In Too Fast

by Mara Jacobs

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  I totally got that. That was kind of what everyone was waiting for me to do—show my true, low-class, daughter-of-a-home-wrecking-whore colors.

  “And that kiss you laid on me on the dance floor?”

  He smiled. “You know what? I kind of think that sealed the deal for Caro.”

  “Does she have lots of visitors? Was that why it was important to make sure you could fit in?”

  “That was the thought, but turns out she really doesn’t have all that many visitors. I’m not sure if she’s turning down offers because she’s afraid word will get out, or…”

  “If she’s not getting any offers.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And Dotty? I’m assuming she knows?” I spoke the name like I knew Caroline’s long-time housekeeper. I’d never met her, though she’d been at the wedding, crying the whole time over “Miss Betsy” being so beautiful.

  But I remembered many a time my mother would scream into the phone at my father that she needed help. And it would almost always end with, “I need my own Dotty!”

  He’d hired cleaning ladies for my mom, who came twice a week, but none of them ever lasted very long.

  “Anybody else helping out? Home nursing of any kind?”

  “Too risky that they’d tell the press. I am the home nursing. At least for as long as I can maintain. If it gets too bad, we’ll call someone in. She won’t be…in pain, if I can help it.”

  “You like her,” I said, studying him.

  He shrugged. “She’s okay.” The tone of his voice, though, assured me I was right.

  “Who’s to say you won’t go to the press? Bet there’d be a lot of money for that story. The first picture of an emaciated Caroline Stratton would fetch top dollar.”

  “First of all, thanks for thinking that I’d be that low. Christ.”

  “Can you blame me? You are—were—a thief.”

  “That’s different.” I lifted a brow at that, but just motioned for him to go on. “Second, it seems Spaulding recorded a conversation I had with him about Lucas’s arrest, where, shall we say, I allude to my possible involvement.”

  “He blackmailed you into doing this?” It didn’t surprise me at all, except that it was a big risk for Grayson to take. Stick was a wild card, and I wasn’t at all sure that he would respond well to coercion.

  “No. I’d already agreed to do it before he told me about the recording. That’s just insurance to him. I knew I would never do something that sleazy. Now he feels safe too.”

  “Why are you doing this at all? No matter what they’re paying you, surely you would have made more stealing cars.”

  “There’s a shelf life on that kind of existence. And I like my freedom.”

  “So you don’t think you’re one of the crooks that’s too smart to get caught.”

  “Nope. A million things can happen during any…transaction, and almost all of them are going to do you in. This gig came along at the exact right time for me.”

  “Gig. Like it’s playing in a club with your band or something.”

  He turned into Lot H, and I saw his car in the corner where Yvette had been parked. It hadn’t been there earlier. He must have had someone drop it off for him while we were at Caroline’s.

  He pulled Yvette in next to his car and cut the engine.

  “You know you can’t tell anyone, right?” he said.

  “Who would I tell?” I said. Just as I said it, my mother’s face flashed in front of me. Oh, man, she’d die for this kind of information. Okay, bad word choice.

  “I won’t tell her,” I said. “Anyone. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Nobody,” he warned.

  “I won’t.”

  He studied me for a second, then nodded, as if he was convinced.

  Then his eyes dropped to my mouth. He ran his hand through his hair, looked away and out to the parking lot.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “What?”

  He looked back at me as he said, “I swore to myself I was going to keep my hands off of you.”

  And then he put his hands on me.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I could have stopped him.

  There was a second or two, which seemed so much longer, as he moved his head to mine, as he lined up our mouths, as I felt his warm breath mingling with mine.

  Yeah, I could have stopped him anywhere in there. Pushed him back, turned away, even gotten out of Yvette.

  But I did none of those things. Instead, I leaned closer, letting the console push into my hip as his mouth came down on mine.

  His usual peppermint taste mingled with coffee this time. Dark and rich yet fresh and light, all at the same time.

