B0161IZ63U (A) (20 page)

“I can’t go back to sleep,” she said. “I need a drink.  I need to get the hell out of this house.”

“Christ…” Chase palmed through the darkness in search of his cellphone, frowning deeply when he saw the time.  “Baby…”

Lila’s skin rolled with soft chills. 
Baby. 
Some part of her itched to correct it, to put a stop to it, to shut it down, but another part wouldn’t let her. He’d said it, and her silence endorsed it.   To her surprise, it didn’t even feel wrong.

“Baby, it’s one in the morning.”

Lila was already standing up from the couch.  “Aren’t you a college kid?  1am is nothing.  Your night should just be getting started.”

“Not when you’re pre-med.”

“Fine.  Then stay here.  I’m going out.”

--

Lila slammed her fourth Patron shot of the night, frowning across the booth at Chase.  Brooklyn Heights was still jumping.  After a short walk around the neighborhood, they’d landed in a diner that was wall to wall with college kids and drunken hipsters.  Most of the servers were older than dirt and couldn’t care less about their intoxicated patrons, as long as their credit cards went through once it came time to close out the tab.

It was now pushing 2am. Chase had finally forgiven Lila for dragging him out of bed at such an ungodly hour.  She was well passed wasted, and he was highly entertained.

“What were you dreaming about?” he asked.

Her eyes flew to him from where she’d been studying the other customers in the diner. “What?”

“You heard me.  What were you dreaming about that had you sweating bullets and pulling me out of the house in booty shorts and a tank top at one in the morning?”

She looked down at her lavender pajama shorts.  They were pretty short, but not ungodly so.  Surrounded by young people, her outfit wasn’t anywhere near scandalous enough to make her stand out.  She was hardly the sluttiest dressed woman there.  Not by a long shot. 

“Or should I ask, what was your
nightmare
about?” Chase corrected.

“I don’t want to talk about that. I just want to have a good time,” Lila said, leaning across the small table and running her hand slowly down his face.  He was sure she’d been going for his cheek, but instead, the back of her hand went right down the middle of his face, sliding clumsily over the bridge of his nose, his lips, and his chin.  “Don’t you want to have a good time, Chase?”

Chase was no longer smiling.  His face had gone deadly serious.  “I’m always up for a good time with you.”

“You’re always up for me, period.  Aren’t you?”

“Don’t do that.  Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not,” she said, poking her lips out in an attempt to appear serious while plopping back down into her seat. “I would never make fun of you.”

“I take you very seriously, you know,” he said to her, smiling bashfully.

“I know.”

“And I don’t appreciate you making fun of me for that.”

“I’m not, I’m being
so
serious.  So much.”

“You’re
so
drunk, is what you are.”

“How seriously do you think about taking me?”

“I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“I mean it.  I want to know.  What makes you so serious about me?”

“Don’t ask me a question that you’re not ready to hear the answer to,
Professor.
”

“I’m ready. I’m so ready. Fuck it!”

Chase chortled.  He figured if he was going to have this conversation with her, there was no better time than now.  He didn’t have to worry about regretting it later because there was no way in hell she’d remember any of it come daylight.  “I think about you… in a lot of serious ways.”

“Like how?”

He smiled down at his hands, playing them together on top of the table.  “I think about you in a serious way academically.”

She scoffed.

“I think about you in a serious way as a woman in my life.”

Her smile slowly fell.

“I definitely think about you in a serious way sexually.”

Her breathing hitched.

Chase noticed, since his eyes had fallen to the deep dip in her tank top.  “Very seriously,” he whispered, his breathing picking up.  His eyes rose to hers, darker than they had been a moment ago.

“Mmm…” She purred.  “How? Tell me.”

Chase licked his lips, eyes lowering as he felt a blush heat his cheeks.

“Come on,” she said.

His eyes met hers, again.

“Do you think about kissing me?” she asked.

His face was serious, once more.  “Yes.” He barely croaked out the answer, his voice having gone lower than even a whisper, coming from somewhere in the deepest part of his gut.  The same part that seemed to be in control of his rapidly hardening dick.  “Yes.”

