Playing For Keeps (13 page)

“Is that what it’s like, always?”

“To everyone in this industry? I don’t know. Probably. That’s why…”

“What?”

“Why you matter so much. You’re real. Honest. I feel like we’re building something here…or can, if you’ll let us.”

I ran my fingers over the fence line. “Shit,” I said. “I can’t do this. Be this girl. I can’t abandon my band like this. They’re waiting for me back there. Standing around…” I pressed my eyes closed.
Stupid, Courtney. You are such a jerk.

“I’ll make it up to them.”

I huffed in exasperation. “You can’t just
make it up to them
. What, send them a fruit basket?
Sorry for wasting your time this morning because your bandmate can’t keep her hands off me
?”

We stared out over the light blue of the sky, the deep blue of the ocean. White gulls dotted the horizon.

“I shouldn’t be here.”

“And yet, here you stand.”

“Because I want it all.”

I turned to the side and stared at him. Really studied him. It wasn’t hard to see what got girls hot and bothered. Jimmy was tall and slim. Clothes draped over his body like they were made for him. And they probably were. He moved with a quiet elegance, his shoulders strong with confidence. His lips were full and his skin like dark velvet. His eyes were searching, as though looking for the deepest layers of people. At least, the deepest layers of me. I’m pretty sure he didn’t look at everyone the way he was looking at me, now, though. The patient, but desirous look that made his eyelids soften and his lips part slightly.

And that was part of the appeal. Jimmy Keats, mega world music star, didn’t look at Bea or Kaitlin or any fangirl the way he was looking at me right now. He wanted my talent for his new project, but he also wanted
me
. And we did have something. We shared similar roots, we were growing a tenuous trust in each other. He was easy to talk to. Making music with him felt right.

“You told your grammy about me. Do you tell your grammy about everyone you see?”

“Grammy keeps me in check. She has to know everything or I get in trouble.”

I laughed. Took one of his hands in mine. Studied the long fingers. They had a familiar pattern of calluses and soft spots. Just like mine. I liked the way he called his grandmother “grammy.” It was endearing. Soft. Innocent. I wanted to tell him that, but he cut me off before I could say anything.

“Come over tonight,” he said. “Just tonight. See if you can stand me, alone, in a quiet space, for more than a few minutes without your band imploding.”

“Why?”

“Because I told you to.”

My back bristled, but then I caught the hint of a smile at the corner of his eyes. Jimmy Keats always got what he wanted. He knew people said that about him. He found it funny. “I don’t do very many things other people tell me to.”

“No, I didn’t think so. That’s part of why I like you. So, instead, come because I’m asking nicely, like a good man should. Come because you want to.”

I let go of his fingers and ran my hands along the white fence again, spreading my arms as far as I could, leaning over the top of the barrier and imagining what it would feel like to launch myself over, to be weightless through the air. I placed one foot on the bottom board, then the second. It was a little tough to balance in my sky high heels, and I wobbled slightly.

Jimmy came behind me and put his arms around my legs.

“Dammit. It’s the one thing that I don’t like.”

“Holding me?” I said.

“Oh, I like that. I plan on doing more of that. But I don’t like heights.”

“You’re afraid of heights?” I laughed a little, delighted in this tidbit of knowledge. “If I fall, you’ll have to come with me.”

“You won’t fall. I’ve got you.”

“Are you sure? I could be falling right now.”

The air between us thickened as the words sank in. They surprised me, the quickness of the words, the way they scurried into the conversation when I hardly expected them. How they were honest, too. I turned and looked at Jimmy to gauge his reaction. This was dangerous, mixing emotions with business and I knew it to the core. Even if it wasn’t common sense, I’d studied it in my business classes. Avoid, avoid, avoid. And, to make things worse, friendships were involved. Which meant I should have taken the words back, right then. Pretended they didn’t mean what I was sure they did mean. Laughed them off, gotten down from the fence, demanded he take me back to my bandmates.

He studied my face for a minute and it was all I could do to not look away. What was he thinking? I wanted to ask him so badly, but I also didn’t want to know.

