We ended up at my favorite pizza joint. One of the reasons it was my favorite was because it was in a town about twenty minutes from Ellery—I hadn’t managed a trip there since I’d wrecked Tom’s car. Another reason was that it was more of a working guy’s place than an Ellery student place.
As we ate, I learned a few more things about Wyatt. One, he was a vegetarian and I had to keep my pepperoni and sausage strictly on my side of the table. Two, he had excellent manners—no wolfing or snorting or other Animal House-like behavior. Three, he was older than I was by more than I’d suspected—twenty-three to my twenty. He’d taken two years off between high school and college, doing something that was apparently going to remain a secret, despite my prodding. Four, he was fun to talk to.
So dinner was cool. Things didn’t get awkward or weird until we got back to Ellery. For some reason I didn’t feel like asking him to give me a ride to the hotel. Tom’s place was a no-go for a bunch of reasons. I wanted to keep driving around but that would have been an awkward thing to ask too.
He might have had something similar on his mind because he wasn’t taking a direct route through town. As we got closer to the campus green, he pulled over to the side of the road. The quiet side street had a few houses and a few college administration buildings. Streetlights cast yellow-orange shadows on his profile, outlining a brow, nose and chin that were in the fine-looking category. It was only when you looked at him face-on that the ears and the mouth sorta ruined the handsome-guy effect. I was glad when he turned his head to look at me. I preferred interesting and sorta ruined to boring and fine-looking.
My excuse for entertaining thoughts like this was that Wyatt was looking into my eyes, and my heart was thudding and my brain was humming and I was getting that tingly feeling all through my most sensitive parts—the insides of my elbows, the nape of my neck, the backs of my knees. And, yeah, other parts too.
He smiled and I had to smile back.
“So,” he said.
“So,” I said back.
“Guess I should think about studying some more.”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “That shit never ends, right?”
“Not till the end of the semester anyway.”
His gaze disconnected from mine and now it was traveling over my face. When I licked my lips, his eyes widened slightly.
“I missed my study group at the library. You wanna come back to my room and hang out for a while?”
His tone was casual, friendly, but the breath froze in my lungs as if I’d heard a horror-movie scream. A hook-up was on the table. Right? I wasn’t misreading him, was I?
If that’s what he was suggesting it didn’t surprise me—we’d been sparking off each other since we met—but the situation (me and my messy head plus a boy like Wyatt sitting way too close on the bench seat of his cherry truck) was freaking me out. Giving in to these sparkly spooky vibes of attraction was a super-bad idea right now but, God, those vibes felt good. Like laughter, like sunshine, like the best sugar rush ever.
“And do what?” I had to ask. Just to see what he would say.
He laughed. “I don’t know.” His shoulders moved against the back of the seat, making the old vinyl creak. His gaze caught mine for a split second before skittering away to the dashboard, the steering wheel, the rearview mirror. “Whatever you want.”
Hmm. What the hell did I want? It would probably take me a few years (or more) to figure that out so I said, “Well…I don’t think I want to hang out at Fenton. I’m not sure watching your study session would be cool, fun or exciting. If you know what I mean.”
He snorted. “Well…” he mimicked, “just goes to show you don’t know what my kind of study sessions are all about, heh-heh.”
His silly Beavis and Butthead-style snicker inspired another surprising giggle from me, enough of a giggle that I didn’t notice his hand moving toward me until his warm fingers were covering mine, pressing my palm against the seat’s rough covering.
The combo of surprise and tactile sensation made my head spin. I gulped as more awareness fizzed through my nerve endings.
He shifted his upper body toward me, coming a few inches closer on the bench seat as his other hand curved around my neck, his long, slightly rough fingers brushing the short hair at the base of my skull, his big palm cupping the tensing tendons between my shoulder and ear.
I opened my mouth to say something—and God only knows what that something was—when his fingers (on both hands) tightened and his head dipped toward mine.
Kisses could be awkward, especially first kisses. The adjustment of lips and noses and breath and bodies—the weird hyperconsciousness of how things might or might not fit—never seemed to go as smoothly as what you’d been picturing in your head or wanting with your body.
Wyatt, however, was so fast, so smooth, so slick that I wasn’t aware of any arranging or adjusting. One second I was thinking “oh shit, kissing might happen” and the next second I was thinking “wow, his mouth feels as good as it looks”. Maybe the effect wasn’t so much about Wyatt’s sick moves as my crazy-nutso reaction, which was to open my mouth and let my tongue tangle with his, to move my free hand up to explore a hard shoulder, sandpaper-rough jaw, silky-shaggy hair.
We were breathing through our noses, the sound reverberating through the truck’s cab as if the windows were rolled down and we were whooshing by slow-moving cars as we drove a zillion miles an hour down the interstate. Except we weren’t zooming anywhere, really. We were parked. And it was a moving car’s headlights shining through the windshield that finally made us stop and take deep, unhindered breaths.
And then came the period of awkward adjustment.
I sat back against the seat. My hand shook as I carded my fingers through my hair. It felt sticky and rumpled and undone. Like the rest of me. Time to put on the brakes. Which, yeah, I sucked at.
“This is not a good idea,” I told the windshield.
