Eighteen
Eighteen
Thomas Collins stands in my doorway wearing a gray sweatshirt that clings to his powerful shoulders. He worries his tongue piercing between his teeth and has a lit cigarette in his right hand as he looks me up and down with those eyes that make me so uncomfortable, so intimidated. Because when Thomas looks at you like that, you can’t help but feel a little naked and a lot vulnerable. The fact that he actually does know what I look like naked doesn’t make it any better.
With an evil grin, he drags his gaze from my pink PJs with the teddy bears all the way down to the fuzzy unicorn slippers I’m wearing. He pauses for a moment on my hair, which looks like a bird’s nest. I blink repeatedly, still incredulous, as I try to get my bearings.
“Are you going to stand there and stare at me much longer? I mean, I know I have a certain allure, but I’m starting to feel violated here.” His smug insolence brings me back to my senses. I had hoped I’d be getting the nice version of Thomas now that I know such a person exists, but apparently, I’ve got his asshole twin instead.
“Thomas, wh-what are you doing at my house?” I try to hide my astonishment but fail miserably.
“You were looking for me?” he asks calmly, taking a drag from the cigarette.
“What?” Earth to Vanessa. Wake up!
“On campus,” he specifies impatiently. He must still be mad at me for yesterday morning’s meltdown. “Larry, my roommate, said a girl with dark hair and gray eyes came to see me.” He gives me a wink. Wait a minute, did he seriously just wink at me? So he’s not angry with me, then? “He said you were blushing pretty hard, reminded him of a giant Red Vine.”
What is this guy’s deal?
“So, what did you want?” he asks.
Oh my God, why couldn’t Mr. Red Vines have kept his mouth shut like I asked him to?
“Nothing, I was just in the neighborhood.”
“You were in the neighborhood,” he repeats, making air quotes. “Of my dorm. Alone. On a Sunday night?”
Well, when you say it out loud, it sounds more ridiculous.
In one of her films, Greta Garbo once said that any lie will find believers as long as you tell it with enough force. So come on, Greta, let’s see if you were right. “Yep,” I said.
Thomas gives a resigned sigh and shakes his head, as if he didn’t believe a word I said. “Let’s hear it, then: Why, during your questionable visit to ‘the neighborhood,’ did you end up at my door?”
“I came to return Leila’s clothes to you,” I replied, congratulating myself on managing a plausible, spur-of-the-moment lie.
“You could have gone straight to her. She lives in the building next door.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Bullshit. You also could have given them to me tomorrow. Why’d it have to be tonight?”
“Enough with the questions!”
“Don’t get worked up. I’m just trying to understand. Yesterday you make a scene, saying I’m tormenting you, and now you’re showing up at my room in the middle of the night.” He pauses and continues in a more soothing tone: “What is going on inside that little head of yours, Ness?”
He tilts his head slightly, waiting for my response, and reveals what is obviously a lipstick stain on his neck. My breath catches. Seriously? He has the nerve to show up at my house wearing clear evidence of his most recent sexcapade? Suddenly, I am filled with rage.
“I don’t know!” I snap, and it’s the truth. If I’d known that, while I was beating myself up over my outburst, he was out getting laid, I would never have gone looking for him. No way.
He takes one last drag on his cigarette and, looking me steadily in the eyes, tosses the butt to the ground, where he crushes it with his toe. “While you come up with a more believable excuse than that, why don’t you let me in? It’s cold out here,” he adds, blowing a final plume of smoke into the air.
“No way. Good night.” I make to close the door, but he blocks it with one foot.
“I wasn’t really asking,” he says, pushing the door open with one arm and stepping over the threshold. He advances on me until we are far too close, just inches from each other. He dips his head slightly to whisper in my ear, “For the record, you look hot…” I can feel his eyes sliding along my body, lingering on my breasts, and I remember too late that I’m not wearing a bra. Instinctively, I cross my arms over my chest. Thomas caresses my cheek. His knuckles are cold and the contrast between his skin and mine makes me shiver. “even in pajamas,” he concludes in a whisper.
