Chapter Twenty-Six
–Haley–
“Haley!” Fletch says in a way than indicates he’s done this several times already.
I flop onto my back on my bedroom floor. “What?”
“The conclusion?” Fletch sighs. “What do you think of it?”
I make eye contact, giving the appearance of listening, but the paragraph he reads to me from his laptop turns into nothing but mushy sounds. My fake-listening doesn’t fool my Civics partner.
He sighs again and then snaps his laptop shut. “Let’s finish this later.”
“Wait!” I cross the room and grab his computer. “I’ll look at it. That’ll be easier.”
“Will you promise to stop tapping your pen?”
I let the pen in my hand fall to the ground. “Sorry. I didn’t know I was tapping.”
“Clearly I’m the most boring person on the planet.” Fletch fights a grin. “I’ve been saying things for thirty minutes, and none of it has stuck.”
Welcome to my world. And he’s not boring. He’s kind of stuck in my head, just not this Fletcher who’s reading me boring Civics Constitution project conclusions. The other Fletcher who promised to do anything I wanted in his room. Alone. Does he say that to all the girls? So yeah, I’m pretty distracted this afternoon. Probably from the knowledge that Fletch has his very first private-instruction victim (I mean customer) tonight. I get why this is bothering me, but I don’t get why logically thinking it through isn’t helping me not hate that he’s doing this lesson. He isn’t my boyfriend. He doesn’t owe me explanations for everything. And dancing is his job.
I open the laptop, and the bright Word document flashes in front of me. I read it through twice, but still nothing sticks. I glance at Fletch and grin. “It’s great.”
“So, you liked my reference to Barbie’s disproportionate figure?”
“What?” My eyes snap back to the screen, and I quickly reread the paragraph. “Where is Barbie—”
“Kidding,” he says. “I was just testing you.”
I close the laptop and shove it back at him—a little harder than I should. Fletch grunts from the force and looks around for space on my messy desk to place it. He finally decides to tuck the computer away in his backpack.
“Maybe you could concentrate better if your bedroom wasn’t attempting a shot at Hoarders fame,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “My bedroom looks like the bedroom of a teenager. Your room, on the other hand, is freakishly clean.”
Fletch eyes the five-foot-high pile of magazines in the corner. “That is not normal.”
I rest my hands on my hips. “Well, what do all those other girls you hook up with have in their bedrooms? Steel countertops and see-through drawers?”
He shrugs, his eyes on his cell phone. “I haven’t really gone in any girls’ rooms before.”
See? He can’t insult me without anything to compare to. But wait… “Never? Do you hook up at your house, then?”
Fletch looks like he’d rather discuss the economy or tax forms. “I don’t bring girls to my bedroom, either.”
“Your dad wouldn’t like it?”
“Hard to say,” he admits. “He wouldn’t forbid me or anything, but I’d be subjected to interrogation after, and I’d rather not be.”
But he invited me to his room. What does that mean?
Stop analyzing every little thing!
I shove the throw rug over with my big toe, exposing the wood floors so I can practice turns. I’ve done this so much that I’ve actually caused the wood to discolor, hence the need for a throw rug. “So not at your place or her place…but you’ve had sex, right? Or are you one of those ‘everything but’ people?”
“Why does it feel like I’m walking into a trap?” Fletch is straddling my desk chair, sitting backward in it. He lays his arms over the back and rests his chin there, watching me.
“You’re a great big mystery to me.” I successfully pull off a double turn and put myself in position to try again. “And I’m curious now about how everyone else goes about their sex life. I’m not a virgin, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t,” he says. “Keep your shoulders down on those turns.”
I stick my tongue out at him but drop my shoulders anyway. “Tate and I had sex, and then Jake and I—”
“Haley,” Fletch says, raising a hand to stop me. “You really don’t need to tell me this stuff. And I kind of assumed you and Tate had…you guys were together for what? A year?”
“A year and a half.” I spin to a stop and face him. “But that doesn’t mean we had sex. Kayla and Kyle Stewart have been together for two years, and they haven’t done it.”
Fletch stands up, and just as I’m mid-turn, he grasps my shoulders and holds me in place. Relief washes over his face. “Can you just stand still for a second, please? I’m getting nauseated watching you bounce around.”
