Love Story

Ten hours later I was hunched over my laptop at my desk, struggling with the last paragraph of my history paper, when I heard a commotion in the outer bedroom. I rolled my desk chair back and peeked around the door frame. Summer was there with Manohar, Kyle, Isabelle, Brian, and Brian’s new boyfriend, all of them leaning on the others, tipsy. Bringing up the rear, standing at the threshold to the hallway, was Hunter.

“Erin!” Summer called when she saw me. “We came to find you. Aren’t you done with your paper yet? We’re going to the club, baby!”

My heart leapt. Summer, Jřrdis, and I had had a great time at the club the week before classes started. I hadn’t had time to go since.

“I have a test tomorrow,” I said. “I’ve almost finished my paper, and then I’m going to bed.” That is, I might be going to bed. Despite my best instincts, that depended on what Hunter was doing. Angry as I was with him, I could not let him go to that club with Isabelle.

“You don’t need all that sleep just to pass a test,” Brian said. “You need to relax and get your mind off studying for a while, and you can do that at the club.”

“Oooh, what’s this?” Brian’s boyfriend exclaimed, peering at one of Jřrdis’s works in progress. She’d started to glue the faces onto a board. All at once, everyone else tried to explain Jřrdis’s art, and Jřrdis.

Hunter walked over and leaned through my doorway. His shadow blended with my shadow on the wall behind him until I couldn’t tell one from the other. “Are you going?” he asked me quietly.

I was about to burst with anger. I should tell him I knew everything about his deal with my grandmother. But then our relationship, even our friendship, would be over. I wanted to get him out of my system, didn’t I? Otherwise I would wonder for the rest of my life what he would have been like. I would dream about him.

“I’m going if you’re going,” I said, looking him straight in the eye.

He disappeared into the larger room. I heard him say, “She’s going.”

“Hooray!” Now Summer poked her head into my room and whispered hoarsely, “Do you want a drink before we go? Or drinks? Manohar has a flask of—I don’t know what it is, honestly.”

“Oh, God, no,” I said. Just what my calculus test needed.

“Suit yourself.” Now she disappeared from the doorway. She said more loudly, “Hunter, Manohar has a mystery flask!”

“Oh, God, no,” Hunter said.

My fingers paused over my laptop keyboard. He couldn’t have overheard my whispered convo with Summer. Yet we were saying the same thing, feeling the same thing at the same moment, worried about school and frankly somewhat exasperated with our friends and sooooo bone tired and yet desperate to be with each other. I had always viewed Hunter as different from me—the opposite of me, really—and now I hated him thoroughly, yet tonight he was the person most like me in the universe.

“Come on, Erin!” Summer called.

I rolled backward in my chair and leaned through the doorway myself. “Go on without me. I’ll be right there. I’ve lost my train of thought for this paper. I can’t finish with you guys standing here.”

“Come on,” Hunter reprimanded them. “Leave her alone. She’ll show up in a while.” They groaned begrudgingly and shuffled out. The last one to leave, Hunter looked back over his shoulder and asked me, “Won’t you?”

I nodded. I didn’t see how, honestly. I had lost my bead on this paper. I didn’t see how I could miss this night with Hunter, either.

But thirty minutes later I did finish, then changed into club clothes and stared at myself in the mirror. I definitely was no classic blond beauty. But I had always done the best I could with what I had. On this particular night, worn-out looking from days of worry and hard work and little sleep, I supposed I could have been a model in a gritty heroin-chic fashion-magazine spread.

Yes, I would do for Hunter.

I heard the music from the club a block away. I couldn’t see the lights—the windows were blocked out, as if something delicious and secret was going down inside—and in the shadows near the door, Hunter leaned against the brick wall, waiting for me.

He met me halfway down the block and walked with me. “I shouldn’t have let you come by yourself,” he grumbled, “but by the time I realized that, I was afraid that if I went back for you, you’d come a different way and I’d pass you. Why are you a young woman in New York without a cell phone, again?”

“Are you kidding? A cell phone costs two hundred packages of ramen noodles every month.”

