by Sarina Bowen
“It rained. I hope his fancy camera got soaked,” Lianne grumbles.
“He probably packed it in hours ago,” I agree. “But we’ll be careful anyway.” Lianne seems a little unsteady on her feet as she puts on her coat. “Piggyback ride?” I offer.
“Heck yeah.”
I crouch down until she puts her arms around me, then I stand up again, my hands under her knees. I open the door with an elbow and then trot across the darkened driveway and into the open garage.
Lianne kisses the back of my neck before I reluctantly set her down beside the passenger door of Orsen’s car. “Hop in, smalls,” I say, opening the door for her and eyeing the driveway. There’s nobody out there, though.
When she’s buckled in, I run around and get into the driver’s seat. A minute later we’re backing out of the driveway for the two-minute drive to Beaumont House. Lianne is quiet, looking out the window.
I assume she’s sleepy, but she turns to me when I pull up at the curb. “I had so much fun tonight,” she whispers. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” I say, my voice rough. God, this girl kills me.
“More Shakespeare later this week?” She smiles when she asks it—an awkward little grin. It promises that Shakespeare won’t be our only topic.
“Absolutely.”
She opens the door and slides one foot out. I give her left hand a gentle tug. Lianne turns to me with a smile that turns shy when I hold her gaze. I can’t resist it. Leaning in, I pull her toward me. We meet above the gearbox for a kiss. And the happy sound she makes when our lips connect lights me up inside.
Ours is a kiss that wishes the night weren’t over. We’re in an idling car that’s parked in the fire lane. All we’ve got is this one last moment, so we make it a good one. Jesus H, she’s like honey on my tongue. “You taste so good,” I mumble between kisses.
She grips the back of my head and lets out a shaky sigh. “Cherry lip gloss,” she whispers before diving in for another.
Smiling, I suck her tongue into my mouth while my palms skim over her breasts, and she moans. I break it off, practically panting just from a few kisses. “It’s not your lip gloss, babe.” I know I need to say goodnight and let her go, but every time we’re together the chemistry is thick. As if Macbeth’s weird sisters have stirred up something in their cauldron that glues her tight body against mine.
Against my better judgment, I give her ass a suggestive squeeze. She moans again. I fucking love that sound.
But then there’s another noise and not a good one. It’s the insistent repetition of a camera’s shutter.
Fuck, I curse under my breath as I pull back.
It occurs to me that Lianne could close the car door again so we can drive off together. But that’s not what happens.
The next moment Lianne is gone. Before one whole second has passed, she’s exited the car, crossed to the Beaumont gate and swiped her ID past the reader.
My heart crawls into my throat as the fucking photographer follows her all the way to the gate. I cut the engine, because if that asshole tries to follow her into Beaumont, he’s going to have to go through me.
But he doesn’t. When the big iron gate slams shut, Lianne is on the inside and he’s peering in after her, calling her name, asking, “Who’s your boyfriend?”
Fuck.
My hands are squeezed into fists that I’d happily pound him with. And I’m considering the idea when he puts the lens cap back on his camera and backs away from the gate. Then he melts into the darkness of the pedestrian walkway that passes between Beaumont and the English building.
Only when I’m sure he’s gone do I restart Orsen’s car and drive back home.
13
My Dragons Are Hungry
Lianne
Note to self: anger and adrenaline can make even a drunk girl move fast.
By the time I make it inside my entryway door, I’m seething. Stomping up the steps to the fourth floor does nothing to improve my mood. The asshole paparazzo has ruined a perfectly good kiss. And there aren’t that many kisses in my life. It’s not like I have kisses to spare.
What must DJ think? It’s a pain in the ass to hang around with me, that’s for sure.
I’m still angry as I brush my teeth, still irritated as I climb into bed.
Falling asleep is difficult, too, as my mind runs through a blurry reel of the evening’s spectacular events. Maybe they’re not spectacular to anyone else. But look at me! I hung out on a Saturday night, just like anyone would do. I made an a cappella singer jealous with video game weaponry. I drank a margarita or four. I rehearsed Lady M’s part with the hottest boy at Harkness.
