Liam Davis & The Raven (17 page)

I sat close to the front
of the small, almost empty theater with Hannah, who was a bouquet of smiles and laughter next to me. Behind us somewhere were Quinn and Cheddar, but I gave them their privacy by not looking back.

A
bout halfway through the documentary, I slipped my hand over the arm separating our chairs, and nudged Hannah’s pinkie. I whispered, “Maybe we should—”

Hannah pressed her hand against mine, threading our fingers together.
Clammy and stiff, but warm too. Reassuring, somehow.

Well
, yes, the kiss with Quinn had been better. Comforting and spiced with little electric thrills. But holding hands was hardly a fair comparison. I’d never done that with Quinn. Maybe kissing Hannah would be just as good.

Colored light from the screen flickered over Hannah’s face, softening the sharp profile of her nose
and highlighting her full lips, stretched into a nervous smile. She peeked at me from the corner of her eye. “What?” she mouthed.

Again,
I whispered in her ear, “May I kiss you a second?”

She faced me, teasing her bottom lip with her front teeth.
Cute as a bunny, to pen a fitting phrase. Yes, cute flushed cheeks, sweet smile, nice eyes . . .

I cupped the side of her face and leaned in to kiss her. Her lips moved shyly against mine, but her breath puffing out was warm and smelled like
cherry-flavored bubblegum.

Pleasant. Fine. Okay.

Where was the static? The strange moment where I skipped a breath? The promise of cocooning warmth that came from a bigger body?

I tried the kiss again, searching for something else perhaps I’d miss
ed the first time. I threaded my fingers through the back of her soft hair, loosening it from the hair-tie. She danced delicate fingers up my arm to rest lightly on the curve of my neck.

Our mouths locked awkwardly and a slither of tongue over my bottom lip just made it feel wet.

“Hmmm,” I murmured. A sudden silence in the documentary emphasized the sound.

She squeezed my hand and drew hers away. “Let’s give it to the end of the
night to be sure.”

“
Maybe it’s the angle,” I said. The time? The heat? The fullness from Quinn’s sandwiches? The need to urinate?

“Or
not,” she said with an apathetic shrug and smile. To the point. Factual.

“Or not,” I agreed.

I excused myself and sidled out of the row, passing the only other person in there besides my party and Quinn’s.

I’d just finished relieving myself in the bathroom
when the door swung in. I caught the action in the reflection of the mirrors to my left, and was buttoning up as Quinn sauntered in. At first he must have been looking at me, but then his gaze met mine in the mirror.

There was something almost predatory as he kicked his way across the room.

With a slight shiver, I turned to the sink and pressed down on the faucet. Antiseptic soap scented the air. “How do you like the film?”

Quinn stood behind me, keeping eye contact through the mirrors. “I don’t.”

I shrugged. “I wish I could comment more constructively, but I’ve been oblivious to the screen. This dating thing is more challenging than I thought. It’s like an equation I’m not schooled enough to solve. The angles, the timing, the—”

“Fact she’s
female?”

I nodded. “Maybe that, too. I tr
ied to kiss her but all I could think about was how much better it was with you. How I could feel it in my toes. How even just remembering makes me itchy.”

Quinn stepped closer, his chest rising as he took in a deep breath.

I asked, “Do you mind giving us both a lift to Fifth?”

His chest deflated
, and his gaze darted from the mirror to the urinals. He started running a hand through his hair.

“Looks good,” I told him, drying my hands.

“Cheddar thinks so too.”

“Then the cheese has taste.”

Quinn almost grinned, but something held him back. Maybe the fact he needed to piss and hadn’t yet because I was standing around. Some men were shy that way.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” I said, slipping past him to the door. “Are we good for the lift?”

“It’ll be a tight fit. Cheddar’s coming home with me.”

“I’m taking that as a yes.”

Jell-O Fight Night.

W
ell wasn’t this a pretty sight?

A ten-
foot, rectangular paddle pool lay lengthwise in an empty living room. Tens of students surrounded the pool at a wide berth, watching two women in jeans and T-shirts wrestling in ankle-deep putrid green Jell-O.

The party smelled of
beer, citrus, and cheap thrills.

Hannah pressed closer to my side, scoured the scene, and shook her head. “I need a drink.”

Alone in a crowd of cheering guys, I reached for my notebook and pen.

A guy in a
tank-top and running shoes hollered from the corner of the room. “If your number is called out, please make your way to the pool. Seventeen and twenty-three, you’re up.”

My gaze veered from my notebook to the fifty-seven that’d been stamped on my hand
, apparently for entry to the curved fishbowl of numbers.

Well. They could forget that. No way in a hundred years would
I expose myself to such crass ridicule.

Was this the type of thing Jack and Jill found fun?
No wonder my columns were a disappointment if
this
was the type of cut-rate angle readers sought.

Flyers were pressed against my chest and I clutched the pile on reflex.

“Take one, pass it on,” someone said. I awkwardly shifted them to Mr. Buzz-Cut next to me and resumed note taking.

Hannah pushed her way back through the thickening crowds, her hair loose, spilling over her shoulders and snagging on horny
guys as she squeezed free.