  The thought that I knew what constituted a different taste of Stick, and how bizarre that was, briefly ran through my mind before he placed his hand along my jaw and deepened the kiss.

  Then I lost all thought.

  But I could feel.

  And I felt the tug of his lips on mine, the way they fit, not perfectly with mine, but in a…quest. Almost a desire to conquer.

  I totally got it. Because I felt it too. Not wanting to want like I did. Not wanting to enjoy the play of our tongues as they tangled. Not wanting to moan in delight when he pulled my lower lip with his teeth.

  Not wanting Stick.

  And yet…God, how I wanted him.

  My hands fisted in his hoodie, pulling him closer. As close as the small car—and the seemingly huge console that divided us—would allow.

  “Jane,” he murmured, a whisper on my lips, and then he kissed me again, deeper. Even more desperately. And again, I got it.

  It did feel desperate, like a losing battle to fight how good—how soooo good—it felt to kiss Stick.

  He wasn’t trying to conquer me. He was trying to conquer this feeling. He didn’t want to feel it any more than I did.

  I sucked on his tongue and he moaned, his fingers pressing into my jaw line, making me open my mouth even more to him. His thumbs brushed my cheeks, soothing, giving, while his mouth did nothing but take.

  And I gave. Willingly.

  We went on, tasting, kissing, gasping for breath when needed. At some point I noticed Yvette’s windows were completely steamed up, and it felt like we were drifting in our own Corvette cockpit cloud. That the world, with car theft rings, and women wasting away of cancer, was so, so far away.

  I tried to get to him, needing to feel his arms around me, wanting the comfort I knew that would bring.

  And that thought was what pulled me away, both of us gasping, his hands reaching to pull my face back to his, but me sitting back in my seat, turning away from him.

  Because I would find no comfort in Stick. He wasn’t just some guy you could bang after a party for the pure physical pleasure of it, and walk away like nothing happened.

  On the surface, yeah, that was exactly the guy who Stick should be.

  And yet he wasn’t.

  “I told you,” I said, facing out the side window. “We can’t happen.”

  He would think it was because I had a hang-up about who he was, where he came from. What he did. And I’d let him think that—it served my purposes.

  And maybe it was about that at first, certainly the other day it was.

  But it was about more now.

  Knowing about his father. Seeing him with Caro. I was dangerously close to…liking Stick. And that simply could not happen.

  I wasn’t a control freak or anything, but I’d watched my mother drive herself crazy wanting a man that she couldn’t have.

  And somewhere deep inside of me, a voice was telling me that I could never truly have Stick. That he was not the type of guy to go along with me just because I wanted him to. And I needed that. I needed to be in control of that aspect of my life. Because so much of my life I had no control over.

  And hard as I’d tried to carve out my own little world here at Bribury, it seemed I was still surrounded by my father’s enclave
.

  “Yeah, I know,” was all he said. There was no defensiveness in it. No “fuck you,” like the other day when he’d correctly read my thoughts about him. “That’s why I told myself to keep my hands off of you,” he added, a resignation in his voice. And also a bit of failure.

  “But you didn’t,” I said, then turned back to face him. His eyes roved over my face, then settled on my lips, which felt puffy and well used. I put my fingers on them, not knowing if it was to create a barrier, or to feel the effect his kisses had on me.

  Not that I needed any reminder of that—I wasn’t sure I’d even be able to rise up out of Yvette, my legs felt so weak and trembly.

  “No, I didn’t. And I can’t seem to say ‘sorry’ about it, either.”

  I nodded. I wasn’t sorry he’d kissed me, either. “But no more,” I said firmly.

  “Right. No more,” he agreed. We looked at each other for a second, then both nodded, like it was a handshake on our deal.

  He opened his door, the cool air rushing in, almost pulling me out of my make-out haze. Almost.

  “Next Tuesday?” he asked.

