In the Wake of Wanting

by Lori L. Otto

  The fantasy played out quickly. I took the fork from her and threw it on the floor, drawing the attention of the rest of the diners in the coffee shop. In one swift movement, I pushed the table out of the way and pulled on her arm to bring her into my lap. She straddled me, her hands gripping the metal bars on the back of the chair while mine released her messy strands from the clip that didn’t want to hold them there in the first place. The hair accessory found its place on the floor with the fork and we kissed voraciously, uninhibited, unlike any kiss I was able to actually exchange in a public setting.

  Well, unlike any kiss the public Trey she thought she knew would be allowed to exchange, anyway. I wanted to prove that there was another side to me. I wanted to show her that other side of me.

  And just as soon as I started thinking that, I began to berate myself for having such thoughts about a relative stranger–especially with a girlfriend whose only crime committed was being away at school in England.

  Passion. Heat. Mysterious. Unbridled. Rough and rash. Out of control.

  She described that fantasy perfectly.

  “Professor Aslon specifically said I shouldn’t change the content.” I look up at Coley, grateful for the old, wooden slats with peeling paint that separate her eyes from the hard-on that she’s unwittingly caused. I have to adjust myself to alleviate the discomfort, hoping she doesn’t notice. I quickly bring my hand back to the table’s surface. “Is that what you’re wanting me to do?”

  I never wanted to be the editor that censors someone’s work, but I know if she confesses her crush and intentions to our professor, our advisor will think we can’t have a professional relationship. I know we can. I know I will be faithful to Zaina and control whatever lustful temptations I’m having right now. I have self control. Our professor would never assume that of a guy in college, though.

  I know I don’t want to have a different partner.

  “Yes, Coley. You need to tone it down a bit. Maybe shift more to what we talked about Monday. Can you focus on the conversation about how I got into writing? You seemed genuinely interested in that.”

  “I think so. You were so vulnerable when you told me the story about that girl who died–Anabel, was it? I could feel your pain, Trey, and I just wanted you to let me hold you.”

  “Okay, that’s a start. Talk about how well I communicated my feelings in my blog post. Don’t talk about how you wanted to hold me. Do you see where I’m going with this?”

  “Yeah,” she says, then sighs. She closes her laptop and looks at me. “I’m sorry about this, Trey.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Let’s just get it done.”

  “I’ll write it this evening. I’ll have it ready for you to edit tomorrow after my classes. Maybe we can do a screen-share and chat editing session or something.”

  “That sounds good. Can I trust you with my number?” I ask her. “Just use it for school stuff, okay? And don’t give it to anyone.”

  “Of course,” she says, pulling out her phone and programming my number in. She dials it until my phone rings to make sure she input it correctly. “I think I’ll just head back to my dorm for lunch. I’ve got a lot of work to do.” She looks at the pages I still hold in my hand. I have no intention of giving them back, and she makes no movement to take them. We smile at each other.

  “Good luck,” I tell her as she begins to walk away.

  “Thanks.” She turns and briefly waves. I continue to watch her until I can’t see her anymore. I stay at the table a little bit longer, the smooth legs revealed by her ridiculous, weather-inappropriate skirt requiring the extra time for recovery.

  I want to know this girl–inside and out.

  Her.

  And there’s something about Her that makes Her the only Her I want to know like that anymore. Like she could be the Her to end the search for all other Hers; the search for Her I didn’t know was ongoing.

  I decide to return to my apartment over the next break instead of meeting up with Asher like I’d planned. I don’t eat, but instead sate the other hunger I’d built up this morning, pulling out a picture of Zaina to make the job easy. I feel a lot less guilt when I’m done.

  Before I go to my afternoon classes, I lock up Coley’s poems in the safe my dad insisted on buying me. It’s not to protect them. It’s to protect me from the damage they could do.

  chapter six

  Her touch on my leg is different than anything I’ve felt before. Zaina’s never touched me like this. Her fingers play a quick and even rhythm, fast like a hummingbird, sliding gently to one side until the feeling’s gone. Faintly, I still feel the vibrations against the couch. I pick up her hand to move it back to my leg to continue the erotic sensation.

  That’s not a hand. It’s hard and rectangular.

  That’s my phone.

  I open my eyes and answer the call quickly. It may not be her hand, but the phone says it’s Her.

  “Hell–” I have to clear my throat to make sound come out. “Hello?”

  “Trey?”

  “Yeah,” I say as I stretch, making the word sound drawn out.

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Hmmm? No, no,” I assure her.

  “It’s Coley.”

  “The laureate,” I tease her. She laughs. “What’s up?”

  “Do you have time to get online and look at my article?”

  “Definitely.” I look at the clock on my phone, noticing it’s eleven-forty-five. “You are a night owl,” I comment. “Have you been at Ruvelyn’s all this time?”

  “They closed at ten, and then I came back to my dorm,” she says. “But I had this done last night. I’ve just been procrastinating. I was too nervous to call you. My roommate finally made me do a few shots.”

  “So you’re a drunk laureate now?”

