To Each Her Own Read online

  There were soft, down-filled pillows underneath Erin, one supporting her head and the other under the bulky splint of her shattered right ankle. She felt a little disconnected from her body, like she was floating, but at least she was feeling no pain, thanks to the outstanding painkiller she was on. It was making everything seem surreal, and she'd obviously been imagining things, like, for instance, Blond Guy.

  She raised her hand and stared at it, opening and closing her fingers. It seemed normal and real enough, so she peeked around Zac again to see if she was still hallucinating Blond Guy. Yep. Still there. Of all things for her brain to conjure up, why him?

  She felt like giggling at the absurdity of it because there was no way he could possibly be in her living room, but her mirth died quickly when she remembered what he'd said about her. She shoved the memory away. Bad thoughts didn't belong in her world right now.

  If the Blond Guy illusion was any indication, Percocet was some powerful stuff. She'd never taken the drug before, but now she understood why it was a controlled substance. She hadn't been this fucked up in at least a couple of months. She was high as a kite.

  No, not a kite, she thought as her mind began to wander. That was too common. High as a hot-air balloon? No. High as a jet? No. High as a cloud? No. Lame.

  She scoffed at herself. It was one of her greatest frustrations as a writer, this thing of trying to find descriptions and phrases that hadn't been used a million times before.

  Her talent was mediocre, despite all the practice and the college degree she'd earned in writing. She'd finished several novels but never submitted a single one for publication because she knew they sucked. Some might call her a perfectionist or an underachiever or a coward. She called herself a realist.

  “Earth to Erin,” said Zac, snapping his fingers in front of her face. He gave her a lazy, affectionate smile and drawled, “You're fuckin' blazed, little sister.” He always talked like that, like a stoner. Well, okay. He was a stoner. He was a walking cliché, the standard druggie musician.

  Zac said getting high freed his mind to be creative. Erin argued he didn't need the pot (or sometimes the stronger stuff), that he was just as talented and creative without it. Not that she could talk. She felt more creative when she was drunk, less inhibited, and God knew she was no saint when it came to drugs. She didn't smoke nearly as often as Zac, but she'd been known to smoke a bowl or two. The high got rid of her demons, at least for a little while.

  Zac was watching her, still amused. Erin decided it was time to speak. “'M not”—she paused and licked her bottom lip, trying to get her tongue and mouth to perk up and form coherent words—“your li'l sister.” It was her standard, pat response whenever he called her that, although usually delivered more lucidly. It was juvenile, just a way for her brother to rib her, and she knew it, but neither of them would let it die.

  Zac voiced his usual response in return. “Size matters more than a measly five minutes in the delivery room. I'm tall; you're a freakin' pygmy.” He tweaked her nose. “That makes you my little sister.”

  She was about to protest but was distracted when Zac turned and swept a hand toward the specter of Blond Guy. Erin was more awake now and starting to get worried. Shouldn't Blond Guy have poofed away or morphed into something tangible by now, like a potted plant or a TV? Why was she still seeing him?

  To her dismay, he was sharpening into focus instead of shimmering away like an apparition should. Blond stubble that matched his longish blond hair covered a well-shaped, firm jaw. His lips, pressed together in a neutral line, were part of a face that was symmetrical and masculine. He was good-looking, no doubt about it, but Erin didn't care. She wasn't into blond guys, especially ones who equated her with pond scum.

  Zac suddenly put his hands on her cheeks and turned her face so that she was forced to pay attention to him. “That dude over there is Jay—” Zac stopped and looked over his shoulder at Blond Guy. “How do you say your last name again?”

  “Bon-tray-grrr,” Blond Guy answered.

  “What's the origin of that?”

  Erin snickered. Sometimes Zac asked the dorkiest questions.

  Blond Guy's brows went up and the corners of his mouth went down. His expression said he really had no idea. “Um, German, maybe?”

  Zac nodded. “Thought so.”

  Erin rolled her eyes, and the room spun in a slow, fascinating circle.

  Zac turned back to her and resumed his introduction. “That dude is Jay Bontrager, your new roommate.”

