Tangled Up in Blue Page 2

  “I think maybe I’ve heard of him now that you say his name. Isn’t he really old like, Sixties music or something? I think maybe my mom mentioned him once? Or maybe that was Johnny Cash she was talking about.” I shake my head. "I'm just not sure. But, to be honest, if that’s what Bryson sounds like,” I wrinkle my nose for emphasis, “I’m surprised anybody is still listening to him.”

  Blue grabs his head with both hands as if it is about to explode and keeps his eyes closed for several seconds. I spend the time staring at his flexed biceps and letting my gaze drift down where it shouldn't be going. Blue slides his hands slowly down his face as if in despair and opens his eyes. Then he places his hands on my shoulders, sending my loins leaping out of their assigned areas. I'd read about loins in my romance novel phase. They’re always flaming or burning or in some stage of combustibility. But mine aren’t just on fire; they are also doing calisthenics.

  “What has happened to this generation?” Blue is speaking to the ceiling, shaking his head. Then he tightens his grip on my shoulders and peers into my eyes in a way that makes me go weak at the knees.

  “It’s okay. It’s not your fault,” he assures me. “Society has failed you. Your parents have failed you. You may have come to the Embassy just in the nick of time. Fortunately for you, I am here to open your eyes.”

  And hopefully my legs. My damn loins are talking. It sure isn’t me. “I think I need to get all my stuff up to my room. I’ve got a lot of studying to do.” I sound unsteady. Blue's hands are still on my shoulders. I pull away from him.

  “Oh, sorry.” He doesn’t look sorry, though. The naughty grin is back. He picks up my crates yet again and once more starts up the stairs. “I got distracted by your appalling musical and cultural ignorance. Not that it’s your fault. Right this way, my young pupil.”

  There’s a landing halfway up the stairs and a window that looks out over a back deck. I see more red cups and bottles all over the deck and a couple of lawn chairs. Over the window, a huge Canadian flag hangs on the wall. I pause on the landing and stare up at the flag, then gaze out over the back deck at the weed-choked yard below that holds yet more lawn chairs and dozens more cups and bottles.

  “So why is this place called The Canadian Embassy?”

  “That’s a long and fascinating story that I need to tell you over a couple of beers.” Blue turns to look at me, then spots something that makes him step down to the landing and yell out the open window. “Max! C’mere boy. Max. Wait. . .Corey? Man, what the hell are you still doing here?”

  I crane my neck to look around Blue in time to see the German Shepherd sniffing around a form in the back yard that slowly rises from the ground. It appears to be a grubby-looking male with wild hair. He’s rubbing his eyes and blocking the sun with his hands as if it hurts him.

  “Corey,” Blue yells again. “Go home.” He laughs and continues up the stairs. “Still sleeping it off, I guess.”

  “So is that your dog?”

  “Max is kind of the house dog, although I seem to be the one who takes care of him most of the time. He belonged to the Canadians, but they abandoned him when they left town. Long story, remember?”

  I nod, realizing how tired I am. I haven’t even made it to my room yet. We reach the top of the stairs, and I look from right to left. Three bedrooms, all with their doors closed. And one bathroom, door open. I spot an old-fashioned, claw-foot bathtub and wish I could take a long hot bath.

  Blue sets my possessions in front of the door directly across from the bathroom. “You'll meet Hunter and Kendra later.” He wipes his forehead with his arm again. “Damn, I can’t believe how hot it is.”

  “No air-conditioning in the house?”

  "Window units in the bedrooms. Yours works the best of all of them, although that's not saying much.” He turns the knob. “Here we are.”

  I step through the door and gasp at the naked couple passed out on my bed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Some Kind of Sizzle

  Blue

  Keegan almost drops her dentures, as my mother would say, when she sees Hunter and whoever the bleached blonde is sprawled bare-ass and obviously post-fuck (not a word that would ever have come out of Mama’s mouth) on what is now Keegan’s bed. Not the best introduction to the Embassy, but at least Keegan is getting the full picture up front.