I break out of his grip and plop down on my bed. “I’m sorry. I suck at being anyone’s partner when it comes to school stuff. I’m kind of an idiot, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Fletch returns to sitting in the chair and looks me over. “Have you ever considered—don’t take this the wrong way or anything—but you seem like one of those ADD people.”
“One of those ADD people?” I repeat like he’s just told me I’m ugly or have three boobs. “What does that even mean?”
“Maybe more like ADHD.” Fletch runs a hand through his hair. “I had an ADHD kid in my homeschool group. He couldn’t get any of the assignments completed, but he made these amazing castles out of toothpicks…”
“Toothpick castles? That sounds like it’s got savant written all over it. Now I’m an unfocused genius?” And yeah, my defenses are all flying up at once. I don’t like hearing anything that I can’t change. If I do poorly, I can work harder, study more. If my brain is wired to be this way for all eternity, well, I may not be able to do anything about it.
“He wasn’t a savant or whatever,” Fletcher argues. “Eventually his mom put him on medication, and he was like, the best one in the group. I think he’s going to med school now or something.”
I close my eyes and groan. “So, you think I need Ritalin?”
“There are plenty of other medications besides Ritalin,” he says.
I bury my face in a pillow. It’s Friday of week three of summer school. Only two weeks to go. Jamie has a C-, maybe a D+, either way, he’s passing. I’m passing. I have a B-, actually. Not an A. But whatever. Kill me now. I can’t take any more of this. “Can we please be done studying?”
“Haley?”
“Yes, Fletch. The answer you should give me is yes. ’Cause I’m seriously studied out, and I’m driving you crazy. I promised to never drive any more guys crazy, so it’s best if we end this session right now.”
“I’m going to answer your question from earlier,” he says, surprising me enough to get me to lift my head. “The one where you asked me if, when, and where I’ve had sex…”
I scrunch up my nose. “God, did I really ask that? I’m sorry.”
“I don’t mind answering.” He shoves his glasses back to the bridge of his nose, indicating that he might actually mind. “It just felt like a leading question, or like there was something else you wanted to ask me, but you’re avoiding it for whatever reason.”
Jesus. Add mind reading to the list of Fletcher Scott skills. I put my face back in the pillow. I’m braver like this. “I really want to know if you’re gonna have sex in the practice room during your private lesson today.”
He’s so silent, I get all nervous and squirmy. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that… Well, there might be, actually. Since she’s paying you, that could be a form of prostitution—” I shoot upright, my eyes wide. “Okay, I did not just say that.”
Fletcher’s mouth twitches, the right corner slowly rising. “You’re right. Civics study session is over. How about I give you an example of what might occur during a private dance lesson?”
My eyebrows lift up. “Two girls in one day. Sure you have the stamina for that?”
“First…” Fletch stands and then pulls me to my feet. “I would establish a no-talking rule.”
“What about moaning and other nonword sounds of pleasure?”
“In a real lesson, definitely not. But for you? Negotiable.” Fletch smirks.
“So, I’ve earned special treatment?”
“Maybe a little.” He gets back to business. “Next, we need to find a more suitable space because this room is…not acceptable.”
I glance around. It would be hard to fit two sets of feet in my turning spot. “Basement?”
He shrugs, and I lead him out—Fletch flips the light switch off and closes my door. Tomorrow we’re going to have a chat about his neurotic behaviors. Maybe I’ll even google some medication suggestions for him.
My basement has low ceilings, but it’s pretty clean and empty for the most part. We’ve got a giant flat-screen and a sectional sofa, but that’s it. Lots of empty carpet space. Unlike my bedroom.
“Okay, Yoda, what are you gonna teach me today?” Personally, I wouldn’t mind stretching out across the couch while Fletch strips off his shirt and dances in front of me, but would that really be a lesson?
“What are you in the mood to learn?” He steps back from me, assessing me head-to-toe like I’m going to need a costume change depending on what I pick. “Something fast and complicated, or maybe slow and sexy…?”
“How about somewhere in the middle of those?”
He nods. “Okay, cha-cha, then.”
Fletch jumps right into a basic explanation of this style of dance, but unlike with the Civics project, he keeps the words to a minimum and uses mostly demonstration and hands-on assistance. And honestly, I figured he was doing this little “dance lesson” as a method of flirting or pressing my buttons, and I’m almost disappointed that he’s actually teaching. But then I get into the challenge, and watching him move with such ease—it’s something completely other for me—and eventually the goal of moving together wins my attention.
