Punk and Zen (25 page)

I could feel my eyes widen in surprise as I thought
about her words. It took me absolutely no time at all to process them and
realize, yeah, me too.

“You know what?” I grinned back at her.

“What?” she asked, as the snow lay like crystals in
her hair.

“Me, too.”

Fran tossed her head back and laughed, a light, pure
sound in a world rapidly turning white, and I joined her.

“So,” I asked as I took off my scarf, “did it fulfill
your expectations?” I gave it a good shake and brought it over her head and
around her shoulders.

“What’re you doing?” she asked as I brushed her hair
lightly with my fingertips under the cloth.

“Keeping you warm. It’s snowing,” I explained, then
tucked the ends into the
V
of her peacoat, taking a moment to button an
anchor-engraved button.

“There. So…” I paused and stepped back to admire my
handiwork.

“So…what?” Her gaze was frankly evaluating.

“Did it fulfill your expectations?” Uh-oh, I thought
as I watched her face; I was going to stop being quite so cavalier with my
questions. That smile became slightly shy, and unless it was a shadow from the
scarf, a faint blush rose in her cheeks.

“Well, let’s just say,” she began, as she watched the
flakes hit the sidewalk, “that I’m glad it happened.” She glanced up at me as
those last few words emerged, and there was only one way to describe the look
in her eyes: smokin’.

“C’mon,” she said, brushing the flakes from my head
and breaking us from the strange envelope we seemed to be caught up in, “let’s
get going.”

I ran a quick hand through my hair—hey, snow or no,
it’s got to look good—and allowed her to take my arm.

“What’s your plan?” I asked as we waited at an
intersection for the light to change.

“Well,” Fran paused a moment for breath, “we grab a
cab back to my place. I’ll make something quick, you take a nap, and I’ll send
you back to the island later today in a car, whattaya say?” she concluded as we
reached the next corner.

I considered. “How about,” I counteroffered, “we walk
and try to catch a cab on the way.” I glanced at the obviously taxi-empty
streets. Don’t ask why, but it’s the unwritten Manhattan rule: when the first
drop of moisture hits the ground, all forms of public transportation—especially
taxicabs—disappear. Come to think of it, that rule applies to the rest of the
city, too. Damn.

“Okay…and?” she prompted.

“We pick something up on the way.”

“Okay—”

“And I’ll leave after that,” I concluded.

Fran stopped suddenly and whirled to face me.

“Nina, no way.”

I let my expression ask why.

“It’s late, it’s snowing like hell, and you’ve got to
be exhausted.”

I opened my mouth to protest—I didn’t want to impose
on her hospitality—and I certainly didn’t want to give her the wrong idea after
that kiss. Not that I didn’t, I mean, not that there wasn’t—ah, never mind. I
didn’t know what was in her head, and I didn’t want to find out that Fran was
like everyone else—all about the fuck. It was a kiss, just a kiss, and as nice
and as warm and as sweet as it was (okay, and sensual too, she absolutely knew
how to kiss well), it wasn’t “I love you.” I might have made a misstep, but I
wasn’t going to make another, I hoped.

I began to explain about not imposing or some such,
but Fran waved my words away, sending eddies of snow clouds around her.

“I haven’t seen you in four years, thought you were
dead, and now that I know you’re alive and well, how do you think I’d feel if I
let you leave to freeze to death or get into some sort of accident during a
blizzard?” she cajoled with a smile.

I laughed and looked up, blinking away the flakes that
fell into my eyes. She was right, though, and if it wasn’t exactly a blizzard
yet, it was snowing hard enough to be its younger sibling.

I let my breath out in a huff. “Fair enough,” I gave
in with a smile of ABC my own, “you win.”

Fran slipped her arm into mine. “Well, of course I do.”
She laughed as she rubbed my forearm briskly.

We found a bodega (that’s Spanish for “deli”)
somewhere on Avenue A and bought the same stuff everyone buys when it snows:
milk, bread, and eggs. I don’t know why. I mean, what’s everyone doing, making
French toast? I took the bag in one hand and her hand in the other.