  I nodded, and he shut the door behind him, got into his own car and drove away.

  I sat for a very long time before I left Yvette and walked back to my dorm.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Valentine’s Day was that weekend. Lily had a date with Lucas, so Syd and I had planned to go to a party wearing semi-slutty red dresses, and looking to hook up.

  But at the last minute, she had to work, so I sat in our room and studied, even read ahead for a couple of the classes.

  I could have gone out with others. Girls from our floor were always popping over and inviting us out.

  Well, inviting Lily out. She was the most like all the other girls here. But Syd and I came as part of the package deal, so they invited us too.

  But Syd was not “Bribury material” to many here (snobby bastards), and I kind of scared a lot of the other girls away. Probably because I called people out on their bullshit.

  And there was a lot of bullshit at Bribury.

  So I stayed in, and kept my fingers away from my phone.

  It wasn’t like I’d actually text Stick to see what he was up to, but I did keep the phone on the other side of the room, out of easy access.

  And yes, I did nearly twist my ankle jumping up to get to it when it buzzed.

  But it was only Lily saying she wasn’t coming home and to not worry. Lucas was still staying with his mom and little brother to help out with the rent, so I knew she wasn’t staying there with him.

  They’d probably gotten a motel room somewhere. Or Lucas had taken her to the apartment he’d shared with Stick until last fall, when he’d moved to his mother’s apartment.

  I wanted to text and ask where she was, but I didn’t. I wanted to take Yvette for a drive, but it was snowing out, and I hadn’t driven her on snow yet. I started to text Stick that it might be a good time for a lesson with the new snow, but deleted it before I even finished.

  It wasn’t like me to just sit in the room when I wanted to be out, doing something—anything.

  But there were a whole lot of things I was doing lately that weren’t like me.

  Find her. Be her…and let the rest of the bullshit go. Montrose’s words came back to me again.

  The guy was like some Buddha or something. I even considered downloading his oh-so-acclaimed novel and reading it, but in the end I just lay on my bed and stared up at the ceiling.

  I must have drifted off to sleep at some point. Around four a.m. I heard Syd in the bathroom. She took a long shower, and when she’d been done for about ten minutes, I got out of bed, grabbed my comforter and made my way to her room.

  “Hey,” I said as I entered the room. I moved to the empty bed her former roommate Megan had used.

  Megan had gone home to Nebraska after the first week because her mom had died. She’d thought she’d be back for this semester, but she didn’t show in January.

  Syd might still be in touch with her, but I wasn’t.

  “Hey,” Syd said, her back to me. She was fiddling with something on her desk. “Sorry I woke you.”

  “You didn’t. Or I don’t think you did.”

  She looked over her shoulder at me, saw me still dressed in leggings and a sweatshirt, not my pajamas. “Were you out?”

  I shook my head as I sprawled out on Megan’s bed, wrapping my comforter over me.

  “No, I stayed in.”

  “Sorry I had to work,” she said. She left the desk and went over to her bed. She’d thrown on her pajamas after her shower and put her long black hair into a wet ponytail.

  “Lily with Lucas?” she asked. I nodded. “That’s nice, that he was able to get Valentine’s off and that they can be alone together.”

  “I guess.”

  She sighed, stretched out on her back, flinging her arms over her face. “It’s so easy for them, hey? They both know they love each other. There’s no drama. No should-they-or-shouldn’t-they. It’s nice, right?”

  Syd hadn’t been a fan of Lily being with a townie at the beginning, so her words were surprising. And a bit uncharacteristic.

  “Well, it wasn’t easy at first, remember?”

  She waved a hand, as if Lily’s broken heart at having to break things off with Lucas had been a minor hiccup. In a way she was right.

  But I’d shared a room with Lily when she’d cried herself to sleep. I’d seen—more so than Syd—how devastated our friend had been until she’d worked things out with Lucas.

  And it had scared me.

