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  “Yeah, yeah, okay, try to hide your passion. Yes, I have a couch and yes, you can sleep on it. Do you know where I live?”

  How would she know that? “No.”

  She could hear him laugh quietly through the phone. “Okay, where are you now?”

  “Subway parking lot.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way home from the store. Pull onto Main from where you’re at and head north. I should run into you pretty quick. I’m in a Dodge Charger. Follow me.”

  “Dodge Charger as in the new girlie cars, or Dodge Charger as in General Lee?”

  “General Lee, except blue and minus the Confederate flag.”

  “Got it.” She started her Jeep and pulled out onto Main Street. Almost immediately, a blue Charger pulled out from another street behind her. She hung up the phone as the Charger revved up its engine and pulled into the next lane to pass her.

  Anderson waved and she followed him the rest of the way. He drove to the edge of town, a nice neighborhood with modest houses. He pulled up to a beige house, and she parked beside him. There was also a silver BMW X5 parked in the large driveway.

  She got out of her Jeep and grabbed her duffel bag with the spare clothes in it, thankful her dad had persuaded her to pack them. Anderson hopped out of his car. They were both still dressed in their practice clothes.

  “Hey! Fancy meeting you here,” he said brightly.

  “Uh, yeah.” She adjusted the bag on her shoulder.

  “This is pretty hilarious, actually.” He ducked back into his car and came out with a few grocery bags. “Help me with this stuff.”

  She picked up a gallon of milk and a couple bags and waited for him to grab his stuff. “That’s a really nice car.” She waved the gallon of milk at the BMW. “Your dad’s?”

  “Nah, no dad. I’ve got a single mom. That’s not hers, either. She’s at work.” He slung his bag over his shoulder and grabbed the remainder of the groceries. “She works 8:00pm to 8:00am in the ER at the hospital.”

  “Wow, long hours.”

  He shrugged and kicked his door shut. “She wouldn’t have it any other way. She loves the ER. ER nurses are real-life superheroes, you know.”

  She smiled at the admiration he had for his mother. “Very true. They save lives on a regular basis.”

  “Yep.” He headed for his front door.

  “So whose is it then?”

  “The Beemer? Beck’s.”

  “Oh...what’s he doing here?” she asked, suddenly apprehensive.

  “How should I know? He’s here all the flippin’ time. Kid needs to get a life.”

  He was just joking. She could tell by his tone.

  She followed him into the house. He led the way into the kitchen. Beck was sitting on a stool at the breakfast bar, looking at some sort of medical file he held in both hands.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Anderson dumped the groceries on the counter loudly, bringing Beck out of his reverie.

  Beck looked up and noticed her. His eyes immediately narrowed. “What’s she doing here?”

  “Oh, you know, I’m banging the new girl.” Anderson shrugged casually and took the groceries from her, putting the milk in the fridge.

  Carmondy rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  Anderson glanced at the file in Beck’s hands. “My mom’s not here.”

  “I noticed. Why not? It’s her day off.”

  “She picked up a shift for a friend, I think. You can leave it here for her though. I can put it in her room.” Anderson reached for the file.

  Beck still had his eyes on Carmondy, but he pulled the file out of reach and stood up. “No, I’ll try again tomorrow.”

  Carmondy was starting to get uncomfortable under his gaze. “I’m sorry, do you have a problem or something?”

  He didn’t answer her but looked her body up and down pointedly and then glanced at Anderson. “Let me know how she is, maybe I’ll take her for a ride.”

  Carmondy’s jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re excused. Why don’t you go strip and wait in his bedroom like a good little tramp?”

  “Fuck off,” she said quickly.

  “Blow me,” he said harshly, pinning her with a scary look.

  She scoffed and said sarcastically, “Oh, can I? Pretty please?”

  “Well, since you begged for it. Get on your knees and open wide.” He casually took hold of his belt buckle and waited.

  Anderson seemed to be ignoring the whole conversation while he put the groceries away.

