Friends with a Tryst

  Friends with a Tryst

  Kris Jayne

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Excerpt from Chasing You

  Also in the Thirsty Hearts Series

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2020 by Kris Jayne

  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.

  Kris Jayne/Write Shout

  kris@krisjayne.com

  www.krisjayne.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Friends with a Tryst/ Kris Jayne. -- 1st ed.

  978-1-944460-18-1

  Chapter 1

  Erin

  “Down!” The bark came with that familiar New Yorker punch.

  It was still too dark outside to see the condensation of my breath, but I knew I was huffing clouds in the frigid Austin air.

  No time to think.

  I dropped into a brief squat before sprawling onto my stomach, legs extended. One push-up. Two push-ups. Thhhreee...

  On my left, a stout firefighter named Gabriel did his push-ups with one leg in the air and then sprang into a tuck jump. On my right, Skinny Mini, whose real name I could never remember, pulled her legs back under her and jumped, clapping her hands high over her head.

  “Nine!” The others screamed in unison as I scrambled back to my feet and just managed a toe raise. Dear God, no more jumping.

  It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet on a wintry Saturday morning. Why in hell was I freezing my ass off in Zilker Park?

  Oh, yeah. Luke.

  His constant badgering at the gym had seeped its way into my brain and turned me into a caffeinated exercise zombie who drove to this godforsaken park at 6 a.m. for the privilege of having him scream at me.

  I’d hoped that, on my fifth Saturday, these end-of-workout burpees would be getting easier. Nope. I collapsed for the tenth, thankful for the few inches of head start my boobs gave me to push back up.

  One. Sweet baby Jesus. Two. I’m going to die. Thhhreee...

  “Come on, Erin. You got this. On your feet!” Luke shouted.

  “Ten!” Everyone else yelled.

  Jumping wasn’t an option after an hour-long ass kicking in the dark. I raised my hips to a quivering down dog and walked in my feet to stand up. My calves convulsed me into a toe raise, and I pumped my arms.

  Luke walked down the line of boot campers, giving high fives and fist bumps. He yelled and whooped. The twenty or so exercisers disbanded in waves toward the parking lot.

  I didn’t have enough air to whoop, but a surge of pride put a grin on my face.

  Fucking done.

  My towel was flung two feet in front of me. If I wanted to wipe my face with it, I’d have to bend over and get back up. The trembling fatigue in my abs and legs shot down that idea. Instead, I grabbed the hem of my shirt and hunched a little to drag a dry-ish corner of the fabric over my forehead.

  A slap on the back made me shiver.

  “Are you cold? Where’s your jacket?” Luke asked.

  I spun around to point, and he was already plucking up my fleece hoodie and my towel. I slipped on the jacket and reveled in the warmth of it and of the presence beside me.

  Skinny Mini grumbled with irritation meant to sound fake. “Umm, I’m still waiting for my high five.”

  He slapped her skyward hand, and she giggled, entwining his fingers. “Thank you. You have the best workouts. They’re killer, but I love it.”

  “Thanks.” Luke withdrew his hand and swept his towel off his shoulder to wipe his fingers. The dimple in his left cheek winked at me as he downed a swig of water and slipped the bottle back in the duffle bag on his shoulder. “I love it, too. Do you love it, Ms. McKenna?”

  “Woo. Hoo.” I circled my index finger in the air.

  He snapped the towel on my thigh. “You know you do.”

  “I hate it. I’m here. I chose to be here. But let’s not pretend that I don’t hate every other minute. You know I don’t like the out-of-doors.” I sniffed with condescension at nature and ran a fingernail across an incisor. “I think I have grass in my teeth.”

  “Don’t say that!” Skinny Mini threw an admonishing gasp my direction. “He works really hard on these. I know. I used to be a trainer.”

  I darted my eyes at our trainer’s tall frame and smiled. “I’m just kidding. Luke knows I’m kidding.”

  He snapped me again with his towel. “Erin and I have known each other forever.”

  Skinny Mini scowled. I relished her unhappiness. Probably too much.

  She practically drooled over Luke, and as annoying as I found her pep each week, they would make a stunning couple. He could use a compatible girlfriend, and he hadn’t dated anyone in forever. I had to let her off the hook.

  “He’s like a brother to me,” I said.

  Luke flung his towel over his head and wiped his hidden face.

  “Oh, is he?” Mini brightened.

  “Sorry, what was your name again?” I asked.

  “Julie.”

  “Right, Julie. I’m Erin.”

  Julie shook my extended hand and gave a sweet show of teeth resembling a smile. “Yeah, I see you here every week joking around with...everyone.”

  “Luke and I have known each other since college. Well, he was in college with—” I stopped. I didn’t want to explain that. “I’m giving him a hard time. We’re like family.”

  She barely noticed the awkwardness and had already turned her fluttering eyelashes back to Luke. “Oh, well, I love your boot camp. If you ever add more days or anything, let me know. My number is on my sign-up sheet.”