  Quite literally “up front,” as her new roommate Hunter is lying on his back on the bare mattress, with nothing left to the imagination. The blonde’s curled up next to him, snoring softly with her mouth open and a line of drool on her chin. No idea who she is. I can’t remember seeing her before, but that’s no surprise. The Embassy attracts new people every weekend. And she looks like his type: hot and “breezy”—Hunter slang for an easy broad.

  Why Hunter steered the blonde into Keegan’s room instead of his own last night, I have no clue. He’ll make up some kind of hilarious reason and have us all laughing about it later. Dude is funny, no doubt about it. Except when it comes time to cough up his part of the rent. No amount of funny can make up for his perpetual excuses.

  Keegan stands there gawking at them, then looks at me like she wants me to tell her what to do next. There’s something quirky and coltish about this girl. She’s got legs that go on for days, just the right amount on top to fill out that little black tank and long, glossy hair that I want to bury my face in. Physically, she’s definitely my type, although I should have learned my lesson about hooking up with roommates from the whole Kendra drama.

  I can tell there’s something different, something intriguing about Keegan. She’s guarded and kind of innocent; she seems fragile, I guess. That’s the word that pops into my head, anyway. But there’s something else I can discern in her, a quality I can’t quite put my finger on. It actually spooks me, a little. When Keegan took off her sunglasses in the living room and I saw her eyes, I almost choked. Just like that, I was right back in Afghanistan, looking at the face of a girl with nearly identical eyes. I'd sensed the same quality in that girl that I sense in Keegan. That girl probably hates my guts now, for making her life even worse than it was before. Assuming she’s still alive.

  Spotting the drum stick on the floor gave me a reason to bend over for a moment so I could get my shit together. It’s not the first time since I became a civilian that I’ve suddenly been on the verge of tears. It’s happening a lot. And it really pisses me off.

  So yeah, I played up my shock at Keegan’s musical ignorance and acted like a horny-ass cave man more than was probably necessary. Most of the kids on campus have the same stunted appreciation of the over-processed crap that passes for music nowadays; it’s not a surprise that Keegan is just another member of the masses, musically anyway. She does seem to dig the whole ‘I need to take you in hand and teach you’ routine. Assuming my man radar is in good working order, the attraction between us is mutual, even if she’s trying to resist it for some reason. It sure wasn’t difficult to let her see my eyes taking a cruise all over her body. I won’t mind getting to know Keegan a lot better, in more ways than one.

  Kendra will kill me if I do, but I’m not going to think too far ahead.

  I walk to the bed and twist Hunter’s big toe hard to wake him up. At the same moment, Max bounds up the stairs, his nails clicking on the wood. He runs right into the room, right toward the bed and sticks his cold nose right into the blonde’s nicely toned ass. That’s what I love about dogs. There’s nothing subtle, nothing complicated about them; they get right to the heart of the matter.

  Yowling, Hunter and the blonde both try to sit up at the same time, and the blonde rolls off the bed and hits the floor butt first, which gets Max barking, thinking she wants to play.

  “Get that fucking dog away from me,” she screams, jumping to her feet while trying—pointlessly—to cover her private parts with her hands. Max keeps barking and rushes toward her playfully. And she kicks him, sending him scrambling behind me like a coward. For a German Shepherd, the dog’s certainly no ca
nine cop.

  “Hey!” I yell. “Don’t kick the dog. He’s just trying to play.”

  She grabs her clothes off the floor and, still cursing, runs out the door and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Hunter cradles his head in his hands. “Jesus, Blue, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “I could say the same thing to you, dickwad.” I pick up Hunter’s boxers and throw them at him. “So could Keegan here, who has already paid her share of the rent. Unlike some people in this room. And she just had to have the unpleasant experience of walking into her room and seeing your nasty bare asses all over her bed. Put on your underwear and get the hell out of here so she can move in.”

  Hunter squints at the sun pouring through the windows and slowly turns his face toward Keegan. Then, true to form, he gives her a cocky smile as he rolls off the bed clutching his underwear in one hand. He walks toward her, extending the other hand. He is still naked, of course.

  “Hi roomie,” he says. “Welcome to the Embassy!”