My left hand was still sandwiched between the seat and Wyatt’s hand. The rough pads of his fingertips stroked upward, finding the grooves between my knuckles, tracing the thin bones beneath the sensitive skin along the back of my hand. God. Pleasure blasted jet-fuel hot up my arms. My heart was beating lickety-split, trying to catch up.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t…do complicated hook-ups.” I looked down at his hand. I should have pulled my own hand away but I couldn’t get my brain to coordinate with my muscles. “And, um, anything between us would be…”
“Fun.” He laughed again. “Not that I was necessarily going for a hook-up…” He cleared his throat. “I like to let this kind of thing happen naturally. Doesn’t have to be big or heavy.” His fingers traveled over my wrist and stilled. I wondered if he could feel my pulse flutter beneath his fingertips.
“Lately I can’t seem to avoid big and heavy,” I said. “I don’t know if I can do small and light.” His eyes held mine and in the dim light I couldn’t read his expression. I tried again to explain. “I mean your scene is different from mine in a bunch of ways that spell out complicated in my book.” He drew his hand away and loss flowed over my skin, dark coolness shoving away warmth. I swallowed. “I admit my book is a bit hard to read and the language can get kinda rough but, um—”
“Got it,” he interrupted. “You don’t need to explain.” His teeth smashed down hard against his lower lip. As if he was trying to control a pout or keep from saying something he didn’t want to say.
“Okay.” Of course the minute I said it I wanted to keep explaining, keep talking, erase that look on his face and get the old look back…the one where he was all lusty and ready to go.
“Where to?” He put his hands on the steering wheel, gripping the hard plastic as if it might become animate and roll away.
His expression suddenly became easy to read. Disappointment. Frustration.
The fizzy bubbles in my bloodstream popped all at once. Why would his disappointment make me feel guilty? I peered out the window as I fumbled around for the door handle. I knew what road we were on—literally and otherwise—but in the murky darkness I couldn’t see any familiar landmarks. My stomach gurgled. Guess confusion and guilt weren’t good additives to a crap-ton of pizza.
My urge to flee felt like a cop-out, but what else was there to say?
Just like that I got mad. Mad at Wyatt for ending the evening like this. Mad at myself for stupid expectations. I’d ventured out of my groove this afternoon because the simple idea of a friend had been seemed so…nice. A friend. A friendly game of pool. A friendly sharing of pizza. I’d gone for it and as a reward I got to deal with a bunch of awkward bullshit. Jesus, was I magnet for this kind of thing, or what?
“Why are you acting like this?” I asked, my voice surprisingly loud in the quiet cab.
“Like what?”
“Were you really expecting I’d go for hot boinking so fast? Like, hey, the funky gender-bendy creature is obviously a sex freak and so what better way to get your freak on—?”
“Fuck you, Ray.” He didn’t say it with a lot of heat but I still felt the prickling impact of the epithet on my skin. “Now you’re being an insulting asshole to both of us.”
“I think which one of us is being an insulting asshole is pretty fucking debatable.”
He snorted. “Stupid to debate that instead of getting down to the real issue. I know what attraction is. I know when I’m feeling it and I know when someone else is attracted to me. If you want to call me an asshole for acting on it—for wanting to see if we could have fun together, make each other feel good—fine, that’s your right, I guess.” He rubbed his hand over his head, rumpling the waves until they were wild. “It’s not complicated. Doesn’t get much simpler than wanting to kiss the living fuck out of someone.”
Um. Wow. Okay. A noise escaped my throat. Sounded embarrassingly like a whimper. I tore my gaze away from his. Tried to think.
This would be the moment where if I acted without thinking—if I did what my instincts were screaming at the top of their abused lungs to do—I would take advantage of the truck’s ginormous bench seat, crawl onto Wyatt’s big, prime body and explore that sexy mouth of his to my thumping heart’s content.
I didn’t have anything against kissing. I loved kissing. But Wyatt was a different kind of partner for me and I wanted a different kind of outcome from what I was used to. I didn’t want to be the vulnerable one, the needy one, the one with expectations that were too damn big.
I licked my lips. “Okay. But we gotta stay in the truck. I won’t get naked. And I won’t go back to your room. I’m in charge.”
“I’m good with that.” The head bob he gave me was fast and hard. Made me smile.
“C’mere,” I said. I pointed to my lap.
“What?” He raised his brows.
I tapped my khaki-clad thighs with damp fingers. “Do you want to kiss the living fuck outta me or not?”
He shifted on the seat. “Well, yeah. But I don’t want to crush you—”
“You won’t. Straddle me. But keep your weight on your knees.” I shifted my butt closer to the middle of the bench, clenching the seat cover on either side of me, making the polyester rustle. “If we’re gonna do this, you have to do what I say.”
I didn’t have rules in mind. I was just saying what I wanted here and now in this moment.
His eyes were wide and dark, dark, dark. The sound of his breath—harsh, raspy—filled the space between us, touching my nape, my nipples, my wrists with a rough, warm rhythm.
I’d watched him move a lot in the last few days. I liked to watch him move. Maybe even loved to watch him move. I wasn’t surprised by how quickly and gracefully he managed to extract himself from behind the wheel and shift around on the wide bench seat. He was big, but the seat and the truck’s cab were big too.
“Like this?” he breathed.
“Yeah.” I tipped my head and looked up at him. “Keep your hands on the seat.”
He’d planted his knees on either side of my lap, keeping tight control over his balance so his ass didn’t rest on my knees. Following my command, he gripped the seat back, his arms caging my shoulders. I clasped his forearms, biting my lip when muscles tensed and flexed under his jacket.
It was that sense of control—of him doing what I’d asked, of him holding his body over me so tense and so still, protecting me from his weight—that, ironically, made me crazy-wild to take this further. But crazy-wild felt too risky. I wanted wild without the crazy. Wild with a big side of control.