Before I realized what he was doing, he had paid my way into the club. I tried to protest, but he couldn’t hear me over the music. We wound through the writhing crowd, Hunter leading me by the hand. Summer and Manohar danced at the edge of the floor—Manohar, dancing! courtesy of the flask—and Summer pointed us toward an empty booth, the table scattered with glasses and a pitcher of soda.

Hunter slid onto the red velvet bench against the wall. I could sit on the bench across the table from him. Or I could sit on the bench beside him. I didn’t have to sit right next to him. He’d acted all day like we were together and he couldn’t wait to seal the deal. If I sat close to him, I’d be making my first move toward seducing him in return, though I knew full well I would dump him before he had the chance to dump me.

Decision made, I plopped down beside him on the bench without looking at him.

He said something. I couldn’t hear him.

“What?” I asked, turning to look at him.

He watched me intensely, strobe lights flashing across his long nose and sparkling in his blond hair. He crooked his finger at me, beckoning me closer.

Only so I could hear what he’d said, right? I leaned toward him.

At the same time, he stopped crooking his finger at me and laid that hand back where it had been, across the top of the seat.

So as I leaned my head toward his mouth, his arm was sort of around me.

“Are you as tired as I am?” he asked.

I still could hardly hear him over the music, but I knew he was talking loudly because his breath in my ear made my skin dance.

“I’m stone-cold sober,” he said, “and I feel more drunk than I did last night.”

What he said rang so true, so unexpectedly and absolutely true to my life in that moment, that I laughed, and I smiled at him as if he were my friend, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

He laughed, too—chuckling at first, watching me, unsure as to whether I was putting him on. Then laughing with me, a full-body laugh that had us both leaning forward across the bench, toward each other.

Finally the giddiness passed, mostly because my mouth hurt from smiling. Also because a few girls passing by the table had glanced in our direction and I was afraid we’d get kicked out for doing Ecstasy. But the lovely feeling remained, the warmth of laughing, the nearness of Hunter, smiling at me.

The smile stayed on his lips, but his eyes looked worried as he leaned toward me again and said in my ear, “I’m not sure I can handle pre-med.”

I backed away from him enough so that I could look into his eyes. He was dead serious, and again, what he said rang true. I nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. But you will feel better tomorrow. You’ll hardly remember feeling like this tonight.”

He watched me, eyes serious. “Why will I feel better tomorrow?”

I shrugged. “Because your tests will be over, and you will have gotten some rest tonight.” I’d thought what I meant was obvious. Weird that I understood him perfectly, and he didn’t understand me at all.

“I will?” He leaned forward to talk into my ear again—but this time his cheek touched mine, and his stubble combed across it, dragging a tingling sensation behind. If our friends on the dance floor glanced in our direction, they would not be able to tell we were touching each other. They would think we were still leaning close to hear each other, like before. They would have no idea that every nerve in my body sparked to life and burned as he growled in my ear, “Would you like to dance?”

I gave him a small nod. He stood and held out his hand to me. I put my hand in his. He led me onto the dance floor, in a clear space in a dark corner where the strobe light did not quite reach and the pink searchlight never swept.

Pulling me close, he wrapped one arm around my waist and put his other palm to my cheek. “I’ve done this all wrong,” he whispered in my ear. “I want to start over.”

At the feel of his breath on my earlobe, my heart shivered, sending tingles across my chest. My lips parted. I moved my cheek against his hand so he stroked me softly.

“This is a slow country song,” he whispered, his voice audible over the throbbing techno beat only because his lips moved against my ear. “And we are alone.”

Then he kissed me. His lips were on mine, pressing hard and hungrily. His hands were on the back of my neck, his fingers weaving into my hair, holding me in place as he opened my mouth with his tongue. His hands moved from my neck down my back and around to my front—not far enough to cup my breasts, but far enough to tell me what he wanted. I could not see whether anyone was watching us. He did not look. His eyes were closed, fists gripping my slinky blouse, lips on mine, like he would never let me go.

My heart was beating out of my chest. I did not want to do this with Hunter when I knew he was only toying with me. I did not want to do this in front of my friends. Eventually they would find out that he was toying with me, and that I had known this and had let him.

