Switch
I looked in the mirror again, turning my chin to one side, then the other, to catch my profile. My hair’s blond. And it’s natural. My eyes are blue, but dark, almost navy. I look a lot like my dad, which is one reason, maybe, why he never bothered denying I was his.
“I think I look fine,” I told her, but the faint sound of longing slithered into my voice.
I spent my clothes budget on simple, brand-name pieces I picked up off-season or in discount stores. I’d spent the past few years building my wardrobe. Clothes for work and casual wear that looked expensive enough to pass as classy. I paired them with shoes I couldn’t always afford. I wasn’t going to be Clarice Starling, giving away my background with my good bag and my cheap shoes.
I looked again at my reflection and thought of the whisper of satin on my skin. Going without a bra, how my nipples would push at the fabric and force a man’s eyes straight to my breasts. Every man’s eyes.
I picked up the tank top again and held it up. I smoothed the fabric over my stomach. Kira gave me an approving nod and slung an arm around my shoulders and bumped me with her hip. “C’mon. You know you want to.”
I did want to. I wanted to go out and get shit-hammered drunk and dance and smoke and rub up on half a dozen boys. I wanted to feel a hot, hard body against mine and look for lust in a pair of eyes I didn’t know.
I wanted not to worry about proving anyone right about me.
I pulled my tank top over my head and after a second’s hesitation, unhooked my bra. The satin tank top slithered over my head and fell to my hips. My breasts swayed under the smooth fabric. My nipples tightened at once, and I shivered.
“Let me get you some makeup,” Kira said.
She lugged her huge purse over to me and pulled out pots and tubes and brushes and glitter. I love glitter. I hadn’t worn glitter in forever, either. No place for it here, in my new life.
“I’ll do it.” I wouldn’t dream of sharing makeup that had been on her face. No telling what germs could be passed on that way. I waved her away and went into my bathroom, where I rummaged beneath my sink.
I pulled out my own box of tricks and treats. Lipsticks in berry shades, eye shadows in rainbow hues. Lots and lots of half-used black-eyeliner sticks and a few bottles of liquid eyeliner. I shook one, thinking it must have dried up after all these years, but when I unscrewed the cap with its built-in brush, the makeup inside was still smooth.
I painted a mask. It looked just like me, only brighter. Bolder. More. Once, I’d worn this face every day. Once, it had been the only one I had.
My makeup finished, I squeezed into the tight black skirt. I left my legs bare. I’d be chilly on the walk from the parking garage to the bar, but hot enough inside once I started dancing. From my closet I pulled out a truly fucking fabulous pair of pumps.
Kira had been bent over her phone, fingers stabbing out messages, but her eyes widened and she reached for the shoes. “Oh, wow. Steve Madden!”
“First pair I ever bought.” I stroked the smooth black patent leather. Four-inch heels. Most men couldn’t have told the difference between a Steve Madden shoe and a Payless pump, but they looked twice when I wore them. Sometimes more than twice.
I slipped into the shoes and stood, adjusting to the way my center of balance shifted. My mother had taught me the art of how to walk in heels this high. I used to raid her closet as a kid and parade around the house in her shoes.
I smoothed the silky shirt over my belly and hips and turned around to look at myself one last time in the mirror. “Ready to go?”
“I guess so,” Kira said sullenly. “Except now you look awesome and I look like shit.”
“You look hot,” I promised. What were friends for?
She was convinced, more because she wanted to believe it than because I’d tried hard. “Okay, let’s go get shit-hammered!”
I saw him again, that dark-haired man. This time, he was coming in as I was going out. We passed each other not so much like two ships, as much as one ship passing while the other crashes into an iceberg. I couldn’t be offended that his gaze slid over and past me, taking in the short skirt and high heels without a second look. He had his head down and was talking urgently into his cell phone. He didn’t have attention to spare me. And it wasn’t his fault I was trying so hard to pretend I wasn’t looking back at him that I ran into the edge of the door frame hard enough to leave a bruise.
“Smooth move, Ex-Lax.” Kira smirked. She hadn’t even noticed it was the man from earlier that day. “Nice to see you can hold your tequila.”
I shrugged off the sting in my shoulder and didn’t reply. His sleeve had brushed my bare arm as he passed, and the hairs on it all the way up to the back of my neck had stood at that brief, simple touch. A slow, tumbling roll of sensation centered in my belly.
