FIGHT FOR ME (3 page)

“I don’t know, I just don’t want to stay inside.”

“I get that.” Jess put in a movie, some chick flick with a ridiculous plot that Ivy wasn’t too into.

She focused more on drinking wine. Eventually she ended up with the bottle next to her on the coffee table. She was a little buzzed.

She got to thinking about Lucas.

The main actor in the chick flick looked a little like him, but a bit older and not as smoldering. When the main characters finally fell into bed together, cheesy indie music playing over their PG-13 moans and sighs, Ivy couldn’t help but imagine Lucas.

He affected her so strongly. She needed to do something about this. More like
he
needed to do something about it. Something with her. Except… he didn’t seem as interested as she had initially thought. Fuck him.

Ivy set down her –empty –glass and considered asking Jess about it. Would Jess be okay with Ivy crushing hard on her daughter’s teacher? It didn’t seem too bad on one hand, but on the other Jess was a tiny bit unpredictable and might get really pissed off.

Maybe there was another way to bring this up, and get two questions answered at once.

“Hey Jess?”

Jess looked away from the screen, where the protagonists of the movie were now fighting over something unimportant. “Yeah?”

“Do you think Lucas is into you?”

“Mr. Fray? What?” Jess raised an eyebrow and laughed a little. “No way. What brought that up?”

“He just keeps asking about you.”

“Like I said, no way. He’s honestly just a caring guy. Lucas is… extremely single. Ever since he moved here, like half a year ago, I’ve never seen him in town with anyone really. It’s like he spends all his time working his ass off or at home.”

“You sure?”

“Hell yes. Also, I’m pretty sure he’s not a complete idiot. Not stupid enough to go after a widow.”

Ivy put a hand on Jess’s and nodded. “Okay. That makes sense.”

Jess smiled grimly and turned down the TV. She could tell there was something to talk about.

“Why do you ask? Really? I mean, why do you care?”

Ivy shrugged. Great. “I... Well…” Curse good red wine. “I guess I’m interested.”

Jess made a face. “I don’t think he’s boyfriend material. Like I said, I haven’t seen him take an interest in anyone since he moved here. And he might want to stay away as a courtesy to me. Just because he’s polite, you know.”

“Thanks, Jess,” Ivy said sarcastically and poured herself another glass of wine. “Honestly, I didn’t think he was into me anyway.”

“If you really need some action while you’re in town, I can find you someone.” Jess laughed. Ivy blushed.

“Fuck you, Jess.”

Jess turned up the volume on the movie. “I want to see how this ends. If you still want to talk more about my daughter’s unavailable kindergarten teacher afterwards, we can.”

“Got it.” Ivy felt herself drifting off as the movie came to a dreamy happily ever after close. She thought about the weekend. It sounded nice to wander around the small town. Maybe it would help her get her mind off things.

Chapter Five

The next morning, Ivy left the apartment with a slight headache and a bit too late to order breakfast from most restaurants. She walked the few blocks to Paisley’s tourist trap of a downtown and chose a quaint café to eat brunch in simply because it was the closest. The sign hanging outside it let her know it was called “Antonelli’s” in pretty cursive paint.

She ordered pancakes with a side of fruit and ate them with relish. They were a nice change from the instant food abundant in Jess’s household.

The few other diners in the café seemed like they were either tourists on their way somewhere else or locals that had never been anywhere else. Ivy felt a little out of place; she wasn’t a tourist passing through or a long time local. She was something in between.

She finished her breakfast, paid, and walked through the two block downtown. She wandered through various curio shops and found an antique shop that she wanted to return to when she had cash on her.

Eventually she ended up at the park Jess had mentioned, a sprawling expanse on the edge of town, complete with a lake and a gazebo.

By then her headache was gone and she was full of good food. The day was warm and sunny. She walked over the grass to the little lake –pond, really; the body of water had initially impressed her because as a city girl she didn’t see much standing water –and sat on a bench facing the water. A few ducks hopefully swam nearer to the shore where she was sitting, but when she showed that she had no food in her hands they swam away.