“Do you think about--”

“What it’s like to be inside you?” he finished for her.  “Yes.  What your pussy looks like?  Yes.  What it tastes like?  The look in your eyes when you cum? The
sounds you make when you cum?  Yes, Lila.  Okay?  Yes.  All of it.  And more.”  He held his hand out, looking away from her while swallowing thickly.  “More than you’ll ever know.”

“So let’s go.”

His eyes shot back to her.  “Excuse me?”

“I’m tired of hula-hooping around this thing.”

“This thing?”

“I don’t know what it is.  I don’t know what to call it.  I just know it’s there.  It’s alive, and it’s right there.”  She pointed to an area in the middle of the table, where they were now leaning into each other.  “Right there between us, always on the brink of explosion.”

Chase knew exactly what she was talking about, even if her drunken ramblings were almost indiscernible.  He understood.  “I know it’s there, Lila. It’s been there since I was sixteen. Can I take you back now, please?  I’m exhausted.”  When she didn’t budge, he couldn’t help a smile.  “You’re gonna hate yourself tomorrow.  You realize that right?”

“It is tomorrow.”  She suddenly squinted at him. “Is this one of those… you want me until you know you can have me, kind of things?  Is that what this is?”

“You’re really saying I could have you?” His eyes came to life.  “Right now?  Tonight?”

Lila sputtered, and then looked out of the window with a roll of her eyes.

“I accept,” Chase said. “In fact, I’ll take two.  Three. Hell, I’ll take
ten.
”

“Stop.  Now you’re making fun of me.” She finally looked back at him and shifted in her seat. “I don’t like it.”

Chase remained still, leaning coolly against the table. “I will always want you. You is
kind
… you is
smart....”
His joking smile fell away after playfully quoting the movie they’d fallen asleep to that night.  “You’re so beautiful it’s ridiculous…”

“Go on…” She grinned.

“And, yeah, I think about you a lot.  Sometimes in really filthy, disgusting, inappropriate ways.”  He tilted his head, studying her intensely before nodding her way. “Do you think about me?”

Lila shifted, again.

“Do you think about me sometimes, Professor?”

She sighed.  “Of course I do.”

“No.  Not ‘
of course I do’
.  That’s not what I’m asking you.”

She closed her eyes momentarily, and when she reopened them, she was shaken by the look in his eye. “Yes, Chase. I think about you.”

“When you’re alone?”

A smile teased her lips.

“I think of you the most… when I’m alone…” he said.

“Stop.”

“In the bed…”

“
Stop
.”

“At night.”

“I got it.” 

“This isn’t a recent turn of events.”  He raised his eyebrows.  “This has been six years in the making, alright? So, I’m sorry that you’re feeling a certain type of way about how I’m handling you right now.”

“Handling me?” She beamed. “There’s no handling going on here.  You’re playing with me.  For your own amusement. It’s like you’re trying to bestow some sick payback on me.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I just offered you some booty, and you shot me down--” Lila tripped herself up.  “I hate the words that are coming out of my
mouth
.”

“Really?  You do? Because I think I’m in love with them.”

She shook her head at him before finishing off her shot.  Catching eyes with the server, she gave a small nod of her head and held up her empty shot glass with a polite smile.

“You’re reading me wrong,” he whispered.

She slammed her empty glass on the table, giving him a look. “I don’t know
how
to read you wrong.”

He searched her eyes. “Are you so used to men fucking you senseless the moment you give the word, that you’ve forgotten what everything else looks like?”

Lila faltered.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I want to enjoy this,” he said, motioning between them.

“Enjoy what?”  Lila asked.  “Torturing me?”

“Lila, I don’t just want to be inside you, in the sexual sense.”  He leaned in closer and made a claw with his hand, pressing it over his heart.  “I want to be inside you.”  He tapped his clawed hand against his heart. “I want in.  I want all the way in.”

“Your honesty is unsettling sometimes.”

“I don’t know how else to be with you.”

“Likewise.”

He squinted softly.  “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”  He leaned back in the booth, picking up his water as he nodded his head, taking a small sip.  He let it chill his teeth.  As he set it down, he cleared his throat. “Did you fuck Jack?”