I inhaled slowly. He smelled so fucking good. Cotton and leather and wool and the sexy kind of sweat. Pizza and beer and the faint smoky scent of the moist spring air. My fingers ached to curl around his neck, to pull him down so I could taste him, breathe him in.
I dropped my hands, forcing them to curve over the seat’s edge instead.
“Kiss me,” I commanded.
His arms bent slowly, purposefully, as if he was doing a push-up. My gaze traveled over broad shoulders, flexing biceps. I licked my lips.
“Ray,” he whispered.
I looked into his eyes, so close now. He dipped his head and our mouths met. My lips were already parted—I was having a damn hard time breathing—and his tongue found mine easily. I followed his lead on this, enjoying the dance he was encouraging me to join. Lips nibbling, pressing and then slanting together. Tongues performing their own version of a buck and grind.
My hands refused to behave. I was easing them up his tensing thighs, letting the vibration of those primed jock-dude muscles carry my hands higher. I slid my fingers under his jacket and shirt, the thick denim of his waistband and belt loops tickling my palms. When I reached warm, bare skin my breath snagged in my throat.
Too much to explore. Ridged abdomen, bumpy ribcage, a trail of silky hair between his pecs. I found the hard points of his nipples and tweaked them with the edges of my thumbs.
He groaned into my mouth. God. Sounded good, felt good, tasted good…
I stroked the little nubs of flesh over and over, getting high from the way his skin quivered and the way his kisses got deeper, his tongue-thrusts more desperate. I slid my hands downward again, the moisture that had been building on my fingertips abruptly absorbed by his hot, sleek skin.
Even though I really, really, really wanted to get to know Wyatt’s dick, or at least introduce myself, I had to remember my clothes-on policy. I ran the pads of my fingers over the flap of denim covering his button fly. When the fabric made my skin buzz and burn, I moved on to explore some interesting bumps and ridges and valleys.
Certain touches made him shudder and other touches made his hips jerk and thrust. I was a fan of both responses, but the jerk and thrust was my favorite. I curved my fingers, running my short nails over the long ridge angling from his crotch to his thigh. The music of our breaths was filling the cab with sexy tuneage, an underlying hum way better than the static we’d pick up on AM radio.
“Fuck,” he whispered, thrusting his hips into my touch. “Wanna touch you.”
I loved that I could feel the need on his lips as he spoke the words. “Nope,” I whispered back.
More kisses in more places now—my jaw, my cheek, the tender spot beneath my ear. He inhaled slowly and I knew he was breathing me in, trying to absorb me the same way I was trying to absorb him.
“Ray,” he moaned. “How the hell is this gonna work if you don’t let me touch?”
“I’m gonna do the touching for you.”
“You mean you’re gonna touch yourself?” The breathy way he spoke let me know he was not turned off by this idea.
He leaned back, the hard muscles of his ass touching my knees as he shifted to support his weight on the dash, his elbows thumping against the plastic shelf over the glove box and radio. “Show me.”
I swallowed. Okay, so now he was doing the commanding, but the needy rasp in his tone triggered a bunch of mini explosions in my lower belly and the look in his eyes was fucking hot as hell so I was okay with obeying.
Keeping my gaze fixed on his, I tugged one hand from beneath his shirt. My fingers curved into a fist, as if they wanted to hold onto the buzzy warmth they’d gathered from his chest.
I dropped my fist to my lap. My gaze followed his downward. We both watched as I slowly spread my fingers. Then I had to close my eyes as I imagined the heat—no, actually felt the heat spread from my hand and penetrate the layers of my clothes.
My ability to come quickly once I was primed was both excellent and embarrassing. Kind of depended on the situation. Since I was in a truck with a guy I barely knew and nakedness and honest-to-God fucking were off limits at the moment, I counted the sucking, whirling, awesome pleasure cyclone currently whooshing from my lower vertebrae and down through my pelvis as a win.
I pressed the heel of my hand down hard against my crotch. My head fell back as the cyclone exploded into smithereens and I came. “Fuck, yeah,” I muttered.
Wyatt grunted, not quite as articulate as me as he witnessed my moment of glory. Speaking of moments of glory—shit, I’d completely forgotten about his. My eyes opened. I was still clutching him with my left hand, my fingers digging into his side.
He was being so good, so heroic. He looked like he was in serious pain—his arms rigid against the dash, his hands in tight fists. Should I set him free? Grab him and let him grab me back? I wanted that—I wanted him to hold me and kiss me some more, wanted him to put his hands on mine, show me how he liked to be touched.
But no. If I was going to be hardcore enough to make rules about touching and getting naked, I needed to follow them. Wishy-washy had been failing me as an approach to life.
I put my hot hand on the ridge boldly making itself known beneath his jeans.
“Not gonna take much.” He closed his eyes. I watched his throat work in the pale yellow glow cast by the streetlight. “Hard and fast.”
Easy to follow those orders. The feel of him under my palm didn’t spur lazy touches. I wanted to watch him go over. I rubbed harder, faster.
He was on top of me, filling my line of sight, invading my nostrils with his scent—pretty much his whole being was surrounding me in the confines of his truck. So I knew right away when he started to come. Everything around us went tense, every living cell seemed to hold its breath…
Then in a blast of energy ignited by a very impressive stream of fuck, fuck, fuck’s erupting from his mouth, he detonated. He bucked a couple of times and a warm wet spot formed under my still-stroking fingers. I bit my lip hard, feeling a few responding quakes happening inside my own body.
