Chapter 15 Not a Date
Not a Date
I didn’t give it too much thought either way. The students were well-behaved, and I was more than happy to keep an eye on things with Cooper for company.
Our conversation earlier in the night had been a sort of breakthrough for us. With the barrier down, conversation flowed like a chain reaction.
“You used to run in Central Park? Me too! I wonder if we ever passed each other and didn’t realize it.”
“So there’s this taco place on 72nd—it’s so cheap and so good, but you have to make sure you are close to a bathroom.”
“The old books at the back of the library, and—I know this is going to sound weird, but bare with me—they smell so good. Exactly! The lignin!”
For hours, words poured between us. We talked about everything. And nothing. None of it was important, but it felt meaningful. I felt closer to him. My crush was growing legs, and there was nothing I could do to stop it, not that I wanted to.
By 11 p.m., the party was winding down. I was exhausted from a full day—and a little tipsy from the booze and sugar—but I stayed to help the October Lovers clean up after everyone else left.
To my surprise, Cooper insisted on staying too, volunteering with Russel and Jose to lug buckets of water from the lake to douse the bonfire and the scalding-hot sand beneath.
“Sand,” Cooper explained, “is essentially silicon dioxide with a few other minerals mixed in for variety.”
“So, it holds heat for a long time,” I reasoned.
“Exactly,” he said. “This time tomorrow, the spot under the fire will still be hot enough to burn skin.”
Everyone agreed that we had to make the beach safe before leaving for the night. No one wanted anyone inadvertently getting burned if they walked this way in the morning.
Once the beach was cleaned up, I waved goodbye to Russel and the others as they headed back to their dorms. Then, Cooper and I were alone.
“Are you headed back to Brookside?” I asked.
“Where else?” he replied.
He fell into step next to me, and together we followed the tree-lined path around the lake to the faculty residences.
The night seemed impossibly dark and quiet after hours beside a roaring fire.
There were probably stars out, but they were hidden behind the tree canopy.
I was tempted to take out my phone and use it for a flashlight, but the useless brick was dead in my pocket.
I would have to rely on my other senses and familiarity with this path rather than sight.
As it was, the darkness had a kind of insulating quality about it. There was privacy in darkness. Intimacy. I tried not to think about it, but I was intimately aware of where Cooper walked by my side.
“I hadn’t expected to have so much fun tonight,” I said. Darkness was one thing, but silence was too much for me to handle. “It was really nice spending the evening with you.”
I started second guessing the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. Would he take it like a back-handed compliment? I definitely didn’t want him to think I had been expecting spending the evening with him to be horrible.
“I had a really nice evening too.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. He wasn’t mad. I hadn’t said anything too stupid.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to talk to someone like that. I had Silvia in New York, but I don’t really have any close friends here. Tonight almost felt like a date.”
Fuck, I’d done it again. That was a stupid thing to say. I was going to scare him away and ruin our budding friendship.
To my surprise, Cooper chuckled. “High school Jack would never have dreamed that he’d have a date with Princess Melanie Burke.”
I bristled, feeling a stab of hurt. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly, and I thought I heard something like surprise in his voice. “I just mean—we both know you were way out of my league.”
“Oh,” I said. “I don’t know about that. I think if we had run into each other at a bonfire ten years ago, we might still have ended up talking.”
He barked a laugh. “The difference is that I never would have gone to a bonfire ten years ago. I either would have felt too awkward to go or I simply wouldn’t have been invited.”
“Why would it have been awkward?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“You’re not going to make me spell it out, are you?”
I could see his profile in the dark, his face tipped down toward me. I leaned over, bumping his arm with my shoulder.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I wasn’t that scary.”
“It wasn’t that you were scary. You were untouchable. There was an aura of confidence around you that everyone was drawn to. I wouldn’t have made it within twenty feet of you.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I scoffed.
I could feel him shrug. “Maybe you couldn’t see it from the inside, but it was painfully obvious from the outside.”
“You could have come in,” I insisted. I was starting to feel an unfamiliar itch, something that wouldn’t go away just from scratching. It felt like shame, or maybe regret.
“No,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “I couldn’t have.”
I fell silent. I couldn’t contradict his feelings. This smart, funny, sexy man had felt excluded, or at least overlooked. I silently cursed my younger self for being so oblivious. So careless.
Away from the heat of the bonfire, there was a sharp chill in the fall air. I rubbed my hands down my arms as I walked.
“Cold?” Cooper asked.
“Aren’t you?” I replied.
“I wish I’d brought a jacket,” he said, “so I could give it to you.”
I glanced up at him, his face dark in the shadows. “You’re sweet,” I said, at a loss for what else to say. We had been talking for hours, but suddenly I had no more words.
