by Penny Reid
I once went on a date with a guy who chewed with his mouth open. It was like sitting across from a garbage disposal.
Not everyone chews sexily. But Alex did. Or maybe I was falling a little too hard, a little too fast, especially since I still knew almost nothing about the details of his life.
When he belatedly responded, his eyes were warm and lovely, and a small, teasing smile graced his lips. Something in my expression must’ve lightened his mood.
“You can ask me anything. I just might not be able to answer.”
“Because of the danger you don’t want to put me in?”
He nodded then paused before saying, “Or for your own good.”
“What does that mean?”
“Meaning….” His eyes moved to the left as he searched for the right words. “Questions about my childhood and family are probably not a good idea.”
“Why? Is Darth Vader your father?”
He laughed, and his smile was immense, and again I was enchanted. My heart and stomach traded places a few times. I took a bite of garlic bread and chewed my mesmerized mind into submission.
“I think it’s safe for me to admit that Darth Vader is not my father.”
“I see.” My throat felt dry, so I took a swig from my bottle. His eyes followed the movement of my lips as I drank and seemed affixed to my mouth after I lowered the bottle. I licked away a drop of water, pulled my bottom lip into my mouth, bit it, and watched as Alex’s lips parted slightly. He was staring at me as though mesmerized.
Well, well, well…how about that.
I cleared my throat—loudly—and he shook himself. He blinked, glanced around the restaurant, his eyebrows furrowed, and he gathered a deep breath.
“So, um….” He swallowed and said no more.
I took pity on him, though my heart was victory dancing like an obnoxious football player after scoring a game-winning touchdown.
“Can I ask you about the Patels? How you came to work for them?”
He seemed to consider this, weighing the request even as he spoke. “There’s not much to tell. The Patels knew me when I was little; my mother worked for them. Shirra is their daughter; we used to play together. I had to leave when I was little, but I remembered them. It’s one of my few memories of my mother. When I got out of prison, they were the only people I could think of who might be willing to help me.”
Now my heart hurt.
“No other family—aunts, uncles, cousins?”
He cleared his throat and placed the garlic bread he’d been holding on his plate. “No. There is no one.”
The way he held my gaze told me that he didn’t wish to continue this conversation. I decided to yield, for now.
“Can I ask you more questions about your favorite things? I assume your favorite color is black.” I let my eyes move over his usual black attire. If I ever saw him in something other than black, I might not recognize him. “What about movies?”
“Yes, feel free to ask me about movies.” Alex’s mouth hooked to the side. I took it as a positive sign.
“No, doofus, I just asked you. What are your favorite movies?”
His eyes flashed at my usage of the word doofus, and I couldn’t tell if it bothered him or not. “What are your favorite movies?”
“You aren’t going to tell me first?”
“No. But I will tell you that black isn’t my favorite color. Green is.”
I allowed my surprise to register on my face paired with a small smile. “Green? What shade of green? There are so many greens. I don’t want to knit you a foam green scarf if sea green is your favorite. Although, you strike me as an olive green kind of guy.”
“What color are your eyes?”
I had the abrupt sensation of falling, lost my breath, worried briefly that I’d never catch it again. The more we were together, the further and faster I fell. His gaze was steady yet scorching—which explained why I was melting beneath it.
I tried to swallow and only half managed. “Uh, they’ve been called leaf green.”
“Not malachite green?”
“No. I’m not even sure what malachite is. The color has also been described as forest green.”
“You don’t remind me of a plant.”
“Not even a flower?”
“No. Flowers are temporary. I think your eyes are closer to emerald or jade.”
“So I’m a gemstone?”
His mouth curved as he thought about the comparison. At length, he nodded. “In so many ways, yes.”
My voice was breathy when I responded; for once, it was not purposeful. “But not a lush green rainforest?”
“No. Rainforests are fragile. Emerald green is my favorite color.”
I considered him for a moment, with my emerald green eyes, and he considered me right back. If we kept this up much longer, I was going to rip his clothes off and man-eat him in Manny’s Deep Dish Pizza Shoppe.
The waitress brought our pizza, which served to delay my response and prolong the moment. When she departed, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
So I blurted, “Star Wars.”
“What?”
“Star Wars is my favorite movie—actually, the Star Wars trilogy, starting with A New Hope and ending with Return of the Jedi.” I served him a piece of pizza then grabbed one for myself. I tried to ignore the fact that the cheese and sauce burned the roof of my mouth.
“I see, hence Cloud City.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you like Star Wars movies so much?”
I mirrored his look and thought about how silly the question was. “Haven’t you ever seen them?”
“Yes. I’ve seen them. They play old movies at Grant Park over the summer. I saw them last year for the first time. I heard you talking about them with one of your dates…” He hadn’t taken a bite of his pizza yet. Like the smarty-pants he was, he let it cool first. Apparently, as he’d mentioned in previous conversations, he didn’t mind waiting. His self-control irked me. “But why do you like them? Why are they your favorite movies?”
