In a Rush

Chapter 10

chapter ten

Emme

Today’s Learning Objective:

Students will get carried away.

“That looks uncomfortable.”

Ines eyed me up and down, a grimace dug into her face. I glanced at her in the mirror as I tried to even out my cleavage. They’d sewn a heavy-duty bra into this dress for me which was amazing because I couldn’t get away with free-boobing. But I must’ve done something wrong because one side looked deflated while the other was right where it should be.

“It’s not bad,” I said, scooping and shifting as best I could in a sequin-studded dress that was tailored to the point that I didn’t dare take a deep breath. I figured it was good that it was this tight. At least I wouldn’t worry about gravity taking over and flashing some nip.

“It looks like there was an explosion of citrus.” She pushed her glasses up her nose and made a face that suggested we didn’t care for explosive citrus. “Or?—”

“I get what you’re saying,” I said.

“How much did it cost?”

“A lot,” was all I was willing to say.

Ines nodded gravely. I wasn’t sure she understood the mindfuck that was wearing a dress that could’ve covered three month’s rent but I accepted it.

“You look better,” she said.

I humphed down at my cleavage. “Well, it’s not there yet, but it’s more even.”

“No, I mean, you look better than you did a few weeks ago. Like you’re back from the dead.” She shook her head, sending her pin-straight dark hair swishing. “Must be all the Vitamin C. From the citrus.”

I sputtered a laugh. I loved Ines’s jokes and her insistence on explaining them. “Must be.”

“It’s good that you’re doing this. If you didn’t get out there soon, I was going to drag you along to my kung fu classes and Magic: The Gathering tournaments. It’s not good to stay in bed and be sad all the time.” With a shrug, she added, “It wasn’t worth moping around over that rat-faced man-pig, anyway.”

I stopped fussing with my dress to peer at her. “Wait. When did you meet him?”

“I didn’t, but I know he was a dick to you and that makes him a rat-faced man-pig to me.”

I turned away from the mirror so she wouldn’t see the tears that’d filled my eyes. “Thanks,” I managed.

“You do look nice,” she said, trailing the back of her finger over the bodice. “It’s the kind of dress that regular people never get to wear.”

I knew she was right and I also knew Teddy would’ve hated it. He would’ve made that sour milk face and told me to change into something that fit. Or he would’ve eyed my plumped-up breasts and said I looked like an overstuffed sausage. If he really wanted to shut me down, he would’ve poked a finger into my belly or hips and simply walked away with a disgusted shake of his head.

Once again, I exited Teddy from my mind with a mental scream of Fuck you and the horse you rode in on . He didn’t belong there. His voice had no place in my inner monologue. He deserved none of my energy. “I love the yellow and orange. It felt…fun. And I didn’t want to wear black.”

“You deserve some fun,” she said.

The truth was, I’d hated almost all the dresses Ryan’s stylist Wren had selected for me. They were so boring . All the same silhouettes, all the same colors. What was the point of shopping for an actual ball if I didn’t have a good time with it?

Black, gray, and navy blue were my day-to-day staples, but I’d always spiced it up with something bright and bold. Maybe I was living this dress-up fantasy a little too loudly, but I wanted to look like myself tonight. Just…fancy.

And that was how I’d landed on this sequined dress of deep, rich marigold with subtle swirls of sunset orange and pale yellow. It’d taken Wren a second to come around, but when I’d tried this one on, she’d agreed. I didn’t know if it was my dark hair or the light olive of my skin or some other fashion thing I’d never understand, but exploding citrus worked for me.

When I had my chest even and organized, I gave my hair another fluff. I’d splurged on a blowout this afternoon because my hair was longer than I usually let it go, and the only thing I could reliably do with it at this length was twist it up with a claw clip and I didn’t think that was the vibe tonight.

Jamie was right about it being time for a cut. I’d put it off because I hadn’t cared enough about how I looked to want something new and I hadn’t wanted to feed into the new do, new you storyline . That would’ve required me to make an effort at getting out there again, and I knew deep in my heart that if it wasn’t for Ryan, I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

“Aren’t you going to be cold?” Ines asked. “You’re basically half naked.”

I glanced down at the dress pooled around my bare feet. “How is this half naked?”

She motioned to her shoulders. “You’re…bare.”

“I’m okay with this,” I said. “But there’s a cape that came with the dress if I really want to?—”

“If you have a cape, you wear a cape,” she cried. “Put on the cape!”