  “Make it quick, I got places to be,” Beck said, still looking at her with a deadly stare.

  Carmondy couldn’t believe how crude he was being. She just stared with her mouth open as he stood there, hand on the front of his pants.

  “All right, you got the ‘open wide’ part down. Next?”

  “You’re a pig,” she said, disgusted.

  He made a noise that sounded like a laugh but there was no humor in his face,

  “What’s that you got there?” She pointed to the file still in his hands. “Your STD record or some shit? Looking for a nurse to give you some tips on medication?”

  His mouth remained in a firm line but a muscle in his jaw tensed. “Yeah, that’s it. You want one? What do you prefer? Gonorrhea? Chlamydia? Syphilis?”

  “None, thanks.”

  He made a move toward her, and she leapt back, bumping into the counter.

  Beck did the sort-of-laughing thing again. “Afraid of me?”

  “You wish.” Of course she was afraid of him. He looked like he wanted to kill her.

  He brushed past her and left the kitchen, and she caught a glimpse of the last name on the file: NICHOLSON. The front door slammed and soon after, a car started up and squealed tires out of the driveway. So the file was his, or at least someone with his last name.

  She looked across the kitchen to where Anderson was staring intently at boxes of easy-mac and no-bake cheesecake.

  “He’s friendly,” she said.

  Anderson looked up. “Hmm? Oh yeah, Beck.” He shrugged and looked back at the food. “Can you cook?”

  “If by ‘cook’, you mean make those two boxes of packaged meals. Yes.”

  He beamed and held the boxes out to her.

  By the time she finished making him the awful, unhealthy meal, it was about 9:30, which was bedtime in her book. She was tired and planned on getting up early in the morning. He grabbed his bag from where he had dumped it and she picked hers up, too.

  “You’re not a night owl, are you?” he asked as he led the way up a staircase.

  “Nope.”

  “Good, so we can make the sex quick and then hit the sack.”

  “Yep, minus the sex part.” She was getting used to his flirting.

  At the top of the stairs, he opened the only door. The room had a TV, a desk, a large window with a window seat, a lamp on a small table and a huge, comfortable-looking couch.

  “Wow. That is a really big couch,” she commented.

  “Yep.” He dropped his bag on the floor. “Welcome to my room.”

  “This is your room?” she asked, looking around for the bed.

  “Well, sort of. The whole upstairs is mine. My mom never comes up here. It’s the master suite of the house. My actual bed is in there.” He pointed to a door. “And that’s the bathroom.” He pointed to the last door.

  “Ah, I see.” She approached the gigantic couch. “So this is my bed?”

  “Yep, unless you want to join me in mine, standing offer.”

  “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to pass.”

  He shrugged. “Up to you. If you get lonely in the middle of the night just come on in and cuddle up.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He went to the other room. “I’ll find you a pillow and some blankets.”

  Carmondy dropped her bag by the couch and looked around, surprised by how clean the place was.

  Anderson came back with two blue pillows and a large fluffy blanket and
dumped them on the couch. “There you go.”

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded and yawned. “So like...do you need anything?” he asked a little awkwardly.

  “Like what?”

  “I dunno, something to sleep in? Or do you have it covered?”

  She didn’t know. She picked up her bag and looked in it, finding a set of clothes for tomorrow and the sweats she had worn today but no T-shirt or anything to sleep in. “Do you have a T-shirt or something I can borrow?”

  “Yeah, sure, follow me.” He led the way into his room and over to his dresser. She looked around his room while he rummaged through his clothes. Anything smaller than the king-sized bed would have looked tiny in the large, dark-blue room. He had a few magazines and some other random stuff lying around, and lots of clothes all over the floor, along with a basketball and two footballs.

  “How’s this?” he asked, holding up a T-shirt that said 2003 AAU Basketball. “It’s clean.”

  “Thanks.” She reached for it but he pulled it away.

  “It’s gonna cost you.”

  She waited for the price.

