Admit You Want Me

by Holloway, Taylor

  Kate looked at me like I was the world’s stupidest man. “She’s going to quit now. Within a week. I guarantee it.”

  “Why would you say that?” To be honest, I was a bit hurt that Kate thought I was so awful

  “Because it’s obvious that she’s into you.”

  “I’m into her too… which is why we—”

  She cut me off with an angry wave of her hand. “No!” The shouting was back. When I put a finger to my lips and pointed at the door, she lowered her voice. “Look, I’m sure you think she’s fun and sexy and whatever. But she… ugh, I hate that I have to explain such a simple concept to you! She has feelings for you. You know, like normal people do.”

  I paused. “You think so?” The idea that Emma had feelings for me, which should terrify me, actually made my heart do a little pathetic flip-flop in my chest. That was new. I’d honestly thought that part of me was dead, murdered forever by Jessie.

  “I can tell by your shocked and vacant expression that you didn’t realize,” Kate told me. “But yeah, she clearly does. And now that you’ve decided to turn her into your latest conquest, she’s going to get her hopes up, and then crushed, and then probably neither one of us is ever going to see her again. That’s why I wish you could have just left her alone.”

  I’d been ready to head back to the bar, but now I was feeling a bit lightheaded. I sat down in my office chair.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I told Kate. “Don’t worry.”

  She rolled her eyes at me and made a rude noise. “Yeah ok. Whatever. At least I still have the stack of other resumes from the job posting. I might as well start scheduling the interviews now. Thanks in advance for making my friend hate me.”

  Kate stomped out, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Kate was smart, and she was disturbingly good at reading me, but there was no proof that she had any skill at all when it came to Emma. Kate had been studying me our whole life, but she’d only known Emma for a fraction of that time. Maybe she was just misreading Emma.

  Or maybe she was picking up on something, but it wasn’t what she thought. I’d spent the past half-decade insulating myself against any chance of falling in love with someone, or having anyone fall in love with me, it would be just my luck that it happened anyway. Like some kind of perverse, cosmic joke, it would be Kate who would figure it out. Only backward. Kate, who couldn’t ever seem to tell if someone was into her, even if the guy hired a skywriter and showed up with a dozen roses.

  Emma didn’t have feelings for me. It was the other way around.

  Even though the thought ought to send me running for the hills, I found myself entertaining the thought of dating Emma. Of moving in with her. Getting a dog together and going on walks with it. Getting engaged. Maybe even, one day, getting married. I bet Emma would be beautiful in white…

  Oh, shit. Why couldn’t Kate ever be wrong?

  32

  Ward

  Over the next three weeks, Emma and I defied Kate’s gloomy expectations. The bar had never been better. The general atmosphere there was better than usual, and customers seemed to be spending more time, and money, there as a result. The whole world seemed to be riding our gentle high. Although I was fairly sure that disaster approached, I wasn’t going to question the present. I was happy. Emma was happy. Wasn’t that really all that mattered?

  Outside of work, we spent almost every waking moment together. I would have thought we’d both get sick of being together, but it only seemed to feed our hunger for each other. Lily got used to seeing me in the mornings. Emma learned where things were in my condo. Kate didn’t learn not to make a weird, disapproving face every time she saw us together, but I think she was working on it. Emma and I did a lot of talking, in addition to spending hours between the sheets (and in the shower, and on the couch, and on the floor…). Life was good and neither one of us felt the need to say anything about dating, or relationships, or feelings. It was easy.

  Until one morning, it wasn’t. I woke up to Emma already up and tapping at her laptop to my right in the bed, sniffling.

  “Emma what’s the matter?” I asked her, surprised to see her awake and six am and even more surprised to see her puffy-eyed and upset.

