It burned on my tongue to tell her about the kink club right then, but I held back. First of all, she didn’t approve of Annie, and once I weathered her disapproval for hanging out with the girl who abandoned her at a biker bar, she would demand all the details. Considering most of those details involved Logan Mulvaney and a kiss that left me all hot and bothered, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. The very idea made me wince. “I’ll be working . . . doing research, remember?”
“Not every moment of the day. You’ll have plenty of time for play.”
“I’ll be fine,” I assured her.
“Who wants to be fine all the time?” She snorted, standing and grabbing her bag. “Be crazy. Have a fling. Get that asshat Harris out of your system for good. Nothing like a good romp between the sheets to make you forget the prick and move on. And who knows? Maybe you’ll meet the one.”
I sighed, not quite knowing what to do with this new Emerson. She had turned into the eternal optimist who believed in love and happily ever after.
But some of what she was saying had a kernel of truth. I’d just had a taste of what she was describing with Logan, and Harris’s memory was already dimmer. When I did think of Harris these days, it was with more clarity. The relationship hadn’t been working for a long time, but habit had kept me chained to him. And the fact that my parents loved the idea of us together.
Could a romp between the sheets with Logan exorcise my ex totally? Tempting. Too bad it couldn’t happen. Any other guy, maybe. But not Logan. It would be difficult to have a fling with Reece’s younger brother and keep it uncomplicated.
She pressed a quick kiss to my cheek. “You staying here for the summer is going to be good for you.”
“Yeah?” I asked as she moved to the door.
“Yeah. Look. You’ve played the perfect girlfriend, the perfect daughter forever. Maybe you need to spend the summer and just find the perfect you.” She smiled at me to soften her words—as though she knew they stung. And they did.
I’d always viewed myself as strong, smart, and independent, but she’d just called me out. I was a fake—not nearly as independent as I had pretended to be. I could think of no reply.
“I’ll text you,” she said, her smile soft and encouraging.
I nodded, her words tumbling through me with a truth that I didn’t want to acknowledge. And yet she’d thrown them out there, forcing me to see them. “Bye.”
The door clicked shut after her. Alone in our empty suite, I fell back on the bare mattress and stared at the ceiling, confronting the idea of me being someone else this summer. A girl who didn’t have to worry about what her parents thought. A girl without a hovering boyfriend.
I could be anyone I wanted.
Chapter 7
I’D BEEN TO REECE’S apartment above Mulvaney’s once before. Pepper had cooked dinner and we’d played cards afterward to the quiet rumble of the bar below us.
The apartment felt like a barren shell compared to that night. They had left the bed, futon, kitchen table, and major appliances. Pepper mentioned they would be buying new stuff for their new place. Even with the basic furniture, all the little flourishes that had made it feel like a home were gone. The photographs and wall art. Reece’s bike in the corner. The books crammed into the bookcase. It felt like an echo of what it had been before.
The bar was a low murmur under my feet as I padded barefoot around the space, unpacking and hanging clothes, stopping occasionally to eat some of the fried pickles that the cook had forced on me as I passed through the kitchen to take the stairs up to the apartment. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to pack on the pounds living above Mulvaney’s kitchen—home of the famous Tijuana Fries, Death Burger, and Fried Pickle Chips with Chipotle Ranch Sauce.