Girl Abroad

I LEAN AGAINST THE DRIVER’S SIDE OF THE CAR AS I WAIT FOR HIM to answer. He takes his sweet-ass time, fighting it till the bitter end before sighing in surrender.

“I’m just protective, that’s all.”

There’s that word again. Protective. Nate said something similar when we had lunch that day, admitting I trigger a protective instinct in him. Do I really do that? And why? I always thought I came off as independent and strong, not as a damsel in distress. I wonder what it is they’re both seeing that I’m not.

“You worry me sometimes, all right? You’re not the girl who goes around kissing blokes a decade older.”

“Maybe I am.” I flash him a defiant look. “Women date older men all the time. Celeste’s boyfriend is forty-three.”

“You’re not Celeste.”

The flicker of concern in his eyes unleashes a rush of frustration that comes out in the form of a strangled groan.

“Then who am I? Because sometimes I have no goddamn idea. Don’t you get it? That’s why I’m here! It’s clichéd as fuck, but I came to London to find myself. I want to have adventures. I want to kiss lords. And I don’t need a lecture or a protector. I already have my father clinging to my leg to stop me from leaving the house. Don’t be like that too. If you want to protect someone, go shadow Lee for a day or something. I don’t need it.”

His lips twitch at that.

“What?” I demand.

Jack leans against the car beside me, sliding his hands in the pockets of his coat. Then he turns a fraction to face me. “You’re cute when you’re angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Still cute.”

It starts again. The nervous static in my fingertips. The flutters in my belly. Half my attention becomes consumed with my own breathing because suddenly it sounds too loud between my ears. This energy that builds in the space between us is so obvious it practically manifests in colors and strands of light. I hate that I feel this way around him and I miss it when it’s gone.

“Don’t say stuff like that if you don’t mean it,” I warn.

He blinks innocently. “What’d I do?”

“Seriously?” He’s impossible. “You’re doing this on purpose, right? To get a rise out of me?”

“Why would I do that?”

Jack’s got this thing he does with his face. Smirking at his own mischief. It if wasn’t so hot, I’d smack him upside the head. Charming guys who know they’re charming are the worst.

“Cut it out,” I order.

“Your nose sort of twitches and your lips curl up when you’re mad,” he says. “I like it.”

“Yeah, well, don’t.” But I can’t keep a straight face, and it only encourages him. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

“Is that bad?”

“Yes.” No. “I hate it.” I really don’t. “It’s awful.”

His grin grows wider. “You’re a terrible liar.”

And I realize in that moment why I like being around him so much. Jack brings out my silly, ridiculous, playful side. He makes me feel young. I mean, I am young. I know that. But I very rarely feel it.

By the age of five, I was a little adult, attending awards shows with my dad and learning fast that I was the mature one in our parent/child relationship. And then suddenly I wasn’t. Dad retired, and then he became the adult, and out of nowhere, my life became sheltered. He wasn’t—and still isn’t—keen on me going out, partying, dating. Since the second I hit adolescence, he’s been projecting his fear and regrets over his checkered past and questionable lifestyle choices onto me.

So no. It’s rare for me to experience all those youthful, carefree feelings other girls my age take for granted. Jack brings that out in me. Our friendship is fun, and I feel giddy when we’re together.

And inevitably that always seems to trigger a rush of need that now rises inside me.

I look up at his hazy blue eyes and know he’s feeling it too. He’s not drunk this time either.

Jack stares back at me in an infinite moment of anticipation that expands like a bubble of time as it engulfs us. I know before it happens that I’m going to regret this. And I don’t care.

I kiss him.

On my terms. Because I feel like it, and whatever he tells himself later, he means it in this moment. He returns the kiss with intent. Hurried and insistent. As if he knows I’ve waited weeks for a second chance at this.

He makes a low, rumbling sound and deepens the kiss.

I melt against him. My hands climb his broad shoulders to pull him closer. He presses me against the passenger door, his tongue slicking over mine.

“You drive me mad,” he mumbles before hungrily kissing me again.

I feel him hard against my pelvis and can’t stop myself from rocking my lower body. Just slightly, but it’s enough to summon a groan from his throat. I swallow the husky sound with another frantic, greedy kiss, needing to feel his tongue touching mine again, teasing me into oblivion.

Kissing Jack feels like the most natural thing in the world.

But it’s over too quickly.

“Fuck.” He pulls back, biting his lip. “I’ve no bloody willpower around you.”

“Is that such a bad thing?” My heartbeat is still so erratic, my knees weak.

“Christ, I don’t even know anymore.” His voice sounds hoarse. “No, I do know. Nothing’s changed, Abbs.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m still shit at relationships. Meaning I still don’t want to jeopardize things between us. I count you as one of my closest friends. I don’t want to lose that.”

“Who says you would?”

There’s a trace of self-deprecation in his answering laugh. “That’s what always happens. When you’re with a woman, suddenly there’s a whole new set of standards you gotta meet. And I never meet them.” Before I can delve any deeper into that response, he adds, “Besides, we already established we don’t want to ruin the dynamic of the house, right?”

There he goes, speaking on my behalf again. But the rational part of me knows he’s right. If we got together, the house dynamic would be shot to hell. It’d be too convenient. Dating a guy who sleeps thirty feet away starts to look like shacking up pretty quick. Which turns into practically married even quicker. And that’s got quick, fiery end written all over it.

At least that’s what I tell myself as I stand here in the face of yet another rejection from Jack Campbell.

“Right,” I say, brushing it off with laugh. “We’d be married and divorced in six weeks. Tops.”

“Right. Lawyers are so expensive these days.”

