Bad Reputation Read online

  “You can leave now,” I said instead.

  He sighed. “Listen, Tucks. Tucker. The truth is…I need a favor.”

  “Not happening.”

  “Hear me out.”

  “No.”

  But old habits die hard, and I’m a sucker for a lost cause. And no one could be sorrier than my ex. I unlocked my dorm door and gestured for him to come in.

  I really am a sucker, I thought as Mark smiled and followed me up to my room.

  He came in and sat down on my bed like he belonged there.

  Yep. Tucker the sucker. That’s me.

  I limped in after him and positioned myself carefully on the desk chair on Liandra’s side of the room. Mark grabbed my foot, and I was immediately struck by how much of nothing I felt in reaction. I’d felt more when Joey the snake charmer touched me. Much more.

  I started to pull away in protest, but as Mark rubbed the sore ankle, the ache all but disappeared. I closed my eyes to enjoy the relief.

  “You want to tell me what’s up?” I asked

  “The City offered me this internship. I traded in my sandals for a suit. I thought I’d see how the other half lived.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “What’s funny?” he wanted to know.

  “That you thought I cared about the fact that you switched sides.”

  “You asked what was up,” he pointed out.

  “Yeah. Because I wondered what you want. Not how you are.”

  It was a little weird to see him behind a desk rather than behind a protest sign. But was it surprising? Not really. He’d already proven his scumbag nature.

  “We were good together, Tucks,” Mark said softly.

  “Don’t push it, Mark,” I replied. “Right now I’m pretending some male supermodel is rubbing my leg instead of the ex-boyfriend I hate.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Less talk, more action.”

  “My sister is getting married in a week,” he said.

  “I know. I would have been your plus one,” I reminded him.

  “You would have been more than my plus one, Tucker.”

  He sounded so sincere, I had to open my eyes and look at his face. He stared back at me from behind his familiar, horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Don’t do this, Mark,” I begged. “I’m finally in an all right place.”

  “I’m not asking you for anything other than a date,” he said.

  “A date?”

  “Yes.”

  “For the love of God, why?”

  “I don’t have a plus one,” he replied.

  “Go alone.”

  “Tucks…when I saw you in boardroom yesterday, it made me wonder if we missed the boat when we broke up,” he confessed.

  “You mean when you slept around and I dumped your ass?”

  Mark gave me the crooked smile again. “Yeah. That.”

  I stared at him incredulously, then shook my head. Had I been expecting an apology, or wanting one? Maybe. Had I been expecting him to suggest we get back together and make jokes about breaking my heart? Hell, no.

  “Were you always this self-centered?” I asked abruptly.

  “What?”

  “I mean, all the times you were handing out leaflets, going door-to-door or screaming about clean water for needy children…was that about the people who needed help? Or was it about you?”

  “How could it be about me, Tucks?”

  “So you could hold up your wave of self-righteousness. Tell everyone how damned good you were. Like you’re doing to me, right now, trying to make it sound like you’re worth it?” I was almost yelling.

  Mark shrank back against the bed, but he wasn’t ready to give up just yet. Like a dog with a bone. Always eager to get what people weren’t willing to give—money, time, anything. Especially when they said no first of all.

  “I want to cut a deal,” he said.

  “You have nothing that I want.”

  “I have two-thousand dollars, and I’ll give it to you. You can put it into your campaign fund.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m being serious,” he told me.

  “Why? Even if I believed you, why would I take your money?”

  “Okay, do you remember that antique cigarette holder we found in that thrift shop?” Mark asked, and I nodded. “I sold it online for two grand.”

  “You did not.”

  “I did. And technically, half of that is yours. But I’ll give you the whole amount if you do this one tiny thing.”

  I wanted desperately to tell him to screw himself, but when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t do it. I looked at Mark’s face. It was completely genuine. I wanted the money. I needed it.

  And technically, it’s mine anyway, right?

  Mark was looking at me expectantly, like I was a foregone conclusion. I was instantly disgusted at myself for considering it.

  “You’ve just tried to turn me into a paid escort, you realize that?” I asked angrily.

  “That’s a yes?”

  “That’s a get the hell out of my room,” I replied as I slid my foot off of him and turned my face pointedly in the other direction.

  I didn’t breathe again until I heard the door click shut.

  Joey

  After my close encounter with the redhead at the student market, taking Amber out for lunch seemed like trying to accept a silver medal after having been first told I was getting the gold.

  Worse than that. It feels like I’m watching the game from the sidelines.

  My usual self-pity was quickly returning, and maybe even compounding into something even darker.

  Like I’d touched the sun and was now being asked to stay in a dark closet for the rest of my life.

  I laughed at my own melodrama.

  I was mad at myself. Partly for chasing after the other girl. Partly for wanting to in the first place.

  What is it about her?

