He climbed out of the booth. “Get whatever you girls want and a cheeseburger for me.”
“Okay,” his girlfriend of the moment agreed with a giggle.
He’d congratulated himself on finding yet another way to ruffle his straight-laced brother’s feathers in the bathroom. But when he came out, the co-ed had left and now only this month’s girlfriend was sitting on his side of the booth, looking uncomfortable and somber.
“What’s going on?” he asked her as he sat down.
Before she could answer, Layla covered her hand with hers and said, “Michelle has an essay due tomorrow, so she decided to cut out. I told her grades were more important than whatever she had planned with you two tonight. She’s on scholarship you know, so she really can’t afford to waste her time on…” She took a significant pause. “…people who might not have her best interests at heart.”
Nathan glanced at Andrew, who was slouched back in the booth and smirking at him. “That’s cool,” he said, refusing to blow up like Andrew obviously wanted him to. He took off his sunglasses and leaned toward Layla. “Maybe you can take her place.”
“Hey,” Andrew said, sitting up. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
Again Layla rubbed his back, soothing him with just the right touch. “It’s okay, I can take care of myself.” She turned her eyes back to his girlfriend. “No, I prefer to engage with people who actually care about me, so I’ll have to pass. Jessica, I think we have that in common, right? It’s better to be with someone who cares even a little about you than with someone who’s just using you for sex or who makes you feel like less of a human being. Right?”
Jessica nodded and said in a voice so soft he could barely hear her, “Right.”
“Oh, come on,” Nathan said.
This time Layla pinned Nathan with a look of blazing fury that took him by surprise. “No, you come on. Jessica is smart and generous. She deserves better. Do you care about her? Even a little?”
Jessica also turned toward him, waiting for his answer. And a thoroughly unfamiliar feeling assailed him: Guilt. “I don’t want to have this conversation,” he said, refusing to meet Jessica’s eyes.
Layla turned back to Jessica. “Do you care about Nathan?”
“I do,” Jessica said. “A lot.”
“Then, Nathan, you owe it to Jessica to tell her how you feel.”
“I don’t owe her anything. You’re the one who started this conversation.”
But then the normally up-for-anything Jessica surprised him by saying, “You can’t even say you care about me a little?”
He made a few calculations and decided to just go with the truth. “No, I can’t really say that. You’re a fun girl, but—”
She slapped across the face. “You’re an asshole, Nathan Sinclair. Let me out.” She pushed at him until he slid out of the booth, allowing her to slide out, too.
But before she left in a huff, she stopped long enough to say, “Thanks, Layla. It was great meeting you.”
“You, too,” Layla said.
They all watched her stomp out of the restaurant. The waiter chose that moment to come over with three plates of food.
“Oh, here’s your cheeseburger,” Layla said.
Nathan plopped back down on his now empty side of the booth. “I hate you,” he said to Layla.
She grinned. “Hate’s such a strong word. Eat your cheeseburger.”
Both she and his brother were obviously trying very hard not to laugh.
“I’m not hungry,” Nathan said.
“Apparently Michelle and Jessica weren’t either. Look at all this food they left behind. If I were Jessica, I would have at least asked for a to-go bag before slapping you and storming out.”
Andrew lost his battle not to laugh, letting go of his mirth with a huge splutter of air. That set Layla off. She giggled leaning her head again Andrew’s shoulder. And though Nathan wanted to stay angry at the both of them, he felt a strange bubble of humor crawling up his chest, and before he knew it, he was laughing too, just as amused by what had happened as Layla and Andrew.
The three of them ended up staying at the diner until one in the morning, talking about everything from current television to their classes at Carnegie Mellon to Nathan’s own future plans.
That was the conversation that convinced Nathan to stop partying and start applying to colleges. It was also the conversation that escalated his feelings for Layla from lust to love. But Layla’s original plan to bring the brothers closer had failed. By the time he and Andrew made it home, after dropping off Layla at her dorm building, Nathan disliked his brother even more. Not because of their many differences, but simply because he had Layla and Nathan did not. And at that point, there was nothing Nathan wanted more than to have Layla for himself.
Nathan snapped out of the memory, arriving back in his inner office bathroom. The object of his long ago obsession was now in his office and waiting for him in a most tantalizing position. He threw one more handful of water in his face, and imagined what he’d do to her next. He wanted to taste her this time, feast on her until she keened his name and begged him to do whatever he wanted to her.
But when he walked into his office, he found it empty. Both Layla and her clothes had disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the lingering smell of the sex they’d just had and Nathan’s complete and utter fury.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THREE days after unwittingly having sex with a married man in his office and two back-to-back remote physical therapy appointments on the other side of town, the 61C bus dropped Layla off on Murray Avenue. She lived about a fifteen-minute walk away from the bus stop and she usually relished the time it took her to get home. Squirrel Hill was a clean and peaceful neighborhood, populated mostly with Orthodox Jewish families and students from two nearby colleges. She felt safe there, even when walking home in the dark.
But that night the eight-block walk was a miserable slog. The summer night air felt hot and sticky on her skin, and she couldn’t help but think of the last time she had been hot and sticky, in Nathan Sinclair’s office with her back pressed up to one of his cold windows. An embarrassing wave of lust washed over her as she remembered what she had done. Embarrassing because she’d prefer to feel nothing but guilt where Nathan Sinclair was concerned. But when she thought about the way his chest had rubbed against her breasts as he pounded into her creaming slit, her breasts betrayed her better intentions by swelling underneath her scrubs.