Charlotte Stein - Telling Tales

CHARLOTTE STEIN

A division of HarperCollins Publishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Mischief

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.mischiefbooks.com

Originally published in 2011 in the United Kingdom by Xcite Books.

1

Copyright © Charlotte Stein 2011

Charlotte Stein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008158309

Version: 2015-11-20

To the Terrifying Person of Great Importance, for making me believe I could be a writer.

Contents

Cover

Title Page Telling Tales CHARLOTTE STEIN A division of HarperCollins Publishers www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright Mischief An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.mischiefbooks.com Originally published in 2011 in the United Kingdom by Xcite Books. 1 Copyright © Charlotte Stein 2011 Charlotte Stein asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008158309 Version: 2015-11-20

Dedication To the Terrifying Person of Great Importance, for making me believe I could be a writer.

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

More from Mischief

About the Author

About the Publisher

In my head, I fucked him the first opportunity I got. I didn’t wait for some perfect time, some perfect place, some perfect convergence of events. I just kissed his sweet mouth right in the middle of him telling me something funny or ridiculous, like – peas are green because they ate too much spinach – and then when he couldn’t quite gather himself after something like that I took his hand and pushed it between my legs.

Or maybe in this dream scenario I could have taken my hand, and pushed it between his legs. I spent so many nights in college, thinking about how his cock would taste and feel. It doesn’t take much to shove my imagination into a slightly different sort of area – one where I unzipped his jeans and licked long and wet over the length of him, while he sat back and simply…let me.

That’s all we were missing, after all. Him letting me. I mean, it wasn’t as though I ever asked or tried to fuck him or any of that stuff, but it was always in my head. That I would make a move on him and he would knock me back, and then I’d lose that bubbling bright friendship between us forever.

Funny how I seem to have lost it anyway. I didn’t even try, and I’ve lost his friendship anyway. It’s been five years, for God’s sake. It’s been longer, according to Professor Warren’s letter, and for a moment I’m just so lost on a sea of trying to remember Wade Robinson’s face.

I’m lost, thinking about things that never happened – his mouth on mine in the back of Kitty’s old Ford Escort, fingers sliding slickly through my ever-ready cunt. How many girls did he do that with? Too many to fucking count, but never to me.

No – I got to sit up front and pretend I couldn’t hear him making out with Tammy or Candy or Veronica, while Joan Jett blasted out from the radio and Kitty shouted at me that we should really actually pick up some boys sometime.

Instead of letting ourselves escort Wade the make-out machine around.

Of course, Kitty soon got into the swing of things. She was my little cloud of blonde loveliness, and she floated through the rest of college on a tide of too-happy. And I was happy too, I was. I really was. We had a great time together – me, Wade, Kitty, and Cameron.

So why am I looking at this letter with dread?

I look at it with dread all through breakfast. And then all the way through lunch too, while simultaneously trying to think of a way to make knitting sound interesting. The magazine wants the article by the seventeenth, but something in me says I’m not quite going to make it.

I’m not even sure what knitting is, really. Something to do with wool, maybe? Possibly a little bit about making jumpers that no one wants to wear with two pointed sticks? I can’t build an article on those things – I know that much. I might as well write what I really want to, which goes something like this:

And then aliens invaded Earth and blew up all the knitting in the world.

But instead I look at the letter again, while pretending I’m not doing anything of the sort. The letter mocks me with its weirdness and its reminders of everything I don’t have anymore, and it makes me think strange things like: I wonder if Wade ever did become a screenwriter. I wonder if he’s still as funny and amazing and handsome, with his gorgeous electric-blue eyes and his mean, mean mouth and his look of something wolfish, as though he might just bite you at any second. God, why did he have to be so attractive? I would have loved him if he’d looked like something that crawled out of a drain.

And I know that much is true, because when the phone rings and it’s suddenly Wade’s voice crawling out of my past at me, saying things in that yawing Canadian accent of his like yeah, no time has passed at all, everything in me goes still. I can’t move for a second, just sitting there staring at the answering machine like it’s suddenly caught on fire.

While he says perfectly normal, ordinary things like How’ve you been, Allie-Cat?

As though no time has passed and I’ll just understand it’s him, immediately. He even has the nerve to demand I pick up pick up pick up , because of course he knows I’ll be here; I have to be here – I’ve just been sitting in one place all this time, waiting for him to grace me with his presence.