We breathed hard for a few moments. I looked out the window. There was a dude with a backpack on his shoulder and a phone on his ear walking briskly down the sidewalk. Not looking this way, thank God. The truck’s windows weren’t tinted. Who knew I had exhibitionist tendencies?
Wyatt shifted his weight back to his knees and opened his eyes. His smile lit me right the hell up. Weird, because I thought all my parts that were capable of lighting up had already been spent. My heart began to expand, Grinch-like, which made me nervous. I didn’t want my heart to make an appearance in this episode.
The seat groaned and creaked in post-orgasmic sighs as he climbed off me and put his ass back where it belonged.
“So that was hot as hell,” he said.
I rubbed my damp hands on my khakis. His voice was deep and cheerful. Happy, well-adjusted. Swapping orgasms was a normal, good-time thing. Not necessarily intimate and sure as heck not monumental or earth-shifting. It was what gorgeous, healthy guys like Wyatt did on a routine basis.
“Yeah.”
“What?”
He reached out. Touched my cheek. I flinched. He dropped his hand.
“Sorry,” he said. “I thought maybe the no-touching rule had expired.”
“Nah, it’s okay.”
My emotions were all over the place. Happy, angry, scared, then happy and now angry again. So, yeah. Apparently I couldn’t do this kind of thing light and casual. I was fucking up by overthinking.
“Well. Good times. I’m out.” I sprang the latch on the door, shoved it open—heavier than it looked—and hopped down. My feet didn’t seem entirely capable of holding my body upright, so I leaned heavily on the door as I slammed it shut. The window was partially opened and I peered inside it. I didn’t focus on Wyatt because I really didn’t want to see the look on his face. I fixed my gaze on the dull shine of the dash.
“Ray. What the hell? I thought we could maybe go back to—”
“I got shit I need to do,” I interrupted, hoping my tone was even, hoping my freaked-outedness wasn’t showing on my face.
“Really? This is how you’re gonna play this? Get off and go?” He was mad again. Frustrated. Ready to pull out his adorable hair. Yup. This is what I did to people. Best to save us both more aggravation and leave.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said.
He shook his head. Stared at the steering wheel. “You’re welcome.” The ignition cranked and the engine started with an appropriate groan and roar.
The rumble of the beast-like machine hummed against my jittery body and I was suddenly afraid that if I stepped away my own machinery would stop working.
“Hey, Ray?”
My heart thumped. “Yeah?”
“Would it ruin your exit if I offered you a ride to wherever you’re going?”
“Yeah. Because then I’d have to make another exit again in a few blocks. Not worth it.”
“Okay then.” He smiled. “Step back.”
“What?”
He waved a hand toward me. “I’m pulling away from the curb now and I don’t want to hurt you.”
I don’t want to hurt you. “Sorry,” I mumbled, stepping back.
“No problem. See you around some time?”
“Sure.”
The next morning I was awake long before sunrise, lying in the luxurious bed I hated—silly, but I really missed couch-thing and my ratty comforter—in the hotel room I was going to have to move out of before 11:00 a.m.
I was clutching my phone, thinking about my woeful financial situation and wondering if AT&T took ones and quarters and how long before they shut me off, when it pinged to let me know I had a new email. It was from Dave.
It started with a cheerful greeting that quickly devolved into some seriously heartbreaking shit. He missed me. He couldn’t sleep. All of his phone-game-TV use was being monitored by his dad. Davey thought the fact that I’d moved out was because of his behavior, not mine. He was so sorry.
His dad had come up with a plan—I tensed up, prepared to feel stray bullet-points penetrating my too-thin skin—for what had to happen in order for Dave and I to hang out again on a regular basis. The plan was being forwarded to me by Tom in a separate email.
A rock-like lump had lodged in my throat. I tried unsuccessfully to swallow it as I scrolled through my messages and, yep, found one from Tom. No subject line. No greeting. Just a list.
Find a decent place to live.
Maintain regular contact with your parents.
Make REAL plans for your future (re-enroll at Ellery or make arrangements to go somewhere else).
Get the rest of your stuff out of the basement by the end of the month (or it will be sent to a thrift store).
My messed-up stomach roiled and pitched and the smooth sheets abraded my skin. This round of bullets had nailed me but good. I could feel the blood begin to seep from the wounds.
So this was Tom’s new plan for dealing with Dave? Holding Davey’s need for friendship hostage to my actions? I jabbed at “reply” with my thumb, my fingers automatically typing two of my favorite words. FUCK. YOU. I went all out with the bold and italics, but when my thumb hovered over “send” something made me hesitate.
I scrolled back to Dave’s message. Made myself re-read it.
Can you write back and tell me if UR OK with being part of the plan? You can do that stuff right? Hopefully it would not be 2 hard. It might help you 2. Miss U. Dave
Blinking against the sudden burn in my eyes, I typed carefully. Yes I can do that stuff. Don’t worry. We’ll see each other soon.
A few days later, I was working the Saturday morning shift at the diner—griddle cakes and grandpas—when old Sheriff Earp strolled in, surveyed the scene and sat down in my section.
I was not happy to see him. I was not happy in general. I still didn’t have a place to live. My phone had gone black. My money, my options and my mood were running so low I’d need to rent a backhoe to dig them out and, as I knew too goddamned well, I didn’t have money for no stinkin’ rent. I’d seen a few apartments, but I didn’t have enough cash for a deposit plus first month’s rent. I was waiting on a couple of callbacks from ads I’d responded to for folks looking for roommates, but I wasn’t feeling optimistic.