  Fighting to hold on to the loopy, soothing remnants of the Percocet, Erin let out a sloppy, skeptical snort. Her new roommate? That wasn't possible. “I have a roomie.” She pressed the tip of Zac's nose with her finger. “You. You're my wombmate.”

  Zac groaned and Blond Guy's lips curved upward, like he might be slightly amused.

  “Okay,” said Zac, sitting down on the old mahogany coffee table a few inches across from the couch. “Erin, I need you to, like, try to focus on what I'm saying.”

  She didn't want to focus. She didn't want to be in this conversation. Blond Guy as a roommate was too horrible to contemplate.

  “You were in a car wreck, remember?” Zac was frowning and kind of serious, for once. “You have a bad concussion and a really fucked-up ankle, which you had to have surgery on. No way you're going on tour with the band. Remember what we talked about at the hospital? I'm leaving in a couple of days, and you need someone to help pay the bills, especially since you won't be able to work at Lars Bar for a while. Doctor said crutches for twelve weeks and then at least four weeks of therapy after that. Jay has signed a six-month lease. You'll be roommates while I'm on the tour, and then we'll reevaluate once you're back to normal.”

  Erin stared at her brother for a moment, then let her gaze flick over to Blond Guy. Her heart sank. She couldn't deny it anymore. He wasn't going to poof away. He wasn't a hallucination. He was real.

  His mouth quirked to one side, and he raised his eyebrows, giving her a look that was part curiosity and part insolent challenge. He was clearly waiting to see what she would say, but he didn't seem too worried. Erin found that unbelievable, considering he had to have an inkling of how she despised him.

  “No fucking way he's moving in here.” Her voice was suddenly stronger and more deliberate, and she tried to make it clear there was no room for argument. “He's an asshole.”

  Zac blinked in surprise and shot Blond Guy a sheepish look. “Sorry, dude. She's so out of it. She doesn't know what she's saying. She's on a pretty strong painkiller.”

  “It's okay,” said Blond Guy, now the picture of compassion as his eyes settled on Erin. “I understand.”

  The rumbling timbre of his voice was confident and masculine, and Erin remembered the sound of it all too well. During his rant against devs at Luis's apartment, that voice had bulldozed through any self-esteem she might have salvaged over the years. Narrowing her eyes, she said caustically, “How noble of you.”

  He met her gaze, almost daring her to expose him, which pissed Erin off even more.

  Zac's brow furrowed, and he looked from Erin to Blond Guy and then back to Erin. “So, do you know this dude or something?”

  “No, but—” She clamped her mouth shut. She wanted so badly to tell Zac who Blond Guy really was and how he'd made her loathe herself, how she'd almost—stupidly—killed herself because of him.

  But Zac knew nothing about the whole dev thing, and she wanted to keep it that way. She didn't want anyone in her family or any of her friends to know. She'd learned her lesson with her ex, and she didn't want a repeat. She couldn't stand the thought of her brother thinking she was a perv, looking at her with disgust.

  “I don't know him,” she said, answering Zac's question. “He just seems . . . arrogant. I think he'd be hard to live with and—” she eyed Blond Guy's wheelchair pointedly “—and high maintenance. I'm not gonna be some crippled guy's nurse.”

  Blond Guy's shoulders went rigid, his hands tightened
on his wheels, and a muscle twitched in his jaw, but he let the barb go.

  Erin felt a pang of remorse for using the word “crippled” (totally not politically correct) but dismissed it. Whatever his game was, she wasn't going to make things easy for him. Besides, what she'd just said was downright sweet compared to what he'd said about her.

  Zac's eyes widened as if Erin had suddenly sprouted an extra head. He turned to Blond Guy. “Whoa. I swear she's not usually like this. She's usually so nice. She likes everybody she meets. Would you—could you just give us a sec?”

  “Sure. No problem,” Blond Guy answered magnanimously, erasing any trace that Erin's comment had hit its mark.

  Erin snorted, which earned her another sharp look from her brother. She ignored him and watched as Blond Guy deftly skirted his chair around the sofa and coffee table.

