The Better To Kiss You With

by Michelle Osgood

  Downstairs, she blessed the fact that Mitilini’s was edging toward the twenty-first century and had begun using portable debit machines as she handed the delivery guy her credit card; paying with cash had been such a hassle. She and the delivery guy chatted briefly about the weather (rainy, on and off) as they waited for the transmission to go through. Deanna waved away the receipt and balanced the hot pizza in one hand as she slid her card back into her wallet with the other.

  It wasn’t until she tucked her wallet under her arm and reached down that she remembered she was wearing a dress. Which meant that she didn’t have pockets. Which meant that she’d left her keys in their dish beside the door instead of taking them with her.

  She could just buzz for Nathan to come down and let her in. He’d bitch about it, but since she was the one with the pizza, she was fairly sure he’d come get her. Moving her wallet to the top of the pizza box so she could reach for the keypad, she punched in the number for her apartment and waited. After three full minutes had passed, she did it again.

  Nothing.

  Maybe she’d hit the wrong buttons? She was a bit tipsy; Nathan had brought a bottle of her favorite white wine. And she’d never had to buzz into her own apartment, so maybe she’d messed it up somehow.

  Leaning closer, she very deliberately entered the code and waited.

  “Come onnnnnnn, Nathan,” she complained when, minutes later, he still hadn’t come pounding down the stairs to let her in. “I could be getting murdered out here for all you know!”

  “If you get murdered, can I have the pizza?” someone asked from right behind her. With a squeak, Deanna whirled around, nearly dropping her pizza and sending her wallet flying.

  Trying to smother a grin, Jamie retrieved Deanna’s wallet. “Locked yourself out?”

  Chagrined, Deanna nodded and tried to keep from staring too blatantly at Jamie, who had clearly just returned from a run. Her red shirt was flecked with drops of rain and dark with sweat under her arms and down the cleft between her breasts. Deanna’s mouth watered in a way that had nothing to do with the warm pizza in her hands.

  Jamie handed Deanna back her wallet before reaching into her pocket for her keys. Deanna resolutely did not look to see if the tight jogging pants hugged Jamie’s ass the way she suspected they did, choosing instead to focus on a drop of water that trickled slowly down from the short hair at the nape of Jamie’s neck. She wasn’t sure if it was a bead of sweat or rain, and for a split second had a vivid image of leaning forward to press her open mouth to Jamie’s heated skin to try to find out.

  Swallowing hard, Deanna tore her eyes away just as Jamie unlocked the door and pulled it open, allowing Deanna to squeeze in past her. “Thanks,” Deanna said once they were both inside. “I forgot my keys, and my ass of a friend apparently decided not to let me back in.”

  “It’s no problem,” Jamie assured her, “But…”

  Deanna paused on the stairs, an anxious knot forming in her stomach.

  “It’s going to cost you this time.” Jamie shrugged and continued up past Deanna. Jamie’s cheeks held the slightest blush of pink, and Deanna wasn’t sure if it was the result of her workout, or… something else.

  “Cost me what?” Deanna asked faintly, a thousand scenarios running through her mind. Only nine hundred of which were sexual in nature. Lord, she was just a bit too drunk for this to be happening. Real life is not a porno. Repeat after me. Real life is not a porno.

  “A slice of that pizza. Maybe even two.” Jamie stopped at the seventh floor and once again held open the door.

  Now Deanna was picturing herself feeding a very naked Jamie a slice of greasy, cheesy pizza and she had to bite back a moan. Drunk Deanna had very little impulse control.

  “Yeah, that could—I could—there’s enough to share. It’s a large pizza,” Deanna managed as they moved down the hallway to her apartment. The closer they got to her place, the more Deanna could understand why Nathan hadn’t heard the buzzer. He’d found her iPod and cranked Ke$ha up to full volume.

  Deanna tried the doorknob and was glad to see that Nathan hadn’t locked it, because she wasn’t sure he’d have been able to hear her knock over the music. Excruciatingly aware of Jamie behind her, Deanna entered the apartment.

