Quick Study (6 page)

He dragged his gaze to her face. She was wearing more makeup than before, and her hair was tied up except for a few loose curls at her temples. “Are you going out?”

She nodded and flushed, triggering a wave of hot, pounding emotion in his gut he realized was jealousy. Not like him. He cleared his throat. “On a date?” 

When she didn’t meet his eyes, he assumed the worst. Shocked by the way his body tensed in preparation for lifting her over his shoulder and hauling her back to his house for himself, he couldn’t think of what to say, just scowled and blinked at her.

“I better go,” she said.

“Wait!” He stepped forward but didn’t touch her, concerned he might do something crazy if he felt her satiny skin under his hand. He took a deep breath and smiled at her, hopefully irresistible. “At least give me your number.”

She was frowning at him, distressed. “Look, Paul. I’m dealing with something right now. This—” she gestured between them with her adorable hands, also marked with purple nails, “—this isn’t what you think. I’m not just some regular girl that can keep doing this, whatever it is.” She sucked in her lips and looked away.

“You’re not a regular girl?” He felt confused but open-minded. “Whatever it is, whoever you are, I just want to see you again. Or talk. We can just talk.”

She sighed. “You don’t only want to talk.”

Their eyes met and electricity crackled in the narrow space between them. His heart banged against his ribs, wanting her. And he knew she wanted him. So what was the problem?

Chapter 5

“
I do want to talk,”
he said. “In addition to other things.”

Her distressed face broke into a smile, and the dimple in one cheek nearly undid him. “How about this. You give me your number.”

Nodding so quick he felt a sprain in the back of his neck, Paul pulled out his wallet for a business card. “I never use these things except for—” he stopped himself, not wanting to elaborate on his boring professional life. “Well, never mind.”

But she misunderstood him. “Except for women?”

“No,” he said quickly, savvy enough to avoid saying
not lately
, but annoyed with himself for setting that up. “For work. But the only time I need a card is at a conference once a year.” Risking the physical charge of touching her, he reached down and took her hand in his, tucked the card in her palm, and gently closed her fingers around it.

“All right, but really, you should just forget about this. About me.”

“But why?”

She stared over his shoulder into space, then took a deep breath and met his gaze. “I used you, Paul. I was going to write about what we did for my master's thesis. That's why I invited you home in the first place. I was
using
you. And I didn't tell you. So now I have to think of some other way to finish my degree without totally destroying my conscience.”

For a few long, awkward seconds, Paul couldn't think of anything to say. He was. . . research? But then he saw the pain in her eyes and thought,
glad I was there for her
. 

Then he realized the implications. “Was I the only one you—you—used?”

She closed her eyes briefly, nodded, and he sighed in relief. Deep relief.

“But I still need to collect enough data to write about. So I have to go,” she said.

“Hold on! You're going out tonight to—
research
? With some other guy?”

“No, no! Not like that. Just interviews.”

He sagged against the gate and tried to keep the jealous caveman out of his voice. “Well, good. Because if you need to do any research, you can do it with me, all right? I don't like that you didn't tell me, but the damage has been done. Might as well make the best of it.”

“No more research. Not like that. Not with you.” And before he could stop her, she bolted back inside, leaving him frustrated and alone out on the sidewalk.

“Why
did you come back?” her roommate Lorraine asked.

“Yeah, he sounded cute,” Marilyn, her other roommate, added. 

“Now how can somebody sound cute?” Lorraine asked Marilyn, starting an affectionate argument that would last for ten minutes. Bonnie’s roommates were elderly women who called themselves “the dearest of friends” to outsiders, not quite believing that the world had changed enough to accept them as the old married couple they really were.

“I have plans.” Bonnie dug into the closet for her shoes.

“Not that sex research thing,” Marilyn said.

“Oh, no,” Lorraine cried, throwing aside her crochet and bracing her hands on each arm of her recliner to get up. “We won’t let you.”

“I’ve got a few people coming.” Bonnie was careful not to mention how she’d placed an ad on Craigslist, which would terrify them. “And they’re just interviews. So chill.” She walked over, put a hand on each of Lorraine’s frail shoulders, and pushed her back down into her chair.

