Checked (26 page)

He trails kisses across my cheek as he pulls me even closer in to him, mumbling, “Callie.” I put my head back on his shoulder and crush myself against him.

And then his pager goes off again. Of course.

As he pulls back a little to grab the device from his pocket, he looks up at me quickly, his hair disheveled, his eyes scorching.

Another beep comes from his other pocket, and he soon has to steal his eyes away to read the text on his cell phone.

“My emergency phone session is now an urgent hospital visit. We have to go.”

I nod into his intense eyes. They haven’t yet lost all of their fire.

Grabbing my hand, he carefully navigates us back to our table so we can pay our bill. Mandy is there shrugging on a sweater.

“Oh, you guys are going?”

I nod as he says, “Patient crisis.” He flings some cash into the bill holder and hands it to Mandy, asking if she minds taking care of it.

“No problem,” she says. And then, “Why don’t you let me take Callie home? I was planning to go soon anyway so I can pack for tomorrow.”

“ No, I want to—” he starts.

Mandy breaks in. “Get to the office or wherever you are going. Really. I only had one drink tonight, and that was a couple of hours ago. I am fine to drive, and you really need to go.”

He looks at me.

“I’d really like to take you—” he whispers before his phone beeps again.

He reads another text and looks up at me regretfully.

I nod and say, “Go. I’ll be just fine.”

“We’ll even walk out with you,” Mandy pipes in, adding some cash to the bill holder and turning it over to the other two girls at the table.

I grab my purse off the back of my chair before he grabs my hand and leads me outside to Mandy’s car. Mandy jumps into the driver’s seat, and he opens my door.

“I’ll text you when I get home,” he promises as he squeezes my hand. “It might be really late.”

Nod. Smile.

“Bye, Callie.”

“Good night, Aiden.”

Chapter 19

day five

MY FACE IS STILL SMILING when I wake up on Friday morning. Last night starts rushing through my mind before I even open my eyes. Our dance. His lips. Warm trembles throughout me. The heat in his eyes.
{Damien Rice starts AGAIN.}
Mandy’s teasing in the car. Her endless stream of questions. Her comments about his designer-smelling cologne. The fact that I could still smell it on my skin before my shower last night…

His late night text. How sorry he was about having to leave so suddenly. Still having my ID. How he had a great night. That he’ll talk to me tomorrow.

{He sings louder and louder. Over and over.}

Now that it’s tomorrow, I should probably get moving. I do, unfortunately, have class with Dr. Gabriel in a few hours.

Morning preparations. Let’s go.

10:00 A.M. A TEXT COMES JUST as I am putting my steam mop away. I run right to my dresser to check the message.

Good morning, Callie. Hope you slept well. Therapy today around 8:00 p.m. I can pick you up at your house. Sound okay?

I write back.

Sounds good. See you soon.

Soon. Does that sound too eager? Desperate? 8:00 p.m. is ten hours away, after all. Not really soon.

Erase text. Start again.

Sounds good. See you then.

Too informal? Like I’m not looking forward to seeing him? I did say that I had a good time when I replied to his text last night, but this is today. I don’t want to sound indifferent. Or cold.

Erase text. Start again.

Sounds good. See you then. :)

Good, I think.

One. Two. Three. Send.

I head to the shower and then complete my morning and leaving preparations. Before I leave for class, I say goodbye to Mandy. Tell her to have a safe trip. To have fun. That I’ll see her on Sunday.

She tries one more time to convince me to go with her and tells me to call or text her if I change my mind before she leaves when her class ends at 2:00 p.m.

Smiles. Hugs.

I leave for class, hoping that the murderers won’t be waiting for me when I return to the Mandy-less house. I am also hoping that by some miracle Dr. Gabriel has taken the week off and won’t be in class.

I’m not that lucky. When I walk into the classroom, he’s in the front of the room talking to a girl with an extremely high ponytail and a shirt that says “Porn Star” on it.