  “Just relaxed,” she says. “Relaxed enough to make the call and accept your criticism. But for the record, I don’t normally write my poetry while I drink.”

  “Noted. And I’ll go easy on you,” I tell her, walking over to my desk and opening up my laptop. “I wasn’t the other day.”

  “You were gracious,” she says.

  “I don’t know what I was. Flattered. I was flattered. And a little stunned.”

  “Tonight’s will be much more professional,” she says.

  “Cool.” After we exchange usernames, we get into a video chat and she shares her document with me. “I bet my hair looks atrocious.” I look at my screen, running my fingers through it a few times. After swim practice, I joined a pickup soccer game on the lawn this evening. I should have showered, but I was so tired, I just fell asleep on the couch. There’s dirt on my left shoulder, too. “Shit, I’m a mess,” I say, laughing.

  “You realize who you’re talking to, right?” she says.

  “Right. So your article. Why don’t you read it aloud?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s either me or you. To me, things need to sound good when read. Literally. My first round of editing has to pass that test,” I tell her.

  “Okay. I’ll go.” I skim the written document as she reads her words to me. Her new first impression piece is vastly different than the sonnets. She’s right; this version is much more professional. Much more palatable to the conventional reader, but much less entertaining. Frankly, it’s boring, as it seems all aspects of Coley have been stripped from this essay.

  “Alright,” I say when she’s done. “Good. Much more suitable to the assignment,” I tell her, just wanting to move forward and get this one stupid task behind us both. “Third paragraph. Second sentence. Let’s use a different verb there. Something more active.” She tries out a few words, and I watch as she edits, finally settling on one we both like. “And then the paragraph that questions the reasons why I do volunteer work… that’s interesting,” I comment, scratching my chin, only slightly offended. “It’s well-written. Your theories are way off-base, but I like the alliteration you used. Content-wise, it’s my least favorite paragraph
, but style-wise, it’s the best one.”

  “You’re not mad, are you?”

  “No. Not mad. But I genuinely like to help people, Coley. No hidden agenda. Sorry to burst your bubble.” I’m actually a little hurt by what she wrote, but maintain a neutral expression as we talk.

  “I was running out of material,” she says. “I don’t really believe it. I added a little fiction. You said I couldn’t write the truth.”

  She stops sharing her screen and instead turns on her camera so I can see her for the first time today. The freckles are back. I touch my computer screen as if I’m feeling her skin beneath my fingers.

  “What are you doing?” she asks. I forget my camera is still broadcasting my image. I guess there are worse things I could have done than admire a beautiful feature on her face.

  “There was a smudge on my screen,” I lie, looking at her as she looks back at me. We smile at each other. “Sorry you had to do the extra work, Coley. You did a good job.”

  “No, I’m sorry about this, Trey,” she says, sounding remorseful.

  “Don’t worry about it. Someday, we’ll look back on this and laugh.”

  “I hope so,” she says.

  “How are you doing, otherwise?” I ask her. “Are your classes going well?”

  “Yeah,” she says briefly. I wish she’d say more, but I think we both know it’s best that she doesn’t.

  “Get some sleep,” I encourage her.

  “Go back to bed,” she tells me. I grin at her and nod, finally admitting that she woke me up.

  “Good night.”

  In class the next day, Professor Aslon gives us each a different prompt and asks us to do some creative writing during the class. It’s an exercise she does every other week to help us all get used to writing on demand. I find it very easy to do. Glancing over at my partner, she’s struggling a little. As our instructor reads the freshmen assignments, she goes table by table to discuss her thoughts. Toward the end of class, she pulls up a chair to our table and sits across from us.

  “I think you were a little heavy-handed on the editing, Trey,” she says to me. I nod, accepting her critique. I’d decided I wouldn’t argue with anything she said about it in hopes that I could just forget it ever happened and move on to real assignments. “I hand-selected her for this class, you know? I honestly wouldn’t have been able to tell that she wrote this. I can’t see her style at all. She has a certain rhythm to her writing, and humor, and an informal ease that will relate well to students.

  “Was this your first draft, Miss Fitzsimmons?” she asks my partner.

  She looks over at me nervously. I let her answer however she wants.

  “No, ma’am. It’s my second.”

  “Does this feel like your writing?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I expected you to turn in a poem, Miss Fitzsimmons,” our professor says in a teasing manner. Surprised, I look over at Coley.

  “Would that have been accepted?” she asks tentatively.

  “Anything but a love poem,” Professor Aslon says, walking away, laughing.

  Coley looks back at me. “Thank you,” she whispers.

  “Yeah,” I tell her, looking back down at my computer and finishing my story. We don’t talk the rest of class, and she barely waves goodbye when she leaves. After my classmates exit the room, I pick up my things and walk up to my instructor.

  “Professor Aslon?”

  “Yes, Trey?”

  “Coley’s first attempt was a poem, but I told her she couldn’t turn it in. I just wanted to let you know.”

  “I figured as much. Her entire book was poetry, so it was surprising to see such a traditional article from her,” she explains to me. I’m surprised to hear that her writings consisted of nothing but poems, and yet she ended up on staff at The Wit.

