Best Kind of Broken

7 Pixie

I avoid Levi for the rest of the week and he avoids me too. The only real benefit of all the avoidance is the abundance of hot water every morning. Either Levi has decided he no longer needs showers or he’s taking them when I’m not around.

I should be happy about this.

I’m not.

Looking into the bathroom mirror, I frown as a blonde curl falls in my face. I didn’t straighten my hair after my hot shower this morning, so now it’s back to its natural state of wavy chaos. I haven’t worn my hair curly in nearly a year, so the weightlessness of my untamed waves feels foreign as I run a flat iron down my locks until there are no more curls.

My phone beeps on the counter and I look at the screen. Crap. Another text from Matt. I keep forgetting to call him back.

Are we still on for tonight?

Yep! I text back, making sure to add a smiley face. I really suck at the whole keeping in touch thing.

It’s Saturday night and I have plans to meet Jenna and Matt in Tempe to go bar hopping. I spent all week looking forward to ditching the inn, but for some reason I’m no longer excited about leaving.

Rummaging around in my makeup bag, I find my eyeliner and lean over the sink as I carefully start applying it. I hate putting makeup on. I find it to be a waste of time and, frankly, a bit dangerous. Like right now, all it would take is a minor hand cramp for me to poke myself in the eye and render myself permanently blind. Who the hell cares if my eyes are lined in black or green or chicken poop? No one, that’s who.

“Hey, you,” comes a silky voice behind me.

Jenna, my heavily tattooed college dorm mate, enters the bathroom wearing skintight pants and a black shirt that shows off the caramel skin of her flat stomach. Her dark brown hair is straightened and pulled back into a long, sleek ponytail. Her eyes are shadowed in dark purple, she’s got a spiked bracelet on her left wrist, and every piercing she has—including her nose and the seven holes running up each ear—is filled with either a diamond stud or a small black hoop.

Jenna always looks like an angry rock star.

She steps out of her shoes and climbs onto the bathroom counter with the grace of a jaguar before sitting cross-legged beside the sink. “Miss me?”

I lower the eyeliner and look around in confusion. “Where did you come from?”

“Yes,” she says. “Your answer is supposed to be, ‘Yes, Jenna. I missed you like crazy and I wish we were still living together.’ ”

When the semester ended, Jenna got to move into a fancy apartment with two of her cousins, while I got to shack up in the hallway of frigid water and awkward tension. So not fair.

“Yes, Jenna. I missed you like crazy,” I repeat. “Now, where did you come from?”

“The girl at the front desk told me you’d be up here,” she says. “She also told me the woman in room three is a lush and that someone named Earl has a foot fetish. Chatty lass, that one.”

“You have no idea.” I return to lining my eyes with the sharp stick of potential blindness. “But why did you drive all the way out here? I thought I was meeting you in Tempe.”

She shrugs. “I thought I would pick you up so you wouldn’t have to drive. And besides, I wanted to check out your new place.” Her eyes cruise around the bathroom. “So this is where you live?”

“Yep. I sleep in the bathtub.”

“Nice.” She nods. “And where does the handyman sleep?”

I shoot her a look. “Please tell me you didn’t come all the way out here to meet Levi.”

“I didn’t come all the way out here to meet Levi.”

“Jenna.”

“Oh, come on,” she pleads. “He’s like this mythical creature from your past that you keep hidden away. He’s like a puzzle to me. A jigsaw puzzle. One that’s missing like four pieces and the picture guide that goes on the box. I must meet this puzzle.”

When Jenna and I first met last year, I wasn’t looking to become friends with anyone, let alone a crazy Creole girl with ink all over her body and a plethora of voodoo dolls in her suitcase. Yet somehow she managed to crowbar her way into my life—and the vault of my past—and pry out a few scraps of sensitive material, such as my history with Levi.

“He’s not a puzzle or a fictitious creature, and I’m not hiding him,” I say. “How’s Jack?”

Shrewd golden eyes narrow at me. “And she changes the subject. Curiouser and curiouser.”

I point the eyeliner at her. “Don’t talk like Alice in Wonderland. You know that creeps me out.”

She takes the eyeliner from my hand and starts to add another layer to her catlike eyes. “I don’t want to talk about Jack. I want to talk about Levi.”

“Not happening.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“Come on—”

“Stop,” I say more emphatically than I mean to.

She stares at me for a second. “Fine.”