  Keegan

  I stare at Hunter’s outstretched hand, blushing to the roots of my hair. Hunter is hot, no doubt about it, in a bad-boy kind of way. Tall and lean, with shoulder-length dirty blond hair falling into his face and tattoos covering his arms, chest and back, he has a pierced eyebrow and lip. And I’m pretty sure that when he walked toward me, I saw another piercing in a place I didn’t even know guys could get pierced. I don’t dare look at that again though.

  I finally manage to shake Hunter’s hand and raise my eyes to his face. He puts his hands on his hips and gives me a sarcastic smirk. Something cold and predatory in his eyes makes me shiver, and not in a good way. I turn without a word and rush out the door, hightailing it down the stairs, feeling like a fool. Then I stand on the bottom step, shuddering, wondering what is wrong with me. I hear Blue order Hunter to bring up all the rest of my things as a way to apologize for using my mattress as a “fuck factory.”

  “Wow, you’re sure giving this girl the royal treatment,” Hunter sneers. “I assume this mean you’re planning to nail her, kind of a Kendra 2.0? Talk about a fuck factory.”

  There’s a shuffle and a thud, then Hunter yelling “Hey! What the. . .” Then Blue’s voice, sounding urgent and angry, but too low for me to hear exactly what he is saying. At the same moment, a cold nose nudges my hand. Max. He whines, and I pet his head to reassure him.

  “Easy, soldier boy, get your hands off me!” I hear Hunter snarl. “I’m just kidding around. I don’t care who you bang. But if you want me to move our new roomie in, I’ll need a few more days’ leeway on the rent.” Blue snorts. Then I hear the bathroom door open with a loud squeak, and Hunter’s voice takes on a wheedling tone. “Hey there, baby. Sorry about what happened earlier. Some people around here have no manners. C’mon, we can go another round in my room.”

  The blonde Hunter was sharing my bed with snarls as she pounds down the stairs. “Don’t you ‘Hey baby' me, you asshole! You’re both assholes, and I’m never coming to another party at this loser house and neither are any of my friends.”

  “Suit yourself.” Hunter sounds amused. The blonde reaches the bottom of the stairs and glares at me. She obviously put her clothes on in a hurry; her shirt’s not buttoned up right.

  “What are you looking at, bitch?”

  Max whines again and presses against my leg. The dog really is a wimp. I don’t bother to answer, just watch the blonde storm out the front door and slam it as hard as she can. When I turn back toward the stairs, Blue is standing there watching me.

  “I’m sorry about all this, Keegan.” His shoulders are slumped. “There’s always drama around here. I guess you might as well get used to it.”

  I give him a half-smile and look down at the dog, who is pressing his head into my hand to get me to keep petting him. I really have made a colossal mistake, moving into this place on the spur of the moment. The last thing I need in my life is more drama.

  “I see you’ve made a friend out of Max already,” Blue says softly. “He’s really picky about who he trusts. Looks like my instincts about you were right on.”

  I keep my eyes on the dog, feeling kind of sheepish. I assume Blue is joking. “Yeah, sure,” I say. “We just met an hour ago. You know nothing about me, except that I was named after a bar.” I look up and roll my eyes, “and that I’m way too easily embarrassed.”

  But Blue doesn’t smile back; he just looks intently into my eyes. “Keegan, before I started my life as a hard partyin’ college boy, I did two tours in Afghanistan. One of the things I had to do to stay alive was be able to size people up immediately. And I discovered I’m pretty good at that. I just have instincts about people as soon as I meet them. I’m not saying I’m psychic, exactly, but I’ve learned to trust my gut. It’s not wrong very often.” He takes a couple of steps down so that he’s only about an inch away from me, and I swear some kind of sizzle passes between us.

  I gasp and step back, my eyes drawn to the tattoo on Blue’s chest. Some kind of rifle topped by a military helmet and surrounded by the words, Freedom is Not Free. I just stand there, my heart pounding.

  Blue laughs awkwardly. “So anyway, my gut told me you’re cool, and Max just confirmed it. Dogs are never wrong about people.”

  That’s when Hunter comes down the stairs two at a time, stopping short when he sees us standing there staring at each other. He glances from Blue to me and then back to Blue and smirks. “Fuck factory, huh, soldier boy? I'm sure not the only one.”