  “Well, it’s feature writing, and I didn’t think you would have wanted to see that.”

  “There’s a reason I put you two together. You’re very rigid in the articles you write for me. They’re great, Trey, but I think you could stand to loosen up a bit to relate better to readers. Your blog articles are much less structured, but here, everything is so… uncompromising to the journalistic rules you obviously take very seriously.”

  “I assumed it’s what you wanted.”

  “I recognize that you know them. Now break them.”

  “Shouldn’t she learn them? Isn’t that something I should teach her?”

  “I didn’t bring her on to be another cookie-cutter writer. I like how her mind interprets the world. Coley doesn’t really follow rules. She writes freely.”

  “Technically,” I say, thinking back to her sonnets, “she followed the iambic pentameter structure to a T. She does follow some rules.”

  Professor Aslon laughs. “Although certainly not the rules of newspaper journalism, so I think it could do you some good. Why don’t you just let her write how she writes for a little bit? With the attention spans that people have these days, maybe one column on The Wit that’s a little non-traditional wouldn’t be so bad. Let’s just see what she can do.”

  “And how do I edit them?” I ask her honestly.

  “You obviously know poetry, since you recognized iambic pentameter. Help her with rhyme and meter. Maybe suggest better words. Your vocabulary is more extensive than hers, so that may come in handy. I don’t think anyone has ever really been critical of her poems… and I don’t think you’ve ever had to be critical of anyone’s art. It’s a gentle thing. You have to take great care, and I think you’re the only one capable of delivering that kind of feedback to her.”

  “Great.” I didn’t mean to voice my lack of enthusiasm out loud, but it makes her laugh again.

  “Was her first attempt at this assignment good?”

  “Well… she did follow the rules. You asked them to write about first impressions, and that’s what she wrote about. Unfortunately, she had her first impression of me years ago.” My professor nods, still smiling. “You should have asked her about second impressions–or, better yet, third–the third one being the guy that told her that her poetry wasn’t good enough for this class and that she had to start fresh and write prose instead.”

  “Was the poetry good enough, though?”

  “It was a work of flattery,” I admit to her vaguely, not looking her directly in the eyes.

  “Did you keep it?”

  My face blossoms in redness, and I turn around quickly to hide it. “Well, ummm. I’m late for my next class.”

  “That’s what I like in a good reporter: incontestable honesty,” she says as I leave.

  Feeling guilty since she obviously knows anyway, I step back into the room to admit the truth. “I’m not really late.” I smile apologetically.

  “I know. You did fine with this, Trey. I knew she’d catch you off guard, and I think you handled it well. We just need to get Coley to stick to her guns.”

  “Understood.”

  Downstairs, I see my partner walking toward the doors to leave.

  “Coley!” I call after her. She turns back around and waits for me. “Where are you off to?”

  “Just going back to my dorm.”

  “Can I walk with you?”

  “Sure,” she says.

  “Listen… you were right. In your poem. There are two distinct versions of me. There’s this one that’s had this beautiful girlfriend since high school, and there’s this other asshole that shared this intense moment with you in the coffee shop the other day.

  “But those two guys are really one person. And that one person is someone who will always remain faithful to that beautiful girlfriend, and that’s the guy that you’re going to be a partner with in this class, and hopefully friends with outside of class.”

  She smiles up at me.

  “Do you think we can make that work?”

  “Maybe,” she says.

  “Come on…” I nudge her with my shoulder, having to lean down to reach her.

  “I�
�m thinking about it.”

  I know she’s teasing me, but I get serious again. “I just met you four days ago, Coley. It’s easy to get swept up in something new–someone new–especially when that person readily admits that they like you. Of course I’m going to have some reaction to that. I won’t lie and say that I didn’t, but it’s not something I would ever act on. The fact of the matter is, I don’t know you at all.

  “And, I mean, I’ll be honest, you were pretty spot on in your initial assessment of me, and you’ve had years to learn about me in the media, but there’s a lot more to me than that.” She should know me better than that. I want so badly to make that proposition to her, but it’s so wrong, what I’m suggesting. “I hope you can learn more about me as a person, too.” I decide to make it seem like a joke. “Then maybe you won’t like me so much.”

  “Oh, get over yourself already,” she says with a lilt in her voice. “Friendship is fine.”

  “Friendship is fine,” I repeat her. She stops in front of a large dormitory hall.

  “Have a good weekend, Trey,” she says.

  “You, too. Oh! I almost forgot.” I reach into my bag and pull out two rolls of red Duct tape. “I wasn’t sure which color matched your purse, so I just bought both.”

  “That is so sweet, but I’m not putting Duct tape on my handbag.”

  I compare the colors in the sun with her bag, seeing her keys hanging out over the side. I easily snatch them out of her purse playfully to make a point. “Wouldn’t you rather the thing shut so people couldn’t steal things from you?” I toss her keys high up into the air and catch them without even looking, my eyes still on the red tape. “Seriously, no one will ever know. This one here.”

  She takes the darker roll from me, but shakes her head.

  “I’m just trying to help stop the spills… I mean, what happens when, like, a lady product falls out?”