Filed to story: Kissing the Wrong Brother
Sister is not going to be pleased that I’m bringing her boy toy and boyfriend into the same orbit, but that’s her problem. Serves her right for giving Beefcake all of those come-hithers that she has no intention of cashing in.
At least she’d better not be cashing in. If she cheats on Ben, there will be some fighting words between us.
Anyway, I digress. The point is, the car ride with Beefcake?
It’s kinda nice.
I mean, granted, I had to practically bribe him to get him to speak. And he’s still a good ways off from sharing whatever’s made him so guarded and haunted.
And, yet … I like his company somehow.
Even if he is sort of stingy with the chips.
The second my flip-flops hit the gravel, I stretch, still humming The Book of Mormon sound track I’d been regaling Miles with on the latter half of the trip as he goes to pull our bags out of the trunk.
I walk around to the back of the car, not to help him, but because my eyes have caught on the black ink creeping beneath the hem of his blue T-shirt. I’m used to seeing Beefcake in his Cambridge Country Club uniform, which means the mysterious tattoo is always covered up.
I hook a finger under the sleeve of his shirt, inching it upward just as he starts to pull out my pink bag, but he realizes my plan before I can see what the tattoo is and jerks back before dropping my bag ceremoniously in the dirt with a “Damn it, Aria.”
“If you don’t want people to see your tattoo you should have gotten it on your ass,” I say, my hand already reaching out again. “Or your taint.”
He dodges with a snarl and I relent. For now.
“Taint,” he mutters, leaning down to retrieve my bag. “Really?”
“Nice,” I say, reaching for his arm again, this time to squeeze the biceps that had flexed rather enticingly as he lifted up a bag made heavy with the books I hoped to read.
He drops my bag again, his finger jabbing in my face. “Carry your own bag.”
“Oh, come on,” I call after him. “I was just admiring you!”
He turns around with a semi-snarl, but at least he pauses. Although I suspect that’s mostly because he doesn’t know where we’re going.
“Someone needs to carry the snacks,” I say, ignoring my bag and going around to retrieve the food from the backseat.
“Of course,” he mutters, coming back toward me but keeping his distance. “Mustn’t forget the snacks.”
He puts my bag over his shoulder as I scoop up my grocery bag full of chips and other processed-food delights. He reaches out his free hand for the handle of the small cooler and I hand it to him.
With his hands all full like that, now’s my chance to check out that tattoo, but I manage to refrain.
Eventually he’ll take his shirt off to go swimming, and I’ll check it out then. Plus, a weird part of me sort of wants him to want to show me. Willingly.
What can I say? I’m a girl. We’re weird like that.
So instead of checking out his ink or fondling his biceps, I settle for linking my arm through his, mostly so he can’t run away once we get inside and my parents start asking parenty questions like, “Who are your people?” and “Are you enjoying the summer?”
“This will be fun,” I say, smiling up at him.
He doesn’t smile back. Just looks at me for a long moment with a don’t bullshit me expression.
“Aria?”
I jerk my gaze away from Beefcake’s glower to see Ben standing in the driveway.
Ben’s wearing only swim trunks, flip-flops, and aviator glasses that make him look like one of the hotties in that Top Gun volleyball game, and for a minute all I can do is stare.
Maybe drool a little.
Beefcake clears his throat.
“Ben! Hey!”
But Ben’s attention is focused on Miles. “Hey, aren’t you Kylie’s tennis coach?”
“And my personal trainer,” I hasten to add.
I’m not sure either guy hears me. They’re doing the staring contest thing that dudes do.
“Ben, you remember Miles. You met him for about six seconds in between exploring Kylie’s molars.”
Ben’s attention comes back to me and he smiles, easy and agreeable as ever. “Right. Sure. Nice to see you again, man. Didn’t realize you and Aria are friends.”
“Best,” I gush, before Miles can respond.
I can’t see Ben’s eyes behind the glasses, but it seems to me that he stares at Miles a few seconds longer than necessary, and I resist the urge to tell him that if he thinks Miles’s a threat now, just wait until he sees how his girlfriend turns into a Beefcake groupie.
“Can I help you carry anything?” Ben asks, coming toward us. “I was sent to fetch more beer for the cooler, but I can help you guys if you need it.”
“We’re good,” Miles says just as I start to say, “Sure.”
“Okay, well, come on around back when you get settled into your rooms,” Ben says with a last flash of white teeth before ducking into the garage, where my parents have a fridge for overflow booze.
“You caught that, right?” Miles asks as I lead him toward the front door.
“Caught what?” I use my hip to shove the door open.
“The way he emphasized rooms. Plural.”
I roll my eyes. “He did not.”
“He’s protective of you,” Beefcake says, taking in the foyer. It’s not fancy, but it’s huge. Most people look intimidated, or at least impressed. Miles looks neither.
“Well, of course he’s protective of me. We’re friends and you look like you collect virgins for a living. He’s probably worried.”
“About your virginity?” he asks.
I set the bag of food by the foot of the stairs and head up. I’ll put the food away later.
I’m up only two stairs when Miles’s hand wraps around my arm and pulls me back, his expression irritated.
“Are you?” he asks. “A virgin?”
“Not your business.”
His fingers tighten on my arm. “Aria.”
“Okay, totally not your business,” I say, a little thrown off by the weird intensity on his face. “But because I’m not really the sweet, secretive type, no. I’m not.”
His eyes search my face as though looking for a lie, and my pride stings.
I jerk my hand away. “I know, hard to believe, right? Trust me, I get that I’m not exactly oozing sex appeal without jerks like you reminding me.”
He releases my arm, his gaze dark.
“I was just making sure,” he says gruffly.
“Making sure of what?”
“That you weren’t waiting because you were hung up on a guy who’s unavailable.”
“Well, good thing that’s not your problem to worry about,” I say sweetly before proceeding up the stairs. “But for the record, first choice would have been someone that I, you know, loved. But a girl can be curious and horny without needing to have her heart all tangled up in it.”
I can practically hear him shaking his head behind me. “You’re a weird little creature, Aria.”
“Why, because I’m not opposed to having sex like a man?”
“Hey, don’t get huffy. I’m hardly one to judge about casual, meaningless sex.”
I spin around, surprised to realize that he has followed me so closely, and is now only one step below me.
The step neutralizes our height difference and we’re eye to eye. “You have sex with women you don’t care about because you can’t have sex with the one you want?”
He shrugs but doesn’t deny it.
“All of those housewives that feel you up at the club. They’re stand-ins for Kylie?”
His dark gaze flits away, and my eyes narrow. There’s more to that story, but his stubbled jaw is doing that grindy thing that tells me he’s not going to tell me what.
I turn around again, moving down the hallway until I halt in front of the guest room that my parents always put my “projects” in. “This is you.”
