First Impressions Series (1-2)

by Nicole R. Locker

  If I was truly honest with myself, I cared about Dylan more than I wanted to admit. Deep down, I’d known it for a long time now, as much as I’d tried to deny it or push it away. A part of me knew it was the alcohol, but suddenly I wanted to tell him how I felt.

  Maybe tomorrow I wouldn’t feel the same, but right then, I wanted him to know. I had to find him and just tell him. I picked up my phone, fumbling with it and opened the texting app.

  “Zia?”

  Oh my God. Now I could hear his voice. I really was going crazy.

  “Zia, are you okay?” Dylan sat on the stool beside me at the bar.

  He was really there. Was this the coincidence of all coincidences? I took it as a sign that I had finally decided to reach out to Dylan and there he was. My eyes widened and my heart filled with relief and excitement all at once as I reached for his hands.

  “You’re here? How did you know where to find me?” I asked.

  “I went by your apartment to see you, make sure you were okay, and Clara said you were here. So here I am,” he explained.

  “You came for me.” I stated the obvious.

  Dylan gave Marco a card to charge my tab to, and thanked him. Then he turned to me and took my hands again.

  “Come on, let’s get you home.”

  Dylan decided to drive me the few blocks back to my apartment. Unfortunately, when the cool night air hit me as I walked outside, it had a sort of compounding effect. I was still able to walk and think somewhat coherently still, but my inhibitions had been left in my seat at the bar back at the Book Shelf.

  He walked me to the passenger side, opened my door for me, and helped me in. My head started to spin ever so slightly so I steadied myself by placing my hands out on either side of me, my right hand on the edge of the car door window and the other hand on the middle console.

  Dylan walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in. He started the ignition and turned on the heater. Then he reached his right hand out to touch my hand on the console.

  “You’re so cold. Here,” he said as he shrugged out of his jacket and put it around me. Then he took my hand and held it with his other hand on the wheel as he drove us the short distance back to my apartment.

  With the feeling of his warm hand in mine, his warm jacket around me, I looked up at his achingly beautiful face and searched for any sign of reciprocity I could find in those captivating eyes.

  I knew he didn’t have the kind of feelings for me that I was hoping to find, but I decided it didn’t matter. He was a guy, and if there was one thing I knew about guys, it was that they were hot blooded and overrun with testosterone.

  I decided that maybe I would never have his heart, but for one night I would settle for his touch.

  We parked and Dylan walked me up to my apartment, still holding my hand. I wasn’t sure if that was my doing or his. Maybe it was both. Standing outside my apartment door, he began to say his goodbyes. I could tell by then that he was shivering from the cold with me wearing his jacket.

  “You’re freezing. Come inside for a while and warm up before you go.” I pulled him inside by our hands that were still connected. I took it as a good sign so far that he didn’t protest.

  The apartment was dark and Clara was nowhere in sight. I led him straight to my bedroom, closing the door behind us. I switched on a lamp by my bed and walked back over to Dylan still standing by the door.

  “Dylan, I have a confession to make,” I started.

  “Oh, no. Good things rarely follow that statement.” He smiled wryly as he turned my own words against me.

  I stood silent for a moment, still searching in his eyes, still afraid of what I wouldn’t find there.

  At that moment, I let all my thoughts exit my brain as I let instinct take over. Before he knew what was going on, I pressed my body against him, my hands in his hair as I pulled his lips down to mine. He stood motionless for a few seconds and I thought I felt his whole body stiffen for the briefest moment. Then his arms circled around my waist and pulled me in tighter against his body. He kissed me with fervent surrender, and immediately, every nerve in my body sprang to life.

  Clara was right, I thought. He definitely had magic lips. Even in the heat of the moment, his lips worshiped mine, moving together with my lips in an intricate and seductive dance. His hands roamed my body in the most perfect of ways, setting me on fire and spurring me on.