I froze with a bottle of setting spray held in front of my face. Aside from the ongoing train wreck of her internship situation, Ines did not have huge reactions to much of anything. She was reliably neutral. It was her operating system.

So, I found myself startled when she yelled at me about the cape.

“Where is this cape?” she asked. “I must see it.”

I pointed to the short doorway that led to the strange annex off my room that functioned as a closet for me. My best guess was that it was used as a nursery back when this building was one grand home. It was too small even for an extremely narrow bed and?—

“Oh my god you have to wear this.” Ines returned holding the cape up by the hanger, her eyes wide and her mouth open. “If I had something like this, I’d wear it every day.”

I studied the matching marigold satin with its delicate bursts of sparkling color, and tried to imagine Ines trudging through Kendall Square with this cape flung over her backpack.

It wouldn’t be the most unusual thing to pass through Kendall Square on a given day. Not even in the top ten.

“I’ll wear the cape,” I said, taking the hanger from her. I’d meant to skip it because it seemed a little excessive, and as much as I loved some excess, I wasn’t convinced I wanted to draw that much attention to myself. Though I probably should’ve gone with one of the simple black dresses if I was hung up on subtlety. “And we’ll find you something equally rad. Okay?”

She helped me get the cape situated without messing up my hair and asked, “Can I take a picture? To send my mom? She’d love this.”

I hesitated. Ines’s mom was an extension of my mom. They had a little sisterhood, all of Gary’s exes, and they were closer to each other than any of their subsequent husbands. Hell, half of them were filming a reality show together right now.

But my mother would find out about Ryan soon enough. Her phone blew up any time a high-earning player in any pro league went off the market. She’d make time in her schedule to attend the wedding. Whenever that was. And she’d definitely be there when all of this ended, all too eager to train me in the ways of the pro sports divorcée.

“Sure,” I said weakly.

Her mom was sweet and she’d always been kind to me. Even if she’d sworn for years that Ines was just a quirky free spirit who didn’t like living by society’s rules, and not a kid who needed someone to accept and support her neurodivergent brain. But I could put that grudge aside for a minute.

I stepped into my shoes and struck the exact pose Wren had shown me. “Tell her I say hi.”

“She’s going to be so happy,” Ines said. “She always likes hearing about you.”

Among the many unhelpful comments from Ines’s mother were often ones about how she wished she’d had a daughter like me. Yep, she’d say that shit right in front of her living, breathing, brilliant daughter. It always made me want to spill a cold drink down her shirt.

Since I didn’t want to make a face I’d have to explain to her, I glanced at my phone while she sent off the photos. “Ryan’s going to be here in a minute,” I said, shooting off a response that he didn’t have to come up to the apartment. “Could you help me down the stairs? I keep having visions of my skirt getting stuck on a loose floorboard or something and ripping the whole thing.”

“You should be more concerned about falling down the stairs and snapping your neck than the state of your dress,” she said, returning to her cool solemnity.

“Right, well, that too.” I grabbed my clutch and shuffled toward the door. I couldn’t move very fast in this dress. A knock sounded. I stared at it and sighed. “I told you not to come up,” I shouted.

“And as you can tell, I didn’t listen,” Ryan shouted back.

Ines abandoned me to open the door, revealing Ryan in a devastating tuxedo. I’d seen him in skintight football gear and swim trunks, and there was no doubt in my mind that this was better. So much better. He looked crisp and precise in a way that was all Ryan, but something about him tonight exuded raw power. The man was a danger to society. I honestly didn’t know what would happen when we went out in public. Swooning, fainting, underwear thrown at his feet. All possible. Likely, even.

Hell, I might get in on it too.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, running a hand over his mouth. “You look?—”

“Like citrus,” Ines said. “The only thing missing is the lime.”

I lifted my skirt just enough to show off my strappy heels encrusted with light green rhinestones. Peridot, Wren had called them. “Nope, I’m fully committed to the bit.”

“No scurvy here,” Ines said. “Because of the Vitamin C. From the fruit.”

Ryan braced his hands on either side of the doorframe and nodded to himself for a second. His jaw was sharp enough that I was certain I’d cut my hand if I reached out and touched him.

He cleared his throat. “Bowen’s downstairs,” he said, extending a hand but keeping his gaze low. “We should go.”

Okay, so not a fan of the yellow. Got it.

