Tease (6 page)

“You had this panicked look in your eyes.” He tapped the side of his head once. “It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. You thought you’d seen the last of me. I get it. You didn’t want your friends to know you were slumming it with me last night.”

I worked my lips a little before finding my voice. “That’s not it at all.” I shook my head.

He shrugged like he didn’t care either way.

“I was embarrassed,” I admitted. “But not because of you. I didn’t want my roommates to know I passed out and had to rely on some stranger to take care of me. God, they’d stage an intervention.”

He considered me for a moment.

“Not my finest hour, I know,” I added, scuffing the ground with the toe of my boot. And then we just stared at each other. Him looking at me. Me looking at him. Like we were trying to figure each other out. I doubted I could ever do that. This guy . . . a boy who’d been to war, who’d seen people die all around him, was not like anyone I had ever met. He’d lost his cousin, and when he returned home it wasn’t to family and friends waiting for him. Not from what I had just seen anyway. Beth looked almost ill at the sight of him. His mother was gone, remarried, and he’d told me yesterday that his grandfather died a year ago. Probably while he was stationed over there. Had he even come home for the funeral?

“What’s your last name, Emerson?” he asked.

“Wingate.”

Dark eyes with gold shards flecked throughout drilled into me. “You’re trouble, Emerson Wingate.”

Funny. That’s what I had been thinking about him since we first met. And yet here I was. Talking to him. Baiting him. Even though I felt like I was skating on thin ice around him—one sudden move and I’d go plunging under—I was here.

“I know. I’m not your type, right?”

The air felt suddenly thick and I wished I could grab those words back, stuff them down my throat. I actually sounded like I was fishing for him to say he liked me. That he cared.

For a second I had forgotten
he
wasn’t
my
type—I was so focused on him. On the fact that he found me thoroughly resistible. I’d let that little fact get under my skin.
Stupid, stupid, stupid
.

With him, I couldn’t be in charge, and I needed to never forget that.

“I don’t have a type.” His deep voice rumbled across the few inches between us.

I nodded dumbly, humiliated, but relieved that he wasn’t going to protest and play along with me by insisting I was his type. I opened my mouth, about to add,
me
either
, when he said, “But if I did, it would be you.”

I gawked at him, shocked. If he didn’t look so displeased at his admission, I’d think he was complimenting me. Or flirting.

My phone rang and I pulled it out, grateful for the distraction. I cringed when I saw it was my mother. I pressed the mute button.

“No one you want to talk to?”

“Just my mother. I don’t need to talk to her.”

“Not close with your mom?”

I shrugged. “Are you close with yours?”

“Yeah. She raised me all alone. My dad was never around, so it was just us and my grandfather growing up. I haven’t seen her much since I got back. She married and moved to Boston.” The corner of his mouth kicked up and my heart gave a stupid flutter. I just got an almost smile. And he was talking more to me than he ever had. “But I take her calls at least.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, resisting the urge to defend myself and explain just how different my mother was from the kind of mom who baked cookies and made her kids lemonade. My mom was the type who stood by as her daughter was hurt and then insisted she forget it. She wouldn’t have worked a job and raised me all on her own. She wouldn’t have made such sacrifices.

“Aren’t you the good son?” The words came out scratchy and a little raw. I couldn’t help it. Thinking about my mother put me in a bitchy place.

“So why don’t you take her calls? What’d she do? Cut your allowance?”

“Ha.” I crossed my arms. “You really don’t know me.”

“Well, now I’m intrigued. Tell me about life in your ivory tower, princess.”

I inhaled through my nose, almost tempted to lay it all out there. Just so I could wipe that smirk from his face. But that lasted only half a second. In five years I hadn’t told a soul what happened. Why would I begin now?

Why would I begin with him?

“Why are you even still talking to me right now?” I snapped.

“You’re the one who ran out here after me.”

“And you’re still here. So why? You don’t like me.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Oh, that’s right. If you had a type, I would be it. What does that even mean?” I angled my head and uncrossed my arms, propping my hands on my hips. “I’m fuckable but not anyone you’d want longterm? That it?”

He didn’t even flinch at my bald language. Nor did he rush to denials either. “You’re . . . interesting.”

I laughed. “Is that what you call it? Maybe you’re just hard up, soldier boy? Fresh off the boat and—”

“I wasn’t in the navy.” His voice got all flinty, but I kept going. Kept talking even when a part of me warned that I should just shut up.

I shook my head. “Tomorrow you won’t even remember my name, my face—”

He stepped closer, eyes scanning me. “Emerson Wingate. Dark hair with reddish highlights. Bright blue eyes.” His gaze dipped, roaming over me. “Hundred ten. Hundred fifteen pounds. Your hands . . .” He plucked one of my hands up, pressing his palm flush to mine. He considered our kissing palms, my hand so much smaller than his own. The tips of my fingers barely passed his middle knuckle.