Breathe, Vanessa. Breathe. Everything is under control.
I gesture for him to leave, before the tingling in my belly overwhelms my rational mind. But he pretends not to notice. “Thomas!” I squeal, as he brushes past me without a care in the world.
“Get out. Right now! You can’t just go walking into people’s houses uninvited!” I dash after him as he makes his way further inside.
“Hmm…I don’t recall inviting you to my dorm, and yet you showed up there.” He stands with his back to me, hands in his pockets, peering around the room.
“No, of course not. You were clearly…busy.” I clench my fists and immediately regret saying it. I sound jealous, and wouldn’t that be stupid? He turns around, giving me a confused head tilt. “You have lipstick on your neck,” I say, trying to sound unbothered.
No reaction. Not even a twinge of surprise or shame at being caught out like that.
“Oh, this?” He wipes the smudge from his neck with one hand. “A dalliance.”
A dalliance. That’s all women are to him, I guess. Just something to do. Something to pass the time.
“All right, now what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. It’s good to see exactly how much you value the women you sleep with. There’s something to like about you, Thomas: you’re always consistent,” I spit venomously before turning my back on him to shut the front door.
“I value them exactly as much as they want to be valued.”
“I don’t care what you do, Thomas.” I needlessly arrange some business cards stowed in the drawer of the hall cabinet; anything to avoid those eyes. “You are free to do whatever—or whomever—you want. It’s none of my business.”
“Whatever you say. Anyway, I’m still waiting.”
I look at him, confused. “Waiting for what?”
“I’m waiting to hear whatever new excuse you’re going to come up with to explain your visit to my dorm in the middle of the night.”
“Fine. I came to your dorm because I wanted to apologize to you. Are you happy now?”
Thomas looks surprised.
“I was being unfair yesterday. I lashed out at you instead of dealing with the real source of my anger, and it wasn’t okay. That’s all.” I shrug indifferently.
“Apology accepted.”
“Excellent,” I say, feigning an enthusiasm I don’t feel. “Now that we’ve resolved all our issues, you can leave.”
“Nah. Don’t feel like it.”
“What do you mean you don’t feel like it?”
“I mean, I. Don’t. Feel. Like it.”
“Look, I’m sorry Larry wrecked your night. But you and I have buried the hatchet. We’re done here. You can go back to whatever it is you were doing.” I try not to look directly at the place on his neck where the lipstick was.
Ignoring me entirely, Thomas gives the house a bored once-over. “So,” he says, “this is where you live.” He turns to face me. My God, I am never going to get him out of here. “Not bad. Looks like someone with taste furnished it. Although there is something…a little off about it.”
“Order,” I supply.
“What?” He gives me a puzzled look.
“Order,” I repeat. “Tidiness, neatness, whatever you want to call it. A place for everything and everything in its place. My mother is like that. She obsesses over details. There’s never a book out of place, a crumb on the table, or a speck of dust on the furniture. People sometimes find the house kind of…sterile because of it.”
Curious, he runs a finger over one of the shelves and then looks at his fingertip. He finds exactly what I knew he’d find: nothing. His skin is perfectly clean. “That’s nuts. You do know that, right?”
“Sure, if you’re not used to it, it can seem weird, but it’s actually harmless. It’s just this quirk she’s had for years and, when my parents separated, it intensified. Her therapist says it’s how she gains a sense of control over her life or some crap like that.”
“Well, I am glad to hear she’s seeing a professional.”
I roll my eyes at his predictable sarcasm and decide to try playing hostess in hopes that he’ll leave afterward. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Water.” Right, Coach is always watching. He follows me into the kitchen, and I pour him a glass. He sits on the counter and downs it all in one go, while I think about how bizarre it is to see him in my house.
“You want more?”
He shakes his head, and I put the bottle back in the refrigerator. “So, your folks are separated?” he asks.
For a moment I freeze; I don’t like to talk about the divorce, the whole situation in general. So I just nod and close the refrigerator door, leaning against it with my arms behind my back. Thomas grabs an apple from the fruit basket on the counter and starts tossing it in the air, catching it easily with one hand. “You get along with them?”