  “Could you turn it down?” she hollered as Nathan danced out of the kitchen where he’d been pulling a second growler out of the fridge. Nathan ignored her, shimmying across the room and only coming to a full stop when he caught sight of Jamie.

  “Hot,” he yelled, winking at Deanna. When she scowled at him he quickly amended. “Hey. I’m Nathan Roberts. The best friend.”

  “Jamie,” Jamie replied dryly.

  Shoving the pizza at Nathan, Deanna fixed him with a thin-lipped death glare before she strode over and turned the music way down. Nathan wasn’t bothering to hide his appraisal of Jamie and, when she bent to unlace her sneakers, he waggled his eyebrows at Deanna and gave her an enthusiastic thumbs up.

  Deanna ignored him, glancing frantically around and hoping Jamie wouldn’t be too unimpressed with the small space.

  She had done a decent job decorating the place. With Nathan’s help she’d painted the walls a clean white, hanging a couple of tasteful prints on the larger walls. The fresh flowers she enjoyed so much were in whimsically mismatched glass vases throughout the apartment; the splashes of color lent vibrancy to the stained wood shelving. Her large windows, the apartment’s best feature, were framed with linen curtains in periwinkle blue. Due to the lack of space in the main room, she and Nathan had pushed the coffee table out of the way so they could sprawl on the floor, but he was already moving it back into place and had dragged out the armchair she had tucked in a corner so there would be enough seats.

  Maybe she wouldn’t have to murder him after all.

  “Do you, um, want a drink?” Deanna asked. “We’ve got wine or beer. Or water, if you’d rather.” She twisted her hands, not sure what to do with them now that she wasn’t holding the pizza. Nathan, meanwhile, had helped himself to a slice and was sitting smugly in Deanna’s armchair.

  “Beer would be great,” Jamie said easily, crossing the room. She started to sit down on the couch and then paused and plucked the material of her shirt away from her skin. “I’m sorry. I’m kind of gross. I should probably grab a shower first.”

  Deanna paused in mid-reach for a pint glass, her brain helpfully providing her with an image of Jamie standing naked with water cascading down her tall, muscled body.

  “Deanna’s got one,” Nathan offered, sounding nothing less than one hundred percent sincere. Deanna changed her mind again. She could definitely kill him.

  “It’s fine,” Deanna grabbed the glass and hurried out of the tiny kitchen. “Really. This couch has seen a lot worse.” Oh god, she really needed to just shut up.

  Arthur had trailed Jamie into the main room and, as she settled onto the couch, he sat adoringly at her feet with his chin resting on her leg and his tail pounding against the floor. He didn’t look when Deanna opened the pizza box and handed Jamie a slice. Deanna rolled her eyes at him and took her empty wine glass into the kitchen for a refill. When she returned, both Nathan and Jamie were eating, apparently comfortable enough that they didn’t need to fill the air with the awkward small talk that was bubbling in Deanna’s throat.

  Deanna would have bet that Nathan had taken the armchair so that she would be forced to share the couch with Jamie, or else sit on the floor like a total dork. Deanna slowly lowered herself onto the couch and smoothed her skirt over her legs before finally taking a bite of the pizza.

  “We were just talking about Deanna’s job,” Nathan informed Jamie as she took a second slice. “And how it’s making her paranoid.”

  “It’s not making me paranoid,” Deanna said crossly, trying to convey to Nathan that he should please just shut up, now.

  “It is,” Nathan confirm
ed around a mouthful of pizza. “Like when we found out that Netflix had all nine seasons of the X-Files. For like a year after that Dee was convinced every weird light she saw in the sky was a UFO. ‘I want to believe.’” He gave his best Mulder impression.

  Jamie laughed. “I’m sorry—what do you do?” she asked Deanna.

  They were sitting so close on Deanna’s small couch that Deanna could see a light dusting of freckles over Jamie’s nose. Deanna wanted to press her lips against each one in turn. She took a hasty gulp of wine before replying. “I’m a content moderator for a role playing game, one of the ones where you download the app and can play from any device in real time.”

