Good Girl, page 1
Good Girl
Brill Harper
Published by Brill Harper, 2019.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
GOOD GIRL
First edition. March 8, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 Brill Harper.
ISBN: 978-1386326137
Written by Brill Harper.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About this Book
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
EPILOGUE
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Further Reading: Nailed: A Blue Collar Bad Boys Book
Also By Brill Harper
About this Book
Virginia Constance Kramer is a good girl. Until she meets the man that makes her want to be bad...
He’s got a record; she’s never been so much as grounded.
His old man is a convict; her dad is the police sergeant.
He’s seen too much darkness; she can barely see out of the stained-glass curtain the world wants her to hide behind.
She’s willing to fight her parents, the town, and the whole world if she has to, but first she has to get past the wall Joe Franklin has built around his heart. He thinks she’s too good, too sweet, too pure for a man like him.
She thinks being good is overrated.
Author Confession: This is a slower burn romance than you might be used to from me, but I promise Virginia and Joe are supercouple material. It’s the classic opposites attract, good girl/bad boy, other side of the tracks, her first time tropey goodness you need in your life. You know how sometimes it feels like nobody sees the real you? Well Joe really sees Ginny. He may be rough on the exterior, but he’s the only one who understands how much pain she’s in as her family grieves the death of her little sister. Watch him grow into an alphamallow right before your eyes. And then the slow burn will scorch your eReader.
ONE
Virginia
The September sunshine teases with the very last tendrils of summer, and it already smells like autumn. I’m okay with this. Another season has passed, winding more time like gauze bandages over a wound that feels like it will never heal.
Will it ever heal?
My Mary-Janes click across the cobblestone courtyard. It’s deserted now, since most of the students flee the grounds of Saint Catherine’s before the last bell stops chiming, but I like to dawdle. The quiet here is more tolerable than the unnatural quiet at home, which sometimes seems stifling. Oppressive and heavy. Like I can’t get enough air into my lungs until I leave it.
The tranquility here in the courtyard feels good, and not a lot does right now. Not since May.
Whenever I wish I could go to public school, I remember how much I love this courtyard. It’s worth the nuns, the uniform, and the rules.
Most of the time.
I let out a sigh and resume my walk. Meandering the breezeway, I look up and freeze, stunned by the beginnings of a mural so beautiful it makes me physically ache. I move as if I have no choice, drawn to the figure glowing in the center. It’s so lifelike, and yet, so very not. Ethereal, like nothing I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen plenty of pictures of Jesus, believe me. I reach out my hand. Will it feel like touching God?
“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” a voice stops me. “The paint is still wet.”
For one split second, I think maybe it really is God talking to me. Then movement catches my eye, and I realize there is a man crouching in front of the wall less than two feet away from my feet, wiping a paintbrush on a rag.
Well, that’s embarrassing.
“I’m sorry. I...it seemed so...I,” I stammer.
He laughs and raises his face to me. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
The man looking up at me is the kind of guy that I’m not supposed to think is attractive, which is probably why my knees knock together the instant I catch sight of the black gauge in his earlobe.
The girls at my school are supposed to like the boys from Woodbridge Prep. They are the only boys St. Cath’s will plan co-ed activities with since they are boys of a suitable nature. They wear ties to dances. They play sports and shave their faces clean every morning. They shake hands with fathers and open doors for nuns.
This guy with the earring is the opposite of suitable.
His jeans are too tight. They are the kind of jeans that you don’t buy pre-faded or distressed, the kind that real men distress themselves doing real things. I’m not sure what those real things are, but I’m sure they include moving heavy objects and working with their hands.
His t-shirt is plain black and stretched tautly over his chest. His black boots are well worn, and day-old stubble dusts his cheeks. The stubble matches his dark messy hair, the waves finger-combed into just-got-out-of-bed perfection. He’s as far from a Woodbridge boy as a St. Cath’s girl can get, and the idea of someone like him in the world suddenly expands my known universe.
He’s still waiting for an answer.
I don’t just blush; I glow like an ember from a blazing fire. I can feel it.
He straightens, pulling on a flannel shirt he’d thrown over a small cooler, and when he’s at his full height, I feel a little intimidated and a little turned on at the same time. He’s dressing in front of me, and it’s illicit even though nary an untoward action has occurred.
“It’s lovely,” I finally manage. “I wish I knew more about art...lovely seems like a lame word.” Because you are so lame, Ginny.
He stands next to me and inspects his work, tilting his head right and then left. “I don’t really know much about art either. But lovely isn’t what I was going for.”
“You have to know about art. You’re an artist.”
He turns to me, and my eyes trace a path from the fourth button of his shirt at my eye level all the way to his face. He lifts one corner of his mouth at my perusal. “Do you know how to drive?”
“Yes.” It’s an odd question, and I wonder if he thinks I’ll give him a ride or something. Which I wouldn’t. I’m pretty sure. Also, I don’t have a car.
“Do you know all about the engine? The names for all the parts, how it works?”
