A Broken Us (London Lover Series Book 1) (9 page)

“I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit,
Fin,” she says, lying her head back down on my shoulder.

“If he looks at me differently after he knows,
I won’t be able to handle it, Leslie. I won’t be able to forget. I don’t think
I can come back from something like that. And I refuse to beg him to stay with
me. Refuse,” I say, sniffing loudly. “I’m in survival mode right now.”

“I think
you
are all Brody needs. And he is all
you
need. And I think you are fooling yourself to think you can’t make a happy life
together, just the two of you.”

I look at her, feeling my chest rise as her
words blanket me with a shred of hope. But that hope needs to shut the hell up
right now. Hope is too painful right now.

“You guys have something really special.
Unique. To think you can find anything remotely close to that with Liam, or any
other guy that crosses your path for that matter, is a fool’s errand, Fin-Bin.
A fool’s errand.”

I watch her stand up off the bathroom floor and
stretch. “You look terrible, by the way,” she says, smoothing down her auburn
bob in the bathroom mirror.

“Why am I naked?” I ask.

“Ha!” she laughs loudly, “You really don’t
remember?” she looks at me, her eyes wide and wild.

“I have no recollection. If I had to guess, I
would say Brody found out where I was, flew over the ocean and seduced me in
the middle of the night.”

Her jaw drops. “You had a sex dream?” she
questions.

I nod.

“You brazen little minx! I want details!” she
squeals, while jumping and clapping like a child on Christmas morning.

I shake my head slowly, “No. No freaking way.
It was way too strange to relive.”

“Oh, come on! I’m not getting any action over
here, I need to live vicariously through you. Even if it’s just in your pretty
little messed up head.”

I look up at her and smile, figuring the least
I can do is throw her a bone after the pep talk she just gave me.

“I’ll tell you one thing and that’s it. You
have to swear on your life that you won’t ask me for any more details,” I
bargain.

Her eyes turn wide, “Yes! Tell me, tell me,
tell me!” she pants like a dog.

“I mean it,
Lez
. No
more details,” I chide as I stretch out my cramped legs in front of me.

“I got it, I got it!” she kneels down on the
floor beside me.

I take a deep breath and say, “Brody wasn’t the
only one in my dream last night.”

She tilts her head in thought.

“One word...
Liam
.”

Her expression goes blank as she sinks further
back on her feet tucked under her butt. She looks straight up to the ceiling and
falls directly on top of me.

“
Ow
!” I cry,
laughing. “Get off of me, you fat ass!”

“I can’t. I’ve just died of a fascination
stroke. I fascinated so fast and so hard about those two dreamboats that I came
in my panties and died happy.”

I shove her off of my lap and she flops onto
her back, eyes closed. Suddenly she sits back up, “Seriously, you’ve given my
vibrator material for the next year.”

“TMI!” I shout.

“TMI?” she questions, “What about the cracks?”

Oh God,
the cracks.

“Fine, fine. Thanks for sharing,
Lez
. Happy to help,” I struggle to get up off the floor
without stepping on my sheet.

“Seriously though, why am I naked?” I ask her
one last time.

“You said—and I quote,
I want to feel the breeze of the house-air
on my skin as I walk up three flights of stairs. I’ve never done that before.
Bucket list!
Unquote.” Leslie looks at me with a straight poker face.

“I didn’t!” I scream, jostling the ache in my
head.

“I’m afraid you did, my dear. You are so
freaking lucky Julie and Mitch weren’t here.”

“What about Frank?”

She laughs hard and then tries to compose
herself, “You
might
have been passing
by his floor just as he was exiting his room with a magazine. He took one look
at you, screamed like a girl, and ran back into his room. He hasn’t been out
since!” she laughs, obnoxiously kicking her feet and hands on the ground.

Poor, poor Frank and Beans.

After sleeping it off for another hour, I feel
tons better. It has been a while since I’ve been hung over so bad I threw up
the next day. I hated it then and I hate it now. Couple being hung over with
the internal monologue constantly screaming in my head, and you have a recipe
for upchuck.

However, I can’t stop myself from popping on
Facebook
one more time to confirm the
images I saw of Brody and Olivia yesterday. The date stamp is clear. The
pictures are from a couple nights ago and it looks like they were at a bar or
party of some sort. Together. Brody barely knew Olivia back in college. I
wonder where the hell he bumped into her after I left. She sure as hell wasn’t
his type, but then again, I know Brody is a different guy since I left him.