  “Oh, that sounds cool.” Jamie leaned forward, clearly interested.

  A little flustered with Jamie’s full attention on her, Deanna took another drink of wine. “There’s a website as well—with profiles and message boards, and that’s where most of the game plot takes place. With the app we’ve mapped out Vancouver and, well, it’s a lot like Ingress. There are different teams—‘packs’—and the goal is to control as much territory as possible.”

  “It is actually super fun.” Nathan grabbed himself another slice of pizza. “You can claim whole areas of the city, and the more members of your pack who claim the same area, the stronger your pack’s right to it is. Depending on what’s happening with the game plot, some areas are worth more than others. I really need to get back into playing,” he mumbled around a mouthful of cheese.

  “Nathan gets really into gaming for the, like, three weeks between when one relationship ends and another begins,” Deanna confided to Jamie.

  “Hey.” Nathan raised his middle finger.

  Deanna pretended she hadn’t seen it. “Wolf’s Run is a fantasy game and role playing and strategy all in one. We’re pretty popular cross-genre.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would that make you paranoid?” Jamie directed her question at Deanna, but glanced at Nathan who leaned forward gleefully in his chair.

  “Dee left out the best part,” he scolded, eyes gleaming. “The teams are called ‘packs’ because in the game all the players are werewolves.”

  Beside Deanna, Jamie choked on her beer, and Deanna mentally face-palmed. Was Nathan trying to make her sound like the world’s biggest nerd?

  “And our Dee,” Nathan continued, willfully oblivious, “is confusing the plot of the game with real life. In Wolf’s Run some of the packs are anti-human, which means that the occasional human corpse turns up ravaged by ‘wild animals.’ When that happens, it means all of the players need to be extra careful. Claiming territory becomes harder, because now having multiple players in the same real-life location is a risk, not an asset. With a dead body humans are on alert. It’s really fun,” he added. “But Dee might be taking it too seriously.”

  “I’m not taking it too seriously. I don’t believe in werewolves, Nathan, come on.” Deanna gave an exasperated sigh and watched for Jamie’s reaction, but Jamie was avoiding looking at either of them as she reached for another slice.

  “I’m not the one freaking out because she thinks she found a dead body,” Nathan pointed out.

  “I don’t think I found one,” Deanna had to rise to the bait. “I think Arthur did.”

  As one, all three of them looked down at Arthur.

  He yawned.

  “Dogs like dead things.” Jamie shrugged, giving Arthur’s head a stroke. “I’m sure it was just an animal.”

  “I don’t know, with a full moon coming up it could totally have been an out-of-control werewolf!” Nathan growled and tore viciously into his slice of pizza, splattering himself with tomato sauce.

  Deanna stuck out her tongue, and, after a moment of baffled silence, Jamie shook her head with a silent chuckle and took another drink of beer.

  Nathan wiped his face with the rose-printed paper napkin Deanna had tossed his way. “Anyway, Jamie, Deanna said you’re new to the building. What brought you to your humble abode?” He gestured to the ceiling above them, betraying that he and Deanna had discussed her upstairs neighbor’s more impressive digs.

  Jamie seemed unfazed. “I just moved to the city. I’m doing my master’s in race and gender studies at the university.”

  “No way.” Nathan grinned. “I work at the university library, so if you ever need a hand finding research materials or anything, let me know.”

  “Thank you, I will.” Jamie clinked her glass against Nathan’s offered one.

  “Well, it’s been fun.” Nathan downed the rest of his beer in one swallow, rose to his feet, and ignored the beseeching look Deanna sent his way. “I’ve got to work bright and early tomorrow, so I’d better head out. Thanks for the pizza, Dee,” he called as he dumped his dishes in the sink before going the door. “It was nice to meet you, Jamie.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  Deanna forced a smile and stood to walk Nathan out. “You’re an ass,” she hissed through her teeth.

  “You love me.” He winked. “Have fun and play safe!”

  Deanna locked the door behind him, sucking in a quick breath to steady herself before going back into the main room and curling back into her seat on the couch.