And he kissed me again. Many times. But even when I was brave and kissing the stuffing out of him, he wouldn’t take me to bed. He brought me home instead.
Damn.
In my mind, I replay the kisses several more times, because that’s more fun than worrying. Then I sleep.
* * *
It’s noise that wakes me up in the morning, as usual. I almost wrap my pillow around my head in the standard evasive maneuver. Then I realize that the noise I’m hearing isn’t the sound of Bella and Rafe in the mad throes of passion, but my phone ringing.
Grabbing it off my bedside table, I see DJ’s name on the display. “Hello?” I squawk after swiping the screen.
“Aw, you’re sleeping?” he asks.
“No.” I clear my throat. “Okay, yes.”
He chuckles into my ear. “It’s late. I thought it was safe to call.”
“Damn.” No wonder the room is so bright, and there’s nobody yelling, pound me, Rafe! Harder! I’d slept through it. “What time is it?”
“Eleven.”
“Wow, really?” I don’t know if I’d ever slept so late before. “My dragons must be hungry.”
DJ barks out a laugh and says something under his breath. It may or may not end with so fucking cute. “How’s your head?”
I give this some thought. My head is perfectly fine. But why is he asking? “Um… It’s okay. Shouldn’t it be?”
There’s that chuckle again, low and soft in my ear. I just want to climb through the phone and rub that sound all over my body. But I guess that would be weird.
“You got a little tipsy, that’s all,” DJ says softly. “I think it was the tequila.”
“Right.” Now that I’ve had a moment to wake up, the details of last night are coming into focus. The video game and Amy’s ornery face. The tasty margarita Bella and Scarlet gave me. And the one Pepe poured me after that. The dancing. And then DJ in the kitchen… Oh my God. I groan out loud.
“I thought you said your head was okay,” DJ prompts.
“It’s not that.”
“Your stomach?”
“Ugh, no.” It’s my poor injured dignity. “Did we…talk in the kitchen?” I remember sitting on the counter. We kissed, and I said… Holy hell. Please, Jesus, let me not have said those things out loud.
DJ’s silence is not encouraging. And when he speaks, the amusement in his voice is unmistakable. “We may have talked in the kitchen.”
“Right.” And I said I wanted to treat your body like my own personal lollipop. “Oh man. So that’s what happens when I drink tequila.” DJ’s chuckle is audible through the phone. “Hey, can you do me a favor?”
“Sure,” he says, his voice amused.
“Can we never speak of this again?”
“Okay?”
“I’d better run,” I say quickly. I need to get off the phone and hide under something. Preferably forever.
“Wait.” DJ laughs. “There’s a favor I need to ask, too.”
“Really?” I can’t imagine what. And if he’s going to make a joke about licking, I will die.
“I have, uh, something I have to do next Saturday. And there’s a women’s hockey game I’m supposed to DJ at five o’clock. There’s a sub I called once last year, and he was okay. But I wondered if you wanted to do it.”
I’m li
stening so hard for him to tease me that it takes a minute to sink in. “Really? You’d let me DJ a game?”
“Of course. You’d be great. The pay isn’t much, though. Fifty bucks. I’m sure you usually work for a lot more than that.”
“I don’t want the money,” I scoff. “I want the power.”
He laughs. “Don’t ever run for office, babe. Or if you do? Pick another slogan.”
“This is going to be great.” Seriously. I can’t wait. “Saturday, right? I have six days to prepare.”
He rewards me with another warm laugh. “Don’t spend too much time on it. I know you’re busy.”
DJ may know me better than any other guy at Harkness. But he clearly hasn’t witnessed me on a tear. And I have so much to do before Saturday. So much. “Can I choose my own playlists?”
“Of course.”
“Thank you!” I squeak. “Gotta go now.” I need to find some sporty, ass-kicking songs by women. Like, dozens of them.
