1991
He wasn’t pursuing her, really. Three classes of his six, chosen solely on the basis of his major in world history and his minors in French and philosophy, and she happened to be in all of them. Second row, just off the center aisle, the muted light of the auditorium glinting off the buckles of her combat boots that stopped just short of her knees, she sat, his dark goddess. Zoe Edelstein, though she was so incandescently hot, she really only needed one name.
Something about the skirts captured his imagination, never longer than the middle of her thigh, with their flirty black lace and silver chain embellishments, or the racy plaid. For the past six weeks, his subconscious had been filled with images of stack-heeled boots, striped stockings and garter belts. Haunting his dreams at night, she perched on the edge of the desk in his miniscule dorm room, reading their latest assignment from French Lit, in French, pausing with every other paragraph to remove an article of clothing.
Eli’s chosen outlet to blow off steam was to lurk in the massive fiction section of the University of Nevada Las Vegas library, the size of which was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that their collection of previously banned books was immense, and mostly deserted, giving him a refuge to study, do his homework, and read stuff that was not on any syllabus. The curse was the distraction it posed to a man with unfinished homework in the last year of his undergraduate career.
The call of D.H. Lawrence’s work was clear and strong, especially considering he’d read it before, having snuck it out of his older brother’s collection. Unfortunately he’d had to sneak it back when his dad discovered it hidden under his mattress. Surprisingly, one of their only lecture-free interactions.
Forgoing his studying, he picked up Lady Chatterley’s Lover and fell into the world of the sexually frustrated Constance, and her physically paralyzed and emotionally distant husband, Lord Clifford Chatterley. The sexual escapades of her and her lover, the gameskeeper, Oliver Mellors may as well have been another planet for Eli. The freedom from constraint, restraint, and the sex . . . it was the exact antithesis of his life thus far. Other than the occasional dalliance with a foreign exchange student, his personal life had been sparsely populated by anything other than his imagination.
He read until his stomach intervened, reminding him that he hadn’t even looked at food since eleven that morning. He tossed his pen in the paperback to hold his place, grabbed his black wool coat and bag, and took two steps towards the check-out desk before coming up short.
Sitting primly behind the tall, semicircular desk in her black reading glasses with the pink bows, was Zoe. Her black hair was up in pigtails, her white dress shirt that she’d kept buttoned for class was now open far enough down to see some sort of lacy thing beneath it. Eli closed his eyes and took a deep breath to ensure that he was, in fact, still breathing. The way she molested a pen cap, a sultry combination of light chewing and rolling it around her full, red lips, was enough to make his temperature spike and his pants way too tight to be comfortable. Given his choice of reading material, there was a good chance that he would faint before she even managed to stamp the book.
Three people stood in line ahead of him, only serving to heighten the anticipation instead of calming his nerves. He watched her hands as she handled the books, delicate with red, glittery nails, her lips as she smiled at the patrons, red and full like she bit them often, her voice, cheerful and refined like Bostonian gentry, everything committed to memory for him to obsess over while he was doing his chemistry later this evening.
He approached the desk and set his book down as a girl behind a rolling cart full of books came up to Zoe. They had a brief conversation, too quiet for him to hear even though he was only a couple of feet away, and ended with the book cart girl flashing him a quick grin before blushing and scurrying off to the elevators. Zoe turned back to him, tapping her pen lightly against her bottom lip. “I know you.”
Her lips curved into a full grin, making her eyes sparkle. Eli noticed something else, as well. “Heterochromia.” A blue eye and a green eye were hard to miss, especially prominent when she lined her lashes in jet black. He’d never been this close to her before, never face-to-face, but there were many other things he could have said that would have been so much smoother. Dammit.
“Actually my name is Zoe. The autosomal dominant gene is just one of my many features.” She licked her lips and laughed as she dropped her head forward. She looked up at him through her lashes and his book bag landed on his foot as he lost control of his fingers. He took his student ID from his pocket and slid it across the counter to disguise his trembling hands.
“I-I know your name,” he stammered, hoping not to sound like a stalker. The heat in his cheeks was distracting as hell. “You’re in Stayton’s Philosophy of Living and Dying lecture.”
“And you’re in Satterlee’s Romans d’Amour.” She took his book and drew it across the counter slowly, presumably to deactivate the anti-theft tag. The tips of her pigtails swooped down over her shoulders as she looked over the book and found the check-out card. She held the card up under the infrared light and then did the same with his student ID.
“Le même.” He hoped there was no one in line behind him, because he wanted this interaction to go on for as long as possible. “I’m Eli, by the way.”
“Interesting choice of reading material, Eli.” She handed the book and his ID back to him and got a tinge of blush in her cheeks when their hands touched. “Personal or independent study?”
