Love Out of Order (Indigo Love Spectrum) (9 page)

“You sure? It looked kind of serious.”

“Yeah. Let me see your trophy.” I reached for the
cheap plastic object in his hand I had helped pick out and
knew well. I turned the conversation back to the contest
and successfully avoided talking about the oddness of our
relationship. For the moment, anyway.

* * *

When we got to John’s place, a guy threw the door
open before John could. He had short blond hair and
h
azel eyes. His muscled, perfect arms rested against the
door frame. He stared at me in a drunkenly quizzical way.
Then he held his hand up to John for a high-five. “Bud! Where have you been? Missing out on all the fun, that’s
where.”

John turned to me. “Denise, this is my roommate,
Shawn. Shawn, Denise.”

“Hey.” Shawn barely glanced at me.

“I thought it was just going to be a few people.
Where’s Tyler?” John said as we walked in. Tyler was his
other roommate. I’d known them both only by name until that night.

Shawn pointed into the living room. Tyler was on the
couch, talking to a brunette with an orange tan. He was
tall and lanky and had shaggy brown hair.

John didn’t look too happy about what was going on.
He pulled Shawn aside for a minute and they had a con
versation involving a lot of gestures, a few of them rude.
Then, John came back over to me.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Nothing.” So it was his turn to be evasive. “It’s too
loud down here. Wanna come upstairs with me?”

I hesitated, staring at the hand he held out to me.

“I’ll behave. I promise,” he said. He waved to some girls across the room who kept trying to wave him over.

I put my hand in his and he led me up the stairs. We
stopped at his room for a jacket, which he put under his
arm and then we continued up the stairs.

“Where are we going?” I asked as he opened the door
to the attic.

“
The roof.” He said that like it was a normal thing.
I stopped by the window he opened, refusing to go
through. “What do you mean, the roof?”

“It’s safe. It’s a lot quieter. I like it out here. C’mon.
You will, too.” He put his hands around my waist to help me outside and onto the roof. Even though I didn’t need
the help, I wasn’t about to push his hands away.

“You were right. It is nice out here.” I looked up at
the cloudless sky, admiring the stars I could actually see
since we were far enough away from the city.

“Yeah. Beautiful,” he said. When I glanced over at
him, he wasn’t looking up at the stars. He was looking at
me. I fiddled with the zipper on my jacket, my tongue tied.

I shivered slightly. Even though it was still not that
chilly, it was cool enough to be uncomfortable wearing just my light jacket. I was hardly aware that I had shiv
ered until John put the jacket he’d brought from his room
around my shoulders. I closed my eyes, relishing the
sudden rush of warmth that had come with the jacket
wrapped around my shoulders. He hugged me to him
and I tried to feel like it was wrong to feel so good being
pressed against him, but all I could feel was comfortable
and warm.

* * *

The next morning, I leaned back against John. We’d spent the whole night out on the roof. I watched the sun
rise with a faint smile across my lips. At that moment, I
p
retended he didn’t have a girlfriend. I pretended that we
never had to leave that roof.

The sky was filled with rich hues of purple, red, and
pink illuminated by the golden rays of the sun. The
purple was a little darker than lavender. The red,
crimson. And the pink, a delicate contrast to the purple
and red. There was an orange tint to the collage that gave
the entire sky an ethereal beauty.

The gold warmed me inside even though there was
no external warmth emanating from it. It was the most
beautiful sunrise I had ever seen. That probably had
something to do with the fact that I was hardly ever up
early enough to see the sunrise and the fact that everything was more beautiful when I was around John.

I sighed and settled further back into his jacket.

“You okay?” he murmured.

I nodded. I was afraid to speak. I didn’t want anything to ruin that moment.

John and I had talked for hours. Mostly about me.
He wouldn’t say very much about most of his family,
though I felt like I knew his brother, Thomas—who went
by Thom—personally by the end of that night. I told
him about college and my parents and Apryl. The one subject I steered way clear of was Joe.

It felt so easy and natural and right to talk to him; to
be around him. And that was scary because no matter
how perfect the night had been, I knew there was still a
Sasha out there in the world. Of course that was my luck.
Fall in love with a guy who has a gorgeous girlfriend.
Great job, Denise.

“
What are you thinking about? You’re so quiet,” John
murmured. He ran his hands up and down my arms as if
trying to warm me up. Little did he know, he was
increasing my temperature to a dangerous level.

“Just how beautiful the sunrise is,” I said, coming as
close to the whole truth as I dared.

“Oh,” John said.

I turned to face him. He brushed the backs of his fin
gers along my cheek and I had to ask. The look in his
eyes, a look not lust, not adoration for a friend, but
something else, made me ask. “You sang that song to me
last night, didn’t you?”

He removed his hand from my cheek and shrugged,
looking out across the rooftops of his neighbor’s houses.

“John, I just don’t know what to think about you,” I
sighed. It was the closest I’d ever come to addressing any
of the weirdness that always seemed to happen between
us.