I’d been staying with Amelia and Lucy, but I didn’t want to intrude on their brand-new-couple bliss for much longer. The whole reason they’d moved out of the dorms and into an apartment was for privacy.
I was coming to terms with the fact that following through on my promise to Dave would mean I would have to: a) beg my parents or friends for money or b) move back to Connecticut (to stay with my fascist dad) or East Hampton (to stay with my fucked-up mom) until I got my shit together.
Yeah, I know Option B was the most practical way to go, but it was also the option that made my skin feel eight sizes too small and my brain scream, OH MY FUCKING GOD, NO, NOT THAT!
Also, I was worried as hell about Dave. If I moved away he’d think I’d abandoned him and Tom’s stupid-ass plan. Plus, he wouldn’t be able to hang out with me at all, no matter what we both managed with “the plan”, and because I hadn’t seen him or had a real conversation with him in fricking forever, it was hard to know how badly it would mess him up if I left town.
So as I walked over to greet my newest customer and I registered just a few of the details that made him a shiny example of Ellery College perfection—ultra-toned bod, golden, healthy skin, bright eyes and perfect teeth gleaming from between smiling lips—my own lips twisted into a sneer.
His smile faltered. “Hey,” he said.
“Coffee?” I pretty much spat out the word.
“Yeah. Please.” He turned over his mug for me to fill. Such a nice boy.
Man, I was cranky. I’d managed to be civil to my customers so far this morning—I needed tips badly—but Sheriff Earp’s smile had apparently burned through my waitperson façade. I dispensed the coffee as quickly as I could and turned to leave—he could wait a while before I took his order. His hand caught my arm.
I froze, looking down at where his big tanned hand covered my forearm. Hair follicles rose and performed an absurd boogie up my arm and across my nape.
Holding my breath, I forced my gaze up to his.
He dropped my arm abruptly and held up his hands. I’m innocent, I surrender. “Do you have time to talk…maybe after your shift?”
The sneer wouldn’t let go of my expression. “You need to confer with the freak about another homework assignment? Sorry, I’m fresh out of freakiness today. Just a plain ordinary tired bitch at your beck and call.”
His gaze skimmed my features—a gentle, concerned survey that felt soothing, fresh, like leaves brushing against my cheek as I walked through the woods.
Obviously if I was thinking this kind of poetic garbage about his damn eyes, I was more freaky than I’d thought. I had a sudden awareness of how I must look—something else I was immediately angry at him for. I didn’t want to think about my faded purple hair lying in unpoufed hanks around my pale cheeks, the chips on my nail polish, the stains on my khakis. When you’re flat busted and working double shifts, beauty and its requisite products go by the way, way, wayside.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his deep voice easing over my nerves with the same leafy softness as his eyes.
“Yes,” I said. “Hunky-dory. Brilliant. And you?”
“I’m fine.” He leaned back in his chair, fiddling with his full coffee mug with his long fingers. My face was turning rosy-hot, so I turned to walk away.
“Ray.”
“What? I’m trying to work.” Actually, the busy part of my shift was over. Just a few more tables to give checks to and then I could leave.
“I get that. But I can’t get through to you on your phone and I wanted to talk to you about…things.” He cleared his throat and qualified quickly, “Doesn’t have anything to do with the other night. Or, um, hot boinking.”
“Oh.”
His lips twitched. “Disappointed?”
“Nope.” My ever-reddening cheeks screamed I was lying.
“When do you get off?” His lip twitch turned into a half-mast smile.
“Meet me in the back parking lot in twenty.” He could interpret that one however he wanted.
Approximately eighteen minutes later—I was paying very close attention to the diner’s big wall clock—I pushed through the rear exit and stepped outside. Bright sun burned my overworked retinas. My knees were performing the double-shift wobble and I made myself take a few deep breaths. After my double yesterday, I’d almost passed out while shutting down the dining room for closing. Lisa, the shift manager, had read me the riot act before making one of the fry cooks serve me soup and a sandwich.
Wyatt was bolstering the lumpy brick wall of the neighboring building with his broad shoulders. He looked up from his phone, saw me and waved.
I stopped in the center of the lot, waiting for a car that was backing out. As Wyatt walked toward me, my brain performed one of those two-second analysis deals where I tried to figure out why a particular person struck me as attractive. It had been a while since I’d met someone who floated my boat. Why did this guy make my sails feel perky? Who knew? Not me. Yep, life was full of these fascinating little mysteries.
The car was out of the way and Wyatt stopped about a foot away from me. “You ride?”
I was clutching my helmet with white-knuckled fingers. “Yeah.”
“Cool.” His eyes lit up with guy-machine interest.
I pointed to my usual parking spot for the Vespa.
The scooter was vintage in the real sense of the word—it had belonged to my great aunt when she lived in Italy. My mom had arranged to have it shipped to the States after my great aunt died. For a sixteenth birthday present my folks had refurbished it for me and the refurb job was totally sick—new one-hundred-fifty cc engine, pale pink paint, red leather seat and lots of shiny chrome. Even though I’d made a point of ditching all the material baggage from my folks when I’d dropped out of Ellery, I couldn’t give up the scooter. It meant more to me than a statement, and it wouldn’t be worth the eff you to my parents to see somebody else riding her.
Old Earp sauntered over for a closer look. His lips turned down in a lopsided grin.
“What?” I asked. “You were expecting a Harley?”