“How do you know it’s not for a class?” he challenged. A quick look behind him as he knelt down to put the book away in his bag told him that he had all the time in the world to chat up the sexy little librarian. He slung his bag over his shoulder as he stood, and was glad for it when she leaned back and he could see the rest of her outfit. The lacy thing was the top of a bustier, the color of the faintest rose, which was really more of a display case than a foundation garment. She’d had to open up a couple of buttons, lest they become potentially lethal projectiles and put out someone’s eye. He really hoped he wasn’t drooling on the counter.
“Trust me, it’s not on any syllabus, and I would know.” Her every breath made him lightheaded. Her every movement made his ears hum.
“It’s for personal reading.” He was gratified to see her inky eyebrow arch in response. She hopped down off the chair and for the first time he realized how tiny she was. Five foot and maybe a handful of pennies, compared to his 6’2” frame, she was practically a munchkin. She flounced over to the desk and bent over a drawer and he knew that his dreams tonight were probably going to kill him with the images of today, including the laces up the backs of her stockings.
Zoe bounced back with a bright pink sticky note in the shape of a kitty with a bow attached to her fingertips. She held it out to him. “In case you ever want to talk about it. Discuss major themes and such.”
Her number, holy mother of geek gods, she was giving him her number. “Um, okay. Thank you.” He took out his wallet and fixed the note to the back of his driver’s license, the one thing he would never, ever lose. As he put his wallet away, he looked up at her; she had her back to him and was talking to another girl with a cart full of books. He might never get another chance to . . . “Um, Zoe?”
She concluded her conversation, turned back around, and came back over to the desk. “Yes, Eli?”
He knew right then he would never get tired of hearing her say his name. “About the book . . . would you like to talk about it this evening? Maybe over dinner?”
Zoe expertly twirled the pen she’d been torturing him with, around and between her fingers, finally stopping to tap the cap against her bottom lip again. “I get off in half-an-hour. Do you really read that fast?”
He laughed and shook his head. “No, but I’ve read it before and would love to talk about it with you, get your thoughts on it. Plus I’m starving and I thought you might . . .” he trailed off, worried that he might be overselling it.
“Okay. I’ll meet you out front in about twenty-five minutes.”
* * *
Twenty-five minutes was interminably long, and he kept himself busy by reading his newly checked-out novel in a far corner, off to the side, and surreptitiously watching the desk. More than once he caught her eyes scanning the room for him, but he didn’t alert her to his presence, content to watch her and read.
The moment she moved to gather her belongings, he was there by her side, helping her into her black trench coat that would do little more than stop the wind.
“No book bag?” He took in her tiny black silk drawstring pouch around her wrist. That was all she carried.
She smiled her thanks up at him as he held the door for her. “I do the reading for the classes at work and then I do the writing at home. It’s a good system.”
He watched her profile as they started across campus. “Perfect recall?”
An adorable dimple cut into her cheek as she smiled but didn’t look at him. “Close enough to get the job done.”
They walked in silence, past the administration building, towards the student union and then took a hard left. He would have taken them to the student union dining hall, but he had something else in mind.
“Off campus?”
Eli watched her lose a step as a shudder passed through her slight frame. “Cold?” At her slight nod, he stopped and dropped his bag to the ground. After removing his coat, he settled it on her shoulders—it almost touched the backs of her knees—and picked up his bag again. “Better?”
“Much, thank you,” she murmured as she pulled it tighter around her. She sniffed the lapel and smiled up at him. “Smells like you.”
“Good thing it’s mine, then.” This was a date with his dream girl and so far it was going well. Having very little experience with this kind of thing to this point, he didn’t even know how to process it.
“Won’t you be cold?”
Eli stopped in front of a coffee house in an older part of town near campus with a rista of chiles hanging from the interior door handle. “Not at all, because we’ve arrived.”
Again he held the door for her. “Such a gentleman.” She shrugged out of his coat and handed it back to him.
He led them to a table and signaled the waitress. “My mother would be pleased to hear it.” He held the chair for her out of habit.
“Now you’re just showing off.”
He simply grinned and took a seat across from her. The waitress came and dropped off menus and warm cups of coffee. They ordered and discussed their classes like foreplay, dancing around the edge of the topic that had brought them together without ever getting to it. Their meal arrived quickly, and they ate gleefully, happy to be away from the dining hall’s industrial fare.
While they were contemplating dessert, Eli pulled the book from the bag and set it on the table between them like a dare. Zoe’s eyes fell to the cover, with its painting of a woman’s back in the act of disrobing coyly almost looking over her shoulder, and then back to him. Her slow grin made him nervous.
“So you said you’ve read this before?” She sipped her coffee as she asked him, seemingly studying his reaction.
“Yes?” He was curious to see where she would go with this line of questioning. Admittedly, it was hard to think when he was facing her and the delicate lace edging of her bustier head on.
“So if I said to you that ‘Obscenity only comes in when the mind despises and fears the body and’ . . . ?’”
Oh, this was too easy. “Then I would tell you that, ‘the body hates and resists the mind.’ I could do this all night, give me a hard one.”
