Quick Study (7 page)

He met her eyes and raised an eyebrow, pen hovering over the paper. “What’s the hurry? Stay here in case I have any questions.” He smiled, and Bonnie had to force herself to smile back.

“All right.” She turned her chair so she wasn’t facing him and pulled out her notebook, balancing it on her legs and frowning at it as though the creepy guy didn’t bother her at all.

Luckily, he bent over the paper and wrote silently, without comment or evil glances, for at least ten minutes, and when he was done, he simply looked up and slid the paper over to her. “What did you say your degree is called?”

“Gender Studies. The department used to be Feminist Studies, but that was too narrow.”

“Right,” he said flatly, staring at her but not meeting her eyes.

“So, what would you like?” She shoved his questionnaire deep into her bag, not even wanting to touch it. “From the counter.”

“Aren’t you going to read it?”

“What?” She looked at him, then realized he wanted her to read all about his kinky urges there, while she watched. “Uh, no. I’ll study all of them later at home.”

“Where’s home? You live around here?”

Bonnie looked around at the other tables, playing cool even though her skin was beginning to crawl. “So did you want a coffee? Because I have other volunteers coming as well.”

“But they’re not here yet.” He settled back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Are they?”

“Perhaps not,” she said, her voice as icy and flat as she could make it, lifting her bag up into her lap between them like a shield. “But we’re done here. Free coffee? Last chance.”

He gave her a tight-lipped smile and stared at her. “I don’t want any coffee.”

She jerked to her feet. “Your choice. Thank you for your time.”

“Where are you going?”

She didn’t answer him, just walked away to another table near the door and sat down with her side to him. More than anything, she wanted to run out to her car and drive home to her lesbian aunties, but she didn’t want him at her back.

Sooner or later, he’d give up and she could go home.

Still
smiling from his meeting with Bonnie’s surprising roommates, Paul sat in his car and watched the Starbucks storefront and her feminine profile just inside. Nice of the old ladies to tell him where she’d gone. And because they were worried about her. And liked him.

He was worried too, but for different reasons. She’d picked him up with the promise of coffee, and he didn’t like the fact that she was apparently using it again tonight—with other guys. He’d given it a lot of thought and concluded that he wasn’t going to let her sleep with anyone else until she’d talked to him seriously first. Over dinner, maybe.

Not that he’d just sit by after they talked seriously, which might be a problem since she was obviously an independent, sexually-adventurous woman and he was just a one-night stand. Worse—
research
. But if he could keep her smiling and sexually-satisfied, she wouldn’t have time to think about anyone else.

That made him hard, thinking of how he’d make her happy. He looked at his watch, surprised it was taking her so long to interview a few people. They’d kick her out if she stayed too long, wouldn’t they?

At last, she appeared at the door, sexy as hell in a skirt that whipped up above her knees in the wind. He began to get out of the car, but then a guy appeared right behind her and matched his steps with hers. Jealous rage held carefully at bay, Paul got back into his car and told himself she would never forgive him for screwing up her research project. Coming off like a possessive boyfriend might scare her away for good.

Boyfriend. He wanted that. To have a name for himself, with her. Not just “that guy who fucked your brains out and can’t stop thinking about you.”

Damn, she was still with the other guy. Some preppy, sporty type, probably a guy from the university. Fiddling with the ignition, Paul realized he’d been imagining running the guy over with his Prius. Homicidal hybrid. 

Suddenly, Bonnie had her phone out and took a picture of the guy. He laughed and made a face. Then Bonnie laughed back at him and had the phone to her ear, making a call. The guy stopped laughing, then lifted his hand to wave goodbye. 

Bonnie stood on the sidewalk, watching him, and Paul fought a wave of jealousy. She couldn’t take her eyes off of him.

Finally, when the guy was on the other side of the parking lot getting into a black F-250, Bonnie walked towards her own car, the red Bug he remembered, several aisles in the opposite direction.

Should he go to her now? Or would that look weird, like he was crashing her date?