  She looked over at me and slammed the top of her laptop down. Blushing furiously, she set it on the bedside table like she’d been caught doing something bad. “Sorry Ward, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “You didn’t,” I told her, pulling her close to me and feeling slightly encouraged when she nuzzled against me after a second. “Do you want to tell me why you’re upset?” I couldn’t imagine what she might have been looking at that would have her so worked up. It must have been very bad news.

  “It’s not a very interesting story.” Her voice was muffled against my chest.

  “Tell me anyway,” I coaxed. She raised her head up to look at me, maybe to determine whether she could trust me, and nodded.

  Her story started with a sigh. “I submitted a few of my short stories and poems to a well-regarded literary magazine,” she told me. “They liked one of my shorts and they published it in their fall publication.”

  “Emma, that’s really great!” I knew that being published meant a lot to Emma. It helped her establish credibility for herself in academia, and it also helped provide validation to her that she was actually a good writer. We’d talked about it a lot over the last few weeks, mostly at my prompting. I wanted to understand Emma, and I had been feeling like I was making progress at doing that. But now I wasn’t so sure. “Isn’t that great?” I asked again, confused.

  She laughed miserably. “Yeah, that part is great. I’m sorry. I’m explaining this all wrong. I’m happy that I got published. But I didn’t even know that I made the autumn quarterly until I got this email. From Adam. He’s telling me how much he liked my piece and that if I would just come and study under him at the university he could see me doing even better work in the future. Then he goes into all the ways I could have improved the piece, and all the things that were wrong with it…”

  What a dick.

  “Wait, he wrote you a note congratulating you and then decided to tear you down? That’s really rude.”

  Emma shook her head which I felt rather than saw because she was now hiding under the covers. Her voice emerged from under the comforter. “You don’t understand. It’s his job to help people like me become better writers. He’s had dozens and dozens of pieces published in this magazine. He’s brilliant. And his criticisms are all… good. Insightful, you know?”

  “Emma, that’s crazy,” I told her, lifting the blanked and brushing her hair back from her forehead so I could see her better. She looked up at me miserably.

  “I wish it was crazy,” Emma said. “I do. If he were just one hundred percent wrong, I’d be fine with it. I could just write him off as an asshole and move on with my life. But he makes some really good points about where I could have improved the piece, and it just makes me doubt everything. Maybe I should go talk to him. I could use his help. Maybe he’s right that we would work well together…”

  I swallowed my snide comments about the fact that Adam clearly just wanted to get her into bed. He was gaslighting her and making her doubt her own talent. But even though I was sure I was right, if I said the wrong thing in this moment, it might be a disaster. I had no right to tell Emma what to do in her professional, or her personal relationships. I was just a hookup to her, but I was also her friend.

  “Do you think he would have written you this note if you two had never been together?” I asked carefully.

  She blinked. “Not this email. But probably something. It’s perfectly standard for department members to email grad students if they see them published. And it’s also standard for them to offer feedback.”

  “What do you mean ‘not this email’?” I had a feeling I already knew, but I needed her to figure it out for herself. I resisted the urge to be pushy, even though it was my natural response. Emma didn’t react well to pushy. Our fi
rst interaction had taught me that much.

  “Well, the email wasn’t totally about the piece that I published. Some of it was about other things. He says that he misses me a lot. He talks about how it’s hard to adjust to being here in Texas after living in New Haven. He just moved here. I think he’s very lonely.”

  I swallowed my disgust. I couldn’t care less that he was lonely. In fact, I liked it. I hoped that it continued. He deserved to be lonely. “Do you think it’s possible that he’s trying to mess with you emotionally?”

  After a moment, she nodded. “Probably. And it worked.” She looked upset, but also annoyed. “Offering me feedback is fine, but it’s not normal that he would combine it with his weird little love letter, is it?”

  “No. That’s not normal at all.”

  “Should I write him back?”

  I blinked. She was asking me? “I don’t know,” I told her. “If it were up to me, you’d forward that message that clearly shows what an ass-hat he is directly to his boss. Get him fired. He shouldn’t be trying to trick you into anything, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying to appeal to your hope of being published and being a better writer in order to get you back into his bed.”

