“I know,” I admitted, already feeling better.

Jude was a roller coaster‌—‌I was a roller coaster. Together we created that super-duper-looper thing. It was scary, standing on the ground and looking up at it, but if that’s the ride I had to take to be with Jude, I’d be first in line.

“Hey, thank your stars your man ain’t no kiddie bumper cars,” India added, taking another puff before blowing out a smoke ring. “I dated a man once who was like that. The man who is solely responsible for why I don’t date any more. He even made love like the damn kiddie cars. Bump. Sputter, sputter,” India sat up, jolting back and forth. “Bump. Sputter, sputter.” I started laughing, watching her acting out the scene. “Bump. Sputter, sputter. Bump. Fizzle.” Curling her nose, she groaned, collapsing back into the chair.

Our laughter blended down the hall with Mr. Marley.

“Great practice today Lucy,” Thomas said, coming up behind me as I walked out of the auditorium doors.

“Well, it helps my partner is one hell of a dancer,” I said, nudging him as I wrapped my scarf around my neck.

It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the New York weather was already bringing it on. What had possessed a girl who believed sun was essential to life to go to school in a place where the winters ran frigid and long?

My pointes bounced against my body as I walked, reminding me why.

“Yeah, so, your boyfriend,” Thomas started, looking uneasy just speaking about Jude, “does he know we’re partners for the winter recital?”

Poor Thomas. He was a dancer, not a fighter. I would be scared out of my tights too if I was supposed to be lifting by the crotch the girlfriend of a boy who packed a mean punch.

“Not yet,” I said, throwing my cap on too. I would be living in a state of hat hair from now until May.

Thomas cleared his throat, fidgeting with the strap of his backpack. “Are you planning on telling him?”

“Of course,” I said, turning towards my dorm. I still had to finish one more assignment before the end of the day and the sooner I tucked myself into bed, the sooner Jude would be here in the morning to spend four whole days together. India was flying back home to her parents’ place outside of Miami, so we’d have the whole room to ourselves.

I wasn’t planning on leaving it once. That’s what delivery was for.

“When?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t really given it much thought. “This weekend, I guess.”

“Okay,” Thomas said. “I just want to be prepared. It’s probably for the best he knows sooner rather than later. Will make the shock a little less… extreme.”

“You’ve thought this out,” I said, trying not to smile to give away my amusement. “Good for you.”

“Yeah,” Thomas said, “if the dude almost beat my ass for helping you out of a corset, he will murder me on the spot when he sees our modern interpretation of the ‘Rape of Persephone’.”

Thomas spelling it out for me moved telling Jude about our performance and the “encounters” Thomas and I would share on stage up to number one on the list. The more notice Jude had about it, the more time he could get used to the idea so he, as Thomas had put it, wouldn’t murder him on the spot.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be all right,” I said, stopping outside of the dorm hall.

“I’d say I’ll be anything but ‘all right’ after your boyfriend is done with me, but thanks for the vote of confidence.” Heading down the sidewalk, Thomas waved. “Have a nice break, Lucy.”

I would.

“You too,” I called after him, rushing into the building because I was twenty seconds away from breaking into a chatter fest.

India was already gone by the time I made it back, but she’d left a gift behind. Lying on my bed was a black shopping bag, cascading with red and pink tissue paper. Not the first colors one thought of when they celebrated Thanksgiving.

Tearing into the bag, I tossed the tissue paper behind me, peering inside. My mouth dropped as I pulled out the item on top. It was black, lacy, and had holes in places that were normally covered.

“India,” I muttered, shaking my head. Tossing the lingerie off to the side, I grabbed the first thing in the bag my fingers fell on. Something cold and hard. I pulled out a pair of hardcore handcuffs, complete with key, dangling from my finger. Throwing them back in the bag like they’d stung me, I rolled the top of the bag over and stuffed it into the depths of our closet.

I might be ready to take the next step with Jude, but I wasn’t ready to go from A to Z in the same night. I’d be regifting these gems at Christmas to the girl who’d so carefully selected them for her resident prude.

I hurried through my last assignment and emailed it off to the professor by eight that night. Having a cup of hot tea and a microwave vegetarian burger for dinner, I turned off the lights and crawled into bed, hoping I’d fall into a deep sleep.

After tossing and turning my sheets into a tornado three hours later, I realized sleep and I weren’t making things easy for one another. Giving up some time after midnight, I threw an old DVD into the player and watched two movies all the way through before I managed to nod off. My alarm was blaring less than two hours later.

So much for the recuperative qualities of sleep.

CHAPTER TEN

I was on my third cup of coffee, and somewhere in between my second and third, I’d crossed the line from alert to jumpy. Oh well, edgy was better than comatose.