Chapter 10 From Hot to Not
Ten
From Hot to Not
I texted Priya to tell her I wasn’t going to meet up with them after the game. I could tell she was upset, but there wasn’t much she could do when she had no idea where I was or who I was with.
Dallas and I walked to Sporty’s, and as we were approaching the door, he pulled me to a stop facing him. It was cold enough that I could see the intermingling of our breath.
“I need to make something clear before we go in there,” he said.
Great. What now?
He reached out and touched my face. Those hands. I remembered how they’d felt when he held me at the party. He moved closer and cupped the back of my neck.
His lips touched mine. Warm, soft, wet. It was like stepping into a time machine. I was brought back instantly to the party. I’d been yearning for this feeling for a week now, and I didn’t want it to stop.
The kiss started slow but intensified fast. I couldn’t get enough of his heat, his mouth.
He broke it off far quicker than I wanted. I wasn’t sure how he did it, but he made me feel like I was the most wanted girl in the entire world just by kissing me.
I caught my breath. “What was that for?”
“We’re going into a bar. I need you to know that I don’t want to kiss you only when I’m drinking.”
My thudding heart swelled into my throat. I couldn’t talk. Even if I could, it wouldn’t matter. I was speechless.
He opened the door for me, and we ascended a flight of stairs. At the top, sitting on a stool, was the bouncer.
“Hey, man.” He gave Dallas a high five. “How’s it going?”
“Good,” he said. “I brought a friend with me, is that cool?”
He waved us through. “No problem.”
And without showing our IDs, we were in.
Dallas made a beeline for the bar, and I followed him.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Behind the counter was an array of taps. The only kind of beer I’d ever had was the inexpensive stuff.
“Um.” I started reading the labels, but I had no idea. I frowned.
“Why don’t you try a Blue Moon?” He gestured to the light-blue label. “I think you’ll like it.”
I nodded. I actually didn’t think it mattered. I wasn’t that picky.
The next thing I knew, I had a glass filled with an orange slice floating in cloudy beer in my hand. And it tasted good—really good. Like nothing I’d ever had. Piss-warm party beer out of a plastic glass was awful. This was like an icy heaven.
Dallas introduced me to a group of his high school classmates. I found out most of the guys were people he’d played hockey with as a teenager. They seemed ordinary—well, as ordinary as your average hockey player could be.
“I didn’t know that you played,” I said to Dallas with a changed pitch in my tone.
“Yeah.” He shrugged. But he offered nothing more. Which was fine by me. Hockey and I didn’t go well together.
Feeling a bit awkward while Dallas was on the other side of the room, I struck up a conversation with a quieter guy.
He sat a little away from rest. A former goalie named Charlie.
He was nice but, like most goalies, quiet and a bit quirky.
He kept rearranging the condiment basket in the center of the table.
I tried to find things to chat about, but the only thing Charlie and I had in common was our shared knowledge of hockey. A dangerous subject for me, and a couple times I almost messed up and said something damning about my father. Somehow I got through the conversation without giving myself away.
There were girls too. Some were part of the crowd, and some were girlfriends.
One of them, Penny, sat down next to me at a high table. “You look sort of familiar to me.”
I smiled politely even though my stomach did a nosedive. The media didn’t have many videos or photos of me. The only ones were from a while ago, when I was younger. I was sure I’d never seen her before.
“What’s up with you and Reynolds?” she asked.
I straightened. “You mean Dallas,” I said.
“Right, what’s up with you and Dallas?”
I’d figured someone would ask, and I was prepared. “We live in the same dorm and have chemistry together.”
“So you’re in those nerdy classes too?”
Dallas was playing pool with Charlie and some of his other buddies. With a cue in hand, the butt resting on the ground, he lifted his gaze from the table and looked at me. He smiled, and I smiled back.
“Yeah, I’ll admit it.” I looked back at Penny. “I’m a nerd too.”
She was watching Dallas now as he lined up the tip of his pool stick with the cue ball and the eight ball.
“It’s so bizarre. I would have never imagined Dallas hooking up with someone like you, but then again I never imagined he’d be going to school here either, taking engineering classes and going to a campus bar while the hockey team plays on television either. ”
I slid down a little in my chair.
Wait a second. I wasn’t with him like that. I mean, we’d come here together, but he’d introduced me as his friend. And at the moment, that was it. “Just to be clear, we’re not hooking up.”