So I didn’t let him talk.

I turned my whole body around on the fence, put my arms around his neck and kissed him slowly, knowing there was only him in front of me and nothing behind me. I ignored his hands on my back and imagined that the things holding me to the land were his lips. Everything in my brain screamed that this wasn’t right; every part of my body sang that it was so, so perfect. Jimmy held onto me with a fierceness nobody else ever had. He claimed my mouth, my thighs, the curves and edges of me like he knew I wouldn’t—couldn’t—say no to him.

And that was part of the appeal of Jimmy Keats. No one said no to him. He didn’t have to wait for a yes. It wasn’t something he was used to, in his other life. But in his moments with me, he understood there was the possibility of no, but pursued anyway. I wanted someone like that, someone who pursued, who, in the bedroom if nowhere else, took over.

I sat on the fence and nibbled on Jimmy’s bottom lip for a second, then pulled away when the sun was too bright to ignore anymore.

“How long do you think we’ve been gone?”

“I don’t know. An hour, maybe.” He kissed my nose.

“I have to get back.”

“I thought you never should have come in the first place.”

“That, too. Bea’s going to be mad. Really mad.”

“Why did you come then?”

I made a motion to step down from the fence. Jimmy placed his hands around my waist and lifted me off like I weighed nothing. When I’d found firm footing again, he left his hands on me.

“Because I wanted to. I…want to try.”

The relief that filled his face buoyed me. He was sincere in how much he wanted this, too. Then, he grinned. “I like a woman who goes after what she wants.”

Jimmy handed me my helmet and I slipped it back on my head. He started the bike and, with one long, last look at the ocean, we joined the 101 traffic once again. When we got back to the clearing, it was empty. The only sound, after Jimmy turned off the engine, was the ringing in my ears and birdsong.

My heart sank.

Why did I keep insisting on ruining everything for everyone?

“Take me home,” I told Jimmy.

The ride back to Delta Gamma felt heavy. Too long and too quick, at the same time. My insides twisted with shame, but regret stayed hidden behind my desire for Jimmy, and I wondered if that made me a bad person.

When Jimmy stopped the engine in front of the sorority house, I slid off and held the helmet out to him.

“Keep it. You’ll need it tonight. Nine.” He revved the engine and shot down the road.

I saw a curtain fall in the front window and caught a swath of familiar hair. Standing on the front porch, I chewed on a nail, just standing there, afraid to face Bea and what I’d done to her.

She opened the door like she lived there. She practically did.

Her eyes swept over me, taking in my disheveled hair, my smudged lipstick, the helmet in my hand. Then she looked in my face. I braced myself for her anger. Her disappointment. Her harsh words. I deserved them.

But that’s not what happened.

“It’s okay, Court.” Her expression was soft. Her voice, even softer. “It’s okay to like him. It’s okay to test things and see where they go. It wasn’t cool of you to take off like that because you didn’t know that the shoot was wrapping up anyway. But he did, so I guess that makes it half okay. Just…don’t screw us over, okay? Otherwise…I hope it works out.”

My emotions sprang up like a geyser, flooding me with grateful warmth. I flung myself into Bea’s arms. “Thank you, Bea. You are amazing.”

“I know! Now get changed. You still have classes, today.” She ushered me in and we went to my room.

“What do you mean, the shoot was wrapping up anyway?” I asked as I changed out of my leather pants and into jeans.

Bea gathered my textbooks and stuffed them in my backpack for me. “They didn’t want to do the group shots out there, so we have to go to a studio tomorrow.”

I stopped pulling the sparklies from my temples and looked at Bea. “Same time?”

She didn’t meet my eyes. “A little later, so that’s good, right? Sleeping in.”

“But that means--.”

“Right in the middle of classes, I know. I tried to argue the point, but there wasn’t a lot of flexibility. Duncan said they’d already had to call in a favor to book the studio at such short notice.” Bea handed me a letter sitting on my desk, seemingly thankful for a reason to change the subject. “Oh, mail call!”

