Awakening (22 page)

“Doing what?” I tease back.

“You’re staring at me with that look. I haven’t quite figured out what’s going on in that brain of yours, yet.” He turns the veggies on the heat.

“Well, you’re just going to have to find out, one of these days.”

“20 questions, then?” Ryan pauses his stirring and looks directly at me.

“You want to play 20 questions?” I ask, baffled. “You mean, like you pick something and I ask 20 questions to figure out what you’re thinking about?”

“Sort of. But in this one I get to ask 20 questions, any questions. And you have to answer them.” He goes back to stirring the pan.

“Okay. Do I get to ask you 20 questions when you’re done?” I perk up at the thought.

“Yeah. That’s fair.” He focuses on the food for a minute or two and turns around with two plates of steaming tacos.

“Hey! Look at this!” I grab a plate and move to the small table in the ‘living room’.

“Okay, Young. Where did you grow up?” Ryan takes a huge bite of taco and watches me while I answer him.

“Fountain Hills, Arizona.”

“Okay. Where the heck is that?”

“About 45 minutes from Phoenix. It’s a tiny community with small schools and big houses.”

“Must be hot there, huh? Wait, don’t answer that. Were you prom queen or homecoming queen in high school?”

I laugh out loud at that one. “Neither.”

“Hmm.” He takes a minute with that one. “Did you do anything else at Stanford?”

“Well my major was Political Science, as you already know. But at the end I did some photography and journalism. I finished in three and half years and had a semester to screw around.”

“You finished your undergrad in less than four years and they let you hang out and take pictures for a semester?” He seems incredulous.

“Yeah. I wanted to walk with my class, so I didn’t want to graduate early. And I was pretty burnt out with the law school thing, by then I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Taking photos and writing silly columns and articles about life around campus seemed like a fun way to spend a semester.”

“And. What happened?”

“Well.” Do I really want to get into this? Stalling, I push my hair behind my ears. “I don’t know. When it was time to start the applications, I had already met Darren. It was really nice to just be and not push, push, push. He liked how open my schedule was. I liked not working so hard, so I just never completed them.”

“Darren didn’t want you to go to law school so you didn’t go?” Now he looks mad and he has his lawyer fighting face on. Ugh.

“Isn’t that 20? I think it was 20.” I need to move this conversation away from me and Darren and school.

“Okay, wait. One more question. What schools were you going to apply to?” He no longer looks pissed, but now I feel like I’m in a job interview.

“Stanford, Brown, Berkeley. UCLA, Yale, Duke, Georgetown, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”

“You were applying to all of them?” He motions for more. “Did you have a preference, or an idea about which ones would take you?”

“I was thinking about Duke, but I got courting letters from a bunch of them,” I say, popping my last bite of taco in my mouth.

His mouth drops open as he gazes at me.

“Courting letters? Like, the school writes to you and says please apply here. And then you just chucked it all? And you ended up getting a job as a party planner?” Now he just looks disgusted.

Every time I think about what I did, or didn’t do, and where I ended up, I cringe. It just pisses me off more. I know I screwed up. I know it and I am trying to fix it. I feel myself blushing with embarrassment.

“Well yes, Ryan. You’re looking at a class one idiot!” Damn it, what a stupid game this is.

“Holy crap, Young. Your parents must have shit their pants!” He starts laughing. I can feel myself moving from embarrassment to anger. Where the hell does he get off, laughing at me? I get up and start cleaning up dinner.

“Wait, Nora.” He tries to recover. How gallant of him. “Nora, I’m not laughing at you—”

“Really? This isn’t you laughing at me? Well, thank God, ’cause for a second there, I heard laughter and well, yes, it was directed in my general direction, but now that you cleared that up, I feel so much better!” I don’t mean to yell, but I’m yelling.

His face changes instantly to serious. He gets up and comes over to me.

“I’m sorry. I’m just shocked. I thought your law school idea was a new idea, not something you had and then chucked.”

“Wow, Ryan, you have such a way with words.” The sarcasm is evident in my voice.

“Whoa. Let’s back up. I don’t know anyone who has the brains to finish school in three and half years. I should know; I tried. I applied to seven schools and got into four of them. No one I know got courting letters,” he says, seriously.

“Really?” I’m interested in his history, but still hurt and pouting a little.

“Really. But it doesn’t matter. You flared out your last semester and took some time off. No big deal. We all do that.” Ryan reaches up and touches my shoulder, which drops a few inches, the release relaxing my spine and neck.

“I flared out,” I repeat. Jeez, that’s a lot better than ‘I met a guy who for once didn’t care that I was so damn smart and I flipped head over heels and chucked everything so we could hang out on his schedule’.

“Yes. You flared out.” He kisses me, softly.

I love the way his mouth feels against mine. As my anger dissolves, inspiration hits.

“Hey. I have 20 questions for you, Cole.” I pull back and watch him.

“Ah. Yes, you do. Okay, shoot.” He stares right back at me, nothing to hide. We shall see.

“Where did you go to school?” I ask, crossing my arms, waiting for the answers to come.

“GW and then Georgetown Law,” he fires back.

“So, you were back East for seven years. How long did you stay after law school?”

“Three years.”

“Really? How old are you?” Doing the math in my head, I’m confused. I thought he was around my age, maybe a little older, but not much.

“27.”

“Oh. So when did you get here?”

“Two months ago.” He still sounds amused. His eyes are smiling and he looks relaxed.

“Two months? So when you showed up your first assignment was the firm’s biggest event?” I know that sounded incredulous, but now I just want to know. This man is so intriguing.