  His chair was sporty and fit him like a glove. It looked like the type of wheelchair made with a rigid frame, where the wheels popped off for stowage, instead of the type of chair that folded up and tended to be bulkier. Erin figured it had probably been custom made for his needs—a common solution for those wheelers who could afford it. He propelled his wheels with long, fluid pushes, and he seemed to have a symmetry with his chair that was second nature, like it was a part of him.

  He was wearing a blue plaid flannel shirt and loose jeans, and his thin legs were tucked neatly in, close to his chair. His feet, shod in white Nikes, were placed evenly on the solid piece of metal that made up the footplate. Normally Erin would have thought white Nikes were a little too Seinfeld, but she had to grudgingly admit that, somehow, Blond Guy made the look work.

  She hated herself for noticing so many details about him, and her anger spiked all over again. What was he trying to pull here? Why would he want to be her roommate, especially in light of the excruciatingly low opinion he had of her? The guy hated devs. Why would he want to live with one?

  “Erin,” Zac hissed after Blond Guy had disappeared down the hallway that led to the bedrooms. “What the hell? The dude is handicapped, and you just totally, like, mowed him down for no reason!”

  Not for no reason, but it wasn't like she could tell Zac that. “Don't say 'handicapped.'”

  “Huh?”

  “'Handicapped' is offensive to some. Just say he has a disability.”

  Zac gave her another look that said he thought she'd lost her mind. “Oh, like calling him a cripple is better?” He didn't wait for a reply. “Listen to me. This guy is willing to pay double what we were asking for rent.”

  Erin frowned. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because I thought it would be better for you to have a girl roommate, and I already had one lined up when Jay came to see the house. When I told him we already had a renter, he offered to pay double what she was, and he was willing to do a six-month lease instead of three, like the girl wanted.”

  Erin ground her teeth, which didn't help her sore head any. The drugs must be wearing off, because it was starting to hurt. “What if he's a serial killer, Zac? You're just gonna leave me alone with a strange guy you don't know?”

  Eye roll. “The dude's a computer nerd. He does software support.”

  She was skeptical, although it made sense, since he was a friend of Luis's, and Luis owned an IT company. But Blond Guy didn't look anything like an IT guy, and there wasn't a nerdy bone in his body. Maybe the whole computer nerd thing was just a cover. “Ted Bundy was an innocuous, well-liked law student,” she pointed out.

  “Erin,” said Zac, tilting his head to the side, “you know I wouldn't leave you with someone I thought might hurt you. I get a good vibe from Jay.”

  “A good vibe?” she asked, incredulous. “You're leaving me with a totally strange man, when I'm all injured and vulnerable, because you get a 'good vibe' from him?”

  Zac nodded like that was completely reasonable and added, “I talked to his boss on the phone, and he gave him a stellar rec, too. The guy couldn't say enough good things about him.”

  His boss who was probably Luis. So now Luis was in on the deception, and he'd actually spoken with her brother. Erin felt like there was a lead ball in her stomach, and then panic flashed through her.

  Calm down, she told herself. Luis couldn't have outed her as a dev to Zac. Zac definitely would have said something if he knew.

  She frowned, which seemed to make her head throb more, and then her ankle decided to join the fray. She rubbed her forehead with her hand. “Please, Zac. I've just got a bad feeling about this guy. I don't want him here.”

  “Erin, the dude's handi—has a disability, for fuck's sake. What's he gonna do? Run over you with his wheelchair?”

  She felt an illogical spark of indignation on Blond Guy's behalf and on behalf of wheelers everywhere who constantly had to put up with the assumption they were weak and ineffectual. “He can't walk, Zac. That doesn't mean he's helpless. I'm sure he's far from it.” Then she remembered her purpose and that she hated the guy. “He could—he could strangle me in my sleep or smother me or hack me to bits with a machete. He has incredible upper body strength.”

  “How would you know that?”

  She knew because she knew way more than she should about paraplegics. Freak echoed in her head, but she said, “Just a guess. He probably has to use his arms a lot. Stands to reason he'd be strong.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Zac sounded uncertain, but, never one to mull things over too closely, he switched gears. “He's got a dog.”