“Because…because….” I looked to the ceiling. It was like trying to find the words to describe why chocolate tasted better than vanilla. In the end, I stopped thinking and just said what I felt. “Because it’s the story about a man who has all this power, just a crazy amount of innate talent and power, and how seductive and easy it is for him to be drawn away from what he knows is right. It would be so easy to use superpowers for evil, and hard to use them exclusively for good. As a cautionary tale, there isn’t a better one. And love saves him in the end—not Luke’s love for him, but Darth Vader’s love for Luke, for Leia, and their mother. That’s what saves him.”
He lifted his eyebrows, the left higher than the right, “Do you always use your talents for good?”
I started, surprised by the question. Something in his gaze felt abrupt and disconcerting. I became very, very still. “What do you mean?”
“Your superpower; do you use it exclusively for good?”
“What superpower?”
“Manipulating people.”
“What?” My single-word response was sharp because his question felt like a slap.
He grimaced, though it looked like a stubborn, impatient grimace. “Sandra, I’m not insulting you.”
“Really? You just told me I’m manipulative. That sounded a lot like an insult.”
“It wasn’t.”
“I don’t manipulate people.”
“Yes. Yes you do.” His eyes held mine ensnared, daring me to look away, and his tone was low, challenging, and argumentative. “You manipulate people into talking about themselves. Then you manipulate them into seeking the treatment they need. You hide your own reactions to what they say so completely that they trust you implicitly. And you do all of this because you sincerely want to help them.”
My neck became hot, and I knew I was blushing. This annoyed me; I didn’t know if I were blushing because I was offended, impressed, or flattered.
His expression temp
ered and, after a prolonged moment, he almost looked contrite. “I’ve only seen you use your talents for good.”
I didn’t respond. He was right, of course. I felt the veracity of his words, though my brain still fought against the label of manipulative. To be seen so completely by another person was…disorienting.
He offered a belated and apprehensive, “Sorry.”
I studied him. “No you’re not.”
“I’m sorry if I upset you.” He said the words as though they were meant to clarify his earlier apology.
I thought about that statement. Once again, I understood the nuance behind his words. “You’re sorry if you upset me, but you’re not sorry you said it.”
A phantom smile claimed his features, and I couldn’t help it. I inwardly laughed at this moment of déjà vu. We were back in the Chase Auditorium, and he’d just forced me to cop a feel. It was BonerGate all over again, only this time I was blushing because he saw me for who I was.
I didn’t know if I used my talents exclusively for good. I hoped that I did. But I did know that I’d never met someone so infuriatingly good at flustering me. It was, indeed, his superpower. I wondered if I could trust him to use it exclusively for good.
Alex took a bite of his pizza, though he continued to survey me from behind his glasses, phantom smile in place.
I decided to change the subject back to Star Wars since I didn’t know how to answer his original question. “I had custom T-shirts made for watching each of the movies.”
“Really?” he said, looking somewhat surprised yet admiring that I would go to such lengths in pursuit of total fandom. “What do the T-shirts say?”
“The first one says I’ve been looking for love in Alderan places, so now I’m going to search for A New Hope. The second one says Flying Solo only gets you frozen in carbonite. The third one, for Jedi, says You go outside. I’m going to stay Endor and watch Return of the Jedi.”
Alex’s smile grew with each of my T-shirt puns, but then he looked concerned and asked, “What about episodes one through three? Do you have T-shirts for those?”
“Yes, just one. It’s a picture of Admiral Ackbar with the words Aaacckbar! It’s a Trap! because I never watch the first three.”
He laughed then, a full-on belly laugh, and said, “Oh my God, I love you.”
Oh sigh and shitzterhozen.
As a way to cover the unsteadiness of my voice and hands, I made a light sound of amusement and reached for my pizza; I took a bite. It had cooled to a reasonable temperature, though the damage had already been done. I’d been burned.
I knew he didn’t love love me, but hearing the words from his mouth even as a figure of speech did things to me like his letter did things to me. And his laugh, and his kiss, and his crazy smarts, and his weirdness, and his intensity, and how he liked to fluster the brains out of me—all that did so many wonderful things to me.
He did things to me. I was drawn to him like a fan-girl to an obsession.
And any lingering hopes that I hadn’t just fallen face first into a tire fire of nonsensical passion, fascination, and infatuation with him completely disappeared.
CHAPTER 19
Saturday Horoscope: You’ll find yourself on a rollercoaster of emotions today. It’s important to remember that you’re not the only one on the ride.
I WOKE UP Saturday with an unexpected text from Thomas cancelling our lunch. He never cancelled our lunch—ever.
Can’t make lunch was all he texted.
It threw me for a loop.
I was being thrown in all kinds of loops lately.
I’d used Friday to return calls I’d missed—now that my cell phone was frequently without a battery—and made plans with several of my male friends over the coming weeks.
But I was still spinning in circles from Alex’s label of my talent. I didn’t like the word manipulative or the implication of it as a label. For me, manipulative meant calculated egocentric intent.
He could have used the word persuasive instead; however, I recognized that it would have been less accurate. I did manipulate people. My manipulation of them was calculated. I hid my thoughts in order to gain their trust and push them in the direction I felt best. And I did it unapologetically.
