Chapter 21 #2
During class, as we work, Professor M moves from station to station, giving guidance to each of us. She has mostly positive comments about my creation—her word, not mine—with a few suggestions for improvement. I’m relieved as she moves on to Darcy.
I can’t help overhearing Professor M quietly commenting on her project.
“I suggest you work on making the outfit more wearable. Maybe you could try making a statement that says something other than feel sorry for me. Maybe go for something more elevated.”
Embarrassment for Darcy wells up. Shit. I try to concentrate harder on what I’m doing and ignore them.
But I’m floored when Darcy pushes back. “I’m not into classic design if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“No,” the prof lowers her voice, but I listen harder, concern overriding shame. “Not classic. But you can stand out and be different in a brighter, prettier way. Think about it.”
Darcy nods but turns away and starts packing up her things even though there’s still twenty minutes left in class.
Professor M moves to the front of the room and claps her hands to get our attention, aiming a pointed glare in Darcy’s direction as she pre-empts the girls' exit.
“My darlings, you have two days to finish your projects and bring them to class where you’ll leave them until the fashion show dress rehearsal.
Work hard, all night if you have to, to make your fashion vision become a reality because I have a special opportunity for you.
” She pauses. No one makes a move or says a word.
“I’ve invited the world-renowned fashion designer, head of one of the largest and most prestigious and multi-award-winning design shops in New York City, Ellery Yumo, to attend the fashion show at the Winter Snow Ball.”
The air is sucked from the room by our collective gasps until it must be a near vacuum. I drop my pin cushion.
That’s… unbelievable.” I want to say more, but everyone in the class talks at once, clapping, and one guy whistles.
“She will be assessing you and she does have openings for summer internships.”
Without another word, Professor M raises her hands to calm everyone, then sweeps her hand in the air, dismissing us.
After class, I realize I might not have a chance to see Trick for a few days while I finish my project for the deadline, and it’s like all the caffeine in my blood dried up, taking away too much of the energy I’m going to need.
As soon as I get back to my room, I text Pammy.
Me: Favor to ask--two things. First, don’t let Trick go to the team lunch if I don’t catch him.
Second, I need you to go out and be seen in public with him to create some social media gossip and also to give me a chance to work on my design project for the Winter Snow Ball Fashion show without any distractions.
Can you do it? I owe you BIG!
Pammy: Sure thing. No worries. You don’t owe me anything. I haven’t had this much fun in… ever
I smile
Me:
Lying back on my bed, I call Trick, hoping he’s finished with practice and his shower so he can take my call.
He picks up on the third ring. “How’s my favorite distraction?” There’s a smile in his low, rumbling voice. He sounds like he’s trying not to be heard. The eruption of noise in the background confirms that he’s in the locker room.
“It’s a good thing I didn’t FaceTime you.”
“You sure about that? Wouldn’t you love a screen full of naked hockey players?”
“I’d love a screenful of you in your naked glory. Better yet, skip lunch and hide away with me.”
There’s a pause. “Skip lunch? You mean you want me to go without eating a meal?”
I laugh. “It’s a big ask, I know. I’m actually jealous of your relationship with food. What do you say, Trick?” I hold my breath, anticipating our private escape.
He chuckles. “I might be crazy, but it appears that the call of my dick is stronger than the call of my empty stomach, which is now kicking and screaming in a valiant, yet futile effort to win my attention.”
My giggling started halfway through his confession, and my chest clenches so hard around the joy that I might actually cry, wishing the feeling would stay, even as it fades into the past.
“Meet me at my apartment in fifteen.”
“How about ten?”
“I adore you, Trick.” Shit. The words spilled from deep down, below my conscious mind, from where my feelings swirl in their mysterious lair, happy to play havoc with me and my reality.
Reflexively, out of some emotional survival instinct, I disconnect the call before I need to explain myself, before I need to hear his response, or worse, his lack of response.
When he arrives, the apartment is quiet, and I pull him into my room as is becoming our habit—or rather our necessity.
“How did you know a mid-day rendezvous is exactly what I needed?” He sheds his clothes as he talks, not stopping after he takes off his jacket and shoes, continuing until he’s naked.
I watch shamelessly as bulging hard muscle is revealed and then stare at the gleaming erect pillar of his magnificent cock until my mouth actually waters.
“Why bother with a pic,” he says, his eyes aiming thier predatory gleam at me, his voice gravelly. “When you can have my naked hunky body in the flesh.”
He reaches for me and helps me out of the remainder of my clothes.
“I do… want you, your naked…” I’m too distracted by his hands on me to say more. My earlier unplanned declaration of adoration pops into my head, but the disturbance is fleeting under the sensual onslaught of Trick’s skin against mine.
He wraps me in his arms, and my breasts flatten against his warm hard chest, my nipples pebbling as they drag along his skin.
He half carries me to the bed, not bothering to get under the covers, not bothering to close the blinds, not bothering to say another word as he covers my mouth, and I lose my breath, then my mind or any ability to think.
All I can do is feel as the world shrinks to only him against me, touching me, inside me, exploding my world into a million glittering pieces.
***–
It’s late afternoon and already getting dark before we dress again, mostly because Trick’s stomach won’t shut up and I feel guilty depriving him of food. I throw on an old T-shirt of Trick’s that he left here and I maybe forgot to return on purpose.
“Let’s go off campus to get some food,” he says.
He doesn’t have his car, so he drives my turquoise Mini Cooper, and we escape to the coast to a place called Markey’s and get some take-out fried clams for me and burger and fries for him.
“Some people say Markeys has the best fried clams around,” I say as we drive to an empty spot along the beach. He doesn’t take the bait—so-to-speak. “Jennings Market has the best.”
