Unraveling Josh Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Unraveling Josh

  Edie Danford

  Copyright © 2016 Edie Danford

  Edited by Christa Desir

  Cover art by Jay Aheer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Dedication

  For Winston, whose heavenly sounds inspired endlessly.

  For Christa Desir, who was awesome every step of this book’s winding way.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  PART TWO

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  PART THREE

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  PART FOUR

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  PART ONE

  “If you’ve gotta be all Cinderfella, hit up the footman who turns into a horse instead of boring Prince Whatshisname.”

  Chapter One

  Nick

  I WAS GETTING ready to bail on my fourth party of the night when I saw him.

  My friend Lucy had been tugging my hand, bored, wanting to leave—a plan I’d been down with—but something kept my ass planted against the roof deck’s railing. Probably the same something keeping my gaze fixed on the hot tub built into the huge deck’s far corner.

  It was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend and, during the course of our impromptu party hop, Lucy and I had witnessed several fresh tricks with alcohol. The neighborhood was close to a few of Boston’s many campuses—including MIT and Harvard—and about a zillion brainiac twenty-somethings were concentrating very, very hard on getting the school year off to a smart start.

  So when Lucy and I had first arrived at this shindig, the big, six-person hot tub had been filled with beer and ice, and we hadn’t taken much notice when a few jock types had replaced several cases’ worth of beverages with their asses.

  I did pay attention, though, when they climbed out of the tub and sprawled their dripping jock bods on a low bench directly in my line of sight. A paper lantern began to flicker like a sleepy strobe over the biggest of the guys, flashes of light keeping freakily rhythmic time with the reggae track the party’s crap playlist had just served up.

  When the big guy tipped his head—his damp, dark hair gleaming like he was in some ridiculous ad for men’s personal-care products—his bark of laughter reached my ears over Bob Marley’s plea for soul satisfaction.

  That was when I’d been absolutely sure it was him.

  Embarrassing as hell, but if I hadn’t already been holding on hard to the cedar railing, I probably would have gone toppling over the side of the building, splat, onto a gnarly Somerville sidewalk.

  When his eyes met mine and stayed trapped there long enough for his familiar half smile to kick-start my stalled-out heart, I knew the reason I was seeing him at a lame party on a late summer night in Boston had nothing to do with coincidence.

  Or with the fact he’d been my first crush, and when I was fourteen I’d memorized every detail of his face, body, voice, laughter, attitude, personality, clothing style, shoe choice, car, sports-drink preference, etcetera, etcetera, that my senses could possibly suck down. From an always painful distance, of course. My senses are damn greedy when it comes to beauty, so lots of details memorized in his case.

  Nope, I knew seeing Josh Pahlke tonight of all nights had to do with all kinds of crap I didn’t usually believe in—fate and kismet and synchronicity and likely the alignment of the fucking planets or some shit.

  “And that right there is the last nail in this party’s huge-ass coffin,” Lucy said from beside me. “Hate reggae. Let’s go back to the apartment—should’ve cooled down there by now.”

  I was sure I’d never be chill again as Josh looked back at his friend, his half smile unchanged, his eyes the same shade of friendly.

  Nope, he didn’t recognize me. Don’t know why he would’ve, really.

  “Nicky? What do you think?” Luce tugged at my hand again, her fingers damp from the condensation of the beer she’d been nursing. It had been hot and humid as hell all weekend, and the apartment I’d been helping Lucy and her girlfriend Amelia move into had defunct AC.

  Earlier in the day Amelia had vamoosed to the Cape for a cousin’s wedding, an event Lucy had bowed out of in favor of getting their new apartment in shape. After setting up the essentials—bed, shower curtain and espresso machine—Luce and I had escaped the loft’s tiny, kiln-like confines to seek food, drink and, in my case, a good, hard fuck.

  “Hotel might be a better idea, I guess.” She plucked at her damp-looking T-shirt and scowled.

  “I could go either way,” I said absently. I dropped my cigarette—only my third of the weekend (go me)—in a half-empty Solo cup and continued my survey of the long, muscular body that had been the inspiration for some of my first and most intense erotic dreams. The blood in my veins had gone into hyperdrive, zooming to keep up with my heartbeat. I wasn’t feeling so bored or tired anymore.

  Lucy tipped her head toward the hot tub. “You know any of those guys?”

  “Matter of fact, I do.”

  “Well, hey,” she said, her round cheeks creasing into a perky smile. “Am I seeing a spark of interest for the first time tonight? Here I was thinking your quest for the perfect ass would be a bust.”

  “You didn’t have to tag along for the ass-quest portion of the evening, you know.”

  “I know. I’m thinking of it as a continuation of my anthro seminar from last year.” She pressed a finger to her chin, narrowing her eyes as she scrutinized me and spoke in a dorky voice. “Which cues catch the subject’s interest? What rituals bore him? Is the burgeoning rod in his pants a typical sign for his subtype or simply a random anomaly?”