“Okay, sweetheart. Have a good morning.”
“I will. Later!” We hang up, and I’m halfway to my computer before I remember again that I told DJ I wanted to lick him everywhere.
The groan I let out probably shakes the walls. Because Bella opens my door and sticks her head in the room. “What is it now? Another bad sex scene?”
I wish. “No. Just regrets.”
Her eyes widen. “Really? How’s your head, anyway?”
Why does everyone keep asking that? “It’s fine, actually. I might be one of those people who doesn’t get hungover.”
“Of course you don’t. Then how’s your sex life?”
“Bella!” The question catches me off guard, and my cheeks immediately flame like the coils in a toaster.
My neighbor grins at me. “Ah ha! You two finally did it! Your number just doubled, you hussy. How was he? DJ has that quiet, serious thing going on. I’ll bet he’s a very focused lover. And good with his hands…”
I clap my hands over my face. “Stop! Even if there were juicy details, I wouldn’t share them.”
“Wait—no details? You didn’t make the monster with two backs?”
“Ugh. Nice image.” I fling myself on the desk chair. “We didn’t. For a minute I thought maybe we would. But then we didn’t, and he brought me home.”
“Well, okay,” Bella says, twirling the end of her bathrobe tie. “That’s progress, right?”
“Right.”
“You could always ask for it, you know.”
“Um…” Actually I don’t know. “Not sure I could put it into words. Not sober, anyway.” Too embarrassing.
Bella snorts. “Sure you could. Repeat after me, okay? ‘DJ, let’s get naked. I want to bounce on your dick.’”
Yuh! “That is not a sentence you will ever hear me say.”
“Never say never,” Bella chides me. “If you can’t say what you want, how do you expect him to give it to you?”
I made a grumbly noise. “It’s so obnoxious of you to make sense.”
“Honey, I know. Now get dressed. If you don’t have juicy details, I need brunch. Right now.”
“I need a shower,” I whine.
“Then take it already. Feed me food or sexual exploits. It’s one or the other.”
I’m hungry too, I discover. So I do as she suggests and head for the shower.
14
Nice Catch
DJ
For Harkness students, Sunday is not a day of rest.
I have to choose a paper topic for French History and a set of calculus problems to do. But every five minutes or so my mind drifts off my books and onto certain other topics. Like the way Lianne’s lips felt against mine. And the way she wrapped her whole body around me while we kissed in the kitchen. And it’s not only her looks that attract me. I love her buoyant attitude, and the contrast between that giant personality which is somehow encased in a tiny body.
It’s been a long time since I allowed myself to want someone, let alone touch anyone. It’s hard to think sexy thoughts when the last time you took your clothes off the result was a nasty accusation.
But Lianne’s small, smooth hands have flipped some kind of sexual switch for me. I just want to kiss her again, to find out if her mouth is as sweet as I remember it. I want to strip off all her clothes and hold her narrow hips in my hands.
It’s a terrible idea for me to get involved with her right now. I know this. But she’s so fucking cute and twice as sexy. And somehow I trust her, even though we haven’t known each other long. There’s something just so forthright about her—the way she squares her small shoulders and refuses to take any crap from anyone.
I want her, even though the timing is awful.
These are my thoughts as I labor through Sunday. I do homework and then I hit the gym. And in between sets on the squat rack, I think of making out with Lianne and of the way she sighed when I touched her.
I can’t wait to see her again. It’s so freaking nice to look forward to something for once.
The coming week is going to stink, what with my lawyer powwow and everything. But still, I get a whiff of enthusiasm when I realize I can call Lianne tonight just to hear her voice.
I do two extra sets on the bench, just because I can.
On Monday I call Lianne to see how she’s doing. Maybe it makes me a sap, but I want her to know that I’m thinking about her. She doesn’t pick me up, though, so I leave a voicemail asking how she’s doing and whether the asshole photographer had decided to leave her alone.
