Choose Me Read online

  I shift into fifth and we glide down the highway toward college.

  I've caught him off guard. He laughs and says, "It’s nothing..." he sighs and looks out of the window.

  "Mark! Spit it out!"

  He runs both hands over his face and mumbles incomprehensively. "I'm crazy about Casey," he confesses in the end. "She's my brother's 'girl and I can't stand the idea of the two of them together."

  I’m so shocked I almost run a red light. What?! I was expecting something like, 'Ben takes long showers and uses up all the hot water so I have to take a cold one every morning.'

  I turn to stare at him. "For real?"

  He sighs and looks down at his cell phone. "Yes, but if you tell anyone...please, don't tell anyone, okay?"

  He gazes off into the distance and my heart aches for him. Mark the Womanizer, Mr. Loverman, has a crush on the girl his brother is sleeping with. My brain refuses to put 'girlfriend' in the same sentence as 'Ben'.

  "Of course not. You can trust me. Have they been together long?"

  "Six months, more or less, it depends. I think she'd like something more, but Ben has no intention of committing himself to anything serious."

  "Start from the beginning. How on earth did you fall in love with your brother's girlf...with the girl your brother sleeps with?" The light turns green but I slow down. We're almost at college and I want to hear the whole story.

  "We met her at a party. I was still a freshman and she was a junior, so I never even got a second glance, but I thought she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. At some point, my brother just vanished and I went looking for him. Then I saw them coming out of one of the bedrooms. He was using her to make this girl, Maddy, jealous, and out of all the girls at the party, he chose Casey." He stops and puts his hand on top of mine, which is still wrapped around the gearstick. "Can I trust you, Cat?"

  I nod firmly.

  "So, one evening, Casey showed up looking for Ben, but he wasn't around, he was out with this other girl. She was upset, she'd been crying, and she was drunk, so I let her in. There was no way I'd ever let her get back behind the wheel in that state. I got some strong coffee down her, but then she started crying again...and we got to talking. She was going through a bad time at home...Her dad...well, he's not a good person. I couldn't believe she was confiding in me. I had no idea what to do or how to make her feel better, but she told me some real sad stuff. I sat with her, listening to her for hours, giving her all the space she needed, and she realized she could trust me. I don't know how it happened, but the situation got out of hand. One minute we were sitting in front of each other talking, and she was feeling better. She even started making jokes...the next minute we were doing it on the couch...

  "You slept with her? With your brother's girlfriend?" I exclaim, glaring at him.

  "She's not his girlfriend, he was off somewhere, screwing someone else...and I knew Ben didn't care about her...but then, when we were done, she got angry, saying all kinds of horrible shit, that I'd taken advantage of her, that it had all been a huge mistake. Since then she refuses to speak to me...this was like, three months ago."

  "And you're still crazy about her?"

  "Yeah, pathetic, ha? That night was incredible, and I know it was the same for her. And my brother...he doesn't even see her. He doesn't see how sensitive and vulnerable she is, how starved of affection she is, that she’s hiding behind this super-woman act."

  For probably the first time in my life, I'm totally speechless. "Shit!" I hiss. "Did you tell Ben how you feel about her?"

  "Now who's crazy? If he ever found out I slept with her he'd chop my balls off," he says, then laughs shrilly.

  "Perhaps he'd stop seeing her instead." Which, of course, would be fantastic for me, too.

  Mark shakes his head, one 'no' after another. "He wouldn't understand. There's no excuse on earth for sleeping with your brother's girlfriend, not even the fact that I'm crazy about her and for him she's nothing more than a good fuck"

  Then I understand. "So that's why you didn't want to go home last night?"

  "Yup. It makes my skin crawl, mostly because she's still sleeping with him."

  His hand is still on top of mine and I lace my fingers with his, squeezing them tight.

  "Mark, you have to find a way to forget about her." I glance over at him for a second as I turn into the parking lot and look for a free spot.

  "Is that an offer?" His cheerful tone and good humor are back and I laugh. "Because I could take you up on it." He leans forward and kisses my cheek.

  "Ass!"

