Tempt Me: A First Class Romance Collection

by Jessica Hawkins

“I’m fine.”

  “You’re being childish,” Rich says as the driver creeps alongside me. I stride down the sidewalk. “Get in the car.”

  “No.”

  “Come back with me now, or . . .”

  “Or what?” I prompt.

  “Or don’t come back at all.”

  Even though there’s a definite waver in his voice, my stomach clenches. Is he breaking up with me? Do I care enough to get in the car? In this moment, my answer is no. I don’t want to think too hard if that’ll be the case tomorrow. “Fine,” I say. “I won’t.”

  I turn on my heel and walk in the opposite direction.

  “Come on,” Rich calls after me. “Seriously?”

  I ignore him. This is unlike me, acting on impulse, arguing in front of a stranger, being petulant just to get at Rich.

  Or, maybe it is me.

  Only a couple blocks later, the adrenaline begins to wear off. In the East Village, the bars are packed, the sidewalks livening up with downtowners who remind me of my assistant. Don’t I belong here as much as anyone? I consider calling Benny to see if she’s around. I think she lives in the area. She’s invited me out a few times, but I’ve always turned her down. We don’t have that kind of relationship. But why couldn’t we?

  I shiver. I’ve never been much of a partier. I didn’t smoke or drink because I liked it. They were just ways to comfort myself. Despite what Rich said, he wouldn’t turn me away if I showed up on his doorstep right now. If I did, we’d make up. We’d pretend none of this happened. He’d convince me not to take on my own treatment, and if he couldn’t, my dad would. Because Rich will tell him all about this. Maybe already has.

  I walk toward my apartment, which is a good twenty or more minutes away. It’s not where I want to be, though. Rich and my dad have always been more of a team than I have with either of them. I accepted that. But Finn makes me feel important. Heard. Seen. We met less than two weeks ago, yet his interest in my journals, his questions, his attention, reminds me of how my mom was with me. When she looked at me, it was as if she couldn’t wait to see the person I would become.

  Finn does that too, except he knew me before he ever laid eyes on me. It’s not supposed to happen that way, as if something greater brought us together.

  I already have a missed call from Rich. I clear it. I didn’t get out my phone for him. Finn just posted the third photo, but I go right past it to my inbox.

  I send Finn a direct message:

  Are you home?

  11

  Four minutes have passed since I messaged Finn to see if he was home. He shouldn’t be sleeping at ten thirty on a Thursday night, but it’s not exactly early either. Now that I’ve decided I want to see him, it’s all I can think about. Just the thought of Rich annoys me.

  I’m a couple blocks from his place when his response comes through.

  Call me.

  His phone number pops up.

  I stop in the middle of the sidewalk. My bravery wavers. Finn is a man. He’s in his thirties. He won’t like being jerked around. If I go up to his apartment this late at night, and he has certain expectations—am I ready to take things to that level?

  Breathe. I’m being ridiculous. Jumping to conclusions. I don’t even know if Finn will want to see me. Despite the temperature, I begin to sweat. I unwrap my scarf and ball it under my arm before dialing.

  Finn picks up after the first ring. “Hey.” His voice is scratchy, even deeper than I remember.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “Nah. Just been working all day since I saw you.”

  “Oh.” A snowflake lands on my nose as a couple more drift onto my coat. He doesn’t say anything else. “Do you maybe want some company?” I ask.

  “Where are you?”

  “Close,” I say. “I walked from the East Village, and now I’m by the café.”

  He sniffs. “Hmm.”

  Clearly, I didn’t think this through. It occurs to me that he might not even be alone. “I mean, if you’re busy, it’s fine, or if you don’t want—”

  “I want,” he says so low, I almost miss it. “You know I want.”

  This afternoon, he basically admitted to fighting his attraction to me because of Rich. Finn doesn’t want to get hurt. But the way I left things with Rich is as close to breaking up as we’ve ever come “It’s over. We had an argument.” I play with the fringe of my scarf. “So can I come up?”

  “I’ll come down.”