  I think my little monologue had shocked her. She sat up in bed and looked at me for a long moment. Her sea-green eyes were unreadable. “You really think I should do that? He’d probably be fired. He’d certainly be embarrassed and humiliated. This was a private message, sent outside of the university email system.”

  “Don’t you think he should be punished? He’s sexually harassing you.”

  She bit her lip, turning it a sexy, deeper pink. “I don’t know. I mean, our relationship was always consensual.”

  Part of me wanted to convince her that if a guy was willing to do something like that after the end of a consensual sexual relationship, he was probably willing to pursue someone who wasn’t willing. Another part wanted to convince her that sexual harassers generally didn’t harass only one person. There were probably other victims of this guy running around feeling ashamed. But I didn’t need to tell her any of that. She already knew. She just didn’t want to admit it yet.

  “I’m not telling you to do anything,” I told her. “Scouts honor. But you asked me what I think you should do, and that’s what I would do. I’d get his creepy old ass fired and then laugh while he was escorted out of the building.”

  Emma looked like she was really considering it, but then she shook her head. “I can’t. I don’t want to destroy his career.”

  “Can I offer another option?” I asked. As much as I wanted to see the guy ruined, Emma still clearly had a bit of a soft spot for him. Not that he deserved it. I stifled my jealousy.

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  “Why don’t you write him back? Thank him for his comments on your piece and then tell him that you think the rest of the message is not ok. Make it clear, in writing, that he needs to back the hell off. Permanently. That way if you ever do need to go to the University about him sexually harassing you, you’ll have the email.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Ok.”

  I could barely believe my ears. “Really? You’ll do it?”

  She smirked, and the light came back into her eyes and cheeks. “Yeah. It’s a good idea. You always make such a big deal about how dumb you are, but you aren’t. I think maybe Adam doesn’t actually hear anything that I say. But maybe if he reads it, he’ll understand that I don’t want to be with him—personally or professionally.”

  I grinned at her, delighted that she was going to write the guy and tell him to fuck off. Only nicer, of course, since she was Emma.

  “So, am I allowed to read your piece?” I asked. “I mean, I know I won’t have any criticisms, so you don’t need to worry about that. I probably won’t understand half of it.”

  “You want to read it?” She looked shocked and happy. “Really?”

  “Of course, I want to read it,” I said. “Is that ok?” I was proud of her for getting published. It was the equivalent of winning a bowl game to a writer. There was no bigger win for Emma than having people read her words.

  “Yeah, I’ll email you a copy.” She looked excited and hopeful.

  “Can I read the print version? It seems more important if it’s in print, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, it definitely does.”

  Emma smiled her biggest, brightest smile, and it made my heart throb. She was so beautiful it was ridiculous. I’d told her about the fact that she looked like my bottle opener and she’d curled her hair the night before to play up the resemblance. Now that she’d slept on it, she looked even more like the mermaid. I wished I could carry her around in my pocket the way I did the bottle opener.

  Knowing that she was operating under the information that I had no feelings for her was beginning to eat at me, but I had no idea what to do about it. If she didn’t feel the same way, and I told her I was in love with her, she’d bolt. And I wasn’t sure I could stand losing her, even if I couldn’t have her heart.

  33

  Ward

  “I guess I need to get up,” Emma said, bending over me to take a look at the alarm clock on my bedside table. Even disguised by the shapeless t-shirt of mine that covered her in a sea of grey cotton, her body couldn’t be ignored. In an instant, my libido woke up. Emma wasn’t going anywhere if I could stop it.

  When she tried to lean away from me, I gripped her forearms and pinned her down, rolling so that I was on top of her.

  “Hey!” She squealed, wriggling uselessly beneath me and giggling. “No fair. I’ve got to get up.”