He lived in my building.
Chapter 03
I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I saw a lot of River-view Manor tenants at Miriam’s shop, and in the Morning-star Mocha, the coffee shop at the end of our block. I ran into them in the post office and parking garage and at the grocery store, too. Harrisburg’s a small city.
Even so, I couldn’t shake the memory of those dark eyes, that thick, dark hair. The brush of a shirtsleeve on my bare skin. Fuck. I was horny, no two ways around it, and no wonder. It had been ages since I’d had sex with anyone but myself.
We had our choice of places downtown, but I wanted to go to the Pharmacy. We took a cab since I wouldn’t drive after drinking, and the walk that was fine on a Sunday afternoon in sweatpants would be too long to make at night in heels…and shit-hammered.
The bar was packed, even for a Friday night. We pushed through the crowd toward the bar, Kira leading. She stopped abruptly and I ran into her. Someone ran into me. Someone also grabbed my ass, but when I turned to see who it was and possibly haul off and smack the shit out of them, all I could see was an ocean of possible culprits.
“Hey, Jack,” Kira said, and I turned.
Shit. Jack had been the love of Kira’s life our senior year, when he transferred in from another school. She’d plotted and schemed for months to get him to ask her to the prom, determined to get in his pants. It hadn’t worked, so far as I knew. I only knew that once Kira had keyed one of his girlfriends’ cars.
Kira didn’t know Jack and I had fucked each other senseless for about two months straight a few years ago. I doubt either of us even cared anymore. But Kira would have, so I tried to pull her away before things could get ugly.
Besides, he wasn’t alone. The woman with him had a beer and she tipped it to her mouth, eyeing us with a smile. I yanked Kira’s elbow to pull her away.
“Ow,” she said when the crowd closed behind us, cutting off the view of him. “What did you do that for?”
“Don’t cause trouble,” I told her. “C’mon. Drinks.”
“I wasn’t going to cause trouble.” She frowned and tossed her hair, not caring she’d whacked some dude across the face with it. He looked pissed. Not the way I wanted to start the night.
“There will be other guys here,” I told her.
Kira just sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, I know that.”
The Pharmacy was almost always a total sausage party—three guys for every girl, easy, and all of them horny and looking to hook up. Chivalry had nothing to do with them pulling out their wallets and plying us with booze. It was all about getting laid.
“Oh, look,” Kira said from beside me. “Talk about trouble.”
She was right. Trouble with a capital T. I stood taller in my sexy shoes and lifted my chin, straightened my shoulders. “Hello, Austin.”
Once upon a time, Austin and I had fucked like tigers. I was willing to bet he still had the scars. I did.
“Paige.” His hair was longer, but he had the same grin, the one that parted thighs like the Red Sea. He didn’t look surprised to see me.
Austin wore a blue-striped shirt and faded jeans that hugged his ass just right and hung down, ragged, at the hems. Jeans like that should be outlawed on men like Austin. His buddy, some guy I didn’t know, wore an almost identical shirt, but with brown stripes. He didn’t look half as good.
Behind me, Kira dug her fingernails into the skin of my elbow. It stung, and I shook her off. “How are you?”
“Good. I’m good.” His eyes shifted to Kira and back to me. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Haven’t been home,” I said, though home to me now was an apartment on Front Street, not a trailer or a rented house in Lebanon.
“Yeah. I know. Hey, Kira. I made it.”
My insides froze. I glared at her, but Kira gave me her best dumb look. “What?”
She’d told him we’d be here. I knew it. I could see it on both their faces, their conspiracy, and I wondered how he’d convinced her to tell him. I thought about walking out, and the only reason I didn’t was because he was looking at me. Not her.
Kira saw it, too, and she gave me a narrow-eyed glare. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have set this up purely to see the throw down between me and Austin, but I wasn’t going to do it. I was past those days. She rallied when Austin’s friend gave her a grin. It helped that he was cute. Not as cute as Austin, but then really, who was? Who had ever been?
“What’re you drinking?” Austin was already pulling out his wallet to pay.
I wasn’t going to turn down a free drink, not even from him. “Margarita.”