“With whom?”
“Your folks,” he says, watching the apple rise and fall.
“Not really. With my mother, it’s…complicated. I think we’re too much alike in some ways and too different in others.”
“Yeah, I’ve witnessed your shared obsession with order. But what about your dad?”
I stiffen. “Well, to get along with him, I’d have to occasionally see him, so…”
He raises an eyebrow and looks at me, confused. “What do you mean?”
“He doesn’t live here. He moved out a few years ago,” I answer regretfully.
“Where?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. One day he just up and left us, made a brand-new family and decided to disappear, forgetting all about the old one.” I hope Thomas doesn’t start looking at me with pity in his eyes. I hate being pitied.
“What a bastard.”
“My father cheated on my mother, Travis cheated on me. You want me to believe this moves you deeply?” I chuckle. “Don’t make me laugh, we all know how you feel about ‘relationships.’” I mime the quotation marks.
“Don’t compare me to them,” he says sternly. “I don’t promise anything to anybody. The girls I fuck know exactly who they are dealing with, they know what I want from them, and they know that, whatever it is, it won’t last.” His coldness is disconcerting. Yet part of me admires his honesty. He doesn’t pretend to be someone he’s not just to please other people.
On the other hand, it is alarming to know that sex really is all that matters to him.
“How about you?” I try to change the subject because we have talked about me far too much. “What’s your relationship like with your parents?”
Suddenly he frowns. The surly expression on his face is the same as the one he wore when I tried to ask him about the scar. “None of your business,” he snaps, hopping off the counter and heading into the living room.
“None of my business?” I retort irritably, after catching up with him.
“There’s no need for you to know,” he says resolutely.
“You asked me, though.”
“You could have chosen not to answer if you didn’t feel like it.” I don’t know what’s more annoying, his biting voice or his punchable face.
“So you are allowed to ask and get an answer, but I’m not? That’s not how it goes.”
“Stop pushing.” He glares at me, and for a moment I catch a glimpse in his eyes of some emotion he is trying to suppress. Anger? Sorrow? Resentment, perhaps? “You’re not missing anything anyway.”
“Fine.” I tighten my lips into a thin line and cross my arms over my chest. “So, now that we’ve said everything we have to say to each other and you’ve seen my house and learned all about my family’s flaws, it’s time for you to go,” I say curtly.
“Are you kicking me out because I won’t answer your question?” he asks with a sarcastic smile.
“I am kicking you out because my mother will be back soon and, believe me, you don’t want to be here when that happens. Especially in your condition.”
He frowns and peers down at his clothes. “What’s wrong with me?”
“I can smell the weed from here,” I say disgustedly.
“I haven’t smoked anything, I’m clean.” I believe him, but he is imbued with that frat house smell.
“You may be clean, but your clothes aren’t. My mother would go crazy if she found me at home with a boy who isn’t Travis, especially one who is covered in tattoos and smells like weed and Jack Daniel’s. She would immediately call a rehab facility and have you committed, though not before having you bludgeoned by the orderlies,” I calmly explain to him.
He looks at me dumbfounded. “Your mother doesn’t need a therapist; she needs a psychiatrist. I’m starting to get seriously concerned for your well-being. Is it safe for you to live here?”
I laugh out loud. “With my mother, nothing is certain, but I’m not taking any risks for now.” After a moment of silence, I continue, “Thomas…”
“Yeah?”
“How did you know where I live?”
He walks over to me with a mocking smile and touches my chin. “Friends of friends…” Then he walks past me and heads for the hallway, where he stops to look at the antique paintings hanging on the wall.
“Which friends of friends?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’d like to know. Do you know who shows up on someone’s doorstep without that person having given them their address?”
“Who?”
“A stalker,” I retort dryly, making him laugh under his breath.
“Maybe I am a stalker, have you ever thought of that?” He turns to me with a mock-intimidating look.
