Isn't She Lovely (19 page)

I don’t say a word as I set my bag down, but my eyes never leave Stephanie’s. She looks guilty at first, but after studying my expression, the guilt is replaced by something that looks like stubbornness.

“What’s up, man?” I say casually, tearing my eyes away from Stephanie and glancing at David.

“Elliot,” he says, giving a little nod.

I don’t bother to hide my eye roll as I grab a beer from the fridge. The fake messing up of the opponent’s name is the oldest trick in the male handbook.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“Just brought Steph’s DVDs back over. You know how she is about her movies.”

I see his hand move a little higher on her thigh as he says it. A thigh that’s covered in cargo fatigues.

Belatedly my eyes skim over the rest of her, and I see what I didn’t notice when I first
came in: the boots, the tough-girl pants, one of those trademark tiny tanks, and the gray shit on her eyes. She’s been dabbling with pieces of her old self for the past few days—the boots, the nails, the pants—but apparently she decided to go all out tonight, because it’s the full-goth Stephanie.

It should make me want her less. It should remind me that it’s David who’s her type, not me.

But mostly I want to tell him to get his hands off her.

I take a sip of my beer and keep my face perfectly blank. “Stephanie, you have all your DVDs?”

Her eyes narrow at my casual tone. It’s like I said—she knows me. “Yeah.”

“Excellent,” I say with my best smile before turning to David. “Get the fuck out.”

David may be a skinny artist type, but he’s apparently not a pushover, because he stands to face me and his expression is pissed.

Can’t say I blame him. I’m being a dick, but it’s
my
house, and this asshole’s hand was on Stephanie when he has another girlfriend—

Shit. At least I
hope
he has another girl. What if he broke it off with that Leah chick and wants Stephanie back?

The thought makes my beer taste like piss.

“Dude, can you give us a minute?” David asks, doing a far better job with manners than I am.

“For what?”

He ignores my question and turns to Stephanie. His eyes go sappy and pleading, and I think I’ve got a pretty good idea what’s coming. The guy’s realized that he threw Stephanie over for a skank, and now he wants the good one back.

I no longer just want to ask him to leave. I want to throw him out on his hipster ass.

“Stephanie?” I ask.

She sucks in her cheeks and looks angry, but I can’t tell if she’s mad at me for acting like a possessive dick or at David for daring to touch her after cheating on her.

“You should go, David.”

I smile. She’s mad at David.

Then her blue eyes find mine, and I’m not entirely sure they won’t actually shoot poison darts at me. She’s definitely pissed at
me
too.

I rein in my caveman mood enough so that I don’t follow them to the front door, but I’m not going to pretend that I don’t try to eavesdrop, just a little. But they’re whispering, and I can’t make out any words. Then the whispering stops altogether, and I strain to hear anything at all. Are they kissing? I force myself to go sit on the couch so that I don’t completely lose my shit. If
they want to get back together, that’s their business.

Except
damn
. The very thought burns my throat.

I hear the front door click shut, and Stephanie stomps back into the living room, looking every bit as angry and mutinous as she did that day I first ran into her in the hallway. Only this time I’m pretty sure she’d stab me with her pens, rather than just drop them tamely into her little-kid backpack.

She doesn’t say a word as she rummages around in one of my cabinets and pulls out a bottle of bourbon. I raise an eyebrow. “Rough day?”

Stephanie manages to simultaneously pour a couple of fingers into a tumbler and give me the bird. She drops a few ice cubes into the glass. Whisky actually sounds perfect right now, but I know better than to ask her to pour me some when she’s in Ethan-must-die mode, so I set my barely touched beer aside and pour some for myself, sans ice.

She commandeers the couch after I get up, and I know I should give her space, but I live here too, so I sit next to her. Not close enough to touch, but closer than roommates would, considering there’s a half dozen other spots to sit in the room.

I expect her to give me a blistering lecture about respecting boundaries, and
What the hell were you thinking?
and
You’re such a Neanderthal
, but she’s just sitting there quietly, patiently, taking tiny sips of bourbon.

