Someone to Love (33 page)

The next week, after Gender Relations, Cruise
said there is someplace special he wants to take me.

Cruise holds my hand as we walk boldly
through campus. I’m still hopped up on our newly engaged status.
We’ve spent every night tangled in one another’s arms, locked in
the bliss of what the future holds for us.

A parade of bicycles clutter the walkways.
They speed by as if this were a busy New York sidewalk—the Tour De
France taking place right here at Garrison.

He pauses just shy of a tall brick building.
His gaze rides to the top, then to me. There’s a mischievous look
in his eye that suggests the architectural erection standing in
front of us has something to do with his special locale.

“If this involves repelling, you can count me
out.” No use placating him with false hope. I’d just as soon leap
from a building as I would eat a bowl of greasy worms.

“No repelling. I promise.” Cruise brings my
hand to his lips and presses in a kiss that warms me down to my
toes.

My mouth opens to say something, but a blonde
in a red coat catches my eye off in the distance. It’s Blair from
art, which reminds me, I meant to ask her if she’d be open to
trapping Cal. Lauren has been after me every chance she gets, even
though I’ve assured her I won’t be hitting on another guy anytime
soon. Not when I have Cruise.

He reels me in and we duck into a narrow door
through the back. It’s dark inside. The stench of mildew and rust
lights up my senses.

“Welcome to the tower, Kenny,” he says,
nodding over to a stairwell that leads dozens of stories to the top
of Garrison’s most prized phallic symbol.

“This will take hours.” I’m quick to point
out. Plus, this is one vertigo-inspired workout I’m not looking
forward to.

He pushes a button behind me, and an elevator
door silently opens.

“Clever,” I say, more than slightly relieved.
“My feet appreciate the reprieve.”

We climb in and ride to the top at gravity
defying speeds. Cruise makes himself at home, nibbling on my
earlobe with his hot, hungry mouth.

The doors open to an iced bite of wind, and
that revised syllabus comes flooding back to me. Number ten, the
grand finale—the tower.

“Oh God,” it comes out frail.

“I got you,” he whispers with a devious
smile.

Cruise leads us outside to the giant globe
that floats over campus like an insignia. The graphite sky looms
above. Burnt grey clouds bow so close you could touch them. I
half-expect the finger of God to reach out like a fresco come to
life.

I catch a glimpse down at the tiny people
shuffling around campus. The landscape zooms in and out as I sway
on my feet.

“Don’t be afraid,” he says, steadying me. He
pulls me gently into the metal frame of the sphere with the utmost
care. Cruise wants this. This is the piece de resistance of his
orgasmic outline, the one he drew up for my eyes only.

I give a naughty grin as I drop to my knees
and peel open his jeans. He clasps his hand over mine and kneels
beside me.

“Kenny, you’re a work of beauty. You know
that?”

“No, I don’t know that,” I whisper as the
color rises to my cheeks. “But I’m damn glad you think so.”

Cruise scoops my face in his palms, kissing
me full on the lips with the fire from his mouth.

The wind slices through the gap between our
bodies as if it were trying to keep us apart, push us over the
edge—trade in our love for tragedy. But Cruise lays me down,
holding me steady with the weight of his affection. He hovers over
me with a wicked grin, taking me in, soaking up the experience as
if this were the sum total of all he ever wanted. He runs his hands
inside my sweater and frees me from my bra with the dexterity of a
magician. He bows into my neck with steamed kisses before creating
a trail down my chest, slow and steady as if the world and
everything in it were ours. We had a million years to love one
another, wherever we pleased—whenever.

Cruise maneuvers me free from my jeans, pulls
down his boxers, and his love for me dives into the open. His warm
body rides over mine, teasing me with barely-there kisses. He
kneads his hands into my hips, rolling me into him until I’m
panting for what he’s about to offer. I reach down and guide him
in, soft and easy until my body arches to meet his, and I take in a
breath. Cruise pulsates in and out as we create a soothing rhythm.
He lands his lips over mine; they drift to my ear, my neck, quick
as lightning. Cruise bites and licks, moans and calls my name until
we’re lost in that beautiful oblivion built just for the two of us.
My lids flutter. The clouds rotate dressed in navy and black while
the wind sears us with its wrath. With Cruise, I no longer fear the
heights the world has to offer. Now I would crave them. With
Cruise, I no longer wonder what it would be like to be loved. Now
I’ll know forever.

“
God, Kenny
.” He boils the words into
my ear as his body launches into a series of convulsions. Cruise
lets out a guttural roar and arches his neck back, his eyes closed
to heaven. I want to remember him this way—nothing but Cruise and
sky—the pinnacle of lust with a backdrop of cinder.

My insides sail me past passion and reason,
and I flex into him hard and fast. Cruise doesn’t let up. He
thrusts in deeper until all of the breath leaves my body. I clutch
onto his back, pulling him in with violent intention.

A dark laugh rumbles from him as his skin
blisters against mine.

“I love you, Kenny.” His heart knocks against
my chest as if demanding to come inside.

“I love you, too, Cruise.” I pull a wet kiss
off his lips, trying to catch my breath.

Cruise always leaves me breathless.

I tried to convince Cruise we should go home
and continue the prequel to our honeymoon, but he insists I go to
my afternoon sessions, poor hygiene and all.

In art, Ally, of all people, surprises the
hell out of me by being the next student hungry for two hundred
solid. She lends her body to the class as a landscape with a smile,
and every guy in the class is perked to attention. The male model
never showed, so she’s a one-woman show. I can tell she’s
uncomfortable because she keeps trying to cover her girl parts by
crossing her arms and legs, and Professor Webber keeps barking at
her to knock it off.

A little warning would have been nice on
Ally’s part, but, then again, she probably doesn’t know I’m in this
class.