Maybe I should’ve shown it to him when we picked it up the other day. I didn’t think he’d care much one way or another. It wasn’t like he’d expect me to blend in with all the other silk ball gowns. He knew me better than that.

His gaze shifted to my neck. “I instructed Wren to select jewelry for you.”

I fluttered my hand at the base of my throat. “Yeah. She did. But it seemed like too much. The earrings weren’t my style and the necklace looked like something out of a heist movie. I didn’t want you to spend all the money just to have some witty bandits cut the power and yank it off me in the dark.”

“Next time,” he said, “tell Wren you’d like to see something different.”

“Please.” I waved a hand at my skirt. “The last thing I need is more sparkle. It would’ve been a waste of money.”

Ryan tucked my hair over one ear and frowned at the diamond studs there. They were the nicest things I had, and good-sized stones too, a birthday gift I was positive my stepmother had picked out. My father never would’ve gone for something so simple or elegant.

But more to the point, he never would’ve sent me a birthday gift.

“Next time, waste the money,” he said, a few strands of my hair twisted around his finger. “I’ll be disappointed if you don’t.”

“You want me to just…buy jewelry.”

He nodded as he rubbed my hair between his index finger and thumb. “Yes.”

“Does it have to be jewelry?”

“Is there something else you want?”

I stared at the crisp lines of his bow tie. I didn’t know why, but I wanted to pull it loose. I wanted to make a mess of him. “What about books? I need a new class set of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane . Most of them are more tape than book these days.”

“Buy whatever you want. I’ll add you to my Amex account.”

A startled laugh burst out of me. “I was kidding about—about the books. I don’t need?—”

“If you don’t order the books, I will.”

He wasn’t being serious. About any of it. I knew that. Even so, I said, “Okay, but don’t be surprised if you see some major bookstore charges coming your way.”

“Even if you ordered class sets of every second-grade book you could ever want, that would still cost less than the jewelry Wren selected for you.”

Such an attitude with this one tonight. I rolled my eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be saving up to buy some soccer teams? Maybe it’s not a great idea to be throwing around the cash like it’s confetti.”

He dragged his fingers down the length of my hair, pulling just enough to send a wave of tingles running over my scalp and down my neck. “I’m going to spend a little over sixty million on these teams when the ink is dry,” he said, the words low and husky. “That’s less than what I earn in a year before postseason bonuses, before endorsements.” He released my hair and let his fingers trail down my bare arm to circle my wrist. “Buy all the books you want, wife.”

I swallowed hard, but didn’t say anything for a minute. Ines coughed from the other side of the kitchen but made herself look busy when we glanced in that direction. Eventually, I managed, “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Wildcat. We’re not married yet.”

“I’m getting warmed up,” he said. “You know how I am about practice.”

“You guys are going to be late,” Ines called.

Ignoring her, Ryan leaned in close, saying, “In the future, I’ll take care of the jewelry.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded as another round of tingles softened my skull.

Ines held the tail of the cape while I gripped Ryan’s forearm and moved toward the stairs. “Wait, wait just a second,” I said, carefully gathering my skirt. I tried descending the step again, but I felt the same tension in the dress that screamed I’m gonna rip!

“What’s wrong?” he asked, staring down the curve of the stairwell.

I pulled the skirt up as high as the fabric would allow—which wasn’t much. Still no progress. “I guess I should’ve gotten dressed on the sidewalk.”

“Emme,” he sighed. “I don’t know what that means.”

I drew in a shallow breath because it was all I could manage with this skirt bunched all the way up to my knees and the bodice slicing into my rib cage. “There’s not enough room in this skirt to make it down the stairs. They’re too steep and the dress is too tight.”

“Fuck it,” he growled. “We’ll stay here. We don’t need to go to this thing.”

“That is not the answer,” I said at the same moment Ines cried, “But the cape!”

“You said this was important,” I continued. “That you needed to be at this event.”

“It costs five thousand dollars to attend,” Ines said.

“Oh, we’re going,” I said. “I am surgically attached to this dress, my hair’s been blown out, and I have twenty-nine different products on my face. We are going to this party even if I have to parachute out a window.” I motioned to my face and hair. “There’s no way I’m letting you waste five thousand dollars per plate tickets and all of this.”

“She spends most Saturday nights in bed, eating cheese and yelling at movies,” Ines added. “She needs to get out of the house.”