  I backed him up against my bed and then raised one knee up to the mattress top, gently compelling him to sit. As he did, I straddled his lap and lifted my arms over his shoulders, my chest pressed firmly to his, my fingers running through his hair, massaging his scalp. His hands tenderly caressed the bare skin of my waist under my shirt as he pulled me in close to him, deepening our kiss.

  He gently sucked my bottom lip, and as I moved my arms down to his body, reaching around him to press my fingertips into the defined muscles of his back, he moaned seductively into my mouth.

  “Zia…” he breathed my name against my lips and I could hear a faint protest in his voice.

  “Shhhh, don’t think about it. Just feel it,” I said as I pressed my hands to his chest in an effort to urge him to lie down.

  He didn’t lie down, but instead broke our kiss as he cupped my face tenderly, looking into my eyes in the dim light of the room.

  “Baby, you’ll regret this in the morning,” he reasoned as he brushed a strand of hair from my face and tucked it behind my ear.

  Again, I searched his eyes for something to indicate that he felt something for me, and when I thought I had found something in them, the same hunger that I felt inside myself for him, I was too afraid to let myself believe it.

  “Dylan,” I whispered, my face just inches away from his. “I want you to hold me,” I pleaded.

  “Baby, I don’t want to hurt you,” he tried to reason with me. “You only want this because you’ve had too much to drink. That isn’t how it should be. Not with us,” he tried to explain, but all I could hear was that he didn’t feel the same.

  But so what? He had admitted that he’d been with so many other girls in the past that he obviously didn’t want anything serious with. Was I really that repulsive to him that he couldn’t stand the thought of touching me?

  And if that was true, then how could he have kissed me like he just did? Was he really just that good, or could there have been feelings behind it?

  “Why? You can do this with any random girl you meet in a bar, with strangers; with girls who have no idea that you’re the kind of person who always does what he says, or always shows up on time, or loves to just laugh and enjoy life and be in the moment, or how much your family really means to you, or how brave or how generous or how kind you are, or how genuine your heart can be. So why not me?” I tried to sound angry, but it just came out as one long, powerless, and pathetic run-on sentence.

  “I can’t do this. Not with you, Zia, not like this,” he repeated.

  Not with me? Not like this? What did that even mean? I didn’t ask him because I was afraid I didn’t want the answer. I just gave up and let him go.

  I moved off of his lap as I crawled to the other side of my bed and lay my head on the pillow facing away from him.

  “I’m sorry, Zia,” he said, but I just lay there silently, looking at the wall.

  I heard him as he went to my dresser and looked through a couple of drawers until he found what he was looking for, some pajama pants and a tank top. He came over to me and wiped a tear from my face as he lifted me up to a sitting position to pull my shirt over my head and then pulled the tank top down in its place. He pulled me up to stand and finished undressing and redressing me in my pajama pants, and I realized I was exhausted.

  I knew I would be humiliated for all of this tomorrow, but for now, I let him pick me up like the knight in shining armor that he was, and he laid me on my bed so that my head lay on my pillow. He pulled the blankets around me and tucked me in.

  He pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead and w
hispered, “Goodnight, baby.” Then he sat beside me at the head of my bed, his back to my headboard, and he softly stroked my hair as I drifted into a peaceful, dreamless slumber.

  My last thoughts before I wearily surrendered to my sleep were: what have I done?

  CHAPTER 9: DYLAN

  When I pulled into the hospital parking lot, I parked my truck on the curb at the emergency room entrance, not caring the slightest bit at the moment that it was a no-parking zone. I ran around to the passenger side, extracting Zia from the seat belt, and carried her into the emergency room lobby.

  A male nurse stood at the desk and saw me as I entered, observing the limp, unconscious girl in my arms. I expected I would have to cause a scene to get the hospital staff to react, but he immediately sprang to action, coming to me as he put two fingers to her neck, checking for a pulse.

