“Staring at my phone, waiting for you to call. And you did. My life is complete,” she says, then emits a playful sigh.
“Seriously. What are you doing?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“I won’t.”
“No. You will. It’s so lame. Especially since my parents aren’t even here.”
My ears prick up. This is the sort of intel I was hoping for. “Tell me,” I insist.
“Reading the news.”
I laugh.
“See! I told you you’d laugh.”
“You’re such a news junkie. It’s cute,” I say, then shift gears. “Where are your parents?”
“My mom is out of town at a conference in Miami. She’s speaking at it, presenting or something. And my dad is out at some work thing, but he said it’s supposed to run super late. Wink-wink.”
I wither inside, a small part of my heart turning blacker, but I press on. “Do you still think he’s fooling around?”
“Totally. I’m sure he’s with the wench tonight. Like I can’t figure out what it means that he’s at a ‘networking thing that’s going to run super late’ when my mom is out of town.”
We chat for a few more minutes, then I tell her I need to get on my bike and ride downtown to my dad’s.
Instead I call Noah. “I’m on my way. I’m riding over. See you in seven minutes,” I say. My mom’s used me to cover up for her for years; it’s only fair that I get to use her affairs to cover up my tracks. I’m lying to both my parents tonight, but they have each used me in their own way to hurt each other, to help themselves.
I’m only doing what they taught me, I reason, as I race across town, without a soul in Manhattan, in the whole world, knowing where I am tonight. As the warm air whips past me on Fifth Avenue, I hardly feel like a girl still in high school for one more week. I hardly am. I might still spend seven hours a day there, but I am a girl of this city. Knowing how to navigate Manhattan is the class I excel most in.
New York is my real school. I’ve learned everything I’ve needed to survive from this city.
I reach his building and walk my bike into his lobby, saying hello to the doorman who knows me, and tells me he’ll lock my bike up in the storage room. I thank him and head to the sixth floor, where my boyfriend opens the door looking super hot and super sexy in his shorts and T-shirt.
“You look like you got caught in the rain,” he says, eyeing my wet hair and damp clothes.
“I did. Earlier.”
“I like your hair like that. But then again, I like your hair any way you wear it,” he says, fingering a strand of my wet hair.
“These jeans are kind of sticking to me.” I point to my blue jeans.
“Do you like boxers?”
I nod, and he takes my hand, threading his fingers through mine. He squeezes tight, his touch a signal that I’m his, and he’s mine. It is a small, but potent reminder, that he likes every part of touching me, and I feel the same for him. He walks me to his bedroom and offers me several pairs of boxers to choose from. I take a plaid pair, and then ask for a shirt.
“Take your pick,” he says and I choose my favorite purple one, trailing my fingernails down the front as I glance suggestively at him
I go to his bathroom and change, leaving my slightly damp clothes hanging on the shower curtain to dry. When I walk into his bedroom, he’s lying on top of the navy comforter, hands behind his head. He says nothing, just raises an eyebrow in appreciation of my new outfit.
One that brands me even deeper as his. Here, in his clothes again, I am showing my loyalty. To him. These clothes are the sign, even though we are the only ones who know that I belong to him. I bring the collar of the shirt to my nose, and inhale him. My eyes flutter closed and when I open them, his are darker and completely fixed on me.
“Come here,” he says, in a hot, husky voice. I’ve never seen so much desire in his eyes, so much heat. “Come here now.”
Noah
As she walks to the bed, I picture that red circle on the calendar. But it slips from my mind in a second in the curve of her hips, the look in her eyes, the way she licks her lips once, her tongue darting out.
My body is a tightrope. My blood heats and my skin burns with want for her, especially when she reaches the bed and crawls to me on her hands and knees. In. My. Clothes. My throat is dry, and my lungs are on fire as she slinks closer. My hands are at my sides, balled into fists. Clenched. Want thunders through me, and it’s nearly impossible to keep my hands off her. Not when she drops her mouth to mine. Not when she scoots on top of me, poised above me. Not when she laces her hands in my hair, and kisses me hard. Harder than she ever has.
We’ve always excelled at the slow and soft kisses; the measured, controlled ones. The kisses where you melt into each other. But this feels like a first. Because it’s raw and heated, and she clutches at me tightly, her hands sliding out of my hair to grip my shoulders as our lips crash together, and we swallow each other’s moans.
In this moment, I barely know how I’ve managed to keep my hands above her waist all those times we were together last year, and I hardly know how to do it now. Or if I even can anymore. Because when I pull gently on her lower lip with my teeth, she gasps in the sexiest, sweetest way. It kills my resolve. I shift her off me, and in seconds, she’s flat on her back on my bed, and I’ve pushed up her shirt and am kissing the soft skin of her stomach, licking a path up her body.