One & Only (Canton) (19 page)

The bargaining continued as he braced his hands on the wall above my head and breathed harshly against my ear, as lost as I was, as desperate to go on.
It’s okay,
I wanted to tell him.
It doesn’t count. We’re not even kissing.

Like whores do.

The thought fell like a sheet of ice between us. My hands dropped to my sides and I slid off his leg. “Stop. Stop, Dylan. Stop.”

He backed off immediately.

“I’m not this girl,” I mumbled. “Not this girl who fucks some guy with a girlfriend in a closet at a frat party. Oh, God, what are we doing?” I fumbled for the door.

“Tess, don’t—” He reached for me. I needed air, I needed light, I needed out.
Reality
.

I practically fell out of the closet. Blinking in the light, I saw a handful of people staring at me.

“That’s
so
not a bathroom,” I trilled, pretending to be tipsy. “Oops.” I hope I didn’t look as mussed, as flushed and hot and turned-on and
guilty
as I felt.

Eyes downcast, I hurried down the hall and through the house out on to the yard. The lights on the lawn bathed everything in harsh, multi-colored reality. Spilled beer and crushed plastic cups. Trash and crowds and cold, grim air. Reality. Escape. My car—still parked outside the lab—

“There you are!” said Elaine. I practically ran right into her. “Where did you disappear to? That Chris guy is looking for you—”

Chris. Right. That guy in line for the beer. He’d been cute, he’d been funny…but he hadn’t been Dylan. God, what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I like the nice, available frat boy?

“I have to go home,” I said, and I completely failed at keeping my voice in acceptable levels of calm.

“Tess, what’s wrong?” Her eyes narrowed and she reached for me. “Do you feel all right? What did you have to drink?”

“Tess!” It was Dylan. “Wait.”

Elaine looked from me to Dylan. “What’s going on?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. This was a nightmare.

“Tess is fine,” Dylan said to Elaine. “I’m going to walk her back to her car…”

“No,” I said. If he walked me back to my car, we’d end up doing it on the hood. “I’m fine. I just want to go home.”

“Let me go with you,” Elaine was saying now. “It’s late, and I’m not sure you—”

“I’ve got this,” Dylan said to her. “She’s fine.”

“Back off, Kingsley,” Elaine snapped. “She was fine twenty minutes ago, and now she looks like she might cry.”

I took a deep breath and gave them both a long, hard glare. “I’m fine. I don’t need anyone to walk me anywhere. I just want to go home.” I looked at Elaine. “Don’t worry about me. I had two sips of a beer I opened myself. No one has slipped me a roofie.” I turned to Dylan. “Don’t. Just…don’t.”

He looked stricken but gave a tiny nod. I almost gave in right there. But I didn’t. I turned on my stupid, sexy, too-high heels and walked away.

I was not that girl.

SIXTEEN

I was halfway home before my heart stopped pounding, and it wasn’t until I was in the shower that the queasy feeling in my stomach subsided. I pressed my palms flat against the tiled walls of our shower stall and took several deep breaths.

It was close back there. And I had no idea how it had happened.

There were times in my childhood, especially once I was a teenager and understood the truth behind my existence, when I’d wondered what my mother had been thinking. At what point in her early interactions with my father she had thought to herself, “I don’t give a shit that he’s married and has made a commitment before God and man to some other women, I’m going to take all my clothes off and have sex with him anyway.” I thought there had to have been a moment where she made that decision, where it lay before her, a giant YES/NO button for her to look at and then choose.

But that hadn’t happened back in the closet. We were having a discussion and then we were doing…
things
, and I’m not sure where one ended and the other began.

I had made a decision, though, before things got too dire. I’d left. I’d
run
, to be perfectly honest. But I’d had to. If I didn’t leave right then, right that very second, I would have capitulated. I’d have pressed the giant, blinking red YES button and become that girl. The one who slept with her sick sister’s boyfriend.

I started feeling queasy again.

What was it about Dylan? Was it that he was taken? Was
that
the kind of person I was—the one who liked boys who weren’t available? Would I want Dylan as much as I did if he were free? He had been free, back at Cornell, and I’d been able to walk away. What had changed? Why couldn’t I walk away now?