“I’ll take a Slow, Comfortable Screw.” Kira made sure to lean in close so he could hear her. Her lips brushed his ear.
Austin leaned away a little, not enough that Kira would notice. But I did. He introduced us both to his friend, Ethan, who managed to tear his gaze away from Kira’s tits long enough to nod toward me without a trace of recognition. Well, what had I expected him to do? Say, “Oh, so this is Paige?”
“So what are you up to now?” Austin asked me as Kira and Ethan eyed each other.
“I work for Kelly Printing.” The last time we spoke I’d still been finishing the degree I’d started when we were together and taking care of some rich couple’s kids. I didn’t ask him what he was doing, not for work and not here in Harrisburg. I didn’t want him to think I cared.
“What about your mom?” Austin moved closer, his arm on the bar. “She still working for Hershey? I haven’t been to the shop for a while.”
My mom owns a tiny sandwich shop she inherited from her dad when I was in high school. I’d worked in that shop almost my entire life, running errands as a kid then graduating to making subs and running the cash register. Now I only helped if she had a big order to fill and deliver, or a party to cater.
“She still has it. She was working for Hershey but got laid off.”
Austin nodded. “I’m working for McClaron and Sons.”
I had no idea who or what McClaron and Sons was, but the fact he was working for someone other than his dad surprised me into a reply. “What about your dad?”
Austin shrugged, then grimaced, and only because I’d once known him so well it had been like knowing myself did I catch his hesitation. “It was time I got out of that job.”
“But you’re doing the same thing, right? Construction?” Kira popped into the conversation and drew both our attentions.
“Yeah, and some other stuff,” Austin said, but didn’t elaborate.
Interesting. Austin had worked for his dad’s business the way I’d worked for my mom’s—summers and after school since he’d been old enough to carry a hammer. It had always been the assumption that he’d take over the business when his dad retired, and become a full partner some time before that. I’d figured he already was.
“What about you?” Kira sipped her drink, eyes on Ethan. For someone with a boyfriend, she certainly seemed interested in him, but then Kira was just one of those girls.
You know. The slutty ones.
“I’m a mechanic,” he said. “For Hershey.”
“Oh, that’s a good job!” Kira sidled in between Austin and Ethan.
“It is a good job,” Ethan agreed and drank from his cup while his eyes wandered everywhere on Kira’s body but her face.
It was so easy, really. They wanted to seduce us. We wanted to be seduced, for a few hours anyway. I knew what we looked like to them. Two girls in slinky outfits, sucking back drink after drink and letting the crowd push us closer and closer. There’s no such thing as social distance in bars. The music makes conversation impossible unless you lean across to shout in someone’s ear. The crush of people means you have to fight for your own small space, and sharing it doesn’t seem so bad after a drink or four.
When Austin’s hand ended up on my ass, I didn’t even blink. It felt good there. Heavy, warm. He had strong fingers to go along with those biceps. He smelled good. Drakkar Noir. Despite myself and everything that had happened with us before, I’d missed him.
Austin said into my ear, “Wanna dance?”
Our bodies had always worked just right together, whether we were dancing or fucking. I was ready for both. Leaving Ethan and Kira, he took my hand and pulled me up the stairs to the third floor, where the songs ran into one another without stopping and all sounded the same. We found a spot in the middle and started dancing.
The booze had made me soft and melty, but the music wasn’t. I wanted to slow dance. Austin wanted to grind. We compromised with a little hip action that brought us groin to groin, but when he tried to flip me around and get up on me in the back end, I pushed away with a smile.
“You don’t answer my messages,” Austin said.
It was easy to pretend I didn’t hear him with the music so loud. I smiled and shook my head. He took me by the arm, up high in the soft part that bruises easily. His fingers closed all the way around it.
He moved in to brush his lips against my ear. “I’ve really missed you.”
I inched away from him, but Austin grabbed my wrist just as a bazillion watts of supernova bright light lit the entire dance floor. Austin still looked good. I must not have looked like Frankenstein, because he reached to brush my hair from my forehead. He smiled again as the lights went down and the beat of the music started its rapid thump-thumping, the same as my heart.
It was different when he kissed me. I felt different. His mouth opened and I let him inside me. His tongue stroked mine as his hand came up to curl in my hair. He didn’t pull it, though my body tensed in anticipation.