Ivy wished that she had found the library and brought a book to the park. It was the perfect place to read. A warm day, a gentle and refreshing wind, and lovely scenery –perfect. She shut her eyes and listened to the sounds of the pond and the park. She could hear kids yelling somewhere nearby; there was probably a playground. A few dogs barked in the distance. And… footsteps, and the sound of a leash jingling. That wasn’t unexpected. There was a path all around the lake.

But when the footsteps stopped right in front of her, Ivy opened her eyes and looked up.

Between her and the lake, on the path, was Lucas. She saw that at the end of the leash in his hand was a somewhat small dog with black and white fur sitting at his heels. The dog looked a little bit like a pit bull, but not quite. Ivy thought back to her days volunteering at an animal shelter in high school. Pit bull terrier. A mix unique to America of two dogs, bred to fight other dogs, but now widely accepted as a great human companion.

Either that or it was a mutt. She couldn’t really tell. She took a breath and met Lucas’s gaze.

“Hi, Ivy,” he said.

“Hi,” she replied. There was a moment of silence. The dog lazily thumped its tail on the ground a few times, letting Lucas know he was bored but not upset. “Who’s this?” she asked finally, referring to the dog.

“This is Kimbo.”

“He’s adorable. May I pet him?”

“Go ahead, but be careful. He’s unpredictable and doesn’t like some people.”

Smiling nervously, Ivy reached down to Kimbo. First she let him smell her hand. He didn’t seem repulsed so she gave him a gentle pet and scratched him behind the ears. The dog wagged his tail and rolled over.

“Aww,” Ivy said, smiling for real now. “He’s great.” She scratched his stomach for a moment but froze when Lucas sat down next to her on the bench.

Was that normal? That wasn’t normal. Usually if you saw an acquaintance at the park you said hello and moved on. Sitting down next to them
meant
something. Did he want to talk to her? Did he have more questions about Jess?

Ivy sat up, leaving Kimbo to roll back right side up. Lucas leaned over and unhooked Kimbo’s leash from his collar. “Go play, boy!” The dog started to run down the path around the pond, joyful. “I take him out here on weekends. He loves to get to run around freely. Usually he’s stuck in my apartment all day, so…”

Lucas seemed oddly relaxed and at peace, just like Ivy had felt before he showed up and sent her into a nervous state. He was smiling and gazing out over the pond.

Maybe it was just that kind of day.

“I had a dog, as a kid.” Ivy watched as Kimbo stopped a hundred feet away or so to sniff something on the ground.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. His name was Zipper, because he was tiny and ran around really fast.”

Another silence.

“I got Kimbo when I moved here, a little more than half a year ago. He’s a great dog.”

“He seems like it.”

Ivy glanced over at Lucas. He was looking at her but looked away once he saw her notice. He reached into his jeans pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“Do you mind?”

“Oh, no, go ahead.” Ivy didn’t smoke but she found the action extremely aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes she thought she would pick up the habit eventually just because it looked so gorgeous.

He lit up and leaned back into the bench, letting the cigarette rest between his lips.

Ivy wondered at how contradictory Lucas was. A kindergarten teacher with a dog, super kind and caring toward a student with no father, yet also… ripped, and a smoker. Maybe she was overthinking this, just finding a way to make her curiosity in him legitimate and not completely romantic.

Ivy watched as he gently exhaled smoke from between his lips.

Sexual, she mentally corrected herself. Her interest was undeniably sexual.

She crossed her legs. Lucas turned to her at the movement. She saw his eyes linger on her bare legs. Just like the first time she met him, his gaze made her skin tingle. There was that same look in his eyes that made her wonder why he wasn’t ripping off her clothes right then.

The same look that frustrated her because he
wasn’t
ripping her clothes off.

“Um,” she said, just trying to fill the silence. He looked up to her eyes. He almost looked a little flustered, like he hadn’t meant to be distracted by her legs. “Your week was good?”

He nodded, flicking ash off his cigarette and looking out over the pond and surrounding greenery. Kimbo was on the other side of the pond, barking at ducks.

“I think I like Paisley,” she tried.

He nodded again, still not looking at her.

“Why did you move here, again?”

