Hook Shot

We reconvene in the main saloon to play. After a few rounds, it’s actually fun. That’s the thing about these games. We all groan and pretend we hate them, but there’s something exhilarating about shaking off the cloak of responsibility, the daily adulting, and playing like kids again if only for a night.

Amanda and Yari both drew a thimble. They knock back their glasses of tequila and then slam them on the table in the center of the room with gusto, both hissing and wiping their mouths with the backs of their hands. When it’s time for their kiss, they laughingly make such a show of it to the great enthusiasm of all the guys.

“More!” Chase yells. “Don’t stop now. It was getting good.”

We go through a few more rounds, sitting on low couches lining the walls, eating and getting drunker by the minute. I try to tune out, to ignore the compelling presence of the man who doesn’t quite fit in here, doesn’t quite belong with this tribe of crazy creatives, but who manages to seem as comfortable floating with us tonight as he would standing at the free-throw line.

I guess there’s still a free-throw line. They could have abolished it as far as I know or care. I follow basketball not at all.

I’m aware of Kenan, though. My senses pique and my skin prickles every time something lures his reluctant laughter out of hiding.

“Your turn, Lo,” Vale says, cheeks still pink from her kiss and liquor.

I step to the table. A bottle of tequila and two shot glasses are the only things cluttering its surface. With a flourish, I hold up my tiny silk bag to show everyone, and then slowly extract the gold button.

“Okay, so who am I kissing?” I search the room until I find JP and wink at him. “Let’s do this.”

JP winks back, his eyes shining the way they do when a design comes together, but he doesn’t move.

JP doesn’t move, but to my alarm and horror, Kenan joins me at the table and holds up a button. My eyes dart from him to the button. I could have sworn I heard him say he had the boot, and I could have sworn JP had the button. Right now, I could just swear. Just cuss. The very lining of my stomach seems to quiver with Kenan so close.

But I won’t back down in front of everyone. And I certainly won’t back down in front of him. It’s just a kiss. It can be quick and harmless and over in no time.

With deceptively steady hands, I grab the bottle and fill my shot glass to the very top. I slide the bottle his way without once looking at him. My hands may look steady, but I’m vibrating inside. With fury. With frustration. Dammit, I can only admit this to myself, and I swear myself to secrecy—vibrating with anticipation. I can’t have this incredible tower of a man, and I will not under any circumstances give myself to him.

Kenan seems too good to be true. Those are the worst men because, from my experience, they usually aren’t true. With all I’m sorting through, I don’t need that not true shit right now. Actually, ever. I’ve had enough people in my life who I thought I could count on, but in the end, proved I couldn’t.

No, I can’t have him and he can’t have me, but we can have this kiss. This one little kiss. The trick is to control it. A little pressure. A little tongue. A tiny taste, then get out.

With my battle plan in place, I meet his eyes over our shot glass rims and, on the crowd’s count of three, we knock our drinks back together. The fiery liquid scorches my throat. I give an “ahhhhhh” and slam my glass down. Kenan does the same, and we face each other across the table.

“Let’s get this over with.” I flash a wide smile and false bravado to my friends. “I’m gonna blow his mind, folks.”

They answer with wolf whistles and catcalls, emboldening me. The tiniest quirk of Kenan’s mouth is the only clue that he might find this all amusing.

Instead of leaning across the table like everyone else has done so far, he steps around the table until he stands directly in front of me. My quips and quick humor wither under the intensity of his stare. He leans down until his lips are only a breath above mine. He slides his hands down my bare arms and grasps my elbows to pull me up, eliminating the last few inches separating our lips.

It starts with the lightest pressure, barely a kiss at all. His lips rest against mine. Him, demanding nothing. Me, determined I won’t give him anything, but with a slight shift of his head, the new angle deepens the contact, opens my mouth. It’s a petition to enter, to taste, to sample. My lips barely part, but my sigh grants permission, and he doesn’t hesitate, cupping my face, tugging gently on my chin, opening me and probing inside, slowly and languorously with fiery, liquored licks. When his tongue brushes the roof of my mouth, a thousand fingers, everywhere at once, stroke my arms, my spine, my neck, my legs. Not even the most hidden parts of me remain untouched by sensation. Every inch of me is stimulated. I gasp, and he immediately dives deeper, like he’s chasing the secrets tucked under my tongue and sealed in the lining of my mouth.

