HANK
COME ON, ABBY. None of that matters now.” Somehow, we’ve gone from talking and laughing, and Abby giving me the broad strokes of the years since that brutal goodbye, to her primed to say it again.
Christ, I’m not ready.
I want more of her laugh, more of her smile. More pretending that last day ten years ago didn’t happen. I want the easy company I never seem to find with the women I meet these days. Not that I’ve really been looking for that kind of connection, but hell, stumbling onto it with Abby again like this makes me not want to give it up. Not quite yet, anyway.
We’re almost back to her car, and there’s this pressure in my chest that’s getting worse the closer we get.
“Do you really need to leave?” I look around the empty lot like it might hold the key to hanging on to her a few more minutes. “It’s still early. We could go back inside and—”
She’s shaking her head, looking up at me with a bittersweet smile that doesn’t offer much hope.
“You should go back, but I think I’m good. I’ve wished I could tell you how sorry I was for so many years, and now that I’ve finally had the chance, I’m not sure I have it in me to make a bunch of small talk with people I didn’t know that well the first time around. Besides, I’m having brunch with the friends I really wanted to see tomorrow.”
“Oh I see how it is… the friends you want to see?” I tease, needing to lighten the mood, to see her smile. Just one more time.
I hate the idea that she’s been carrying around so much guilt about the way our relationship ended. Yeah, it was shitty and rough and nothing I saw coming. But we were kids, despite what we believed at the time.
And I’ve never felt like there was any bad blood between us, just a bad breakup and a broken heart or two. It happened. And it was a hell of a long time ago.
“You’re more than welcome to come,” she offers with a smile not quite bright enough to ease the ache in my chest.
“I’ll be on a flight to Switzerland at six a.m.”
We stop at her car and she nods. “That old excuse.”
I take her hand and remember the thousands of times I’ve done it before. “I’m glad we got to talk. It’s been too long.”
A few strands of her hair catch in the breeze and I tuck them behind her ear. Only just like with hearing my name and holding her hand, the tactile sensation from the soft strands between my fingers stirs up memories I thought safely put to bed. It gives me ideas I shouldn’t be considering.
“Hank?” Abby whispers, quiet and confused. “What are you doing?”
Losing my mind. “Giving us a better goodbye.”
My fingers curl in so the backs of my knuckles stroke her soft cheek. This is so messed up. I know what I’m doing is wrong, but she’s looking up into my eyes.
I kiss her.
By adult standards, it isn’t much of a kiss. A single brush of my mouth against hers and a lingering contact I’m not quite ready to give up. And yet that barely-there kiss has my heart slamming against my ribs and fire racing through my veins.
Christ, it’s like I’m fifteen again. Except instead of this being my first kiss with Abby, it’s our last, and I don’t want it to end.
I’m not talking about not wanting it to end like I didn’t want all the other Abby stuff to end before.
No, this is different.
I. Don’t. Want. This. To. End.
But too soon, that soft clinging contact is gone, leaving only the warmth of her breath against my lips.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
I open my eyes, realizing I’m not the only one still holding on. Abby’s free hand, the one that isn’t still trapped in mine, is wrapped around my tie.
She hasn’t let go.
A shadow passes over her eyes. “You’re not in Chicago for good.”
She isn’t really asking, but she wants to hear me say it anyway. She wants to remind us both that fundamentally nothing has changed. That we need to stop this before it goes too far, and hell, I know she’s right.
“I’m not. Tomorrow’s just a business trip, but all indications are I’ll be out of Chicago in a few months if this deal goes through.” And even if it doesn’t, there will be something else. There’s always something else.
It’s the deal breaker that lost me this woman ten years ago. After the way Abby grew up, she couldn’t watch me leave and she wouldn’t wait for me to come back. I didn’t understand until it was too late the first time around, but now I do.
And with her in my arms, it’s good that neither of us loses sight of the fact that this fundamental difference between us hasn’t changed.
She nods her understanding, and I wait for her to take a step back, for the shake of her head and quiet laugh. Only it doesn’t come. Instead, her eyes drop back to my mouth and the world around us starts to slow. Because I know that look. I fucking love that look.
But Jesus, this has to be a mistake. We aren’t teenagers. We aren’t starting something new.
So what am I doing, uncurling my fist to sift my fingers into the dark silk behind her ear? Using that hold to tip her head back? Waiting until her heavy-lidded stare finds mine again?
What am I doing?
Only it doesn’t matter what I’m doing, because then Abby is the one tugging at my tie to bring me closer. She’s the one murmuring her agreement that this is a much better goodbye a scant inch from my mouth.
She’s the one short-circuiting my brain, and now the only thing I’m thinking is that I can do much, much better.
This time when my lips meet hers, there’s nothing barely-there about it. I kiss her hard, gathering her close, then closer still as she opens beneath me with a shuddering gasp I feel all the way through me.
Her fingers knot in my hair, then race over my shoulders and neck. Christ, her touch is electric, building the charge in my chest by the second.
We’re breathless and frantic. Devouring each other with a hot need that edges the line of control.
Just another minute and we’ll stop.
Just another taste.
My hand wraps in her hair and she moans around the thrust of my tongue.
Yes.
The part of my brain that’s still functioning is rolling through the data…
We’re in a parking lot.
The press is camped out on the other side of the school.
I don’t do serious, and this is the girl I learned how to love with.
We should stop. No maybe about it.
But Abby’s breasts are pressing into my chest as she wraps her arms around my neck, and now there’s another part of my brain speaking up… and this is the part I know better than to listen to. It’s the part that dirty-talked me into climbing up the old oak outside Abby’s bedroom window… when her parents were home. It’s the part that swore up and down security wouldn’t notice if I let myself back into the lab at MIT after hours just to finish my experiment. And right now, it’s casually noting the parking lot is empty.
