3. Finn #3
I relaxed a little. There was still a great deal of tension in my shoulders, but I was beginning to hope that last night was just a fluke. Maybe, just maybe, my friends had a method to this madness. Besides, the hot dog was a hearty and delicious choice with not even a trace of truffles.
Knox and I shared a portion of cheese and bacon fries placed between us on the table. “And how’s that working out for you?” he asked.
I liked that he was asking a reasonable question.
I reached for a fry when he did, our fingers brushing for a moment.
The back of his hand was tattooed with some fiery symbol I didn’t fully understand.
It looked a little as if it were totally fresh, and maybe even like it was peeling in one spot, missing the lick of the flame on the left side.
But he let out a low laugh when our fingers touched. “Guess you’d call that romance, huh?”
“Something like that,” I said, laughing.
After a couple of minutes of me telling him about the blind date I’d had last night, Knox’s phone vibrated, and he said, “Sorry, babes, gotta get this.” He looked into my eyes while it rang, like it wasn’t a hurry at all.
He bit his lip briefly, giving me a further glimpse into the appeal of bad boys. Then he slid his finger over the screen of his phone and pressed it against his ear.
The person on the other end was loud enough for the whole parking lot to hear. “I swear to God, Marvin Frickles, if you put your laundry to wash, you stay in the goddamn house to put it in the dryer.”
Knox rolled his eyes. “Ma, I told you I’d be back in an hour.”
“And I need the washing machine now. What am I supposed to do? Hang your laundry? You’re old enough to do this crap by yourself, Marvin.”
“Just drop it in a basket, Ma, and I’ll deal with it later,” the not-so-bad boy said, my heart sinking with each word he uttered.
But I pushed my prejudices aside. So what if he called himself Knox even if that wasn’t his name?
People picked their identities the way they wanted, and I was here for it.
He was still cute and a little dangerous. If we’d met at a bar by chance, I’d have gone for it.
When he hung up and slipped his phone into the pocket of his leather jacket, he rolled his eyes again. “Parents, huh? She’s just riding my ass for no reason.”
“You live with your mom?” I asked conversationally.
He sucked his teeth and nodded reluctantly. “Had my own place, but a pipe burst and wrecked a wall. And the landlord was an asshole. This is temporary. What about you? Got your own place?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nah, I live in a frat house,” I said. “The university takes care of the pipes, but there’s no peace and quiet.”
Some sense of normalcy returned to the conversation, a flow that I was difficult to describe.
He wore a sulky expression, but there was a soft underbelly to his whole persona.
He was capable of smiling, especially when I took a big chunk of the hot dog.
“You’ve got mustard all over your face,” he said, leaning over with his thumb and wiping the corner of my lips, and hot-fucking-damn if that wasn’t the biggest turn-on.
I was speechless for a moment, so Knox lifted his chin in a daring, almost challenging way. “Wanna go for a ride?” he asked.
I hated that it was this easy. It wasn’t supposed to work, but it did.
My heart skipped a beat as I pictured Knox in a big helmet, wind ripping at his leather jacket, my hands around his waist. Fuck.
Even the fact that my friends were going to gloat didn’t stop me from grinning and giving an excited nod.
He got up, shoulders swinging, back tapering to a narrow waist, ass not so small in those tight pants.
I followed.
We passed a row of bikes, each bigger than the last. I’d never realized that bikes were something sexy.
The entire concept was on the periphery of my awareness, something people said like it was cool, but it never got close to me until now.
The big, bulky vehicles with large seats and powerful engines and shiny polish.
Somewhere in the distance, a group of bikers was making their engines roar, and I decided I was going to see this through even if we didn’t get a second date.
I wanted to see what else Knox had to offer.
Then we rounded the row of parked bikes, and Knox nodded to the last one. “Hop on.”
“Huh?”
Knox was lifting a mint green helmet that matched the color of his Vespa. He offered it to me, and I genuinely didn’t know what to do with it. Did I even need a helmet for a thing that, at best, went at the speed of a light jog?
I took the helmet, put it on my head, and watched as Knox started the engine. I couldn’t hear if it was going or not over the loud sounds of engines around us, but the exhaust pipe was trembling slightly, so I figured it was on.
I sat down behind Knox on the small seat heated by the afternoon sun, and Knox took my hands in his, pulling them forward to hold on to his waist. The flaming tattoo was missing another bit, peeling off in earnest now.
“Oh, it’s seven-fifty, by the way,” he said, his voice just as husky as before. “That’s including half a portion of fries.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “I’ve got cash.”
He waddled a few feet forward, then the Vespa coughed and sputtered and began to move on its own, more or less. “Where do you wanna go?”
I bit my lip. Knox was still kinda hot, but my drive was all gone. “I was thinking maybe campus.”
He dropped me off almost exactly at the spot where Dominic had left me last night, and I paid him for the hot dog and half a portion of fries.
When I offered him gas money, he winked and said it was on him.
Then I walked back to the BEL house with a deadpan expression, my eyebrows dropping lower with each step I took.
In front of the BEL house, the guys had put up a tennis net and were teaching Bennet how to play. Greg and Taylor played on one side, Jason and Bennet on the other, and Harrison was sitting in a lawn recliner with a yellow, aged paperback in his hands.
“What happened?” Taylor asked.
“Just one question,” I said loudly enough for all five to hear. “Does anyone here even know that guy?”
Guilty looks all around answered before any of them could.
“Oh, so he was from that ad you spoke about,” I concluded.
Reluctant nods followed. “Well, Marvin’s mom yelled at him over the phone, so he rode his Vespa home to do laundry and wash off his stick-on tattoos.
And I swear to God, his piercings are clip-ons, because the one on the lip swapped places while I was washing my hands. ”
“You know what? Mistakes happen,” Taylor said cheerfully. “There are still five dates left, although we all thought Knox…er, Marvin, left a good impression.”
I stalked into the house for some alone time, haunted by Jason shouting behind me to promise that the next one was going to be so much better.
It…was not.
Bennet had calculated that the odds of my discovering I wanted to live off the land with a rugged mountain man were low, but not impossibly low. He also calculated that, if it happened, the payoff would be the most satisfying of all, because of the surprise element.
Harrison drove a car full of frat guys to the edge of a hiking trail and said that the four of them would make a picnic at the base of the trail, while I went with my off-grid recluse to get in touch with nature.
“And don’t rush it,” Jason said. “We have all the time in the world.”
“No, you don’t. We’re supposed to be sitting in lectures,” I almost shouted.
I walked up the lonely trail until I spotted my date.
He was maybe ten years older than me, which was a good sign after Knox.
Maybe I wasn’t patient enough to go through the whole self-discovery thing with a twenty-year-old.
I’d always thought of myself as an old soul in a way, so a man in his thirties was a promising start.
It was only that I hadn’t been paying attention when the guys told me the name. I must have misheard it.