“Not yet.” Penny shrugged.
Which was what I wanted. I wanted Dallas to be a foregone conclusion. But she had a way of making it sound cheap.
“And I’m confused,” I said. “Why are you surprised he’s taking engineering classes and watching a hockey game at a bar?”
Dallas slid up next to me. “You hungry?”
I nodded, and before I could mull over what I wanted, he’d waved over a waitress and ordered us both new beers and appetizers.
Normally, I’d be offended by not being asked to make my own choices, but in this situation, it was nice of him to relieve me of decisions when it was hard enough for me to navigate his friends.
Penny folded her hands together on the table. “Adriana just asked me a really good question. Dallas, do you know why I’m surprised you’re watching the Minnesota University hockey team play on TV?”
“No.” He pursed his lips.
Penny tipped her head and flashed him a smile. “I think you do.”
Maybe me hanging out with his friends had been a bad idea.
What followed next was an awkward bout of silence. Dallas made no attempt to divulge anything more, and Penny seemed to think she’d proven something.
I was completely lost.
“Do you want to play pool?” Dallas asked me.
I nodded and got up from my chair. Anything to get away from NFP. No-fun Penny.
And then the night got better. Way better. The hockey game started playing on the screens, which distracted most of Dallas’s friends, while Dallas and I stepped into our own little world.
He wasn’t paying attention to the game. Only me. Finally, someone who might not obsessively follow the school hockey team.
Together, we loosened up. It might have been the beer, but who cared?
We played pool against each other, and as the game went on, things got…well, touchy-feely. His hands always seemed to be on me. My arms, my back, my waist. I didn’t mind. There was something appealing in the heat of it. The possessiveness in it.
“Why are you taking engineering classes?” I asked him as he pondered his next move.
“Huh?” He looked up.
Contrary to Penny’s thoughts, there had to be a perfectly logical reason. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Oh,” he said, smiling. “I’m interested in refrigeration, so I’m thinking of getting a degree in mechanical engineering.”
“An obsession with ice rinks maybe?”
“Possibly. Or just HVAC in general. What about you?”
“Chemical engineering. I’d like to work with food scientists in the food industry.”
“Cool.”
“It always seems like ideas about food are changing,” I said. “What’s good for you, what’s bad for you. I’d like to be part of that.”
“It’s not because you want to study their aphrodisiac properties?”
My ears perked up. “Aphrodisiac?”
“I’m kidding.” He gave me a wide, mischievous grin. “I think what you want to do is really interesting.”
“No, I want to know. What properties?”
“You know, phenylethylamine, serotonin, B vitamins.”
“And those chemicals do what?”
“I think they relax blood vessels, improve blood flow, and increase the production of testosterone.”
“Like Viagra?”
He started to line up his shot. “Kind of, but naturally.”
He took the shot. Eight ball in the center pocket. He beat me.
I put my cue back into the rack and brushed my front side up against his back to get around him.
He turned and raised an eyebrow.
“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
When I came out, there he was, standing in the hallway, waiting for me. He wanted to kiss me. I could tell.
“‘Do or do not,’” I said with my best serious tone. “‘There is no try.’”
His eyes sparkled. “Is that a Star Wars quote?”
“Yoda, to be exact.” I couldn’t help but smile back.
“I love Yoda.”
“Me too.”
“So.” He paused. “You’re saying commit or don’t commit, right?”
“Yeah, but if I were you”—I tipped my head slightly—“I’d definitely commit.”
He pulled me into an alcove where a door led to the kitchen.
He pressed me against the wall, pinning me with his body.
His mouth consumed me, sending me soaring into the sky.
His tongue probed and smoothed, but it was his lips that were as soft and gentle as I’d remembered.
His fingers slipped under my sweater and trailed across my abdomen, sending waves of heat through me.
But then the kitchen door swung open and hit Dallas in the side. He grunted.
My face was hot, and I was sure my cheeks were as red as a billiard ball. Dallas didn’t seem to mind. We walked back to the bar area, his hand on the small of my back. Before we separated, he trailed his fingers over the small of my back, and I turned gooey.
I held up my hands to the light, and I’d swear there were particles in Brownian motion inside them, buzzing and colliding.
I was breathless, weightless, and the happiest I’d been in a long time.
I didn’t want the night to end. I wanted it to last forever—or maybe I just wanted there to be more nights like this. More time being with Dallas.