“Beautiful hands.” My chest tightened at his deep voice washing over me. “Slender. Fine-boned but strong. Like they play an instrument. Piano maybe?” His eyes locked with mine. A dark eyebrow arched in question.

“I-I paint,” I admitted.

He smiled as if he had just solved some kind of puzzle. “You paint,” he echoed and continued, marking characteristics like he was reading off a chart. “Skin smooth. Pale. A tight little body perfect for tying guys up in knots.”

My eyes shot to his face and I yanked my hand away from his. I rubbed my palm against my thigh, still feeling his touch there. “Go to hell.”

“Temperamental.” He gave me his half smile. “See? I’ll remember you.”

And then he was gone.

I stared after his retreating back, his figure dark against the mostly white landscape, broken up by only concrete and vehicles.

I exhaled, unaware that I had been holding my breath. I told myself I was glad that he was leaving. Glad that I wouldn’t have to see him again.

Turning, I headed back inside the house, wrapping my arms tightly around myself as if that might somehow make me feel less cold. And less empty.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins
Publishers

....................................

Chapter 5

I
was grateful when
Monday rolled around just so I could distract myself with the routine of the week. There was no expectation of me going out. I didn’t have to work so hard to be the me that I had created ever since I started here at Dartford. Friday loomed ahead like a visit to the gyno. Something you didn’t want to do, but you knew you had to. If I didn’t party it up on the weekends, if I stayed in, then everyone would think something was wrong with me. That I was sick or depressed. And nothing was wrong with me. I worked hard to convince everyone—myself included—that nothing was wrong with me. I was happy. Really.

My week ran its normal course. I still barely made it on time to class, slipping in and finding my desk at the last second possible. I dodged my mother’s phone calls. The afternoons I spent in the studio, losing myself in my work so much that I sometimes lost track of time.

On Friday afternoon I was working at my station, wishing it were still Wednesday so I didn’t have to go out. I sighed, blowing at the strand of hair that dangled in my face. I had agreed to go with Pepper and Reece to hear a new band. Suzanne was joining us, too. Georgia had some lame event with Harris. Some future “Douches of America” banquet.

“That’s really good,” Gretchen said, stopping by my station to comment. “Not your usual . . .”

I blew at a magenta-dyed streak that dangled in my face. I had pulled the short strands back with a kerchief, but it always kept escaping.

“Good is not my usual?” I joked. “You wound me.”

“No.” Gretchen shook her head, staring intently at the canvas. “It’s personal somehow.”

Her words forced me to stand back and consider my work in a way I never did while I was laboring over it. When I’d returned to the studio on Sunday, I had a stern talk with myself, deciding that just because I was painting a scene from Shaw’s house didn’t mean anything. I was an artist. I seized inspiration when it arrived. I didn’t need to examine the source.

The door had taken on a richness. There was a lushness in the browns that made it leap to life. The glass was like crystal, winking with light. I marveled that I had somehow achieved that effect. It took me hours playing with a lot of blues and yellows. The snow visible through the glass bled out beyond the door like this amorphous cloud of pristine white. And there, in that fog of snow, was a face. Almost ghostly. The features vague and indistinct. Except for the deeply set eyes. They seemed to stare back at you, intense and probing.

When had I done that?

“No,” the single word escaped me on a breathy exhale. My shoulders slumped.

“What? Something wrong?”

Oh. Hell. No. I was not painting
him
. I wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t some lovesick stupid girl pining after a hot boy
. I
didn’t pine. Pushing up off my stool, I grabbed the offending piece by the edges, determined to add it to the stack of canvases that we recycle.

I was almost to the dozen or so canvases leaning on the far side of the room, Gretchen trailing after me, when Professor Martinelli’s voice stopped me in my tracks. “Emerson, what do you think you’re doing?”

Still clutching the canvas that was almost as tall as me, I peeped around the side. “Excuse me?”

Professor Martinelli swept into the studio, her many bracelets jangling. I never understood that. Those things would distract me while I painted, but she was never without at least a dozen bracelets on each arm.

“I was going to recycle this and start on something new . . . I have a fresh idea,” I babbled, “something that has really been nagging at me—”

She pointed an imperious finger at me. “You will put that canvas back at your station and finish it.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off. “This is the first piece that you’ve done that has shown any true inspiration. I’ll not have you toss it aside.”