I don’t know if the growl is his, if the whimper is mine, but all the things that would keep this tame—my friends watching, our inhibitions, propriety—melt in the wrath of this heat, like we’re kissing under the sun. Rusty cogs inside of me, oiled by tequila and passion, start turning in ways long forgotten, if ever known before. Mindlessly, I strain up, push my hands over the width of his shoulders and wrap my fingers around his neck. He’s too far, and I want to be close. He splays his hands over my back, completely encompassing as he pulls me into the shelter of his body. He bites my lip and I lick into the tangy well of his mouth. God, he’s delicious. I’ve never tasted anything like him. Never felt anything like this.

With each second, it intensifies. We intensify. Our hands grip tighter. Our mouths grow desperate. The breaths come fast and short through our noses because I won’t release his mouth and he won’t let mine go. This kiss is a dark corridor, twisting and turning, luring me deeper. I can’t find my way out, and if someone opened a door offering escape, I’d slam it in their face.

“Get a room!” someone calls from the crowd. Others laugh.

It startles me. Wrenches me from the false privacy we created with our lips, our tongues, our mouths, our moans. It’s like a flashlight shone on us, exposing me.

We jerk apart, our ragged breaths intermingled. It’s not that I’m self-conscious about what my friends have seen. It’s what he has seen—that I’m not immune to him.

From above, he searches my face. For what, I don’t know, but with the little bit of dignity I have left, I lower my head, hiding from him.

“Well, uh . . . who’s next?” Keir asks, obviously nonplussed, but trying to recover.

I take advantage of the attention shifting to the next players. Swiftly and on unsteady legs, I leave the saloon and head up to the observation deck without sparing Kenan a glance.

The vibrant New York skyline never gets old. I let the beauty of the night — the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge’s trail of lights—comfort me. The evening air calms my racing pulse and the faint breeze lifts my hair, cools my burning cheeks.

I look up at the stars accusingly, like they’ve orchestrated this. It’s too much of a coincidence, this man surfacing just as I’m starting to deal with tough things from my past. I search the indigo sky for an answer, for confirmation of this cleromancy, but there’s no shooting star. No cosmic crisis reflecting the turmoil beneath my skin. Not even a cloud or a strike of lightning.

“Here you are,” Yari says, joining me near the rail. “You and Kenan shoulda charged admission for that.”

“It was a game, Ri,” I say, side eyeing her. “Don’t make it a big deal. It wasn’t real.”

“With that man down there looking like a snack, I’d make it real if I were you.”

“Remember this . . .” I draw an air square around my V-zone. “. . . is a no-dick area for the foreseeable future.”

“If that man looked at me the way he looks at you, I’d reconsider.” She goes quiet for a second. “You like him, don’t you?”

What gave it away? I ask silently. The vacuum cleaner kiss?

I don’t answer. There’s a connection between Kenan and me. I knew it the first time I saw him. I felt his eyes on me the whole time in that hospital room when I visited August. I had to force myself not to stare back.

Me crying in Chase’s shower, the inexplicable emptiness I’ve been feeling—they’re symptoms of a bigger issue, something I haven’t talked about even to Yari. Something I haven’t really dealt with. It’s been chasing me for years and it’s finally catching up. I can keep running or I can turn around and face it, conquer it. I haven’t decided what I’ll do yet, but I know I don’t need a complication like Kenan while I figure it out.

“Ahem.”

The clearing throat draws my attention and Yari’s, too. Kenan stands at the top of the stairs leading to the lower deck.

Our eyes collide in the semi-darkness. The glittering Manhattan skyline casts a warm glow, adding to the air of intimacy building between us, even with Yari standing watch.

“Um, well this is awkward,” Yari says with a chuckle. “Imma . . . go. See you down there, Lo.”

Kenan steps aside for her to pass, but doesn’t look away from my face.

“How did you get that button?” I lead with the thing I want to know most. “JP had it. So how did you get it?”

He crosses the deck between us in a few measured steps.

“I told him I’d do the watch campaign if he’d give me the button.” There’s no apology in his voice, nor in the look he gives me.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because I wanted to kiss you.”

His admission, frank, honest, snatches my breath, but I disguise it. Look away, down. I turn my back on him and face the night-darkened waters instead.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I tell him.

“It was a game, Lotus,” he says from far too close. From right beside me, but I lift my eyes to the still-silent sky above. “You didn’t have to play.”     PrevNextTip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between pages.

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