I stifle a laugh, completely entertained now. “Actually, I think you said that we should go back to one of the rooms.” I hold my hands up to my side, pretending to be innocent, and trying not to laugh at him as his face contorts in perplexity. “Maybe you just wanted to cuddle or something. Some guys like that.”
His eyes narrow as he moves back and leans his hip against the bumper for support. “You think this is funny.” He pats his back pockets and then starts to panic, standing up straight as his hands dart around to his front pockets. He promptly relaxes as he pulls out a pack of squished Marlboros and then fumbles to open it. “It’s not funny…” He plucks one out and then goes to put the end in his mouth, but drops it on the ground. Cursing, he bends down to pick it up and doesn’t bother to brush the dirt off before he puts it into his mouth as he stands back up. “It’s not funny at all.” He snatches his lighter out of his back pocket and then drops the pack on the ground and cups his hand around his mouth. He flicks the lighter over and over but can’t get it to light. Grunting, he kicks at the dirt with the tip of his boot and then curses some more. I feel like I’m witnessing a drunken tantrum and it’s ridiculously hilarious.
I haven’t laughed in a while, but I find myself laughing under my breath as I snatch the lighter from his hands. “Here, let me help you.”
“I don’t need your help or anyone else’s,” he insists, annoyed, but still doesn’t bother stopping me as I move the lighter up toward the cigarette in his mouth and flick it. The flame burns as the paper crinkles, but he starts blowing instead of sucking and it doesn’t light. I try again and then again.
“Would you stop blowing on it so hard?” I flick the lighter again and the flame poofs up.
“Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?” he retorts in a lazy tone and his bleary-eyed gaze is unyielding. “Hey, what happened to your face?”
I put the flame from the lighter up to the end of the cigarette. “I got into a fight with the wall and the wall won.”
He crooks his brow, blowing too hard again and it burns out. “A wall?”
“Yeah, a wall.” I give up on lighting the cigarette and pluck it from his mouth.
“Hey,” he protests as I put the end of the cigarette into my mouth. I gag at the potent taste of Jack Daniel’s on it as I light it up and take a deep inhale. I quickly puff out the smoke and do it a few more times, getting light-headed and then I hand it over, the end glowing orange through the dark.
“There you go, nicotine addict,” I say as he takes the lit cigarette from my fingers.
He puts it in his mouth and sucks on it. When he exhales the cloud of smoke, he looks more calm and relaxed. “You sucked that like a pro.”
“Well, I’ve had a lot of practice,” I tell him and then laugh a little when he busts up laughing, hunching over and holding the cigarette out to the side, the cherry bright through the dark.
“And I didn’t mean it like that.” I shake my head with a somewhat real smile on my face. “I just meant that I had this foster mother who liked to smoke when she cooked and sometimes when her hands were full she’d have me light her cigarette for her.” He stops laughing and I realize I’ve just told him more about me than I’ve told pretty much anyone besides the people who’ve taken me in.
He quiets down, putting the cigarette back into his mouth. “Foster mother?” He blows out smoke. “You grew up in a foster home?” He pauses, considering something. “What was it like?”
“All rainbows and sunshine—I was completely showered with love. Can we drop the subject?”
“Was it weird or good having different parents all the time?” he continues, clearly not registering that I want to change the subject.
A sinking feeling moves through my body, so weighted and heavy I nearly collapse to the ground. “So where’s your truck?”
The lights from the strip club’s signs flash in his eyes as he stares at me. “I think I parked out back… why?”
I head for the back of the building, motioning for him to follow me. “Because I’m going to drive you back to campus.”
He staggers after me, surprising me when he hitches a finger through a back loop on my shorts. At first I think he’s going to jerk me back to him, but all he does is hold on to me for support and balance, trusting me to get him where he needs to go, which is weird.
“How’d you get here?” he mutters in my ear.
I lead us around the corner, ignoring the blast of heat when his knuckles graze the skin on my back. “I walked.”