I got out of the shower, toweled off, and brushed my teeth. Once my hair was dry enough to stop dripping, I changed into a pair of my mom’s old silk pajamas. Over the years, Dad had bought her plenty of sexy negligees, but they seemed to gather dust in the bottom of her lingerie drawer. I’d never seen her wearing anything but these—loose, silky drawstring pants and matching tops. Sometimes they were fancy, kimono-style tops with embroidered dragons and palm fronds, but this was a simple blue button-down. The material shivered over my feverish skin, cool and soothing, a sensual delight that had nothing to do with sex.

Suddenly, it was very easy to understand what Mom liked about these PJs.

It was barely eleven thirty, but I climbed into bed anyway. Mom had already retired to her bedroom, but though I could see the light from her bedroom TV flickering under the door, I opted not to bother her. What would I say?

Mom, when you started having sex with Dad behind his wife’s back, did you ever have a crisis of conscience, or did you just decide that he looked so handsome and smelled so good and felt so amazing that you really didn’t care whose lives you’d be ruining?

Mom, I’m thinking of continuing the family tradition of having an affair with a guy who
should
be with a Swift woman. Thoughts?

Hey, Mom, just wondering how you feel about me sleeping with my sister’s boyfriend. Think it violates Dad’s rules? What if we just don’t tell her? After all, it’s worked for you all these years.

I threw my arm over my face to muffle my cry of frustration.

Mom, I’m screwing up. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to be that girl. But I love him. What do you do if you love him?

I knew what she had done. She’d thrown caution to the wind and taken what she wanted, even though it belonged to someone else.

He was mine first.

Yes, there were differences. Dylan and I—we had history, long before Hannah. And nobody was married yet. And the big one: I
hadn’t
slept with him when I’d had the chance.

And I wouldn’t, either. Not until everything was resolved. I could offer my secret sister that, at least. Maybe I’d take her boyfriend, but I wouldn’t betray her.

My phone buzzed on my nightstand. I didn’t even have to see the screen to know it was Dylan. I let it ring, once, twice, three times, then lost my nerve and picked it up.

“Don’t hang up,” he said at once.

“I’m not going to. I wouldn’t have answered if I didn’t want to talk.”

He sighed in relief. “Thank God. The only reason I’m not at your door right now is because I realized I don’t know where you live.” He stopped. “I don’t even know where you live, Tess.”

I imagined him running up the stairs to my apartment, banging on the door, waking up all the neighbors and my mom like he was the hero in some romantic movie. Jesus, Tess. What was next? Picturing him out in the parking lot, holding up a boom box as the sun rose?

Of course he didn’t know where I lived. How could I invite him by when there was a good possibility my dad might show up at any time? To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t used to having people over to my house. Friends would visit when I was younger for play dates and later, sleepovers, and now occasionally Sylvia stopped in, but nothing else. I didn’t even know what Mom’s policy was about guys coming over. It had never been an issue in high school, and I’d had my own apartment at State.

“What happened at the party,” he was saying, “I thought—I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking.”

I hadn’t been either. That was the problem. One dark, empty closet and I was going to break the promises we’d made just a few days ago.

“Where are you right now?” he asked. “Home? Let me come over.”

No freaking way. “No. I’m in bed.”

There was a pause. “Oh, then definitely let me come over.”

He said it like a joke, but I knew better. If he came over, that would be the end of all my good intentions.

“No.”

“Tess—”

“I can’t be around you,” I whispered. “I can’t stop myself.” Maybe it was genetic. My parents couldn’t stop themselves, either.

“I can’t
not
be around you,” he replied. “How’s that for a conundrum?”

My insides thrilled at his words, even as my conscience pinged. “Dylan, please…”

“You know, I couldn’t actually see you tonight,” he went on. “Not really.”

I had no idea what he was getting at.

“But I still knew exactly what you looked like.” Another pause, and some rustling. Where was he? Back in his studio apartment in Swift? Sitting on his rumply futon bed? Lying on it? “Want to know why?”

Yes
. “No.”