He has music on his phone that we play at a low volume due to lack of speakers, but it helps to hear the beat along with moving to it. After I’ve got several eight counts mastered and even a turn, Fletch says, “Want to add a trick?”
Based on the way his face lights up, I can tell he likes the tricks. So do I. He grabs his phone and shows me a video of him and Angel, pausing it in the middle. I watch the move carefully—it involves Angel turning upside down and Fletch keeping her head from crashing into the ground. He replays it a few times and then waits for me to say something.
“So, it’s like a cartwheel, but I use your legs as the floor?”
“Exactly,” he says, surprised.
I shrug. “Cool. Let’s try it.”
He places me in a spot where I can’t kick the TV or the sofa, then he slides a couple of feet to the side. “The most important thing is to go all-out. Really kick into it, and I’ll do the rest, okay?”
“Okay, Yoda.” I replay the video in my head, and then I kick into the cartwheel, reaching for Fletcher’s legs and pressing my hands against his thighs. I’m standing upright on the other side of him seconds later.
“Not bad, Stevenson,” he says, flashing me his biggest grin. “It took Angel two rehearsals to learn that one.”
“Really?” That’s hard to believe considering how amazing of a dancer she is and the fact that I thought it was pretty simple. Unlike the cha-cha steps.
Fletch shrugs. “She’s a tad bit too tall for me. It works out fine, but that does a number on her confidence. Ricky doesn’t care, though. She says our chemistry makes up for it and then some.”
He’s back on his phone again, searching for more tricks. But I’m still sitting on this chemistry thing. “What does her fiancé think about all that chemistry you guys have? Or are they like, open or something?”
Fletch glances up at me, likes he’s checking to see if I’m serious. “I already told you that it’s not like that with Angel and me. Chemistry, like actors have. It’s not actual chemistry.”
“I think I get it.” I begin going through the steps Fletcher taught me on my own. “To you—all the long looks, the caressing, the hip grinding—it’s all just work. And for people like me, who make a social experience out of it, it’s one long, hot foreplay session.”
“Maybe,” he says, tossing his phone onto the sofa. “Maybe a woman I dance with gets all riled up, and then she goes home and screws the hell out of her husband. Nothing wrong with that, right?”
“I don’t know.” To me, it’s a gray area. “If I were the husband whose wife needed to be turned on by someone else in order to feel like having sex with me…” But Fletch isn’t the husband or the married woman, so he doesn’t really need to hear my opinions on this gray area.
“I see what the problem is now.” He steps into my dance space, getting his arms around me, moving through the steps with me. “You’re looking at it the wrong way. Me leading someone around the dance floor isn’t about me and how I’m affecting them.”
I completely disagree. I was 100 percent affected by him leading me around the other night. In fact, I’m feeling a little bit of that right now.
“Is there an employee handbook at your job that provides these perfect answers?”
“Relax your shoulders.” Fletch pulls me in close, his hand pressing between my shoulder blades, forcing my back straighter. “And no, my answer didn’t come from a work handbook, it came from my grandmother, and also Grandpa Scott.”
I look at him, one eyebrow lifting. I’m waiting for him to explain further.
“Allowing me to lead, it’s a gift,” he says, his voice low and sexy. “Respecting that gift means respecting my partner. She is the reason the dance is happening; she is the reason I have someone in my arms. I never forget who’s really leading.”
His breath tickles my ear. We’ve fallen into a new pattern—a waltz or maybe a rumba—that involves being completely pressed together, and I stop the jolt my stomach takes, the flipping and flopping, the goose bumps…it’s exhilarating.
Fletch steps forward, and I step back in time with him. “For most women,” he continues, “handing over control in a dance is empowering. Whatever pleasure they gain from it is one they sought out and took for themselves. It has nothing to do with the partner. The partner is interchangeable.”
As much as I’d love to fall into a trance right now, this speech is too much bullshit for me to be able to do that. “So, all those women yelling out “Scott, Scott, Scott” every Saturday night…have you let them know this yet? That the partner is interchangeable or whatever?”
“When you dance with someone, you get a thrill out of it, you get turned on, and then you give him all the credit, well where does that leave you?”
I shake my head.