“Still too dangerous.” Marilyn pedaled the portable stepping-machine at her feet. “This lovesick dude is the first man you’ve been excited about since—well, since your parents passed. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Now, get me a Fresca out of the ice box, will you Bon, and we’ll talk about this.” 

Bonnie went to get the soda and wondered how they could be encouraging her to pursue a relationship. If she did get serious about anybody, she’d have to leave—and then what would they do? They had been lucky enough to find each other young, and so had no failed marriages behind them. But no children, either. Without Bonnie they’d have to fend for themselves, and even if she kept paying the rent, they were just too old and vulnerable to be alone.

She handed Marilyn her favorite soda but didn’t linger. “Don’t wait up for me,” she said, knowing it was pointless, and they’d camp out in the living room, trying to stay awake watching cable reruns of
Xena: Warrior Princess
.

“Oh, no,” Lorraine said. “Mary-bellie, don’t let her go.”

Marilyn kicked aside her As-Seen-On-TV pedaling machine and shoved her feet into her diabetic loafers. “I’ll go with her.”

Bonnie laughed, horrified. “You can’t!” She hurried over to guide Marilyn back into her chair. “No guy is going to talk to me about sex with you there.”

“She’s got a point, Mary-bellie.” Lorraine smiled at her wife with love. “You can be quite intimidating.” 

Marilyn scowled. “Bullshit. I’m just an old lady now.”

Pained she had distressed her best friends, Bonnie put on a confident smile and headed for the door, hoping they’d calm down once she’d left. Sometimes they put on a performance just to show her they cared. “It’s only Starbucks. Not like the scary dives you two used to hit.”

Marilyn flashed a grin, then scowled. “I thought you were dropping out of that stupid school.”

“I need to do this first,” Bonnie said. “Just to be sure it’s wrong. I need to feel that it’s the wrong career for me.”

“You’ve been feeling it every day for two years,” Marilyn said. “And us with you. Isn’t that enough?”

Bonnie opened the door and stepped outside. “I’ll bring you each a spice cookie if you just settle down and act like the radical feminists you really are and let me live my own damn life.”

They laughed and she closed the door behind her, loving them but wishing sometimes she didn’t live with them.

She went out to her car and immediately regretted what she was wearing. Too exposed, too feminine, too cold. January in the Bay Area was not the tropics, sadly, and her bare legs were immediately whipped into goose bumps by the cold blast from the northwest. In spite of herself, she scanned the street for a parked Prius and fought off the intense disappointment that she couldn’t find one. 

His card was in the pocket of her skirt, a stiff rectangle that poked her in the thigh when she got behind the wheel of her VW. The thought of him tickled at the back of her mind, along her chilled skin, between her legs. 

Ruthlessly, she shoved aside the fantasy and tore out into the road. One thing was certain—all she really wanted to research was him. Paul. A guy she barely knew but craved with a passion she’d never had for school. Her dreams were filled with him, some hot and naked, some cool and quiet and frighteningly sweet. 

At a stop light, she noticed a patch of ferny foliage growing through the rocks of an undeveloped hillside and felt the long-lost desire to paint again. Soon the vivid orange California poppies would be breaking through the gloom of wet, overcast days. Her first serious painting, when she had been twelve years old, had been of a poppy, impossibly bright and tough and beautiful.

“Just like you,” her father had said.

Instead of crying at the memory like she might have done a year earlier, Bonnie smiled. Her dad had been a great guy. He had driven her mother crazy, not caring about striving and succeeding and looking good the way she had—just being. Luckily for him, he’d inherited a fortune that had made happiness with her Type-A mother possible, since being rich was something she valued.

Poor mom. She had been happy, so happy, with her father, but never seemed to realize it. Standing on green grass and envying the patch of gravel next door.

Bonnie pulled into the parking lot outside Starbucks, crowded even on a Friday night, and found a parking spot. As she stepped out of the car, she smelled KFC wafting through the strip mall and her stomach growled. Then she thought of Thai food, and what Paul had said about wanting to talk in addition to other things, and how hot he made her feel even from the other side of the rusted gate of her apartment building.