“Neither do I,” he murmured. “I’ve been trying to
stay away from you, Denise. I have to.”

I pulled away from him and moved from between his
legs to sit next to him a safe distance away. “Yeah, I
noticed. I’m not really even sure why you asked me here.”

“Honestly, neither am I.” He was still staring away from me.

I laughed. The absurdity of it all.

“I mean, you’re cool. Really cool.” He paused for a
moment, wetting his lips in the interim. “And I really want to be friends. But, I mean—well, I guess it’s like
this. I want to hang out and stuff. But lately I’ve been
t
alking myself out of asking you to. I mean, ’cause I know
it’s gonna be great at first. But then it’s going to get to this
awkward part. It’s getting there right now. Well, it’s
gotten there already, I guess.”

“I still really don’t understand,” I said.

He turned to face me. I immediately wished he
hadn’t. His eyes locked on mine with such an intensity
that it knocked the air out of my lungs. I couldn’t look
away, but I felt as if I would melt and die on that roof if
I didn’t. There was more than passion between us at that
moment. His eyes were so intense. It was as if he was
trying to swallow me whole with them. And I wanted
him to. I wanted to devour him devouring me. I’d gotten
sex looks before, but this wasn’t one. It was as if he
wanted me to open to him; to become exposed so that he
could read my entire story. And I wanted him to.

He slid over so close that our legs were touching. He
pressed his hand to my cheek and I think I stopped
breathing. I grabbed the back of his neck and at the same
time, he pulled me to him. John kissed me. His tongue
moved slowly over mine. I wasn’t aware of anything in
the world besides his tongue moving slowly against mine.
A warmth washed over me that I had never felt before,
but I liked it. I hadn’t been kissed much in my life, and I
never felt such heat from a kiss before.

“I want to be friends. But it’s hard. For that reason.”
He whispered the words over my lips before pulling away
from me.

I muttered something nasty under my breath that I guess he heard.

“
I’m serious, Denise. I’m going through some crazy
stuff right now. And I shouldn’t be involving you in it. But I can’t—” he stopped himself with a groan of frustration.

I turned to him, wondering if I had heard him right.
“Can’t what?” I drew his jacket closer to me, wishing I was drawing him close instead.

John didn’t answer me.

“I dunno. It seems a pretty simple concept to me.
Why is it so hard for you to be around me and just be
friends if she’s the one you want to be with?” I couldn’t
bring myself to say her name. I could still feel his lips on
mine, and thinking straight was impossible. I was just
saying whatever words floated to the top of my mind.

He still didn’t say anything.

“Well, what are you trying to say here? We just stay
out of each other’s way from now on?”

He just shrugged. He could be so maddeningly frustrating. We sat there in silence for a while, just staring out
over the rooftops.

For one fleeting moment, I thought about putting
my hand in his again. But instead, I pulled myself to my feet with an exaggerated sigh. “I’m going home now.”

“I’ll drive you.” He stood and walked over to the
window we had climbed out of earlier. I climbed over the
sill in front of him, pushing away the hand he offered to
help me.

“I don’t need you to,” I said, but he still followed me
as I crossed the attic floor.

We silently walked through the hall and down the
stairs. I breathed in a mixture of stale beer and vomit. But
there was no breathing in John. He held the front door
open for me. I stopped in the doorway and stared at his
profile, since he wouldn’t turn to me.

“What you did up there was just bullshit,” I said, my
breath catching in my throat. I hurried down the steps and out to the sidewalk.

His voice was barely above a whisper. “You really
should let me drive you.”

I was walking in the opposite direction from where he
was parked. I stopped, but didn’t turn to face him. “No,” I called over my shoulder.

I continued down the sidewalk. I ignored him trying
to call me back. I let the tears fall. The wind stung my
face where they cut tracks down my cheeks. I tasted salt
at the corners of my lips and I was glad. I deserved to cry. I deserved to be sad. Who was I to think I had a chance
with John? Who was I to think I could ever be more than I was to him? And that that could ever be enough?

Astoria could not know. Ever. I couldn’t tell Suse for
fear it would slip out to Astoria. That was one I-told-you
so I could not bear. Not under any circumstances. It was
a pain I wanted to bear alone. And I hoped that bearing
it alone would make it go away faster.

I was determined not to think about the way the pre
vious night had felt so right. Watching the sunrise with
him. The tingle I still felt from his kiss. No. Such
thoughts were off limits. Permanently.

R
umors flew after the karaoke contest. Suse was right
about people talking, and the night of the contest had
only made it worse. I wasn’t surprised that John avoided
me, and I was too angry at him to care much about it.

I sat across from Astoria in the library. I stared at the
stacks behind her head, mostly. My administrative law
casebook lay open, the first page of that night’s reading
assignment glaring up at me. I couldn’t concentrate on
the law. With Astoria IMing me every few minutes and
the fact that my mind was far away from everything it
was supposed to be on, I hadn’t gotten much done at all
that evening.