  “Why?” I questioned, kissing her neck and counting the tiny freckles that dotted her skin.

  “I was going to go get the oil changed on my stupid car before the line gets long,” she said. “I’m overdue. I don’t want my car to explode.” Although she was talking a good game, her resistance was already fading. She’d wrapped her legs around my hips and was arching her soft tits up into my chest.

  “That’s just silly,” I told her, pulling up the hem of the t-shirt to get a better look at her. Her skin was so pale it nearly glowed in the bright morning light coming through the windows. She looked like an angel. “I’ll teach you how to change the oil yourself. You should never have to pay somebody to do it for you.” I wanted to tell her that I’d just change it for her, but she’d interpret that as charity, which I’d learned that she despised.

  “Ok,” she said, although I probably could have just suggested that we go base jumping at that point. I’d taken her right nipple between my lips and was lavishing attention on it, something that I’d learned she absolutely loved. I loved it too, especially when it made her rock her hips against me like she was and turn her eyes glassy and vacant.

  The jaded, cynical version of me that lived for one-night stands was astonished. That Ward had believed that spending too much time with the same woman would make her reactions become boring. Emma had silenced that voice in my head without ever even knowing it existed. How could I ever grow tired of watching her bite into her full bottom lip while I licked and sucked on her chest? Or the way she made little noises that seemed to be totally beyond her control when I stroked her inner thighs? It was impossible.

  By the time we were shedding our final layers of clothing, I was forced again to admit to myself that Emma was the sexiest woman I’d ever had the pleasure of making love to. And also, the most innocent. She approached sex like she did everything else, with an eagerness and curiosity. I’d turned on my side to pull off my boxers, and she pressed a soft little palm into my chest to push my back against the mattress.

  “You get to be on top too much,” she whispered in my ear, biting my earlobe and making me shiver. “My turn.”

  Anything you want. Especially that.

  She took me inside herself on a slow, gentle descent, her mouth getting a little wider as she went down. I pressed my hands to her creamy white thighs, trying not to rush her but also squeezed
so tight that I felt like I had to move or die. When she finally began to move it was a grinding, teasing movement, placing her hands atop mine while she did.

  “You’re beautiful,” I told her. The awe in my voice was obvious. She smiled down at me, maybe, for once, believing me.

  Her shell-pink nipples swayed with her movements, hypnotizing me as she worked. Her eyes had gone glassy again, and she rode me with that same, slow grinding until I could barely stand it. I’m not sure how long she danced like that on my cock, but it was beautiful torture. It felt life forever.

  “Emma, fuck,” I groaned, pushing my hips up into her as hard as I could, but she kept that grinding rhythm slow and steady.

  I’d discovered she didn’t need direct stimulation on her clit to make her come when she was on top, but I gave it to her anyway, rubbing her sweet little spot until she moaned and threw her head back. Her back arched, pointing her chest to the ceiling and showing the outlines of her ribs through her pale skin. Her orgasm clenched around me in pulsating waves. When her eyes cleared, and her noises slowed, I wrapped my hands around her ass to try and urge her on—to make her movements faster and more up and down—and thank god, she obliged.

  Now bouncing energetically, the delicate muscles inside her were pushing me toward climax as quickly as her mouth could have done. I pushed back into her from below more forcefully as well, pulling at her hair with one hand and pushing down from her waist at the other.

  “Yes, harder,” she was saying, over and over, urging me on. I did.

  Her second climax pulled me right over the edge with her, and I came with enough force to barely hear her screaming my name in a high, breathy voice. My neighbors probably heard it though. They’d left me a nasty note about it actually, taping it to my door and telling us to ‘keep our ridiculous porno noises to ourselves’ but I hadn’t told Emma about it and had no intention of doing so. They could get some earplugs, or better yet, move. I loved how damn loud Emma was when she came, it was genuine. She was too embarrassed about how loud she was to be faking it. I loved how easily she got embarrassed. I loved everything about her.