  I snorted. “My rod has yet to burgeon, baby.”

  She took a pull on her beer and said, “You were hit on more times than I could count at that Harvard Square party—where, by the way, I saw more hot boys than I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve been to a lot of parties in my day. But, nooooo, none of those dudes would do for Nick McQueen, connoisseur of only the finest ass—” She was continuing her survey of the hot-tub area when her eyes suddenly went wide. “Holy shit. Is that Josh Pahlke?” She glanced at me, eyebrows raised. “Ellery College grad
of awesome hotness and renown? Nordic-skiing god?”

  “Pretty sure it’s him.”

  “At this party? Fucking weird.” Her gaze shifted from me to Josh and then back.

  I raised my eyebrows too, mimicking her expression.

  “Oh my God,” she croaked. “You’re not thinking about going after him, are you?”

  I shrugged. “Don’t see why not. If you’re all into ethnographic observation or whatever, you’ve gotta see he’s the most prime specimen we’ve encountered tonight, right?”

  “Yeah, he’s a prime specimen for sure, but not for you. He’s way too shiny-squeaky for your needs, McQueen. He’s a nice boy.”

  I tried to laugh, but the sound that came out of my mouth was more like a cough. I swayed a bit and retightened my grip on the deck’s rough railing. Felt like I’d taken a hard knock back in time five or six years. Luce had no way of knowing it, of course, but her comments were the perfect one-two punch. He’s perfect, but not for you…

  Shrugging, I played it cool. “Even nice boys like to get dirty every now and then.” I picked up my beer from the railing and discovered it was empty. “That’s why observation isn’t the only research method a thorough anthropologist should employ.”

  “Okay. Good point.” She tipped her head, eyeing me with interest. Like I was, for real, a subject in some study she was doing. “How do you know him? He was a few years ahead of me at Ellery, which means he graduated before your time. Last couple years he’s been at Harvard, I think? Doing some kind of unlikely and obscure history thing.”

  One of my buds from home followed Josh on social media, so I knew what Josh had been up to since getting his undergrad degree at Ellery. And I also knew that last year Josh had broken up with his long-term boyfriend and hadn’t been in a relationship since. At least not one he’d announced in public.

  But I didn’t reveal any of this knowledge to Luce.

  I slid my thumb down the side of the beer bottle. I could tell her the truth. I trusted her. Lucy and Amelia had helped me get through a few rough patches last year. They’d been seniors at Ellery College and I’d been a freshman. Fall quarter I’d shown up drunk and obnoxious at a GSA party and for some reason Luce had taken me under her small, strong wing, sobering me up with a midnight breakfast at the off-campus apartment she shared with Amelia, both of them reassuring me the Greeks and the GSA weren’t the only games in town for a dude like me.

  We’d hung out a lot last year, and I’d come to New England a week early to help them move. They were happy with their new scene. I wasn’t. I would miss them like hell even if I came down for weekends as often as possible—I needed all the friends at Ellery I could get.

  Luce was trying to cheer me up by keeping me company tonight as I sought a final decent fuck before returning to Ellery’s slim pickings and wholesome-as-hell confines. I’d have had better luck at a club or with Grindr or whatever, but Luce had gone out of her way to round up a list of party recs from some friends. Mostly I think she was tagging along tonight because she was worried about me.

  “Nicky?” She nudged me.

  It was because of the worry thing that I decided to tell her a brief, easy version of the truth. I didn’t want to explain a bunch of shit, because then she’d give me serious grief about my recent adjustment to tonight’s mission—I wasn’t going to find a hardcore fuck with a stranger. I was going to find one with Joshua Pahlke.

  “I knew Josh growing up,” I told her. “We lived in the same neighborhood. He was a coach at the summer soccer camp I went to in high school.”

  “For real?” Luce’s eyes crinkled at the corners and one side of her mouth twitched. “You? Soccer?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, smiling, keeping things light. “Hard to picture me in cleats and pads, right? I did it because it was the only way to get my parents to agree to voice lessons.”

  Luce let out a laugh. “You are so kidding.”

  “Nope. I was determined to sing like Freddie Mercury. Turns out I was actually a better soccer player than singer, and I really sucked at soccer.”

  Luce giggled a bunch more, gasping out a line or two from “Bohemian Rhapsody”. “Mama! Ooo-ooo-ooo!”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Exactly how I sounded.”

  She cast a quick glance toward the hot tub. “So if you know him that means you have an excellent reason to go over there and chat him up, right?”

  I shook my head. “He’s not going to recognize me. And I’m not going to tell him who I am.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said.

  I looked up at the sky. It was a weird color—muted black with hints of orange and brown—an urban sky with hardly any visible stars even though the night was clear. One of the few things that excited me about going back to Ellery tomorrow was the chance to see gobs of stars again.

