Twenty-Two

I held Hunter’s hand on the way back home. It felt like the right thing to do. Like we were on a real date, and we could be a real couple. My mind never strayed far from thinking about my secret. About finally telling him and letting things fall where they may. There it was again. That falling word.

“You look amazing.”

“Thank you. You look pretty good.” Understatement.

“Oh this old thing? Shucks,” he said.

“Dork.”

“Goddess.”

He took my hand and kissed the back of it, taking his eyes off the road for a moment.

“So you’re not still mad at me? I mean, it’s okay if you are.”

“I’m not mad exactly. Well, not anymore. I just… I never thought you had that in you.”

“I did,” he said. “I’ve… I’ve lost control like that before, but not for a long time. I wanted to go after you, but I was so ashamed of what I’d done. I didn’t want you to feel   threatened by me at all.”

“I can take care of myself, Hunter.”

“I know.”

“Let’s just not talk about it anymore. Talking about it isn’t going to change it. It happened and that’s that,” I said.

“It’s not, but I can agree to a change in topic. What would you like to discuss?”

“What did you say to the piano player?”

“I just told him that I’d been a jerk and there was a special lady who needed a very special apology.”

“Let me guess, I’m the special lady.”

 He shook his head. 

“Nope it was the lady at the next table.”

“The eavesdropper? How dare you.”

“Are you kidding? Nothing turns a man on like giant gold earrings and an animal print top. Rawr.”

 I laughed as we pulled into the student lot. This time I waited for Hunter to come open my door.

“So do you have anything further planned for this lovely evening?” I asked.

“Well, I know how much you like that wedding movie and it always makes you laugh, so I figured we could watch it with some kettle corn. Sound good?”

“Sounds perfect.” I could see the whole scene in my head. Me and Hunter in our pjs, with me draped across him on the couch, laughing so much our stomachs hurt.

“You don’t have to tell me tonight. One secret is enough for a day, don’t you think?”

“Yeah.” Part of me wanted to blurt it out, to unburden myself and kill the suspense already. He wanted to know. How could he not? I’d practically pried his secret out of him, like digging a pearl from a clam. But I was glad I knew. I hoped he didn’t regret telling me. I hoped I wouldn’t regret telling him.

There was a note on the front door as we came up the stairs.

You kids have fun. The place is all yours. Please wipe all surfaces you become amorous on with the wipes in the kitchen. Love you, Darah and Renee

“I wonder who wrote that note.”

“Well, I’m guessing Renee wrote it and Darah added the part about the wipes.”

“Sounds about right.” He took the note down and put his key in the lock.

“So,” he said when he’d opened the door and turned the light on. “I guess it’s just us.”

We’d never been alone together all night before. Daytime was a whole other ball of wax. 

Hunter was still holding my hand.

“I’ll, um, let you get changed and I’ll start the popcorn,” he said, dropping it like a burning coal.

 A little voice inside me screamed in frustration, but I turned and went to the bedroom anyway. 

I reached around my back to undo the zipper, but it wouldn’t undo. I’d had no problem getting it up, but down was another story. I nearly wrenched my arms out of my sockets trying to get the damn thing to cooperate with me. 

“Son of a bitch!”

There was a knock at the door.

“You okay in there?”

“Yes, fine.” I tried pulling the hem of the dress up and over my head that way, but it was too formfitting. Well, shit.

I tried one last time before I gave up.

“Okay, so can you give me a hand? The stupid zipper is stuck.” 

“Oh, really?” 

“Shut up and just help me, please?” I opened the door and turned my back to him. “Just get it started —”

I stopped talking when I felt his warm hands on my back. Breathing suddenly became very challenging. His fingers took their sweet time brushing across my skin and tucking my hair out of the way of the traitorous zipper.

He pulled gently, and down it zipped.

“There. I didn’t seem to have any problem.”

“Well that’s so nice for you,” I snapped, trying to turn back around.

