14. Chapter 14 #3
“Who would’ve thought you prefer getting intimidated?” I muse, with a smile playing on my lips.
She scoffs and quickly looks out the window.
“Play a favorite song of yours.” I jerk my chin toward the console.
“Why?” She narrows her eyes.
“Because you’re right.” I shift my hand on the wheel. “We barely know each other. I’d want to change that.”
I glance over to find her studying me. She quickly looks down at my phone and starts typing something before the song changes. I glance over and read the name: “10,000 Emerald Pools” by BORNS.
“This is your idea of getting to know me?”
“Would you rather I jump straight into traumas?”
“Music is a good start.” She lifts her head to hide a smile, and her legs are resting looser now.
We’re moving well.
“Does that mean I can ask you things too?” she asks.
Anything. Everything.
“Sure.”
She looks back at the road. “What were you like as a kid?”
My brows dip. Interesting first choice.
The memories force themselves into my mind. A fresh bouquet of wildflowers in my hand for my mother, the other full of pebbles as I run toward the house for dinner with Nico behind me.
“Small,” I say.
“You?” Her brows go up dramatically.
“Hard to imagine, huh?”
That gets me the smile I wanted.
She tucks one leg up slightly in the seat, getting more comfortable now without noticing she’s doing it. The pink dress rides higher on her thigh. I look back at the road before my thoughts get hot too early.
“Were you weird?”
“Were?” I glance over.
She laughs once and rests her head back.
We keep driving with the music shifting and the miles dropping away.
The bus gets farther ahead when traffic opens, then closer when it bunches up.
She keeps picking the songs, and I keep asking her about the lyrics, pretending I don’t know them.
I like her explaining things to me. I like her talking to me.
Underneath all of it, the thing from last night is still there, but it feels threaded with something else.
The whole convoy stretches and tightens with the highway, cars shimmering in the heat, the sky too bright to stare at for long. Lilly has one leg tucked under her now, with the bottle of iced tea in her hand, more relaxed than I’ve ever seen her.
Music opens the door the way it always does. Little things first. Favorite songs and guilty pleasures. We’ve now shifted to favorite foods.
“What’s yours?” she asks and takes a sip of the iced tea.
“Cherry pie,” I answer.
My mother’s, specifically. With too much filling. The kitchen smelling like sugar, fruit, and butter while my father steals a piece for us off the tray and my mother pretends not to notice.
“Cherry pie?” Lilly echoes, unconvinced. “That’s… unexpected.”
“It’s pie.” I shrug. “Why is it unexpected?”
“I don’t know.” Her mouth twitches. “You seem more like a steak and cigarettes guy.”
“Both go great with pie.”
“You’re unpredictable.”
“That so?” I glance over.
“Yes.” She looks down at the label on the bottle and peels at it. “I never really know how to act around you.”
“You don’t have to act any way.” I keep my eyes on the road.
“It’s just…” A few silent moments pass before she turns to me and sets the bottle in her lap. “You know you’re a little crazy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s it?” She blinks.
“What else do I say?” I ask, amused.
“You somehow found my address.” She stares at me. “You parked outside my house. You came to camp when you clearly didn’t want to be there.”
“Wanted to be there less. Wanted to be close to you more.” I correct.
And I also do things for her I haven’t wanted to do for anyone in years. The need to take care of her is a need I’ve only had for one other person.
The music plays while she thinks it over.
“You’re not even a little uncomfortable admitting that?”
“Why would I be?” I shrug. “Would you rather I lie to you about what I want?”
“There’s a middle ground between lying and stalking.”
There’s that word again. Stalking. Sure, I stepped over some lines, but I would never do anything to harm Lilly or put her in danger. I know how it looks. Too much. Too fast. Past whatever line most people stop at.
She makes a little face and says jokingly, “I mean, what’s next? You break into my house?”
I’ve pictured it more than she’d like to know.
When I don’t laugh with her, she slowly turns her head toward me.
“Zed.” She looks at me. “That was a joke.”
