Three

Our chests are pressed together by the crush of people, and I know he can feel my breasts through my skimpy camisole and the thin cotton of his T-shirt. He cocks his head slightly, and I know he recognizes me too. But he says nothing.

Shay blithely continues, “Jonah, this is Vivienne Charles. She’s a good friend of ours, Carmen’s old roommate.”

I just nod. No words come to me. Once again that mixture of fear and desire surges through my veins, the same kind of fire I imagine injected heroin must feel like—an agony so sweet you’d do anything for it.

“We’ve met,” Jonah says, never looking away from me.

“Oh, yeah? That’s UT Austin for you.” Shay grins, still oblivious to the energy between Jonah and me. “Practically the largest university in the country, but somehow we all cross paths.”

“We met just the other night,” I finally manage to say. “On my way back from New Orleans, I had a flat tire. Jonah changed it for me. Thanks again, by the way.”

He inclines his head, acknowledging my words as little as possible.

“Hey, hey. Our hero,” Shay says. “You never mentioned helping someone on the roadside, Jonah.”

“It was no big deal.” With that, Jonah finally breaks eye contact, turns, and walks away. I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

If Shay notices my reaction, she misinterprets it. “Don’t let Jonah get to you. He comes across as rude sometimes, but that’s just his way. I mean, he’s good to work for—doesn’t treat me like his personal servant, the way some of the professors do. But never once have I heard him laugh.” Shay’s expression turns thoughtful. “Huh. I’m not sure he even can.”

“Why did you ask him here tonight? If he’s so—cold.”

“I asked a bunch of people from our department. Would’ve been mean to leave him out.”

That’s just like Shay. She’d invite someone she barely likes to a party before she’d hurt anyone’s feelings.

Jonah’s out of sight, and—for Shay, at least—out of mind. She resumes pushing me through the kitchen crowd. “Come on. Time to get you some sangria!”

It’s not like me, going quiet that way. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to teach myself to be more assertive, and . . . let’s say I’m getting there. But seeing Tall, Dark, and Dangerous again—finding out that his name is Jonah Marks—he threw me off. Embarrassed me.

Correction, I tell myself. He didn’t embarrass you. Your fantasies about him make you ashamed. Not the same thing.

Sometime later on, I’ll find Jonah among the other partygoers. I’ll say something simple and stupid. Basic party chatter. Great song, huh? That kind of thing. Then I’ll thank him again, and it won’t be weird anymore. After that I can walk away from this man for good.

Right now, though, I need to catch my breath.

Shay gets me sangria and grabs herself a ginger ale, and starts going on about how she wants to paint the nursery green, but Arturo prefers yellow. I’m excited about the baby and everything, but there’s only so much nursery talk I can take. So I basically zone out, saying “Yeah” and “Of course” whenever she pauses for a moment.

Almost against my will, I steal glances across the room at Jonah Marks.

He’s even more attractive than I remembered. Not beautiful, or gorgeous—any of the adjectives that would apply to a Ralph Lauren model or a boy-band star. Jonah’s features are too rugged for that. Too stark. He looks like the work of a sculptor who didn’t believe in polishing rough edges, who wanted you to see exactly where the chisel had struck. In some ways, he’s aggressively masculine: the dark red henley he’s wearing is tight enough to reveal the powerful muscles of his arms. But in others, Jonah looks strangely vulnerable. His waist is narrow, and his neck is longer than most men’s. His whole body looks as though someone took the macho ideal of a masculine form and brought it almost to the breaking point. Strong—and yet strained, beneath the surface.

This is a man who could be broken, I think. But he’d be more likely to break you first.

Jonah moves deeper into the crowd, until I can’t see him any longer. At first I wonder if I could extricate myself from Shay’s nursery-decoration talk to find him; then I wonder why I feel like I need to do that this second.

Maybe I shouldn’t seek Jonah out at all, if he shakes me up like this. Besides, what would I say? It was incredibly nice of you to help me out the other night. Remember how I treated you like you were probably a serial killer? Yeah, guys love that.

Then distraction arrives, in the form of Geordie Hilton, aka my ex-boyfriend.

“Vivienne!” Geordie’s smile is absolutely genuine. In his eyes there’s only the slightest flicker of doubt. He’s glad to see me, but he’s not sure I’ll feel the same.

To my surprise, I do. “Hey, you. Come here.”

We hug each other, the one-armed friendly hug that clearly says We’re not fucking anymore. I’m aware of Shay studying us, and other people too; the first meeting of the exes is always an attention-getter. Right now they’re looking at us half in relief (no fight), half in disappointment (no fight?). Shay sidles away, giving us as much space as this crowded party allows.

He says, “Did you have a good summer? You never post to Facebook, you know.” Geordie is the kind of hyper-extrovert who considers avoiding social media nearly criminal.

“I had a quiet summer, which is exactly what I needed. You?”