“From where?” he asks, flicking his cigarette to the side, little orange sparks dotting the gravel.
“From nearby,” I lie and speed up when I spot his truck parked crookedly at the back of the club in front of a cluster of trees beneath one of the lampposts. “Were you drunk when you got here?” I ask.
He steps up to the side of me, releasing my belt loop and grabbing hold of my arm. “No.”
“You parked like you were drunk.” I stiffen, not liking the way he’s clinging on to me for support. It’s causing a mixture of emotions from panic to desire and those damn heated stomach sensations to surface again.
“Well, I wasn’t.” He stares at his truck like he barely recognizes it. “I was just distracted.”
I’m not sure if he’s telling the truth or not, but I lead him the rest of the way to the truck. The doors are unlocked and I help him into the passenger side, letting him put his hands onto my shoulder to boost himself in. God, he owes me big time. Just thinking about him owing me a favor thrills me way, way too much. I need to get my head out of Luke land and get back to the place where it’s only me and me alone.
Once he gets settled in the seat, I close the door and round the front of the truck, deciding where I’m going to go when I get him back to his dorm. Walk back to my dorm and then what? I don’t have hardly any of my stuff and I’m pretty much homeless, at least in a couple of days I will be.
When I open the driver’s door, Luke is already lying down in the seat. I nudge him over and then hop in, slamming the door. “Where are your keys?”
His eyes are shut, his arms flopped over his chest, looking like he’s asleep. “I think… I think in my… pocket.”
I rest my hands on the steering wheel. “Can you please get them out?” I ask as nicely as I can because he’s wasted and doesn’t really know what he’s saying, but my patience is wearing thin.
He moves his hand slowly for his pocket and pats himself down. “Hmmm… that’s weird… They’re not there.”
This night is quickly becoming the night of ill-fated events, but I’m not going to put it down as my worst. “Then where are they?”
He shrugs, kicking his feet up on the door. “I have no idea.”
Sighing, I pat down his pockets myself, causing him to laugh and squirm. The only thing I can find is what looks like an insulin monitor thing with a strip sticking out of it and also a pen-shaped object.
“Oh good, you found it…” he mutters, taking it from my hands. But his fingers falter and he drops it on his stomach. “Damn it, I’m all… I’m all…” He sighs the longest sigh in world’s history. “Violet… can you… can you check my blood sugar for me?”
I pick up the monitor and pen object and flip on the interior light, examining them. “How do I do that exactly?”
He extends his arm over his head toward me and points his finger. “Just put the pen up to my finger and push the button.”
I’m a little uneasy about helping him, but put it up to his finger, and push the button like he asked. It pricks his finger and blood pools out of it.
“Now put the strip up onto the blood,” he says, yawning.
I do what he asks and move the strip on the monitor up to his finger. He dabs his blood on it and his eyes shut, like he barely knows what he’s doing. Then he pulls his hand away and flops it down on his stomach as the machine beeps. “What’s it say?” he asks.
I glance down at the beeping screen. “Sixty-eight.”
“Shit,” he mutters, forcing his eyes open. “Can you get my pills out of the glove box?”
I reach over him, flip the handle of the glove box, and dig around the papers and past the flashlight until I find a bottle of vitamin pills. “These ones that say ‘glucose’ on them.”
He bobs his head up and down with a lot of effort. “Those would… be the… ones.”
I unscrew the cap. “How many do you need?”
“Three…”
I’m kind of worried. Luke’s drunk and I have no idea about diabetics and what happens is they don’t get the right meds. What if I do something wrong?
“Are you sure it’s three?” I ask.
He bobs his head up and down. “Yeah… three and I’ll be… good…”
I swallow hard and pour three into my hand, then put the cap back on, and put the bottle away, shutting the glove box. I nudge him gently with my arm. “Luke, here. Take them.”