  “I think she’s been drugged. She’s still breathing, but she’s been unconscious for the past seven, maybe ten minutes now,” I explained urgently. “I got her here as soon as I could. Please, help her,” I pled with the staff, as another female nurse had approached us now.

  They took her from me and placed her on a stretcher that someone had wheeled out from somewhere I didn’t notice.

  “Sir, we’ll take it from here. Please wait here in the lobby, and someone will be with you shortly,” the female nurse told me as they wheeled her quickly away through a set of double doors that closed behind them.

  I noticed my pulse racing and I had no idea what to do next. I stood there for a moment, letting the panic settle, trying to calm down and convince myself that she was going to be okay. She had to be okay.

  I decided to go out and park my truck legally. Afterwards, I went back inside to sit and wait. I checked in with the receptionist from time to time asking for updates, any news, and when I could see Zia.

  The time was dragging by, which was killing me. I felt unproductive. I wanted to do something, but I was helpless to do anything at all. Finally, after a couple of hours had passed, a nurse came out and told me that Zia was stable and had been taken to a room.

  Thank God.

  Once I followed the nurse up to the third floor and maneuvered our way to her room, I entered cautiously. She was still asleep, and the tubes and wires connected to her had my heart in my throat.

  “Is she okay?” I asked the nurse, a middle-aged woman with graying brown hair.

  “She will be fine. Her blood tests showed trace amounts of a drug called Rohypnol. It’s a good thing you brought her in when you did. This drug metabolizes quickly and is hard to prove once it’s out of the system. You’ll have a good case if you decide to file a police report,” the nurse explained. “We have her on some fluids to help flush out the toxins, but she may have a headache or possibly some nausea when she wakes up.”

  The nurse asked if I had any other questions, then checked the monitors one last time before leaving the room. Then it was quiet.

  I pulled up a chair beside the hospital bed and sat next to her as I took her hand in mine. She looked so peaceful and beautiful lying there, asleep.

  I felt guilty for leaving her alone with that dirt bag and for giving him the opportunity to do this to her. If I had only followed my gut instincts and just told her how I had felt instead of trying to wait until the end of the night when I was supposed to drive her home, none of this would have happened.

  I must have dozed off while sitting there beside her. I roused a couple hours later when I felt Zia stirring. My hand was still holding hers when I came to.

  “Dylan? What happened?” she asked groggily, a confused expression on her face as she looked around to see where she was.

  “You’re awake. How do you feel?” I had never felt such relief to see someone awake in my life.

  “I have a slight headache, but other than that I feel okay,” she answered.

  I reached for the remote attached to the bed and pressed the button to call for the nurse.

  “You scared the hell out of me, actually. I walked back to the table last night and you were gone. I looked around everywhere but couldn’t find you, so I thought maybe you had gone to the bathroom, until I saw you being dragged out by Cason. I knew something was wrong, and when I got to you I saw exactly what was happening… He had drugged you, Zia.”

  She said nothing as that sunk in for a few moments, and then a tear fell from her eye and rolled down her cheek. It broke my heart.

  “No, no, don’t cry, Zia. You’re okay now. You’re safe.” I wiped the tear away gently with my thumb.

  At that, a nurse came in, a little too cheerful for what I knew Zia and I were both feeling at that moment. She began removing the I.V. and heart rate monitor wires as she explained to Zia that there were no more traces of drug in her system, that the Rohypnol had metabolized out within a few hours, and that as soon as she was able to get up and get around, she was free to go.

  Once the nurse left the room, Zia asked about her clothes, so I handed them to her and helped her out of the hospital bed. She was able to walk into the restroom on her own, where she changed back into the clothes she had worn the night before.

  When she came out, I couldn’t help but notice her eyes were red, and I wondered if she had been crying, though she wasn’t any longer if she had been. We left and I drove her home.