We didn’t really speak as we walked; we just kicked up
the snow and pointed out different items that looked surreal and magical in the
falling white.

As we approached her block, I grew uneasy. I mean, I
knew this block, I knew the building we were approaching. Nah, couldn’t be, I
thought. What are the odds, right? But that funky sense persisted, and judging
from how cool it suddenly got, I think the blood had drained out of my face and
was rapidly descending into my feet.

We stopped by the steps that led to her apartment, and
I let go of her hand so she could dig for her keys.

“Hey, Fran?” I asked as the snow blew around us. It
was really starting to come down.

“Yeah?” she responded distractedly. “I can’t believe I
can’t find them!” she complained, mostly to herself, her focus on searching her
pockets.

“You wouldn’t, um, happen to have had a neighbor named
Candace, would you?” I asked as casually as I could.

“Ah, got you!” she exclaimed triumphantly, holding her
keys out so I could see them. “I’m sorry—what did you say?”

I put the bag down to give my hands a break and tried
my best to nonchalantly shove them into my coat pockets. “I was just, uh…you
have a neighbor named Candace?”

Fran whirled so quickly to face me I only had a moment
to see the shock in her eyes before it changed to alarm as she lost her footing
in the fresh snow.

Her arms flew up, the keys went wide, and I rushed
forward to catch her before gravity did. It got us both, and she landed on top
of me with a solid, breathless “whump” as her body pushed my ribs one way and
the slippery sidewalk another.

I lay there a moment and took a deep breath, then
wiggled my fingers and toes. Everything was operational; therefore, I was fine.
I blinked the snow out of my eyes and opened them to first find her curls
sliding over my cheeks, and as I gazed past her chin, I found her lips,
grinning widely. I smiled back ruefully. So much for my rescue attempt.

“Thank you,” she said.

ABC

“You’re welcome.”

We studied each other as the snow continued to fall,
thick and heavy, and Fran wiped some off my face, her thumb lingering against
my chin.

“Are you okay?” I asked finally. She’d fallen, after
all, and even if we seemed to be sitting rather comfortably, it was still
possible that she could have injured something.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine. In fact I—oh shit!” she
exclaimed, and sat up with a panicked expression, looking about her wildly. The
movement put her solidly and squarely on my groin, sending a bolt from my buddy
to my brain, which made me jump in return. I swallowed the sensation and sat up
on my elbows.

“Problem?” I asked mildly, arching a brow.

“My keys! I dropped my keys!”

“I’ll help you find them. I think I know where they
fell,” I offered. I did have an idea, really. I’d seen them fly, and if I
wasn’t mistaken, they were probably behind the bushes that lined the front of
the building.

“Sure, thanks,” Fran agreed. All of a sudden, she
seemed to realize exactly the way we were sitting.

She looked down to see just how we were joined and bit
her lip. “Uh, sorry,” she said finally, giving me a sheepish look. “Are you
okay?”

I let it go for a heartbeat, then gave her back a slow
grin. “Never better,” I drawled. “Do you think you’ll need a hand getting up?”

“Oh. Ah, no, I’m fine.” She scrambled a moment in the
snow before she stood, but, finally, she regained her feet.

“Let me help you,” she offered when she was steady,
and extended a hand.

As soon as I was on my feet, I brushed the snow off.
But, man, was it cold to do barehanded!

“Let’s find your keys,” I suggested, and we moved in
the direction I indicated. We searched through the dried brush together—Fran
got the front, I got the back.

“So…did you say Candace?” she asked casually as we
searched.

I was so sure I’d seen her keys fly over to this exact
spot—between the dead brush and the wall where the snow didn’t reach, but
neither did the light. I felt my way along carefully—I didn’t want to cut
myself on a stray piece of glass or get bitten by whatever passed for local
fauna and die of ABC rabies. Yuck.

“Yeah,” I answered Fran, who hovered somewhere behind
me, “is she a neighbor of yours?”

