have a seat,” one of the city officials suggested.

I started to pull a chair out, then froze as Keith spoke.

“Thanks, but no,” he said.

It wasn’t his words that held me in place. It was my glimpse of a dark-haired man at the table. My stomach dropped at the sight of the familiar face. I marveled that even after all this time apart, I still felt the residual pain of what he’d done to me. I didn’t love him anymore. I’d been telling myself it was true for a long time. Seeing him sitting there confirmed it. There was no leftover attraction, no spark of hope. But that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a gaping hole left behind by his betrayal. It was that hole that formed the foundation for the carefully constructed wall around my heart, after all.

“What’s he doing here?”

I didn’t realize that I’d spoken out loud until one of the other men answered. “Mark is our intern.”

He was staring at me, too, with frank curiosity. I looked away first.

“Is there a conflict?” Keith asked with a frown.

“Not at all,” I said quickly, and didn’t meet Mark’s eyes.

My lawyer didn’t look like he believed me, but he just snapped his briefcase open and began presenting my ideas in an authoritative voice.

As he outlined my plans for fundraising and alluded to a potential media hailstorm, he sounded logical, believable and convincing. I was impressed, and I wanted to focus on what he was saying. But most of my energy was used up on keeping my eyes away from the man across the room.

For a crazy minute, I wondered if my sleep-text had somehow brought Mark here.

I looked down at my fingers and tried again to listen to Keith. He was talking about my nonprofit company and asking the room to direct questions to him rather than me. He threw out numbers that made sense and fielded their inquiries confidently.

My mind wandered helplessly, and I hoped no one was watching me.

What are the chances that Mark just happened to show up here, hundreds of miles from home, on the day you’re presenting?

I glanced at him from the corner of my eye.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Keith said, and I realized he was finished. “We’ll come back to you in six weeks with the agreed-upon amount.”

I avoided my ex’s stare and followed my lawyer out into the hall.

“Tucker, are you okay?” Keith asked.

“Fine.”

“Hmm.” He shrugged. “I hope you’re better at raising money than you are at lying. You’ve got forty-five days to come up with the balance. Can you do it?”

I nodded. “I’m already set up to do the student market this afternoon.”

“Good,” Keith said. “You seemed a little unsure in there.”

“Just nerves,” I stated with a tinny laugh.

I cringed as the boardroom door swung open.

“I’m sorry, Keith. I’ve got to go.” I took off before Mark could make his way out.

By the time I got back to my dorm, the unsettled feeling in my stomach had calmed enough for me to begin thinking about my next move.

Joey

I woke up to find myself sitting up. Admittedly, that was a new one. Asleep in my truck, or fully dressed in my bed, or dozing on some girl’s floor—those were to be expected after my monthly night of freedom. This was a new low. The sense of dread wracking my body was all too familiar. I didn’t have to think too hard to recognize the relationship between the three things—the sixth of every month, feeling sick, and the parade of women—but I chose not to acknowledge it. I shoved aside the automatic connection and assessed my situation instead.

I started by trying to recall the events of the evening before.

Everything was an unpleasant blur that started with the Jell-O shooter girl and ended with me waking up with a stiff back and an aching head.