Chapter 39 Adela #2
I turn and look at him standing there in the alley in the gray afternoon light, his hair slightly askew from my fingers, the smile gone, but the trace of it still somewhere in his face.
I shake my head and walk, feeling a sting in my gut.
"Why?" His voice behind me, closer than I expected — is he following me or just leaving the alley?
"For your safety, Theo. This is goodbye."
I walk quickly across the street.
My throat hurts.
My eyes sting.
I reach my Range Rover and get in. I sit in the driver's seat with my hands on the wheel while my heart pounds, and then the passenger door opens.
Theo gets in and closes the door.
“What are you––”
He kisses me.
His mouth is on mine, cold from the outside air, and then his tongue fights against mine. I make a sound I didn't mean to make, and his teeth find my bottom lip. I grab something — his jacket, his arm, I don't know, I need something to hold onto.
"Theo," I breathe when he pulls back a fraction.
He kisses me again. Deeper. His hand wraps around my throat, not tight, just present, pulling me toward him like there's somewhere more to go. I go.
"I shouldn't," I manage between his mouth and mine. "Theo—" He swallows my voice. "Theo," I whimper.
Something slides down my cheek.
He pulls back, noticing it.
He looks at the tear without looking afraid of it. Just looks at it, then at my eyes, and then he leans in and licks it from my cheek. I make a completely involuntary sound and grip his jacket tighter.
"We shouldn't," I huff.
His hand is still at my throat. I can feel my own pulse against his palm. "We should," he says.
He pulls me back in and kisses me until my lips hurt, and my thoughts are completely gone, and I am nothing but at his will.
I pull back. "I need Chapstick. My lips are…"
He looks at my mouth. "They're bright red."
I flip the mirror down and look. They are. Swollen and red and unmistakably kissed, and I look away from my own reflection because looking at it means acknowledging what I just did.
"I've never seen them this red before," I admit, digging for the Chapstick out of my bag. I apply it, feeling the immediate cooling relief. Then I glide my lip gloss over it.
"Give me your number, Adela."
I shake my head.
His hand finds my face. Gently this time, just his fingers against my jaw as he stares into my eyes. "What's your number?"
I shake my head again and say, "I'll meet you at Barnes and Noble. Across the city, when they open."
"Saturday?" I say.
I shake my head. "Sunday."
I search his face. The thing in his eyes that I have never been able to fully read and have been trying to read since the first afternoon. "Okay," he says.
I lean back in my seat. My lips still hurt. My cheek where his tongue was is still warm. "Why did you kiss me?"
"So that I could ask you how it was."
I stare out the window, thinking about my answer, and another tear slides. "It was good, Theo."
"Just good?" He looks at the tear. "Is that why you're crying?"
"It was really good." I nod, trying to hide my face. "Amazing. Not like I imagined."
"You imagined it?"
The heat hits my face immediately. "Yes."
He's quiet for a moment. "So it's better than you imagined and you're crying because—"
"Because I have a boyfriend."
"Do you?" he asks, surprised.
I wince at his tone. "It's complicated."
He reaches for the door handle.
"I just told you I have a boyfriend," I say, hating that he’s about to leave.
He looks at me steadily. "Yet here you are telling me you imagined kissing me. I don't care if you have a boyfriend, Adela." His eyes drop to my mouth and come back up. "I don't see a ring. Until there is one, don't dismiss what you feel."
His tone makes anger stir in my chest. It’s not exactly towards him, but towards everything. I notice he doesn’t reach for the door handle again.
Another tear slides down my face. How I wish I didn’t have a boyfriend right now.
"Don't you have business to attend to?" I ask.
He watches me closely. "I can't leave you crying."
He reaches over and kisses the tear from my other cheek, his mouth barely touching my skin. I close my eyes.
"You shouldn't do that," I whisper.
He licks the next one.
I exhale. Long and slow. I open my eyes and look at him and make myself swallow it down — all of it, the tears and the heat and the want and the guilt sitting underneath all of them. "I'm done crying, Theo. You can go."
"Are you dismissing me?"
"This was a mistake."
He looks at me for a long moment. His expression doesn't change. Doesn't harden or soften or do any of the things expressions do when someone has been told something they don't want to hear.
"Fine," he says.
He leans in. His mouth finds my ear, and I go completely still. His voice is low enough that I feel it more than hear it. "This isn't a mistake." A breath. "You'll see."
Then he's out of the car.
The door closes.
And he doesn't look back.
I sit for a moment watching him walk away — the set of his shoulders, the pace of him, the way he moves through the world like it arranged itself around him rather than the other way around.
Then he turns the corner, and he's gone.
I touch my lips.
The Chapstick is there. The gloss over it. But underneath them, my lips are still faintly tender, still faintly his, and I press my fingers against them and feel the ghost of the pressure and close my eyes.
I move my hand to my cheek.
The places where his tongue touched. Still wet.
He’s not like I imagined at all.
He’s better.
I start the engine.
I pull out of the space and into the street.
This isn't a mistake. You'll see.
He said it like he knows something I don't.
I press my fingers to my lips again at a red light.
The way he said, you'll see.
Not a promise. Not a threat. Something in between that feels like both.
I think about his face when I mentioned his mother. The way it went briefly, completely unguarded — a flash of something real underneath all that control, there and gone so fast I almost missed it.
I didn't miss it.
I don't miss things the way I used to.
The light changes. I drive.
Sunday, I told him. Barnes and Noble on Sunday.
I have one day between now and Saturday. One day before Cody's father's house, and whatever that evening is going to require from me. One day before I have to be someone's girlfriend again in the most deliberate and dangerous way I've been asked to be it yet.
And then Sunday.
I touch my cheek.
I shouldn't go.
I drive home through the gray Seattle evening. I don't turn the radio on, and I don't call anyone. I sit with everything that just happened in the last hour — the job, the apron, the alley, his mouth, his hand at my throat, his tongue on my tears — and I let it be complicated.
I would meet you at the edge of the earth every day if you asked me to.