  I hang up, part triumphant, part scared as shit. I don’t know how to be with someone like Finn. I’ve written about it, I’ve fantasized about it, but what if I can’t actually be it?

  I need coffee, if only just to smell it, hold it. As fate has it, Lait Noir is only two blocks from Finn’s—but I turn the corner to find it closed. I continue toward Finn’s, where there’s a twenty-four-hour diner across the street. I can be in and out in a minute flat.

  I’m about to step into the crosswalk when Finn exits his building a half block away. He comes toward me, passing under yellow streetlights. In sweatpants, sneakers, and a jacket, he’s not dressed for snow. He cups his hands over his mouth to warm them and nods at me. “Who do we have here?” he asks as he approaches. “Halston—what’s your last name?”

  “Fox.”

  “Fox,” he repeats, stopping in front of me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “What was the fight about?”

  Sharing the details means getting into some heavy stuff with Finn. It’s more than enough to scare him off. I shake my head. “It’s complicated.”

  “In other words, it isn’t my business.”

  “No. I mean yes, it is. Well, it’s not, but I can make it your business if you want to know.”

  He crosses his arms under his pits. “I do.”

  “I’ll tell you more, but can we go to your place?” Maybe if I can get him upstairs, he’ll forget all about it. “It’s cold.”

  He tugs my scarf from under my arm and shakes it out. “Tell me now.” He wraps it around my neck with extraordinary care, as if he’s dressing a queen for her coronation. He wants to know about the fight before he invites me up. It’s fair, but the thought of telling Finn the truth has my stomach doing flips, my nose tingling. Unlike Rich, who wanted in good with my dad, Finn has no reason to take on damaged goods.

  I glance at the ground a few seconds while the words bubble up—and then fizzle out. “Can we at least go get a coffee?” I ask. “The diner—”

  “I’ll make you some upstairs.” He slips a hand under my hair, freeing it from the scarf, and brushes some flakes away. “Just give me the rundown.”

  He basically said we’re going upstairs no matter what. I might as well get it over with. “You might think less of me.”

  “I told you I cheated on my wife with someone else’s wife.”

  I scrape the sole of my boot against the icy sidewalk, carving out a circle in a fine layer of snow. “I just don’t want you to see me differently.”

  “I want to see you differently,” he says without missing a beat. “As many sides as there are, I want to see them all. I’m sure a week into knowing someone, that’d scare some people. I don’t think you’re one of those people, though. Are you?”

  I smile to myself. Every time I’m with him, I become more confident that he knows me. And he’s asking for more. “No,” I say, looking up into his eyes. “I’m on antidepressants.”

  He scans my face. “Okay. That’s not so rare these days. Kendra, my ex, went through that phase.”

  “It’s not a phase.”

  “No, I didn’t mean to imply it was. I just meant lots of people take them.”

  “About a week ago, I decided to stop. I’ve been weaning myself off them. Rich noticed because my mood’s been a little erratic, and he and my dad don’t approve.”

  Finn nods slowly. A strand of his hair falls over his forehead. I have to stop myself from pushing it back into place, from running my hands through
his butterscotch-colored locks. “It’s not really their decision, is it?” he asks. “It’s between you and your psychiatrist.”

  I wasn’t involved in the decision to start treatment. I wouldn’t have any say in stopping it. Finn believes I should have that right, though. He’s a good man who would see me as a partner, not a puppet. “My psychiatrist listens to my dad. He says our sessions are private, but I don’t believe him. They decide together, and I’m supposed to go along with it because he’s a doctor.”

  “Then you need to find someone else. That’s a delicate relationship. If you don’t trust your doctor, it can’t work.”

  He makes it sound so simple. He almost makes me believe it is simple. For that, I want to hug him. “The thing is . . .” I can’t believe I’m saying this. It’s something I haven’t said aloud to anyone other than Doctor Lumby, a thought I’ve been trying to avoid. “They’re right. After almost ten years, I don’t even know who I am without them. I don’t know if I can control myself.”

