Always Been You Read online

  “We are. We will,” I exclaim, near fervent in my assurance. “I’ll see it twice.” When Misty Copeland was named the first black prima ballerina, we were excited and vowed to go to one of her shows during the summer. I mentioned it to Colin and he surprised me with tickets. How could I say no?

  I mean he wanted to see it with me. And it’s ballet, and he likes ballet probably as much as I like pole dancing—which is not at all— so this is huge.

  Liv pouts. Sadly, it’s not a bad look on her. She looks adorable. “Do you realize this is becoming a regular thing with you?”

  First Troy, now her. I sigh and resign myself to my fate. “You’re not going to send me on a long guilt trip are you?”

  Lips quivering, she fights back a smile. After a pause, she holds up her hand and capitulates. “Okay, no guilt trip. It’s just that ever since you started dating Colin, you’ve stopped hanging out with us.”

  And by us, she means our tight group of seven that now includes Emily.

  “Well it’s hard. I want Colin to come but, let’s face it, the guys don’t like him.” And Colin doesn’t particularly like them either. But I leave that part out. No need to further muddy the already muddy waters.

  “That’s not true. Zach doesn’t dislike him.”

  I take the dress off the hanger and lay it out at the foot of my bed. “That’s a ringing endorsement,” I say dryly.

  “Colin can be kind of standoffish don’t you think?”

  A bit. Okay, so the guys and he are like oil and water. “He’s not into sports and that’s basically all the guys talk about when we go out.”

  We’d all gone out once when Colin and I had first started dating, and it hadn’t gone well. I will concede that Zach and Scott had tried to include him in the conversation but my boyfriend had been more comfortable monopolizing one hundred percent of my attention. He’d stuck to me like a burr that night.

  “Bring him. The guys will be on their best behavior,” Liv promises.

  Troy won’t. He won’t be nasty but he won’t go out of his way to be nice to him. Plus Colin wouldn’t go even if I asked him to.

  “I’ll ask him,” I lie.

  The look Liv casts me is skeptical but she doesn’t push it. “So, it sounds like you guys are getting pretty serious.”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. Serious enough I guess.” If serious means exclusivity and a standing date on weekends.

  “Well that’s something I guess. I assume the sex is good?” The avid expression on her face coaxes me to open up. What I’ve been slightly embarrassed to tell her—to tell anyone—is that there’s nothing to tell.

  I avert my gaze, dropping it to my dress.

  It doesn’t take her long to silently connect the dots. Her hazel eyes widen in surprise. “Wait, you guys aren’t having sex?”

  “Is that the definition of serious?” I don’t mean to sound defensive but my tone’s refusal to cooperate works against me.

  “No. No. I just thought…”

  We’ve been going out for a little over three months, and I can tell Colin’s patience is wearing thin. Our make-out sessions always end with weighty sighs, a tight jaw and lots of tension.

  A part of me wants to just take the plunge. Have sex with him and pray it’s half as good as it was with Troy. The other part of me is terrified it will be a Steven-type disaster, and that’s a mistake I don’t want to repeat.

  But I think I’m finally ready now though. I’m a normal twenty-one-year-old with a normal sex drive. I like sex. Good sex. I’d probably become a nympho over mind-blowing sex. That said, I’m extremely particular about who I share my body with.

  “I understand that you can’t imagine going a week without it, but some of us can manage to go months, sometimes even years without sex without going blind,” I tease dryly.

  “Very funny. I go a week without every month.”

  “Your period doesn’t count.”

  Her sheepish smile slowly dims as she continues to regard me, her gaze unwavering. Then she lets out a long sigh and runs her fingers through her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair. “I’m just worried about you. It’s been two years since—”

  “You don’t need to be. I’m over him now,” I say cutting her off, my tone more curt and sharper than I intend. She doesn’t need to remind me. I know exactly how long it’s been down to the day.

  “Are you?” she asks softly.

  My first nod is emphatic. But in the face of her probing stare, I relent and reply with something closer to the truth. “Okay, maybe not one hundred percent over him, but I’m getting there. I’m thinking that having sex with Colin will help things along.” My laugh is so dry and self-deprecating it scrapes over my throat coming out.

  “You’d have sex with him for that?” She looks equally amused and surprised.

  At this rate, I may never have sex again if I wait for love or a consuming passion. Look what happened with the last guy I loved who I had sex with. A big fat nothing. Liv has been with Zach for so long, she doesn’t understand what it’s like for us single girls.

  “You know what they say. The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else,” I quip with a wink.

  A movement behind me has my head swiveling toward the door as my heart jolts violently in my chest.

  Troy stands framed at the entrance. He doesn’t look amused. Actually, he looks downright grim.

  “Jesus, Troy, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you to lock your door?”

  With my hand placed over my madly beating chest, I snap back, “Do you know how to knock?”

  He enters my room and directs his attention at Olivia. “Hey, Liv, do you have something on the stove?”

  “Oh crap. I lost track of time. Thanks for reminding me.” And with that, she dashes out of the room, leaving me alone with Troy, which I’m sure is what he intended.

  Looking around, he strolls deeper into the room. His perusal would appear cursory to a casual onlooker. I know better. He stops and stares down at my dress.

