Lois's voice crackled on the humming police scanner.
I ducked from under his arm, dove across the bed, and switched the scanner off.
In the silence, I felt a wave of relief. Then it occurred to me he might be weird about keeping his scanner on at all times, listening for trouble.
I sat up cross-legged on the bed. He still watched me from the doorway, beside the large drawing of the bridge.
Since I'd already turned the scanner off and he hadn't kicked me out of his apartment yet, I considered asking him to take the bridge drawing down and deposit it in the closet, just for the next two hours. I opted not to, lest he think I was a complete fruitcake.
Wait a minute. Who was the bigger fruitcake? He was the one with the bridge obsession.
Okay, I did not want to hold a fruitcake bake-off just then. I wanted John to do me.
T held out my hand to him.
He approached me cautiously, beams of moonlight through the windows blinds moving over him. He thought I was going to bolt. He sat in front of me, weighing down the bed so I sank toward him a little on the mattress. With a hot palm on each of my thighs, he leaned in until our foreheads touched. Then he brushed his sensitive lips up my cheek and toward my hairline.
Here was more of what I expected from John. Tortured self-control. Now I didn't have nearly as much self-control as he did. I leaned in and kissed him hard.
We played this game for the next hour and a half. He would take over and kiss me carefully, with attention to detail, like I was one of his drawings. It was the slowest, most thorough, most agonizing, best make-out session imaginable. Until he tried to take my shirt off, or my jeans. I couldn't allow that.
Then I would take over, and things would go faster. There was also a certain amount of fascinated experimentation on my part. After his show of being a big strong policeman, it really turned me on to find out he was a normal boy after all. An unusually well-built boy, granted, but still a boy who reacted in predictable ways. When I whispered in his ear, he shivered. When I touched him, he gripped me harder. I managed to get all his clothes off while it was my turn to play authority. His beautiful naked body pressed down on me. wanting in.
I could have very happily spent a whole week in foreplay with him, but I had to leave for the diner soon. I needed to get what I'd come for.
One of the condoms I'd bought for Eric yesterday was in my pocket. If I pulled it out, I might look slut-whorish, like I was always on the ready. Anyway, I figured John was so uber-responsible, he had his own. Even if he hadn't intended them for me. I rolled out from under him, opened the side table drawer, and fished inside. "How lucky," I murmured. "An assortment." I spread them out beside us on the bed to look.
"Meg, I don't think we should do it."
His soft words stabbed me. The only other sound was the sheets slipping against each other as we breathed. Suddenly I longed for the hum of cars on the interstate, even the scanner. Anything to drown out those gentle words I'd known were coming all along.
"You could have fooled me," I managed.
"I mean, I do. Of course I do. But I think there's something wrong if you want to have sex with me but you won't even take your clothes off."
I moved my hands down to zip my jeans. "I have given you access."
"You've probably still got your shoes on." I felt him exploring with his bare foot at the end of the bed. "Yes, you've still got your shoes on. So you can run out the door."
"That's not why."
"Okay, then." He propped himself up on one elbow and gazed at me. "Why won't you take your clothes off?"
I shuddered at a little chill that slipped into the warm bed with us. "I would feel naked."
"You would be naked."
"Exactly."
In the soft light, I watched the worry lines appear between his eyebrows. He pulled one hand from under the covers and moved it to stroke my hair, but something in my face must have stopped him. He put his hand down. "You won't let me kiss you in the corner."
"I won't let anybody kiss me in the corner."
"Then you don't trust anybody. I'm not sure I want to have sex with a girl who doesn't trust me."
"You're not sure? Let me help you make the decision." I slid out of bed and landed with my shoes on the carpet, hard enough that the room shook, just to make my point.
He grabbed my wrist, his big hand tight and hot around me. "I mean, I do want to have sex with you, but I want you to trust me."
The red lights flashed behind my eyes again. "Never grab me."
I think a few seconds passed before the red lights faded and I looked at John again. He had let me go in surprise, dark eyes wide.
"I hope I got sand in your bed," I threw at him on my way out of his bedroom.
I built speed across his living room, through the door of his apartment, and down the stairs outside. By the time my feet hit the asphalt, I was running at top speed across the parking lot and onto the shoulder of the highway. It was only about two miles to Eggstra! Eggstra! And the jog would be good for me. I hadn't gotten my run in yesterday. I probably had leukemia.
Through the trees, the interstate had begun to hum again with the traffic of early commuters to Birmingham. And footsteps rang behind me, gaining on me. John passed me and stepped in front of me. I stopped to keep from running right into him. He wore jogging shoes and jeans, no shirt. His white chest glowed under the streetlights.
He took a big breath. "You're fast."
"So they tell me." I stepped around him and started running again.
"Hey!" He ran a few steps after me and caught me with his hand around my upper arm.
I stopped and screamed at him, "I told you, don't grab me!"
"For God's sake, Meg! We look like a domestic!" "Whose fault is that? You're the one with your shirt off."
He looked down at his bare chest, then accusingly at a passing car. Then accusingly at me. "What is the problem?"
I put my fists on my hips. Between panting breaths, I said, "All right, John. You want to play dumb? I'll explain it to you. Girls don't like it when boys don't want to have sex with them."
“I—"
"Boys are supposed to be helpless in the face of their hormones, or a pair of big tits. You didn't turn me down because I had my shoes on. That's bullshit. You're in love with someone else."
"I am not in love with Angie," he said with his hands out to me. "To tell you the truth, I was kind of relieved when she broke up with me. I should have ended it a long time before that, but she'd gotten to be a habit. A bad habit."