“Don’t joke about things you don’t want me considering.”
By the time I turn onto her street, we’ve spent two hours talking. Real talking, not the usual push-pull bullshit where she gets flustered and I get entertained. Music. Food. Movies. Little scraps of her she handed over without noticing how much I was taking.
She doesn’t notice the turn before her house comes into view, and she looks out the windshield.
“I guess you didn’t need directions.”
I fight a smile as I pull up in front of the house and kill the engine. The sudden quiet in the car is immediate. The tick of cooling metal, the faint hiss of the vents, and the rattling of her purse as she gathers it off the floor.
I get out before she can touch the handle and open the door for her. Something I’ve watched my father do countless times, and it’s stuck.
By the time she’s around to the front, I’ve already got her duffel out.
“I can take it.”
“You won’t,” I say, shutting the compartment.
She exhales through her nose and follows me to the door. The house looks different in daylight.
What a creepy-ass statement.
“I’ll take it from here.” She takes the bag from me. There’s nowhere else for me to put it without physically carrying it inside, and she clearly thinks it’s a bad idea.
For a bit, neither of us moves. The afternoon is bright—birds chirp all around us, and a lawn sprinkler hisses two houses down. The normal, boring suburban soundtrack of a place where a man should kiss a girl on the cheek and go the fuck home.
Lilly shifts her grip on the duffel and looks up at me, clearly building nerve for something.
“Thank you for the ride,” she finally says and toys with her bottom lip between her teeth.
I can give you a better one.
She looks like she’s about to say something else, but instead, she leans up on her toes. Her face falls at an angle, her lips going for my cheek.
Cute idea.
I catch her jaw with one hand before she gets there and turn her face where I want it.
Then my mouth’s on hers. I kiss her the way the whole drive’s been testing my patience since we left camp.
All the questions. All the songs. All the little facts she handed me.
The pink dress she’s wearing, the coffee at breakfast. Her father asking if she slept well while I sat across from him with the ghost of her pussy on my fingers.
All of it.
Her duffel bag slips out of one hand and thuds against her leg. She makes a soft sound into my mouth, and I take it, deepening the kiss.
Her free hand catches at my shirt. My thumb shifts once against her jaw, and I feel the exact second her body gives up trying to play polite. She leans into me, mouth opening, soft and eager, and I walk her back until I press her against the door.
Bad idea.
Any idiot could turn the corner and get a hell of a show. And I’m already way too close to not caring that we’re in broad daylight.
My other hand lands on her waist, then lower. I catch myself before it gets where it wants to go. I know she feels it too because her breath breaks and her fingers tighten in my shirt hard enough to stretch it.
I drag my mouth off hers just long enough to hit her jaw, then the corner of her mouth again, then back, and that’s the exact second I know this is about to get out of hand.
I pull back reluctantly. Her lips are wet and swollen already. Her eyes are wide and hazy, and her cheeks match her dress.
I still have my hand on her waist, so I make myself let go.
“Get inside.”
I take one step back because if I don’t, I’m putting her against her own front door, and that will be the end of whatever fragile good intentions I had for today.
“Unless you want to get fucked against the door,” I add.
That gets through. Her throat works on a swallow, then she moves. She grabs the duffel and fumbles with her keys. She finally gets the door open, slips inside, and, with one last lingering look, shuts it.
I stare at the closed door, breathing like I ran the last ten miles. Then I laugh under my breath.
Because behind that door is a girl who now knows two things for certain:
I don’t need directions to her house.
And I’m done leaving things unfinished.
***
“You too. Thanks.” I end the call.
The news anchor keeps talking through the TV as I look through the glass panels and over the water beyond them. Too much space and not enough noise in this house.
I toss my phone onto the couch and stand there for a second, doing nothing.
After I dropped Lilly off, I moved as much as I could. I worked out, showered, met up with an old friend for lunch, did anything to keep the day going.
Now it’s night, and there’s nothing left to do except sit inside my own skull and listen to it drag the same thing over the floorboards of my mind.