Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Summer
I really miss Henry’s apartment. The dorm is noisy, even after curfew, and it smells bad. Constantly. Like sweat and granola bars and sex. A lot of sex that I’m not having—although I am on Sundays, and that’s awesome.
I pour myself into classwork and try not to think about how quiet his apartment is during the day. I make it until the third Friday night in September, when a party breaks out just as I’m crawling into bed. I give up and text Henry.
Can I come to your place for the whole weekend? Pretty please? I know you said Sundays only, but there’s a party going on, and I want nothing to do with it.
He replies immediately.
Where are you? I can pick you up in ten minutes.
I tell him I’m at the dorm, and there’s no hurry. He shows up nine minutes later, and I run out from the lobby to meet him before he can get out of the car.
“What’s wrong?” he asks as soon as I’m in the passenger seat. He has a ferocious look on his face, like he’ll kill someone for me.
I like it, but that’s truly not necessary. “People were just having a party. There was no way I could study.”
“Nobody was pressuring you to do something you didn’t want to do?”
I shake my head no and catch his face in my hands, kissing him quickly on the mouth because he’s a sweet, lovely man who worries about me.
His face softens as he puts the truck into drive. “And you didn’t want to join them? It’s a rite of passage.”
“Ew, no.” I cock my head to the side. “I thought you said I couldn’t drink?”
“That was. . .” He shrugs. “I don’t know. The summer had different rules. I’m not going to tell you that you can’t be an average college kid.”
“You don’t drink much.”
“I had my youthful indiscretions, though. And now I like a pint of beer while I watch a game or a bottle of wine with a nice meal. I just didn’t over the summer when you were in my charge.”
“They were doing tequila shots when I left.”
He laughs. “Those have their place, I suppose.”
“Do you have anything to drink at your place?”
“Not tequila.”
“What do you have?”
“Beer.”
I wrinkle my nose.
He slides his hand over my shoulder and squeezes the back of my neck. “We can stop and pick up some wine if you want to try something. Maybe something bubbly.”
“Like champagne?”
“Whatever you want.” He squeezes again, his big hand warm and comforting, and we’re happily silent for the three-block drive to the grocery store.
“Have you eaten?” he asks me as we walk through the front doors.
“I had a slice of pizza at dinner. The cafeteria food is taking some getting used to, too.”
He stops in his tracks. “You didn’t say that before. Okay, let’s do this right. First, we need to decide what we’ll cook, then we’ll pick a nice wine to go with it.”
Easy. I want a big salad and fancy pasta. Something we can make together.
We get the produce first, then the rest of the supplies, including muffins for breakfast in the morning, and finish in the wine aisle.
I have no idea what I want, so Henry picks a couple of bottles.
“Nice dinner in tonight?” The cashier is just making idle conversation, but I still slide a sideways glance at Henry to see if he’s nervous about the inquiry.
He grins. “Yep.”
I didn’t know how much I needed to see him be easy about this until now. Something unlocks in my chest, and I brush my hand against his, my pinky finger hooking his for just a second.
Baby steps toward being a real couple.
Baby steps toward me telling him with my whole chest just how much I love him.
Back at the apartment, he tells me to get comfortable.
I don’t move an inch. “I thought we could cook together.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“It would be. . . romantic.”
He slides his hand into my hair, holding me still while he kisses me softly. “I like the sound of that. A lot.”
“Good.”
The bottle of wine he chooses is sparkling, not champagne but something similar, and he pours me a little glass to sip while we cook.
It’s bubbly and not as sweet as I thought it would be, and I really like it. By the time our food is ready, my glass is empty, and I refill it while Henry is setting the table.
Over dinner, I tell him about school, and he updates me on his favorite—and least favorite—customers. He confesses that he’s started going to Brewed Awakening for his mid-day coffee instead of Wake Up Call because he likes the proximity to campus. “It feels like I’m a little closer to you.”