  At the time, I’d filed it away—with my mother’s perpetual desperateness—as two places I never wanted to end up.

  I would not be the type of woman who was desperate to keep her man. So desperate she’d do anything. And I would never fall apart over losing a guy the way Lily had.

  I didn’t think less of Lil for it—I felt deeply for her. But I just knew that would never be me.

  “But it was never because she didn’t trust her feelings, right? It was just shit that got in their way,” Syd said, still covering her face.

  If I’d been more on my toes, I’d have been suspicious of Syd’s mood and the things she was saying. Normally I would have pushed and prodded, and gotten to what Syd was really saying.

  But I was distracted with her words as they applied to me.

  And my feelings for Stick.

  It was time to stop denying that I wanted him to kiss me, that I felt something for him. But I wouldn’t romanticize it and put it in a “Lily and Lucas” kind of love category either. Stick pushed my buttons, and I liked it. It was as simple as that.

  And I very much liked when he kissed me—hard.

  But that was all it could ever be—some stolen kisses, maybe a little more. Hopefully a little more.

  I would never put myself in the position my mother had for all those years—begging for crumbs from a man. Or where Lily was now—helplessly in love.

  “It’s just so hard, you know,” Syd said. I don’t know if she was talking about anything in particular, but I murmured my agreement.

  We lay in silence for a bit more, then I got up to make my way back to my room.

  At the door, I saw a beautiful scarf lying over Syd’s coat on the back of a chair. It was brightly colored and expensive looking, and did not at all look like something Syd would pick out. She was all about blending in, trying to look like the Bribury Basics. And this scarf stood out.

  I bet it looked great on her, though, with her dark coloring.

  “This new?” I asked, holding up the scarf.

  She peeked out from under her arms and nodded. “Just got it.” She kept her arms down, propping herself up on her elbows, watching me as I held up the scarf. It wasn’t quite a paisley pattern, nor floral. It was really unique, like nothing I’d seen before. I did most of my shopping in thrift stores and consignment shops, loving older, funky, retro stuff. But I’d also had to tag along with my m
other to enough high-end stores in Baltimore to know that this was quite a scarf. “It’s beautiful,” I said, meaning it. It wasn’t something I’d pick out, but I could certainly appreciate it.

  “Thanks,” she said. Her eyes followed the scarf as I held it up to the light, then draped it back over her coat on the chair. I couldn’t quite read her expression—kind of pensive, like maybe she’d spent way too much money on it or something.

  “Good thing you picked up a second job,” I said as I turned to leave.

  “Yeah, good thing,” I heard her say quietly, more to herself, as I walked out of her side of the suite.

  Chapter Twenty

  It became a standing thing. We’d meet in Lot H, Stick would be standing next to my car or sometimes sitting in it with the engine running if it was cold, I’d drive Yvette to Caroline’s house, where we’d spend a few hours, then we’d come back.

  It moved from Tuesdays and Thursdays to almost every weekday. I started bringing my laptop and books and studying, either at the kitchen table with Caro nearby doing stuff on her laptop, or sometimes, if she was napping, I’d take my books to the garage and study while Stick worked on the cars.

  Well, on those days, I mostly watched Stick as he moved with grace and skill around the fleet of vehicles. He was definitely in his element.

  Some days, if he got particularly dirty, he’d go over to the guesthouse and shower before we left. He kept a few changes of clothes in the detached guesthouse. He said he’d even started spending a few nights a week there, just in case Caro needed him. The plan was that he’d eventually move in if—when—the time came.

  Dotty lived in, but Caro had gotten so weak that she now slept in a bedroom on the main floor. I’d asked her if it was time to call back Betsy and Joey yet, and she said no. I didn’t push it.

  So, yeah, it was a nice little routine. Kind of my Tuesdays with Morrie, except it was nearly every day, and it encompassed not only Caro, but Dotty and Stick as well. Many days we’d just spend talking, careful to avoid tender subjects like my mother.