Chapter 15
15
Gabe
No, Johnson, you cannot talk to me for a sec. This is the worst possible time. See those two guys behind me? They think you’re trash, because they’re trash, and one of them is in a position to take your house away just for spite.
This is what I think when Kayla comes up to me. This is what I try to communicate to her silently as she stares earnestly into my eyes.
Adam and Ryan both fall silent. “Speak of the devil,” I hear my brother mutter. I know he’s watching carefully to see what I do. But if I send her away, I’ll risk damaging whatever chance I may have with her. Plus that serious look on her face has me worried. Something inside my chest clenches. I make a choice.
“Not here,” I mutter gruffly. I take her by the arm, more roughly than I mean to, spin her around, and march her as far away from Adam and Ryan as we can get in this place. We wind up near the bathrooms, around the corner from the main bar and dance floor. I stop near a bulletin board advertising used IKEA furniture and yoga from underqualified teachers. She wheels around and looks up at me. She doesn’t seem to have registered that I was fighting with Adam and Ryan, or that I’ve just treated her more forcefully than I ever have before.
“I made a mistake,” she says, clutching her beer bottle to her chest. “The night of Steven O’Connor’s graduation party, I saw you leave with Allison after we danced together. I thought you wanted to sleep with her because she was drunk. And because I put the brakes on. But I’m pretty sure I was wrong.”
Her gray eyes are searching my face, probing, pleading. I take a step back from her and rub my hands over my face. Is this why she’s been angry with me all this time? Is this why she ghosted me?
“I… no,” I stammer. “No, I just took Allison home. As soon as you went into the house to look for her, I saw these guys head into the woods with her, and they were laughing in a way that… well, I could guess what they had planned. And I could see that she was really drunk. She just needed to get out of there, fast, so I intervened and took her home. I texted you and waited for you as long as I could. Then I wanted to come back to you, but you didn’t answer any of my messages. I didn’t… I would never have…” I’m absolutely flabbergasted that she could have thought this. I would almost be angry if it weren’t for the painful remorse written all over her face.
“I know,” she says with a deep sigh, seemingly fighting back tears. “I mean, I know now. Allison just told me. I had never asked her about it, because I thought she might be embarrassed or ashamed. And I… I think I let myself believe it all this time because I was scared. Of you.”
“Scared of me ? Why ?”
“Because I really liked you! Because I thought that if we got together, I might fuck up college! But that was no way to treat you. I’m really, really sorry.”
She looks straight into my eyes. I feel such a strong connection to her that I don’t think I could look away even if the bar burned down around us. Every part of my body is pulsing to the beat of my pounding heart.
“You really liked me,” I say finally, breathing hard. She just nods.
“And so that night,” I continue, needing, urgently, to know the whole truth, “if it hadn’t been for Allison…”
“Yes,” she says, still looking into my eyes, her expression of remorse replaced by something needier. I can tell she’s breathing hard too.
“Yes what?” I growl, allowing myself to step closer to her.
Her chest rises and falls quickly as she considers her next words. She finally breaks eye contact and looks down at her tattered sneakers.
“YesIwouldhavesleptwithyou,” she says all in a rush. Her eyes flick back up to mine. “When you danced with me like that, you really turned me on.” She gives me a tentative smile. “I was very attracted to you back then,” she confesses, just above a whisper.
“And now?” I whisper back, edging even closer.
She doesn’t move away. Instead, she just shakes the hair out of her eyes and tips her face up to mine. A sentence seems to be forming on her lips, but I never hear it. Because suddenly I can’t take it anymore. I close the distance between us, twist my fingers in her hair, and kiss her hungrily. She drops the beer bottle she was holding. It shatters at her feet as she claws at my chest, my arms, my back, pressing me harder and harder against her. Her tongue slides against mine, our teeth clack together, it’s messy and rough and I don’t care, because finally, finally this is happening. I slide my hands to her perfect hips and she hops up and wraps her long legs around me. I run my palms over her ass, up her back to where I can feel her bra clasp under her shirt. I undo it in one easy motion and now my hand is on her skin, my fingers flicking against her nipple as she moans into my mouth. My erection is pressing against her jeans and I know she can feel it from the way she tightens her legs around me. Groaning, I slam her against the bulletin board. Thumbtacks and notices rain down—those underqualified yoga teachers will never know what happened—and pull down the collar of her t-shirt so I can lick her neck, her collarbone, her?—
“K? Are you all right?” Allison’s voice suddenly rings out. “Oh, shit?—”
“I think she’s fine,” I hear a man say in a choked voice. “Come on.”