I trace her out in charcoal—thin and wispy,
making her limbs look as though they’ve run through a pasta
machine. I want to make her face as beautiful as possible because I
know she’s going to want to see this. Anyway, Ally is gorgeous, so
I don’t have to worry about trying to make her look good—more like
trying to make her look human. Needless to say, my aptitude for
sketching people leaves a lot to be desired. Speaking of Ally—that
totally reminds me of Lauren’s ludicrous plan to sick a faux tramp
on her boyfriend. That’s so twisted I don’t even know how to
classify it.

“Say, Blair?” I take her in as she wistfully
sketches Ally, giving her ballooning hips fit for birthing an
elephant. “Would you mind trying to seduce someone’s boyfriend to
prove he’s not a cheat?”

Her tiny mouth opens. Blair looks at me with
wonder as if a backhanded miracle just took place.

“You want me to seduce your boyfriend?” She
stammers, flustered at the idea of hitting on Cruise, and suddenly
I’m sorry I ever brought it up.

“No, not my boyfriend. He would never cheat.
It’s for a friend.”

“Nope, wouldn’t do it.” She whips her pencil
across the oversized sheet of paper. Funny how her enthusiasm waned
once “my” boyfriend disappeared from the scene.

“Is that a ring on your finger?” Blair’s eyes
magnify and retract at the sight of the shiny band of platinum.

“His grandmother’s.” I hold it out for her to
inspect and her face turns a strange ashen shade. “Are you
okay?”

“I’m fine.” Her lips pinch tight. “So how’d
he do it? It’s the boy with the penis, right?”

I don’t like her reducing Cruise to such
indelicate body parts, but I let it slide since she’s bitter.
Nothing like a broken heart to turn you off to men forever, or so
my mother says. Although with Mom, forever is the span of time
between her divorce finalizing and her next visit to the local
bar.

“He took me out on horseback,” I whisper. “It
was this place that looked like heaven on earth, and he dropped to
his knees—made love to me in the snow after, right there in the
field like we were the only two people in world,” I say it low,
mostly to myself as I relive the memory. A thread of heat rises
through me, and suddenly it’s too warm inside the jacket, inside
the boots he bought for me with his careful attention to my needs.
“He’s perfect.”

She huffs into my admission. “I bet his last
fiancée thought so, too.” She shrugs as if I should already know
this. “Does he ever talk about her?”

The ground beneath me sways for a moment. I
knew Cruise had a girlfriend, but he’s never brought her up. For
sure he never mentioned an engagement.

“No, he doesn’t say much.”

“Funny.” She smirks, continuing on with the
distorted picture in front of her. Blair’s pencil glides across the
page in a series of spastic strokes as she disfigures Ally’s
forehead to make it look twice its natural size. “For a couple
that’s supposedly so in love, you don’t seem to know a lot about
him. Then again, he probably doesn’t want you to find out why they
broke it off.”

Why they broke it off? “Do you know why they
broke it off?”

“
Oh
…” She grunts with marked
aggression, “I do know. They crashed and burned.” She says it with
an exaggerated sadness as if there’s an irony in there somewhere.
“He cheated. He’s prone to wander. But you know that. He’s slept
with at least five hundred girls. He’s got pig’s blood coursing
through his veins just like his daddy.”

A breath gets caught in my throat. She so did
not go there.

“What the hell are you talking about?” The
words edge out as if each one took me one step closer to stepping
off a cliff. “Take it back. Cruise isn’t like that, and I don’t
appreciate you reducing him or his father to farm animals.” My
blood boils right down to the marrow to hear her talk about Cruise
like that.

She gives a solid laugh. “It’s true. But
you’re one of those girls who needs to find things out the hard
way, I can tell.”

The sudden urge to slap her rails through me,
and the only thing stopping me is the fact a bitch like Blair would
most likely file assault charges.

“Boy”—a frustrated laugh gyrates through
me—“someone really screwed you over, didn’t they?” This is the last
conversation I’m ever having with this psycho. I’m sorry I ever sat
on this side of the room.

She needles me with those dark, brooding
eyes. Her face is hard as flint with all of the sweetness drained
right out of her.

“You’re right. Someone really screwed me
over. Or maybe I did it to myself.” Her arm glides over the page in
front of her, violent and spastic. She creates large black X’s
through her meticulous sketch until the pencil knifes through
layers of onion paper. She stops cold and looks right at me with a
fire in her eyes that looks downright caustic. “He still loves her.
You know that, right? That’s the reason he never brings her
up—because it hurts so bad. He’ll always love the girl he was going
to marry. You don’t really want to be second place in his heart, do
you?”

I pack my things and turn to go, but she
catches me by the elbow.

“Look”—she closes her eyes briefly—“I’m only
trying to do you a favor. I never want you to feel as bad as I do.
There’s someone special out there for you, Kendall. It’s just not
him. His heart still belongs to me.”

My stomach lurches. I scoot the hell back,
knocking down easels like dominos and half the room erupts from the
chaos.

This is
her
?

She never once said so, and yet she listened
as I told her the intimate details of our relationship.

I run out of the building.

I never plan on going back.

Cruise

Caught a ride home with Lauren. xoxo

Ride with Lauren? Huh. Maybe she’s not
feeling good.

I would have left early if she wanted. I’m
all done with classes just logging the last few minutes of office
hours.

Strange. It’s usually me waiting for her.
We’ve been driving together the past few weeks to save on gas. It
won’t be the same leaving without her next to me. I actually miss
her.

I let out a little laugh. It looks like Ms.
Jordan has me whipped after all. My how the mighty have fallen.

A shadow darkens the doorway, and for a
fleeting moment I’m convinced it’s Kenny. She’s probably going to
tie me to the chair and make good use of this paper
penitentiary.