  He offered her his cheek. “Kiss.”

  She sighed and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  He smiled and gave her the shirt. “That was easy. Oh, did I mention that you have to sleep with me before I let you spend the night? It’s a rule of mine.”

  “Good night, Anderson,” she said, leaving the room.

  “Night, just remember what I said if you get lonely or horny!”

  Chapter Two

  Carmondy opened her eyes and rolled onto her back. The faintest hint of the morning sun peeked in from the window. She found her cell phone and checked the time: 5:12. Perfect. She quickly dressed in her practice gear and pulled on her sweats. Then she looked around the room, needing to borrow a sweatshirt. She saw a gray one hanging over the back of a chair. It smelled relatively clean so she pulled the sweatshirt on and grabbed her iPod from her bag, taking off downstairs.

  She left the house and put her iPod on her running playlist as she started her pace at a quick jog. She decided to head further into the residential area instead of toward town. As she ran down the street, listening to her music, she noticed the houses getting bigger and more extravagant. Anderson’s house was nice and a decent size, but modestly decorated. The houses she passed now were huge, adorned with gates and archways. No cars were in the driveways. There was not a speck of children’s play furniture, and no chain link fences or weeds.

  About twenty minutes into her jog, she saw the first people of the morning. For some reason, she slowed and then stopped, pausing to listen to the husband and wife arguing.

  “Damnit, Greg! You never listen to me! You just go off to work and mess around. Screw the wife waiting at home!” The woman’s voice was loud and shrill. Carmondy bent down and tied her shoes, trying to look inconspicuous, not sure why she was listening at all.

  “Margaret, I don’t go to work and mess around. I go to work to work. You should try it sometime!”

  “I am a homemaker, Greg. I work in the home!”

  “You mean bossing the maids around and going to the spa? Give me a break! You don’t know the meaning of work and if you want to keep it that way, get back inside the house and leave me be!”

  “I will not! I made this family. You would have been nothing without me! Do you like that Porsche? That’s all on me, Greg!”

  “Are you joking? I work, Margaret, I have a job—”

  “A job given to you by my father!”

  The man shook his head and opened the car door.

  “Don’t walk away from this argument, Greg!” the woman shouted from the doorstep.

  The front door opened abruptly and a familiar figure stepped out. She was surprised to see Beck hop off the porch and walk across the grass toward the garage.

  “Walk on the cement, young man!” the woman screeched.

  “Give it a rest, Marge,” Beck said without turning around. “You two should try to keep it down. You’re waking up the whole damn neighborhood. Take your dirty laundry inside for once.”

  The man slammed his car door shut without getting in. “You won’t speak to us like that! You are our son, you are an adult, and you will act that way!”

  “You’re an adult too, so stop screaming all your problems to your goddamn neighbors at six in the morning. No one wants to hear your shit and that includes me.” Beck opened his car door and got in. He revved up the car quickly and peeled out onto the street.

  Beck’s parents picked up their argument from where they had left off as soon as he was gone.

  Carmondy turned back toward Anderson’s house and resumed her jog, hoping Beck hadn’t noticed her when he drove by. She could still hear the parents yelling when she was a block away so she turned her iPod back on. She let herself back into Anderson’s house and up to the second floor. She meant to take a shower but she looked at the couch. The little nest she had made with the puffy blanket was too appealing to resist. She took her shoes off and lay back down. She still had a while before she needed to be up.

  Carmondy was shaken awake by a hand on her shoulder.

  “Carmondy. Carmondy...Car! Car! Car! Ca—”

  “Ahh, shut up!” she said, sitting up just to get the voice to stop. She opened her eyes and saw Anderson, clad only in a towel, beside her. “What?”

  “Morning, sunshine.” He looked at the clothes she had on. “Why are you dressed like that, and is that my sweatshirt?”

  “What? Oh, yeah. I figured you wouldn’t mind. I went for a run and it’s cold outside.”

  “You went for a run? When?”