Dylan went on like he hadn’t even heard me. “That day at Cornell. You weren’t only the first girl I’d ever slept with, Tess. You were also the first girl I’d ever made come.”

I caught my breath.

“The first girl I’d ever
seen
come. Clearly I was watching all the wrong porn in high school.”

I laughed nervously. “You’ve found better porn?”

“I don’t need porn,” he said softly. “I just remember you.”

Oh my God.

“A lot.”

Oh. My. God.

“Your eyes, wide, like you were surprised and happy—thrilled, maybe? Your face flushed. And your mouth open, your lips pink and wet and perfect.” His voice was soft and languid and I knew he must be lying in his bed too. Maybe that was the rustling. Oh, I was in
so
much trouble.

“And the sounds you were making,” came Dylan’s voice in my ear, soft and close as if he were sharing my pillow.

I don’t think what I was doing could properly be called breathing anymore. It was panting.

“Kind of like now.” He chuckled, low and smooth, and I felt moisture pool between my legs. “Like you didn’t want me to know how hot I was making you. But I knew, Tess. I knew, and I’ve never forgotten.”

I shifted under the covers as if I could escape him, escape his voice, but he went on, slow and steady and insistent, and even the silk of my pajamas was an affront. My nipples were hard and tingly against the fabric, my skin felt too tight, too hot, too sensitive, and that throbbing I’d felt in the closet was back in full force.

“It’s really clear to me, Tess, because I’ve thought about it quite a bit. For two years.”

My hand drifted lazily over the waistband of my pants.
No. No, Tess.
I was not going there. Phone sex was off-limits as much as closet sex.

“Every time I touch myself.” Was it my imagination, or was he breathing heavily too? I lay there, listening, my body sobbing for release, and I thought of Dylan, for two years, touching himself and remembering me, imagining me, wanting me…

“What do you think about?” he asked, and there was no mistaking it now. Breathless. “Tell me, Tess.”

No. I would not respond. I couldn’t control Dylan’s imagination, but I wasn’t going to cross the line.

“Tell me,” he coaxed.

“You,” I admitted miserably. I took a deep breath. “Of course it’s you. It’ll be you for years after tonight, you jerk.”

He was quiet for a long, long moment. I thought I’d lost him.

“Dylan?”

“See?” he said, his tone all smug and satisfied. “You can avoid me if you want, but it doesn’t change things. Believe me. I’ve wanted you for two years, and I didn’t see you once.”

“What the hell, Dylan!” I barely kept my tone low enough not to wake the whole building. “That was supposed to be a
lesson
?”

“No,” he said. “Just the truth. I love you, Tess. Goodnight.” The line went dead.

I wanted to throw my phone across the room. But instead I turned off the light, rolled over, and finished the job Dylan had started.

***

Early the next morning, I emailed Dylan.

I’ve canceled our lab reservation this evening, since Elaine has offered to share and I could use the shift at Verde. She told me we can use it Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Have a good weekend.

-Tess

There. That should do it. The hints were heavy enough. Three blissful days in which I wouldn’t see him once. Three miserable, interminable days in which I would never even set eyes on Dylan Kingsley.

The only way to get through this was to work, and work hard. After my Friday classes, I headed straight to Verde and changed into my waitress uniform. Once the lemons were sliced to within an inch of their lives, the silverware/napkin rollups bundled so tightly they could have passed for tourniquets, the candleholders polished, and the liquor bottles on the rail refilled, I decided to wash down the prep fridge.

Sylvia found me elbow-deep in the ice machine. “You know we have a duty roster, right? And you’re only supposed to pick
one
task?”

I wiped my hands off on my apron. “Yeah. I just needed to work off some extra energy.”

“I don’t believe it,” she replied, crouching beside me. “Canton Bio-E, working here four nights a week, and that whole symposium thing? No one with your schedule has extra energy.”

Would she accept sexual frustration? My solo session the previous evening had barely even taken the edge off. Every time I closed my eyes, I remembered that dark closet. I couldn’t look at my clothes hangers without blushing this morning. “You should talk. You’ve got voice lessons, band practice, and every night you aren’t here you’re either performing or babysitting Milo.”