Before he could decide what to do, the huge black pickup roared past him and parked immediately behind the red Bug, trapping the little car in its parking spot. Paul frowned, unable to see Bonnie clearly in the dark. She stopped walking, her back to Paul, and took out her phone again.

Paul got out of his car. He didn’t know if she’d think he was a creep or not, he was just acting on instinct. But he was several rows away. All of a sudden that seemed miles too far.

The preppy guy got out of his pickup, walked around to the back, and leaned against the tailgate, arms crossed, the glare of the streetlight catching the white of his teeth as he grinned at her.

Still unsure if this was just a friendly joke between Bonnie and her friend, Paul began to walk towards them through the parked cars. A sedan pulled out in front of him, stalling him, and as he was forced to wait he realized his heart was racing.

Bonnie had begun to move towards her car again, stopping when she was only a few feet away from the preppy guy and his pickup. The asshole had left the engine running, and it rumbled behind him, overlarge and menacing. 

Paul started jogging. But he was still fifty yards away when the man lurched forward and grabbed Bonnie’s arm, then pulled her up to his chest and put his other hand on her face.

Adrenaline flooded Paul’s veins and he broke into a sprint.

Chapter 6

W
hile Paul was cursing himself
for being too slow, the man suddenly howled, clutched his groin, and fell out of Paul’s view. Only Bonnie’s curly round head, bobbing back and forth like a soccer player kicking a ball, was visible over the parked cars between them, and then she bent over and disappeared.

Just as Paul passed through the last row of parked cars, he watched in shock as Bonnie climbed up into the lifted pickup and slammed the engine into reverse.

The man screamed.

“Heads up!” Bonnie cried, and backed up over the panicked, writhing man who flattened himself between the wheels, safe from being crushed, but now prostrate under his own truck.

Bonnie revved the engine, then got out, slammed the door, and strode to her VW just as Paul reached her.

“Bonnie!” he yelled out. “Are you OK?”

Eyes wild, she turned to him. For a second, he didn’t think she recognized him, but then she shook her head, nodded, waved goodbye and got into her car. He could see her hands shake as she started the engine.

“Wait—” But she hit the engine and roared into reverse, not looking at him, then ground the gears moving it back into first and screeching away.

“Crazy bitch!” The man cried from the ground. He crawled out from under his truck, disheveled and streaked with dirt, and staggered to his feet. “Did you see that? I should fucking press charges!”

Just then a police car pulled into the parking lot, flood light searching the rows. Remembering Bonnie’s phone calls, Paul broke into a grin and flagged it down.

“Here’s your chance, dickwad,” Paul said.

Watching the police approach, and more than happy to provide his eyewitness testimony, Paul was filled with a happiness so complete he thought he’d float away from the weightless joy of it.

So this is what love feels like
, he thought.

Parked
in front of her apartment building, still shaking with the trauma of the attack, Bonnie sat frozen in her seat and tried to get a grip. Making her statement at the police station had taken longer than she’d expected, and though she’d called Lorraine and Marilyn to warn them she would be home late, they would worry. But she couldn’t make herself get out of the car.

She stared over at the folder filled with questionnaires on the seat next to her and didn’t recognize them, not even the red binder with the white label, not the transparent pink clipboard, or even the box of fine-point rollerball pens shoved alongside. 

It was as though she had sleepwalked into somebody else’s life.

With sudden clarity, Bonnie recognized the futility of the past few years and knew, just as surely as she knew she would never be a member of the Starship
Enterprise
, that she would never finish her degree in the progressive fringe of interdisciplinary social sciences. Because she hated the progressive fringe of interdisciplinary social sciences. And the conservative fringe and moderate core, too. And academia itself, come to think of it, with all its smug self-referential bias and back-breaking loans and shitty pay.

She was going to quit.

She let her forehead rest on the steering wheel, acknowledging the failure with a numb sense of relief. Expecting tears to follow, she was surprised when she could only manage a deep sigh. Even her mother wouldn’t have wanted her to pursue a degree she hated—unless it was in law or business, maybe, with its promises of affluence and prestige—and maybe, Bonnie had to admit, maybe not even then.