I turn around to examine my backside in the mirror. I spent all week in ratty jeans and stained T-shirts, so I’m trying to live it up tonight. And for me, living it up means wrapping my butt in a short piece of leather. I’m out of control.

“Is this skirt too short?” I tug the skirt down, but my booty is too bootylicious to be properly contained so the material bounces right back up.

“No. You look hot.” She lowers the liner. “But what’s with the granny sweater?”

She means the cardigan I threw on to hide my scar. I’m not ashamed of my scar—not at all—but I don’t want to run into Levi with my chest exposed and risk a repeat of the other day. A knot forms in my stomach and I swallow to keep it from rising into my throat.

I glance at Jenna and shrug. “I was cold.”

With a few more fruitless yanks of my skirt, I turn back around and start digging through my stuff for another deadly makeup utensil.

“So,” Jenna says casually as she goes back to lining her eyes. “How’s the sex thing going with Matt?”

Oh jeez.

“It’s not,” I say.

She scrunches her nose. “Was your first time really so bad?”

My sexual experience is limited to a one-time disaster with a guy named Benji Barker—that was his name, I kid you not—and it was drunk and sloppy and just… bleh.

I always thought losing my virginity would be a memorable event with fireworks and theme music and maybe a parade afterward. But no. It was more like, Hey, so thanks for the horribly awkward sex. Let’s never speak again.

“No,” I say, searching the depths of the black hole that is my makeup bag for my mascara. “I mean, it was uncomfortable as hell, but it wasn’t bad. I just haven’t been able to get into it with Matt yet. Or the guy before him. Or the guy before that guy.” I shrug again. “Maybe I’m a lesbian.”

My fingers finally wrap around a tube of mascara and I pull it out in triumph.

“You’re not a lesbian,” Jenna says.

“I could be.”

“No way.” She looks at me with the eyeliner in midair. “If you were a lesbian, you would totally check me out. You never check me out.”

“Well, maybe you’re not my type,” I say in between batting lashes and coats of black goo.

She rolls her eyes. “Oh please. I’m everyone’s type—”

“Pixie!” calls someone from the hallway.

Levi.

I haven’t heard his voice for three days, and all my senses immediately go on alert. My eyes snap to the mirror just as his reflection appears in the bathroom doorway, and my heart stammers at the sight.

He’s wearing dark jeans and an untucked shirt that fits his frame perfectly. The top two buttons of his shirt are undone, showing off the tan skin of his thick throat, and I suddenly sympathize with vampires everywhere. Who wouldn’t want to take a bite out of that?

WHAT?

Where did that thought come from?

“Hey, Pixie. Ellen wanted me to…” Levi’s words trail off as his gaze runs down my body and lingers on my butt. Desire flashes in his eyes, and my insides start to heat and tighten in response.

Our eyes lock in the mirror.

Am I blushing? Crap, I’m blushing.

He clears his throat and starts again. “Ellen wanted me to give these to you. She says you lost your own set? These are her backups.” He lays a set of inn keys on the counter by my hip, his hand so close to my belly I can feel his body heat seeping in through my leather skirt.

I nod. I swallow. I try not to pass out.

Or you know, bite him.

“Oh, right. Thanks,” I say, my voice all ragged like I just finished running a marathon or something. I’m so cool.

“I’m Jenna,” Jenna says loudly, holding out her hand.

Levi and I blink away from each other, and he raises his eyebrows like he hadn’t noticed Jenna until right that second.

“Oh, hey,” he says in his smooth-operator voice. He has many voices. “I’m Levi.”

“Levi,” she repeats with a Cheshire cat grin as they shake hands. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

I glare at her, but she refuses to acknowledge me.

“Right.” He glances at me. “Good to meet you too.” He pauses. “So yeah. Later.” Then he rigidly moves from the bathroom mirror.

I stare at the empty hallway that replaces him, suddenly feeling empty myself.

“Ohmygod.” A low chuckle falls from Jenna’s mouth and she drops her head back. “I totally get it. Everything makes so much sense now.” More laughter. “You’re so not a lesbian.”

I pull my eyes away from the hallway and toss the mascara back into my bag. “Whatever.” I look at my reflection with a grimace. My straightened hair looks all wrong.

“Whatever,” she mocks, going back to her eyes. “You conveniently forgot to tell me that our mysterious Levi is HOT.”

“Please shut up.” I pull my hair up. Still wrong.

“Mega hot. Why did he call you Pixie?”