I realize, now, that that interaction was very public. Kayla must realize it too, because she slides her feet back to the floor.
“Yes, everything’s all right,” she says a little breathlessly. I risk a look at her, and she’s smiling and biting her lower lip as she looks up at me mischievously. She looks so gorgeously disheveled—messy hair, t-shirt and bra askew, a flush spreading over her cheeks and chest—that it takes real effort to acknowledge that there are people behind me. I turn around to see Allison and her boyfriend in fast retreat. But something makes Allison stop short as she’s about to turn the corner.
“Gabe,” she calls carefully. “I think your brother might be coming over.”
Oh, shit. Adam . How much of that did he see? How much will he intuit?
“He shouldn’t see us together,” I tell Kayla without thinking.
She’d been straightening her hair and clothes, but now she furrows her brows. “Why?”
“He was really pissed that I talked to you after your meeting with my dad,” I hasten to explain.
“Adam!” I hear Allison’s voice on the other side of the wall, pitched half an octave higher than it had been before. “I was just wondering if you could tell Tom here about your workout routine! How did you build these biceps?”
“Oh, um, well, that mostly involved curls, and boosting my protein intake?—”
“Fascinating!” a voice I assume is Tom’s interrupts. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I seem to recall that the Wilsons are descended from the Eastons, who first settled in northeastern Missouri in 1830?”
“Uh, what?”
Kayla suppresses a laugh, but turns serious when I say quietly, “He could make refinancing difficult for you if he wanted to.”
“Would he? Why?”
“Because he’s mad at me. Because he’s a dick. I don’t know, but I don’t trust him.”
She seems to accept this. “I guess he hasn’t changed much,” she says, running her fingertips over my chest. I’m surprised I don’t see little sparks of electricity crackle where she touches me. She looks up at me intently, then surprises me by gently stroking my cheek with her soft hand. I close my eyes to savor her touch.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
My eyes snap back open. “Oh, you don’t have to be sorry about that, I really enjoyed?—”
She laughs. “I mean about ghosting you. About assuming the worst about you. About running away.”
“I missed you,” I confess. It’s such a simple thing to say, but so profoundly true. I didn’t think about her so much over the past eight years just because she’s sexy. Or because I was baffled by her disappearance. It’s because she was one of the dearest friends I’ve ever made in my life, and I wanted more time with her.
“I missed you too,” she replies. Then she lifts up on her toes and kisses me tenderly, her full lips sliding over mine. I reach up to tangle her hair in my hands, kissing her more deeply, when I realize that Allison and Tom are still desperately trying to distract my brother.
“So would you recommend a protein powder, or just eating a whole bunch of meat?” Allison asks.
“And your mother’s family, if I’m not mistaken, set up the first steam mill in the county in about 1850. It would have been in the German colony about ten miles west of Kentwood, right?”
Time is running short. I doubt Adam knows much about protein powders or steam mills.
“Can I take you out to—” I start.
“Do you want to come over tomorrow night?” she asks at the same time. “My mom will be home, but we can say you’re there to fix the garbage disposal.”
“I will not let you compare yourself to a garbage disposal,” I joke before I can think better of it. Fortunately, she laughs out loud and smacks me playfully in the chest.
“I’m not! It really is broken!”
“Well then, you ought to have me look at it,” I reply with a smile. “I wouldn’t want you and Joyce to have to pay for a plumber.”
“No, that would be bad,” she says in a soft voice that makes me rock hard again. “Can you come around 10:00?”
Yup, I’m pretty sure I can. But I simply say, “Sure thing,” and start to pull her in for another kiss.
But she’s already broken away. “See you then, Wilson,” she says with a grin over her shoulder. Allison, who has missed her calling as a choreographer, gracefully spins Adam towards me and sweeps Kayla to the door without letting them meet. Fortunately Allison and Tom have redirected Adam enough that he’s no longer fixated on Kayla. He offers to get me another beer, bragging all the while about our ancestors’ prowess as steam mill operators. As we move towards the bar, I hear broken glass crunch under my feet. Through the Kayla-induced fog in my head, I try to remind myself to ask an employee to clean it up before someone gets hurt. While Adam is ordering drinks, I turn just in time to see Kayla disappear out the door.
Only when she’s gone do I realize that the DJ is playing the song we danced to the night of Steven O’Connor’s graduation party.