Life was too short. How could she have forgotten? Her parents had died at fifty-seven, long before their time. If this guy had raped and killed her, would her last thoughts be filled with regrets about academic paperwork?

Or with the regrets of not truly living?

Paul had been there. She’d been too freaked to talk to him, to ask why he’d followed her.

The rectangular windows of her apartment building glowed into the darkness. Lorraine and Marilyn. They must have told him where to find her. She reached into her pocket and ran her thumb along the smooth edge of his card, wondering what he thought and what he would say. How much had he seen?

The sidewalk in front of her apartment seemed unusually dark, and she hesitated to get out of her car. Damn men. Some men. The ones who could hurt you—or tried to, since Bonnie had followed her dad’s unusually serious advice to learn self-defense.

She clicked on the reading light and dialed Paul’s number, her hands shaking as much as they had after backing the truck over her would-be rapist.

Part of her had wanted to really drive over him—bone-crushing, wheel-to-flesh contact—not just straddle him. But thank God she hadn’t.

“Hello?”

Paul. How good he sounded. “It’s me,” she said. “Bonnie.” Then to her shame, began to cry.

“Where are you?” He sounded frantic. “Did you talk to the police?”

She took a deep breath. “I drove straight to the station and made a statement. They said they had a car on the scene.”

He paused. “They did. I made a statement.”

“Thank you.”

“They took in your friend—”

“Do not call him that.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding truly chastened. “They seemed to know him from another case. They put him in the back of the squad car.”

“My God. What an idiot.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Of course it wasn’t my fault! I told that loser I was calling the police when he followed me out the door. I even took his picture.”

He laughed. “Man, I—” he stopped himself. “I want to see you. Can I come over?”

“I’ve been sitting in my car in front of my apartment for a half hour. I think I’m afraid to get out of it.”

“I’ll be right there.” 

He clicked off and Bonnie closed her eyes, too stirred up to analyze the blurry mixture of lust and affection she felt for him, and when ten minutes later he came humming down the street in his Prius, she got out of the car to meet him.

“Thanks again—” she began, but he had his arms around her.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, kissing her cheeks, her nose, her forehead. “I was useless. I was sitting there doing jack squat, just watching. I didn’t want you to think I was stalking you or something.”

Bonnie didn’t think she would want a man’s hands around her, but he felt warm and strong and good. “I’m fine. Just hungry.”

He released her and tucked his hands into his pockets. “Sorry to grab you. That can’t be what you want right now.” His face was hard. “I could kill that bastard.”

Bonnie managed a smile. “I almost did.”

He took her in his arms again and tucked her head under his chin. His heart beat through his chest under her ear, soothing at first, until her body became aware of the rest of him, his hard thigh along hers, the earthy smell of his leather jacket. Then he pulled away.

“Look at me, grabbing you again,” he said. “What a prick. And you said you were hungry.”

“It’s late. Everything will be closed.”

“Everything?”

She gave him a look. “I’m not up for your place tonight.”

“You don’t have a kitchen?”

“I don’t cook.”

He laughed. “I can give it a shot. Come on. Your old lady friends are probably freaking out.”

“I know, I know. I’ve got to go in.”

They walked together across the street to her building, and after she unlocked the gate and they passed inside, he tucked her hand in his and walked down the hall to her door like love-sick fourteen-year-olds.

“You’re back!” Marilyn cried out from her recliner. “Lorraine! You can get off the computer now.”

“Oh, honey,” Lorraine said, rounding the corner and throwing her thin arms around her. “I’ve been reading all about post-traumatic stress disorder. I think you might have it.”

“Oh, shush up,” Marilyn said. “She just got home. Leave her the hell alone.”

Bonnie looked at Paul, frowning. “How did they know? I just told them I’d met an old friend.”

“They called me.”

“How’d they—” She put her hands on her hips. “Only use your cards for business, eh?”