I let my hair fall back down. “It’s a nickname he gave me when we were kids. Quit layering on eyeliner. You look like a walking cry for help.”

“No, I don’t,” she says, putting the liner away and examining her reflection. “I look like a misunderstood bad girl who paints poetic pictures about death.”

I blink at her. “Exactly.”

Picking up all my belongings, I leave the bathroom as Jenna steps back into her shoes and follows after me. In my room, she throws herself belly-first onto my bed and leans over the side, eyeing the three paintings I have drying under the window.

“Whoa.” She crawls off the bed and over to the nearest canvas, running a finger along the edge. “These are beautiful.” She touches another one. “Depressing as hell, but beautiful.”

“They’re not depressing.” I search through the mess of my room for my oversized purse until I find it wedged between an unopened box of stuff from my dorm and a stack of out of state college pamphlets.

“Everything you paint is depressing. It’s all black and white and gray.” She squints at a dark painting of a tree.

“Yeah, well. I like the contrast.” I start cramming clothes into my purse. I’m not sure what my overnight plans are yet, but I’m pretty confident no one will be willing to drive me all the way back to the inn later.

Jenna flops back down on the bed and watches me shove a cotton T-shirt and a tiny black thong into the bag. “Are you thinking about staying at Matt’s place tonight?”

I throw in a toothbrush, a hair tie, and a book. “Maybe.”

There’s no pressure with Matt. He’s one of those rare good guys.

My palms start to sweat as I search for my favorite black bra, find it, and toss it into the purse along with a pair of socks and a tube of sunscreen.

She plays with her bracelet. “You guys have been together for like four months, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“If you’re not comfortable with Matt, then maybe you should move on.”

I look up. “Who says I’m not comfortable with him?”

“Your vagina.”

I let out a snort because, gah, it’s true. My vagina is super picky and, apparently, still mad at me about the Benji thing.

I keep shoving random items into my bag like I’m packing for Gilligan’s Island and not an overnighter in a metropolitan city. Do I need a scarf? No. Am I cramming one into my bag just in case there’s a flash blizzard? Yep.

“Seriously, Sarah.” Jenna sits up. “Why are you still dating him?”

Because having a boyfriend is a normal thing to do and I’m desperate for normal.

“Because he’s loyal and patient and kind.” I sound like I’m describing a pet dog. “Matt’s a great guy,” I add. “I just need to relax and get the sex thing over with.”

She crosses her arms. “You realize how stupid that sounds, right?”

I point at her. “Don’t you dare get preachy on me, little Miss Sex-a-lot.”

“First of all”—she holds up a finger—“I may have had a lot of sex, but I haven’t had a lot of partners. Second”—she adds another finger—“every guy I’ve slept with has been a choice I made without any hesitations. And third”—three fingers—“we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”

“Yeah, well. I’m sick of talking about me.”

“Sarah doesn’t want to talk about something real? Shocking.” She pins me with her gaze. “Sex is not a requirement for a relationship. It’s a perk. And if you don’t want to get perky with Matt, then don’t.”

“I want to get perky with Matt.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.” Kind of.

“Okay. In that case…” Standing up, she reaches into the pocket of her rock-star jeans and pulls out a massive handful of condoms before sprinkling them into my purse, where they slip down among the many scarves, pop-up tents, and emergency snakebite kits I’ve deemed critical for tonight’s bar crawl.

I packed for a deserted island. Jenna packed for a porno.

I blink at her. “Did you just rain condoms into my purse?”

“You betcha.” She smiles. “But seriously, if you change your mind about tonight, you and your grandma sweater can always crash at my place, okay?” She sits back down. “So how are things going with Levi? Have you two talked yet?”

“Can we not do this right now?”

“You never want to do this. You’re always so weird about him.”

“I’m not weird about him.”

“You’re super weird about him.”

“Can you just stop?” I snap.

“Stop what? I just want to know if you guys—”

“I don’t want to talk about Levi!” I snap again. Like a bitch. I just bitch-snapped her.

The room goes silent.

With a slow nod, Jenna quietly says, “Okay. We won’t talk about Levi.”

Guilt washes over me and I hang my head. I shouldn’t get snippy with Jenna like that, and yet I do it all the time.

“Sorry.” I bite my lip.

She shrugs and gives me a small smile. “Don’t worry about it.” Without further argument, she drops the Levi thing and smoothly transitions into a conversation about her summer plans.

Jenna. She’s good at being patient. She’s good at being my friend.

And sometimes that scares the crap out of me.