  That piqued Erin's interest, despite her desperation to convince her brother not to let Blond Guy move in. “What kind of dog?”

  Zac's mouth curved into a knowing smirk. Erin was a sucker for animals, especially dogs, and it was no secret she'd always wanted one. “Some kind of Rottweiler mix.”

  She grumbled, “So what. Serial killers can have dogs, too.”

  Zac flashed her the goofy rock-star grin he used to dazzle his groupies. “Yeah, but I think the difference is that, like, the serial killers eat their dogs or something, not play fetch with them.”

  “Ew.”

  Zac grew serious again. “The tour lasts four months. You only have to live with him for that long without me, and then I'll be back.”

  “No. Absolutely not,” said Erin with an emphatic shake of her head. “I don't want him here. And four months is a long time!”

  “Why are you so against him? Just because he's handicapped or disabled or whatever?”

  Ah, the irony.

  “That's not like you, Erin,” Zac said reproachfully. “I've never known you to be prejudiced like that. And it's not like the dude can help it.”

  She shrugged.

  “Besides, the house is already equipped with handicapped—um, I mean, disabled stuff. Nana's room is perfect for him.”

  Erin stiffened. “No!” They'd both been close to Nana, but Erin and Nana had had a special bond. Nana had used a wheelchair for the last few years of her life, and her room had been left untouched since her death.

  “I know you and Nana were close, Erin,” Zac went on. “I loved her, too, but her room's not a shrine. There's no reason Jay shouldn't use it. I mean, seriously. It's time we face reality. Nana doesn't need it anymore.”

  That was harsh, even if it was true, and it made Erin feel weepy. She swallowed the huge lump in her throat and said, “Find someone else, Zac. Call that girl you were talking about, the one who almost rented. See if she's still interested.”

  “Jay's paying double, Erin, and you need the money. It'll be at least twelve weeks before you're on your feet again and probably longer before you can work at Lars full time on that ankle. I can send you a little money from the road, but you need Jay's rent.”

  She didn't say anything. She knew Zac was right about the money, but she didn't want to give in.

  His eyes were pleading. “Just give him a chance. I can't understand why you're so against him. I think you're just overly emotional and whacked-out because of, like, the concussion or the meds. You're not thinking stra
ight.”

  “He's a stranger,” she argued again.

  “So is that girl,” Zac countered. “What if she's psycho like that girl in Single White Female?”

  Erin searched for another argument, but she was getting tired and her brain hurt. She let out a sigh and her head sank deeper into her pillow.

  Zac took it as acquiescence. He dropped a brotherly kiss on her forehead. “Thanks. It'll work out great. You'll see.”

  She responded with an inelegant sniff that meant “I highly doubt it.”

  “I'll go tell Jay he doesn't have to move out,” he said with a grin.

  She raised her brows in a combination of dismay and disbelief. “He's already moved in?” Her brother was thoughtless sometimes, but she couldn't believe he would be so high-handed.

  “Oh. Uh, yeah.” Zac was already getting up and heading toward the hall, and he shrugged off her disapproval. “I really didn't think you'd care. I thought you'd just be glad I found someone.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Thanks for asking me first. Loved the 'Hey, Erin. I've got someone I'd like you to meet. I think he'd make a good roommate for you, and I want to see what you think.'”

  Zac mimed choking her. “I did! You just don't remember. This is the first, like, really coherent conversation I've had with you. You've been really fucked up.” He shrugged again as if to say, What was I supposed to do? “Jay was anxious to get out of his friend's apartment, so I said he could move in. You were still in la-la land at the hospital and weren't up to conversations of more than five words. I seriously had no idea you would have any objection to the dude.”

  Erin took in a massively annoyed breath.

  “Just relax, little sister. It's all good,” Zac drawled in his stoner's voice, and then he disappeared down the hallway.

  Erin slung her arm across her forehead and muttered, “I'm not your little sister.” A second later, she could hear him knocking on Nana's—Blond Guy's—Jay's door.