Eventually, I accepted that he hadn’t meant the word as an insult. I decided, after a great deal of contemplation, that his honesty demonstrated how little he understood about the social implications of semantics. His honesty was brutal and meant to challenge me, but not meant to hurt or wound me. Using the theory of Occam’s razor, I decided that the best explanation was the simplest: He didn’t know any better. He’d never been taught.
After the dinner and movie on Thursday, Alex had walked me home, kissed me senseless on the sidewalk, then sent me upstairs alone. I hadn’t been expecting cosmic orgasmic fiddle playing, but I was hoping for something more than zing kisses exclusively on my lips.
I wondered if it were time to resurrect the compelling red dress.
I spent my Saturday knitting, cleaning, and researching journal articles for an abstract I was working on. I wasn’t meeting Alex until late, as he had to work the dinner shift. We’d made plans via passing notes to meet at a small bar in Lincoln Park around eleven. He’d heard that a band he liked was playing there, and told me it would be loud and crowded.
I assumed that what he meant by loud and crowded was that we could have a conversation without being overheard. We still hadn’t discussed Agent Bell’s visit and her extensive interrogation of me, and my curiosity levels of how Alex would react to this news were reaching critical.
I dressed in high-heel boots, leggings, and a short green wool dress with three-quarter sleeves. It was snug and cute and kept me warm. The color also matched my eyes.
Unfortunately, it was mostly hidden by my bulky jacket.
The concert venue was crowded, but not too crowded. It was a dive bar in the Lincoln Park area. The main portion of it was underground. I thought I’d arrived first, but as I entered Alex stepped forward—again out the shadows—and grabbed my arm. He breathed out a sigh that would have been audible if the bar hadn’t been loud and crowded.
We crossed to the bar, pressing our way through the crush. Once there he removed my jacket and signaled to the bartender. The man immediately came over. Alex passed him my jacket, which the man took after glancing at me briefly and giving me a wink.
“Hey Alex, good to see you. Who’s the thermos?” The bartender lifted his chin toward me. The man was about my age or a little older, and every inch of his visible skin was covered in tattoos.
Thermos? I hoped it was a compliment.
Alex frowned, then responded to the bartender. “This is my girlfriend.”
Despite the absurdity of it, I liked how possessive he sounded. At the same time, I was annoyed. Apparently, introducing me by my name either hadn’t occurred to him or came second to marking his territory.
The bartender snorted. “Yeah, kind of figured that out. But does she have a name?”
I stuck my hand over the bar to shake his. “No. That’s my name.” I winked at him. “And I’m assuming your name is Bartender?”
He glanced from it to me then wiped his own on a towel at his waist before accepting the handshake, a big smile on his face. “Yep. That’s me. Dr. Bartender.”
Alex grimaced good-naturedly, and; then, with an eye roll, corrected his faux pas. “Sandra, this is George. George, this is Sandra.”
“Sexy Sandra.” George winked at me.
“I see my reputation precedes me.”
George and Alex both laughed, though Alex placed his hands on my waist. I saw George’s brown eyes skim over what was visible of my body before returning to my face.
“What can I get you, gorgeous?”
I ordered a gin and tonic, and George disappeared to grab my drink.
I glanced around us, noting that the ceiling was so low that Alex could probably touch it if he raised his hand above him.
“So
, what does thermos mean?” I lifted an eyebrow, inspecting Alex’s face for clues. “Tell me the truth. I can take it.”
He leaned close, and his hands slipped from my waist, over my bottom, and down to my thighs. He lifted the hem of my short green dress, and I felt his hot fingers on the backs of my legs through my leggings. “It means hot, but all bottled up.”
I scrunched my nose at this news then glanced around us. When I did so, I understood why I’d been pinned with this label. Skimpy dresses, half-bared bosoms in black bras, and titillating tights were everywhere.
“You should have told me not to dress like a thermos,” I responded after pursuing the crowd. “I could have dressed appropriately. I even have a shirt for the occasion.”
His lips quirked to the side. “What does it say?”
“It’s a black tank top, torn at the midriff, that says Ask me about my daddy issues.”
Alex guffawed, burying his head in my neck as his fingers gripped my legs and pulled me closer. “No way!” he said, catching his breath. “Tell me you do not have a T-shirt like that!”
“It’s not a T-shirt, actually. It’s a tank top.”
George returned with my drink, and Alex’s hands fell away, much to my infinite regret. He nodded once to George then handed me my beverage. He lifted his chin toward the stage to encourage me to enjoy the music.
So I did. We walked a little ways closer to the small, haphazard stage. His hands found their way to my hips, gripped me there, and cradled my bottom against his pelvis. We danced to the music, swaying our hips and rubbing against each other like grabby teenagers.
It was torture. I was getting worked up into a frenzy, and no relief was in sight.
Regardless, I was impressed with the band. They were quite good. At first, I thought they were a very talented cover group for Robot Mafia—Robot Mafia being a bit of a punk band/a lot of a rock-n-roll band that had recently become the focus of every teenage girl’s Tumblr account. I came to this initial conclusion because they looked the same, sounded the same, and their music was very similar.