“Thank you for that,” I snapped. “No one needed to know those details, but thank you so much for announcing them to everyone.” Turning back to Ryan, I said, “I’ll just change out of the dress now and duck into the hotel lobby bathroom when we get there for a quick switcheroo. Just drop me off at a side door or something.”

“I’m firing this fucking stylist,” he said under his breath. He shoved a hand through his hair and sighed in a way that made me long for lung capacity. Fists propped on his hips, he turned around and I could see in his face that he was in quarterback mode. He waved a hand at the cape. “Can you take that off? Until we get downstairs?”

“Yeah, but?—”

“Good. Do that.” To Ines, he said, “You’ll carry that thing and the little bag.” He snatched the clutch away from me and passed it to her before shrugging out of his jacket. “And if you don’t mind, this.” He pressed himself back against the wall, adding, “You’re running ahead. I’m gonna need you to clear the way and open the doors.”

When she was a few steps below, Ryan dragged a thoughtful gaze over my dress, lingering on the flare of my hips.

“Here’s what we’re doing.” He gestured to the backs of my knees and under my arms. It looked like he was calling a play. “I’m going to carry you?—”

“You’re gonna fucking what?”

Fully unbothered by my screeching, he continued, “But there are some narrow turns. I need you to keep your head here”—he patted his chest—“and your legs tucked in tight.”

“And what about the part where this is the fifth floor and I am not a small woman?”

“If I wasn’t worried about nailing your head on the banister or messing up your hair, I’d throw you over my shoulder and run.” He slipped an arm around my waist and the other behind my knees, and scooped me off the stair. “Be a good girl for me and keep your head down.”

I curled in on myself as much as this dress would allow and tucked my head under his chin. He shifted his hold on me a bit and I waited for some kind of grunt or groan, a this is quite a hefty package or you’re a sturdy one , but none came.

“Ines,” he said, not even an ounce of distress in that commanding tone, “let’s roll.”

And true to his word, he damn near jogged down every flight of these steep, narrow stairs and out onto the sidewalk. He wasn’t even breathing heavily when he set me down. No sheen of sweat on his brow, no flush of pink coloring his cheeks.

He stared at me while he slipped on his jacket and straightened his cuffs. When he was finished, he took a step closer, and then another. In the corner of my eye, I saw Ines hand him the cape. He swept a hand under my hair and I felt the soft fabric settle over my shoulders, against the backs of my arms.

“You look like the first day of spring after the coldest, most brutal winter,” he said. “No one is going to be able to take their eyes off you.”

“Oh,” I sighed.

With his fingers at my throat, he snapped the clasp into place as he stared down at me. “There,” he whispered. “ Very good.”

I didn’t know this until Ryan asked Bowen to take the long way to the hotel, but we were arriving late to this party. On purpose.

“I see the oppositional defiance still runs strong in you,” I said.

He glanced over at me with something like a smile. “I hate red carpets,” he said.

“And yet you appear on so many of them.”

“Contracts,” he muttered.

“What? What does that mean?”

He cleared his throat and tugged at his collar. “Most of the time, those appearances are required by an endorsement contract.”

“Like, the watch brand?” I pointed to the thick metal face poking out from his sleeve.

“No, I actually like this watch,” he said, adjusting it on his wrist. “It’s the less obvious ones. The car company, the mattress brand.” He blinked like he had to flip through his mental account book. “The private jets.”

“They like it when you show up at fancy things and look pretty for them,” I said.

He nodded and left it at that. These appearances had to get exhausting for him. Idle chatter killed him slowly, and while I was certain all these years of being the face of Boston football had trained the worst of it out of him, that didn’t make it any easier.

By the time we arrived, the red carpet and backdrop branded with the charity’s logo were still in place, but the entrance was empty save for hotel staff.

“Ninety minutes,” Ryan said to Bowen as we pulled up at the luxury Back Bay hotel.

“That’s it?” I asked as Ryan opened my door. He curled an arm around my waist and scooped me out of the car, which was cool because my only other option was flinging myself off the seat and hoping for the best.

“That’s more than enough,” he said, dragging his lips over my cheek.

I swallowed hard. We’d joked around the other day about getting close in public, but I guess I wasn’t prepared for the reality of it. Not that I was un prepared. We’d always been affectionate and I’d thought nothing of it. Hugging, sharing food, sitting close together.

Maybe it was the short supply of oxygen to my brain, but this felt different. Completely different.

