Chapter 22 #2
Growing uncomfortable under his stalwart scrutiny, I dipped my chin, once again not wanting to meet his gaze directly. It was perhaps too soon to share my freakish tendencies with him.
However, it abruptly occurred to me that perhaps it was exactly the right time to share my freakish tendencies with him.
Perhaps now was precisely the right time to send him running, which he would inevitably do, before I really changed and some Quinn-related biochemical process, likely methylation, flipped on all the girl-gone-wild genetic markers of my DNA and I started zealously pursuing him to get my next Quinn fix.
“It’s like shoe sizes,” I said, studying him closely.
“Shoe sizes.” He blinked slowly again. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, they only make so many shoe sizes. If your feet are larger than the largest shoe size, then you are considered to have freakishly big feet.” I touched my thumb and forefinger to the buttons of my shirt, ensuring they were all completely fastened and rigidly buttoning the last two.
“You should know that I have similarly inescapable freakish attributes.”
Quinn immediately smiled but then suppressed it; he cleared his throat. “Well, what about clowns? They wear freakishly big shoes.”
“So?”
“So—big shoes have their place.”
“Yeah. In the circus…” I crossed my arms. “You know, with the freaks.”
He mimicked my stance. “You are not a freak.”
“You should know this about me before this, whatever this is, gets out of hand. I am, indeed, a freak.”
“Define out of hand.”
My cheeks flamed at how he made the colloquialism sound sordid.
Regardless, I straightened my spine and attempted to come across as reasonable and logical. “You know, before this turns into something else, and you think I’m one way when actually I’m another way.”
“Janie, you’re not the only one in this room who is freakish.”
“No you’re not. You’re a falcon, and I’m an ostrich.”
Looking very predatory, he narrowed his eyes. “First, you are using too many analogies today, and second…”
I interrupted. “See?” I pointed to myself with both hands for emphasis. “Freak!”
He ignored me. “Well, I have to admit that I can totally see the similarities between you and an ostrich.”
This surprised me; I thought he would try to defend me against my own insults.
“I…uh…you can?” It was my turn to slow-blink.
“Yes.” The slow sexy grin gradually claimed his features.
“Is it because I’m a strange bird who buries my head in the sand?”
He laughed as he rubbed his chin lightly. “No, it’s because you have long legs, large eyes, and—” his eyes moved over my hair, “a lot of plumage.”
Unthinkingly, I reached for the dreaded crazy-town curls and twisted the bulk of them, hoping to calm their chaos, but to no avail.
He smiled at me.
The full force of his smile felt almost painful.
“So, about dinner…”
“I…uh…I can’t go out with you tonight.” I was somewhat surprised by how normal my voice sounded. “You know, I’m meeting my knitting group. I told you before, before we…before you…” I huffed.
Quinn tilted his head to the side and he lifted his large hands to cover my shoulders. It was so strange to think that he could touch me at will and wanted to do so; that it was now suddenly ok and expected because the seal had been broken; the line had been crossed.
I held certain truths to be self-evident—truths about myself, about people, about the world, and about how everything fit together—and those were changing.
Everything was changing so fast—everything. The only thing that was constant was change.
His hands moved down my arms and he tugged me toward him, away from the desk. I allowed him to pull me to his chest as he swept the drape of hair from my face. He tilted my chin upward and kissed me softly on the mouth.
He didn’t release me right away; his long fingers were now under my chin, but he did shift his head far enough away so that his forehead and nose were in focus. Quinn’s eyes gazed into mine; I was once again struck by how blue they were, and I lost some of my breath when I endeavored to exhale.
He frowned. “You still want to go to your knitting group tonight?”
I nodded.
His gaze moved over my features as though looking for the veracity of my head-bob answer.
“You could always skip this week and spend some time with that guy you’re dating.” His hands moved to my waist, ostensibly to keep me in place.
I swallowed and pressed my lips into a smile. “That is very tempting.”
His mouth hooked to the side; he looked hopeful, an expression that seemed all kinds of strange on his typically reserved features. “We could go out to a movie.”
I wanted—no, I needed to keep my knitting group commitment. It suddenly felt very important that I be there.
“It’s my night to bring the wine. If I don’t go, they’ll start prank-calling senior citizens and then blame me for the ensuing arrests.”
The truth was that I needed time to figure this out.
