Switch

I slipped into the shoes and stood, adjusting to the way my center of balance shifted. My mother had taught me the art of how to walk in heels this high. I used to raid her closet as a kid and parade around the house in her shoes.

I smoothed the silky shirt over my belly and hips and turned around to look at myself one last time in the mirror. “Ready to go?”

“I guess so,” Kira said sullenly. “Except now you look awesome and I look like shit.”

“You look hot,” I promised. What were friends for?

She was convinced, more because she wanted to believe it than because I’d tried hard. “Okay, let’s go get shit-hammered!”

I saw him again, that dark-haired man. This time, he was coming in as I was going out. We passed each other not so much like two ships, as much as one ship passing while the other crashes into an iceberg. I couldn’t be offended that his gaze slid over and past me, taking in the short skirt and high heels without a second look. He had his head down and was talking urgently into his cell phone. He didn’t have attention to spare me. And it wasn’t his fault I was trying so hard to pretend I wasn’t looking back at him that I ran into the edge of the door frame hard enough to leave a bruise.

“Smooth move, Ex-Lax.” Kira smirked. She hadn’t even noticed it was the man from earlier that day. “Nice to see you can hold your tequila.”

I shrugged off the sting in my shoulder and didn’t reply. His sleeve had brushed my bare arm as he passed, and the hairs on it all the way up to the back of my neck had stood at that brief, simple touch. A slow, tumbling roll of sensation centered in my belly.

He lived in my building.

Chapter 03

I shouldn’t have been so surprised. I saw a lot of River-view Manor tenants at Miriam’s shop, and in the Morning-star Mocha, the coffee shop at the end of our block. I ran into them in the post office and parking garage and at the grocery store, too. Harrisburg’s a small city.

Even so, I couldn’t shake the memory of those dark eyes, that thick, dark hair. The brush of a shirtsleeve on my bare skin. Fuck. I was horny, no two ways around it, and no wonder. It had been ages since I’d had sex with anyone but myself.

We had our choice of places downtown, but I wanted to go to the Pharmacy. We took a cab since I wouldn’t drive after drinking, and the walk that was fine on a Sunday afternoon in sweatpants would be too long to make at night in heels…and shit-hammered.

The bar was packed, even for a Friday night. We pushed through the crowd toward the bar, Kira leading. She stopped abruptly and I ran into her. Someone ran into me. Someone also grabbed my ass, but when I turned to see who it was and possibly haul off and smack the shit out of them, all I could see was an ocean of possible culprits.

“Hey, Jack,” Kira said, and I turned.

Shit. Jack had been the love of Kira’s life our senior year, when he transferred in from another school. She’d plotted and schemed for months to get him to ask her to the prom, determined to get in his pants. It hadn’t worked, so far as I knew. I only knew that once Kira had keyed one of his girlfriends’ cars.

Kira didn’t know Jack and I had fucked each other senseless for about two months straight a few years ago. I doubt either of us even cared anymore. But Kira would have, so I tried to pull her away before things could get ugly.

Besides, he wasn’t alone. The woman with him had a beer and she tipped it to her mouth, eyeing us with a smile. I yanked Kira’s elbow to pull her away.

“Ow,” she said when the crowd closed behind us, cutting off the view of him. “What did you do that for?”

“Don’t cause trouble,” I told her. “C’mon. Drinks.”

“I wasn’t going to cause trouble.” She frowned and tossed her hair, not caring she’d whacked some dude across the face with it. He looked pissed. Not the way I wanted to start the night.

“There will be other guys here,” I told her.

Kira just sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Oh, I know that.”

The Pharmacy was almost always a total sausage party—three guys for every girl, easy, and all of them horny and looking to hook up. Chivalry had nothing to do with them pulling out their wallets and plying us with booze. It was all about getting laid.

“Oh, look,” Kira said from beside me. “Talk about trouble.”

She was right. Trouble with a capital T. I stood taller in my sexy shoes and lifted my chin, straightened my shoulders. “Hello, Austin.”

Once upon a time, Austin and I had fucked like tigers. I was willing to bet he still had the scars. I did.

“Paige.” His hair was longer, but he had the same grin, the one that parted thighs like the Red Sea. He didn’t look surprised to see me.

Austin wore a blue-striped shirt and faded jeans that hugged his ass just right and hung down, ragged, at the hems. Jeans like that should be outlawed on men like Austin. His buddy, some guy I didn’t know, wore an almost identical shirt, but with brown stripes. He didn’t look half as good.

Behind me, Kira dug her fingernails into the skin of my elbow. It stung, and I shook her off. “How are you?”

“Good. I’m good.” His eyes shifted to Kira and back to me. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“Haven’t been home,” I said, though home to me now was an apartment on Front Street, not a trailer or a rented house in Lebanon.

“Yeah. I know. Hey, Kira. I made it.”

My insides froze. I glared at her, but Kira gave me her best dumb look. “What?”

She’d told him we’d be here. I knew it. I could see it on both their faces, their conspiracy, and I wondered how he’d convinced her to tell him. I thought about walking out, and the only reason I didn’t was because he was looking at me. Not her.

Kira saw it, too, and she gave me a narrow-eyed glare. I wouldn’t have put it past her to have set this up purely to see the throw down between me and Austin, but I wasn’t going to do it. I was past those days. She rallied when Austin’s friend gave her a grin. It helped that he was cute. Not as cute as Austin, but then really, who was? Who had ever been?

“What’re you drinking?” Austin was already pulling out his wallet to pay.

I wasn’t going to turn down a free drink, not even from him. “Margarita.”

“I’ll take a Slow, Comfortable Screw.” Kira made sure to lean in close so he could hear her. Her lips brushed his ear.

Austin leaned away a little, not enough that Kira would notice. But I did. He introduced us both to his friend, Ethan, who managed to tear his gaze away from Kira’s tits long enough to nod toward me without a trace of recognition. Well, what had I expected him to do? Say, “Oh, so this is Paige?”

“So what are you up to now?” Austin asked me as Kira and Ethan eyed each other.

“I work for Kelly Printing.” The last time we spoke I’d still been finishing the degree I’d started when we were together and taking care of some rich couple’s kids. I didn’t ask him what he was doing, not for work and not here in Harrisburg. I didn’t want him to think I cared.

“What about your mom?” Austin moved closer, his arm on the bar. “She still working for Hershey? I haven’t been to the shop for a while.”

My mom owns a tiny sandwich shop she inherited from her dad when I was in high school. I’d worked in that shop almost my entire life, running errands as a kid then graduating to making subs and running the cash register. Now I only helped if she had a big order to fill and deliver, or a party to cater.

“She still has it. She was working for Hershey but got laid off.”

Austin nodded. “I’m working for McClaron and Sons.”

I had no idea who or what McClaron and Sons was, but the fact he was working for someone other than his dad surprised me into a reply. “What about your dad?”

Austin shrugged, then grimaced, and only because I’d once known him so well it had been like knowing myself did I catch his hesitation. “It was time I got out of that job.”

“But you’re doing the same thing, right? Construction?” Kira popped into the conversation and drew both our attentions.

“Yeah, and some other stuff,” Austin said, but didn’t elaborate.