I watch him with narrowed eyes, playing along with his game. “You are quite a weirdo, aren’t you? You have wild mood swings, you show up at my house in the middle of the night, you attend my classes, everywhere I turn I find you.” I advance on him. “You wait for me in blind corners of hallways to make sure that I’m okay, you defended me in the garden even though no one asked you to. Tell me, Collins,” I continue, standing right in front of him. “Should I be worried?”
He steps forward, closing the distance between us. “Oh, you should definitely be worried. But generally, I don’t like to harass anyone who doesn’t want to be harassed. I like consent.” I hear an edge of provocation in his voice. “You should know that.” I blush and avert my gaze. Why does he make me always feel so exposed?
“I see you get it,” he says smugly, then continues, “So, you really aren’t going to give me a tour? You’re being a terrible hostess.” He smiles.
“Didn’t you hear what I just said? You have to leave, I can’t risk my mother finding you here.”
“Yeah, I heard you,” he answers, climbing the stairs.
“Excuse me, where are you going?” I call after him.
“For a tour,” he answers calmly.
“There’s nothing interesting upstairs, just bedrooms,” I shout, as he climbs the last few steps.
“The best part, then.” He smirks mischievously at me before disappearing upstairs.
Damn, he’s not planning on going into my bedroom, is he?
There are a lot of pictures of me as a child up there, back when I looked like a raccoon. I rush up the stairs to stop him, but I’m too late. He is already inside. I clench my fists and wrinkle my nose in frustration.
“Who…gave you…permission to come in here?” I pant.
“I took it,” he replies with his usual arrogant air. “I always take what I want,” he adds.
I put one hand to my hip and use the other to point to the door. “Out. Now.”
Cocky as always, and with no intention of listening to me, he takes an amused look around before examining the framed photos on the shelf next to the bookcase. In the first one I am just a few months old, in the one next to it I am blowing out the candles on my third birthday cake. Then there is a picture of me at nine, completely drenched, with the German shepherd we had back when Dad was still living with us, Roy. We were at a friend’s barbecue that day. Dad and a friend of his had the bright idea of giving Roy a bath and they soaked me along with him. It was Mom who had captured that particular moment.
Thomas points to the picture, puzzled. “I don’t fucking believe it. Are you blond?” He looks at me in genuine astonishment.
I shrug. “You caught me.”
He looks at me, then at the picture, then back at me. “I never would have guessed.”
I managed to surprise Thomas Collins. Score one for me. In another photo, Alex and I wear our robes on graduation day, both of us sticking our tongues out at his mother, who was taking the picture. In the next one I am standing between Travis and Tiffany, also on graduation day. The last one is just me; Travis took it for me about a year ago. I am sitting in a rocking chair on the porch, kissed by the spring sun, with my legs crossed and a peony in my hair, immersed in a copy of Pride and Prejudice . Thomas picks this one up and looks at it thoughtfully, preparing who knows what idiotic comment.
“You look very beautiful here, Ness.”
“Thank you,” I reply, surprised and embarrassed.
A few seconds later, he grabs the picture of me at three years old and says, “And here, you look like a ghost.” Ah, here is the idiotic comment. It felt weird without one.
I snatch it out of his hand, annoyed. “Well, I was sleepy and I had just finished eating I don’t know how many pistachio brownies. I mean, I was going through an emotional time and no one understood that!” I defend myself wryly.
We look at each other for a few seconds, then he admits, “Your room isn’t what I imagined. Everything is a bit too pink for you, no?”
“It’s my childhood bedroom. At seven years old, girls love pink,” I explain, wondering why he was imagining my bedroom.
He nods vaguely, approaches my bed and asks me with a grin, “And who are these guys?” He points to three stuffed animals settled against the pillows.
Oh, no.
“What do you take me for? I’m almost twenty years old, Thomas, I don’t name my stuffed animals.” I chuckle nervously.
“Come on, give me the names.” He sits on the edge of the bed, certain that he’s guessed right.
“Momo, Nina, and Sparky,” I confess after a moment’s hesitation.