Austin nuzzled at my earlobe. “You still taste the same.”
Fortunately, I remembered the reasons I’d broken off our relationship. Unfortunately, I still remembered all the reasons we’d ever hooked up. When Austin ran a fingertip down my bare arm along the sensitive inside flesh to press his fingertip just over the pulse at my wrist, I knew he felt the way my heart sped up at his touch. Time hadn’t changed that. Maybe it never would.
Maybe that was okay.
“Come home with me,” Austin said.
“It’s too far.” Forty minutes I’d have driven in a heartbeat back in the day, just to get in his pants. It wasn’t too far. Just too long.
“Paige,” Austin said with a grin like a shark. “I moved to Lemoyne.”
Just across the river. Fifteen minutes, tops, if you drove really slow or got stuck in traffic. The world fell out from under my fuck-me pumps, but Austin was there to catch me. The crowd moved and danced around us, but we stayed still. I looked deep into his blue, blue eyes, made bluer by the strobe lights.
“What the fuck,” I said evenly, “did you do that for?”
“New job,” he reminded. “Remember?”
I tried to recall if he’d said where McClaron and Sons was, and couldn’t. He should’ve told me, I thought, and hated myself for being irrationally angry. I tugged my arm from his grip. “I have to go check on Kira.”
“She’s fine. She’s with Ethan.”
I tried to level him with a glare, but I’d never been able to level Austin. He’d laid me out cold a thousand times with a look, but though I’d practiced and perfected my steely-eyed look of cold disdain, it slid off him like oil. I bit my lower lip and lifted my chin.
“If he’s anything like you, I’d better make sure she’s okay.”
“Paige.” Austin’s hand snagged my wrist. Pulled me close. “If she’s anything like you, she can handle him.”
The night it ended between us, we’d fucked up against the wall of our shitty, third-floor apartment on Cumberland Street in Lebanon. The red-blue lights of a cop car outside on the street had painted the ceiling and wall over our heads. He’d torn away my panties, tossed them to the side, used his body to pin mine to the wall while his hands held my ass.
I bore the marks of that last encounter on my back for a few weeks where a nail from a fallen picture had gouged me. I hadn’t noticed the pain or the blood while we were going at it. I never had found my panties.
It had ended but wasn’t over. The plain truth is, with a few drinks in me there was little chance of my resisting Austin. Not drunk. Not sober, either. Why else had I moved so far away?
“Hell, no,” Kira said when I found her downstairs and brought up the subject. She shook her head and looked over my shoulder to where I was sure Austin was watching. “You told me to never, never, never let you fuck him again!”
I made myself stare at her, not look back at him. “I know. But that was before.”
“Before what?” Kira’s lip curled.
“Before you thought it would be fun to invite him out with us. I haven’t talked to him in months. Since before I moved here. But now here he is.”
“And looking utterly fuckable.” Kira didn’t lose the sneer, but her gaze flickered back and forth to my face and over my shoulder. “You know, Paige, I’ve known him as long as you have. He moved up here, wanted to know where the good places to go were. I told him we were coming here. I didn’t know you were going to go home with him. I thought you were over him.”
“I am over him!” I looked over my shoulder and caught his gaze, then turned away with hot cheeks and fast-beating heart.
“Whatever.”
“I’ll give you my key.” I looked back at Austin, now bent in conversation with Ethan.
“Fuck, no. I’ll get Tony to come pick me up!” Kira shook her head and stumbled a little bit.
I reached to steady her and she clutched at my hand. “Will he come for you?”
“He will if I fucking tell him to.” Kira straightened, then swiped at her hair.
“I’ll wait with you until he comes.”
“Don’t do me any favors,” Kira said, then slung her arm around my shoulder. “Paige. Don’t forget what happened.”
As if I ever could. “I’ll be fine!”
“Don’t let your pussy get you into trouble,” she continued, warning me off what she’d fallen prey to many times herself. “He made you cry.”
“Yeah.” I let Austin’s gaze catch mine when it turned toward me and didn’t look away. “Well, he won’t make me cry anymore.”
“He’ll always make you cry,” Kira said. “But go. Whatever. He’s got a magic cock. I get it.”
Remembering the times she’d left me stranded so she could go home with someone she met in a bar, I didn’t feel nearly as bad as she wanted me to. “I’ll wait until Tony gets here.”