  It was a quiet ride back to her apartment from the hospital. I could tell she had a lot weighing on her mind, and the last thing I wanted to do was say the wrong thing. I knew that I couldn’t even begin to fathom knowing how she felt about what had happened. I could tell she was taking it hard just by the way she looked distantly out the window. All I knew was that I was here for her, and I didn’t want to make things worse.

  When we got to her apartment building, I parked and walked her inside. Standing at her apartment door, I stood facing her and braced my hands on her arms. “I’m here if you need anything, Zia.”

  “Thank you, Dylan. Really, thank you. I don’t know where I’d be right now if you hadn’t been there to save me like you did,” she said.

  We stood there for several seconds, saying nothing but looking into each other’s eyes. I could tell that there were a lot of emotions behind her eyes, but all I could do was wrap my arms around her to show her she was safe with me.

  * * *

  After I had gone home that morning after dropping Zia off, I crashed, sleeping several hours before waking up in a cold sweat from nightmares that I hadn’t gotten to Zia in time. The first thing I thought of after I woke up was how she was doing.

  It was almost nine in the evening, so I decided I’d get dressed and run over to her place to see her. It was cold and I knew it might be late when I left, so I took my truck, even though it was just a couple of blocks away.

  When I got there, I knocked on her apartment door and Clara answered.

  “Hey, Dylan. Are you here to see Zia?” she asked.

  “Yeah, is she here?”

  “I’m afraid not. I think she went down to the Book Shelf,” Clara answered.

  I nodded. “Okay, thanks,” I said as I turned to walk back in the direction I’d come.

  I went back down to my truck, drove over to the Book Shelf, and within a few minutes, walked in to find Zia sitting alone at the bar. She had several empty tumbler-sized glasses in front of her, which was my first indication she may have had a little too much to drink.

  She had just pulled her phone out and looked like she was about to text someone.

  “Zia?” I said as I approached.

  She looked up, but not in my direction as she lifted a hand to her forehead.

  “Zia, are you okay?” I sat on the bar stool beside her.

  She looked over at me and her eyes went wide with surprise. “You’re here? How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

  “I went by your apartment to see you, make sure you were okay, and Clara said you were here. So here I am,” I explained.

  “You came for me.” She had the slightest hint of a s
lur as she put extra effort into enunciating each word. That was my second indication that she had had too much to drink.

  I grabbed my wallet out of my pocket and handed my debit card to the bartender to pay out her tab. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

  We walked out together and I helped her into my truck. Once I got in and got the heat going, I noticed her left hand was resting on the center console with the other hand holding the door handle as though she were trying to steady herself. She shivered from the cold, so I reached out to touch her hand to gauge her temperature.

  “You’re so cold. Here,” I said as I shrugged out of my jacket and put it around her. Then I took her hand in mine and held it, resting my other hand on the wheel as I drove us the short distance back to her apartment.

  Once we parked in front of her building, I walked her up to her apartment, our fingers still interlocked. When we got to her apartment door, I didn’t want to say goodbye yet, but I also didn’t want to overstep my bounds, especially with her being in the inebriated state she was in at that moment.

  I felt a sense of responsibility to protect her and care for her. I knew after the events from the previous night, her emotions were in a fragile place, or she wouldn’t have attempted to drown them in alcohol.

  I wasn’t sure if it was the chill from the cold night air we had just come in out of without wearing my jacket, or the electricity shooting through me from the place our skin made contact as we continued to hold hands, approaching her apartment door. Maybe it was a combination of both, as a shiver went through me.

  “You’re freezing,” Zia noticed. “Come inside for a while and warm up before you go,” she said as she opened her door and pulled me inside.

  I hesitantly followed, still unsure of whether it was a good idea. What was the most that could happen?

  It was dark inside the apartment, and Clara was nowhere in sight. Zia pulled me straight into her bedroom, closed the door behind us, and switched on a lamp sitting on the nightstand beside her bed. It cast a dim illumination across her room, lighting up her features just enough to see the gleam of an unnamed emotion in her eyes. I deemed it wishful thinking to call it desire.