Chapter Six—Sky
As soon as I left Linc’s apartment, I called up my friend Cassie; she had made me promise to get in touch as soon as I was safely more or less settled into my apartment. I decided to go out instead of staying around and watching Linc fix the pipe. There were several things that I had to get at the store now that my final check from my summer job had cleared. It wasn’t much, but I figured that I could at least have a meal that wasn’t takeout, and maybe something to drink that wasn’t tap water or instant coffee.
Cassie was waiting for me when I got out to the front of the apartment building, just like she’d said she would be. I’d told her that I could just as easily meet her somewhere, but she said there was no point in both of us using up the gas in our cars, and I’d finally agreed to ride with her. I’d just locked my door, figuring that Linc would have a master key and do the repair while I was gone. There was something about him that was hard to handle; it wasn’t that I was afraid of him—not really—but there was something overwhelming, all the same. It was just easier to avoid him if I could.
“Hey, girl! Man, it’s been a while!” I closed the distance between us and hugged her tightly, more grateful than I had expected to see a familiar face in my new hometown. Cassie had graduated a year before me. She was the one who’d told me about the job, and she had helped me get it, because she worked for the same company; she’d moved to Denver in the name of love, and settled in even though the love didn’t last. When I’d told her that I wanted an excuse to get out of my sleepy small town, she’d handed it to me practically on a silver platter.
“So where are we going?” I pulled back and smiled at Cassie. It was actually kind of impossible not to smile around her; she was always so cheerful.
“Well, that depends,” she said. “Are you hungry?”
“Not really. I just had breakfast, actually,” I replied.
“Did you already go shopping? I thought you said you didn’t have anything in your fridge yet,” Cassie said, giving me a dramatic, almost disapproving frown.
“No, the landlord made it for me,” I explained. She gave me a look like I was going to have to explain further. “It was nothing, I swear,” I said quickly. I loved Cassie, but she had a tendency to be on the lookout for any kind of situation that might possibly lead to romance. “My pipes are leaking and he had to turn the water off. So he let me use his shower, and I guess he made enough to share when he was getting together his own breakfast.”
“It sounds like the start of a bad porno! Or maybe a really good romance novel,” Cassie said with a grin. “Is he cute?”
I sighed and shook my head as we walked over to her car, making a mental note that I would need to get the trailer to the rental place at some point. It was just as well that Cassie had offered to drive. I didn’t feel like trying to navigate the parking lot of a grocery store or a mall with the trailer still hooked up to my car. “Yeah, he’s cute,” I admitted, and when I saw that Cassie was about to tell me to go for it, I added, “And in at least his late thirties, maybe even forties!”
“That just means he knows what he wants,” Cassie said, wiggling her eyebrows at me. I rolled my eyes.
“Well, have at him. I’m not even worried about that,” I said, shaking my head at the thought of having anything to do with Linc.
“Still waiting for ‘the one’, huh?” I heard the little bit of pity in her voice and I was torn between laughing and feeling annoyed. As soon as she’d learned that I was putting off my first time, waiting for love, Cassie had done everything in her power to change my mind. She’d set me up with more guys than I could count. None of them had ever worked out, and I wanted to stop her before she got started this time.
“Yes, I’m still waiting for the one, and I promise you that it isn’t Linc,” I told her. “You’ll meet him eventually and then you’ll see. He’s one of those hotheads. I don’t really like that kind of guy.”
“Still don’t know what you’re looking for, huh?” I didn’t want to admit it, but Cassie wasn’t entirely wrong; after living in the same dorm building for three years—and sharing a dorm room for two of those years—she knew me pretty well.
“No, I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I know what I’m not looking for, and Linc Hayes is exactly the opposite of what I need,” I said firmly. Cassie just shook her head and smiled at me like I was a lost cause. I hated that she might actually be right, but I was still young, after all—I was a year younger than she was, and I had plenty of time to find someone. And there was no way that that someone, the first person I ever had sex with, was going to be my landlord. He was too dangerous. I could easily imagine him letting a girl fall head over heels for him and then just walking away; and that was not a risk I was willing to take, no matter how much Cassie carried on about how fun it would be. Something inside of me told me that I should stay away from him.
We moved on to other subjects, and I asked about Clandale. It was one of the biggest employers in the city, apparently; that explained Linc having heard of it. Although Cassie was an accountant and wouldn’t be in the same department, she was at least going to be close by. It was going to be good to have someone there that I already knew. It was a great job opportunity anyway, but knowing Cassie would be there to go to lunch with, and talk to about the other people in the office—to generally just steer me away from the bad and towards the good, just like she had in college—was comforting.
