She shrugs, the gesture small, unguarded. Adorably funny.
I laugh. “Definitely the same thing. I used to love that stuff.”
“Me too. Lived off it my freshman year. It’s a miracle all my teeth didn’t fall out of my head,” she says.
“Beer’s got vitamin C in it.”
“It does?”
“No.” I’m still laughing. Have I ever laughed this hard with anyone outside of my family? “I don’t know.”
“Hey, I’d believe it. Something kept me from getting scurvy that year, and I don’t think it was the ramen.” She grabs the pot holders next to the sink and shakes some bread crumbs off them before heading back to the stove.
I try not to stare at her as she gives the pot another stir. She just looks…at home here, I guess. I don’t mean in the kitchen. I mean here, in my flat. The whole place feels different when she’s here. Better. It’s full—full of laughter and food and good smells—the way Mum’s house is always full.
Looking back at the past two years I’ve lived in Madrid, it strikes me how often I’m alone in this flat. I eat by myself, watch TV by myself, read by myself. It’s so damn quiet here. As an introvert, I thought I needed that quiet. But now that Rachel’s here, I’m starting to believe I don’t need as much of it as I thought.
Maybe I need something else. I need more of this, whatever this is. Company, maybe. Connection.
“So, like, I hope you don’t mind me asking about this,” Rachel says, busying herself with the pot holders. She doesn’t meet my eyes. “But why are you looking for…well, love, I guess? You’re, what, twenty-five?”
“Twenty-two.”
“So, you’re in your twenties, you’re a professional athlete, and you’re cute. You not banging everything that moves makes absolutely no sense to me.”
My lips curl into a smile. “I am quite cute, aren’t I?”
She grins, turning off the stove. “Our seeker, always so full of himself.”
“I’ve got this,” I say, trying to nudge her aside. Our arms touch, my bicep grazing her shoulder. These small touches—they keep happening, and I’m not sure they’re entirely accidental on my part. A charge of electricity moves between us. Her breath catches; for a split second she goes still, her dark eyes trained on the offending bicep. The tip of her tongue, pink and wet, trails along the inside of her bottom lip as she looks, and looks, and looks.
Blood rushes to my groin. The head of my dick presses against my fly. I struggle not to wince. My thoughts whirl as I struggle to breathe, hot, desperate breaths that do nothing to slow my thundering heart rate.
I feel so much for this girl—all of it intense and good and deep—that feeling it, and thinking it, isn’t enough. I’d have to take her face in my hands and I’d have to kiss her mouth and her skin and her pussy to show her just how much she makes me feel. My skin feels too tight, my body too small. I’m bursting.
I am bursting with something I should not fucking feel right now.
Rachel blinks, breaking the spell, and looks away.
My heart won’t stop pounding.
“I’ll get it—this is my favorite part,” she says.
My mouth is dry. I lick my lips. “You sure?”
“I am.”
“Okay,” I say, moving out of the way to she can drain the pasta in the sink. A rush of steam billows up from the colander.
I take a long, hard pull from my beer. It doesn’t help.
“As to your question…” I say. “I’ve casually fooled around with girls in the past, but I didn’t like the way I felt afterward. Made me feel a bit empty, yeah? Lonely. Like there was no connection there whatsoever, and we were just using each other to get off. I was just a body to those girls. It could’ve been me or some other bloke, it didn’t matter. I told you Mum raised me to respect women, and using them like that—it just didn’t feel right.”
Rachel looks at me. “I get it. There’s this huge hook-up culture back at Meryton—no one really dates—and I’ve felt that way, too, sometimes. The loneliness of it. The superficiality. I’m all for getting your rocks off, but only if it makes you feel good about yourself, you know?”
“Exactly.” I hold out my hand and Rachel gives me the pot holders. I spill the pasta back into the pot and drop in a couple pats of butter. “I’ve thought about this quite a bit. I’m not religious or anything, not really. But I do think sex should be special. Who you’re having it with, trusting that person, caring about that person—all that stuff counts. I don’t want to cheapen the experience by hooking up with some random girl who could care less about me.”