Just scant inches beyond my fingertips some
streetlight broke through the bracken, and I thought I saw a gleam. That had to
be it!

“British?”

“Huh?” I asked back, not certain of what she’d said as
I inspected what I’d found. A pull tab from a can—damn. I discarded it and
followed that gleam before me. That just had to be it.

“Was she a Brit, you know, from the UK?” she repeated
and clarified.

Almost, almost, just another…there. I snagged the loop
with my fingertip, hauled back, and was rewarded with a jingle that could mean
only one thing.

“Got ’em!” I announced triumphantly, and passed the
keys behind me to her. Still bent double, I tried to carefully back out; I
didn’t want to rip my coat or my face on a branch.

“Yeah, she’s English,” I said as I crawled. “I take it
you know her?” I was almost out, just a little farther now and…

“Know her?” Fran echoed. “She sublet my apartment this
summer. She’s Sam’s girlfriend.”

Holy shit! Shocked, alarmed, and otherwise totally
taken aback, I stood straight up, slammed my head into the brick window ledge
above me, and went straight back down. I saw stars, I saw God, I think I spoke
a foreign language as adrenaline beat up through me and the pain in my head
floored me.

“Ow,” I muttered, scowling and rubbing my head. That
fucking hurt.

“Are you all right? Are you okay?” Fran scrambled
through the branches to ask.

I leaned my back against the building and rubbed my
head some more. “I’m fine, I’ll live,” I told her, still scowling.

“Are you sure you didn’t hurt anything?” she asked
again, and reached down to help me up.

“My ego,” I answered with a self-deprecating smile as
I took her hand. “I think I broke it.” This time I stood and managed not to
injure myself.

“Looks fine from here, Raze,” she smiled at me
broadly, using my old nickname from swim team—Razor. “And besides,” she
continued, “you’re safe with me.”

“I think I knew that.” I smiled back genuinely and
brushed myself off as best I could as I squeezed out of the space between the
steps and the damn dead twig collection. I stopped a moment to pick up the
snow-covered bag and cautiously walked up the steps.

The snow had picked up volume and momentum, coming
down hard and fast enough to have already covered the area we’d fallen onto in
a fresh coating of white and fill up Fran’s original footsteps.

Fran unlocked the door, and as it swung open into that
very familiar corridor, my brain cleared enough to ask, “Did you say Candace
was Samantha’s girlfriend?” My mouth was dry as those words came out.

“Well, you know,” she explained as she went to her
mailbox, “it’s one of those on-again, off-again sort of things. How do you know
Candace?” she asked, giving me a quick and curious look, before she went back
to sorting through her envelopes.

My guts froze. I was going to hell, I knew it. I was
absolutely, positively going to hell, because I had committed the worst sin I
could possibly think of—I’d slept with my best friend’s girlfriend. Dammit,
dammit, double damn. It didn’t matter that we hadn’t seen each other in years,
didn’t matter that I hadn’t known because Candace had told me her ex was named
Annie—and definitely an ex.

The facts remained the facts—did I sleep with her?
Okay, all right, we didn’t sleep. So did I have sex with her? Forget all those
who-touches-who equivocations, because I knew how she liked her nipples sucked
and how she loved me in leather. I had not only a mental picture, but a
visceral one of the taste, the touch, the scent, and the gorgeous fit of her
pussy and how she loved it best when I fucked her slowly and very deeply until
I wanted and she needed to come, so I’d bury myself inside her tightening cunt
until she was screaming my name and her pussy flooding my hand, and we’d relax
a few moments while her cunt pulsed slowly around my buried fingers—Candace
called them thankyou kisses—until I gently withdrew. And we’d start again.

How did I know Candace? Cunt thump surrender, to
borrow a phrase; that’s how I knew her.

“Oh, uh, we hung out over the summer a bit,” I
answered instead. It’s not that I wanted to lie; it’s just that, well, I’d
really liked Candace, and it’s just not my thing to kiss and tell—ever.