She looked intrigued at his choice of words and he noticed the briefest glance at his lap before she looked back at his face. “A hard one, huh?” Her tongue poked out as she thought about her next quote, and he knew she was doing it just to torture him. “Okay, ‘intellectually, I believe in having . . . ?’”
“‘A good heart, a chirpy penis, a lively intelligence, and,’” he moved his chair next to her and leaned closer to her, looking around to make sure that no one else could overhear him, “‘the courage to say ‘shit!’ in front of a lady.’”
Zoe gently placed her hand on his knee and the blood began to pound in his ears. “I’m impressed. I didn’t think you’d say it.”
It took a minute for him to find his voice around her hand that never left his knee. “‘I try not to swear for the most part, but it has its place. I think it can be disrespectful, but you can’t help but use it in relation to this book.”
“I can appreciate a man who knows how to be respectful.” She sat back and crossed her legs at the knee daintily, fiddling with the way her black lacy skirt fell over her knee. “That was definitely not on the mind of Mr. Lawrence.”
He could tell that she wore old school thigh high stockings with a garter belt. It was just like his fantasy and there was no way he’d be able to stand up any time soon without her noticing the serious hard-on currently tenting the front of his jeans. Especially since he’d caught her looking before. “I don’t think he met any social convention that he didn’t want to flout.”
Zoe nodded. “I guess to a certain degree, he met his goal of making the seemingly obscene ordinary.”
He had to agree. They discussed the novel some more before realizing that they both had to get home to complete their chemistry homework. Again Eli helped her into her coat, noting that, “You know you’re going to need something warmer, and soon, right?”
The flush of pink in Zoe’s cheeks was endearing. “I know. I have to buy one, my old one is in tatters, but I just haven’t had the time.”
“I’m not busy this weekend if you’d like some company.” These offers of spending time, of dates, just seemed to flow out of him, unbidden. It was magical, miraculous. He’d never been supremely comfortable around women, certainly never beautiful women, and yet he was performing like a pro.
“I work ’til noon on Saturday, but I’m free after that if you want to meet me at the library.”
And just like that, they had another date in the offing. They stepped into the cold misty night and the sudden drop in temperature rocked her to the soles of her combat boots. Ever the gentleman, Eli undid the buttons on his coat and held it open for her. “C’mere.”
She eyed him only for a moment before taking him up on his generous offer. “Thank you,” she said softly as she snugged an arm around his waist and pressed against his side. Zoe barely came up to his shoulder.
She was close enough that he could feel the boning in her bustier under her shirt and coat. He draped his arm over her shoulder for his comfort, a lie he told himself for no good reason, but he could barely think beyond the fact that four hours prior, she was just the girl in class that he thought about, mused about, desperately lusted after, and now she was cuddled against his side like she had no intention of leaving.
The first raindrop hit his nose as they crossed the street back onto campus. The next several million were not nearly as precise, falling quickly, randomly, chasing them from their spot on the sidewalk to the nearest unoccupied vestibule in front of the old administration building, now one of the campus guard shacks. It was lit only by the blue light of the emergency call box down the way, but he could see her face in relief as she moved from his side to face him in the small space.
“This sucks,” she remarked succinctly as she glared at the downpour. Her bangs, which had been incorporated into her pigtails, had come free and were curling wisps on her forehead.
“Let’s just hope it lets up soon, so we can get back to our dorms and dry off.” It was a little sad to know the date was ending, but it buoyed his spirit to know that they’d already made plans to meet again in a few days.
“God, yes, I’m so cold, my nipples could cut glass.” She covered her mouth as her eyes widened. It was an absent remark, probably one she had meant to keep in her head, but it nonetheless drew his eye to the region in question. Nothing too telling, as far as he could see, and more was the pity. When he brought his eyes back to hers, she was smirking, and he knew she’d caught him looking. “You know, you never did give me one.”
The fact that she didn’t apologize for the slip did not slip by him and the feelings of arousal, temporarily doused by the rain, returned with purpose. “One what?”
“A quote.” The droplets at the ends of her eyelashes sparkled in the faint light.
He took a small step towards her, so as not to startle her, just to be nearer. “Okay, then. ‘We’ve got to live . . .’”
He heard her breath catch as she moved closer to him. “‘No matter how many skies have fallen.’” His fingers came up, of their own volition and traced her lips as she spoke. Her eyes fell shut at the contact. “‘A woman has to live her life . . .’”
“‘Or live to repent having not lived it,’” he whispered the words against her lips.
Eli didn’t need an engraved invitation, cupping his hand behind her head as he touched his lips to hers. They were cold and trembling, but he felt her sigh vibrate all the way through him. Her hand came up to his chest, neither to push him away nor pull him close, just to steady herself as he gently explored her lips, which were rapidly warming to his touch as she responded to his kisses. His tongue touched hers and her hand fisted in the cotton of his button down shirt.
Just as quickly as it began, it was over. She stepped back and looked back out to the world beyond them. “I think the rain has stopped . . .”