“Well, if you recall, I wasn’t in charge. Emily was. I was still relatively new working at the firm when Auntie Lynn brought me to our first meeting. She didn’t know what to do with me, I didn’t have a lot of clients, and was still getting my feet wet.” He sits down, almost as if the memory is exhausting.

“Seriously. You had just started?”

“Yep.” He smiles that wicked smile of his.

I laugh out loud.

“And when Emily came it wasn’t to babysit us, it was to find out what the hell you were doing?” I ask again, laughing now.

“Well, I think a little of both. It was the first thing I happily took over at the firm. My being there was a bit of an issue. For everyone,” he says, his eyes darkening.

“That sounds like a story.” I say. This is what I’m after. “What does it mean, you’re here paying off your school loans?”

He looks up at me, surprised. “It means I am working at the firm, making money to pay off my debts.”

“So you’re not here by choice?”

He laughs, but this time the laugh is not filled with joy, this time it’s sardonic.

“No. This is not my choice. But I think you’ve filled your quota of questions. Time for an evening walk.”

Oh, great! Just when we were getting somewhere.

“An evening walk, huh? Okay. Do you have a flashlight? I, um, am not so comfortable in the dark in the woods.”

He grabs me and pulls me into him. “Don’t worry, my child. I will protect you,” he says with a silly accent. “Let’s go into the woods!”

Laughing, I pull away to get my jacket. Darkness has fallen around us and the buzz of evening insects has become noticeably louder. After retying one of my shoes and pulling on my jacket, I’m ready to go.

Standing at the camp waiting for Ryan, I hear him rustling around in the van, getting his jacket and flashlight, I presume. I look up at the trees, some stars are already starting to sparkle in the sky and the moon is low, just beginning her assent. My breath stops and for a moment I am lost in this expanse of silence and beauty.

“Okay. Here’s your head lamp.” Ryan comes up behind me. I turn around and get blinded by a light on his head.

“What the hell is that?” I say, snapping my eyes shut. I feel him clamp something around my head while he’s laughing.

“You will learn to love this, we just can’t look at each other,” Ryan says, still laughing.

I open my eyes and sure enough, I have a flashlight on my head.

“Wait. Turn yours off, I want to see you!” He obliges and turns his off. I look directly at him. He looks like a miner or a hippy. Maybe a hippy miner. I’m sure I look just as ridiculous.

Satisfied, I look away. “Okay. You can turn your light back on now.”

He takes my hand and we walk into the woods. Mostly I look down because we’re not on a trail. After about ten minutes of walking, I wonder if he knows where we are, because I have no idea how to get back to the van.

I’m about to ask him if he knows when he slows down and squeezes my hand. Stepping up to join him, I see we have stopped at an illuminated meadow. We both turn off our lights and watch the moon light it up even more.

The meadow is large with small flowers; they look white in the moonlight, but could be any color. Just like in fairy tales, the trees surround the meadow and the moon, shining softly on the grass, gives it a velvety texture.

The stars come into focus as my eyes adjust to the darkness. There are tons of them sparkling over our heads. Ryan moves to sit down and I follow. Once we settle the only sound is our breathing, and with each exhale I feel him relax.

With a long breath I realize this is the first time I have ever seen anything like this in real life. In movies or books maybe, but never have I sat on the edge of a meadow and watched the moon rise over it with the sky blossoming a million stars a minute. I am speechless at the perfection of nature.

I have no idea how long we’ve been sitting. Ryan turns towards me and kisses me. It’s a long and deep kiss, filled with so much unspoken communication. I just wish I knew what he was saying.

He pulls back and looks at me, his eyes shining, a smile playing on his face. “You are so beautiful. Thanks for coming here with me.”

With that he gets up. I stand too, a little dazed. He turns and flips his light back on. I do the same and we head back. How he knows the way back is beyond me, but I am grateful he does.

We walk for a while and then I see the outline of the van and the camp.

“Bed, then?” Ryan asks as we approach the van.

“Yeah. What about all this?” I motion to the camp.

“Well, the food is stored, so all this is fine. We just need to make sure all the clothes are inside the van, otherwise they’ll be damp in the morning.” He starts walking around the camp as if he is looking for something.

I search the camp for discarded clothes or towels. Now I see why this headlamp is so spectacular. I have both hands to tidy up or pick up and move things.

Ryan is already in the van when I do one last sweep of the camp and join him. With the door closed it’s a tight fit, but still cozy. Ryan is sitting on the back seat reading a book. He’s wearing pajama pants and no top. His chest is bare, muscles relaxed, but still evident. My insides wake up.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey back. You look nice.” I smile at him.

He catches my eye and smiles back.

“Back for more already?” He puts down his book.

“Well, I’m just saying.” I’m slightly embarrassed now.

“We may still have a few rounds of 20 questions to go, but I do know a few things about you. I know that look.” He stands up and reaches for my shirt. My hands fall to my sides.

He slowly grabs my shirt and pulls it over my head. I hear his intake of breath as his hands slide over my stomach and breasts. My nipples harden.

He murmurs long and low from deep in his throat.

His fingertips graze my waist where my pants sit. The thrill of his touch underneath my clothing quickens my breath.

He reaches for my button and undoes it. As if my body knows what that means, a shiver of excitement runs through me. He slowly works down the zipper.

I slip off my shoes while he slides my pants down my hips. I wiggle the rest of way out of them. I’m left standing in my underwear and bra. He leans back and takes me in.

“Damn girl. You are hot!” he says, admiringly.

“I could say the same about you,” I tell him, the words riding my breath.

“After you,” he says, waiting.

“After me where?” I ask, still breathless, admiring him, feeling my skin prickling with anticipation.