“Momo. Nina. And Sparky?” he repeats, clearly trying to hold back an explosion of laughter.
“Hey! You can’t just barge into my room without permission and start ridiculing my things! You’ll hurt my feelings.”
He tries to make his face serious, with little success. “So, let’s see if I’ve got this right.” He rests Sparky, my stuffed bunny, on his lap. “You still sleep with stuffed animals, which means you’re a big baby. You like TV shows.” He points to the shelf above the TV, where a variety of box sets are stored. “Which tells me that your real life bores you. You’re an incurable romantic,” he continues, gesturing to my bookshelf full of romance novels. “And you probably suffer from the same disorder as your mother.” He looks at me smugly. “How’d I do?”
I frown. “The same disorder as my mother? Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know, maybe it’s the books arranged in order of height or the shoes in order of color… Or maybe it’s the military precision with which you organize your desk during class. Seriously, your family has a real problem,” he insists.
I’m beginning to feel annoyed. “Give it a rest. I like things to be in their place, in the right way. I’m a tidy person, nothing more,” I say, trying to minimize the issue.
“What if I were to, purely by accident, make a mess of everything right now? Here, maybe?” He gets up and walks toward my bookcase.
“That depends: do you have a death wish?”
“Actually, I’ve got another kind of wish…” He gives me a cheeky smile. I blush but force myself to glare indignantly. Which only amuses him more. “Or I can just sit in this chair and contemplate the ceiling.” He makes himself comfortable, crossing his arms over his chest and spreading his knees. He drops his gaze to my legs, a mischievous gleam in his eyes. Instinctively, I cross them, feeling a wave of heat invade my body.
Dammit, why does he always have to be so attractive?
“You’re not contemplating shit. Now, you can get up and go back to the dormitory, or you can go back to the party, but you can’t stay here,” I retort when I manage to recover from the visual aphrodisiac he presents.
“The frat party wasn’t much fun. Just when it was about to get fun, my roommate called me. Does that ring a bell?”
“Oh, no!” I press a hand to my chest, pretending to be pained. “I’m so sorry I ruined your night. But in all honesty, Thomas, no one asked you to come to my house. You could have just stayed there and…scratched your itch,” I retort acidly.
“Yes, I could have. In fact, I should have,” he underscores the point. “I’d be having a much better time.”
I am shocked by his lack of tact. “You’re an asshole, Thomas.” He’s an insensitive, arrogant, mercurial jerk who enjoys testing my patience.
“I’ve been holding myself back quite a bit with you. You should be thanking me, not getting pissy.” The satisfied expression he gives me is enough to make me lose my patience. Without a second thought, I throw one of the stuffed animals in my hands and I hit him square in the face.
“Shit, you got me right in the eye. What’s in this thing?” He brings a hand to his face.
Oh no. Caught up in the heat of the moment, I threw Nina at him, the mother kangaroo in which I keep my earrings and bracelets. He rubs his forehead as I leap to his aid. I reach out and take his face gently in my hands.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—” But I don’t get a chance to finish my sentence, because Thomas gets up, grabs me by the waist, and throws me onto the bed.
“You really are too naive, little one.” He straddles me, pinning my wrists above my head with one hand and tickling my side with the other.
“Oh God, stop!” I laugh so hard that the words come out strangled.
“Were you trying to kill me with a stuffed animal, Ness?” He teases me mercilessly.
“Thomas, I’m begging you, stop!” I writhe, trying to free myself from him. I can’t. He’s too strong; his fingers tickle my neck, my sides, my belly. I can’t resist any longer. “Okay, okay you win! Enough!” I say with tears in my eyes. Only then does he loosen his grip.
“I always win, remember that.”
“You’re twice my size, and you lured me in under false pretenses. That’s what is called an easy win,” I answer, pretending to be offended.
“You gotta play the cards you’re dealt.” He boops me on the nose with one finger, then we hold still and look at one other as the smiles fade from our lips. A few minutes ago, I was so angry at him, and now I have tears in my eyes from laughing. “You should do that more often.”
“What, hit you with stuffed animals?”