“You’re such a romantic,” she says. She’s smiling, but there’s something sad about her expression. Pained.
I know that pain, all too well. She’s starting to hate this forced friendship—this line I’ve tried to draw—as much as I do. She wants more.
But where does the fuck does that leave me? I’m trying to be on my best behavior here. I’m trying to respect her, to respect the boundaries I’ve put in place. Seeing that longing in her face, though—being bowled over by that longing myself—I don’t know what’s right anymore. I don’t know if keeping her at arm’s length is the smart choice, or the choice I’m going to regret most tomorrow. Because I’ve never got on with someone so well.
I’ve never wanted anyone more. I get caught up in the moment with her; time always passes so quickly when we’re together. I recognize that Rachel is different. Special. What if I never meet someone like her again? Will I regret not pushing my boundaries, not touching her, while I had the chance?
Will I regret not losing my virginity to the first girl who’s ever made me feel so at home in my own skin?
Rachel stirs the pasta in the pot while I attempt to add a little more butter. My hands don’t seem to want to work, and I end up whacking a hunk onto the counter before I spear it with the knife and toss it into the pot.
The small space between my body and hers tightens. Narrows.
I try to focus on the food. It smells so bloody good. She nods at the pot of meat sauce beside it, and continues to stir as I slowly pour the sauce over the noodles.
I tip back the pot. There’s more sauce, but I think the pasta looks good.
“Looks good,” Rachel says.
I pause. Just for a second.
Just long enough for her to notice.
I look at her. Look at her pretty face and dark eyes. The pain is still there.
“What?” she says.
I fucking like you. I really fucking like you, Rachel.
“Nothing,” I say. “You just like it exactly how I do.”
She smiles again, that sad thing that makes my heart clench, and meets my eyes.
“Rachel,” I say. I don’t recognize my own voice. It’s hard. Strained.
She hesitates. For a minute, I think she’s going to turn to me. For a minute, I think we’re both going to give in to the riot of things we’re feeling and kiss the fuck out of each other, right here in my kitchen.
My blood burns inside my skin. I want to. Hell, I want to cross this line with her. It’s a bad idea. But I want to do it anyway, taste the beer on her lips, claim that questioning little tongue as my own. Wanting to kiss this girl—it’s never been more wrong.
It’s never felt more right.
Chapter 7
Rachel
I’m shaking as Fred leans in, towering over me. The wild, almost thunderous look in his eyes scares me.
It scares me because I like it. I like that I’m making him feel these things. I like that he’s clearly as unsettled by our instant, white hot connection as I am.
And that’s fucked up.
This whole thing is fucked up. But there’s a perverse sort of charm in that fact, too. I can’t give him what he wants. He won’t give me what I need. Yet here we are, dazed and horny as hell, powerless against the constant onslaught of our chemistry and our connection and our shared love of Quidditch.
I don’t want to
push him too far. But now he’s pushing me. And I don’t know what to do. Do I kiss him? Do I run?
I care about him. It’s important to me that Fred wakes up tomorrow and feels good about whatever happens tonight. He’s more than just some random guy I met. There’s more between us than that.
Which means I really should keep my hands to myself. I want to respect his boundaries. I am leaving in three weeks—I can’t offer him anything more than a fling. He wants more than that. He deserves so much more than that.
I close my eyes and I square my shoulders and I turn back to the pot of pasta on the stove. It hurts—physically hurts—to turn my back to him. But it’s the right move. If we ever did put our hands on each other, I have a feeling we wouldn’t be able to stop. We’d burn each other down. Then what? We’d be left sorting through the ashes.
I can’t do that to Fred.
“Should we eat at the island?” I ask. “Or the table?”
Behind me, I hear Fred release a breath. In my head, I see him tugging a hand through his hair, his eyes blue in this light, stormy. The image is so lovely it makes my heart swell.