His gust of laughter reverbed against the nearby brick wall, a guffaw as annoying and joyful as SpongeBob’s. No wonder Dave had fallen for the big lug so fast.
“I don’t know what I was expecting,” he said, still shaking his head. “Not this, I guess.”
He assessed me thoroughly. He assessed the Vespa thoroughly. As he performed his “one of these things is not like the other” comparison, I ridiculously found myself wishing my body was the one sporting the snazzy pink paint and chrome highlights.
“Got something against pink?” I asked, edging the question with scorn.
“Uh, no, not at all.”
“Good,” I said. “Then you won’t mind riding the bitch seat.”
His smile went crooked. “Where are we going?”
“Away from here,” I said.
“Are you sure this thing will hold me?”
I snorted. “You aren’t that big.”
He raised his eyebrows again, smirking like a silly frat boy, because, yeah, that’s what he was. I stuck my helmet on my head, my scalp relaxing a bit as it got covered with the hard foam shields. A little bit of shielding was good in this situation. Usually I was anal about making my riders wear a helmet, but my spare was still in Tom’s garage and I wasn’t planning on taking Wyatt far. At all. If you know what I mean.
I arranged my messenger bag across my chest, wheeled the scooter out of its spot and got on. I fired it up, the familiar whirr and rumble of the engine juicing my wobbly legs. I looked at Wyatt, waiting to see what he would do.
He grinned and climbed on. Like a champ. Gracefully, no bumps, no imbalances, no hesitation.
Well, well.
I steered toward the parking lot’s exit, taking it easy. My heartbeat was rocketing again and I had to admit my proximity to Wyatt was to blame. How could I not be aware of him? He was big.
He put his hands on my hips and the warmth of his large palms heated my skin even through layers of leather and cotton. His legs were super long, smooshing my own legs against the foot runners until my muscles felt soft and melty, like the grilled cheeses I served up for lunch every day. The Vespa and his muscular thighs were the bread and my own skinny limbs were the melting cheese.
When I accelerated after a stop sign, I had to do a quick stop-start thing when a pedestrian stepped out suddenly from the sidewalk. Wyatt’s hands came up to my waist, sliding up beneath my jacket, catching the bare skin between my shirt and my belt.
I tooled down the street, trying to concentrate on driving. Difficult when every cell of my being was screaming, A BOY IS TOUCHING YOU.
The Ellery athletic center came into view. There was a park adjacent to the center’s outdoor sports courts and it seemed like a good place to stop. The spring sunshine wasn’t strong but it felt good, and the air seemed to be what my lungs needed after too many hours at the diner.
I pulled into a space in the deserted parking lot, put my feet down, turned off the scooter, took off my helmet, all while hyperaware of Wyatt’s hold on my body. Dismounting, I stood on the asphalt, putting some distance between me and the boy with the big, warm hands. I could feel his gaze, but I didn’t meet his eyes. I stared at the empty tennis courts.
“Nice ride,” he said.
“It gets me where I need to go.”
“In style. Seriously. Where’d you get this thing?” His long fingers trailed over the red leather seat.
“It was a gift.” My tone was sharp. “I’m probably going to have to sell it.”
“Now that would be a fucking shame.” His tone was seriously bummed. He shook his head, his gaze traveling over the Vespa’s lines with a sad combo of covetousness and woe. “God, I hate money.”
“Yeah.” For two seconds I felt bad for letting him think we were on equal footing regarding our hatred of the almighty dollar. My hatred was the rarified, can’t-breathe-this-fucking-air variety, rising to upper-tier levels that less than one percent of the planet could reach. Wyatt’s hatred was likely right in the thick of reality. Justified and juicy and hard-earned.
But I realized there were plenty of other more practical, more here-and-now chasms that would be too hard to cross to get close to Wyatt. As a friend or anything else.
“So what did you want to talk about?” I asked.
Wyatt finally eased off the Vespa’s seat. I moved in to help with the kickstand, but he managed it with no problem. He ran a hand over his wind-tousled hair and said, “Well, mostly I wanted to talk to you about David Perlmutter. You know how Mike and I are his coaches for intramural basketball?”
“Yeah.” I gulped. “What? Why? Is he okay?”
“Yeah, he’s okay. I think. Nothing to be hugely worried about. I just thought maybe you could give me some advice on how to get through to him. You know him pretty well, right?”
“Yeah.” My brain clicked through images of Davey—the feel of his minnow-squirmy body as I taught him to swim when he was four, the lights in his eyes as he wrote his name across the sky with a sparkler on the Fourth of July when he was six, the sound of his raspy voice as he read Harry Potter aloud to me when I had the flu last year.
“Why don’t we sit?” He tipped his head toward one of the benches that lined the walk leading to the courts.
My legs still weren’t working right so I was amenable to the suggestion. Wyatt sat close, but not too close, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees.
“I saw him on Thursday and I’ll see him this afternoon when the league plays their games. I think he might be depressed. And really worried about you. I guess you haven’t been seeing him as much lately?”
“Not so much.” My fingertips pressed into the lining of my helmet, crushing into the solid core foam as if it were made of marshmallows. “You’ve been talking to him at basketball practice?”
“He’s been on time every day, but unlike the first week of practice, he doesn’t participate. Just kinda sits there on the bleachers.”
“Oh.”
“Mike and I have tried to get him going a few times—even just to talk, but the only thing that seems to interest him is discussing you.”
“Me?”
“He’s worried about you. He, uh…wants me to be your friend.”
