Bad Reputation Read online

  My phone rang insistently in my ear.

  “Goddamn,” I murmured, half into Joey’s mouth and half into my pillow.

  I tried to drag myself to full consciousness, but my body was tense with unmet longing, and I couldn’t quite move.

  The phone rang again.

  “Are you gonna answer that?” Liandra’s voice floated across the room, and I finally sat up.

  My roommate was sitting up in bed.

  “Why are you up?” I asked.

  “Because your phone is ringing?” she countered.

  I grabbed it midway through the third ring. “Hmph?”

  “Hey.”

  The sound of Joey’s signature greeting brought back the dream, and I didn’t reply because I wasn’t sure that I could keep the residual passion out of my voice.

  “Tucker.”

  The sound of my name on his lips sent a thrill through my body. My head was pressed against my pillow, and there was something irrationally intimate about hearing him speak into my ear.

  I squeaked out a response, and he said my name again.

  “Tucker.”

  I groaned internally as I remembered the feel of dream him pressed against dream me. I cleared my throat to answer him properly.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Tucker.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s taken me since this afternoon, but I finally figured out how I can keep my hands to myself.”

  My face flamed red, and I was glad he couldn’t see it.

  “You’re calling me at…” I paused, struggling to focus on the clock so I could check the time. “Eleven forty-eight at night to brag about how slow you are?”

  “I was trying to impress you with my eagerness.”

  “I’m not impressed.”

  “We’re going to be friends,” he told me.

  “Friends?” Was there a hint of disappointment in my voice? Probably.

  “Yes. Friends. I’m not that bad of a person. I do have friends.”

  “Prove it,” I challenged.

  “Prove that I have friends?” he teased. “All right. Come out with me Saturday night. I’ll introduce you.”

  “Nice try,” I said. “I meant prove you’re not a bad person. And then I’ll consider your friendship request.”

  “You’re the one who put this condition in place,” he reminded.

  “Criticizing me is not the way to my heart any more than stalking me is.”

  “Your heart?”

  “The heart of my friendship.”

  He chuckled, then went silent.

  “The breathing into the phone thing isn’t helping the creep factor, Joey.”

  “Well?” he said.

  “Well, what?”

  “Can we go out tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Are you drunk?” I replied.

  “What?”

  “You call me in the middle of the night to talk about being friends, then ask me out. What am I supposed to think?”

  “I’m not asking you out. You’re the one who suggested tomorrow. We can go back to date-like Saturday night instead if you’d prefer,” he offered.

  “No! I—”

  Liandra’s voice cut off the rest of my protest. “Whatever he wants, do it!”

  “I like her,” Joey said.

  “Maybe you should be her friend,” I suggested.

  “So yes to Saturday then?”

  “Yes to Tuesday,” I corrected, and when he laughed, I added, “And I have one other condition.”

  “Anything.”

  “Do not call me between now and tomorrow at four o’clock. And keep your damned truck off the grass,” I instructed.

  “That’s two conditions,” he pointed out.

  “Joey…” I replied in warning voice.

  He laughed again. “Should I pick you up?”

  “No way,” I said. “I am never getting in that truck of yours.”

  “Eventually you will. And it’ll be the ride of your life.”

  I groaned. “I’ll text you the address after lunch, and you can meet me there.”

  I hung up before he could get any further under my skin, and rolled over to face the bedroom wall.

  “We’re not going to talk about this?” Liandra asked.

  “Nope.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  She waited.

  “I’m taking him to the fundraiser,” I finally told her.

  “I thought it was all very hush-hush.”

  I sighed. “It’s not hush-hush. I just don’t want my name splashed all over the place. You know why.”

  “And you trust this guy to keep it to himself?” Liandra asked.

  “Why would he tell anyone? He’s so high and mighty, he’ll probably think it’s beneath him to admit that he was even there.”

  “He might think he was doing you a favor. People’s instinct is to help, you know.”

  I went silent for a second. I knew, logically, that the press would be my friend in this case, but the thought of seeing my name in headlines made my throat constrict.

  “I’ll make sure he understands,” I said quietly.

  I closed my eyes and let myself drift, praying that I wasn’t about to slip back into the all-consuming Joey dream.

  The last thing I needed was his particular brand of friendship.

  And yet…I’d agreed to it. I’d encouraged him to prove that we could be friends. And I was left wondering how I had gone from being furious at him, to inviting him to accompany me the one place that would give away more about myself than I had ever revealed to anyone but Liandra.

  Tuesday

  Joey

  Good morning, I texted as soon as I rolled out of bed.

  Her reply was immediate. I told you not to call me!

  I’m not calling. I’m texting.

  !!!!!!!!!!!!

  Was that a virtual punch in the jaw?

  More like a kick in the ass.

  Ouch.

  I waited for her reply, and when it didn’t come right away, I jumped into the shower. My phone chimed just as I finished lathering up my hair. I couldn’t resist waiting to read what she’d written.

