Deep down, I was still scared it would come to an abrupt end. He'd turn out to be a jerk once the honeymoon phase of dating ended. Anyone could pretend to be nice for a couple dates or a few hours. None of the game-breaker bad habits or tendencies showed up that early, either. Maybe he was one of those animals who wore socks in bed, for example. Or maybe he didn't know how to brush his teeth without splattering the mirror with tiny specks of toothpaste. Worse, he could even drink skim milk.
Quirks aside, I could hardly imagine a future where things between us would work out. He’d probably get bored and break up with me, or maybe even cheat. He’d realize I was way too poor to be interesting for a guy like him. Or maybe he’d fail to stop his psychotic step-sister from ruining our relationship. Some way, it felt doomed.
And yet, stupid me still wanted to try.
10
Liam
We abandoned the idea of actually watching the marathon of Boy Meets World about ten minutes after I arrived. I spent nearly thirty minutes in a state of awe as I watched Lilith and her seemingly bottomless appetite. She worked through three slices of pizza, four cheesy breadsticks, a slice of the dessert pizza, and three crab rangoons. She also polished off the entire milkshake.
“I feel a little emasculated here. I don’t think I can even keep up with you.” I set down the dessert pizza with a defeated sigh. The woman was half my size, and she’d outmatched me.
“It’s not a competition,” she said. “Unless you’re a self-respecting man who doesn’t want to be out-eaten by me, at least.”
I laughed. “See, when you phrase it that way, it sounds a lot like a competition.”
“It’s okay to lose, Liam. Just embrace it.”
“It’s not even that. I’m just trying to figure out where you put it all.”
“That’s easy. I pre-fasted. I’m kind of a marathon junkie. I don’t watch shows every day or even every week, but when I hear about a marathon coming on, I kind of make an event of it.”
I grinned. “You realize Netflix is basically marathons on-demand, right? You don’t have to wait for them to come on TV and watch commercials.”
Something passed over her eyes that I couldn’t quite read. “I think it’s nostalgia. It’s not the same without the commercials or the feeling that you have to plan your day around it. My parents were always riding me so hard about everything. But it was kind of a family tradition to do these marathon nights when their favorite shows were on. It was the one time they forgot to suck. We’d starve ourselves all day and then basically have a feast, then we watched as much as we could before we passed out. Maybe it was just the food coma, but those are probably my only memories with them when they weren’t nagging me or pushing me. We just hung out and they didn’t care if I was being perfectly ladylike.”
I watched her face while she spoke, and I could almost see her when she was younger, sitting on the couch between two hard-faced parents. It made me realize how that little girl who had just wanted to feel accepted and loved was probably still inside her, and how she had learned to put on a tough face to convince the world she was okay.
I knew what she needed from me. She didn’t need me to sweep her off her feet or to convince her she was the most beautiful girl in the world, even if I was starting to think she was. She just needed me to accept her and care about her. When I’d gone stiff after getting the text from Celia the other night, I’d probably shattered whatever trust she had been starting to put in me, and I’d have to work to rebuild it.
“So,” I said. “I never stood a chance, because you’ve trained your whole life to eat like this?”
She nodded, and she even smiled. “Exactly.”
Once Lilith had inhaled enough food, we sat on the couch. She let me put my arm around her and pull her in close to my chest. It felt good. I’d never been the cuddling type, maybe because I had never wanted to give women the wrong idea in the past, or maybe just because I’d never been interested enough in them in the first place.
“You know,” Lilith said after a while. “In romance movies, when the guy and the girl pig out on pizza and then bang like ten minutes later, that’s completely unrealistic. I mean, it’s like you’ve got a greasy food baby in your stomach. Are you really thinking about stripping off your clothes, climbing on a guy, and trying to act like you feel sexy?”
“Greasy food baby,” I repeated quietly. “You’re right, I suddenly feel less in the mood when you put it that way.”
She tilted her head to look up at me from where she was resting on my chest. “You don’t think my food baby is sexy?” She lifted her shirt and pushed her stomach out so that it ballooned into a surprisingly round impression of early pregnancy.
I laughed, pressing my palm to her stomach softly and giving a playful squeeze. “I don’t feel any food babies.”
She squirmed away from my hands and sat up suddenly with a deadly serious look on her face. “Don’t tickle me.”
I raised my eyebrows. “What? Why not?”
“I’m not going to explain, so don’t even try to ask why. Just don’t do it.”
“Come on. You can’t leave me hanging with that. Why not?”
Her face went bright red. “Some women prefer to keep a few mysteries to themselves. Okay?”
I gave her a crooked smile. “Fine. But I’m going to find out one day. I guarantee it.”
“I hope not. For both our sakes.”
Lilith’s phone was sitting on the armrest of the couch, and she barely caught it when it lit up and started vibrating its way toward the floor. She frowned at the screen. “Uh, shit,” she said. “Sorry, do you mind if I take this? It might be the cat place”
I raised my eyebrows, but nodded. The cat place?