It feels like a personal attack; he’s always
known about my distaste for Olivia. I explained the situation to him in the
early days of our relationship. I watered down the parts about my crush on
Jake. Brody and Jake had a history of conflict from our senior year because
Jake tried to kiss me at a party shortly after Brody and I started dating. I
wouldn’t call Brody possessive, but Jake was a sensitive subject I always
treaded lightly around. Brody hated the idea that I had unrequited love with
anyone. He couldn’t believe any guy wouldn’t want me. Jake and I were always
just friends, though. I did my best to assure Brody that I only had eyes for
him after we met, but, when it came to me and my past with other guys, it was
definitely a subject I avoided as much as possible.

I wouldn’t call myself promiscuous, by any
stretch of the imagination, but I was experienced. In high school, I had about
four semi-serious boyfriends, and I ended up having sex with all of them. I was
a young, wild teenager and extremely curious about sex. So when I had my first
official boyfriend at sixteen years old, it was only a matter of time before I
willingly gave him my v-card.

Connor Nelson. He wasn’t anything special in
the looks department but he was a senior, two years older than me. That gave
him a definite
cool
factor. He was
also one of the best players on the varsity football team, so even if he wasn’t
super attractive, all the girls wanted him. I felt like the queen bee when he
singled me out from all the sophomores. We had a good relationship but had no
fireworks or passion between us. It lasted until just before his senior
graduation. Surprising everyone, I broke it off because I didn’t want to be
tied down to a long-distance relationship when he went to college in the fall.

My other three relationships only lasted about
six-to-nine months each. One being just a summer fling, and the other two I
ended before they became too serious. My sexual curiosity had been stirred with
Connor; so having sex seemed like a normal progression of events in any
relationship.

In college, I experienced my first one-night
stand. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but I was a freshman enjoying my
newfound freedoms,
a bit too much
,
and a football player caught my eye. Sure enough, he promised to call and never
did. I hated running into him on campus because I felt like such a fool for
sleeping with him the first night I met him. I told Cadence about it and she
chastised me for weeks. Nobody needed to yell at me though, I knew I was an
idiot and felt horrible about myself afterward. Thankfully, I was smart enough
to use a condom. Back then I was terrified of getting pregnant; little did I
know, it wasn’t even in the realm of possibilities. Still, football players
have nasty reputations, so I’m glad I wasn’t a complete moron.

After that, my girlfriends called me the
make-out bandit. I made out and got hot and heavy with quite a few guys after
parties and stuff, but I never went all the way with them. That college
football player scared me off from opening up like that, and the alternatives
were just as fun. If I did find a halfway decent guy, he never seemed to hold
my interest for very long; I would end things before they got serious. At the
time, I seemed to care more about hanging out with my friends and going to
parties than finding a boyfriend.

That was, until I met Brody. When I met Brody,
all bets were off. I had never really found a guy I could be completely
comfortable and at ease with. That’s what made Brody a breath of fresh air to
me. He was hot, funny, kind, and interesting. He was the total package for me.
I noticed him for the first time when I was dancing at a bar. I had heard his
name around campus before but never spoke to him. After the whole Jake thing
fizzled out, I found myself trying to figure out what parties Brody was going
to and who his friends were. I couldn’t believe we had been going to the same
college for three whole years and our paths never crossed.

After we started getting serious, he admitted he’d
seen me around campus before, and had always regretted not talking to me. He
rectified that situation when he saw me two months into our senior year,
walking in the parking lot of our apartment complex. I can’t help but smile
when I picture him standing there in a pair of jersey shorts and no shoes with
a half-empty bag of trash. He later told me he only grabbed the trash as an
excuse to come out and talk to me. It seriously felt like fate when it dawned
on us we’d been living in the same apartment complex, just two buildings apart.

After that, Brody and I got super hot and
heavy, but we were good about not being one of those couples that fall off the
face of the earth when they fall in love. We both had really solid groups of
friends and wanted our senior year to be the best it could be, so we tried hard
to separate ourselves occasionally and be with our own friends. However, we
managed to combine our groups of friends together a lot so we could have the
best of both worlds.

I sighed at the thought of simpler times when
our only worries were upsetting our friends for hanging out too much.

After showering, shaving, and dressing in a
pair of denim Daisy Dukes and a hoodie, I begin to feel like myself again. I
trot down the steps, preparing for a good session of groveling to Frank for
flashing him last night.

I repeatedly thump on his door for a good five
minutes, begging him to come out.

“Come on, Frank. I promise I have clothes on
now. I’m not naked and I’m really sorry, okay?” I whine at his door.

 
“Seriously, Frank. I’ve been banging out
here for almost ten minutes now.”