By lunchtime I was getting excited about starting my new life on Monday morning. With everything at the apartment being such a mess, and having to deal with the ticking time bomb that Linc seemed to be, it was nice to have something that seemed to be what it was supposed to be. The rest I was just going to have to learn to adapt to.
After a little back-and-forth and discussion, we went to a sushi place for lunch that Cassie said was the best in town. I was quite willing to go along with her until I found my own favorite spots. I decided that since she was so into my love life, I might as well ask about hers.
“So, what’s the dating scene like here? Surely if you managed to stick around, there’s plenty of fish in the lake,” I said, snagging some pickled ginger with my chopsticks between bites of some over-the-top roll that Cassie had insisted on getting for us to share.
“Not much on that front,” Cassie admitted with a grimace. “Dating sucks here, but the friends with benefits angle is fun. Nothing to hold onto, but you can have some fun.”
“That’s not really my kind of fun,” I pointed out, frowning. “Kind of a bummer.”
“You know what I’m going to say,” Cassie told me. “You don’t know what you’re missing, and you shouldn’t knock it until you’ve tried it.” I rolled my eyes.
“I’m not entirely sheltered, you know,” I countered. “I’ve watched porn, I’ve read books...”
“You haven’t actually done anything more than make out with a guy, though,” Cassie said, interrupting me. “So how do you know that you won’t like a little no-strings, no-frills fun?”
“Okay—technically I don’t,” I admitted. “But the thing is—why should that be my first time ever? I mean, shouldn’t my first time be special, at least a little?”
“Why? Your first time is only going to be so good, no matter who it’s with, because you’re going to be obsessed with whether or not you’re doing it right,” Cassie said. “So it might as well be a throwaway. Like the first pancake in a batch.”
I almost choked on my sip of water at that comparison. I knew I couldn’t actually argue the logic, but my feeling about the situation wasn’t going to change.
“I just want it to actually mean something. That’s all,” I said, hoping that would put an end to it.
Cassie said that I was dreaming. “You need to wear something low-cut, show off those knockers and see what happens.” I stared at her for a moment and then shook my head again, rolling my eyes.
“Just that easy, huh?” I popped a few edamame out of a shell and into my mouth, and reached for another bite of sushi.
“For you? It would be even easier,” Cassie said. “Those damn eyes would do it every time.” There had been a time in college when Cassie had experimented with women, and she’d made comments about my eyes in the past. Oh god, she’s going to hit on me, I thought, and felt my cheeks burning even as I looked down at the table, pretending to be intensely interested in the menu card. “Calm down, I don’t really like girls like that anymore. I’m just calling it like I see it. You never did understand the power that you have.”
It wasn’t something I’d ever really thought about; even when Cassie had tried to drill it into my head that I had some mystical “hot girl” power, I’d always dismissed it. I’d gotten good grades because I’d studied, and I’d gotten the job at Clandale because I was able to get through the phone interview. It had nothing to do with my looks, and anyway, I’d seen more than one gorgeous girl whose looks had done more to get her into trouble than to get her out of it.
“I’ll find someone when the time is right,” I told Cassie, once again hoping that I could just get the subject changed. “I just got here, and right now I just want to have some fun.”
That got Cassie smiling. It was only two when we left the restaurant, and there was still shopping to do, but we’d agreed that that night would be reserved for a night out. It had been too long since we’d just let loose, and now was the time. “One thing you have to look out for,” she said, as we finally got to the first of the shops we needed to visit. “You’re going to be a lightweight here—the altitude takes time to get used to. So for the sake of future-Sky, you need to remember that hangovers suck.” I laughed at that; I had partied with Cassie many times before in college—starting before I’d been legally old enough to drink—but it was always me who’d ended up taking care of her, not the other way around. I didn’t like being too drunk. I felt weird, and out of control in a way that wasn’t even pleasant.
I got back to the apartment around five or so and noticed that my door was unlocked. I was a little miffed that Linc would leave it like that, but quickly realized that he was still in there; that made it okay—at least more okay than it would have been. I walked through the house calling his name, and, just as I suspected, he was still hard at work in the bathroom. The man was covered in water and had a determined look on his face as he stared down the tub like it was his mortal enemy that just wouldn’t die already.