  She grinned and pulled her long, dark hair out of her ponytail, shaking out the damp strands and flinging her torso from side to side as if she were hocking shampoo on TV.

  Luke kept his faded Brooklyn accent all business. “If I add anything, it will be in the gym’s email newsletter. Or listed on the website.”

  “Oh. Okay. See you next week.” Julie gathered her bag and exercise mat. “Nice to see you again, Erin. You’re making progress. You’ll get the hang of those burpees in no time.”

  “No time is about right.” I laughed, and she retreated out of earshot. “Email newsletter? Damn, Luke, she was flirting with you.”

  Luke huffed. “I don’t want to go out with Julie.”

  “Why? She—”

  “No fixing me up. Change of subject.” He barked in his boot camp voice, then popped me on the shoulder with a friendly slap. “How was your Christmas? Did you work out? You need to be ready for Africa in the spring.”

  Luke was still trying to convince me to join his group trek up Kilimanjaro—no matter how often I told him he was out of his mind to think that I could do such a thing. “It’s just a tough hike. You can totally do it.” Mountain climbing in Tanzania. Crazy. I ignored that little jibe and took a long swig of water.

&n
bsp; “I had a good Christmas. Low key. I went to Abby’s for dinner on Christmas Eve and then watched movies on TV the next day. Turned out to be a good plan with the weather.”

  A blast of ice covered the city early morning on Christmas. Austinites don’t do frozen.

  Luke shook his head. “I still say you should have come home with me for my belated Hanukkah dinner.”

  Even though Hanukkah had been in early December this year, Luke didn’t have time off until Christmas.

  “To your parents’? I’m not going to crash your family time.” Besides, I declined to add, warm family holidays made things worse.

  “My parents adore you, and you could have bonded over your shared love of brisket. Nothing beats my mom’s brisket.”

  “Maybe her latkes.” I chuckled and wiped my face with the edge of my towel.

  I’d met Mr. and Mrs. Abrams several times in the fourteen years since I first visited my brother Sean at Columbia. He roomed with Luke in college, and the Abramses adopted him into their New York family and Jewish traditions. Not that Luke kept up most of those traditions on his own. His parents did. Every time I went to visit for a weekend, Mrs. Abrams insisted that I come over for Shabbat dinner. She was an amazing cook.

  But being there reminded me of Sean. The holidays were hard enough since he died nine years ago.

  My parents skipped traditional holiday celebrations altogether and traveled every year to the sunniest locale they could find. This year, they took off for Hawaii. I always got an invitation, but I stopped going after the first two years. Aggressively avoiding the memories depressed me as much as steeping in them. Christmas cheer is hard to come by with my mom’s forced holiday joy and my dad’s easy everyday aggression.

  “You missed it. We had latkes and kugel with apricots.” Luke smacked his lips, enhancing the allure of the missed opportunity.

  “Tempting, but I didn’t want to take the time off for a trip. I have some big projects at work. Besides, it wasn’t actually Hanukkah.”

  “Mom made me brisket anyway.”

  I poked Luke in the center of his chiseled chest. “Such a mama’s boy.”

  “You’ll get no denial from me on that.” His smile slipped. “So, you had a good day?”

  “I had a great day.” I grinned wider, hoping Luke would buy my mirth. “You don’t have to babysit me, Luke. I’m a grown woman.”

  Luke sniffed. “I’m aware.”

  A brief crackle of tension zinged between us and tickled my skin. His flirtation and my own wishful thinking sparked a tingle starting in my neck and firing down my spine.

  Tall, dark, handsome Luke, with his personal trainer physique and sharp, hazel eyes cut through with green, was monstrously out of my league. And maybe the mini crush I had since I was fifteen had evolved in complexity, but it was still nothing but a temperature-raising fantasy.

  He treated me like a sister—even more so since Sean’s cancer diagnosis. Despite my crush and the simmering awkwardness that bubbled up more and more these days, he was like a brother to me. Mostly. At least, until he took his shirt off.

  “Well, I better go—” I shoved my hands in my pockets.

  A buzzing in my jacket pocket and strains of Ani DeFranco’s acoustics interrupted my attempt at a graceful goodbye. I pulled my phone out, saw the name on the screen, and grimaced.

  Fucking Ricky.

  I showed Luke the phone. “I have to take this. I’ve been trying to talk to him about getting the rest of his stuff.” I tapped the green button and pulled the device to my ear. “Wow, you called me back.”

  Luke crossed his arms and shook his head.

  Ricky’s petulance whined at me through muffled background noise. “Did I have a choice? You’re threatening to trash everything I own.”

  “Everything? Have you been wandering around naked for four months? It’s piles of video games and useless shit, and I’ve been a saint to keep it this long and do everything but contact you via carrier pigeon. I’m not a storage facility.”

  “I’ve got some important things going on.”

  I waved an exasperated hand in the air and turned away from Luke’s disappointed eyes and into the glare of the rising sun. I blinked and focused on my phone call. “You went to Burning Man. That’s hardly critical.”