But there was no way I would break that kiss. His warm tongue was in my mouth, tangling with my tongue, sweeping over my teeth, claiming me as his. My blood raced through my veins and seemed to throb toward him like the ocean tide pointing toward the moon. It was one of those things in life a writer needed to experience: feeling smitten, rendered helpless, being taken.

“We have to go back to the dorm,” he mumbled against my lips.

I nodded just a little, gently enough that I didn’t remove my mouth from his.

This time I was the one who led him by the hand through the crowd. I was shocked that he put up with this all the way across the flashing dance floor. He must have reasoned that if he could keep me happy long enough to bed me, I would listen to reason about my career choice, he could talk me into running back to my grandmother, and a college education would be his. He let himself be led.

Summer glanced up from her dancelike tangle with Manohar. Her eyes widened. I’d told her in the afternoon that I would fill her in on my weekend with Hunter after I finished my history paper, but I hadn’t implied—or thought—that I would be leading him by the hand out of a club later. She spoke to Manohar. He jerked his head up wearing her astonished expression. So Hunter hadn’t told Manohar about us, either. Not that there was any “us” to tell.

We hurried through the cold night scented with Italian garbage, holding hands, hardly speaking.

The dorm was Sunday-night quiet as he backed me against the outer door to my room and kissed me hard. His hands reached around my waist, found their way up to my br**sts and touched them through my blouse and bra this time. I put my hands behind his head to mash him closer, but by then he’d fumbled through my purse and stuck my key in the lock. The door opened behind me.

We crossed the larger room quickly and closed ourselves in my tiny bedroom. As we embraced again, I began to understand the mistake I was making. He was in my bed, and I would never be able to sleep again without thinking of him here. He kissed me, and if I opened my eyes a sliver, I could see my makeshift bedside table, actually my filing cabinet, sporting the New York City magnet. He lay down on top of me, and past his shoulders I could see my laptop glowing. I smelled him and tasted him and now when I came here every night, I would think of him, which was exactly what I never, ever intended to happen.

17

Half asleep, I opened my eyes and puzzled through what I was seeing. Hunter Allen lay beside me. His bare muscular arm crossed me. He reached to my filing cabinet and touched the New York City magnet.

IN THE BLUE GLOW FROM THE streetlights outside, he slipped out of bed. I watched him pull on his jeans and move toward the door. He didn’t fasten his belt. Maybe he didn’t fasten the jeans, either, because they sat very low on his hips, so low that I would have turned around to watch him go if I’d passed him in the hall like that.

With his hand on the doorknob, he glanced back at me and saw me staring.

He came back and knelt on the side of the bed, leaned forward, and kissed the tip of my nose. “Go back to sleep,” he whispered.

Then he was gone, carefully opening the door without a squeak and shutting it most of the way behind him.

The outer door to the hallway closed softly. I felt this more than heard it, a little bump through the building.

Footfalls sounded in the stairwell, higher and higher in the walls.

Then silence.

I took a long breath, enjoying the last of his warmth lingering in the sheets around me. As my chest moved, the warm sheets slid against my skin as if he were still here. But it was over and he was gone.

Eventually the breath had to come out again as a sigh, and I was sobbing, coughing. I rolled over and coughed into my pillow so I wouldn’t wake Summer and Jřrdis. The pillowcase smelled like him.

I was lucky I’d found out in Kentucky that I’d been fooled all this time. I’d slept with him to get him out of my system, and that plan had backfired. He had jumped up and beat a trail out the door and up to his own floor as soon as he came to his senses and realized where he was. If I had expected anything different, I was still the fool I’d been trying so hard not to be.

Footfalls sounded in the stairwell again. Descending.

It wasn’t Hunter. It couldn’t be him coming back to me. Or if it was, he simply realized he’d left his coat in my room, and his shirt

and his underwear.

The hall door bumped shut.

I held my breath.

My door opened. He would gather his things and make a hasty exit.

He closed the door softly behind him. He shed his jeans in the soft light and slid into bed beside me. Because I’d rolled over to sob into the pillow, there was less room for him now. He pressed against me until I scooted over with my back to him.

Soft clicks sounded behind my head, and then the tiniest beep. He must have retrieved his Rolex from his room. He was setting his alarm.