“The island,” he grinds out. “I’ll get the plates.”
***
I push back from my plate. The pasta was delicious, but I struggled to eat it. My stomach is in knots. I’m nervous, on edge; I’m trying to keep it together, I want to be able to push Fred away if he reaches for me. But he keeps smiling. Keeps talking soccer and bringing me beer.
His hair is a mess, and his face is still flushed from standing over the heat of the stove. His eyes flit from mine to his plate to my mouth like a bee drunk on pollen. There’s something almost shy about the way he’s looking at me.
Shy, and honest. He’s scared, too, but he’s not trying to cover it up. He’s letting me see what he’s feeling—he’s sharing his vulnerability with me. There’s no pretense. No agenda.
And it’s killing me.
Fred is totally lethal on the football pitch. He’s brutal and huge and forceful. To see this force of nature looking at me like this—with kindness and softness and sharp-edged heat—I can’t freaking breathe.
I curl my hands over my knees underneath the island, my fingers digging painful little furrows in the skin there.
Dear God, why is he looking at me like this? Yeah, I’m a little buzzed from the beer, but I’m not drunk. I know I’m not misinterpreting or imaging the heat in his eyes. It’s there. I’m sure he sees it in my eyes, too. God, I want to touch him. I want him to touch me.
But we can’t. We can’t.
We can’t.
“Did you not like it?” Fred asks, nodding at my plate. I notice he hasn’t really touched his, either.
“No—no, it’s delicious. Seriously. I guess I’m just not as hungry as I thought I was.”
I put down my fork. Fred puts down his and meets my eyes. A beat of heated silence passes between us.
I am not going to make it out of here alive.
Desperate for a change of subject, I say, “I needed this—a break. I’ve been studying like a madwoman for exams, and my mom is riding me super hard about finding an internship for next summer. I’m fucking exhausted.”
“Ah. Your mum,” Fred says. “She sounds…quite driven.”
“Driven.” I twirl the bottom of my beer glass to keep from looking at him. “That’s a nice way of putting it. She and I…we have very different ideas about my future.”
“Have you heard back from the athletic department back at Meryton?”
I smile. “I made it to the final round.”
He holds up his hand. “Hell yeah you did! Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” I say, giving him a high-five. The gesture is meant to be friendly, but a shot of heat moves up my arm from the place where my palm meets his. His hand is warm, dry, enormous. “I’m excited.”
He looks at me, dubious. “You don’t sound like it.”
I sigh. Scoff. “I was excited. But then I talked to my mom the other day, and now I’m confused. Stressed.”
“Why?”
“Because.” I take a gulp of beer. “She’s got big plans for me to be this hoity-toity plastic surgeon, just like she is. But I want to do sports medicine, obviously. The internship I get this summer will kind of determine which path I’ll be taking. I have to decide what my future’s going to look like—I mean, I only have a year and a half left until I graduate.”
“Plenty of surgeons operate on athletes—Rhys Maddox basically had his whole knee reconstructed last year. Couldn’t you be one of those doctors?”
“Mom is really stuck on me going into plastics. I mean, let’s acknowledge that assuming this whole scenario is actually going to happen is ridiculous. I have to get into med school, which is hard. And then I have to get into surgery, which is even harder. But Mom’s convinced it will happen, and when it does, plastic surgery is what I should do. Anything else is a ‘waste of my talent and my time’.”
“Wow. That’s some intense advice.”
“No kidding. The internships my mom wants me to do, shadowing doctors and stuff…the med schools she keeps throwing out as possibilities…I don’t know, none of it feels right.”
Fred glides his tongue along his bottom lip. He puts his forearm on the island and leans into it. Leans toward me. “None of it feels like you.”
“Yes.” I try to swallow the sudden rise of feeling at the base of my throat. “Yes, exactly. But I’m terrified of disappointing her. I’m terrified that the balance I’m looking for in life will disappoint me. That what Mom says is true—it won’t be enough. That it will be boring.”