“No. Laugh,” he whispers, dangerously close to my mouth. “It puts you in a different light.” It’s breathtaking and, when he touches my lip with his free hand, I shudder. Instinctively, I part my lips.
“Everything okay?” he asks with an insolent little smile.
“Everything okay?” I’ve lost the ability to produce saliva and my heart has gone crazy. I feel pinned by the intensity of his gaze, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of his body as it is pressed against mine. Stunned by his unmistakable vetiver scent.
Nevertheless, I manage to nod. He grins, pleased with himself. He gets even closer and my heartbeat speeds up dramatically. He confidently positions himself between my parted legs. Every cell in my body quivers.
“What-what are you doing?” I gasp.
“What do you think?” he whispers hoarsely.
“Thomas…” I swallow and think I should stop him… I should push him away…or at least try.
“Vanessa…” He brushes his lips against mine. Once, twice, three times… His touch is intoxicating, so much so that I close my eyes and clench my knees around his hips in an instinctive motion. Then he traces a line of slow, delicate kisses along my jaw, increasing in intensity as he reaches my throat.
I have a machine gun for a heart.
“You should…you should go…”
He moves his lips to my ear and nibbles on my earlobe before lapping at it with his tongue, setting off a shiver in my lower abdomen. “No, I shouldn’t.”
“Please…” It’s more a desperate plea than a request. Part of me really does want him to go away. But there is another part that just wants to throw myself on his mercy and let him do whatever he wants.
“You’re talking too much,” he cuts me off, pressing his hips against me with an untamable fervor. A wave of chills runs through my entire body, a sensation I have experienced with him before, but it is even stronger now. His tongue captures mine with determined ferocity. I had hoped to put up more resistance, but I return the kiss instinctively, needy and hot.
He releases my wrists, and I take his face in my hands, deepening the kiss. He seems to become even more excited, circling one arm around me and squeezing so tightly that I gasp for air. I cling to his powerful shoulders, his muscular neck, as his hand descends to my thighs. He parts them impatiently. “I’m going to fuck you here, Ness,” he says against my lips, rubbing his erection between my legs and tearing a soft moan from me. He suffocates the sound, pouncing on my mouth ardently. “On your childhood bed,” he concludes lewdly, perversely. I blush, feeling the burning need to have him inside me again. Suddenly, however, the little voice in my head reminds me that this is all wrong. He can never give me what I need, and I can never give him what he wants. I have to stop or I will regret it; I cannot allow this boy to mess up my life any more than he already has.
I put my hands on his chest, stopping him. His heart is pounding, just like mine. “Thomas, wait…”
He pulls away from my mouth, eyes hazy with desire. We are both out of breath, our faces flushed, our lips red and swollen from kisses. We stare at each other for a long moment and while he seems to immediately sense what I am thinking, I have completely forgotten.
“You think too much…” His hoarse tone sends me over the edge. He runs a possessive hand over my neck and then lavishes it with his mouth, scratching it with his teeth, biting and licking. “Live in the moment,” he continues, sliding his hand under my pajama shirt, up to my breasts. I feel his lips curving against the hollow of my neck. “I knew you weren’t wearing a bra as soon as you opened the door.” He squeezes my breast and presses his erection against my most sensitive spot. “Stop thinking, Ness. Just stop,” he orders and, without giving me a chance to answer, goes back to devouring my mouth. My uncertainty is swept away like grains of sand scattered by the wind. Instinct gets the better of reason. I let myself be overwhelmed by those impulses that only he seems to awaken in me. I sink my teeth into his upper lip, eliciting a guttural groan from him. This time I won’t be able to blame it on alcohol when, after having sex with him, I see him in the arms of another. It will be my fault, just mine. I press my pelvis harder against him. I put one hand in his hair and, with the other, I begin to unbutton his jeans. His hand pushes below the elastic of my pajama pants, insinuating itself over the damp fabric of my panties, but then something stops us, forcing my heart into my throat.
Three words. Three simple words that make me regain all my lost clarity.
“Nessy, I’m back!”