I beam. “That’s because you are.” I give him a sly look. “Mid-day, you say? Your usual after lunch caffeine refresh?”
“Don’t come looking for me,” he says gruffly. But he’s grinning.
Running into each other mid-week would be a nice surprise.
Just as he’s about to say something else, there’s a knock at the door downstairs. It’s loud and carries on long enough it feels urgent.
Henry frowns. “Stay here. Sip more wine. I’ll be right back.”
As his heavy steps fade down the stairs, I think about the warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest. This must be what it feels like to be tipsy, I decide. And I wouldn’t like this if I were at the dorms—it wouldn’t be warm, but hot and achy and dangerous—but with Henry, it feels good.
I laugh to myself, feeling quite pleased with how the night is going. I’m thinking about having drunk sex with the hot guy who is very good with his mouth when I recognize the second voice moving rapidly through the shop downstairs.
“I went to campus looking for her, Henry, and someone said they saw her getting in your truck—the barber’s truck, they said—and you kissed her.”
Holy shit. Mama. I shove the wine glass away from me, but there are only two place settings at the table. And Henry lit a candle. Can I get rid of that in time? The wine bottle?
Do I look like I was just imagining Henry’s face between my legs, his hands clamped on my thighs, forcing them apart as I plead for him to stop, but never really mean it?
Probably.
I try to stand but then think better of it and do my best to look like I’m innocently eating dinner, a regular, non-romantic dinner.
She bursts into the apartment and shrieks when she sees me.
“Hi, Mom,” I say half-heartedly.
“Summer!”
“I thought you were on a cruise ship.”
“We have a few days in dock in Seattle, so I decided to come and see you.”
I want to snap at her that we’ve had telephones for, like, at least a hundred years. She could have called or texted or given me a heads up through literally any method, but now is maybe not the time to be sassy.
“And now I see that you’re. . . you’re. . .”
“Eating dinner?”
“And the wine? Summer Anne Figaro, this is not what you are supposed to be doing with your time here.”
“Really? Because I’m pretty sure you sent me here with a broken plan. Did you know that people party every night on campus? This is way more civilized than that.”
“I taught you better than that, too. You don’t need to party anywhere, here or there. You need to get good grades and graduate college.”
Oh, now I can’t help but be sassy, even if I know better. “Uh, hello, I know that. And I will. But having a nice dinner on a Friday night with Henry is no big deal.”
Her gaze narrows. “I don’t like the way you say that. It’s too casual. He’s your elder, Summer.”
Oh, I’m aware. Behind her, he flushes, and I swear, if he gets weird about this, I will tie him to a chair until he shakes that nonsense off. “Henry is—”
He clears his throat.
I glare at him.
My mother pivots and, I imagine, also glaring at him.
He crosses his arms over his chest, fixes a stern look on me, then addresses the intruder.
“Jennifer, I know you have strong feelings about protecting Summer from this world. But she is a grown-up who can make her own choices. And as a grown-up, she is my peer. Please don’t project your parental expectations of her onto me as well. ”
“Henry, once upon a time, you wanted to be her father.”
I gasp out loud. Like, legit screech.
That is a specific tidbit of information he didn’t once share with me. Not when he was touching my tits, not when his face was buried between my legs and not any of the times he put his cock in my body and let me call him Daddy.
What. The. Fuck?
They both look at me. Henry looks ashamed, and my mom looks confused. “Summer, why do you think I sent you here?”
I wince. “Because he’s a guy you know in the same town where I got into college?”
“I told you. He’s the only man I trust.”
“Well, news flash, Mama, he’s also the only man I thought I could trust, too. But he never shared that particular detail with me. So maybe he’s not so trustworthy after all.”
I’m shaking. It’s time to go.
Henry’s face is bright red now, but he doesn’t try to stop me. When I get to the top of the stairs, I gesture for my mother to follow me. “Come on. Let’s go be buzzkills at the dorm party. I hope you like sharing a twin bed.”