“Is everything okay in here?” I could barely suppress a giggle at the sight of him. He turned to me and blinked like he had never in his life seen me before. His mind was obviously a million miles away. I smiled at him and waited for him to answer me. When he didn’t, I walked off to put the bags down. I hoped that he would be packing up to leave by the time I came back, but he was still in the bathroom, all hot and sweaty. His tee shirt—the sleeves cut off—was stuck to his broad chest and back, leaving almost nothing to my imagination. If I hadn’t seen him shirtless before, it would have been difficult not to stare at the massive arms free of their sleeves, the slightly faded tattoos, the way sweat rolled down the back of his neck. Get it together, Sky.
“The problem was bigger than I thought. Not only was your overflow pipe busted, but there were hairline fractures all throughout the pipework underneath. I still need more materials to patch this back up right, and now the hardware store is closed for the day. Can you do one more day without water?”
“I guess it won’t make much of a difference,” I said. “I didn’t get all that sweaty shopping.” Linc raised an eyebrow as if that surprised him.
“Are you sure? I can let you use one of the vacant apartments until it’s fixed. I know this is a big inconvenience,” he said, and I was actually—maybe just a little bit—touched that he was being considerate for once.
“Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t planning on being here tonight anyway,” I said, shrugging it off.
“Oh, okay,” Linc said, turning back to the work in front of him.
I felt like I had to say something else. “Just going out with an old college friend I haven’t seen in a while. We did some shopping, so of course now it’s time to drink.”
Linc laughed, and I tried hard not to notice the sweat that was running down one of his hard biceps. It was hard to do when he looked so damn good. If the guys back at West State had looked like this, Cassie wouldn’t have had such a hard time convincing the younger, more impressionable me to take one for a ride, no strings attached. There was just something about him—about how muscular, powerful, unapologetically masculine he was—that seemed to tug at something deep down between my hips, deeper than the pit of my stomach. “Well, have fun,” he said. “Just pretend like I’m not even here, Sky. I’ll be done cleaning up soon and be out of your way.”
I told him to take his time and just lock up when he left. Going into my bedroom, I looked through my closet. Nothing was really jumping out at me. I didn’t want to admit it, but Linc’s presence in my bathroom had to have influenced me. Normally I didn’t go for anything flashy when I went out. I didn’t want to give any guys the impression that I would be open to going home with them. But I wanted Linc to see me in the black, slinky dress that I hadn’t worn in a while. It fit me just perfectly, and if it had been my time of the month it would have been just a bit too small at the chest. I had to rummage through my luggage to find one of the few thongs I owned. There was no way I was going to have a panty line with that dress. It was worth it, I told myself—or it would be, when I saw the look on Linc’s face.
I decided to test the theory after I’d done my makeup. I took my hair out of the convenient braids I’d put it in, tousling it with some product to leave the ringlets it formed. I wanted it soft but not too messy. I knocked on the bathroom door where Linc was still at work, and felt that little tingle of heat when he glanced up, looked at his hands, and then looked at me again. His dark emerald green eyes told me all that I needed to know. Linc had noticed.
“Where are you going dressed like that?”
It wasn’t what I wanted him to say, and it perturbed me a little bit. If I had wanted to hear my father’s opinion I would have texted him a picture myself, I thought irritably. The lust was there in his eyes, but his words, tone, and facial expression didn’t match up.
“Just out,” I said, keeping my voice as light as possible. I wanted to say, “I’m not even wearing the one pair of slutty heels I own,” but I thought that wouldn’t help. I didn’t know how else to answer his question.
“Be careful out and about looking like that. You’re going to give the boys all kinds of ideas.”
I had to swallow down a laugh at how close that was to being something my own father would have said. I also told myself that it was a good reminder. I sighed and smiled. Even though I could see that I was giving him all kinds of ideas, he was still warning me like he was above it.
“I’m sure it will be okay,” I said. “We’re just hitting a couple of clubs. Besides, I’ll be with my friend, and she knows her way around here. Denver is pretty safe anyway, isn’t it?”
He shook his head. “Yeah, but not when you look like that.” His eyes were on me again, trailing from my chest to my waist to my hips and then right back up, only briefly pausing to look at my face. I wasn’t sure whether I was more thrilled that he found me so hot or frustrated that he was treating me like a child. I’d dressed up to pique the interest of a guy who I knew I wanted nothing to do with, and my reward was a lecture on nighttime safety and a few awkward, lust-filled looks. I decided I should just go before things got any worse.
“See you later, Linc. Thanks for taking care of that for me,” I said, turning to leave.
“Anytime, Sky. Just give me a call,” he said. I had to admit to myself, even if I wasn’t fully pleased with the results I’d gotten, that at least Linc sounded much more reasonable than he had during our first couple of run-ins. Maybe there was something in what Cassie had said.