“Powerless,” Fletch answers. “Your pleasure, your success, your sexiness, are not only uncredited to you, but also reliant on a specific person that you can’t control. It’s perfect grounds for codependency, self-esteem issues…”
I stop dancing and scrub my hands over my face. It’s like I’ve stepped into an alternate reality. I can’t decide if I should call bullshit or reprimand myself because maybe I’ve been the closed-minded judgmental one, assuming what all the screaming women were after last Saturday night.
God, I’m confused.
I drop my hands and stare at this strange creature in front of me. “So, you never get turned-on when you’re getting down and dirty with someone? You don’t have certain partners that do it for you more than others?”
“The laws of attraction…some people draw you in more than others. Why that is and what we’re all attracted to is getting into some complicated psychology and brain chemistry theories.”
“I want inside your head, for like five minutes,” I say. “Just to take a peek around and make sure these are all your thoughts.”
“Come here.” He tugs my hand, pulling me in front of him. “I’m gonna show you something.”
He’s behind me, his front against my back. “Close your eyes.”
I lean against Fletch, and he drapes an arm around my waist. I’m expecting a dance move to come, but instead, his free hand glides slowly up my thigh and over my stomach. I sigh and then clamp my lips shut, not wanting to give away any more signals. Light as a whisper, his breath tickles my neck, lips brushing my skin so perfectly. A shiver races down my spine.
“What are you doing, Fletch?” I mumble. “Is this a Juniper Falls samba or something?”
Those amazing fingers glide down my arm and then lace through mine. He lifts my hand and slides it over my midsection, creating more goose bumps. My head falls back against his shoulder, my eyelids relaxing on their own. God, this feels amazing. Best study session ever.
“Okay,” I concede, when Fletch moves our linked hands over my boobs. “You can have my panties. You’ve earned them.”
“But I’m not doing anything.”
“Bullshit.” I think if he just moved our hands a little lower… “I have a new goal for myself.”
“What’s that?” Fletch says.
“To figure out how to dance with you and have you get this turned on.”
He rests our linked hands on the waistband of my shorts. The muscles in my stomach quiver with anticipation. “Why does it matter? So long as you’re turned on.”
“Because it’ll make me feel powerful,” I say. “Getting you all hot and bothered.”
He laughs against my skin. “Fair enough.”
I feel like I’m on the verge of insanity. I can’t think clearly. I want to do a whole bunch of things I’ve never done before.
“Haley?” he whispers. “This feels good, right?”
“Hmmm.”
“Open your eyes.”
When I do, the normally dim basement lighting is offending. I squint at the brightness. From the corner of my eye, I notice first that it’s not Fletch’s hand on my cheek, it’s my own. And it’s also my own fingers that are teasing the waistband of my shorts. Okay, so that’s a little surprising. I don’t even remember him releasing my hand. How did it decide to move on its own?
“See?” he says. “You can take full credit for all of that.”
If only that were true…
I laugh because he’s pretty cute, trying to give me lessons in touching myself. Thanks, Fletch. “I was imagining you doing it.”
“Yeah, but that’s all within your control. You can pick anyone.”
“Even Channing Tatum? I’ve got a thing for male strippers.” I spin around to face Fletch just in time to see him grin and then laugh. I’ve made him laugh. Not an easy feat. “So, who do you pick?”
“Easy,” he says. “Blake Lively.”
I roll my eyes. “She’s way too tall for you.”
When he flashes me another grin, I’m literally putting all my energy into not grabbing the front of his shirt, tossing him onto the couch, and…well, doing whatever may come next. Instead, I press my palms against his shirt and shove him back a foot or two. “Can we practice more cartwheel things or something that doesn’t involve you whispering in my ear, telling me I have sexy girl powers?”
He studies me for a long moment, making my face heat up for the first time since we came down to the basement.
“What about the pact? I thought we were pledging against denying ourselves things we want.”
I laugh really hard. “Okay, yeah, I’m gonna have to add an amendment or addendum or whatever it’s called. Kissing is one thing, but where my head was going, that’s not something you just do on a whim.” Fletch opens his mouth like he might protest, but I cut him off. “Maybe it’s something you do on a whim, but not me.” Except that one time, I did it on a whim. “There are consequences with sex that aren’t there with kissing,”
He lifts a hand. “Okay, that makes sense. I was just checking to make sure you weren’t subconsciously hoping for a nudge from me.”
“Of course I’m hoping for you to push me further,” I snap. “Cartwheel things. Now.”