I can tell out of the corner of my eye that she’s watching me. Waiting for me to explain. Except I don’t have an explanation other than that I was jealous, and we both know that’s crazy, so I say the only other thing that comes to mind.

“Sorry.”

She lets out a little Stephanie snort before setting her glass aside and starting to untie her combat boots. I watch her fingers unwind the laces, and I want her to say something. Anything. I want her to say,
No problem, Price
, but more than that, I want her to tell me there’s nothing going on with that douche bag David.

I want her to tell me that she wants me to kiss her again.

Perhaps most of all, I want her to explain why she pushed me away from that kiss in the library in the first place. Because she was every bit as into it as I was. I could tell.

But maybe I have to give a little to get a little.

“My mom’s having an affair,” I say.

Well. That came out of nowhere. I’m suddenly remembering why I haven’t really touched whisky since the night of my twenty-first birthday several months back, when I got hammered and spent the rest of the day puking. But worse than the hangover, whisky makes me chatty. Disaster.

Her fingers falter for a second on her boot laces, but she doesn’t look up. “And?”

And? And?

“Well, it totally sucks,” I say, feeling like a little boy, even though I’m pretty sure I’m justified in being upset about this.

She nods, takes a drink, and then starts on her other shoelace. “How’d you find out?”

Here we go
. “I um … I saw her with Michael’s dad. Right after I saw my friend with Olivia, actually.”

I thought it’d suck to say it out loud, but although it still sounds as farcical as it did in my head, I realize that some of the sting is gone.

She does look up then, her eyes meeting mine. “You walked in on your girlfriend with your best friend, and then saw your mom sleeping with your best friend’s dad? And you’re sure this wasn’t a dream? Or a hallucination?”

Despite the fact that her words are flippant, her eyes are concerned, and I belatedly become aware that her hand is on mine, her thumb rubbing against my knuckles. I glance down at her small hand on my larger one.

It looks right.

It
feels
right.

“It wasn’t a hallucination,” I say, trying to give a half smile. “It was definitely my mother kissing another dude. And it wasn’t just a peck, if you know what I mean.”

She kicks off both boots and scoots back on the couch, facing me. “Oh, I do know what you mean. In fact, I received a kiss like that just a few days ago. Weird thing, though—the guy quit talking to me after.”

I widen my eyes in mock surprise. “Weird thing happened to me too! Similar experience, except the girl darted away from the kiss like a terrified little rabbit.”

Her eyes fall to her glass and she stabs at the ice cubes with one skeleton fingernail. “A rabbit, no. Terrified, yes.”

Ah, shit. She was
scared
of me?

“Why?” I ask, keeping my voice as soft and nonconfrontational as possible.

She doesn’t answer for a few seconds, and when she does, it’s not to address my question. “Your whole experience with Olivia and your mom … is that why you went all weird when you saw me and David together?”

I tilt my head back. “I don’t see the connection.”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “I think you do.”

I hate when girls do this, and I struggle to follow her train of thought. It doesn’t take me long.

“You think I was pissed that David was here because I thought you were cheating on me?”

She shrugs. “You tell me.”

No
. “No,” I say. “That’s not it. I mean yeah, I did think you guys were, um … on the verge of something. But I wasn’t mad because I was jealous. How could I be when we’re not really together?”

“Exactly,” she says, her eyes boring into mine.

“Exactly,” I repeat back.

What the fuck is going on here?
I swear to God, talking to her when she’s all gothed out is a trip down a fucking rabbit hole.

“So we agree,” I say. “I’m not jealous.”

“Okay,” she says simply.

“But are you and David … um … together?”

She gives me a look. “You’re not the only one who’s been cheated on, hotshot. You really think I’d go back to him?”

“But his hand …”

“Was creeping, yes. And I was actually relieved for about a half second when you came home because I thought you’d help protect me.”

Terrified. Protect
. Her choice of words to describe physical contact with guys is odd.

But of course it would be. Her senior year … the roofie … her piece-of-trash ex-boyfriend.