  I think Tucker likes you.

  I grinned, knowing Tucker must’ve left her phone unguarded.

  I think she likes me, too. She’s always texting me when she knows I’m naked.

  NAKED?

  And soaking wet, I typed.

  You’re going to wreck your phone, pervert.

  Tucker?

  Yeah, that last one was me. The other stuff was my roommate. She’s a bad person.

  So…you don’t like me?

  Not like that.

  Like what? I teased.

  Oh. My. God. Leave me alone.

  What? I was taking a shower and YOU texted ME.

  Liandra texted you.

  So you say.

  I have to go to class now, she told me, and I could practically hear her exasperated voice.

  Not spending the day ticketing people who don’t deserve it?

  They always deserve it.

  Do you always have to have the last word? I wondered.

  SHUT UP.

  LASTWORDLASTWORDLASTWORD.

  She ignored me, and I jumped back into my increasingly cold shower to rinse out my hair.

  * * *

  Waiting for the day to go by was hard work.

  The hours dragged by. But it wasn’t in a way that it would usually happen. I wasn’t dwelling on the past. In fact, I was truly excited about something for the first time in years. I knew it wasn’t going to be a real date, but that was a good thing. My dates usually ended in guilt and frustration.

  I powered though my morning as best I could, feeling like a kid on Christmas.

  I took notes furiously in each of my two classes, trying to fill my head with facts about muscles and movement in place of Tucker. But somehow they seemed intertwined.

  Muscles and movement and Tucker.


  It was enough to make me shift uncomfortably in my seat.

  I headed home and finished a paper that wasn’t due for another two weeks in a manic, one-hour frenzy. I went for a run, trying to burn off nervous energy. I put in ten miles, then lifted weights for a solid thirty minutes. I ate a carb-ridden plateful of pasta and finally collapsed in my bed, too exhausted to do anything else.

  When I woke up from my impromptu nap just after two o’clock in the afternoon, I saw that I had three missed calls. One from my father, one from Amber and a final one from Tucker.

  I skipped through the messages quickly.

  My dad’s voice cut in and out, like he was calling from inside a tunnel. “Interesting? Info about the girl…Joey? Dammit.”

  I hit delete.

  “I’m waiting for you to tell me where we’re going tonight.” Amber sounded vaguely irritated even though her message was punctuated by a giggle. “I hope you didn’t hit your head so hard the other day that you think it’s actually okay to take me to a drive-through.”

  I gritted my teeth and hit delete again. I relaxed when Tucker’s message started.

  “Hi, Joey,” she said. “It’s me. I think I said I’d text you the address, but the past twenty-four hours have proven you can’t keep your texts in your pants, so…anyway. We’re meeting at the Junction Road Community Center and funnily enough it’s on Junction Road. Actually it’s pretty much the only thing left on Junction Road, so it should be easy to find. I’ll be bussing it out there. I hope five o’clock isn’t too early for you.”

  I heard the clatter of her dropping the phone, then her muffled voice came through again.

  “Dammit. Did I just use the word funnily?”

  “I think you did,” replied another cottony voice, which I was sure belonged to her roommate.

  “I should’ve just sent a text,” Tucker muttered.

  “Probably. But you needed to hear his voice, right?”

  “Shut up. What time does the six-oh-one run to Junction Road?” Tucker asked.

  “Ten past four,” replied the roommate.

  As the message cut off, I decided to forgo the use of my truck and hop onto that bus myself.

  Tucker

  Liandra stared at me from her side of the room. She’d been watching me since I’d come home from my last class. I could feel her eyes on me, and I made a concentrated effort to ignore her. My day had been long, and fraught with clever, teasing texts from Joey that were driving me crazy. I was so unused to getting interruptive messages that I always left my phone on during a class. When it chimed loudly during a lecture, I’d had the humiliating experience of every eye in the room turned my way. I was tired, I was worked up, and I didn’t feel like talking about it, even with my roommate.

  But when she sighed loudly for about the eighth time in a row, I finally gave in and looked up from the book I was reading for my biology class. I scowled at her.

  “What?” I said.

  “You can still change your mind about it,” she replied.

  “About what?”

  “Taking Joey to the fundraiser!”

  “Aren’t you the same girl who told me last night to give him whatever he wanted?”

  “It was the middle of the night. I didn’t know what I was saying. And that was before I knew that he was Trans U’s resident playboy.”

  “Have you seen the guy? Of course he’s a playboy. Besides that, I am the one who told you about his bad habits.”

  “I know. But…”

  “But what?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Who have you been talking to? So help me, if you’ve been spreading rumors about me and Joey Fox…”

  She waved off my frantic expression. “I mentioned him in passing to a girl I sit with in Poetry. She just happened to have spent the night with him once.”

  “So?” I said, pretending that it didn’t irk me a little bit to picture him in the arms of some co-ed.

  “It was just weird. The way she talked about him like he’d ruined her life. In one night. She was royally pissed about whatever happened,” Liandra told me.