  “Sorry, if I crashed your dinner.” Jamie toyed with the edge of her cushion, awkward for the first time since she’d come in. Deanna reacted on instinct, stilling Jamie’s hand with her own.

  “You didn’t, really.” Jamie’s skin was warm, and Deanna’s palm tingled at the contact. She wondered what would happen if she shifted her light grip and tangled her fingers between Jamie’s longer ones. The air between them felt thick, and with an unsteady breath, Deanna drew her hand back. “I’ve known Nathan since we were both in grade school.” Her tongue was clumsy as she forced herself to continue speaking as though nothing had changed. “So it’s not like it was a date or anything.” God, why had she said that?

  “That’s good.” Jamie hadn’t moved her hand and when she looked up her eyes met Deanna’s. Deanna felt her mouth go dry and she reached blindly for her glass of wine, then tore her gaze away from Jamie and took a hasty swallow.

  “Is it just you upstairs, or…?” Subtle.

  “Just me.” Jamie settled against the back of the couch. “It’s a lot of space for one person, I know,” she said with a trace of apology in her voice. Vancouver, like most major cities, was suffering through a longstanding housing crisis, and it seemed almost impossibly decadent to have an apartment that big for just one person.

  “You should get a dog,” Deanna suggested, trying to regain some composure. “I mean, Arthur obviously loves you.” As though he agreed, Arthur’s tail thumped against the hardwood.

  Jamie scratched his ears, but made a noncommittal noise. “Maybe one day. With school I’m not really home on a regular schedule, and since it’s just me it doesn’t seem fair.”

  That was one of the things Deanna liked best about her new job, being able to spend as much time with Arthur as she wanted, even though it seemed Arthur would be more than happy to move in with Jamie without so much as a backward glance. You and me both, buddy.

  “So, do you know many people here?”

  Jamie shook her head. “I’m just starting grad school, so it’s mostly seminars and research for my thesis. Which means you, Nathan and Arthur,” she added with a self-deprecating smile, “make about a dozen. If you count Heather and the cashier at the grocery store.”

  “You’ll have to come out with us sometime, then,” Deanna found herself saying, though what she wanted to say was me, you should come out with me sometime. “There’s a pub trivia night we like to go to—it sounds lame, but, um, it’s actually a lot of fun.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Great.” Deanna could feel herself blushing and she looked away, filling her glass with the last of the wine. “I’ll let you know when the next one is.”

  “I’ll giv
e you my number.” Jamie held out her hand, and it took Deanna a second to realize that she was waiting for Deanna’s phone. Deanna opened a new contact tab and handed it over.

  “And if you ever need anyone to let Arthur out or something, let me know.”

  “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Jamie handed Deanna back her phone and then stood, setting her empty glass down on the table. “It’s late. I should go.”

  “Oh.” Deanna looked down at the screen and saw that it was nearing midnight. “Yeah, you probably have to get up for school, or… whatever.”

  “I appreciate the pizza and the beer.”

  Deanna gave a crooked smile. “Hey, I owed you one.”

  “Well, we only agreed on pizza.” Jamie pointed out as she walked to the door. “So I guess now I owe you a drink.”

  “At least one,” Deanna agreed, rising to follow Jamie.

  “Thanks again.” Jamie lingered in the open door, and Deanna caught her bottom lip in her teeth, wondering if… but Jamie just held her gaze for one steady beat before closing the door firmly behind her.

  Deanna waited until she was sure Jamie was all the way down the hall and would be on her way up the stairs to the eighth floor before she gave in to an incredulous laugh.

  Before she forgot, she picked up her phone and sent Jamie a text, just so Jamie would have her number as well.

  This is Deanna & Arthur from downstairs! She added the puppy emoticon and, after a brief deliberation, a flower as well. Because flowers were pretty and Jamie had said—not directly to Deanna, but still—that Deanna was pretty, and Deanna didn’t think it would hurt to remind her of that.

  Chapter Four |

  “Wow,” Deanna said, still laughing. “I can’t believe you knew that there are thirty-seven subspecies of Canis lupus. I mean, who knows that?”