  I end up spending most of the afternoon organizing my stuff as well as I can, which is a challenge considering my room has no furniture. Other than the bed, of course. I hadn’t even thought to ask Kendra whether the room came with furniture. My room does have the only curtains in the house, made by the girl who’d moved out of it in a hurry. No one seems to know exactly why. Hunter calls her Just Brenna.

  “Just Brenna was the only girl I ever met who could sew,” he tells me as he carelessly lets the last load of my stuff slide out of his arms and hit the wood floor. “She made those curtains the first day she was here. Too bad she was batshit crazy, not to mention fat and butt ugly. She could have been useful.”

  I am already starting to dislike Hunter.

  One of the first things I do is run out to the nearest drugstore and buy a bottle of disinfectant spray. Then I spray most of the bottle on the bed. And then I have to open all the windows and stand out in the hall coughing while the cloud of disinfectant disperses. I lean against the wall, staring into the bathroom at the claw-foot tub that looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in a long time, and I can’t help thinking about Blue.

  Where’s he from? What has he seen and done in the military? All kinds of crazy scenarios for how he got the scars on his back run through my mind. How did he end up at Ikana College? How did he come to be living in a house called The Canadian Embassy? What is it about him that seems to fascinate me so friggin’ much?

  He's promised to tell me the house’s history over a couple of beers. Probably not such a good idea. I got really relaxed and way too giggly the few times I’ve had alcohol. Like just before The PK Penetration.

  That’s what I’d called it in the journal I’ve been keeping since I was seven years old. When I was 14, I started giving each date a title that summarizes the day’s events, hopefully in a funny and sarcastic way. That’s one of the rules I’ve set for myself. Another is that I have to be brutally honest in the journal about everything that happens each day, everything I do, think and feel. The third rule is that I can’t erase or cross out anything I write in the journal, ever. No matter how much I might regret writing it.

  So far, I’ve stuck to my journal rules. Sometimes, it is seriously painful to go back and read certain days’ entries. Like what I wrote in the middle of the night after the graduation party attended by pretty much every senior in Fort Peace, Oklahoma, held at the house of Pastor Seth Adams, head honcho at First Baptist Church of Fort Peace. A megachurch led by
a megalomaniac. At least that’s how his son Tyler once described him.

  Seth Adams is a big man with a huge personality, and he can bring thousands shouting to their feet or send them sobbing to their knees with just a few words. People drive from other towns miles away to attend First Baptist. Pastor Seth sure can pack them in. His son, though, is a different matter. Tyler’s short and skinny, always strutting around with his arms held away from his body as if he’s trying to appear larger than he actually is. He usually tries to act like he owns the town. As Seth Adams’ only son, he kind of does. But Tyler is so insecure, so obviously uncomfortable in his own skin, that most people either pity or despise him. Even Pastor Seth seems to find him pathetic.

  Tyler goes around insisting that people call him PK. “Preacher’s Kid, of course,” he said with phony disgust when I asked what PK stood for the day we met. I was one of the few who actually agreed to call him that, for a little while anyway. Poor Tyler. Sometimes, I do feel sorry for him. Other times, I hate his guts.

  I try to steer my thoughts back to what matters right now: all the crap I need to do for my job at the paper and my classes. Not to mention figuring out how to deal with the jackhole who’d called my phone last night, obviously disguising his voice. He has called and texted and emailed me over and over in the last few weeks, each time scaring the shit out of me. And I have no idea who it is or why he’s doing it.

  I do kind of want to have a beer, or two, with Blue while he tells me about the house. And while he tells me about himself. There’s something about Blue. But I have other, more important things to take care of. And I sure as hell don’t need any more complications or distractions in my life. I stomp back into my room, irritated that I’m thinking about Blue’s loin-tingling grin and rock-hard body. Some of the disinfectant lingers in the air, but I ignore it, coughing as I decide to reorganize the stuff I’d just organized. I move things from one crate to another, and I can't help replaying my first meeting with Blue that morning on the front porch. I can’t help smiling. Dammit.