Pre-Logue
Dustin, back in COLLEGE
There’s nothing quite like the sight of dollar beer, the smell of cheap liquor at a college bar to help cheer you up on a down night.
And then there’s the women.
Personally, I fall in love at least three times a night.
Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I’ve never technically been “in love,” in the way you want to be with someone forever, and you know it and you say it and it’s true.
What I mean to say, is there’s nothing like seeing a hottie across the bar who gives you the eyes.
Ladies, don’t be coy about this. You know the eyes I’m talking about.
Fortunately enough for me, I’m tall, good-looking, and I’ve got that X factor of cocky swagger, so I’m used to getting the eyes, or as I like to tell my friends, los ojos.
Since dark-eyed blondie on the other side of the bar is giving me the look, I strut over to her with a big smirk on my face.
She smiles as I walk up.
“Hi,” I say.
She flips her hair and says “Hi,” back to me.
Ooops, I did it again.
I’ve fallen in love.
Kidding, of course.
I clear my throat. “I’m—”
“Hey Duke!” my friend Jenny yells from across the bar. “You’re here!”
She laughs. “I guess you’re Duke.”
I shrug. “I guess so.”
Jenny, a good friend of mine, has the worst timing when it comes to yelling things out to me. I wave to her and she notices I’m flirting with McHottie over at the bar, so she backs off.
“And you are?” I ask.
“I’m…” she clears her throat. “I’m Fio.”
“Well, nice to meet you Fio. Where are your friends?”
“I’m just passing through here,” she says.
“Oh. You don’t go here?”
She shakes her head.
“What do you do?”
“Oh!” She sounds surprised. “I’m a…a dancer,” she stutters.
“What kind of dancing?”
“Modern and stuff.”
“Modern and stuff. I’ve heard about that.”
“And what do you do, Mr. Big Beard?”
“That’s not all I’ve got,” I wink.
She rolls her eyes. “Puh-lease. Do you really have to be such a cocky asshole?”
“Is it cocky if you can back it up?” I question.
“You’re just going to come at me like this already?”
I shrug. “I think you’re gorgeous. I don’t see any reason to deny that, or to give you some bullshit spiel about how I ‘feel like you know you’ already. We’ve barely been talking for five minutes.”
“You’re weird,” she says.
“Very. Hey, if you can’t handle my weirdness,” I shrug, then grab my drink from the bar next to her and chug down the remainder of my drink. “I should go back with my friends.”
Her eyes soften, Fio licks her cherry red lips, then reaches out and takes hold of my forearm. “Stay,” she says, her voice almost a whisper.
When she touches my skin, I feel a bolt of electricity jolt through me. I wonder if she can feel it, too.
The fluorescent green top she has on tempts me with a tantalizing view of her cleavage. She runs a hand down her neck, like she’s daring to get me to flash my eyes away from her face.
“I think I’m going to marry you,” I blurt out, and after I’ve said the words, I’m strangely confused about where they come from.
“Oh, the old ‘marriage’ pick up line?” she jokes.
“I always propose marriage to girls I meet at the bar.”
“Any takers?”
“Not yet.”
“Keep trying.”
“I am.”
“So where are you from?”
“I’m from—” she stutters. “I don’t think it’s all that important. Do you?”
I shrug. “Why wouldn’t it be important?”
“Well, I’m just thinking about other things right now.”
“Other things?”
“You have very nice forearms,” she says, wrapping her hand around my right arm. “I can’t even get my hand all the way around it.”
She rolls her eyes, playfully. “I can tell you’re about to *that’s what she said.* Do not. Do it.”
“That’s. What…” I pause. “She…”
She shakes her head, and her face looks so fresh and innocent and she’s leaning forward inviting me, and I can’t resist.
I bring my face toward her and plant a kiss on her lips. She moans, reaches around and plants her hand on my back.
Then, as if she realizes we’ve just met, she presses her hand lightly into me.
“What…who…what do you think you’re doing?” she asks, her tone mystified.
“Kissing you.”
“You can’t just kiss me like that. I barely know you.”
I smirk. “Well, I just did.”
“We just met!”
“I don’t know what came over me,” I said, and that was the honest to God truth. Her lips felt like they had this magnetic pull, drawing me in. “Did you not like it?” I added.
She blew out a long, deep breath before admitting. “I did like it. I did, but I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I just want you to know, I don’t usually make out with sexy strangers.”
“Me either.”
I ordered us another round of drinks and went to the bathroom.
On the way back, I stopped twenty feet from where Fio was seated on a stool.