That night I’m reading a homework assignment on my bed when I get an email from her.
Daniel—
Today I’m rereading the beginning of the Scottish play, and I can’t help but hear your voice as Banquo. So that’s distracting.
Anyway, I’m sorry about that photographer. He sold a photo to this rag (link). And you’ll laugh when you see the caption. But I think this means he’ll leave me alone now.
—Lady M
I click on the link and the website for a tabloid comes up. And there we are—Lianne’s foot is outside the car, but the rest of her is in my arms. We are in a goddamn clinch—a deep kiss, with our hands gripping each other. The picture causes something to go wrong in my gut, because anyone who sees this can read me like a book. I look about two seconds away from hauling her back into the car and holding her forever.
Jesus H.
The caption is funny. She’s right. It reads: “Silver screen sorceress-turned-college-student Lianne Challice leaving her boyfriend’s car. She’s dating James Orsen, senior and star goalie for the Harkness hockey team. At 6-1 and 200 pounds, the NHL prospect’s save percentage is an impressive 91%. Nice catch, Princess Vindi.”
“Holy shit!” I snort to myself. The photographer must have run the plates on Orsen’s car, or maybe the deed to his house, then Googled him. Lianne was right when she said the gossip rags didn’t care about the truth. I slide off my bed and carry my tablet to the goalie’s door. “Hey, Orsen?”
“Come in, dude.”
I push his door open. “Your car is having its fifteen minutes of fame.”
He looks up from a chemistry textbook. “What?”
“I’m sorry about this.” I hand over the tablet.
“Aw!” he teases. “Look at the lovesick boy in my car.”
Ugh. “Read the caption.”
Orsen’s howl of laughter is loud and immediate. “No fucking way!” Then he’s tapping on my screen.
“What are you doing?”
“Sending myself the link. I’m a catch, Deej! And the NHL wants me. I look a lot like you, which is a fucking shame, though.” He laughs some more.
I shouldn’t have shown it to him, because now he’s going to pass it around. But most players have a Google alert on their own names in case sportswriters mention them in the press. So he probably would have found it. And anyway, what can I really expect?
While Orsen forwards the link to everyone we know, I head back to my room. This will
be today’s little humiliation. Compared to the other shit swirling around in my life, it’s not a big deal.
Except I’m wrong about that. So wrong.
While I study calculus, the photo makes the rounds. It reaches my brother, of course. And sometime during the next twenty-four hours, he mentions it to my father. Because when my phone rings on Tuesday afternoon, there’s a whole lot of what the fuck on the other end of the line.
“Danny. What the hell are you doing with this girl?”
Ouch. “She’s a nice girl, Dad. We’re friends.” Even as the words came out of my mouth, I know how I sound. The kiss in the picture… That asshole photographer is unfortunately talented. He’d captured the moment with too much clarity.
So I can practically feel my father’s sneer all the way across the Long Island Sound. “Why would you even try to tell me that? Not only are you involved with a girl, you picked one that gets you in the newspapers? Don’t you ever learn?”
His words are a direct hit to the gut—the kind that knocks your breath away. Maybe it’s terrible timing for me to get involved with Lianne, but being with her isn’t wrong. I’m not a fucking criminal. And I’m so tired of people thinking I’m either stupid or a bad person. With the mess I’m in, there’s no door number three.
“Danny,” my father says my name as a gasp, as if it pains him to go through this with me. “Nothing else matters but your case. Nothing. I’m trying to save your life. You need to at least act like you’re paying attention.”
There’s a bang, and the line goes dead.
He hung up on me. My own father hung up on me. That’s a Trevi family first.
Stunned, I sit there for a few minutes just weighed down by how isolated I really am.
The worst part is that I can totally see his point. We can’t have the college viewing me as some kind of playboy. That picture doesn’t make me look like a nice boy at the center of a big misunderstanding. The jackass photographer may have gotten my name wrong this time. But the next one? He might not make the same mistake again.