  Finn’s mouth drops open. “Did you say ten years? How old are you?”

  I look away. It does sound like an alarming length of time, even to my own ears. It just shows how fucked up I am. “Twenty-five.”

  Finn puts his hands on my shoulders, encompassing them. “Look at me.”

  He waits until our eyes meet again.

  “Taking antidepressants is nothing to be ashamed of. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. But why the fuck does a fifteen-year-old need to be medicated?”

  “I’m troubled. I make bad decisions.” Am I really prepared to go back to that place without any armor on? I’ve been worried I’d lost myself somewhere in the last decade, but maybe that part of me needs to stay gone. “Without treatment, I make mistakes. I’m dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Finn asks. “Let me get this straight. You made a mistake when you were fifteen, and you’ve been on antidepressants ever since? Do you really think you’re the first teenager to make bad choices?”

  “It’s not that cut and dry.”

  “It’s extreme, Halston.” He runs a hand through his hair, moving it off his face. “It doesn’t sound right.”

  After ten years of hearing the opposite, my instinct is to defend my dad. He didn’t know what else to do with me. I was reckless. Finn’s validation is too heady to resist, though. It was an awful mistake, but maybe I’ve changed. He’s right—I was just a kid. “I don’t want to keep taking them. I’m just afraid of what’ll happen if I don’t, and I know Rich is too.”

  “This is what you fought about?” I nod, and he puts an arm around my shoulders. “Come on. It’s cold. Let’s go up and you can tell me the rest.”

  I let him walk me to his building, his body heat warming me instantly like I’ve taken a pull of strong liquor. I try to inhale him, but it’s too cold to smell anything. Even without his scent drawing me in, even with him knowing I’m a head case, even though I’m biting my tongue to keep from insisting we get coffee first, I make a decision—I’m going to sleep with Finn. Rich won’t find out. And if he does? I’m not sure I’d feel whatever I’m supposed to. Maybe we really are through. It’d be strange; he’s always been reliable. Breaking up with him is like losing a safety net, but maybe that’s a good thing. Finn could be my chance at the kind of passion I’ve only dared to write about.

  Finn keeps his arm around me through the lobby, up the elevator, and to his door. He unlocks the apartment, guiding me in with a hand on my middle back. The heat is on. He takes my scarf and coat, shakes off the snowflakes, and hangs my things with his jacket.

  “Want something to eat?” he asks.

  I unzip my boots and leave them at the door. I’m not very tall, even in heels, so I have to tilt my head back to look up at him. “I’m okay.”

  “Drink?”

  I thought you’d never ask. I nod hard. “Definitely.”

  I follow him into the kitchen and set my handbag on the counter.

  He opens the refrigerator. “I’m a little disappointed you changed out of those tights.”

  He’d noticed. I’ve had them in my underwear drawer for years, but today was the first time I’d pulled them out. “You didn’t even get to see all of them,” I say.

  He closes the fridge and turns slowly. “No?”

  Any traces of the wintry night fade. My body warms as Finn’s eyes travel downward. “There are little bows at the tops of each leg. Right under my ass.”

  His expression darkens. I’ve seen desire in his eyes before—like when our knees touched on the windowsill at Lait Noir or when he almost kissed me on the couch. But now he’s no longer trying to hide it. “That’d make a good photo.”

  I haven’t stopped wanting Finn’s camera lens on me, even though he told me in the park we couldn’t do it again. “You posted,” I say.

  He nods. “A couple hours ago.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to look yet.”

  He gets his phone from his back pocket and hands it to me. “The code is 2008.”

  Getting his password to unlock the screen feels like a form of intimacy, but I try not to look too excited about it. I pull up the photo, and my mouth drops open. “You have fifty more followers.”

  “Are you keeping track, Serenity?”

  I blush hearing the handle I use on all my social media, @suhr.enity. In the excitement of wanting to see him, I’d forgotten that we’d never actually connected online outside of e-mail. “How’d you know the message was from me?”

  He arches an eyebrow. “Lucky guess. Where does Suhr come from?”