A drunk guy was passing by, and his wallet popped out of his pocket when he pulled his phone out.
The guy was so drunk he didn’t notice. Several people around him saw, but didn’t do anything.
Fio was a good ten feet from where it had happened, but she saw it. And she jumped into action, plowing around a crowd of people, picking up the wallet, and running to tap the drunk man on the shoulder.
He looked shocked, staring at Fio—I think he secretly hoped she was hitting on him and was a little disappointed when he found out she was giving him his wallet. He took it out of her hand and left.
I stood still in the bar and reflected for a moment. That was the sort of moment you couldn’t plan.
And it was the sort of moment that made me instantly, deeply curious about Fio.
Here we were in the middle of the chaos of a crowded college bar in Ann Arbor, and her first instinct was to help out some guy who didn’t even say ‘thank you’ for Fio’s deed.
I feel my heart fill with a warmth to which I’m not very accustomed. To say that pure love fills my heart is an exaggeration, because there’s some form of feral lust rocking through me as I watch her.
Dozes of eyes follow her as she sits back down at the bar.
I walk up back up to her.
“Hey,” I say, grinning, and I feel like the luckiest guy in the damn bar.
“Hay is for horses,” she says, biting her lip. “And if you somehow turn this into a sexual pun, I’m going to end you.”
I shrug. “What do you want? I’m only twenty-two years old. It’s the hormones.”
She laughs, and puts her hand on my mine. “I love how you’re so shameless. It’s refreshing. Most guys I talk to pretend they don’t want to have sex, and then try to pull the old switcheroo.”
I crack up. “The ‘old switcheroo? I have no idea what that is. Enlighten me.”
“When they’re like, ‘hey want to go back to my place and see my fish tank?’ and I’m like ‘just be straight. You have one goldfish, and you forgot to feed him yesterday.’”
“I promise I won’t bullshit you,” I say, running my eyes up and down her dress again. “So why emerald green? Is that. Your favorite color?”
She swallows. “It’s silly, but I just really like the color. I’ve always had a thing for emeralds.”
I wiggle my eyebrows. “Maybe I’ll get you one some day when we get married.”
She sighs. “Just when I was complementing your honesty, you go and say a thing like that.”
I shrug. “I mean I definitely want to sleep with you. But the more I talk to you, the more I’m considering a proposal.”
“How can you know that so fast?”
“I’m a good judge of character.”
“And what makes you think I would marry you?”
“Do you like sexy guys with a good sense of humor with big forearms?”
“You forgot to mention cocky,” she adds.
“Right. And that. And with a penchant for figuring out what kind of wedding ring you want soon after meeting you.”
She runs her hand over my shirt, feeling my abs.
“You can feel under the shirt if you want,” I wink.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Getting too flustered?”
“That’s one word for it.”
I look around the room. “Well, let’s get out of here.”
We finish our drinks, and arm in arm we walk out of the bar.
It feels so natural—like it’s what love is all about.
Not hurried.
The sun is low on the horizon when we get outside, and she’s smiling.
We make out during the ten minute Uber Ride, and by the time I open up my hotel room, both of our engines are revved up, so to speak.
“Let’s go,” she whispers against my cheek, and we kiss ravenously as the door slams shut. I pull away for a moment.
“Is it weird that I’m a little in love with you, Fio?”
“Yes, Duke. But you’re also joking.”
I tear off her dress, and she pulls off my shirt.
We romp around some more until we end up in the bed. Her skin is soft and tender against me.
“You might think that. But I’m not,” I say, deadpan.
She laughs. “Oh yeah. Like you knew ten minutes after meeting me that I was the love of your life, or something.”
“Actually,” I say, “I did.”
She can’t tell if I’m serious, lying there as I’m straddling her body with just a bra and panties on. I’m down to my boxers.
I’m gripping her hands and pushing them into the bed above her head, and she’s panting as I grind against her.
Before she can think too hard, or even respond, my mouth is on hers again and our hands feel everywhere on each others’ bodies.
I press a finger between her legs, and she lets out a loud moan.
I love the sound she makes, and as crazy and weird as it is—I think I might really be in love with Fio.
How would I know it though?
After she’s sufficiently warmed up, I sheath myself with a condom press my tip into her, and whisper in her ear, “Emerald green is really your color, isn’t it.”
I thrust inside her slowly and she grips me tightly.
And even though it’s been hours since I’ve met her, I can’t shake the divine thought that I’ve just met the woman I’ll be with forever.
“I love you,” I whisper softly into her ear, so damn softly, I wonder if she can even hear me.