“My friend.”
Wyatt turned his head and sent me a crooked grin. “Yeah. He even asked if there was a way you could move in to the house.”
“The house?”
“Yeah. Something about his dad being impressed if you pledged Fenton.”
“Oh God.” I laughed. Hard.
He watched me for a minute and said, “Is it really that hilarious?”
“Um, yes it is.” My laughter drifted off and I cleared my throat. “No insult to you. Or the house. But we’re not exactly…compatible.”
“Compatible?”
“Yeah. I mean, come on…you’ve got sharp eyes there, Sheriff.”
“I do,” he said, fixing those eyes on my face.
I looked away. “You aren’t really serious about that suggestion.” I cleared my throat. “Are you?”
“Well…”
“Well…a lot of people would expect me to identify as a guy before I pledged.” I focused very, very intensely on the tree root poking out of the soil about six inches from my boot. My cheeks caught fire. Again. Oh God. I was so bad at talking about this shit.
“I wouldn’t,” he said, simple, clear.
I appreciated his attitude. Truly. But still. “It’s pretty well established that folks without dicks aren’t qualified to be Fen-men.”
He laughed. Not in a mean or snarky way. Kind of like in a “life is damn weird” way. “Just because shit is established doesn’t mean it can’t change.”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “But I don’t want to be a Fen. Ever-never, as Dave would say.”
The sheriff pondered this for a moment. “Even if the house was inclusive…even if we changed things to be more…accepting?”
I snorted. “I know you’re smarter than that. It’s a moot point there, Earp. Fenton will never accept anyone except for guys like you.”
“All it takes is one idea—one action—to make a huge change.”
“I thought you were a finance major.”
“I am.”
“You sound like you’ve been reading too much philosophy.”
“Well…I am taking a course on Karl Marx this term.”
“Ah,” I said.
His knee jiggled for a few moments. Then it stopped and he said, “Do you ever think about pushing the limits around here? And just…I don’t know, blowing some of the old traditional shit sky-high out of the water. Isn’t that part of why you dropped out?”
“No.” I scrutinized his face. Fighting Ellery tradition was low on my battle-fighting priorities. But he wasn’t kidding around. He was asking an honest question. “Do you think about that stuff?”
He laughed again, but this time it sounded more like frustration than humor. “Yeah, actually. I do. Sometimes I love being here. And I love the house and my friends. But other times it drives me up the fucking wall. As if we’re all living in a dream world that has no bearing on reality.”
“Well, I can sure as hell understand that. Getting Ellery to eject the Greek system would be a good step toward reality. I mean, why go through all the pledging and ritual stuff just to say you have brothers or sisters or whatever? Good friends can be had in other less complicated ways, right? And I know you guys are all about the do-good activities for the community, but I can volunteer at the Food Shelf or hang with under-privileged kids on my own time. Without the weird rituals of asshole-togetherness you guys seem to think is so important.”
“There’s more to it than that—”
“Doesn’t matter. I couldn’t make it through the rush bullshit, let alone make it to Hell Week.” I shrugged. “Not that I can’t boot and rally with the best of ’em, but you know. It’s not even close to my idea of fun.”
Actually I wasn’t sure I could barf and hit reset all night, every night for a week (because I was a human being and not a Neanderthal…well, actually, come to think of it, even a Neanderthal would be smart enough to lie down for a nap and call it quits on the partying after hurling). But if I wanted to do something that stupid, I could do it. Probably.
“I wish people would look beyond all the Hell Week shit and pay attention to the positives.” Wyatt was staring into the distance. His pretty mouth had a tautness I’d never seen before. I’d insulted him. And even though I’d kinda-sorta meant to, I felt bad about it.
“Yeah, well. That’s humanity for you. Drunkenness and sexual assault are more entertaining than food drives.” I gave his shoulder a hey-buck-up punch.
He didn’t buck up. Big surprise. He obviously cared about this topic and I was being a smart-ass. The worst kind of smart-ass too—one who was judgmental and dismissive. Maybe I should take my own damn advice and stop making fun of things I didn’t know much about.
I cleared my throat and asked, “How do you guys decide the pledging, who-fits-in shit, anyway? You honestly have a committee to figure it out? Based on a guy’s prowess at drinking and puking and fucking girls and kissing alumni ass?”
“Um…actually it’s kind of complicated. I mean some guys are shoo-ins, sure, but the rest take some debate.” He made a derisive sound. “I don’t know the formula or criteria or whatever. I’ve purposely avoided that committee and those conversations. But now I’m at a place where I want to start making some changes. Next year I’ll be a senior and I want to leave the house—and maybe Ellery—a better place, you know?”
I nodded. “This fits with your college plan.”
“My plan?”
“Being a golden boy popular jock future MBA financier.”
He made another scoffing noise. “Is that how you see me?”
My gaze traveled over sneakers, long legs, lean hips, broad shoulders. His right ear was doing a righteous pokey-outy thing in his messy hair and his mucho mouth was pulling down at the corner, emphasizing his classic-rock lips. I sighed. “That’s how I see you sometimes, yeah.”
“What about other times?”
My shoulder blades hit the back of the bench. “I dunno.”
“Ah.” His eyes settled on mine with a spark. I was glad they’d lost their far-away focus, but I told myself I didn’t enjoy the humor stirring up glints of gold in his bright green irises. “Suddenly the smart-ass opinion machine has ceased functioning,” he commented with not a small amount of smart-ass opinion.
My lips quirked. “Data does not compute.”