  “I haven’t seen you in this.” He shoots a glance at me over his shoulder.

  “That’s because I’ve never worn it.”

  “You wearing it tonight?”

  I let out a long breath. What is he up to? “I know you didn’t come here to ask me that.” I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  He turns and faces me, a smile ghosting his lips. “No, I wanted to make sure that we’re okay.”

  My expression and heart softens with my feelings for him. “Of course we’re okay. We’ll be even more okay when you start knocking before you come in,” I say in light admonishment.

  “I’ll start knocking when you start locking your damn door,” he mock growls.

  This is another argument we’ve had before. But when I’m at home and I know I’m going out later, I haven’t gotten into the habit of locking the door. Apparently that’s some sort of home security sin.

  “As it seems that’s the only way I’ll be able to stop a certain person from coming in uninvited, I promise to lock it from now on,” I assure him lightly.

  “Good,” he says with a nod. His gaze stops at my desk, lingering on my sewing machine. “Is that new?”

  “I bought it a couple months ago.” My bedroom is large enough to also function as my sewing room. It’s a tight fit but I manage by using my bed to lay and cut out the fabric and my desk for schoolwork and to sew. It’s not ideal but it works.

  Troy looks it over as if sewing machines have always been of interest to him. I know that’s not the case.

  “Nice,” he murmurs as he trails his finger over the shiny, chrome finish.

  “Look, Troy, I’m getting ready to go—”

  “Out with Johnson. Yeah, I know. And you’re planning to have sex with him to get over the other one?”

  I knew it. There’s no way Troy hadn’t heard it. And there’s no way he would let it go.

  I narrow my
eyes at him. “How much of our conversation did you hear?”

  “Enough,” he replies, expressing no guilt or shame.

  “Well that was an AB conversation.” He needs to C his way out of it.

  “Are you seriously planning on having sex with a guy to get over another guy?” He shakes his head and shudders as if he finds the notion not only incomprehensible but repugnant.

  An incredulous laugh sputters from my mouth. “No are you serious? Guys don’t need a reason to have sex with a girl so why should we need a good one?”

  A line creases his forehead as he continues to stare at me.

  “Oh God, lighten up, Troy. And seriously, give me some credit. I was just joking.” Although I do believe there’s some validity to the saying, it doesn’t always work—sex with Steve being a prime example.

  “And why do you care anyway?” I ask when it’s clear he’s doing the opposite of lightening up.

  It’s not as if he wants me like that. He’s shown zero interest in me—sexually. And it’s not like he hasn’t had a ton of opportunities. There was the trip to Montreal. We’d slept right across the hall from one another. And we’d all gone to Georgia this past fall, where there’d been tons of opportunities for all sorts of sexy stuff.

  His eyebrows rise high on his forehead. “Why do I care? Are you serious?”

  “Do I say anything to you about the girls you sleep with?” The answer to that is a resounding no. I keep my mouth closed and my lips zipped.

  “Yes.” His snapped response is as sharp and as fast as my own.

  My jaw drops, parting my lips. What?

  “No I don’t.”

  “Yes you do.”

  He’s out of his mind. I make a conscious effort not to say anything about the girls he goes out with. Yes, this usually means I have to bite my tongue so hard I draw blood, but I’m not going to turn into that girl. The shrew of a girl friend he slept with once and is now jealous of every girl he then goes out with. The only thing worse than a sad cliché is being a sad cliché.

  “Who? Name one girl I’ve ever talked shit about.” He won’t be able to come up with one name because it never happened. I’m the soul of circumspect.

  “Courtney,” is his immediate comeback.

  The second his high-school girlfriend’s name leaves his lips, I shake my head in denial. “No way.”

  “You asked me if she grew up with a father in the house because she seemed to crave male attention.”

  “That wasn’t a criticism, it was an observation.” I can’t believe he’s seriously going to try to flag me on that. The girl used to blow up his phone whenever he left her sight. That kind of neurotic behavior had to stem from something. “If anything, I was trying to understand where she was coming from. She was your first serious girlfriend and I wanted to like her.”

  Okay, that’s a blatant lie. I never liked Courtney. And the feeling was very mutual. I did a jig when he told me they’d broken up. Oh yeah, and then I’d had sex with him. Big mistake. But I digress.

  “Bullshit. You never liked her.”

  Troy knows me so well. A little too well for my liking these days.

  “If I didn’t like her it was because she didn’t like me,” I reply in my defense.

  A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth and I’m momentarily distracted. Troy really does have the most kissable lips. Just the perfect amount of fullness. And boy does he know how to use them. My mind immediately goes back to the kiss we shared yesterday.

  Ugh, I was doing so well not having sexual thoughts about him and then he went and did that.

  “She didn’t like you because she was jealous of you. You know she always thought there was something going on between us.”

  I’d suspected as much but this is the first time Troy’s come right out and told me.

  “I don’t get why she’d think that. I mean if we wanted to be together, we would have been, right?”

  I silently groan. Why the hell did I make that a question? Now it sounds like I’m trying to get him to discuss the big ole elephant in the room, when I specifically banished that elephant when we agreed to put that night behind us.