Rather than watching me struggle to climb the handful of steps to the door, Ryan picked me up and deposited me at the entrance like I was a sequined piece of luggage.

“You gotta warn me,” I said, wagging my clutch at the steps. “I can’t have you tossing me around like a sack of potatoes.”

Ryan tucked my arm into his and led me to the elevator. Two bellhops held the doors open for us and went to the trouble of pressing the button for the correct floor. “You’re a lot prettier than a sack of potatoes. Softer too.”

“That’s nice and all,” I said, “but the point is that you can’t pick people up whenever you feel like it.”

He tugged at his collar when we stepped off the elevator and found no fewer than ten hotel employees waiting nearby, all face-splitting smiles and helpful gestures toward the festivities.

“All right, here’s the plan,” he said, his voice low enough to stay between us. “One full turn around the room, stop long enough to take some photos with a few people, maybe some of the guys from the team, and then get the hell out before they serve dinner.”

“No! I really want to know what a five-thousand-dollar dinner tastes like,” I said.

“It’s nothing special,” he said.

“Says the guy with the private plane.”

“I’ll have them box up a plate for you,” he said.

“It’s not the same,” I wailed.

He drew in a breath and it rattled like a warning. “I swear to god, Emme, if you make me sit through a fucking five-course menu with a full roster of speeches in the middle, I-I?—”

We stopped at the doors of the ballroom, the opulent storybook theme spilling out into the hall with exaggerated toadstools and thick branches wrapped in the dreamiest floral garlands. I beamed up at Ryan, waiting for him to land on the consequence he’d never cash in. “Yes?” I fluttered my lashes. “What will you do to me?”

I felt people watching us. I sensed the energy of their attention from every side, and from the corner of my eye, I saw someone aim a camera at us. Then another. A flash went off. It was strange, and if I gave myself a minute to think about it, I’d find a lot of reasons to be uncomfortable. But right now, here, with his hands flexing at his sides and his dark eyes eating me up, I couldn’t bring myself to care.

A snarl sounded in his throat as he shook his head once, looping an arm around my waist. I flattened my hands on his chest to keep my balance while he dragged a hand up my back and over my shoulders to rest at the base of my neck.

“Fuck it,” he growled.

He tipped my head back, and within the space between blinks, he went from staring at me to kissing me. At first it was a slow, firm press but then a quiet, strangled noise vibrated between us and I understood what he’d meant about coming out of a long, cold winter because I felt like the world was new again and I was too.

I linked my hands behind his neck and let him press me closer, closer while murmurs rose and camera shutters clicked around us. I couldn’t let myself think about the audience. I told myself it was Ryan they were after and I was an irrelevant side note in the whole thing. None of it mattered much anyway because I wasn’t sure my feet were still connected to the ground and my head was definitely floating off into space and my belly was—well, there was a lot of swooping and fluttering in there.

Another important note: I was kissing my oldest friend and it wasn’t at all what I’d imagined.

This was not where I’d expected things to go tonight, but if the options were kissing Ryan or not kissing Ryan, I was good with this situation. I was a floating, flailing mess, but I was good .

No one had ever kissed me like this before. Like they were damn certain they wanted to kiss me .

I didn’t even care that he was making the most of the media gathered nearby and checking off the girlfriend box. He was pretending in his way. I’d pretend in mine.

And then, just barely, he eased back. His forehead tipped against mine and his chest heaving, he whispered, “Fine. Dinner. But we’re leaving before dessert.”

I bounced on the balls of my feet. “Dessert is the best part!”

He closed his eyes like I was causing him real pain. “Emme.”

Before I could defend dessert, his lips covered mine again, urgently now, as if this was the last moment to make the play.

Flashes went off around us.

It was my turn to stutter out the incoherent noises, and Ryan tore himself away from me with a gasp. He brought both hands to my neck, sweeping his thumbs over my cheeks. “I’ll have every dessert in this city delivered to you tonight. I’ll have a pastry chef on call to make you whatever the hell you want. But we’re not staying a minute longer than necessary.”

Ryan kept his arm around my waist and led me into the ballroom. He resumed that cool, steady mask that looked like disdain or even disinterest to the rest of the world but I knew to be the placid surface of a raging sea.

As for me, I didn’t even have to force the smile in response to all the people who’d turned to look at us. I was as bright as this shiny, sequined dress.