“Hello?” she said. I watched her face as she paused, then frowned. “Oh. Oh, yeah. Claire. I remember you. From the thing at Galleon, sure.”
Another pause.
“Um, sure. One second.” She pulled the phone away from her ear and turned toward me. “Hey. Were you planning on doing anything with me tomorrow morning?”
“I have a few meetings tomorrow. I wasn’t planning on continuing my seduction attempts until at least the evening.”
She put the phone back to her ear. “Tomorrow morning is good.”
She hung up a few seconds later. “That was this girl I met at a company party. She said she’s having guy trouble or something and wanted to vent. I get free coffee, and I get juicy details about some drama.”
“Well, if tonight goes according to plan, you’ll need the caffeine.”
“Why, are you going to drug me or something?”
“What? No. I meant I was going to have you out all night.”
“Oh. Yeah. That makes more sense. But going out all night implies you’d make me miss the last four hours of this marathon. Your idea would have to be pretty badass to get me off this couch.”
“Name it,” I said. “If the city was yours for the taking, what would you want to do?”
“Uh, I don’t know, sneak into Rockefeller center and ice skate after hours?”
“Easy. That’s it?”
“Easy? I didn’t take you for a rule breaker. The last sessions are at midnight. It’s two in the morning, and they probably have security there.”
“Leave it to me. Do you have skates?”
She got up wordlessly, opened a closet door, and pulled out a pair of relatively fancy looking ice skates. “Do you?”
There was only one guy working security in the area, and after a quick chat, it turned out that he was more than happy to let us sneak onto the ice for a hundred dollars. He even let me use a pair of rental skates. He looked more excited at the prospect of being bribed than by the actual amount I’d offered, and I suspected he would have agreed for five dollars, or even a cheeseburger.
I sat across from Lilith just outside the ice rink and started strapping on the skates. It was around that moment when I realized I’d never ice skated before, and I was very likely a
bout to make an idiot of myself. “You sure this is what you want to do? I said you could do anything, remember?”
She stared at me, and then her lips slowly spread into a faint grin. “What you’re trying to say is you don’t know how to skate?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. I don’t have any first-hand experience, but how hard can it be?”
“We’ll see, won’t we?”
I yanked the straps tighter on my skates and decided I was going to kick this ice’s ass. Lilith looked like she’d already decided I was going to embarrass myself, but I’d prove her wrong.
She stepped out onto the ice and clearly had plenty of practice, because she easily did a half-turn and started drifting backwards as she watched me with an eager expression. It almost looked like she wanted me to fall.
I steadied myself on the edge of the entrance gate and put my first tentative foot into the rink. The skate seemed to grip the ice well enough, and I let confidence surge through me. As soon as I lifted my back foot, my other foot slid forward on the ice and I did a split that I wasn’t flexible enough for as I crashed down to the ground.
My crotch ignited with heat and a sharp kind of pain. I groaned and rolled to my side while I waited for the pain to subside.
Lilith came closer and reached down to help me up.
“I’m fine,” I said. I couldn’t manage to hide the strain from my voice as I gripped the gate and tried to hoist myself back to my feet.
“Try kind of splaying your feet out to the side so you won’t slip forward like that,” Lilith said.
“It’s fine. The ice was just slick right there, and I—” My skates slid out from under me again, and this time I was flat on my back, staring up at Lilith as snow fell around her head. “I’d ask if you were an angel, but I don’t think an angel would look so amused by my pain and suffering.”
“I’m more amused by how stubborn you are. Do you want some help, or are you having fun busting your ass over and over?”
I awkwardly managed to scramble to a position on all fours, and then unsteadily straightened out. This time, I kept my skates under myself, but I could feel them threatening to slide out at any moment. All thoughts of looking cool and confident evaporated, and the only thing left was a primal need to survive this ordeal.
“I could maybe use some advice,” I said without taking my eyes from my skates.
She glided up to me and put her small hands on my hips, steadying me. She tapped her hand on the inside of one of my thighs. “Try spreading your legs out a little more. If they’re directly under you, the skates are going to want to go forward and back on their own.”
“You know, I didn’t think you’d be the one telling me to spread my legs tonight.”
“Would you focus on not falling down instead of trying to make jokes?” She tapped my inner thigh again and pushed outward.
I let her guide my leg outward and immediately felt a little better. “Okay, so how do I go forward?”
“Just lean forward,” she said.
I leaned forward and immediately lost balance. I flopped down face-first on the ice, barely breaking my fall with my hands. I groaned.
Lilith laughed. “Oh my God. I didn’t think you’d actually think that would work. I’m sorry. I feel bad for that one.” She crouched down and helped me to stand back up. She was smiling wider than I’d ever seen, and any annoyance I felt couldn’t stick when I saw how happy she seemed.
“Yeah, I guess I should’ve been able to figure out that was dumb.”
“Which part, leaning forward or trusting me?”
“Both, probably.”