  It would be easy for me to say I wanted her initially because she didn’t want me. After all, I could admit without feeling conceited that I was used to being pursued. Most of the girls I went out with—who eventually wound up hating me because I couldn’t give them what they wanted—had approached me. I didn’t usually have to initiate contact. This girl…not only had she not approached me…she had outright rejected me.

  It would be even easier for me to say that I was going after her because I had to, because my dad had tasked me with finding out who was trying to save the community center.

  I winced internally. If she knew what I was hoping to do on my father’s behalf, she’d do more than reject me.

  But neither my overblown ego nor my business interest is really what’s driving me.

  Truthfully, if the redhead wasn’t on my dad’s radar, or if she had agreed to an interview, or if she had even tried to kiss me today—and God knows I had put myself in a position to allow that to happen—I wouldn’t have wanted her any less.

  I pictured her again. The pride in her eyes every time the community center was mentioned, her stubborn insistence that she didn’t need help and the determined set of her jaw all drew me in, even more than her beauty.

  “Are you listening, Joey?” Amber’s question knocked me back to the present.

  “Sure am, sweetheart,” I lied with a big smile. “Just admiring your pretty face.”

  I had been looking at her, at least some of the time. Admittedly, it was only so I could mentally pick apart her imperfections. Her nose was too long and her face was too narrow. When she was annoyed, she bit her lip in an affected gesture that just plain pissed me off.

  She was doing it at that moment.

  I growled about it in my head, but kept my mouth shut because I knew that I was being unfair. We were good friends. We had been for a long time. Even before she saved me from myself a year and a half ago.

  She didn’t usually irritate me, and to be completely fair, she was quite pretty.

  She just wasn’t the redhead.

  Why am I eve
n here?

  I watched Amber’s mouth form words I couldn’t quite follow.

  “What’s her real name?” I blurted out.

  Amber had been midsentence and she trailed off and stared at me blankly.

  “Chipper. The girl at the market,” I prodded. “You said you went to high school together.”

  Amber smiled tightly and shrugged. “In high school, we just called her by the nickname. She had these enormous front teeth. Like a chipmunk, you know? And God, she was always chattering away about some cause or another.”

  “That’s not very nice.”

  “Since when does being nice matter to you?” Amber asked in a pseudo-teasing voice.

  “I just don’t see what’s wrong with caring about something.”

  “All right,” she sighed. “Tell me what’s really going on.”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Maybe it’s just been a really long time I’ve met someone who picks substance over style.”

  Amber laughed. “And here I was, thinking you kept it that way on purpose.”

  “There’s something about the girl that makes me want to…” I trailed off, unsure exactly what it was she did make me want to do.

  “Save her?” Amber filled in.

  “I don’t think she needs saving.”

  “If you knew her family history, you might think otherwise,” Amber scoffed.

  “I don’t care about her family,” I stated.

  “What about your family?” she asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Do they know that you’re chasing a girl like Chipper?”

  I bristled. “My dad happens to have a vested interest in her business, all right? So yes, he’s aware.”

  Amber smiled. “Well, that’s a relief. I’m sure he wouldn’t be impressed if you took a romantic interest in a girl like that.”

  Even though she didn’t say it, I heard the silent again at the end of her sentence.

  “My parents don’t control who I date.”

  Amber’s eyebrows went up at my use of the word date. I’d made it clear in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t even in my vocabulary.

  “I’m just reminding you that you deserve of a girl of the highest standard.”

  “And Chipper is sub-par?”

  Amber put her hand overtop of mine and stroked it lightly with her thumb. Maybe she sensed that the conversation was going steadily down a hill we could never re-climb.

  “Did you invite me here just to talk about some other girl?” she asked in a sultry voice.

  I cringed. Maybe that’s exactly what I had done. I jerked my hand away. Amber’s eyes widened.

  “Joey, my feelings don’t get hurt easily, but this is taking a turn for the worse and jeopardizing our relationship.”

  I stared at her, wondering if she was really that bad at reading me.

  “We don’t have a relationship. We’re friends,” I reminded her. “And I’m not even sure if we should keep hanging out. This doesn’t seem to be—”

  “Working out?” She interrupted me, but somehow managed to keep her voice light. “You’ll change your mind. Maybe not today. But sooner or later, you’ll remember what I did for you, and you’ll want a reminder of Beth, and you’ll know no one else will talk about her…you’ll call me. I’m the only one who’s honest with you.”

  My skin crawled as I realized she wasn’t bad at reading me at all.

  “My past doesn’t own me,” I replied angrily.

  “Doesn’t it? Then why isn’t this…” She made circling gesture between us. “…a relationship?”

  I didn’t have an answer that wasn’t a lie. I couldn’t admit that I’d been hanging on to Amber precisely so that I could dwell on to the past, so I could somehow hold on to Beth. It kept the guilt fresh in my mind, and that’s what I needed. Amber helped to remind me of what I had done, and how I had driven my father and I even further apart, and how I could never let it happen again.