I haven’t pressed her about that night. Not because I don’t care. On the contrary, I probably care
too
much. And she clearly doesn’t want to talk about it with me. But now I feel like the world’s biggest dick for letting it sit there between us unaddressed. Because I know—somehow I
know
—that that night has everything to do with why she is the way she is. And why she seemed mostly unfazed by David’s infidelity. And maybe even why she seems scared to death about whatever’s between us.

Only I don’t have a fucking clue how to bring it up. I guess I could just ask her what happened, but I want her to want to tell me on her own. I want her to make the first move.

Forcing myself not to beg her for answers, I lean my head back on the couch and close my eyes. Trying to be content for now that she doesn’t seem to hate me. That we’re at peace for the first time in weeks, neither of us dodging the other’s company.

It hits me then that I’ve missed this. Missed Stephanie. And that I’m going to miss her even more when she moves back into the dorms in a week, after my parents’ Hamptons party.

Of all the things I’m expecting then, it isn’t the feel of Stephanie’s cool fingers on my forearm. I keep my eyes closed, thinking maybe I’m imagining it, but then the pressure becomes firmer as she scrapes her nails lightly down my forearm.

“I like this part of you,” she says, her voice husky. “This part of your arm. Weird, huh?
But it’s one of the first things I noticed.”

I don’t open my eyes yet, still confused about whether we’re supposed to be keeping things light. Keeping things distant. “Is it all that sexy arm hair?” I ask.

“That,” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice. “But mostly the contrast between the blond hair and the tan skin and the corded muscle. It’s very …”

“Yeah?” I ask when she doesn’t respond.
Jesus, did my voice just crack?

“Hot,” she says.

I deserve a medal, I really do. Because I don’t kiss her, even though every single part of my body is demanding that I do.

And then I feel her breath on my ear. Her lips on my neck.

There goes my self-control.

I tilt my head toward her, my free hand cupping her cheek, feeling her smooth skin as her lips explore my neck. She moves slowly, her lips never breaking contact with my skin as she leans toward me. Over me. And then her lips are on mine, and I guess I don’t deserve that medal after all, because I’m kissing her back, my fingers tangled in her hair.

She has the wherewithal to move both of our glasses to the table, freeing our hands, and then our hands are everywhere.

Her arms are around my neck, her nails clawing at the skin at my nape, and I realize that it’s the first time she’s really touched me. The first time that she’s initiated.

She wants me.

The thought sends me through the roof, and it’s all I can do to keep my hands on her waist, on her back … and not move them to the places that I’m dying for them to be.

As though reading my thought, she arches into me, wiggling restlessly, and I hope to God I’m not reading the signs wrong. That I’m not going to scare her off.

I lift one hand to the back of her neck, keeping her head still so my tongue can circle hers as I slowly move the other up over her rib cage, brushing for one heartbreaking moment against her breast before settling my palm against her collarbone, my fingers toying with the strap of her tank top.

“These stupid tiny shirts drive me crazy, you know,” I say against her lips.

I feel her smile. “Yeah? Even though they’re not pink and couture?”

“They’re little,” I say, wrapping my fingers around a strap. “I’ve always wondered how much give they have. How hard I’d have to tug to break one.”

“Sounds painful,” she says, gasping against my mouth as my fingers drift infinitesimally lower on her chest.

“I guess we don’t have to break it. We could simply remove it,” I say.

I hold my breath then, knowing this is the moment when she’ll either send me to the
moon or cut bait and run.

She freezes and starts to draw back, and I stifle a groan of disappointment even as I school my features into a mask of understanding. Because I do understand. I do.

Stephanie pulls back just enough to smile shyly at me. “I wouldn’t mind if you broke it.”

I close my eyes for a second and pray that I’m not dreaming. Her mouth is on mine again, and she rocks her hips against mine. Nope. Definitely not dreaming.

Even though I have permission, I’m determined not to rush her, and I let my fingers continue their playing, alternating between rubbing the backs of my fingers against the skin of her shoulder and plucking at the strap, torturing us both.

I release her lips long enough to slide my mouth down to join my fingers, licking and nibbling at her collarbone, her shoulder, before I let my mouth brush against the swell of the top of her breast.