I glanced over the envelope. No return address, but it was addressed with my name and the Delta Gamma house address in beautiful, curving handwriting.

“I never get real mail. Fun.” I slid the flap open carefully and pulled out the single card inside. Five words in the very center of the thick, cream paper:

Stay away from Jimmy Keats
.

10.

If I’d thought I understood a racing heart before, it was nothing to how I was feeling now. I sank into my desk chair and flipped the envelope over. No return address. I studied the postmark over the stamps. It was mailed from a Los Angeles post office.

“You look sick,” Bea said. “What’s wrong? Is your family…?”

“They’re okay.” I passed the note to her without comment. Bea read it, checked the envelope, just like I had, and pulled out her phone.

“Are you calling the police? I’m not sure we have to go there, yet.”

Bea shook her head, searched her phone silently for a few moments, then shoved her screen in my face. “Look at her eyes. Just look at them. Tell me that isn’t the face of a crazy person.”

I took the phone and studied the photo of Julia Wood, Jimmy Keats’ ex-girlfriend. It looked like she was leaving a fitness club. Her hair fluttered around her cheeks and she was glaring hard at whoever was taking the photo. She looked intimidating, for sure.

“You think she sent the note?” I pressed the back button on the phone’s browser and scrolled through the other photos of Julia Wood. She looked polished in most. In the ones she was smiling, she looked friendly and sincere. I thought back to meeting her at Jimmy’s on the night of the party. Sure, I was a little jealous, but other than that, I couldn’t remember any weirdness coming from her end. I made a skeptical face.

“I don’t know, Bea. I’m pretty sure one unflattering, candid photo isn’t enough to accuse her. I’d probably be pissed if the paparazzi was following me around, too.”

“
When
it follows us around,” Bea said, distractedly. She took a few steps away from me, then spun back around, her finger in the air like she was some kind of Sherlock character. “We know the note was sent from L.A. She’s in L.A. And it had to be sent from someone who knows who you are, and where you live. She was at the party and obviously saw the way Jimmy was looking at you. The rest…anybody at that party could have overheard us talking about UCLA. Or Duncan could have told her where you live.”

“Why would he do that? And, for that matter, why would Julia send me this note? She was nice enough at the party.”

“Getting you on her good side. Biding her time. Sociopaths have amazing social skills. All to lure in their victims. Plus, it’s possible she didn’t even know about you and Jimmy until that very moment.”

I let my fingers play over the envelope again. The more Bea talked, the less afraid I felt. It all seemed absurd. Something that would happen to a stranger.

“It’s probably one of Jimmy’s fangirls,” I said.

“A
crazy
fangirl. Court, that is not someone you want showing up at your window in the middle of the night.”

I laughed, but it was forced. My glance went to my window and I had to hold back a shudder. People did creepy things, for sure. I thought about my fangirl crushes when I was younger. Did I wish the girlfriends of the hot celeb I was crushing on were out of the picture? Sure. But it was all a silly fantasy. Even
I
might have gone so far as to write a note like this one, had I the time between school and guitar practice. Wanting things was hard.

Then again, maybe not. Because stalking was
nuts
.

My thoughts went to my missing planner and tablet. Was it possible that whoever sent this note took my things, too? Was in my room? I looked around, as though evidence of an intruder was right in front of me and I was somehow missing it. But everything looked the way I’d left it that morning. That didn’t cure the fear slowly taking hold, though. If someone had my planner and tablet, they would know where I was going to be. Could follow me. Could learn all kinds of things about me. Then again, the missing items might have nothing to do with the note. Some paparazzi asshole taking my things…a crazy fangirl leaving the note…my head spun. Screamed with pain. Keep cool, Courtney.

I crumpled the note, the sharp edges poking into my palm, and tossed it in my trash.

“The best thing we can do is ignore it,” I said, slowly. “I’m sure it’s a one-off. Probably meaningless. Shit, I don’t even have time for stressing about it, right now.”

