Unchained Melody by S.K. Munt Page A

line and saw the cause of it- the L-shaped shadow of one of her Doc Martens being placed up on her shoe shelf on the wall facing him.
    Callie was a metal-head like them, but not in the typical sense. She loved music, and she loved the festival lifestyle. She dressed in grunge and she wore her faded cap as religiously as the guys at school donned their own... but Callie Clay was no slob. She liked to keep things neat and orderly. She didn’t wear patchouli, she washed her hair daily, and she’d never so much as looked sideways at a bong in her life. Her room was as ordered as Hunter imagined Marnie’s or Meredith’s would be and she smelled cleaner than both girls, like fresh air and luxurious linens. She was a tomboy yes, tough enough to be in the thick of any mosh pit; and yet she was still very much a girl. Watching her shadowy-self line up her boots on her perfect little shelf in her perfect little room suddenly reminded Hunter of that.
    No wonder Meredith was suspicious! Most girls like Callie, who had only male friends and hung out in dingy taverns watching acoustic gigs, tended to be of the dreadlocked and tie-dyed variety, with a face full of piercings, their beauty concealed behind thick dark eyeliner and a cloud of clove smoke. Those kinds of girls wouldn’t threaten someone as polished as Meredith, but the fact that Callie could play the drums while wearing her mum’s Chanel (something Hunter only knew about because his mother coveted it) sort of made Callie ideal for both him and Ryan, and probably, for every other guy who was lucky enough to get to know her.
    Hunter smirked. The irony was that he had been as blind to Callie’s appeal as he had been to Meredith’s. He hadn’t spent his life pining over either girl, so it was weird that one almost hadn’t made her crush known because of the constant presence of the other!
    ‘No. If we’d left you alone, that would be bailing.’ He saw Callie’s shadow shrug. ‘I’m glad you rang though. I feel asleep in my clothes- that would have felt gross in the morning.’
    ‘Why did you leave?’ He asked, waiting expectantly at the window for her to turn around and open her blinds. More often than not, they looked at each other across their yards when they spoke on the phone. But Callie didn’t come to her window. Instead, he saw one of her hands move to her hip. The lighting in her room was low and had a purplish glow, which meant that only the lavender butterfly string lights which dangled over her dresser and bookshelf were on. Her hand began to ruck up her dress, and Hunter inhaled sharply and looked down at the flickering candles beneath him. Jesus! She had to be half-asleep not to turn and check her window before taking her clothes off!
    ‘We walked Marnie home and then Ryan walked me back here. What time is it anyway?’
    ‘Almost midnight.’ Hunter dared another glance up at the window, and then immediately wished he hadn’t, because her silhouette was glorious. And the way she was wriggling her hips to get her panties down reminded him of the way she had danced earlier that night to the hip-hop tracks and suddenly, he felt parched. He knew he should look away but he also knew he’d pour hot wax over his hand before he shut his blinds on the spectacle that was his best friend unwittingly doing a strip-tease for him.
    It’s not wrong. It’s not like I can actually see her skin or anything, he told himself, even as he moved to the window for a closer look and prayed that she’d accidentally open her blinds as much as he prayed that she wouldn’t.
    ‘Wow, twelve?’ Callie’s voice lowered. ‘How long were you making out for?’
    Hunter swallowed. Damn her and that voice! ‘Um, a couple of hours I guess.’
    Callie laughed a low, throaty sound. ‘How many bases did you get around?’
    ‘Just the first.’ He sighed. As much fun as kissing had been, Meredith had kept him in a state of hyper-erection-awareness and lust for far too long.