I didn’t know whether to be flattered or annoyed. I’d been a student here for two years and she had never reacted to anything I’d created like this before. Grumbling under my breath, I carted the canvas back to my station and pretended to work for another half hour, feeling Professor Martinelli’s gaze on me. I didn’t want to storm out right out after she told me to put the canvas back. She might very correctly think I was annoyed. When enough time had passed, I washed my brushes and cleaned up at my station.

Dusk had fallen. Night came on fast in the winter. I walked along the sidewalk, mindful of the ice patches. Once inside my building, I chose the staircase over the elevator. My steps rang out over the concrete. I kept hearing Professor Martinelli’s voice in my ears. And then I saw those eyes. Shaw’s eyes. It’s like I was possessed . . . and someone else, the “possessed” me, had painted those eyes.

At my door, I fumbled with my keys, but it was suddenly yanked open. I looked up, expecting Georgia, but it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Pepper.

It was my mom.

There wasn’t much difference
in her appearance now at age forty-eight versus how she looked when I was nine. Except her face looked kind of waxy. She’d had some work since I last saw her. And her hair was longer. She wore it in a sleek braid down her back with several shorter layers escaping to frame her face. I squinted. I’d never seen her hair this long and I suspected it was due to extensions.

She never seemed to change outwardly. Or, for that matter, inwardly. When I was little she used to do the whole PTA-room-mom-thing. But once she and Dad divorced, she stopped pretending. She stopped trying to be the best mom on the block. She moved to Boston and began her quest for husband number two.

And she found him in my stepfather.

She looked me up and down, her nose wrinkling. “What’s all over you? You’re a mess.”

“Paint,” I replied. No greeting. No hug. This was normal.

“You always did have a unique sense of . . . style.” Typical passive aggression. When she wasn’t being outright aggressive.

I stepped past her into my suite. “How’d you get in here?”

“Your RA. I told her I was your mother and she let me in.”

I’d have to talk to Heather about that.

“What are you doing here?” I dropped my bag on the floor and sank down on my bed.

“You’re not returning my calls.”

Wow. She must be desperate to come here. “I already told you. I’m not going.”

“Emerson, would you stop being so selfish for one moment? You’re family. How’s it going to look if my own daughter doesn’t attend her stepbrother’s wedding? You already missed the showers. I want you at the rehearsal dinner
and
wedding.”

“No.”

Her lips compressed and she crossed her arms. The action pulled her shirt dress tightly across her upper body and I marveled at how thin she was. Thinner than the last time I’d seen her. She must be down to four saltines a day.

“You know the embarrassment this will cause me. You just want to hurt me.”

Shaking my head, I stared at her. She really thought this was about her. About me wanting to hurt her and not what might or might not be comfortable for me. “It hasn’t once crossed your mind that this isn’t about you?”

She stared at me, blinking in something akin to bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

“Justin,” I spit his name out like it was venom in my mouth. “I wouldn’t go to his wedding if you held a gun to my head.”

“Oh!” She tossed her hands up in the air. “This is still because of that misunderstanding.”

I surged to my feet. “There was
no
misunderstanding.”

She held up a hand as if to ward me off. “You were always guilty of an overactive imagination. You flighty artist types—”

“Mother!” I snapped. “I imagined nothing.”

“Fine!” Mom grabbed her bag from where it sat on my desk and marched toward my door. “Cling to your bitterness and this ridiculous agenda you have against Justin. You haven’t even seen him in five years. When are you going to grow up and move on, Emerson?”

“Oh, I’ve been quite grown-up for some time.” The hard realities of my youth had guaranteed that.

“Don’t call me. Don’t text.” She stabbed a red-nailed finger at her chest. I almost laughed and reminded her that she was the one who called and texted me. “Not until you learn to accept me. You never have. Not since I married Don.”

“That’s not true. I don’t have a problem with Don.” Honestly, I didn’t. I met with her and Don several times a year for dinner. Even joined them for Christmas one year in Paris—true, I felt safe doing so because Justin was spending the holiday with his new girlfriend, his current fiancée, a girl I’ve obviously never met but who had my boundless pity.

“When you’re finished behaving like a spoiled child, call me.” She slammed out of my suite.

I stared at the door, my chest heaving as though I had just run a marathon. A soft knocking at the adjoining door had my head turning. Pepper peeked in the room, her eyes brimming with concern. Great. She’d heard that.

“You okay?”

I nodded.

She stepped inside the room, rubbing her palms over her thighs. “That your mom?”

I nodded again. “Sorry, I didn’t introduce you two.” My voice cracked a little. I swallowed. “As you heard, we’re not on the best of terms these days.” Years, really.

She sank down beside me. “Want to talk about it?

I shook my head. “No.” Rising from the bed, I started searching through my closet, stuffing my emotions way down deep where they couldn’t get out. “What time does this band start? I could use some fun. And a drink.”

Maybe a few.