He sat up straight, draping his arm across the back of the bench. I caught a whiff of eau de Wyatt—sportsy deodorant, a hint of sweat, laundry detergent, two hundred pounds of healthy male body.
“How do you see me?” I asked, the words tumbling out before I could swallow them. His eyes held mine for a moment and suddenly I felt nervous. My tongue played with the grooves in my back molars, a belated retreat. Shouldn’t ask questions when I don’t want answers.
“You’re thinking I’m gonna throw your words right back atcha, aren’t you?”
“Um…”
“Data does not compute?”
“Oh. Right.”
“Well, I’m not gonna throw ’em back because that’s not how I see you at all.”
“You’re not? I mean, you don’t?” I blinked. The sun’s angle had shifted and rays were beating against my skull. Too bad their effect wasn’t more reviving. Hot syrup on limp pancakes.
The adrenaline from working my shift, from seeing Earp walk into the diner, from riding with him on the back of the Vespa—all those chemicals that were keeping me juiced were finally leaving my body. I swayed and he braced his shoulder against mine, solid as a sunbaked oak.
“Let’s talk about this another time. You’re not ready to have this conversation.”
And there he went with his Mr. I Know What You’re Thinking attitude. “I am always ready,” I muttered.
Something brushed against my nape and I jumped.
“Easy does it,” Wyatt murmured. Long fingers brushed gently over the wire-tight tendon beneath my ear. I closed my eyes and took a shuddery breath. “When was the last time you got some real sleep…or ate a real meal?” he asked with that insight I was starting to get used to.
My brain slogged through the details of the last few days even though I didn’t want to think about the answers to those questions. The only thing I came up with—and I knew it couldn’t possibly be true—was last Tuesday. When I napped in Wyatt’s room and we went out for pizza.
“You don’t even know, do you?” He shook his head. “Jesus. No wonder David’s worried about you. And now I’m feeling guilty as hell because after I talked with him last time I remembered that I’d promised to give you the name of my bro with the real estate gig—”
“Don’t feel guilty. Not your circus, not your monkey.”
“Um, what?”
My arms tensed and my legs straightened. Time to get the hell away from this conversation and this boy—
Strong fingers pressed a knot between my neck and shoulder and rubbed. Hard. I’d spent the morning ignoring what felt like chunks of ice embedded at the base of my neck—a wretched, cold, lumpy mass of overused muscles—and now Wyatt was melting them, turning tendon and tissue into something that felt human. Unghh. Wow. That felt really good. Maybe I’d hold off on leaving.
After a few drool-worthy moments of kneading he asked, “Where have you been living since you got kicked out of your apartment?”
“Um…”
“Answer the question, Ray.”
“Here and there.” A couple nights on the couch at Lucy’s and Amelia’s. One night in Dot’s spare bedroom—Dottie had been cool with it but her husband had given me a bunch of narrow-eyed “you’re totally on drugs” looks.
He snorted. “Have you even been looking for a place?” he asked.
“No,” I muttered. “I’ve been spending all my free time hanging out at the bars, spending all my tip money on beer and cigarettes.”
He ignored me. “Money’s the issue then, right?”
I shrugged. Yeah, money was an issue but probably not in the way he thought. I mean, I could have unlimited funds within moments if I could be bothered to re-enroll at Ellery. Or go home to my folks and agree to their latest “suggestions” about my future. But I didn’t want to delve into the family saga. I just wanted Wyatt to shut up and keep rubbing my shoulders.
“What’s your status as a student?” he asked. My gaze flicked to his. “Legally,” he qualified. “Officially with the administration. How long have you been un-enrolled?”
“I’ve been on medical leave for a year now,” I said. “Hard to explain what the hell happened because I don’t really understand myself, you know? I graduated high school a year early. Started here when I was seventeen. Depending on which therapist or administrator you talk to that might or might not have contributed to my, um, inability to adjust.” I rolled my eyes at the memory of my numerous and unhelpful counseling sessions. “I lasted three semesters and dropped out halfway through sophomore year.” Funny how I’d once been so freaked out about admitting that—as if it was shameful that I’d had a breakdown bad enough to make me want to retreat from life. But now it didn’t seem to matter. Or maybe it didn’t matter that Wyatt knew this fact about me. Or maybe the neck massage he was giving me had somehow caused my synapses to misfire, de-bugging all my usual defenses.
“So you’re not on academic probation…you can re-enroll any time. You’re still officially an Ellery student.”
I was kinda surprised when he didn’t ask for any details about the medical leave thing. I’d revealed something major and he didn’t seem interested.
“Yeah,” I said, scowling even though his fingers were still making me feel all drooly. “I suppose that’s the so-called official thinking on the situation.”
He dropped his hand and leaned forward, forearms on his knees. I clenched the edge of the bench. My hand wanted to reach for his and bring his touch back to all my hurt-y parts.
“That’s good,” he said, eyes focusing on the distant tennis courts.
“Good?”
“Yeah.” His lips thinned, his eyes narrowed. I followed his gaze to the courts. Two women had showed up to play. Students. One was in shorts and a tiny tee and one was in one of those cute little tennis get-ups, looking a lot like Maria Sharapova—tall, blonde, rail-thin but athletic.
“Checkin’ out the coeds, Kelly?” I asked, half-teasing, half-serious.
“Nope.” He smiled, his eyes going all twinkly. “Are you?”
I shrugged.
“Actually,” he said, “I was just figuring out the final deets of my genius idea.” He sat up straight. “Up for another ride?”