  I look at the screen. “My mom’s maiden name.”

  “Did you consider any other ‘Suhr’ words?”

  I glance up. “Like what?”

  “Suhr-ender.”

  My insides tighten. He says it like a command, or an idea he’s just had. Is he suggesting I give in to him for a night? How would that feel? “Friends and family follow me on that account.”

  “And? Surrender’s inappropriate?”

  Inappropriate. God. There’s that word again. This time, I’m the one acting like a prude, not Rich. I’m not exactly wild, but have I become boring? No. A boring person wouldn’t be here right now.

  I return my eyes to the picture. “Nobody commented on the last two posts,” I say. “Do you think that means they didn’t like what I wrote?”

  “No,” he says. “In fact, the one with your fingers in your mouth has more likes.”

  He’s right. It does. I hand him back the phone. “Maybe that’s because of the photo, not the caption.”

  “It doesn’t mean that,” he says. “I got a message just before yours complimenting the captions.”

  “Seriously?” My face splits with a smile. “From who?”

  “Just some random girl.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I didn’t answer, but I updated the description to say ‘My model and her words are anonymous.’”

  My model. Mine.

  “Is that all right?” Finn catches my eye. “I know keeping your identity secret is important to you.”

  I can see the headline in my mind now:

  “George Fox’s sex-fiend daughter at it again! Poses for racy photos online.”

  “It’s good,” I say quickly. “I still want that.”

  He returns to the fridge. “All right then. I’ll leave it.” He holds out a water bottle. “Want a tour?”

  I don’t want to seem like a freak by insisting on the coffee he promised me, it is eleven at night after all, so I take the water. It isn’t easy. When I’m uncomfortable, I cling to my patterns, as Rich says. Being here is out of character for me. This isn’t work or home or my dad’s or Rich’s place. And Finn certainly isn’t Rich.

  I follow him down a hall to one of the closed doors. He opens it, gesturing me in before him. It’s dark, the lights dimmed just enough to make the room glow. A desk by the window is topped by an enormous computer, both opposite a small couch. Photography equipment is
assembled in a corner, including a camera on a tripod. I avoid looking at the prints on the wall because I’ll immediately judge them. It’s automatic, and I want to think of Finn as the man who made me sexy, not the mediocre, flat photographer I’d thought he was when I’d first looked at his work.

  “Should we take another?” he asks.

  I spin around. “Now?”

  “No, not now. Or, maybe now. If inspiration strikes.” He half-smiles, almost smirking.

  I wonder, if I were wearing the stripe-y tights, would inspiration have struck us down already? Would he have crossed the kitchen, impatient to see the bows? Lifted up my skirt and bent me over the counter for a better look? I curl my hands into balls, an ache forming between my legs. I don’t know what I want more, to fuck Finn or pose for him. “If you were to feel inspired . . . what might you do?”

  “Hmm.” He circles me, looking me over. From every angle. I fight the urge to cover myself or hide. Finn hasn’t given me any reason to be self-conscious. His perusal is both intoxicating and distressing. I want him to drink me in, but what if he doesn’t like how I taste? The hair on my skin prickles as I wait for his assessment. “The white collar of your blouse makes you look so sweet.” He says sweet with an edge that weakens my knees. “Like a good girl. It makes me want to turn you bad.”

  My legs are going to give out, and he hasn’t even touched me yet, not even close. He’s put enough distance between us to ensure I couldn’t even reach out and grab him if I wanted.

  “You can do that with a photo?” I ask. “Turn me bad?”

  “I can certainly try.”

  I nod breathlessly. I want to say, “Try! Please try!” but I don’t trust myself to speak without begging.

  He stops in front of me and picks up something from his desk. “Do you have words for that?” he asks, holding my journal out to me.

  I didn’t even notice it before. I take it. The feel of the leather is the only thing that’s ever come as close to comforting me like my mother’s embrace once had. I open it and flutter the pages, playing the edges like the strings of an instrument. My hands tremble, and I’m certain Finn notices.