Chapter 28 #2
The girl held up an imaginary bottle of perfume, affecting a voice somewhere between Julia Child and Oprah, maybe? “A new fragrance—Temptation, by Wicked Angel. Nineteen ninety-five, and if you call in the next fifteen minutes, we’ll throw in one of our signature sinfully silky lingerie bags.”
He’d never met anyone whose brain moved so fast.
Abandoning her invisible perfume bottle with a flourish, she brushed herself off in a way that made zero difference to the completely destroyed gauzy nightgown she still insisted had deep, pepper-spray-holding pockets.
Her eyes were squinting again, but closer up, he could see them well enough to tell they were a blue gray. Like the ocean at night.
“Stop that,” she said.
“Stop what?”
“Smiling at me. It’s creepy.”
“You can barely see. How can you tell I’m smiling at you? And my smile has been called many things. Handsome, dreamy—”
“Cocky?”
“Charismatic.”
“Tomato, tomahto.” Her full lips pressed together as if she were waiting on him. She gave him a come here motion he definitely misinterpreted for a second, before she said, “May I have her back, please?”
“Her?”
“The tree.”
“The stick in a pot. Sure.”
She hugged the broken plastic pot, her voice coaxing. “Don’t listen to that mean ol’ boy. I’m gonna to fix you, sweet girl.” She touched the tree bark. When her attention shifted back to him, that spark returned to her eyes. “Stop.”
“What am I doing now?”
“You’re looking at me like-like-like—”
“Like…?”
“Like I’m the quirky”—she affected a singsong voice—“not-like-the-other-girls girl, and I’m not any of those things.
I’m not quirky. I’m normal. I don’t usually dumpster dive in a nightgown at two AM to rescue an abused plant.
I don’t listen to enigmatic indie music.
And I don’t like niche foreign films or sushi.
Stop looking at me like I’m a manic pixie dream girl that will make you come alive. Gross.”
“So far you’re more like a grouchy demon nightmare sprite.”
“Wicked angel, remember? Though given that I was just at a fire dance, nightmare sprite might be better—if it didn’t sound like the kind of cocktail that would taste amazing but have you puking in the alley by nine fifteen.
That, or a Dungeons and Dragons character.
” She nearly tripped as the long dress got caught in the back of her shoe.
“What’s Dungeons and Drag— Whoa, careful there … How did you fire dance in flip-flops?”
“I wasn’t in the flip-flops for the fire dance. We were supposed to be barefoot in order to allow the equinox to cleanse our energy.”
“I’m sorry, what exactly were you doing?”
She groaned and picked up the pace for several strides before slowing again due to the treacherous flip-flop situation.
“I was told I was supposed to join a club. My adviser said it was the best way to show future employers that you’re a team player.
And also, college experience and all that cliché bullshit. ”
Nicky tilted his head. “I’ve seen a lot of movies about American college experiences, and none that I know of involved fire dances to cleanse the— What were you cleansing again?”
“My energy. It was the Celtic Heritage Society’s Twelfth Annual Beltane Brantley Ridge Waterfall Bonfire Night.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“Christ, fine. You caught me. There was a girl, okay.” She clutched the plant tighter.
“She was really hot. And I’m Irish too. I thought it would be a hoot.
And she kept giving me all these signals, but she showed up with a date.
A middling dude. Okay? Then someone mentioned that when they started construction on the new student affairs office, they dumped all the old stuff here.
That janitor wouldn’t let me rescue this poor unloved fig tree when I saw him cleaning things out, so I figured this was my only shot to grab her. ”
“Ah. Sorry about the girl. And sorry it … uh … wasn’t a hoot. But at least you got the, er, tree.”
“It’s okay.” Her shoulders sagged. “Also, for the record, I like men and women. And don’t like bi erasure.”
“Noted.”
“Bisexual people exist, you know?”
“For the record, I’m pretty gender nonspecific too.”
“Oh.” She stopped walking. “Well, okay then. Coolio.”
He’d never actually said those words aloud before. But between the tequila shots he could still taste in his mouth and the misty night air, this fast-talking, voluptuous forest dryad had completely bewitched him. Body and fucking soul.
She turned and held out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“You still haven’t, actually.” He shook it.
Her hand wrapped around the plant more securely, and she started walking again. “What’s your name?”
“Depends on who you ask.”
“God, can you just give a normal answer to a question. All right, what if I asked your mother?”
“Nicky.”
“Your father?”
He chose the accent closest to his father’s. “Nikolaj Andrew Frederik Christian Holm V.”
“Talk about a mouthful.” She turned around. “What are you, some kind of secret prince?”
He laughed. “No. Just have a pretentious dick of a father who’s sort of a diplomat, in a manner of speaking.”
“What’s your mom’s deal?”
“American.”
“Star-crossed lovers?”
“More like the biggest mistake of her life was when what she did in a hotel in Switzerland didn’t stay in a hotel in Switzerland.”
The girl turned to face him, her brows pulling together.
It hit Nicky then how pathetic all that had sounded. “Now you stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a sad little rich boy.”
“I think you’re a druuunk little rich boy. I can smell the tequila from here. Anyway, I really doubt your mom actually thinks that.” Her lips pouted out. “Well, it’s been swell meeting you, but I gotta dip.”
“Where are you going?” The change of subject was about as graceful as the rest of the conversation had been.
“Home.”
“Campus is that way.”
“I don’t live on campus.”
“It’s two”—he checked his watch—“two seventeen AM.”
She offered him a cool appraisal. “And I have pepper spray, a not-dead plant I could beat a potential assailant with, along with my biting wit to keep me safe. I have a history of biting.”
“I’m not even going to respond to the biting thing, but sure. So can I walk with you?”
“Can you what?”