Classy
. {And now for a rousing rendition of My Darkest Day’s
“Porn Star Dancing.”
}

Their conversation ends. The girl bounces back to her seat, her ponytail swinging back and forth the whole way. Dr. Gabriel starts class. A lengthy monologue about the art of persuasive writing.

Eventually, the persuasive presentations begin. Dr. Gabriel doesn’t ask for any help with comments today. He hasn’t even really looked at me.

Not a problem.

Following a presentation about the benefits of changing the drinking age to eighteen, Miss Ponytail Porn Star herself comes to the front to give her speech about saving sex until marriage.

Unreal.

The presentations continue on and on. I listen to the students, try to memorize some of their names and faces, and pick at my nails.

Oh, and think about last night. And him. And tonight.

When class ends, Dr. Gabriel calls me over to talk about topics I’ll be teaching. He thinks we should meet for lunch at some point to discuss everything.

Seriously?

In an attempt to avoid any face-to-face meetings, I tell him that I have a rather full schedule over the next week and ask him to email some of the information for me to look over. He seems hesitant, but he does agree to email me.

Excellent.

I leave the classroom and head to my car, pulling out my phone to check for any messages. No text messages, but there is a little number two on my Words with Friends icon.

I click on the icon. He took a turn. He’s still losing. I play and further extend my lead. I also have a new game request from Melanie. Of course. She found a way to check if I am surviving while she and Mandy are away. Guess if I’m taking turns it means I’m not in an institution or dead or something…

I take a turn, but she is already beating me. Figures—she is always at least three steps ahead of me in everything.

Okay, time to go home. Before I can even get my key in the ignition, he has played again. He is going to have to wait. Car on. Go home.

WITH FRESHLY WASHED HANDS, I settle on my bed and get to work on my paper.
{R. Kelly’s
“Ignition (Remix)”
ends and begins again for the three-hundredth time since I left campus.}
Each time I complete another hand-written page, I allow myself a few minutes to take my turn in our Scrabble-not Scrabble game. He keeps playing only moments after I take my turn. Melanie hasn’t played another turn yet at all. Guess she’s slacking on checking up on me
. Thank God.

After a few hours, I have successfully written out all but a conclusion to my paper and, more impressively, beaten him by over one hundred points in our game. He, of course, has already started a new game with me.

Does he ever work?

7:30 p.m. I begin to get ready for the night ahead. I have no idea what to wear so I opt for jeans and a Pierce hoodie.

After my 400-calorie salad dinner, it is time to start my leaving-the-house routine. Thirty-three checks completed three times. Ten minutes until 8:00 p.m.

Nail picking, anti-murderers in my house praying, hallway pacing, him thinking, more nail picking. And it’s 8:00 p.m.

The doorbell rings right on time.

Here goes.

In my haste to open the door, I do somehow remember that I should be on the lookout for the murderers so I peek through the little peephole. I’m so glad I do. I can’t see much, but I can see his big, relaxed smile and three yellow roses in his hand. Even though I take a few deep breaths, I cannot manage to wipe the gigantic smile off my own face before I open the door.

He meets my eyes and silently hands me the roses. My right hand grazes his when I take the little bouquet, and I feel the smile slip from my face at the sight of his burning eyes. All the fire from the dance floor has been reignited.

“Callie.” He breathes out my name and grabs my empty left hand. He pulls it right to his face, rubbing his stubbly cheek against my palm. With another little tug, he has my fingers on his lips. He takes the time to kiss each one, his eyes locked with mine.

By the time he traps my pinkie finger between his lips, I can no longer hold myself back and I fall into him. In less than an instant, his lips find mine, and we drink each other in—arms and hands and bodies scrambling to get closer and closer. More and more entangled.

Just as my lips make their way to his neck, a deafening honk pulls us both out of the moment.

“What the—” I begin, still wrapped in his arms.