  10

  The second day of college in Florida goes without a hitch and so do the next two months. It's still too hot for my tastes, but at least we’ve forgotten all about that awful humidity.

  Many things have changed over the past two months, while others are exactly the same as the first day I got here.

  Mark and I have become inseparable; at college, at home, over the weekends. He continues to sleep in my room when Casey stays over with Ben. Yup, Casey’s still around, almost too much.

  My crush on Ben comes and goes. It goes away when I'm asleep and comes back punctually the next morning when I see his stormy green eyes. And when I see him on stage, it's out of control. I still can't get used to the way my stomach leaps every time I hear him sing. My heart beats wildly in my chest and my legs tremble so much I have to sit down for the first song. The more time passes, the better looking he gets. How can that be possible?

  Mark's still beating himself up over Casey, but that hasn't stopped him from bedding an incredible number of girls. No wonder he's eating like a horse, with all the calories he must be consuming.

  Erika's going out with a guy she met last month at a Matching Scars concert. He's a senior engineering student and real cute. She's been walking on air since they met and her laughter has become contagious. Seeing her so happy first thing in the morning puts everyone in a good mood.

  Jessica and Ryan seem to have put their problems behind them, though Erika suspects he's seeing someone else.

  And Leonardo is...in Rome. Far away.

  We speak every day, we send thousands of texts and for a few minutes a day, I'm able to pretend that the distance between us, physical and mental, doesn't exist.

  Casey and my incredible crush aside, Ben and I have made progress. I don't think you could call us friends, but something changed about a month ago. I remember only too well that afternoon when he walked in, his usual bare-chested self, holding his books and looking for Jessica.

  "Hi, Jess around?" he asked, a little embarrassed, though I was the one dying of embarrassment. I was wearing glasses as thick as bottle bottoms that I only use for studying, my hair needed washing and was tied up in an untidy top-knot, a white shirt, and no bra, pajama bottoms and the remains of last-night's mascara under my eyes...I looked awful. Not quite the way I wanted him to see me, ever.

  I shook my head, unable to look up. Why do things like this always happen to good people?

  "You mind if I study here with you?" he asked, standing there, clutching his books. "Mark's...Mark has a friend over and it's impossible to concentrate."

  I burst out laughing. I knew he was with Jenny. I also knew that Jenny was a screamer, because Mark had told me in the most intimate detail how he was forced to invent new ways to get her screaming like a banshee. He'd taken it as a challenge, each time they were together he tried to get her to scream louder in less time. He'd even set the timer on his cell phone and sent me a screen shot for me to keep records.

  "From the way you're laughing, I guess you know exactly what's going on over there." He smiled and sat down in front of me.

  "Unfortunately, yes. I'm waiting for a photo of the latest record any minute now. We're making an Excel chart of his progress." I rubbed a finger under one eye to get rid of the mascara smudges.

  Since then we've always studied together in the kitchen. It's the only time I have him all to myself without interruptions, but when
we're with the others he practically ignores me.

  We chat about this and that, between one chapter and another. His voice is soothing and when he listens, he looks me straight in the eye without blinking, which makes conversation even harder for me. We never talk about ourselves, he never asks personal questions and I'm obliged to do the same. We've come to the conclusion that my taste in music is banal and commercial, and his literary knowledge is dismal. So, he's going to put some 'decent' music on my iTunes and I'm going to help him study for his English Lit test. I wish I could say I'm doing it because, after math, my greatest passion is English Lit, but it would be such a pathetic lie.

  "This book is bullshit!" Benjamin comes flying into the house, waving a book at me, a troubled look on his face. "If you don't help me out here, I'll go crazy!" he announces, before flinging himself down in front of me and tossing a copy of 'Pride and Prejudice' on the table.

  If he keeps turning up like this, his jeans hanging off his ass, no shirt, flaunting his six-pack in my face, I'm the one who'll go crazy.

  I pick the book up without meeting his eyes. Just looking at him makes me dizzy.

  "Where did you get to?" I ask, fighting back my desire. I've got to the point where I want to grab him and slam him up against the wall and then do him every which way. Lately I'm full of good ideas.