 He held my shoulders so I couldn’t. Ever so slowly, he pressed his lips on the spot the zipper had revealed. My skin burned with the contact and the rest of me melted into jelly. I wanted to sag against him, but I didn’t.

“Hunter,” I said. Well, it was more like a whisper.

“Sorry. Couldn’t resist. I’m drawn to you. It drives me absolutely insane that I have to be with you all the time and I can’t touch you.”

 I willed my foot to move so I could take a step forward, and thus away from him. Finally, my foot complied. I felt the exact same way about him, but I couldn’t move forward. There was a giant secret standing in our way.

“I can’t.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ll behave.” I met his eyes, and had to look away. I wanted to tell him not to. To throw everything out of the window and kiss me like he had when we’d nearly broken the recliner.

“I need to change,” I said, my voice loud in the quiet room.

“Okay.” He turned and left.

I could still feel his lips on my back as I slid a t-shirt over my head and put on some shorts. I should have put on a long-sleeved ensemble so as to leave the least amount of skin visible, but it was a warm night and our apartment had crappy ventilation. 

I heard the microwave ding when I came out.

“I think I might need a little help with my zipper, why don’t you give me a hand?” Hunter said, turning his back.

“Sorry, my hands are full,” I said, grabbing the steaming popcorn bag and the bowl he’d set out and holding them up. “You’ll have to do it all by yourself.”

“Fine. But you’re missing out.” Didn’t I know it.

He closed the door, and I leaned against the counter. Why, why did the things he said have to start sounding good? Why did I want to walk into that room and say, ‘Hell yes, I’ll help you with that zipper and the rest of your clothes, get them off NOW.’?

I felt my forehead. Maybe I had a fever. Maybe it was the red velvet cake that had gotten me all riled up. Or maybe it was the damn song. What girl wasn’t a sucker for a guy who could sing? It was why Christine had gone down to the Phantom’s creepy underground lair. It was why so many women threw themselves at rock stars, good-looking or not so much.

By the time he came out, I was situated on the couch with the popcorn in a bowl and two sodas complete with coasters. Darah would have a hissy fit if she knew we hadn’t used coasters.

“Coasters, good thinking,” Hunter said, nodding to our drinks.

“I thought so.”

 He had boxers and a gray tank on. On anyone else, it would have been boxers and a gray tank. On Hunter, it was… damn sexy. 

“Do I have something on my face?” he said, catching me in the act of staring.

“No.”

“Then why were you looking at me like that?”

“I wasn’t.” Deny, deny, deny.

“Okay then, you weren’t.” He sat down next to me and grabbed his drink. “You got the movie in?”

“Yup.” I had the remote in my hand, but I didn’t want to push play. Hunter took a sip of his drink as I fought the urge to throw myself at him. I grabbed the popcorn bowl and put it between us as a buffer. Why had Renee and Darah done this to me? I knew they thought they were helping, but this most certainly was not helping.

I hit play on the movie, hoping against hope that it would serve as a distraction.

 It worked for about five seconds. Then Hunter’s hand and mine collided in the popcorn bowl in one of those movie moments. I snatched mine back, but he stopped me.

“Can I be honest with you right now?” he said.

My mouth was dry as I said, “Sure. When are you not honest with me? With the exception of one time.”

“Yes, well,” he said, rubbing his tattoo one, two, three times. Uh oh. “I’m going to be brutally honest, okay?”

“Once again, when are you not? But carry on,” I said, waving my hand for him to continue. The movie blared in the background, but it might as well have been in Esperanto for all the attention I was paying to it.

He took a breath. 

“I want you. Right now. If you said yes, I would kiss you. I would kiss you until we both forgot that lips were made for anything other than kissing. I’d take you out of that outfit, as cute as it is. I want to see what you look like with nothing on. I want to make you sigh like you did with the cake. I want to be with you. Right now.”

“Right now?” I squeaked.