His eyelids flutter open, bloodshot, with zero comprehension. He gradually lifts his hand up and scoops the pills out of my hand, opening his mouth and dropping them in. His neck muscles work as he forces them down his throat. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” I mutter, confused by the momentary exchange of gratitude. Such a foreign concept to me.
I stare down at him as his eyes drift back shut and then I lean over to turn the light back off, deciding to just lie back and shut my eyes, sleep until morning and then ask him where the hell he put the keys. But as I lean back, I feel a shift on Luke’s part and suddenly I’m being grabbed and he’s pulling me down between the back of the seat and him.
“Holy shit,” I gasp, startled because it seemed like he was barely awake a few moments ago.
I start to get up when he flips us over, putting his body on top of me. I freeze as he stares down at me, the lights from outside barely illuminate the cab.
“God, you’re so beautiful,” he mutters, tracing a line up my cheekbone. “It drives me so crazy how beautiful you are.”
It takes me a second to remember that I’ve never actually been pinned underneath a guy before. I’m always either standing or taking the top. I’ve never lay in bed beside one. Never touched a guy before just because I want to. Never kissed while feeling any sort of emotion behind it. It takes me another second or two to realize that this moment is going against all of my previous experiences. Because I’m pinned below him, being touched, and feeling something I desperately want to run away from. I don’t do normal feelings. There’s no point. Letting someone in and giving yourself to someone else has no purpose but heartache. I should shove him off and bail before he does.
But as he breathes heavily, leaning down, his lips inching nearer, I remain stationary. Frozen by fear and want. The contact of his lips only heightens the fear and desire, the two feelings mixing so persuasively that I start to weakly tremble as the walls I worked so hard to put up begin to crack. I try to keep my mouth closed as he works to kiss me, not wanting to give in, not wanting to give any part of me to him, knowing that eventually he won’t want me anymore. But as my body warms below him, I can’t help it and my lips readily part. Seconds later, his tongue slides into my mouth and he groans against my lips. It sends vibrations through my body and I shiver.
“Jesus, this feels so much better than I imagined…” he moans as his fingers tangle through my hair, tugging at the roots and it feels so good. “I need this… God…” There’s an alarming amount of panic in his voice as he breathes heavily. It’s deafeningly quiet around us and I’m about to say something, when his tongue slips back into my mouth more forcefully and his movements fill with desperation. I can barely keep up with him, gasping for air as his hands travel restlessly across my body, over my legs, my stomach, my breasts. I’m crushed between him and the seat, pinned down and I don’t do anything to escape. And I don’t want to because for a fleeting, unfamiliar, passionate, overwhelming moment, I feel safe with him over me. And I haven’t felt safe in a very long time.
I kiss him back, but don’t touch, feel him with my tongue, keeping some sort of boundary between us. I don’t think of anything else, but the taste of his breath, the blinding heat of his body. His scent: tequila, cologne, and a splash of cigarette smoke.
Then suddenly as quickly as he started, he stops, sliding to the side and nearly falling onto the floor. I turn over and look at him, his chest descending and rising as he breathes. He’s passed out and I’m left wide-awake. I lay there for an eternity, watching him sleep, knowing once I sit up I’m probably going to panic over what I just did. Reluctantly, I sit up and face the consequences of my choices, let them hit me square in the stomach.
I open the door to turn the interior light on and search the floor, the glove box, and the visor, for the keys. I want to get back to the dorm before he wakes up. I get out of the truck, leaving him in it, and backtrack to the bar, searching the ground for the keys. The farther I move away from the truck and into the dark, the less safe I feel, yet I keep going because it’s familiar. I continually curse myself for what I just did as I hunt for the keys behind cars and in the gravel, taking my cell phone out to use the screen as a light. That was not a no-strings-attached kiss. It had meaning behind it and I can’t stop thinking about doing it again, even though he probably can’t even remember doing it. It’s a bad place to be and I need to get away from it.