Bea pursed her lips as she stared at the garbage can, but finally she shrugged and tossed her phone back in her bag. I pulled my laptop closer to me and opened my notes.

“Um, Court?”

“Hm?”

“You know we’re rehearsing in twenty minutes, right?”

I pressed my fingers to my temples and closed my eyes. “No, I didn’t know that.”

“We were given a schedule after the shoot. But you weren’t there, so…” Bea dug a paper out of her bag and passed it to me. I read through the dates and times we were expected to be rehearsing or attending an event or, I bit back a groan, going to dance classes. It looked like some effort was made to keep our mornings open for classes, but in the next couple of weeks I was going to miss at least four. I looked from Bea’s schedule to the one posted on my closet door. There was
way
too much overlap. Shit.

I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath. This is what I wanted, right? My laptop didn’t make a sound when I closed it. I stood.

“Twenty minutes means we’d better leave now,” I said.

*

I got through rehearsals and the group photo shoot—which Jimmy Keats didn’t come to—and spent the rest of my time with my nose in my books, stressed to the rafters that I wasn’t going to be able to keep up. My math brain wasn’t functioning as well as it should and I had to calculate how many hours I had to finish my Ethics and Law in Business Management paper that was due on Monday.

Every time I ran the numbers, there weren’t enough hours.

When we had Delta Gamma meetings, I found myself alternating between spacing out on what we were talking about, and trying to minimize the number of activities on our calendar.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to get a big enough group for the football game next week, so I’ll mark that off the list,” I said, as the DG ladies gave me quizzical looks.

“We have twenty people signed up, we just need to make sure we ordered enough tickets and temporary tattoos,” Bree Hanson said. “They are ordered, right? I said thirty sets, last meeting, so that should be enough, even for late sign-ups.”

I nibbled the base of my pen. I’d completely forgotten to put the ticket order in. I hoped the sales office had enough tickets left. Chasing them down would take another hour out of my day. I stifled a groan and made myself a note on the back of my hand.

As if she could read my mind, Diya piped up. “Do you want someone to run that errand for you, Court?”

I blinked. Why hadn’t I asked about that possibility? Where was the Courtney that used to be so good at delegating? “That would be awesome.”

“I’m on top of it,” Bree said, shooting me a sympathetic smile.

After the meeting, I went to the coffee shop Kaitlin worked at to study because staying in my bedroom was too hard, with my bed to beckon me to rest. When was the last time I’d gotten a good night’s sleep? Between guilt and homework and battling daydreams about sexy musicians, it had been a while. I downed a mocha in about ten seconds flat, and when Kaitlin came over to ask how my work was coming along, I heaved a huge sigh, my muscles all jittery from caffeine and stress.

“This is what I’ll be doing all weekend,” I said.

She twisted her mouth. “Um, you remember we’re recording Monday, right? The new single? Well, the old one you and Jimmy reworked. It’s really good.”

“Shit.” I wanted to cry. “So we need to fit another rehearsal in somewhere, don’t we?” Of course I knew recording was coming soon, I just…had stored the info somewhere in the back of my head, behind everything else I was supposed to be doing. “I’m going to have to get an extension. I don’t know if I’ll be able to. McMath is a hardass. His syllable says he only gives extensions in extreme circumstances. It’s typed in
bold
.”

Kaitlin put a hand on my shoulder and pouted sympathetically. “You have to try.”

“Oh, I will. I just have a feeling my music career isn’t extreme enough a reason for him. How are you keeping up with everything?”

Kaitlin shrugged. “I cut back my hours here by about five. It’s not much, but it helps. I’m just eating more PB&Js for dinner this term.” She laughed. “I get a lot of music practice because it’s my minor, anyway. And I’m not seeing anyone right now, so that’s a time-suck I don’t have to deal with.”