He cocks a brow. “Balance?”
“You know, work-life balance. I want to have a life outside of work. A real life, one that’s not wrapped around making tons of money or impressing other people. I want to have time for hobbies, friends. Eventually a family.”
“I’ve never thought about life like that,” he says, blinking. “The balance part. It’s been all football, all the time for me—”
“I know.” I grin. “You’re such an American when it comes to work.”
One side of his mouth quirks up. It’s an adorably boyish expression, and it’s so very Fred. Honest, unguarded, genuine.
My pulse hiccups.
“What does that mean?” he asks.
“You have to admit you wrap your life around your job.”
“Well, yeah.” Fred shifts on his stool. “I didn’t plan for it to happen that way. Football’s just the only thing I’ve ever been good at.”
I’m leaning forward now, too. It’s like there’s a string that connects Fred’s chest to mine, and he’s slowly reeling it in, pulling me toward him centimeter by centimeter.
I need to pull back. I know that.
Maybe it’s his grin, or his insightful questions, or his genuine interest in what’s going on inside my head—whatever it is, it’s got me falling into him instead. I can’t resist the pull of his gravity.
I don’t want to.
“I disagree,” I say. “You’re good at other things. Really good. Like taking selfies, obviously.”
“Too bad it took me twenty-two years to meet you so I could figure that out,” he says, grinning for the hundredth time tonight. I love it when he grins and his eyes get all squinty. I don’t know how he can be so freaking adorable while also being so smoking hot, but he does it, and he does it well.
“Better late than never,” I say. “I mean, you’ve got this super successful career, obviously, so making football your life has served you well. But in a way, you live to work. I think I want something different. I want to work to live. Not to get, like, all Oprah on you or anything…”
He looks at me. “Why would you want that? To work to live? I’m not asking to be a dick. I’m asking because I’m genuinely curious.”
I pause. I’ve thought about this so often, and for so long, I’m not really sure where to begin. I’m also a college student, so I know how ridiculous it sound
s for me to talk about work-life balance when I’ve yet to hold down a real job.
But I’ve seen how my mom lives her life. Or doesn’t, really. For all the money she makes—she makes a lot of money—Mom doesn’t seem to enjoy the things she works so hard for. We have a big, beautiful house, but Mom is never home. She’s too busy being important—too busy impressing her colleagues and her patients and her fake friends with clothes and cars. On the outside, she has a beautiful, successful life. But on the inside, it’s empty. She’s always stressed. Always unhappy. Her relationships—the few real relationships she has, with me, dad, my aunts and uncles—have suffered on account of her work.
“Because,” I say. “Because I think we miss out on the things we’re looking for in life by thinking we’re going to find them in our work. Don’t get me wrong, I think work is an important piece of the self-fulfillment puzzle, and a girl’s gotta pay the bills. But in terms of finding meaning there, and a sense of real and lasting purpose—I don’t know. I haven’t found any of that in the jobs or internships I’ve had so far. I haven’t found it in my studies, either. I know I won’t find it in plastic surgery. But I have found it in my friends. My hobbies. Travel. That’s the stuff that lights up my life, you know?”
Fred’s got this funny look on his face as he meets my gaze. I can’t tell what he’s thinking; he just looks at me, and looks, his green-blue eyes going soft again. Soft, and hot.
The kind of hot that makes my stomach flip.
“Christ, you’re a knockout,” he says at last.
I shut my eyes. I have to change the subject again. I have to change the fucking subject, now, or I am going to tackle this guy and not get off him until we’re both naked and panting and spent.
“You’re just saying that because you’re bored with talking and you want to get to the vampire boobs, don’t you?” I say.
“No.” He shakes his head. “Quite the opposite. I love hearing you talk. You’re so passionate. Well spoken. I admire that. I admire you.”
“Admire me?” I scoff, even as a rush of pleasure moves through me. “Why?”
Lessons In Losing It (Study Abroad Book 4) Page 8