  "Page thirty, more or less."

  I open the book at the bookmark. Page seventeen.

  I laugh. "You've not even given it a chance." I close the book and lean my elbows on the table, resting my chin in my hands. "If you don't read it, how am I supposed to help you?"

  "I don't know." He bangs his forehead on the table, then looks up at me. The corners of his mouth are turned down and his expression is so disarming I think my heart is going to stop. "Please! Do something!"

  I gulp. The only things I want to do weren't even contemplated by Jane Austen. The Bennet sisters would be shocked at the thought.

  "Are you busy tonight?" I ask, remembering I have the DVD of the movie in my room. As soon as I ask, however, I already know it was a bad idea.

  Me. Him. Couch. Movie. Dark. Gulp.

  It's the perfect recipe for disaster.

  "No, why? What do you have in mind?"

  Wild sex on the couch? I'm curious to see if he'd beat his brother's record, and make me scream with pleasure in less than four minutes, seventeen seconds. I squeeze my thighs together and run a hand over my forehead. Oh, sweet Jesus!

  "Trust me." Or not. That would be better.

  He stands up and leans toward me, his hands on the table. I force myself to look at him, trying not to drool too much. "Okay, I'll be here at eight. I'm all yours." He smiles cheekily and my heart beats like a jackhammer, so loud I think he can hear it, too.

  What did I just do? Jessica is at her mom's house in Daytona Beach, Erika is sleeping over at her boyfriend's, and Mark will be out all night at a birthday party.

  I invited him over, knowing that we'd be alone. What was I thinking? That I'm a masochist, that's what.

  I need to take a shower and make myself presentable. Not too presentable, I don't want him thinking I've put too much effort into this. It's not a date. I'm just helping out a friend.

  Yes, and I'm doing it exclusively for him.

  Mark throws open my bedroom door, making me jump.

  "Shit, Mark! Don't you ever knock? One of these days you're going to give me a heart attack."

  The walls of this house are paper thin – I know, because Jessica and Ryan make one hell of a noise, even when they're trying to be quiet – I can hear everything, except the front door opening and closing. I'm going to have to remember to lock the door tonight, as I'll be all alone.

  "How come my brother's been asking about you?" He throws himself down on the bed without taking his eyes off me.

  My throat is dry and I fix my gaze on the drawer of the dresser where I’m searching for a clean shirt. "What do you mean?" I ask nonchalantly. Apart from the cramp in my stomach, I'm totally cool. "What did he ask?"

  "First, he asked if you were still with that Leonardo guy, then, he asked if you and I are really just friends, which means he really wanted to know if we’d had sex, and when I confirmed there's nothing between us, he pointed his finger at me, told me you're a good girl, and to stay away from you anyway."

  I have to smile. Ben asking his brother about me is a nice surprise.

  "And what did you say?" I lean back against the dresser and fold my arms across my chest.

  "I told him you have a boyfriend, that you're not interested in me and that, as God is my witness..." He puckers his lips and looks at me through slit-eyes to focus better. "...you're not interested in him."

  I hope the dim lighting in my room hides my red cheeks.

  "Why are you smiling like that?" he asks, sitting up and practically wiping his shoes on my quilt.

  "Feet off the bed!" I reply, my voice shrill.

  "Answer my question," he continues, imitating my high-pitched voice.

  "It's funny, that's all. You pretend you're Mr. Cool-Hot-Guy, but deep down you're jealous. What's up? Are you scared of a little competition?" I tease, but all I can think of is Ben asking his brother if I'm still with Leonardo and warning him to stay away from me. Mark's been sleeping in my room for months now, so why ask him now?

  "Don't be stupid. We share the same genes and if I'm an asshole and the apple never falls too far from the tree then he's no better than me. You have a boyfriend and he better stop sniffing around you." He points his finger at me and I've never seen him so serious before.

  "He's not sniffing around me, we barely speak to each other."