He could have said that I should have brought a jacket or that he should have brought one for himself. But he wanted one only to give to me as a gesture of… what? He didn’t like me like I liked him. I couldn’t rationalize it, but my heart twisted anyway.
His jacket would probably be heavy and warm over my shoulders. It would probably smell clean and earthy, like him. Or perhaps, he would keep the jacket on and tuck me inside, warmed with his body heat.
We entered Brookside and climbed the stairs to the third floor.
Tension radiated through my muscles as we drew closer to the inevitable goodnight.
In the middle of the hallway between our two doors, we paused.
I dug my keys out of my pocket, but once I had them in my hands, I still couldn’t bring myself to unlock my door.
It had been a surprisingly perfect night, and I hated to have it end.
“I had a really nice time,” I said, internally cringing at the cliché line. This was not a date!
He ran a hand through his dark hair. “I’m glad Alan brought me out.”
I rubbed the key between my thumb and finger, vaguely aware of the cool metal. This was beyond awkward. Why the hell was I being so awkward?
Because this feels like a date, my brain supplied. He’s supposed to kiss you at the end of the date.
It was a bad idea. A stupid, reckless, incredibly bad idea. We had barely spoken to each other after our almost-kiss. An actual kiss would also have consequences. At the moment, I didn’t care. I wanted him to kiss me anyway.
He stared back at me, searching, looking for the answer to a question that neither of us could ask out loud.
I looked back at him, eyes wide, and bit my lip to keep from just coming out and screaming kiss me! If one of us was going to pull away, it would have to be him.
His eyes dropped to my mouth and darkened. My breath caught in my chest as he took a step toward me. And then another. And then he was right in front of me, and he slipped a hand around the side of my neck, thumb resting at the corner of my jaw.
I tilted my head back as he lowered his mouth to mine, our lips meeting in a slow, sultry kiss.
Fireworks went off in my brain.
My keys clattered to the floor as they slipped out of my fingers. I wound my arms around his neck, pulling him deeper into the kiss.
He tasted even better than I imagined, sweet and smokey from the s’mores and spicy from the whiskey and ginger ale. It was intoxicating. I couldn’t get enough.
He seemed similarly entranced, stepping forward and pushing me back against my door. My soft curves molded against his chest and stomach until there was nothing between us but cotton and friction.
Meanwhile, our hands explored each other as if they had minds of their own. I mapped the hard planes of his shoulders and back through his soft henley. My flesh tingled and ached as he traced paths from my ribs to waist to hip and back again.
Desire roared through every synapse like a lightning storm. Whatever I was feeling had evolved well beyond a crush. What I should do was push him away. That’s what a rational person would do. But rational thought had no place in this hallway.
His mouth moved to my jaw, my ear, my neck, peppering the contours of my face with kisses.
I couldn’t hold back my soft moans as he found sensitive places, triggering burst after burst of electric pleasure.
My head tilted back against the wall, giving him better access to my throat, and he took full advantage before moving back to my mouth to swallow my wanton sounds.
Without warning, Cooper broke the kiss and dropped his forehead to mine while he caught his breath.
“I’m sorry,” he rasped. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
What? No!
Maybe?
Of course making out like teenagers was a bad idea. But kissing him felt so good. I wasn’t ready to stop.
My hands moved to the sides of his face, holding him still so I could look into those dark eyes. His words said one thing, but his hungry gaze and fingers holding onto my hips hard enough to bruise said something else. I was not alone in my desire.
“Yeah, okay,” I panted, before adding, “one more minute though.”
I pulled his face back toward mine and pressed my lips to his again. For the briefest moment, I worried I had made a mistake. Then, he kissed me back with even more intensity than before.
He wanted this. There was no doubt in my mind. I had been crushing on this man for weeks, and he wanted me too. The reality of him was more than I ever imagined. I never wanted to stop.
Seconds stretched to minutes as I lost myself to the sensations again. I could have been happy kissing him all night.
“Please,” I breathed as my lips moved to his jaw. “Do you want to come inside?”
He pulled away again, this time holding me at arm’s length. His skin was flushed, lips wet and rosy. His chest was rising and falling in a perfect mirror of mine.
“I’m sorry,” he panted. “We shouldn’t.”
The words sank in, slowly and then all at once. I was wrong. He didn’t want me back. He was saying no.
“Oh,” I said. “Um… right. That’s fine. Sure.”
My eyes cast to the floor as I reached down to retrieve my keys. I didn’t look back while I turned the key in the lock, sure that my face was radiating mortification.
“I guess I’ll see you around,” I muttered as I closed the door.
I stood with my back pressed flat to the inside of my door until I heard Cooper go into his own apartment. And then I screamed into a pillow until my throat was as raw as my nerves.