I was very attached to Quinn, but I worried that it was a bit premature.
Forming an attachment to someone typically took me years.
I’d known him less than six weeks, and already I felt more for him and thought more about him than I’d ever felt for Jon.
For the love of Thor, I was missing him even when we were in the same room together. The force of the feelings, and the virtually all-consuming nature of them, made me want to hide under my desk until my brain and my heart and my vagina came to a consensus.
Therefore, I pushed him away, albeit gently, and insisted on meeting my friends.
His expression morphed into one that was familiar: taciturn. I noticed that Quinn’s jaw ticked and his mouth curved downward.
He sighed. It sounded pained.
“Janie I thought that—after—” Quinn licked his lips, released my waist, and stepped away. He crossed his arms over his chest and stood with his feet braced apart as though posturing himself. “What is it?” His tone was chipped.
I swallowed before answering. “What is what?”
The predatory look returned; what felt like hostility reticulated through his glare.
“We just…” His voice started to rise, and I watched as he swallowed with difficulty, glanced away, looked back into my eyes, and sighed again.
“You want to go spend time with your knitting group, tonight, after what just happened? After what happened last night?”
I started to worry my lip with my teeth, my eyes wide with feelings I found it difficult to explain. “Yes?”
“Yes?” His eyebrows rose expectantly. “Is that a question?”
“No?”
Quinn’s eyebrows pulled into a sharp V. “Are we on the same page here at all?”
“I don’t know what to say.” I hugged myself, gritting my teeth.
We stared at each other; the moment was protracted and stiff like a heavily starched shirt. His gaze—weary, accusatory, but searching—made me feel like I was an imbecile. Maybe I was.
In fact, I knew I was.
I had the opportunity to spend the evening with Quinn, who I really, really liked in every way, and I was passing it up because I was scared—yes, scared.
Fe, fi, fo, fum, scared.
Unable to hold his penetrating glare, I let out a slow breath, closed my eyes, and turned my face away from him, but just my face, and I shook my head.
“I don’t know what to say.” My voice sounded strangely lost to my own ears.
I felt rather than saw him shift closer. “If you’re not interested in me as something permanent, then you need to tell me now.”
My short laugh was involuntary and immediate, as were my words. “God, Quinn, you have no idea how permanent I’d like this to be. I’d like us to be Twinkies and cockroaches, death and taxes. But I…”
His hands were on me again, on my waist, slipping around to my back, pressing me to his chest, pulling me into an embrace. I automatically grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and clung to him.
“Then stay with me tonight.” His words were warm against my ear, and the earlier saturation of irritation was now absent. He sounded almost relieved.
“I just need…” My breath was ragged. I’d journeyed into uncharted waters, and my unintentional confession didn’t calm my unease, but it didn’t exacerbate it either.
I was in emotional limbo.
I rested my head against his shoulder and breathed him in; he was so warm, like a furnace. I closed my eyes.
Finally, I said the only thing that made sense, which was made easier by the anonymity of darkness behind my closed eyelids. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m afraid. I’m not used to it.”
I felt him smile against my neck where he’d dipped his head, and his lips brushed against my shoulder. He pulled away, slowly, with obvious reluctance.
One of his big palms caressed my cheek; his fingers pulled through my hair and forced my head back.
“Look at me.”
I took a deep breath, then opened my eyes.
Most of his earlier frustration was absent, and the way he looked at me made me feel uncomfortably but deliciously aware that we were pressed together from the waist down.
“We’ll go out tomorrow night, ok?” He kept his thumb on my face, rubbing it slowly over my cheekbone in trance-inducing circles.
I nodded.
“And you’ll spend the entire evening with me?” Quinn’s chin dipped to his chest so that he was peering at me through his eyebrows. “No feminist comic book organizing? No wine club knitting?”
“It’s a knitting group with wine drinking involved, but yes: I will spend the entire evening with you.” My chin wobbled just a little, making my voice shaky and raw.
He may have detected the flimsiness of my emotional limbo because he smiled at me in a way that relieved the pressure of his earlier frustration and began calming the muddled upheaval.
“Ok.” His fingers dropped from my hair, and he leisurely gained a step backward, his hands stuffing into his pants pockets like they needed to be restrained. The smile grew somewhat wistful as his eyes moved over my face. “I can wait.”