“Of course they do.” His lips are tight as we pull over and park.
“You don’t like the smell of fried clams, do you?”
“No.” He gets out of the car and I follow him to the deserted picnic area and sit at the table.
He heaves in a breath of the salty breeze.
“I’m sorry, Trick. I should have realized—”
“No. It’s mostly the smell of raw fish, or fish while it’s cooking that bothers me. But in the closed space of a car…” He shrugs and looks away, clearly uncomfortable with the topic.
I push his box of burger and fries in front of him. “These are yours if you still have an appetite.” I push my box of clams as far away from him as I can manage and still eat them.
I want to tell him I get how hard it must be for him to work around fish all the time and deal with it secretly. I want to ask him why he doesn’t tell his dad and urge him to do it because I can’t stand the idea of him being miserable another minute.
But I don’t say anything because I know he absolutely doesn’t want to talk about any of that. He plucks a fry from the box and it takes no time for all the food to disappear.
He takes my hand/ “Let’s take a walk.” We walk on the empty beach in Salisbury. It’s low tide and getting cold, a typical winter evening.
“It’s beautiful out tonight,” I say. “The sky is so clear. Maybe that’s why it’s so freaky cold.” I squeeze his hand, relishing the warmth.
“You mean invigorating.” He hugs me close to him, but when a gust whips us with frigid sea air, we go back and sit in the car.
“You make my car seem tiny,” I say as we shut our doors against the wind.
“It is tiny, sugar lips. But it’s hella nicer than my old beat-up car.” He leans in and kisses me, gathering me in his arms. “Speaking of old and beat-up, you look great in my old T-shirt.”
“It’s not my usual style, but I like it.” I dip my head and sniff. “Your scent lingers in the material somehow.”
“You know you’d make anything look good. You even make my oversized shapeless game jersey look like a work of art when you wear it.”
“You only say that because you don’t know any better. I should teach you some fashion sense and make a designer version of your game jersey. A version that would make your eyes pop to the moon and back.”
“That’s my kind of fashion lesson. Teach away, my design diva.”
“You don’t think I’m serious, do you?”
“Fifi babe, the day you showed up at the rink looking like you stepped out of my most impossible dream, I stopped thinking, serious or otherwise.”
My heart hiccups and I swat his arm, feeling off balance and fuzzy, like a swarm of hot bees took over my body. Then I leave my hand on the hard ropey muscle of his arm, my skin feeling too hot. A bubble of laughter escapes.
He goes on undaunted as usual. “But when my brain restarted, there was no choice but to take you seriously and any other way I can get you.”
His lopsided grin makes me really laugh, and I roll my eyes, maybe more at myself than him.
He tugs me to him and kisses me.
“I’ll prove you right then,” I murmur.
“Right about what?” He murmurs back, nibbling my lips the way that makes my eyes flutter—not to mention my belly and my heart because they’re fluttering all over as if the entire collection from Butterfly World in Florida popped in for a visit.
“My redesign…” Nibble. Flutter. “Of your hockey jersey…”
“You mean your hockey jersey, the one with my name on it that you’re going to wear?
” His low rumbly voice reverberates down to my toes, and he gives me one of those predatory looks.
Tightening his arms around me, he drags a hand up my back until he clenches it in my hair, holding me in place to face him. As if I could look away.
“Yes. No, a new feminized version of it.” My voice is a heartfelt whisper because he’s nothing but serious now.
“Make it extra special—and by that, I mean sexy.” His words sound big and clear against the uptick of wind outside the car.
I can’t help laughing. “I’ll make it sexy—and wearable in public at the same time.”
“I’ll try not to be disappointed.”
“You’re incorrigible.” But he’s pushing all the right buttons to light up more than my funny bone.
“That’s why you love me.” He rumbles as he nibbles my ear, and I shiver, then go as still as the night. What did he just say?
“I love making you shiver.” He sucks on my neck, and I can barely hold myself together because I want to fall apart in his arms so badly. Does he really think I love him, or was that just nooky-talk?
“Talk of love will do that to me,” I say, hearing the strain in my voice. He hears it too.
He lifts his head to face me. “Talk of…” The puzzle fades from his expression. “Oh… I—”
“Don’t you dare apologize.” I pull from his grasp, wishing I could turn back the conversational clock a few sentences and get back the teasing vibe.
“I wasn’t going to.” He stops talking when he should have kept going.
“Your voice box seems to be allergic to talk of feelings.”
“You’re right. Feelings are my kryptonite. The slightest exposure to mentions of the L-word, and I lose all my powers.” His smile is crooked, but I’m not fooled. I see the tension.
“Be serious.”
“Now you’re looking for trouble. You want me to collapse into a heap?”
“Stop it. Be real. For just a minute, Patrick.”
He keeps his mouth shut, but his eyes are wide open and staring at me with devastating seriousness. My breath hitches and my heart tap dances like Shirley Temple gone wild.
“I’m falling for you deep and hard.” I let the words whoosh from me like fairy dust on a breeze, feeling magical and inevitable and so fragile.
He blinks, and then before I take my next breath, he takes it from me. His mouth captures mine and holds on. His arms wrap me in giving warmth. The kiss is like an exchange of vows, our tongues mingling, communicating in their own language.
A blanket of tingling awareness settles over me as I sense every part of him touching me, his hands as they caress my back, his hard chest and beating heart against mine, his lips as they suck and kiss, trailing a path to my ear.
He stops and nibbles while I catch my breath and lean into him, feeling every little thing in technicolor, memorizing it so hard and intensely that I know it’ll last years and eons, past any other memory and never stopping.
He murmurs, his voice shaky, “I’ll catch you, Fifi. Because I’m already there, waiting with open arms.”