“Brilliant.” Geordie lived in Inverness until he was sixteen, and occasionally his accent and slang give him away. “The internship went great. Seriously, beyond my wildest expectations. We won amnesty for four immigrants in danger of exportation to home countries where they’d have been killed, either for political protests or sexual orientation. Four in three months! The wheels of justice rarely spin so fast.”

Most young attorneys who return to law school for an LLM do it to make even more money; Geordie’s getting his LLM so he can better help people. I don’t regret breaking up with him, but it’s good to be reminded of what I liked about the guy in the first place.

Plenty of the eyes watching us are female. More than one woman at this party hopes to make sure I’m out of the picture with Geordie, so she’ll have a shot at climbing into the frame. He’s handsome—okay, adorable—with floppy brown hair, puppy-dog eyes, and a smile that can be warm, or sly, or both at once. With his white oxford shirt unbuttoned at the neck, sleeves rolled up, his frame looks less skinny, more wiry. He’s the ideal hero of a romantic comedy.

But my life isn’t a rom-com, and it never will be. That ship sailed long before Geordie came along.

Besides, standing within arm’s length of Geordie does less for me than just glancing across the room at Jonah Marks.

Again I look toward the corner where I saw Jonah last, but he’s not there. Did he leave the party already?

If he did, I ought to feel relieved. I don’t.

Time to focus on Geordie again. “Good for you,” I tell him, meaning it.

We chitchat about his time in Miami for a while, then go our own ways within the party. I manage to dodge Arturo’s old roommate, Mack, who always stares at my tits; he’s one of those jocks with a thick neck and square head, like a canned ham in a Longhorns T-shirt. For a while I get to talk with Kip, the department secretary in my section of the art department, but then he receives some urgent text that sucks him into the cell phone dead zone. Mostly, even though I ought to be mingling and meeting new people, I hang out with Carmen. We’re best friends for a reason, and besides, she has a new crush to describe in detail.

As for my crush—if you can use such an innocent word for what Jonah Marks does to me—I refuse to let myself look for him again. Nor does he seek me out. Either Jonah’s on the patio or he blew out of here early, because I don’t see him once.

What I do see is Geordie going back for a third glass of sangria.

And a fourth.

And a fifth. That’s assuming I didn’t miss any refills, and I might have.

It’s on the fifth sangria that Geordie stumbles into the coffee table. A few people’s drinks slosh onto the carpet, which makes Carmen swear under her breath; one of the candles rocks but doesn’t fall over to start a fire. Barely.

People laugh, but there’s an edge to it. Geordie’s drunker than anyone else at this party, by far.

“Hey,” I say to him as gently as I can. “Let’s get you some air.”

Even as she dabs paper towels against her carpet, Carmen defends Geordie. “It’s all right! The rug’s dark. It won’t even show.”

“No, Viv’s right. She’s right.” Geordie must be smashed; otherwise he’d never risk my wrath by calling me Viv. “We should all listen to—to Viv—a little more often.”

I get up and sling one of his arms around my shoulders. If he or anybody else misinterprets this, it’s on them.

“Why don’t I listen to you more?” Geordie stumbles against me, but I manage to keep us upright. “You’re always so smart.”

“That’s me. The genius. Come on.”

With my free hand I slide the glass door open and guide him onto the brick patio. Only a few people linger out there now, and I pay attention to none of them. Instead I get Geordie to the ice chest, where—amid several bottles of beer—I find a Dasani for him.

“Drink this, okay? You need to drink nothing but water the rest of the night. You should eat something too.”

Geordie clasps the bottle of water, but he doesn’t take a sip. Instead he gives me this sad smile. “I should’ve tried harder with you. I should’ve made it work.”

Is he going to cry? Damn, Geordie’s a sloppy drunk.

He just keeps talking. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be the partner you wanted me to be.”

“It’s okay. Really. Please drink some water.” I prop him against the patio table. Around us, a few people are snickering at Geordie; I’m still loyal enough to feel angry on his behalf.

“I mean, it’s for the best. I know that. I do. But it hurts sometimes, doesn’t it?” Geordie’s slurring now. “We should’ve had more fun while we could.”

“Less fun,” I say. “More water.”

Finally Geordie takes a sip, but it doesn’t shut him up for long. “I just couldn’t do that for you. Any of it. And, oh my God, I feel so bad about the rape thing—”

He did not say that. He did not start talking about this in public, at a party, with strangers standing around listening.

Except he did.

My face goes cold with shock, then hot with shame, as Geordie continues. “I mean, kink yay, right? Everybody should love kinks. And you get to have yours! You do. But it’s not my kink. At all. Playing rapist freaks me out. But I shouldn’t have been such a dumb cunt about it.”

“We’re not discussing this here,” I manage to say. “Please stop.”

It hits Geordie then, where we are and what he’s done. The impact gets through all the booze. He sucks in a breath. “Oh, fuck.”

I don’t want to look at the faces of the people standing around who just heard that, but I can’t help it. A few of them look shocked. Others look amused. That creeper Mack leers at me in a way that makes my skin crawl.

Worst of all is the one face that remains impassive—Jonah Marks, only a few feet away, who must have heard every word.