Dating the Devil

by Lia Romeo

  And then I do hear it . . . a low rumble that grows rapidly into a roar as a pair of white lights come barreling down the tunnel towards me. Suddenly I know how a squirrel must feel when a car is coming at it . . . I freeze, transfixed, absolutely terrified, as the roaring in my ears gets louder and louder. I try to flatten my body against the wall, desperately hoping that there’s enough clearance for the train to go by me. And then, as the lights of the train flood the entire tunnel with stark white illumination, I realize that set into the wall, just a few feet in front of my outstretched fingertips, is a door.

  I stumble forward, stretching my arm out in front of me, and push, and the door opens . . . and as the roar of the subway train becomes deafening, I throw myself through it, rolling on the ground as I land and the door swings shut behind me.

  The first thing I realize is that I’m alive. The second is that my entire body hurts . . . my hands and knees from where I scraped them when I fell the first time, and now my back, elbows and shoulders, which bore the brunt of my landing. And the third thing I realize is that it’s hot. Really hot. I can feel beads of sweat forming and beginning to roll down my face.

  Gingerly, I climb to my feet. Miraculously, my purse is still on my arm, though it’s slid down to my elbow . . . and its contents appear to still be inside it. I’m in a long tunnel, sloping gently downwards. The walls and floor are made of dirt, and lit by a faint red glow that seems to intensify as the tunnel curves downwards into the distance.

  And there, in the distance, far in front of me . . . is it my imagination? . . . is the silhouette of a human figure.

  “Lewis!” I scream. The figure gives no sign of having heard me, and I start to run again, stumbling awkwardly on the uneven dirt surface. I’m almost instantly drenched in sweat, and the further I get down into the tunnel, the hotter it seems to be getting. I can feel my hair sticking to the back of my neck.

  “Lewis!” I scream again, and the figure seems to pause. I begin running faster. One of my suede high-heeled boots catches on something in the dirt and my ankle turns over. I gasp in pain . . . but it doesn’t seem to be twisted, and after a minute the pain subsides and I can put weight on it again. “Lewis!” The figure is growing larger . . . at this point, it’s definitely the silhouette of a man . . . dark suit . . . brown hair . . . it’s him.

  “Lucy?”

  “Lewis, oh my God, I’m so glad I found you . . . I’m so glad I caught you . . .”

  “Lucy, what the hell are you doing?”

  This is not exactly the reaction I’d hoped for. “I came to find you,” I tell him, trying to catch my breath. “To stop you from going. Or . . . at least to get you to tell me where you’d be when you came back.”

  He looks me up and down. “You look terrible.”

  I can only imagine . . . my carefully flatironed hair is falling out of its ponytail and sticking to my neck and my cheeks, I can feel my mascara dripping down my face, I’m covered with dirt, and I have a hole in my jeans. Lewis, of course, has somehow managed to make his way down a subway tunnel in his suit while looking immaculate.

  “I know,” I tell him. “Listen. You, um—” I’d imagined myself confidently listing all the reasons why he ought to forgive me. But of course, I’d imagined having the conversation in his bedroom, looking pretty and seductive, with a bottle of two-hundred-dollar scotch . . . not in a dark underground tunnel that leads to Hell. And now that he’s actually standing in front of me, all of the reasons seem to have flown right out of my mind. All I can think about is how much I want to kiss him, how much I want him to hold me and look at me the way he used to. “You . . .” I try again, and then trail off.

  “Go home, Lucy,” he tells me. “Go back to your ex-boyfriend—back to the world where you belong.” And he turns and begins walking down the tunnel again.

  And I’m suddenly furious. “You’re Satan!” I scream after him. “You’re the Lord of Hell!”

  He turns around. “Yeah. So?”

  “So I’d think you’d be able to be a little bit forgiving! . . . a little bit understanding when somebody else does something wrong! I mean, you expected me to get over the fact that you’ve spent centuries trying to get people to do horrible things and end up suffering eternal torment! . . . and I did, I cared about you enough that I got over it! And if I can get over that, then you ought to be able to get over the fact that I spent an unsatisfactory minute or two with my ex-boyfriend’s tongue in my mouth! I’m not perfect! I’m not even good, not all the time, but nobody is! You of all people should know that!”

  “I do know that—” he starts, but I cut him off.

  “Okay, then start acting like it! You say you’re ready to settle down and have a relationship, but you’re never going to be able to have a relationship with me, or—or anyone unless you learn how to forgive people instead of judging them! I know it’s your job to judge them, but it’s a terrible way to live your life!”

  “Lucy—” he says, but I cut him off.