  My gaze drifted back to Josh. His hair glistened under the lantern light and his shorts looked damp after his dip in the hot tub. They clung to his lean hips and ski-god thighs, emphasizing a package I knew for a fact was more than fine.

  I rubbed my palms against the railing’s rough surface and glanced at Lucy. “You ever have a crush on a star when you were a kid? Someone from TV or movies or music or something?”

  Lucy wrinkled her nose, thinking about it. “Oh, yeah. Mine was a total cliché.” I knew exactly how buzzed she was when she said loudly and proudly, “Lucy Lawless from Xena: Warrior Princess. And not just because we shared a name and physique.”

  I conjured an image of Lucy Lawless. “Isn’t she the one who’s, like, seven feet tall or something?”

  “Six feet. But yeah, so?” Luce stood on her toes, expanding her height to just beyond five-foot-two.

  “Yeah, so, okay,” I said, laughing. “When I was a kid I didn’t have a crush on a celebrity. I had a crush on Josh Pahlke.”

  “Oh wow. Do tell.”

  “Nothing to tell. He was—as you pointed out—way outta my league. Mr. Brilliant Jock College Student, while I was one of the many twerpy, talentless sacks he had to put up with on a soccer field for a couple summers.” I glanced at him again, this time letting my gaze linger. “I mean…look at him. Sports, smarts, looks—he made all the other dudes around him seem like puny mortals. I had as much of a chance with Josh as you had with Lucy Lawless.”

  I was carefully telling her only a small, cute part of the big, ugly story, and I knew I’d hooked her when she smiled. “So this is like your chance to be Cinderella? You grew into a beautiful boy who’s all ballroom-worthy”—she nudged my scuffed boot with her sandaled toe—“and tonight you wanna dance with Prince Josh?”

  I looked down at myself. I’d dressed for success in threadbare, ass-hugging jeans, a fitted white tee and my fave beat-to-shit engineer’s boots that added a couple inches to my five-ten frame. “Won’t have to call a fairy godmother for me.” I winked.

  “What if he recognizes you despite your newly splendiferous splendor?”

  “No chance. If you could see pictures of me from back then, you’d get why I’m sure. Even I don’t recognize me.”

  Lucy ran her fingers down my arm, lingering over the latest edition to my tat sleeve. A lot of my ink was devoted to my last name—McQueen—and I’d saved up funds this summer for another kick-ass image of the queen of hearts.

  “I know I don’t have to tell you this…” She gave my arm a squeeze. “But that Cinderella-gets-saved-by-the-prince trope is tired bullshit. If you’ve gotta be all Cinderfella, hit up the footman who turns into a horse instead of boring Prince Whatshisname.”

  I laughed. “No chance of me tripping up over pumpkins or shoes.” I glanced at Josh again and shrugged. “And I’ve always thought if Prince Whatshisname had secretly gotten nailed by some random subject at the ball, the story would’ve been a lot less boring.”

  “You’ve got a point. But still. All this is dependent on your ability to get him to go for it, right? Based on his nice-boy rep, that won’t be easy.”

  “Luce, Luce, Luce
.” I shook my head. “Based on my rep, you’ve gotta know I will not fail.”

  “Hmm.” While Lucy gazed at Josh and pals with a thoughtful look in her bloodshot eyes, I pulled out my phone and found the app I’d downloaded for Boston Cab.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Making sure you get home safely before I begin the final phase of my night.”

  Luce glanced at the screen. “You gonna come back to the apartment or stay at the hotel?”

  Luce’s folks were very nice and very loaded and very far away. Worried about her comfort while she and Amelia got settled, they’d sprung for a posh hotel suite for the week. The reservation was solid through Tuesday.

  “If you’re going apartment then I’ll go hotel.” I gave her a naughty smile. “I’m gonna make him scream and I don’t want to keep you awake.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’ve never known someone with bigger balls than you, McQueen. Weird that you’re not an arrogant a-hole about all parts of your life. How’d you get this way about sex?”

  Again, I thought about telling her the truth. It used to be an act—a basic reaction to getting my heart and soul kicked to shit when I was a kid. But I need it now. It’s the only way I can get off. But yeah, this was the wrong place and time for raw honesty.

  I gave her a crooked smile. “I was born this way, doll. Big balls to match my big dick.”

  “Gag,” she said, laughing some more.

  “Good chance of that, yeah,” I responded, joining her laughter.

  Chapter Two

  Josh

  THE COCKY KID on the other side of the roof was checking me out. Again.

  I shifted my damp ass around on the bench, rethinking my impulsive dip in the “ice tub”. I hadn’t succeeded at numbing my brain or my body tonight.

  The lanterns over my head rattled, and the breeze hit my skin warm and wet as bathwater. I couldn’t seem to get any relief from the hot, uncomfortable ache that had been riding my nerves all week—like a rash I couldn’t see, couldn’t itch and couldn’t kick.