  “Oh, c’mon,” Amber prodded gently. “We have dinner once a week. You’ve poured your heart out to me about your parents, about your work…. If you weren’t so hung up on the past, you’d be able to see this is a relationship. Or at least as close to one as you’re willing to get.”

  I stared at Amber’s face. Her eyes were focused right on mine, and they were intensely serious. She looked down and then back up, and her expression was markedly softer. She put a hand on my forearm.

  “I’m really just thinking of you. I haven’t seen you like this with a girl since Beth,” she said softly.

  I laughed off her comparison.

  “I don’t know Chipper at all. I don’t even know her name,” I reminded Amber. “Right now, she’s just some hot chick who looks good in men’s shorts.”

  “You said right now,” Amber pointed out.

  “So?”

  “So since when do you see the potential for more than right now?”

  I frowned.

  Amber went on. “If you really like Chipper, could you live with yourself if you did what you always do nowadays?”

  “What do I always do?”

  “Reel them in. And toss them away,” she replied with an ease that made me thoroughly uncomfortable. “Do what’s easy.”

  “And what’s easy?”

  “Being with me.” She stood up and kissed my cheek. “Let’s have dinner again on Tuesday. You can tell me all about how the rest of your weekend went.”

  She left me staring after her with a cold feeling building up in my heart.

  * * *

  I let Amber’s words eat me up.

  I had always known that coming back home would expose me to the possibility of having the heartache of my past thrown in my face. A year and a half of silence on the matter had dulled my consideration of the matter.

  I’d spent more than three years in therapy, trying to work through the idea that my actions and their consequences weren’t my fault. Then I had shrugged at the world and turned my back on the belief that I could ever be convinced.

  If Amber thought manipulating me into feeling worse was the way to go, she didn’t really know me as well as she believed she did. No one felt worse about the twists and turns of my life than I did.

  I reached into my back pocket, and my hand closed over a piece of paper. I drew it out quickly, remembering immediately what it was. One of the pamphlets the redhead had had on her table at the market. I’d grabbed it when she wasn’t looking, fully prepared to use it to my—and my father’s—advantage. I unfolded it and gave it a once over. There was a simple logo and a business name—Greenleaf Gardening—but no personal information. I flipped it open and spotted a phone number.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed.

  “Hello,” said a breathless voice.

  For a moment, I was silent, overwhelmed by the way her voice made a rush of longing flood my body and my heart.

  “Hello?” she said again.

  “Hey,” I finally managed to reply as I pushed aside my feelings.

  “How did you get this number?”

  I smiled at her instantaneous irritation. “I see your ankle still hurts.”

  “It’s fine. I had a massage.”

  I forced down my immediate jealousy. “Do you need another?”

  “Really, Joey?”

  “I know,” I sighed. “You’re impervious to my charm.”

  “If you’re not booking a gardening service…I’ve got to go.”

  “Do you want to have coffee?”

  “No,” she replied firmly, and hung up.

  I hit redial, and waited.

  “Stop calling me.”

  “Are you going to change your mind about coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to cut my lawn?” I asked.

  She paused before answering. “That is not a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t think you’re all that interested in my gardening skills.”

  I held in a
laugh. “What is it you think I want?”

  She paused, and I could hear the blush in her voice when she replied. “Something I can’t give you.”

  “An interview?” I teased.

  “Right.”

  “Maybe I just want to talk.”

  “And maybe you just want some action.”

  “Hey,” I protested. “I don’t have a problem getting action.”

  “You’re alone on a Saturday evening. And you’re calling me,” she pointed out.

  “You offering to help me with my perceived loneliness?”

  “I don’t think I’m your type.”

  I laughed. “I don’t have a type. I like ’em all.”

  “I know perfectly well what your type is,” she retorted. “I’m well acquainted with Amber, remember? So stop calling me.”

  “What are you doing later?” I persisted.

  “Are you serious?”

  “Utterly. We could meet somewhere for a drink and do that little interview.”

  “I have plans.”

  “That’s convenient,” I replied. “And it sounds made up.”

  I could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “I’m going to the campus pub, all right? With my roommate. So stop calling me!” She hung up again, and I stared at my phone with a small smile on my face.

  For some reason, the conversation lightened my spirits and made me sure I could prove Amber wrong.

  * * *

  I shouldn’t have been surprised when my dad greeted me on my way out the door, but I was in such a good mood that I jumped back, startled. He grabbed the door and held it open, blocking me from turning the handle.

  “What did you find out?” he demanded immediately.

  Damn. I’d been so wrapped up in my self-satisfaction that I’d temporarily forgotten that he was the reason I was chasing the girl in the first place.

  “That I’m not quite as irresistible as I once believed.” I said lightly.

  He raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

  “The girl who’s stopping you from snapping up that property is impervious to my charm,” I replied.

  This time both of my father’s eyebrows shot up. “A girl?”

  I shrugged off his surprise. “She runs a nonprofit. And whoever she is, she’s hired Bomner.”