Lila’s buzz vanished. “No!”

His eyes rose to hers.

“Why do you keep asking me that?”

He studied her face but didn’t answer.

“Stop asking me that.”

“Okay.  I apologize.  I don’t want you to get upset.”  He reached across the table and covered her hands.

For the first time, their live wires touched and then detonated. 

She tightened her fingers around his.  To her shock, she survived the blast.  They both did.

Barely.  Her heartbeat tripled in pace as he intertwined their fingers, running his thumb gently along her palm.  It felt like he was touching every part of her, inside and out.

--

They didn’t sleep for the rest of the night, spending the entire time talking at the diner until they got the shock of their lives at the sight of the sun rising.

They made it back to the house just in time to see her mother and father on their way out.  Paul had planned an entire day for just the two of them, a day that spanned Central Park, all the way to the Statue of Liberty.  Only a New Yorker, who’d been there for many decades, could claim they’d never seen Lady Liberty up close, and Lila’s parents were among them.  She knew her father only wanted to help her mother forget, to distract her mind, and she hoped it would work, at least for today.

The goodbyes hadn’t been tearful, but loving and optimistic.

For the first time in a long time, Lila was happy she came home.  She was even happier that the man sitting at her parent’s dining room table had come with her.

Freshly showered and dressed, Lila approached the table, taking one of the chairs in the back of her hand.

“I was gonna go for a quick walk before we leave for the airport…” She dragged on. “Do you want to take a walk with me?”

Chase looked up from the pile of books he’d been surrounded with since he’d finished his shower, and Lila felt like she’d been rocketed back to five years ago at The Dalton School.  As he blasted her with those powerful eyes of his, eyes that only seemed to grow more powerful each time he hit her with them, she felt her stomach come to life.  She had to take a deep breath to calm it.

“Yeah,” he smiled.  “I could walk.”

Ten minutes later, they were still walking, side-by-side, quietly, enjoying the beautiful Brooklyn morning.  It was extremely early, so the streets had quieted down.  Every once in a while, their arms would brush as they moved, igniting that invisible pulse, and Chase found himself looking over at her when it happened for what had to be the hundredth time.

“Lila--” He stopped when she suddenly took his arm, pointing to a building behind him.  He followed her finger, taking in the sight of a long brick building.

“I used to go to that school. Holy crap, I almost forgot about this place.”  She laughed softly.  “I think I must have completely exorcized it from my memory out of sheer trauma.  Holy crap,” she said, again.  “Now I understand what old people are talking about when they say time flies.”

“Old people? So you mean people like you, right?”  He smiled when her elbow came flying into his gut.

“Asshole,” she whispered.

He looked back at the building.  It seemed small for a school.

“The Remington School for Gifted Girls.”  He read the sign that was right over her shoulder.  “
Gifted girls
?  Gifted, as in…”

“Violent? Unlawful? Angry?  So many possibilities beyond those doors.”  She sighed, dramatically.  “Those were the days,” she sang.

“Are you telling me you were a problem child?  I’ll never believe it.”

“I was a terror. The kind of kid most parents have nightmares about.” She thought about it.  “I wasn’t so different from you, actually, back when I first met you.”

Chase covered his heart.  “You would have never found me roaming the halls of The Remington School for Gifted
Boys
.  I was an angel from heaven.”

“Sweetheart, on what planet? When I found you, you were on a one-man mission to burn Manhattan to the ground.”

“I was pretty angry.  At everybody.”

“And everything.”

“Then you showed up.”

“And it took three years to calm you the hell down.”

“That’s not how I remember it.  You know, I still remember the first time I saw you.  I was sitting in your office with Jack …”

Lila nodded.

“He and I were at each others throats about some bullshit I can’t remember.  And then you walked in…” Chase suddenly took a deep breath.  “And I looked over…”

Lila’s eyes went to him, waiting for him to finish.

“It’s crazy.”

“What?” she asked.

“How you can be living inside a moment that’s going to completely alter your life… and not even know it.”