Now he looked at her. He put out the cigarette on the metal arm of the bench and let it drop to the ground. “I came here from the city,” he said simply.

“Oh? I live in the city. After being here for a few days, I can totally understand the appeal. It’s nice here. Calm. Is that why you moved?”

“Something like that,” he said, nodding slowly.

Ivy wondered if she’d stumbled upon a subject he didn’t feel like talking about.
Good going
, she thought.

When Kimbo started chasing a pair of ducks a little too intently, Lucas stood up. As he stood his leg accidentally brushed hers.

It was the first time it touched, and it was only denim on her skin for a split second –even so, it made her breathe a little faster.

“I need to take Kimbo home,” he said.

“Oh, all right.”

“I’ll see you Monday.”

“Okay.”

He walked away, somewhat swiftly. Ivy watched him as he called Kimbo to him across the pond, reattached his leash, and started to walk home. He took the long way back toward town, avoiding the bench with Ivy on it.

Well. That was confusing.

Now Ivy just felt awkward sitting on the bench. That dreamy feeling of earlier was gone, replaced by a touch of “this guy is really pissing me off with his body and mixed signals.”

* * * *

She decided to head to that library. She should have gone there in the first place. Words were one of her favorite things, hence the career as an editor.

The walk to the other side of town with the library was a little longer than she would like. She stopped halfway through at a chain restaurant downtown and got a burger and fries. Full and ready for the next leg of her journey, she walked to the library. She realized it was only a few blocks away from Jess’s apartment building, just the opposite way from downtown.

Ivy walked into the stone building. It was smaller than she’d thought it was; the inside consisted of an open ceiling first floor and a second floor platform accessible by stairs. A skylight opened onto both floors.

Only a few people were inside the library, reading or studying or browsing the books. Ivy nodded to the librarian at the checkout desk as she walked through the metal detectors flanking the inside doors.

She walked up to the second floor, pulled a book off of a shelf at random, and sat in an armchair in the corner of the floor. She looked at the book she’d picked. “Macrobiotic Cooking for Dummies.”

Not exactly what she was looking for. Sighing, she stood up and turned toward the shelves to pick out a new book.

Lucas was standing at the other end of the aisle of books, at the top of the stairs to the second floor. He looked a little out of breath.

“Lucas?”

He walked toward her, confidently. With purpose.

Her heart beat fast.

“Ivy.” He took her face in his hands. His palms were warm and his grip was strong.

“What are you doing?”

“I…” He dropped his hands from her. He stood very close to her. She could hear him breathing.

“Did you follow me here?”

He just looked at her.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Lucas?” She didn’t give a thought to what she was saying. “You… You look at me like that every morning for a week. Yet you act like I don’t interest you in the least.”

He kissed her.

Ivy pulled away after a split second. “What are you doing?” She felt light headed.

“I want to kiss you,” he said. His lips were slightly parted and looked so, so soft. “I wanted to kiss you the moment I saw you.”

“Kiss me,” she said; not as a command but because she was seeking confirmation for what she was hearing.

“That’s right. You are…” He looked at her, her entire self, his eyes lingering on her breasts and hips before he met her eyes again. “Intoxicating.”

Ivy felt herself melt right then and there. This was ridiculous. Lucas was ridiculous.

“Fucking kiss me then.”

He did. He pushed against the wall of books and kissed her, hard, open mouthed. His breath was warm and his tongue tasted like cigarettes and something darker. Ivy put a hand around his neck to steady herself.

Breathing hard, she pulled away again. “Why wait until now?”

“It’s unorthodox; asking a girl out the moment you set eyes on her.”

“I wanted you to.”

“I could tell.”

Ivy brushed her lips against his, their noses bumping. Their eyes met. His eyes were offensively green.

“Will you go on a date with me tonight?” He asked it quietly, with almost a joking tone.

“Yes,” Ivy said without thinking about it at all. Her hand was still on his neck. She felt the heat of his attraction for her on his skin.

Now he stepped away. Ivy’s hand fell by her side. “I’m going to leave. I’m not going to follow you for the rest of the day. I’ll pick you up at Jess’s. Seven?”