Love Story(54)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“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 br**sts, 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.