“No.” And then I understand what he is getting at. The behind the scenes stuff isn’t always necessary to understand. “That makes sense.”
“I like to color the world. I don’t know anything about technique or all the stuff they talk about in textbooks.” He shrugs. “But painting a mural is sure as hell better than picking up trash on the highway.”
My mind goes to the chain gangs I see now and then on the roadside, and the breath catches in my throat. Maybe this is his community service sentence? He must have been court ordered to paint the mural.
I don’t think I can touch bottom of the pool I’ve found myself in, but he’s looking at me as if he’s waiting for my overreaction. He knows what I’m thinking, and he’s trying to shock me, so I buck up and force myself to maintain eye contact.
His eyes are as dark as brown can get without being black. Looking into them feels like falling.
“What else do you paint?” I ask, reaching for manners I’m not feeling at the moment since part of me wants to run and the other wants to squeal like I’m suddenly thirteen again.
His jaw sets and he begins packing up his tools, cleaning brushes. “Some people think graffiti is art,” he challenges.
“Is that what you’re doing service for? Graffiti?”
He stops and looks at me as if he’s surprised I’m still there. “No.”
That’s all. Just no. “Well, then, back to my other question. What else do you paint?”
“Lots of things. Mostly cars.” I wasn’t sure if he was saying that he paints pictures of cars or if he paints actual cars. “My preferred canvas is skin.”
“Skin?”
“Yeah. Tattoos.”
My heart thumps in double time. “Oh.”
He winks at me. “I gotta go. See you around, Sister Christian.”
I don’t even know what that means, but I catch myself watching him walk away and get mad at myself for all the things I could have said that weren’t oh.
Joe
FUCK. ME.
I just got struck stupid. By a wisp of a girl in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform.
I chuckle again and pack up my car. I’ve had enough Jesus for one day. “No offense, Dude,” I say to my rear view.
I saw her earlier today, before the courtyard. I was inside the school talking to the nuns about the mural. She was between classes, walking in a group of giggling girls, yet even in the middle she was separate. Different.
It was as if she moved in slow motion while the rest of the world around her traveled on high speed film. I forgot to breathe, watching her until she entered her classroom. I don’t understand how she could stand out in a sea of identical uniforms or why I cared.
But I did. I wanted her. In a way that made me powerless with craving.
And when I realized it was her in the courtyard. When I got a good look at those long legs under the plaid skirt—every nerve in my body shifted to high alert.
I slap my hand on the steering wheel and turn up my tunes. There is nothing for me down that path—nothing but misery. Why can’t I get her off my mind? Yeah, she is pretty, and yeah—the uniform is fucking hot. But she is so far removed from my type she could be from another planet.
Instead she’s just from a different part of town.
Still, all the blame can’t be placed at my feet. It shouldn’t be legal for a girl to be so pure and look so hot.
Jailbait. Remember that word, dude. Jailbait.
Not to mention I really don’t want to screw this job up. How I ended up painting Jesus on the wall of Catholic girls school is anybody’s guess, but this is a big deal for me. Most of my painting jobs are done in Al’s Auto Body Shop and a few Saturday shifts at my brother’s tattoo studio. I’m just now getting commissioned for my art, and I really want to do a good job. Word of mouth is important. And making a play on one of the high school students probably won’t get me any referrals.
At least none that don’t include eternal hellfire.
Besides, I may not be a religious guy, but pissing off a bunch of nuns is one kind of karma I don’t need.
Still, I’ll have sweet dreams tonight about blondes with big...blue eyes. Yeah. Big blue eyes.
Fuck. Who am I kidding. I’m going to dream about her. I’m going to think about her when I rub one out tonight. That sweet little school girl uniform has me ready to take my dick out right now. I could bore through a wall with it thinking of that tight, sweet body and perky round tits.
Virginia
I HAVEN’T SEEN MR. Unsuitable in days. Every day, I stop and look at Jesus, but there’s never any change. I’m sure there is a metaphor in there, about searching the face of God for something new, but I don’t have it in me to figure it out.
The artist hasn’t come back, and I find this disappointing because I’m sure I could hold my own with him now that I’ve had some time to work out all the things I could have said that would have sounded witty or at least mature that day in the courtyard. Things better than oh.
I think about his chiseled jaw and his even white teeth. His dark eyes. That deep voice that makes me think of smoky whiskey and seasoned leather.
Yeah, probably I wouldn’t be able to hold my own with him anyway. I’d probably still squeak out the word oh.
It’s Saturday morning and I’m starving but don’t want to go downstairs until Dad leaves for his golf game. Weekends are hardest now. We used to have big family breakfasts on Saturdays and Sundays. So much food that nobody would eat lunch. Now, nobody eats meals together at my house. Mom just doesn’t eat at all.
I miss the days of Dad dancing Mom around the kitchen when she was trying to fry bacon. It used to embarrass me, especially if I’d had a friend over the night before. God, the things they would say to each other that I’d have to pretend not to understand. My dad liked a good double entendre, but he was never skilled at subtlety.