  “But wasn’t she jealous of every girl you talked to?” I add hurriedly in hopes of negating the prior question.

  “Actually no she wasn’t. She was pretty much only ever jealous of you.” He says it while staring me dead in the eyes.

  My stomach hollows out at the intensity of his gaze. It’s disquieting. Definitely time to move this conversation forward. “Well I’m not counting Courtney because she isn’t a good example. Who else? Which of your other girlfriends did I talk smack about?”

  “Jenny.”

  My gaze narrows. It’s like he’s been biding his time for exactly this conversation and now he’s coming at me, guns blazing and with a hidden agenda.

  “The only thing I ever said to you about her was that she’s a big flirt. And she was. You yourself admitted that.” He can’t dock me for speaking the truth.

  He smirks. “You also said she was a lush and she’d get pregnant before she graduated from high school.”

  My eyes widen. “I never told you that.”

  “No but you told Liv.”

  I inhale an aggrieved breath. “And Liv told you?” I ask, aghast. That’s so against the best friend secrecy protocol.

  He huffs and rolls his eyes. “Of course not. She told Zach and he busted my chops about it when he and Liv were getting together.”

  There are two things really wrong with this scenario. One: Zach probably knows all there is to know about me. Not good. Two: Troy has known for at least two years and this is the first time he’s said anything about it to me. Not that it’s cause for discussion because Jenny is old news. He’d dated her briefly before he started going out with Courtney.

  I play it off with a shrug. “The only thing I was wrong about was the pregnancy. But Maggie told me she’s married now and has a baby.”

  “What about Laura?”

  He dated Laura Grady when I was dating Steven. When Troy first started going out with her, she tried to get all chummy with me. You know, keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer and all that good stuff. She must’ve thought I was born yesterday. She’s like all the other girls Troy’s ever dated, she couldn’t stand the sight of me. But so far, she’s been the fakest of the lot.

  “You thought she was fake.”

  What is he a damn mind reader?

  “I never said that.” My denial is righteously indignant.

  “You didn’t have to, I could tell.”

  I roll my eyes. Yeah, because he knows me so well.

  “I’ve never said one bad word about her.” The lie rolls effortlessly off my tongue. Liv, Rebecca and Emily got an earful about Princess Fakeness.

  “You said she came across as possessive.”

  What, he’s counting that innocent remark? “She was, which is why you broke up with her,” I sweetly remind him.

  “Do you want me to continue?” Troy’s smile is infuriatingly smug.

  “I haven’t said anything about Melissa.” I’m batting a big fat zero here so I’m tossing up a Hail Mary pass.

  Don’t sue me for mixing baseball and football metaphors.

  “Not so far,” he concedes with a nod. “What do you think of her? Honestly,” he adds as if the truth needs to be prodded from me. That’s how much things between us have changed. Before we had S.E.X., we’d always been open with each other. Well except for the part where I’ve been secretly in love with him for years. But other than that, brutal honesty.

  But I’m moving on with Colin and he’s with Melissa—although you’d swear he’d forgotten that yesterday when he had his tongue in my mouth—and I’m not about to tell him that his new girlfriend doesn’t like me any better than any of his others.

  “From what I’ve seen of her, she seems okay.” That’s not a lie, it’s a hedge.

  For some reason, that appears to surprise him. “Ye
ah?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nods slowly. “But I still think you’re making a mistake if you’re planning to sleep with what’s his name just to get over the other one.”

  Argh. I’m this close to pulling my hair out by the roots, that’s how crazy this man makes me. How did it all come back to this?

  “Troy, my love life—my sex life in particular—”

  There’s no missing the stiffening of his jaw and the sudden compression of his lips. “—is none of your business. And I promise that from now on, I won’t say a word about any of the girls you date.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t complaining. Your opinion matters to me so of course I want to hear what you think about everything—including the girls I go out with. I mean they have to pass your inspection test.”

  Ha. If that were true he wouldn’t have gone out with any of them in the first place.

  “Yeah but this isn’t about you expressing an opinion,” I reply softly.

  Troy’s expression shutters as his gaze probes mine. “Seriously, it’s not even about that. I’m just surprised, you know. I had no idea you were still hung up on Steve.”

  Still? I almost laugh at that. Don’t I wish that were the problem. Oh, I love it that Troy thinks he has it all figured out. Steve’s the guy I dated before Colin. We went out for six months and I broke it off after we had sex.

  Not. A. Coincidence.

  We had sex the one time. It took him six months to get me into bed and then he starts talking about us moving in together the next year. One time. Does that really sound like a girl who’s going to shack up after dating less than a year? Not even close.

  Obviously Steve wasn’t the right guy for me. I was still getting over what happened between me and you-know-who, and poor Steve ended up being on the wrong end of the rebound stick. As it now stands, I’ve only had sex with one guy in two years. Only one guy and one time—since Troy.

  Sigh. I know, it’s pathetic. Which is why I need to get back on the horse and ride that bad boy into the ground bronco style.

  “Listen, Troy, we’re not having this conversation.” I cross my arms over my chest to indicate I’ve pulled that subject off the table.