“Right now. Fuck the movie.” He grabbed the remote and paused the movie. “I just thought you should know how I feel.” 

I had to close my eyes for a second. He was so close, it was hard to think. My brain just went blank, and decided to picture all the things he’d talked about. My skin hummed, ready and waiting.

“I…”

“I’m not asking you to. I know this is hard for you. I just wanted you to know that that was something I wanted to do.” I opened my eyes.

“You’ve been saying stuff like that to me since day one.”

“Not like this. Those other girls? That stuff I did with them? That was just sex. I never want to have just sex again. I want to get lucky with you. Only you. Bottom line.”

I fumbled for a response. 

“I’ll make a note of it,” I said.

“Okay, then.” He took the remote and turned the movie back on, settling back as if nothing had happened. What. The. Fuck.

I turned my head toward the movie, but I was even more distracted. He’d planted the seed of that idea in my head and now that thing was growing as if someone had Miracle-Gro-ed the shit out of it. Mental weed killer wasn’t going to work on that sucker.

The next hour was pure torture. Part of me wondered if he’d done it on purpose. To tease me. He’d done things like that before. Our hands didn’t collide in the popcorn bowl, and he pretended as if we were two friends watching a movie.

When it was over, and the popcorn was gone, I waited for him to say something.

“You tired?” I asked. I didn’t have to be up too early, but I knew he did.

“Yeah, I guess we should go to bed.”

It was a very anticlimactic end to our date. He got up and gathered the remnants of our movie snacks and threw them in the sink.

“I’m gonna go brush my teeth,” he said, stepping around me.

I went into the bedroom and tried to get myself under control. 

Not good, not good, not good.

I had to put a cork in my hormones. I’d never reacted like that to anyone. No guy had ever made me feel like I was on fire. I’d thought all that talk about it was just people being melodramatic. Guess it wasn’t.

He came back and without another look at me, shucked off his shirt and got into bed. Oh that was it.

“What the hell, dude?”

“What?” He turned over, as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

“Are you kidding? Seriously? All that talk about the wanting and the kissing and everything and now you’re going to just pretend like it didn’t happen? What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I just thought that I’d been too forward and I thought that I’d freaked you out. I was just giving you space.”

“Oh.”

“So how did you feel about what I said?”

I sputtered for a second, unable to use actual words. Just sounds.

“Can I take that as a confirmation that yes, it would be something you would be interested in?” His blue eyes begged me to say yes.

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“There’s no maybe about it, Missy. Either yes or no.”

“Can I have some time?”

“Sure, Miss. There’s no expiration date on my offer. If you come to me in sixty years, I’ll be waiting with a bottle of Viagra.”

Ew and yuck.

“Thanks for tonight. I had a really good time.” How was this supposed to work? I mean, usually a date ended and the guy dropped the girl off and they said goodnight. With us, there was no goodnight. We’d see each other when we woke up.

“Good. That was the plan.” I got into bed, trying not to stare at his chest. “Can I ask one more thing?” he said.

“Uh, sure.” 

“Can I kiss you goodnight?”

“I guess so.” 

“You seemed to enjoy it the last couple times.”

“Shut up.” And kiss me, I didn’t say.

He got out of bed and walked slowly to mine. I got up and we stared at one another for a breath of time. He leaned down, and I waited this time.

“Goodnight, Taylor.”

He leaned down and pressed the sweetest, briefest kiss in the history of the world. He tried to pull away, but my lips and the rest of me wouldn’t let him. I pulled him back for just a second before I slammed the door on my desire and was able to detach myself from him.

“Goodnight, Hunter.” I somehow got myself back into bed. He stood there for a moment before sighing and going to his bed.

“Love me?” he whispered as he tossed his boxers on the floor.

“Nope.”

“Hate me?”

“Not as much as conjugating verbs.”

“Good.”

My body hummed with energy. There was no way I was getting to sleep at this point. It was going to be a long night.