No Strings Attached by Randi Reisfeld Read Free Book Online Page A

Why.
    Joss Wanderman stretched out on the sofa, tossed his guitar across his belly, and took a long pull of Budweiser. He leaned back, savoring the suds and the moment. The first quiet one he’d had since arriving here last weekend.
    That it was well past 4 a.m. did not guarantee peace. Not in this house of harridans, as he privately called it. The recriminations, sarcastic one-ups—even the laughing, bedspring-rattling, and moaning, not to mention those infernal ferret noises—knew no curfews.
    The main reason Joss had taken the late shift bartending gig—okay, the second reason—was to keep hours that kept him away from his housemates. Housemates! Had he ever used that word? Yet, as he languidly ran his fingers over the six-string, he kinda dug the sound of it.
    The idea of being in one place for a while was really what had appealed to him. He’d been on the road for the better part of the year, the past eight months a different city, different hotel every other day, or inside a tour bus. His lowly roadie status, even with a big-name rock act like Jimi Jones, meant he didn’t get his own space. In hotels, he had a roommate. On the bus, up to six guys shared the two rows of triple bunks.
    So when the tour ended and this came up, a three-month summer share gig, with a private room, he impulsively took it.
    It was turning out that impulses were not his strong suit.
    Since arriving last, he’d taken the only bedroom left. He didn’t care that it was downstairs or that it lacked air-conditioning. Nor did the peeling wallpaper bother him, or even the fact that it didn’t have its own bathroom. What bugged him were the paper-thin walls. And in the whole “one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor” category, his spanned both Alefiya’s and Mandy’s. The last thing Joss cared about was listening—and potentially being drawn in—to everyone else’s drama.
    Mitch had sought him out, the only other XY chromosome in the house. The do-good dude regaled Joss with his Big Plans for Life with Leonora: the well-heeled WASP who offered old-money stability; status; long, winding driveways leading to sprawling homes; luxury cars; leisure tennis and golf games; 2.3 children with names like Taylor and Tucker.
    Joss had no quarrel with Mitch—the cat was cool. Besides, it was easy to tune out the soliloquies.
    It was impossible to not know what was going on with the girls on the other side of his bedroom wall. Katie and Harper—jailbait, like so many groupies he’d seen. In his habit, Joss had renamed them: Smilin’ Suzie Q and Angry Young Babe. How’d this deuce end up roommates, anyway?
    SSQ, so clearly a pampered princess from the not-so-faraway land of the Boston blue bloods, was such a phony! She wanted everyone to think of her as radiant, cool, collected—like she wasn’t repulsed by the shoddy share house and her random roommates.
    It was the condescending tone she used with Mandy when “complimenting” one of her trashier outfits, or “supporting” Mandy’s getting-into-showbiz goal. If SSQ believed she was hiding her “I’m so above all of you” attitude, she was mistaken. Joss saw the way her nose scrunched whenever she tossed one of Alefiya’s half-eaten overripe plums or sweaty peaches left in the den; the disapproving eyes she cast on the carefree chick when she brought home a stray. Ali’s strays often came with gifts—cannabis, for sure; maybe other substances—and stayed the night.
    Just to fuck with SSQ, Joss was sure, AYB purposely got closer to Alefiya. He liked that about her.
    Not that Joss took sides. It was his misfortune to be able tosee things from both points of view. He could make all the private fun of Katie he wanted, but he felt her pain, man. He knew the effort it took to put on a carefree face, to pretend everything was peachy keen, all the time. Why she was here,