She spent the next few minutes helping me get the basics down, and before long, I was making my way around the ice. It was pretty nice, and I forgot to care how goofy I must have looked moving at a fourth the speed she was. I spent my time watching her glide across the ice like it was her second home. She didn't do any spins or jumps to show off, but somehow I was sure she could have. After a while, she settled into a slow speed beside me.
“You’re getting better,” she said.
“Can’t say I took you for an ice skater.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not like I was competing for the Olympics, or anything. It was just a guilty pleasure.”
“Guilty? What’s there to feel guilty about.”
“My parents would’ve loved for me to like ice-skating. Anything that embodied girlishness and womanhood was an automatic ‘yes’ as far as they were concerned. Obviously there are male ice skaters, but, I mean… Come on.”
I grinned. “Yeah, the tight suits don’t exactly scream macho. Or the jazz hands.”
“Yeah, well, the fastest way to get me to hate something was for my parents to want me to do it. So ice skating was off the table. Or it should have been, at least. We went on a field trip as a class to ice skate once. I’d never tried it before, and I still remember how it felt that first time. Everything in my life was all rigidity and resistance. I was always fighting. Then I got on the ice and, for once, it felt like letting go. I knew I was doing something my parents would want, but that time, it was my choice.”
I chuckled. “You know, you’re kind of like a backwards version of Cinderella. The princess who wished she could be a commoner.”
“If I’m backwards Cinderella, does that make you Prince Off-putting?”
“I’m too biased to answer. Why don’t you tell me?”
She spun and skated backwards in front of me so she could grin at me. “Well, that depends. If you’re put off by perfection and cockiness and ridiculous good looks. Then, yes. You definitely fit the bill.”
“I’m hardly perfect.”
She waited with raised eyebrows and took my hands, forcing me to come to a shaky stop beside her against the outer wall of the rink. “Prove it, asshole.”
“There’s your first bit of proof. There’s no such thing as a perfect asshole. Honestly, who wants to look at that?”
"I'm serious. And thank you, by the way, considering you spread me out the other night and got a great look at my not-so-perfect asshole."
“I’m a gentleman. I’d never presume upon your asshole unless you offered it to me.”
She burst out a surprised laugh and followed it with a smile that made me afraid I’d fall down again, but this time it would’ve had nothing to do with my lack of skating abilities.
“My asshole is safe unless I offer it to you,” she mused. “Noted. Am I allowed to know what kind of ritual is involved when it comes to offering up my asshole to you?”
“Oh, you’ll know when it’s time.”
“You still owe me proof, Mr. Off-putting.
“Okay. I’m not perfect because I like to dip my grilled cheese sandwiches in ketchup.”
“Lame. I’ve totally done that. Have you ever bitten into a stick of butter like it was a candy bar?”
I cringed a little at the thought of that.
“Yeah, that’s right. Next.”
“Okay,” I said. “When I was eight, I clogged the toilet at my friend’s house and blamed his grandma when they confronted me about it.”
“You’re a monster,” she said dryly. “If this is all you have, I’m going to go ahead and assume you’re still perfect.”
“How about this. I think I’m falling for a girl I met a few days ago. It’s absolutely a bad time in my life to get into a relationship. I’ve got too much going on at work to even consider dating. I’ve got a psychotic step-sister who is hell-bent on ruining my life and the life of anyone I care about. And she has a cat. Everybody knows cats are highly inferior to dogs, so she clearly has issues.”
“A dog person. That confirms it. You’re not perfect after all.”
“So,” I said as we started skating again. “You had to sneak around to practice this, I guess? Or did you eventually tell your parents?”
“I never told them. They still don’t know. I used to lie and say I was staying after school to work on group projects. I’d come to the rink and zone
out on the ice. It was when I’d daydream about who I would’ve been if my parents hadn’t pushed so hard, I guess.”
“And who would that have been?”
She gave me a crooked smile. “Some goody-two-shoes prissy girl, probably.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s a good thing they tried so hard to make me into what they wanted. After all, you don’t seem like the type to go after princesses.”
I laughed. “It only took one to realize it wasn’t my style. No, I like somebody with backbone. You’re different, and I like that about you.”
“You’re different than I thought you’d be too. I have to admit, I had you pegged as a guy named Kade who spent all day on his yacht.”
I laughed. “Well, one of my best friends is named Kade, unfortunately. And I may or may not technically own a yacht. So maybe I’m not so different, after all.”
She laughed. “Where there’s money, there’s a Kade. It’s like a universal law. Do you have a friend named Rich, too? Or maybe Edward?”
“Not Rich, but my step brother’s name is Price.”
“Damn! I could win a game of rich person cliché bingo with you in seconds.”
“I can play the game too,” I said. “Do you make sacrifices on Halloween? Do you like to go into the woods at night and dance around campfires naked?”
“No and yes,” she said with a completely straight face.
“Wasn’t expecting a yes, but maybe if you just want to shoot me a text before your next nude forest dance, I can watch and give you pointers on your technique.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Perv.”
“I did strip you down and spell the alphabet between your legs with my tongue last night. Clearly I’m interested in what’s under your clothes. I didn’t think I was making a secret of that.”
His Package Page 9