  “Tell me about the girl,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Was she pretty? Smart? Young?”

  Liandra frowned. “Petite with big boobs and a designer purse. Probably not stupid, but pretends to be a little. Dramatic. Why?”

  “Do I seem anything like that girl?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So why would I spend the night with him and let it ruin my life?”

  “I’m seriously not sure why you would. I’m more concerned about if you would,” she replied. “We’ve been living together for a year, Tucker, and I’ve never seen you so much as look at a guy. This makes me nervous.”

  “I’m not looking at him, either. I’m using him for his manly physique. He’s going to wait tables, lift heavy stuff, then go home. Like a good friend. Who is a boy,” I joked.

  My roommate was still frowning. “When you moved here, you were in rough shape. What Mark did to you…do you want to go through that again?”

  That wasn’t just about Mark, I wanted to argue, but the look on Liandra’s face made me swallow the words.

  “No, never,” I said softly instead.

  “Do you want me to come with you to the fundraiser and act as a buffer?” she offered.

  I shook my head. “I know you’ve got tickets to your nephew’s school show. I’d rather take my chances with Joey than risk incurring your eternal resentment.”

  “You’re sure you can do this?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I assured her. “I’m going to dress like an old lady, and he’ll go running for the hills as soon as he sees what a do-gooder I am.”

  * * *

  When it came time to get ready, though, I couldn’t help but glare at—and then toss aside—the prim, button-up blouse and high-waisted pants I planned on wearing. A mere four hours had gone by since I resolved to look anything but my best, and my will to dress down had wavered significantly. Gone out the window, actually.

  And it totally has nothing to do with the girl in Liandra’s poetry class and her big boobs, I lied to myself.

  I had never put so much thought into getting ready for a fundraiser before. Then again, I had never brought a guy like Joey with me before, either. I was annoyed at myself for even bothering, and finally settled on a pair of dark wash jeans and scoop neck, chocolate-colored T-shirt.

  I was very glad Liandra wasn’t around to see me.

  I got onto the bus and nervously adjusted my clothes.

  “Ridiculous,” I muttered under my breath.

  I heard a familiar chuckle from behind me. “You just gonna stand there and grumble, or you wanna sit down?”

  I turned around to find Joey sitting on one of the bus seats with a self-assured grin on his handsome face. The dimple in his cheek was deep enough for me to get lost in, and his green eyes were amused. I opened my mouth to tell him off, but the bus jerked forward and I had to sit down next to him to avoid falling over.

  Quickly, I made sure our legs weren’t touching, and I tried to ignore the arm he so very casually draped my shoulders. There was no subtle way for me to squirm away, so I sat still and pretended it wasn’t there.

  Joey smiled widely. He had to be aware of how his presence was affecting me, and that made me feel self-conscious.

  “So…you decided to slum it like the rest of us tonight?”

  He shrugged. “I looked up the address and decided it would be more fun to take transit. And it gave me time to think.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “Ha-ha. You’re supposed to ask me what I was thinking about.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What were you thinking about?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out what we’re doing at the youth center, and I’ve considered several options.”

  “Such as?”

  “One. A rock concert.”

  “Nope.”

  “Two. Community basketball.�
��

  I made a face. “Not for me, thanks.”

  “Three. You’re a serial killer and it’s where you dispose of the bodies.”

  I laughed. “You have such a good imagination.’

  “You have no idea,” he told me with a wink.

  “All right, Joey. If you want to be friends, you have to stop doing that,” I said.

  “Doing what?”

  My face went red. “Flirting with me.”

  “Only if you stop blushing when I do it,” he replied.

  I realized I was no longer sitting stiffly. I was leaning into him, the hard line of his torso pressed into me. His hand stroked the bare skin on my upper arm.

  “You’re good at this, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Good at what?”

  “This little game. Making girls like you.”

  “Actually…I’m quite a bit better at making them hate me,” he replied, his smile a little sad.

  “I don’t hate you,” I admitted quickly, wanting to bring the warmth back into his eyes.

  “I don’t hate you, either,” he told me.

  “Thanks.”

  The bus wheezed to a stop, and the driver announced that it was the last stop.

  “Let’s go. We’ve got about two blocks to walk.”

  I was relieved we’d reached our destination, and I was able to put some physical space between us.

  “That wasn’t so bad,” Joey said.

  “What wasn’t?”

  “The bus ride. I don’t know why people always complain about it being crowded and uncomfortable. I kind of liked being stuck right next to you. And it was economical.”

  “As if you’ve ever thought about what’s economical and what’s not.”

  “You really hate people with money, don’t you?”

  His direct question caught me off-guard. Was that how I came across?

  “It’s not the people,” I replied. “Or the money. It’s what the people do with the money.”

  “What do they do with it?”

  “They buy designer clothes and put fountains in front of their houses while other people struggle to pay for thrift store jeans and food on their tables.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how self-righteous and judgmental I sounded.