Her words trailed off, and I knew it was an invitation to talk about what was happening with Jimmy. I tapped my notebook with my pen and stared at the page on my laptop, more white space than words in it. I did want to talk about Jimmy. To Kaitlin, to anyone and everyone. The way he’d made me feel was mind-expanding. But…

“Yeah, that’s a good thing, probably,” I said, cutting off the conversation Kaitlin wanted to have. She stuck her tongue out at me and got back to work. I did, too, racing through my assignments with a half-assed effort that wasn’t at all like me. I pulled at my hair in frustration. Finally, I slammed my laptop shut and headed home. I would need at least
some
sleep to be at the top of my game in the recording studio.

The variable I hadn’t factored into my work-hours calculation was Jimmy Keats.

My phone rang halfway back to the Delta Gamma house. I was surprised to see his number. It was the first I’d heard from him since the photo shoot. I swallowed. I’d tried to convince myself I’d been too busy to care that he hadn’t been in touch, but now my chest started aching as I began wondering where he’d been. I had a feeling that if I checked the gossip mags, I could find out, but stalking Jimmy Keats’ whereabouts felt…creepy.

He set my mind at ease, right off the bat.

“Hello, beautiful. I’m sorry I’ve been absent. I was in Louisiana this week. Visiting my family. Payton Smalls went with me. You know, another guy from that terrible band you hate, World Wonder?”

“I met Payton Smalls at your party, remember.” I laughed. “And I think I recall you saying he’s your favorite person in the world, after your Grammy?”

“There might be one or two other people on that list, too,” he teased. “There’s this woman…”

My heart fluttered. “Is there?”

“I’ll tell you more when I have a better sense of things. She’s a tough nut to crakc.”

I laughed. “Does Payton usually go back to Louisiana with you?”

“Nowadays, yeah. He lost his own parents a couple years ago, you know.”

“No,” I said, softly. “I didn’t know that.”

“It was a tough time for him. But he’s worked through a lot of it. My family opened their arms right up to him. Anyway, I didn’t call to talk about Payton. I called to talk to you. I’ve been thinking about you this week. Was hoping I could steal some of your time away.”

“Have you seen my calendar? I have zero time. No, I have negative time. I think I can fit you in…oh, sometime next year, probably.”

“Ouch. I’ll have to talk to Duncan about that. He’s the scheduler.” Jimmy Keats paused and I switched my phone to my other ear. “I was hoping I could come get you tonight.”

Another manic laugh began to work its way up my throat, but it died and left only a huge grin. “I mean, I really wish I could, but…”

“I could help you study,” Jimmy said quickly.

“What do you know about microeconomics?”

“I know a lot about real world business, if that helps?”

“I don’t think I’ll be addressing the best venues for a worldwide stadium tour in my paper.”

“Fair enough. I could hold your flashcards, though.”

“You are persistent,” I said.

“I don’t like getting no for an answer,” he replied. “How about I come get you at nine. No one’s brain works that late at night, anyway, right? Besides, if you’re not sleeping well, I think I have the antidote.”

“How did you know I’m not sleeping well?”

“I’ve been there, Courtney.”

Not exactly, I thought. But instead of disagreeing with him, I gave into the butterflies in my stomach. “Okay, I’ll see you at nine. And I’m bringing my flashcards.”

*

I shook my head at myself in the mirror and picked up a glossy pink lip liner. I puckered up, guiding the liner carefully around the shape of my mouth. That mouth Jimmy always set on fire. I filled my lip brush next with a rich cranberry color with shimmer and filled in my lips. I was careful to keep everything even. To coat my eyelashes twice so my eyes looked fawn-big. To color my cheekbones subtly, so that I didn’t look overexcited.

Even though I was excited.

I reached for my styling products, knocking over my cup of brushes and pencils in the process. I should have gotten ready in the bathroom, instead of in front of this tiny mirror on my desk in my bedroom, where the light wasn’t that great and I could only see half my head at once, but I wanted to avoid questions. If anyone asked me where I was going tonight, I would probably lie. I didn’t want to lie. Especially to my DG sisters, but how did one go about admitting they were answering the booty call from a famous singer? I could imagine their responses. Everything from thrill and good wishes to hastily concealed jealousy to concern trolling about how guys like him use and discard girls like me. How could I subject myself to that kind of indignity?