She
handed me a large, plastic shot glass of red Jell-O. “I tried them all. This is the best flavor.”

Tried them all? I glanced at her semi-diluted pupils, jamming my notebook and pen under my arm while I took the shot glass and sniffed. “How many flavors were there?”

“Five.”

The raspberry shot burned my throat. “Five?” I spluttered. “Why would you do that?”

“Look, I know this isn’t going to work out between us, so I just want to be drunk when I hear you say it.”

Her c
heeks flushed and she downed the other shot, a squirt of liquid dribbling down her chin and plopping onto her turquoise shirt. Hurriedly, she wiped her mouth clean. “Guess I’m drunk enough to hear it now. Go.”

Cheers roared around us, and
in a quick glance through the narrow gaps between heads, I caught sight of a tangled trio in the pool. Some intoxicated guy had thrown himself into the mix.

I
set my empty shot glass down on a nearby windowsill, rubbed my brow, and aligned my glasses proper. “I was curious if it would work out with us, but you’re right. I’m not romantically inclined toward you.”

“Right,” she said,
setting her glass down too. “Yeah. Me neither.”

“You’re still the girl I want to share my mints with at
Scribe,
though. And I hope—” My voice faltered and a nervous shiver had me shifting my weight. “I mean, when we’re not too busy, I’d like to go to the movies with you again. Or eat lunch, or—” I laughed at myself for the sudden fear that gripped my stomach. What if she said no? “I’d like to replace my office friends with real ones.”

The host
yelled, “Numbers fifty-eight and sixty! You’re up.”

Hannah glanced at the back of her hand as she wiped her palms over the thighs of her jeans. “Fifty-eight. That’s me.”

She veered toward the center of the room, threading though the sweaty, anticipatory crowd.

I snagged her sleeve
, and she looked at me over her shoulder. “Don’t do it.”

She shrugged. “I’ve never done anything just for the heck of it, Liam. I want to have a life. At least, I want to try
new things before I dismiss them.”

I frowned. T
here was certain logic to that.

“Besides,” she said, backing
toward the kiddie pool, “you can use me as your angle. You could call it
Letting Loose after Lectures
.”

She
pulled off the small beaded bag she wore and stripped to her undershirt. “That’s all you’re getting from me, guys,” she said, kicking off her shoes and chucking them into a pile at the side of the Jell-O pool.

I opened my notebook
again and scribbled some more, although this time my pen didn’t move as swiftly and I kept shifting positions, searching for something comfortable.

Hannah was pitted against a bear of a guy
who’d been pushed into the pool by his chuckling friends. With a thick crop of brown hair and a light beard, he rested his hands on his hips and blinked thick lashes toward his opponent. He threw his friends a hard look and leaned his hulking frame forward.

“Sorry about this,” he said warmly. Then to Trainers Guy
, “This is hardly a fair fight.”

“Luck of the draw,” came the shrugged answer.

“But she’s
half
my size.”

Not quite true.
She was two heads shorter than he was, but that put her in the range of normal and him in the league of giants.

Hannah straightened and snapped her gaze to his. “
That’s presumptuous.”

He quirked a brow at her.
“What’s presumptuous?”

In answer, Hannah deftly grabbed the loops
at the waist of his jeans and hauled him forward.

He budged a fraction in the thick Jell-O,
while Hannah slid violently forward. A muffled groan escaped her from where she had face-planted into his chest. “So it’s all muscle, then.”

Giant Guy grinned, his cheeks dimpling deeply.
“And I don’t want to use it against you. So how about falling to the pit for three seconds, eh?”

Hannah scowled and shook her head
. Her gaze sought mine and she said, “I want you recording this, Liam. Every detail. Every plea to let him go.”

Amongst the murmuring chatter of the crowd, I
re-gripped my pen.

Giant Guy snorted. “You’re funny.”

“Let’s see who ends up laughing,” Hannah said, and sank her fingers into his armpits and wriggled.

“Ga-ha, stop it!” Giant Guy rolled his arms back, the swing of his arms sending him off balance and
launching a half-stride slip.

Hannah doubled her effort.

Whallomp!

Giant Guy over-corrected and ended up on his ass,
pulling Hannah with him.

She wasted no time to
straddle him and continue attacking his armpits with rigorous tickles.

“Stop, stop,” he cried out between tears of uncontrolled laughter.

“Fall back into the pit for three seconds,” Hannah said, pushing herself hard against him in an effort to force him back. “Then I’ll stop.”

He gave a pathetic attempt to shove her off, but it exposed his armpits more, and he ended up surrendering quic
kly, much to the amusement of his friends and the crowd.

In her eagerness to get out of the pool, Hannah slipped and crashed once more into
the slippery giant. His arms circled her waist, steadying her. “Careful now, my pride’s been shot enough tonight. Can’t have you tackling me to the ground twice.”

She laughed, looking up at him
. He smiled down at her, his eyes crinkled.

I carefully ripped out a piece of paper from the middle of my notebook
. When they clambered out of the pool, I handed it and my pen to Giant Guy.