  “Five-ish?”

  He looked at her like she was crazy. “You are so weird. Anyway, you might want to get moving. School starts in half an hour.”

  She groaned and pulled herself off the couch, trying to ignore his mostly naked, incredibly hot body. “Yay.”

  “Shower’s all yours. Feel free to flash me.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He grinned and went into the other part of his room, shutting the door behind him.

  Carmondy took a quick shower and got dressed, putting her wet hair up into a messy ponytail. She threw all her stuff into her duffel bag and went downstairs. Anderson was in the kitchen with a bowl of cereal.

  “So why’d you go on a run this morning?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I try to run three or four mornings a week outside of school sports.”

  “Don’t you need to give your body a day to recoup?”

  “My runs are light, nothing taxing, just refreshing and energizing.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe how weird you are. I hate running.”

  “Running is about eighty percent of basketball.”

  “I know. I’m good at it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. God, you sound like Beck. That kid runs so much.”

  “I saw him this morning,” she said, trying to sound casual.

  “Oh yeah? Where?”

  “I jogged by this huge house with two people screaming at each other outside, and then Beck came out and took off in his car. It was still way early though.”

  “Yeah, sounds about right. That’s a little weird that he was up though. He likes to sleep a lot. It’s his absolute favorite pastime. What were his parents arguing about now?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t really know, how she’s a housewife and he works and it didn’t really make a lot of sense other than that. They were just really loud.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard them. That house is real nice when they aren’t around though.”

  “I bet. It was huge.”

  “Well, your dad’s the one who built that monster log cabin on the side of the mountain, right? That place is huge too.”

  “Yeah, I guess. It’s a lot of shop and garage space so it’s not really as big as it looks.”

  “Are you gonna be able to get home today?” he asked.

  “I hope so. Some
of the snow seems to have melted. If not, I’ll have to go around but I really don’t want to. It’s a long drive.”

  Anderson winked at her. “Well, you know my couch is always free...except when Beck sleeps here, then my bed is free...except when I have a girl over...do you like threesomes?”

  She shrugged. “Sure, two guys sounds nice to me.”

  He dropped his spoon and leaned back in his chair. “Aw, come on, I’m eating here.”

  Her mouth twitched a bit as she fought to keep from laughing. “So I’m guessing a three-way with Beck is out of the question?”

  He groaned and covered his ears. “Gross, gross, gross. Stop.”

  “You stop making sex comments, and I’ll stop making Anderson-on-Beck comments. Deal?”

  He shook his head. “No deal, I’ll just tell Beck you said that. I’d kill to see his reaction.”

  Carmondy rolled her eyes, trying to banish a sudden image of Beck naked. “I’m out of here. I need to get to school earlier to sign up for that PE class.”

  * * *

  After an agonizing period of Algebra, Carmondy dressed down and joined several other basketball players in the gym.

  Everyone dispersed, some heading for hoops, others heading for the basketball closet.

  On her way to get a ball, she was attacked by Anderson. “Car! Come on, we’re shooting for teams.”

  Anderson, Kendall, Torie, Beck and another boy she didn’t know were all crowded around a basket.

  Anderson waved her over. “Hurry up, make your shot so you can be on my team.”

  Beck was already on one team and Anderson on the other. Torie shot a free throw and made it, putting her on Beck’s team. Carmondy took the ball and shot from the line. She made it too, putting her on Anderson’s team. Eventually, Kendall joined Carmondy and Anderson on a team while the other boy, who she learned was Travis, went on the team with Beck and Torie.

  Anderson took the ball and prepared to check it to Travis. “I gotta take Travis, he’s a point. Who you got, Car?”

  Kendall already had Torie, leaving only Beck to guard.

  She groaned inwardly but tried not to let it show on her face. Car was tall for a girl but Beck was way taller and solid muscle. There was no way this was going to work. She positioned herself between Beck and the ball, determined to do her best to keep the ball away from him because once he had it, she could do very little to stop him.