  “That was September.”

  “Exactly. It’s almost New Year’s!” 1-2-3-4-5. Stay calm. “I boxed everything. You just have to come get it.”

  “Fine. That’s why I’m calling. We’re on our way to your house.”

  Fantastic. I’m pestering him for months with no word, and now, he’s ready to show up at my house with no notice. “You can’t call me at the last minute. I’m not even home.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know you’d be out somewhere? You’re never out this early on a Saturday.” His voice pitched nasal again.

  How had I ever listened to this man’s screeching?

  “As far as you’d remember, I’m not even up this early on a Saturday. What were you going to do? Wake me up pounding on the door?”

  Ricky grumbled. “Look, do you want me to get my stuff or not? I’m trying to do what you want, Erin. You said I had to do it this weekend.”

  “I said call me so we could arrange a time. You didn’t call.”

  “I’m calling now,” he yapped back. “Would it kill you to be flexible?”

  I growled under my breath then, once again, tried to let go of my expectations. At this point, they were so low that you’d need a seismograph to detect them.

  At least, I wouldn’t start the New Year with his crap in my house. New Year, new me, new start. No more Ricky.

  “Fine. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  I hung up and tossed my phone into my gym bag.

  Luke still had his arms folded, looking as irritated as I felt. “Ricky’s coming over?”

  “Yes. He’s finally moving his boxes and furniture. I had to threaten him, and—” I stopped. “He said, ‘we.’”“

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘We’re on our way.’ I swear if he’s bringing one of his shitty friends.” I closed my eyes and cursed again. “Of course, he is. He probably needs help loading and unloading. Ugh.”

  My nose curled remembering the assortment of weirdos I put up with toward the end of our relationship. One of them had stolen money from me. I was sure of it. Ricky always defended them, but some of them were squirrelly jackasses who looked like they begged for dollars on the side of the road to buy meth.

  “I’m coming with you,” Luke declared.

  I sighed. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I remember some of these dudes. You shouldn’t be alone with them.”

  I drew my shoulders back and snapped, “I’m a Texan, Luke. I do own a gun.”

  “You have Sean’s old hunting rifle. When was the last time you even cleaned that thing?”

  His truth pinched my mouth shut, so he continued.

  “Forget it. Didn’t one of them break into your house or something? I’ll follow you and stay until they leave, so they know that you have someone around looking out for you.”

  The pique of having to borrow a penis shield set me off. “I hate that as a woman I have to make up having a guy in my life so people act right.”

  “It sucks, but you’re not making things up.” Luke squeezed my shoulder, prompting my urge to dive into his arms and wail. I resisted it, and he ran a hand up and down my sore bicep. “I’ll grab my things and meet you by the exit.”

  I got in my car and pulled to the end of the lot, checking my rearview mirror in between banging my head on the steering wheel.

  Why had I wasted three years on Ricky? I’d been as agreeable about storing his crap as any girlfriend would be. Some women might have set his shit on fire by now. I lost myself in a temporary fantasy of boyfriend bonfires.

  Beep, beep.

  Luke sat behind me in his SUV. Hell, maybe it wasn’t too late. I
had matches and lighter fluid. Smirking and laughing, I pulled out. Luke might even help me, but I wouldn’t want him to think I was that crazy.

  Chapter 2

  Luke

  Dumbass Ricky was already there when I parked my SUV behind Erin’s sedan. He leaped out of the passenger side of a shaky pickup truck while a sprite of a woman slipped out of the driver’s seat.

  Erin opened the garage and got out of the car, knocking the door closed with a hard shove. I followed her up the drive where her lazy, unfocused parasite of an ex-boyfriend stood. A petite, black-clad woman with sapphire, waist-length hair flanked him with her hands fisted on her narrow hips. She surely couldn’t be expected to help him move anything, so she had to be his new lady friend.

  “Just coming home? You were never this frisky when we dated.” His eyes roamed the length of Erin’s body. My chest swelled, and I strode faster to her side, struggling not to knock him to the ground and smash his smug face into the pavement. Ricky flicked his murky eyes my direction. “And with your guard dog. Great.”

  For a minute, he looked to be preparing another snide remark, but the five inches of height and thirty pounds of muscle I had on him probably made him reconsider.

  Do not punch him. Do not punch him.

  “He wanted to help,” Erin said.

  Ricky smirked. “Yeah. He’s real helpful. Helping himself to—”

  “Look…” I spoke to head off whatever he might say but scrambled to find the words to complete the sentence. Being unnerved by this putz pissed me off, making things worse. Lucky for me, Erin was also interrupting.

  “You could start with, ‘Thanks, Luke.’ How about that?”

  An angry squeak flew from over Ricky’s shoulder, once again stopping him from opening his fat mouth. “Thanks? You never should have been holding on to his stuff in the first place.” The woman tossed her blue bangs out of her face and squinted at me. “I hope you know what a bitch she is. She’s mad because he left her. She’s not over him.”