It’s asking me why, if the press knew we were back here, they aren’t calling my name to score a frontal face shot.
“Hank,” she gasps, and there’s no more mental chatter. I press her against the car, pinning her with the weight of my body.
Her fingers tighten in my hair, and she opens wider to my kiss. I’m bowing over her, reaching for the back of her knee and bringing it up along my side so I can run my hand higher.
Her skin is so smooth…
Higher.
So soft…
Higher still.
So warm…
I’m grazing the edge of what feels like the same style of cotton bikini panties she used to wear.
Holy hell, those panties.
I remember the press of my tongue against the damp cotton, the taste of her soaking through, making me so hard I nearly spilled in my jeans. I kiss her harder. Deeper.
She’s making these little needy noises that have quite literally become the stuff of my fantasies. Like ten years’ worth, accumulating from the last time I heard them. They’re doing something to me that takes my control.
I want more.
I want her breath fracturing at my ear as I tease her. I want the hot clutch of her body around me as I sink deep. I want those aquamarine eyes locked with mine as I make her come.
A peal of feminine laughter cuts through the night air, and we freeze.
Abby’s eyes pop wide open, holding with mine for a panicked beat before we jerk apart.
Using my body to block hers, I search the distance for the source of the laughter.
And then I see it—him—them. It looks like Mitch Reider headed toward the bleachers with some blonde I can’t identify giggling in his arms.
Shoving my hair back from my eyes, I let out a relieved breath.
“It’s just Mitch, and I don’t think he saw us.” But he sure as hell saved us. I owe the guy, big.
We’re in a goddamned parking lot.
Exposed for any reporter or passerby.
A hairsbreadth from having sex in or against an early-two-thousand-model sedan.
What the hell are we thinking?
I turn back to where Abby has already adjusted her dress and mostly smoothed her hair. But one look at her kiss-swollen lips, curved with the barest hint of a smile, and I know exactly what I was thinking. Because I’m thinking it again. “Come back to my place.”
I can push my flight back. Hell, maybe cancel it altogether.
Taking a deep breath, Abby peers up at me, opens her mouth, and then quietly laughs, looking away.
Which doesn’t bode well for my plans to see her hair spread across my pillow when the sun streams in tomorrow morning.
She tries again and this time manages the words. “Thank you for our better goodbye.”
ABBY
MY HANDS ARE shaking as I pull out of the faculty lot, Hank’s reflection shrinking in my rearview mirror until he turns and walks back toward the party.
He asked me to go to his place.
Not the house down on Third where we used to drink Cokes in his mom’s kitchen and play dirty Scrabble in his basement. He hasn’t lived there since the summer after he left for college and even then he was only back for a week before he left again for an internship at NASA. As with the scant handful of other visits, I didn’t see him, but I knew. And two years later, the Wagners were gone, and for the past seven years that house belonged to another family with another life I wasn’t a part of. But my memories of that time… in that space… are perfectly preserved.
I don’t want to see where he lives now. I’m possessive of my memories. Of the moments I keep tucked away in my mind, and don’t want to risk them by introducing a new setting.
Even if it’s only for a night.
Because of course it would only be one night, no matter how good being with Hank felt.
While almost everything between us has changed, one thing hasn’t: Hank is the guy who leaves. And after how long it took me to find my life here, I can’t let it go. I don’t want to.
It’s not that late, but the roads I take back to my apartment are quiet beneath the canopies of mature oaks, ash, elms, and maples. I drive carefully, keeping under the limit. I haven’t had a drop to drink, but I’m still drunk on that kiss, on the heat of his mouth and the fire rushing through my veins beneath his wandering touch.
I’ve long since passed being shocked that Hank kissed me or that I kissed him back. Or even how quickly it flamed out of control. What I’m stuck on is how much further that kiss would have gone if we hadn’t been interrupted.
All. The. Way.
The only thing I was thinking before that giggle interrupted us was how to get the back door of the car open without having to take my hands off Hank.
And considering it’s been two years since I’ve had sex—and then only after a handful of dates with a perfectly nice guy I really wanted to fall for but didn’t—it’s nuts that in less than two hours I’d been ready to go there. And in the parking lot of the building where I work, no less.
I smile as I turn down my street. At least one thing hasn’t changed. Hank still has the ability to override my better judgment.
I park in my regular spot and follow the walk up to my building, taking a quick look over my shoulder before letting myself in. That look should be because I’m a cautious, sensible woman, and I always check to make sure no one is behind me before opening my door. And usually I do, but tonight I’m not looking for a potential assailant. I’m looking for Hank.
But if there’s ever been one thing he was good at, it was letting me go.
THE NEXT MORNING, a man in a suit way too sharp to be a career delivery guy comes to my door. I bring the nondescript cardboard package upstairs and open it at my kitchen table. Inside is a sleek black box with folded gold and gray tissue paper inside, and a card scrawled in Hank’s hand.
Meant to return this last night. Your phone has been resuscitated, so feel free to continue using it. Alternately, you might find this X-series more reliable in its durability, water resistance, and superior operating system. It will be the best phone on the market when it comes out next week… and has been synced with all the data and contacts from your existing device. Any issues, my numbers are programmed in.
Great to see you again,
~Hank
When I pull the new phone out of its space-age packaging, it’s fully charged and everything Hank promised and more. I’m delighted and touched and laughing, because it’s also just so like the guy I used to know. But at the same time, there’s a heaviness in my heart I can’t quite ignore, because as wonderful as Hank is… there’s no misreading his closing line.