I could do that, at least.
Going to Austin’s place was one thing, driving with him another. I wasn’t going to get in the car with him after he’d been drinking, for one, and for another, I wasn’t going to be stuck at his house without knowing for sure I’d be able to get home.
He grinned when I went over to him, but I fended off his kiss. “I have to wait for Kira to get picked up. I’ll meet you there.”
Austin pulled me close and nuzzled my neck exactly how he knew I liked it best. “Just come with me.”
“No.” I pushed him slightly away. Drunker, I’d have given in. More sober, I’m sure I’d have gone home alone. Stuck in this midway point where I wanted to taste him again and knowing lust is never as pretty the morning after, I shook my head. “I’ll meet you there. Give me the address.”
Maybe things were different, after all.
Austin kissed me again, harder, and this time I let him. He knew just how to do it, where to put his hands and his tongue and how to bump me with his groin to make my breath catch in my throat. My nipples throbbed, poking the silk of my shirt.
“Don’t take too long.” He stepped back, steady on his feet and not slurring his words. He reached as I turned and at the last moment, captured my wrist with his fingers. I let him tug me closer. “You’re not going to bail on me, are you? Like last time?”
Last time I hadn’t had Kira to remind me that I’d vowed never to go to bed with Austin again. Not that it was stopping me. Last time I’d called him just after two in the morning and told him I wanted to come over, but when I hung up the phone, good reason had won over the desire for his hands on me. That had been months ago, before I moved here.
“Are you still angry about that?”
“I wasn’t mad. Just disappointed. Do it again, I’ll be mad.” He grinned and dipped his head to kiss me but stopped short of my lips, just brushing them. “And disappointed.”
His blue eyes bore deep into mine, and for half a minute nothing else mattered. I felt Kira at my elbow, but I didn’t turn to look at her. I looked right into Austin’s eyes when I replied. “You won’t be.”
He let me go with another kiss and a nuzzle that sent shivers marching along every nerve. I found Kira waiting for me by the door. Oblivious to the crowd buffeting her, she held her place instead of stepping aside until I showed up to pull her by the elbow onto the sidewalk.
“You sure you’ll be all right?” The chilly night air had done a pretty good job of sobering me up, but I wasn’t reconsidering my rendezvous with Austin. At least not yet.
Kira nodded. “Fine.”
She didn’t look fine, she looked pissed off. I glanced out onto the street. Lots of cops. No cabs. I’d only turned away for a few seconds, but when I turned back to face her, Kira’s expression had turned stormy.
“You asshole!” She took a couple of steps forward, her heel catching on a crack in the sidewalk, and stumbled.
Jack.
With an inward sigh, I went after her. Jack was with the same woman from earlier and he did his best to ignore Kira. I saw him give his date a pained glance she answered with a shrug, and they started walking.
“Hey, Jack! Jackass! Don’t you walk away from me!”
“C’mon, Kira, don’t.” I didn’t blame him for ignoring her. I was a little less pleased he was also actively ignoring me, even though I knew it was really for the best, all around. “He’s not worth it!”
“Fuck you, Jack!” Kira couldn’t let it go, apparently.
Jack grimaced and pulled his cap from his back pocket. He put it on, but didn’t look at her. We hadn’t gone more than another few steps down the sidewalk when Kira launched herself at his back.
Jack stumbled forward as she slammed into him, her legs and arms flying. She didn’t actually manage to hit him more than once or twice, but the spectators leaped out of the way of her drunken tornado performance. She was shrieking insults, mostly stupid and incoherent ones.
Jack gave me an angry look that pissed me off. It wasn’t like I’d told Kira he and I had hooked up or anything. Her issues with him were his own problem and had nothing to do with me. He pushed her off him firmly and grabbed her arm at the same time so she wouldn’t fall. She kept trying to hit him and missing.
“Stop it,” Jack told her and gave her arm a little shake before letting her go. When she flew at him again she managed to knock his cap off. I stepped forward, wishing I’d gone with Austin and left Kira to her theatrics alone. This was a scene I really didn’t want to see.
“I hope your Prince Albert fucking rips out and you have to piss through three holes!” Kira screamed.
“Kira, c’mon.” I reached for her.