  “I made a mistake, and I told you I’m sorry . . . I ran down a tunnel and almost got hit by a train to tell you I’m sorry . . . and I bought you a bottle of two-hundred-dollar scotch to tell you I’m sorry—” I pull the jagged neck of the bottle out of my purse. “But I fell, and I broke it. So now you need to just accept the fact that I’m sorry and get over it! You told me once that I need to stand up for what I deserve, and I deserve for you to forgive me!”

  We stand, staring at each other, for a moment. Then Lewis steps across the distance between us and takes hold of my shoulders. “It’s not that you kissed someone else,” he says. “I mean, it is . . . but it’s more than that. It’s that we live in different worlds—literally, and you don’t . . . I mean, look at you, you obviously don’t belong in mine.”

  “I was worried about that for a while,” I tell him. “Maybe that’s even the reason why I did what I did. But I’m not worried about it anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’d rather be here with you, in an underground tunnel on the way to Hell, than anywhere else in the world,” I tell him. “I love you. And that means it doesn’t matter what you do or what world you live in . . . I belong wherever you are.”

  Lewis looks at me, searching my face with his eyes for a long moment, then wraps his arms around me, crushing me so tightly I can’t breathe, can’t think, lose all consciousness of anything in the world besides him and his arms around me. He bends down to kiss me, a long, deep kiss that turns my knees weak and sets my lips on fire. He presses me up against the dirt wall of the tunnel and we kiss . . . and kiss . . . and kiss until I’m ready to tear off his clothes right there. Then he picks me up and carries me out of the tunnel and into the light.

  – 30 –

  WE DON’T encounter any trains on the way back to the subway platform, though we do get a few puzzled looks as we climb up from the tracks. Lewis looks clean and polished, but I’m covered with dirt and scraped up, and the passengers waiting for the next train probably figure he was rescuing me from a suicide attempt. But nobody says anything . . . it’s New York, after all, and I’m sure they’ve seen stranger things in the subway station. Besides, with Lewis holding my hand, I really don’t care what anyone else thinks.

  “Should we take a cab?” he says. “I think maybe we’ve spent enough time in the subway today.”

  I nod fervently. Lewis laughs, and hand in hand we climb the stairs and emerge into the fresh, chilly air of Canal Street. Lewis puts his jacket around my shoulders as we wait for a cab, but the warmth of his skin against mine is all I really need.

  “So I guess we’re going to your place,” Lewis says. “Seeing as I don’t have a place anymore.”

  “Oh, right! What are you going to do about that?”

  “It was probably time to look for a new apartment anyhow,” he says. “That last one was sort of . . . impersonal. Especially if I’m going to be spending most of my time in New York from now on.” He smiles at me.

 
“Are you?”

  “I hope so,” he says.

  “I hope so too,” I tell him, leaning into the warmth of his arm and smiling up at him.

  “What kind of scotch was it, by the way?” he asks me once a cab has pulled over and we’re headed uptown.

  “Johnnie Walker Blue Label.”

  “You broke a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue?”

  “I tripped over a rat!”

  Lewis laughs and leans in to kiss me again. “I love you,” he says.

  We kiss for the rest of the cab ride, in the lobby, in the elevator, and then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror in my hallway and realize that before we kiss any more I desperately need to take a shower. “Oh, God. Do I smell as bad as I look?” I ask Lewis.

  “You smell like roses,” he says. “And subway exhaust.”

  I groan and unlock the door, planning to head straight for the bathroom . . . but Nat and Mel are sitting on the couch. When they see me, their eyes widen with concern . . . and then they look behind me and catch sight of Lewis, and start applauding. Lewis looks confused. “They knew . . . they told me to . . .” I try to explain.

  “We’re happy for you guys,” Nat says.

  “Oh,” Lewis says, still looking perplexed. “Okay.”

  “What happened to you?” Mel asks me.

  “It’s a long story,” I tell her. “And I’ve really got to take a shower.”

  “That’s okay, we’ll entertain Lewis,” Nat says. “Sit down, sit down. Can we get you a glass of wine?”

  “So Lucy tells us you’re . . . the devil,” I hear Mel saying pleasantly as I head down the hall with my towel. Oh, God. Well, I’ll let them sort that one out on their own.

  When I emerge from the shower, freshly towel-dried and clad in leggings and my Cornell sweatshirt, I find Lewis and Nat deeply engaged in a discussion of Nat’s father, and Mel looking skeptical but listening to them politely. Apparently Lewis hasn’t come across him in Hell, which is good. Nat’s asking Lewis if there’s any way to communicate with the dead, and he’s telling her that there isn’t . . . so far. Cell phones and email can’t bridge the gap, and séances, unfortunately, have proven ineffective. Mel and I exchange relieved looks when Lewis says this . . . no more blasting AC/DC as Nat tries to break through the spirit barrier.

