Free No Strings Attached by Randi Reisfeld Page B

Katie, she mused. Why did the pocket-size princess need the money so badly? And why was she flinging herself at these random rich guys to get it? Didn’t she have enough of both at home? This was the girl who, to Harper’s amusement-slash-horror, had brought her own toilet paper to the share house! Like the community rolls weren’t good enough to wipe her pampered butt. Katie tore from her own zillion-ply stash!
    Harper sighed. Katie was crowding her head. She wandered out to the kitchen for a snack, where, unsurprisingly, more bickering was going on. Mitch was royally pissed at Ali, who apparently had left some chicken out to defrost—and had forgotten about it until the odor had stunk up the room. In related piss-off-iness, he was also questioning the number of guests she’d brought into the house. “What did you even know about that guy who was here last night? He looked homeless.”
    Ali shrugged. “He needed a place to crash.”
    â€œBut this isn’t a crash pad,” Mitch reminded her. “It’s our home for the summer.”
    â€œExactly,” Joss had tossed in, though no one had asked him, “ our home. Ali’s one of us. She has rights too.”
    Mitch looked betrayed. He was about to say something, but never got the chance. An eardrum-piercing, roof-raising series of shrieks shook the house. Mandy. She’d been on the toilet, apparently, when Clarence the ferret pushed the dooropen with his nose and leaped into her bare lap. Now she was running to her room, screeching at the top of her lungs. Her capris were down around her ankles and, Harper envisioned, pee was running down her thigh.
    It was time for a “moment of Zen.”
    Armed with her journal and a big bath towel, Harper headed out. The narrow ribbon of sand backing onto the share house could barely be called a beach. It was grassy, and full of weeds. Harper came here often, especially at times like now, at dusk, when she had it all to herself.
    She could hear the splashes of birds ducking and fishing in the surf, the rhythm of the waves lapping onto the shore. If the night happened to be clear, she could write by moonlight. That wouldn’t be the case tonight. The sky had been tinny all day, the air thick with humidity. It’d rain soon. The gloom matched her mood.
    Her relationship with Luke Clearwater had started as a friendship. Two outsiders bonding over poetry, writing. They’d met at Barnes & Noble. She’d been sitting on the floor, blocking the narrow aisle with Maya Angelou’s inspirational And Still I Rise spread on her knees. People stepped around her, or over her, mumbling annoyed “ excuse me’s.” Luke had knelt down next to her, clutching a copy of The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes . And for the next hour, shoppers had to avoid stepping on both of them.
    It was through the words, then, written by others, that Harper and Luke had scripted their own love story. It had all seemed so organic.
    And simple. He got her. Understood her passions because he shared so many of them. He wasn’t put off by her moods—as her mom constantly reminded her, she was either sulky or sarcastic, serious or angry. She trusted Luke with her ideas, her own poetry, her real self. He responded kindly and constructively, admitting that “My Brother” (a poem reflecting Harper’s longing for a sibling) made him cry. He’d helped her with one called “Flat,” wondering if the poem about spiritual death wouldn’t be more powerful if she killed that middle verse.
    Harper had taken a big breath, and a bigger chance, exposing her soul to him. It was her first time.
    Harper helped Luke, too. He was a senior at Boston Latin High School and delivered pizza after school, but he had the soul of a writer. Unfortunately, he had trouble stitching his profound, but scattered thoughts into a cohesive story. She’d worked on that with him, forcing him