“It’d be an ugly custody battle. I’d obviously get Lee and the house.”

“Of course.” Jack unlocks the door, and we get in the car.

“You’d get Jamie,” I continue as he starts the engine. “But splitting up the kids is always tough on their development.”

“We have to think of the children.”

That’s how we talk ourselves right back into the friend zone.

There’s a suspicious creature in the window when we get home close to suppertime. Walking up the sidewalk, I spot a blur of orange before the curtains sway. I glance at Jack to check that I’m not hallucinating. His dark-blond eyebrows shoot up, confirming he saw it too. As we let ourselves in the door, the blur scurries across the foyer.

“What is that?” demands Jack. “A ferret?”

“I don’t think ferrets are orange.”

We kick off our shoes and hang our coats, then creep into the living room.

“Anyone home?” Jack calls.

No answer.

I walk around with slow steps, peering under the furniture. Under the sofa, two glowing eyes shine back at me. The creature’s body is crouched in the shadows.

“I see it.” I get on all fours, plaster myself to the floor.

“I wouldn’t do that.” Lee appears in the doorway behind us.

After being MIA all weekend, it’s a relief to hear his voice. When I glance over my shoulder at him, the first thing I see is the bandages on his hands.

“He’s quite feral,” Lee warns.

“Let me grab a broom,” Jack says. “I’ll get it out of here.”

“What? No. He isn’t a stray. I adopted him. His name’s Hugh.”

“Seriously, mate? Are you mental?”

Still lying on the rug in front of the sofa, I try to coax Hugh the semi-feral cat out from underneath. He stares at me, unblinking.

“Give him a chance. The girl at the shelter said he just needs time to acclimate to his surroundings.”

“Mate, you’re boggled if you think that thing’s staying.”

The front door opens, and now Jamie is standing in the clump at the threshold of the living room, watching me silently wrestle this cat in a battle of will. I’ve never felt so disrespected than engaging a cat in a staring contest.

“What’s happening here?” Jamie asks curiously.

“He’s gone and gotten a damned cat,” Jack snaps. He’s fully pissed, and it’s a strange phenomenon.

“Really? When did we talk about taking on a pet?”

“Exactly,” Jack growls.

“Right, I know I should’ve asked first,” Lee speaks up, uncharacteristically sheepish. “It was sort of a spontaneous thing.”

“What?” Jack demands. “You got lost and wandered into an animal shelter? Mate, come on. That thing can’t stay.”

Jamie comes to kneel beside me at the sofa. “Not so friendly, is it?”

I turn to grin at him. “Misunderstood, maybe.”

“One of my aunts is a cat lady. She says as soon as you stop paying attention to them, they get interested.”

“Hmm. Okay. Let me try that.”

We hop to our feet, and I proceed to take a seat on the sofa, pulling my legs up.

“I can’t bring him back to the shelter,” Lee says as he and Jack continue to argue over Hugh’s fate. “Give him a chance.”

“I don’t care where you take him. You can’t dump an animal on the rest of us without asking.”

Jamie rejoins the argument. “Seriously, mate.”

“I just don’t get why you’d bring home a cat,” I chime in, not in accusation but genuine curiosity.

“Oh, bloody hell. I know what this is.” Understanding suddenly dawns on Jack’s face, summoning a loud curse from his lips. He turns to glare at Lee. “Let me guess. You’re dating someone new, and your new beau happens to like cats, yeah?”

I wrinkle my forehead. “Wait. This is about the lord from the ball?”

“Oh, mate. You didn’t.” Jamie tosses his hands up and dumps himself into the armchair. “You couldn’t just buy him some flowers, for fuck’s sake?”

“This is what he does,” Jack explains to me while still glowering at Lee. “Celeste says he’s—what does she call it again?”

“Boyfriend chameleon,” supplies Jamie.

“That’s it. He gets smitten with a bloke and takes on his interests. Last year, he dated a guy who raised poisonous snakes. Before that, it was the semipro extreme sports guy.”

Jamie starts to laugh. “Ah, right. Hey, Lee, whatever happened to that BMX bike you spent two thousand pounds on?”

“Kindly fuck off, Jamie,” Lee says cheerfully.

Oh dear. I swallow a laugh. “It’s good to explore different interests, I guess. But how did we end up with this cat?”

“Yes, Lee, how?” Jack says sarcastically.

Cornered, Lee starts talking very fast. “I admit it was a bit rash. We were in bed last night— ”

Jamie scoffs. “Of course.”

“And Eric said he was flying to France next weekend for a cat show. He’s into pedigrees and certain breeds and the like. He has a whole, I don’t know what you’d call it, stable of show cats. They win money, if you can believe that. It’s massive. And, well, I wanted a trip to Paris. So I might have said I was into cats as well. And then before I knew it, I’d spun an elaborate story about our cat Hugh and spent all day going to every shelter in the city looking for something that could pass for a red mackerel Persian.”

“That’s not a fish, mate. It’s a cat,” Jack barks at him.

Lee rolls his eyes, exasperated. “It’s a kind of cat.”

“Am I mental? A mackerel is a fish, right?”

The boys proceed to go at it again over our fish cat, just as Hugh emerges from under the sofa to jump into my lap. The long-haired ball of fur curls up, tail over its eyes, and makes itself quite at home.

“Jamie,” I hiss. “It worked!”

“Don’t get too attached,” he cautions. “We’re not keeping it.”

“We’re keeping it,” Lee insists.

“Lee, mate,” Jack grumbles. “Let’s be reasonable here.”

The guys are still bickering over Hugh’s fate when the cat and I head upstairs to take a nap before dinner.