Now, I’d give just about anything for my parents to display inappropriate affection.
Dad’s car door slams and I venture out. As I walk down the hall, I notice that the guest room door is ajar. Maybe Mom is finally getting the fall decorations out. It used to be that autumn began as soon as Labor Day was over, but this year, there is nary a silk leaf in sight. I miss that too, even though I complained to my friends how my house was always under some sort of holiday siege. Now it just feels dark, even when all the lights are on.
I poke my head into the seldom used room cautiously. The bed is unmade. My heart makes a freefall to the bottom of my ribcage. We don’t have a guest. One of my parents slept in there last night. I close the door as if the blight will be neutralized by shutting it away. Was it the first time? Suddenly, I don’t think so.
What does it mean, exactly? Maybe my dad had snored too loudly. Or maybe he’d come in too late from working a case and didn’t want to wake Mom, so he crawled into the guest bed. Or maybe things had progressed way past lack of kitchen dancing.
I walk very carefully down the rest of the hallway, stepping around the boards that creak. If I am quiet...what? Will that keep my family together? I stop at the bottom of the stairs, pinned in place by the sight of a packed suitcase next to the front door.
Mom sits primly on the couch, her hands in her lap. She’s clutching a tissue. The house is quiet except for the hum of the dishwasher in the kitchen. I am struck with a sudden urge to slink away before Mom sees me. Before she can say the words that I somehow know are coming.
But Mom looks up, her eyes rimmed in pink. She makes eye contact. Last chance for avoiding the scene has come and gone, and now I have to deal with reality.
“What’s going on, Mom?” I ask on a croaky, untried voice. I don’t sound like myself. I sound changed already. Whatever is going to happen has already altered me.
“Sit down, sweetie.”
Instead of sitting on the couch or the chair, like my mother wants me to, I lower myself to the third step. I feel as if I am straddling two places. Upstairs and downstairs. My childhood and this new reality that includes a suitcase by the door.
“Grandma needs me to come and stay with her for a time. She broke her hip last night—she’s okay. Well, she’ll be okay. But they are operating today, and she’ll need me to help her for a while. And to take care of the house and Mipsy while she’s in the hospital.” Mom doesn’t look at me while she talks. She’s got that same glazed over look in her eyes she’s had for months. “I’m going to go stay with Grandma for a while, but I can’t take you out of school. It wouldn’t be fair. It’s your senior year.”
Okay. My grandma needs to be fine. I can’t deal with any more loss. “How long will you be gone?”
“I’m not coming back, Ginny.”
“What?” Even though I know it’s true, I can’t let the words sink in or become real. “Mom, why?”
“Your father and I have grown apart. I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t even understand. But if Grandma hadn’t fallen, I would have left anyway. I just would have waited until you went to college.”
Waves of disbelief crash over me but I can’t find anything to hold on to. “So you’re just leaving us?”
“We’ll arrange some trips back and forth for you so you can visit Grandma, too. I’m leaving your father. I’m not leaving you, sweetie.”
“That’s not what it feels like.”
“I’m sorry, honey. I wish I could make this easier on you. And if you weren’t in the middle of your senior year, we could have arranged something better. It just makes sense that you stay here with your father. It wouldn’t be fair to uproot you now.”
I stand up. “Fair? What about Dad? How can you just walk out on us? What if you guys did date nights again...or saw a marriage counselor or something? You can’t just walk out on your marriage.”
My voice is shrill. Panicked. I doubt my agitation will change her mind, but it’s bubbling to the surface and I don’t know how to tamp it down. How does everyone around here keep it tamped down? We don’t express our grief in wails in this house. We cover it with more and more dirt, burying any feelings that might go with it a little more every day. It’s just that I’m not as good at it as they are. I keep questioning it. Keep trying to climb out of the grave we all seemed to join my sister in.
“I’m sorry. Really I am. But I can’t stay here.”
I guess it’s every man for himself around here now.
TWO
Virginia
I’m not sure what compels me to want to buy a pack of cigarettes at the EZMart on the corner of 3rd and Viking. I don’t smoke. I don’t think I even know anyone who does.
After all, Virginia Constance Kramer is a good girl. She’s a senior at Saint Catherine’s on track with mostly good grades to a mostly good state college. Her dad is Sergeant Kramer of the Pine City Police Department. She is optimistic, unfailingly polite, and smiles when she feels like crying.
She is me and I don’t even know her.
Whatever it is that brought me here, the force of it left as soon as I walked in and now I’m not sure what to do. I’m re-working up my nerve, I suppose, so I circle the candy aisle, once again, in search of the chocolate bar that will make my attempt to purchase a pack of smokes seem legitimate to the clerk at the counter. Something that screams I lack concern and I’m an adult and I do this all the time. I can’t seem to decide which candy wrapper sums all that up. The clerk isn’t even paying attention to me, which is good because I know I’m being ridiculous.