  "It's just not like Ben to ask certain questions. I don't like it at all." He stands up and hugs me tight. "I love you, Cat-Babe." He pats me on the cheek and his sweet smile shakes me from top to bottom.

  "See you tomorrow morning?" I ask before he walks out.

  "Seven-thirty, on the dot, Babe!"

  I sit on the couch as casually as I can. I stretch my legs out, then cross them over, then stretch them out again. I move over to the armchair, then back to the couch, then I lie down, then sit ramrod straight until the patio door slides open to find me sitting with one leg on the couch and the other on the floor, in a highly unlikely, unnatural pose. You can't tell if I'm getting up or sitting down. To remove any doubts, I stand up.

  "Hi," I announce, my voice much too cheerful.

  "Hey, Blondie. So, how are you going to get me to read this boring old book?" He flops down on the couch and stretches out, his arms behind his head.

  Okay, so if he's lying on the couch, where am I going to sit? I turn the DVD player on and fiddle with the remote until the menu appears on the screen.

  "Blondie, are you trying to make me cheat?" Ben jokes, sitting up on the couch.

  "Of course not, you're still gonna have to read the book, but once you've seen the film you'll be curious about the dynamics behind the characters, and the details that get lost when you've only got two hours to tell a story..."

  "Two hours?" Ben groans and throws his head back, covering his face with his hands.

  "Oh, come on. You solve physics problems in your sleep and you're scared of a two-hour movie?" My hands are on my hips and I catch him staring at my breasts.

  Shit. Why’s he doing that now?

  "I don't like TV. Why do you have the DVD of this movie, anyway? And, by the way, no one buys DVDs anymore. Don't you have Netflix? You know you can watch any movie you want on streaming, don't you?"

  Now he thinks I'm silly and old-fashioned. "I have it on DVD because it's one of my favorite movies and I always buy DVDs of the movies I like."

  "How many times have you seen it?" he asks, folding his arms across his chest, his smile so wide I have to frown to keep from laughing. He finally stops staring at my body and I start breathing again.

  "A few..."

  "And how many times have you read the book?"

  "I don't know, I've lost count!" I
say, rolling my eyes and waving my hands theatrically, as if it weren't important.

  "Nerd!" He shakes his head a couple of times. "Wait here..."

  Now where's he going?

  He runs out of the house, leaving the patio door wide open. Less than a minute later, he comes back with four beers. He puts two in the refrigerator and opens the other two.

  I'm still standing here, my back to the TV, watching as he moves comfortably around the kitchen. Thank God he's actually wearing a shirt. Now I'm staring at him. I can't take my eyes off his wide shoulders and his awesome, jean-covered ass. Two hours sitting next to him? We've never been alone in a similar situation. It's different when we're studying. I can spy on him in secret while he's concentrating on his books, moving a finger from one line to another, his lips mouthing the words. He scratches his head with a pencil when there's something he doesn't understand and stops and looks at me when he finishes a chapter. He waits for me to finish so we can chat. Where do I usually go on vacation? Have I ever been to...? What's my favorite dessert? Banal questions, with no real importance, yet the level of embarrassment between us is still sky-high.

  He hands me a beer and sits back down on the couch. "If I have to bore my ass off for the next two hours, I’ll need alcohol in my system."

  He smiles and my brain short-circuits.

  I turn off the light, grab my beer, and sit next to him, at a safe distance. It's not my safety I'm worried about, however, but his.

  "It's not so bad, you'll see." I pick up the remote but he quickly reaches out to steal it from my hands. His cold fingers touch mine and I instinctively let go.

  Calm the fuck down, Caterina! Jesus!

  "You're being horrible to me, you know? Let's make a deal. I'll watch the movie if you do something for me in return?" He licks his lips and smiles.

  "Hey, I'm already doing you a favor. How about I help you with this 'project' and you do something for me in return?" I take small breaths, trying to calm my heartbeat.

  "And what do you want from me, Blondie? Let's hear it." His deep, sexy voice doesn't help and my heart skips another beat. I think this must be the most pathetic crush in the history of all pathetic crushes. Whenever he speaks, my body has a thousand different reactions and I hate it.