I hear a muffled laugh from inside his room.
Was he laughing at me?

“Frank, I’ll
bang
for a whole hour if I need to,” I reproach.

More
muffled giggles.

“Frank, I can
bang
looooong
and
hard
all day if I need to. I’ll
keep hitting this
wood
, that’s how
firmly
I am committed to this
friendship. I’ll
come
to you anytime,
day or night.”

I know I’m making sexual innuendos in a
desperate shot to get Frank to warm up to me, but I am in damage-control mode
and have to make amends with my poor, apparently scarred for life, Frank and
Beans.

Suddenly, Frank creaks open the door and looks
at me with a naughty smirk on his face.

“Said the actress to the bishop,” he titters in
response to my clearly understood word emphasis.

I have no clue what that phrase means, but I
surmise it means something similar to the American version of
that’s what she said
. I’ve grown
accustomed to asking Frank what a lot of his interesting British phrases mean.

Frank is dressed in loose flannel pants and a
white knit sweater, his hair an orange rumpled mess, as usual. He looks a bit
pale and mopey, obviously milking his disposition for all it’s worth.

“You don’t play fair, Finley. You know dick jokes
are my kryptonite,” he adds, idly scratching at the doorframe.

I smile at him, “Frank, I’m sorry. I was drunk.
I was stupid. I didn’t mean to waltz around your house naked last night. And I
sure as heck didn’t mean to scare you into hibernation.”

“I’ve never seen a girl’s wobbly bits before,
Finley! It was quite shocking,” he states deadpan, but I see a sliver of a
smirk on his lips.

I smile and grab his arm to lead him out of his
bedroom, “Just consider it a test that you passed with flying colors.”

He brightens at that, “Not that I needed a test
to know my preference but I was always crap at school, so it’s nice to know I
aced something!”

“Leslie is downstairs preparing for tomorrow
night’s party. There’s going to be a lot of scantily clad girls floating around
here then too you know. So really, now you’re just better primed,” I coo.

“They better not be butt-naked and showing all
their slits like you last night. I’m not sure my heart can take much more of
that,” he says, scratching his head thoughtfully.

As we make our way down the steps, I hear
Leslie and Mitch arguing.

“Bridget Jones did
not
invent the tarts and vicars party theme! You’re a bloody
moron!” Mitch crows at Leslie from the living room as she works feverishly at
the dining room table putting decorations together.

“I’m not saying she
invented
it, I’m just saying she is what made it famous!” Leslie
replies snappily.

“That’s such an American thing to assume,”
Mitch scoffs.

Leslie’s eyes turn to me as I come down the
last step, “You look quite a bit better than earlier!”
 

After the
Epic
Bathroom Floor
Pukefest
of 2014
, I was ready for
some fresh air. Despite the brisk fall London weather, I figured my hoodie
would keep me warm enough to run around town and pick up necessary party
supplies. I feel good in the shorts and I want to be proud of my appearance,
the way Leslie was of hers earlier. I even applied some mascara to bring a bit
of my confidence back.

I nod a
thanks
to Leslie and look over to Mitch, whose scowl lightens as he looks at me. He
gives me a small half smile, like he’s deduced I didn’t listen to his advice
about taking it easy on his liquor.

“What are you making?” I inquire, noticing the
bits of construction paper speckled all over the dining room table.
 

“Crosses!” Leslie declares proudly.

Frank sashays over and begins helping, “Heaven
help us. These are shit. Glad to see you’re holding the fort down in my hour of
need,
Lezbo
! We best get cracking or we’ll never make
this place presentable in time.”

Leslie scowls at him and mumbles, “More like
eight hours of need. You’ve been moping all damn day since Finley flashed you
last night. I’ve been down here doing all the work for
our
party! You really can be a dramatic queen sometimes Frank.”

Frank shoots me a wink as he draws his hand
back and cracks Leslie on the butt. She screeches and punches him on the
shoulder.

“Ouch,
Lez
! You hit
like a bloody footballer!” he cries. I laugh and saddle up to the table to dig
in and help.

In two hours, we have linked together hundreds
of crosses and draped them across the entire dining room ceiling. They remind
me of the links we used to make for our Christmas tree as kids. I laugh
happily, listening to Frank and Leslie bicker like an old married couple over
the various links of chains they intend to hang from the living room ceiling.
Leslie borrowed them from one of her factory retailer’s supply closets, and was
yelling at Frank to
not put tape on them
or they would get all sticky and she’d get into trouble
. Then he told her
he would show her sticky
, and that was
when I snuck out quietly.