  I cuddle up next to Lewis on the couch and take a sip from his glass of wine. I couldn’t be happier. Lewis and I are back together, my friends and I are getting along, my friends and Lewis are getting along . . . everything is right with the world, or at least my little corner of it. And then Lewis puts his arm around my shoulder and begins gently rubbing out the knots of tension there, and suddenly the heat of his fingers is all I can think about.

  “So,” Mel says, “we’re going out! You guys want to come?”

  I look from Mel to Nat. “You are?”

  “I’m going to be good!” Nat says. “I’m Mel’s wingman tonight. She’s single now, so we’re going to find her some boys to make out with!”

  I refrain from saying that even when Mel wasn’t single, she never had any trouble finding boys to make out with. “Thanks,” I tell them, “but I think maybe we’re going to stay in. It’s kind of been a long day.”

  A few minutes later, hair smoothed and lipstick applied, Nat and Mel head out the door, leaving me alone on the couch with Lewis. “So,” he says with a smile, reaching out to tuck a lock of hair behind my ear. “What do we do now?”

  I lean in to kiss him, and, still kissing, we stumble across the room and into my closet. He kisses my neck and puts his warm hands under my sweatshirt, and I begin unbuttoning his shirt. He unbuckles his belt, takes off his pants, and I point at his black dress socks. “Those, too,” I tell him.

  “Really?” He begins pulling one of the socks down, then hesitates. “I don’t have to. We can just—”

  I reach down and pull off one of his socks, then the other, running my hands over the black hooves underneath them. They’re hard and cool to the touch, like marble . . . and I notice, now that I look at them more closely, that they’re not really solid black at all . . . a swirl of colors runs through them, like a rainbow in an oil slick on the pavement.

  “They’re beautiful,” I say to Lewis in surprise.

  “You’re beautiful,” he says in a husky voice, pulling me up to kiss him, and my skin begins to tingle all over as our bodies melt into each other, and I lose track of where mine ends and his begins.

  Afterwards, I rest my head on his chest as he lights a cigarette with the tip of his finger, passes it over to me for a drag, then takes it back. And just then, from my purse, which I dropped in the corner of the room when I came in, I hear my cell phone ringing.

  I climb out of bed, wrapping my white cotton robe around myself, and retrieve it, but by the time I get there it’s already gone to voicemail. It was Jim . . . probably calling to gush about Natalie. I go back to the bed and lay down in the crook of Lewis’ arm, smiling as I press 1 to receive my messages.

  “Um, hi, Luce. It’s me. I just talked to Nat. She’s out at a bar, and she sounded kind of drunk. And she said . . . she said you were back together with your boyfriend. And then she said . . . um, she said your boyfriend was Satan. So . . . yeah. Call me back.”

  Oh, no.

  I haven’t even thought about how I’m going to break the news to my parents and my brother. Honestly, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to, I could just keep putting them off with vague half-truths . . . but so much for that. As hard as it was for me to deal with the truth about Lewis, it’s going to be that much harder for them.

  I hang up the phone with a sigh, climbing out of bed to put it back in my purse again. “What’s wrong?” Lewis asks.

  I climb back into bed and snuggle close to him again. “Nothing,” I tell him, wrapping my arms around him and leaning in to kiss his neck. “Nothing that we can’t deal with tomorrow.”

  We’re in love, and for right now that’s all that matters. For right now, the two of us, wrapped in each other’s arms, here in my tiny room, are all that matters. And everyone else will just have to find some way to accept it.Because I love Lewis, and Lewis loves me, and I have a feeling we’re going to be in each other’s lives for quite a while.

  Which means that I’ll be taking Satan home to meet my family.

  (Please continue reading for more information)

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my agent, Katharine Sands, for serving as such a strong advocate. Thanks also to Deborah Smith and Deb Dixon, and everyone at Bell Bridge Books, for believing in the book and for invaluable editorial and marketing assistance. Thanks to Lane Bishop for seeing the movie potential and optioning the book, and to Julie Sherman Wolfe for a great screenplay adaptation.

  Thanks to Nick Romeo for reading and providing discerning commentary (on this and everything I write), and to Rick and Karen Romeo for reading and thinking it’s wonderful, whether it actually is or not (re: this and everything I write). And thanks to Dan Ostrach for everything.

  About The Author

  Lia Romeo is an award-winning comic writer. She graduated from Princeton University, then earned her MFA from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts.

  She is the author of the popular humor book 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About (yes, it’s just what it sounds like,) and of several plays, which have been produced around the U.S. and internationally. Dating the Devil is her first novel. She lives in Hoboken, NJ with her fiancé Dan and their dog, George Gordon, Lord Byron.

 

 

 
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