Shoving those cravings aside—or deep down, where her body ached for him—Bonnie opened the door of the coffee shop and scanned the crowd. She took a deep breath and got in line at the counter behind a young woman who was hiding a punked-out miniature dog in her purse. Her first subject, from her self-description in an email, unless there were two punked-out purse-dogs in the place.

“Nice shades,” Bonnie said to her, pointing at the purple goggles the dog was wearing.

The woman grinned at her and turned her body away from the counter to show off her pet. “They’re called doggles. Aren’t they sick?”

“Very,” Bonnie said. The dog had a sweet face, behind the faux-piercings, and Bonnie scratched behind its ear with a gentle finger. “I’m Bonnie, here to interview people for my Master’s at State. Are you Carmen?”

The woman hesitated, but after scanning Bonnie from head to toe, must have decided she was legitimate, or at least harmless. “You’re buying? Just to fill out your questionnaire?”

“I’ll even throw in a muffin.”

Carmen bit her lip. “Caramel Frap,” she said, tucking her dog more deeply inside the bag. “But could I have a protein plate instead of the muffin?”

“Absolutely,” Bonnie said, smiling at her. They reached the head of the line and Bonnie ordered and paid for both of them, then led them both to a table near the door. She took out her folder and handed Carmen two sheets of paper. “I should warn you, some of the questions are pretty personal. You don’t have to say them out loud or write your name or anything. Just leave it blank if—”

Carmen frowned and took the paper. “I’m sure it’s fine,” she said, reaching for a pen. “I put all kinds of personal stuff on my blog.” Sipping at her Frappuccino and passing globs of peanut butter to the little creature in her purse, Carmen bent over the paper, read silently, and began to write.

Bonnie took a deep breath. This might not be so bad. But suddenly, the woman handed over the paper and got to her feet. “Gotta go,” she said, gathering the free food and drink in her arms, then fleeing out the door before Bonnie could ask her any follow-up questions.

“Thanks,” Bonnie called after, then looked down at the paper in dread. That had been much too quick.

“Get a life, you perv,” the woman had written, then, “Thanks for the Frap.”

Bonnie stared at the paper, blinking in surprise. She hadn’t answered any of the questions—not even the basic age and gender checkboxes at the beginning. 

Snorting to herself, Bonnie shoved the unfinished questionnaire into her bag.
I wouldn’t want to know about your sex life anyway
, she thought, then looked around the coffee shop and realized that applied to everyone else, too.

Only two more people and she could go home, content that she’d followed through at least that far. She settled back into her chair and finished her tea, then had to get up for another pot when her second appointment didn’t show.

Forty-five minutes later, and fifteen minutes after her expected third volunteer, she felt a tap on her shoulder from behind.

“Excuse me?” A guy in his mid-thirties, head-to-toe REI with short hair and light brown eyes, was leaning down to talk to her. “Are you the girl interviewing people?”

Bonnie studied him and decided he was the self-described “venture capitalist,” which given he was trolling Craig’s List for freebies, meant “unemployed.”

He might be more desperate than Carmen, but she should warn him and save them both their time. “My first volunteer got offended and quit. Before we start, you might want to look over the questions.”

“I won’t get offended.” He sat down at the table, the small smile on his lips not reaching his eyes. “I promise.”

She looked at him, disliking him on sight without knowing why, something about his narrow lips and his perfectly unwrinkled sweatshirt, then chastising herself for being shallow. Regardless of what she did with the data, she’d worked hard and she was going to get at least one of the stupid questionnaires filled out before she gave up. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a five. “I appreciate that. Here’s your payment, such as it is.”

His lip curled, glancing at the bill in her hand. “Let’s get your thing out of the way first. What’s your story? College girl?”

Bonnie tightened her jaw. “Graduate student,” she said, sitting up taller, “at State.”

“Ah, of course.” He reached across the table to take the questionnaire she hadn’t yet handed to him. “Something to write with?”

She handed him the pen, freezing a businesslike look on her face and preparing to stand up. “What would you like? I’ll get it while you write.”