“It’s okay.” He smiles, nodding to the street in front of my house. “Part of tonight’s session.” Judging by the look in his eyes, he hasn’t completely removed himself from our moment.

Can’t we just stay he—

Another honk, and my eyes and thoughts are redirected to the street in front of us where a gigantic bus is parked.
Ugh
. The party bus…used to take drunken college students from bar to bar on weekends.
Marvelous.

As the bus door opens, LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” begins to spill out. The greasy driver is staring right at him…at me…us…with a full-blown smirk on his face.

Disgusting.

“Why don’t you run your flowers in the house and then we can go.” Flowers. In my hand. Right. I forgot about them.

After disentangling myself from him, I place the three roses on the small table in the hallway before meeting him again on the porch. Door locked. Handle twist. Handle twist. Handle twist.
Right in front of him.
He holds out his hand and gives me what I assume is supposed to be a reassuring look. I’m not sure that I can be reassured right now. Not even by him.

Nonetheless, I take his hand and follow him into the huge, loud mode of public transportation. He leads me up two large, relatively clean steps one at a time. No traces of trash, gum, or throw-up—much better than I envisioned. The creepy driver hasn’t stopped staring at us, probably since he first pulled up in front of my house. As if we are seriously the most fascinating people he has seen in ages when he spends his weekends driving around drunken freak shows.

Get some perspective, toolbag.

Unfortunately, bigger problems await me when I reach the top of the stairs. College students are everywhere—some in seats, many roaming around in the bus. Why are they allowed to do that?

Some are singing to the radio—now playing FUN’s “We are Young.”
Perfect. Just perfect
—some are making out, and some are yelling conversations that pretty much consist of sentences about how hammered they are going to get tonight. I guess I’m lucky that most of them aren’t already drunk. Thank God we didn’t have therapy scheduled for 1:00 in the morning.

“Do you want to sit here?” He has found two empty seats together in the front of the bus. The seats aren’t empty though. The blue hotel carpet-looking upholstery has large black splotches in various places. I’m pretty sure that means scraped off gum. There is also a candy bar wrapper shoved in the crevice between the two seats, right by a little tear in the blue fabric.

“Um, no. Let’s just stand.”

I think he understands that I intend to stand right in the front of the bus and not brave the area in the back with all of the swarming, shouting bodies. His hand begins to reach for the bar above us, but he pulls it back after probably seeing the flinch on my face. He manages to balance himself by jamming one foot beside a seat and the other against a pole in middle of the aisle.

The bus begins moving again. I guess the driver couldn’t find it in himself to look at me when it might have been important, like to make sure I’m not just randomly standing in the middle of the bus before peeling away from the front of my house. Fortunately, as I begin to stumble backwards, I am caught by strong and steady arms.

“Relax—I have you,” he whispers into my ear before beginning to massage my shoulders. I close my eyes and try to focus on the heat of his breath on my neck and the pressure of his hands.

The bus jolts to briefly pause at the stop sign at the end of my road. His hands fly from my shoulders to around my waist, and he pulls me even closer against him.

“Are you okay?”

My ear brushes his lips as I move my head up and down. His body tenses behind me before he further tightens his grasp around my waist.

{Now a performance from Alison Krauss.
“When You Say Nothing at All.”
}

After letting my head drop back against his chest, I close my eyes and allow him to hold me. Or allow myself to be held by him.

I can do this. I am doing this.
Even though we’re not in the laps of the obnoxious partygoers in the back, we are riding public transportation with them. I’m not even too annoyed by the noise they are making. Their blaring conversations coupled with the songs from the radio distract me from my thoughts, from actually acknowledging that I am here on this bus.

It begins to rain outside, and the patter on the windows joins the mix to create a new kind of white noise. The rain gets stronger and louder, and the partiers get noisier, but I feel fine somehow. In his arms. Safe. Balanced. Dry.
{Let’s do that refrain again.}