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Dan’s hand squeezed my sides gently before he pulled out. My skirt fell back around my thighs, and I reached to pull up my panties from their place around my knees. He flushed the condom, tucked himself away, zipped up his pants, every movement businesslike and efficient like he’d done this dozens of times before. For all I knew, he had.
“I took care of the check,” he said, his voice suddenly too loud for the small space, and then he walked out.
What had I expected? I chided myself. The same face looked at me from the mirror, but this time the fading flush on my throat and cheeks were a sign of a woman not about to be fucked, but one who has already been. I searched my eyes for some sign of change, something inside me to indicate how this should make me feel. Remorse? Guilt? Smug satisfaction? I saw no evidence of them in my gaze, couldn’t feel it. All I could think of was the way I’d laughed and climaxed simultaneously.
Even so, I lingered at the sink to wash my hands and pat a dampened paper towel across my face. I fixed my hair, freshened my makeup, sprayed cologne to mask the scent of sex.
The parking lot had emptied, the lunchtime crowds gone. I came out into late-afternoon sunshine that had me pulling my sunglasses from my bag. A spring breeze plucked at the hem of my raincoat.
“Hey.”
I turned to see him standing just outside the front doors. He flicked a just-finished cigarette onto the pavement and took two strides to catch up to me.
“You took a long time,” he said. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming out.”
I took a second to answer. “I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”
Something flickered in his eyes I couldn’t decipher. “No?”
I shook my head slowly.
“Why would you think that?”
“Because you were finished. I figured you needed to get back to work.”
I’d taken a cab to the restaurant, but the bus stop was only a block away. I started walking. He let me go four steps before he followed me.
“So…you think I just left you there?”
I nodded again, keeping my eyes straight ahead. It was true. I hadn’t expected him to wait for me, had believed he’d gone. I hadn’t been ashamed of what we’d done until I found him waiting for me. When it became clear he expected not just a quick lunchtime fuck, but conversation after.
“That’s the sort of guy you think I am.” He had a way of phrasing questions in such a way he answered them himself.
I glanced at him. “Well, Dan, I don’t know what sort of guy you are, other than you’re careful, which I appreciate.”
Darkness passed over his features and he reached to grab my arm when I made to move forward again. “Elle—”
I extricated myself from his grip with firmness that could not be misconstrued. “Thanks very much for lunch, Dan.”
He let me get six steps this time before he followed. “Is that all you think I wanted? Is that what you expected?”
How could I explain to him, who seemed so affronted, that it was not only what I had expected, but all I wanted. Twenty minutes of oblivion to make me stop thinking.
He took two more quick steps to end up in front of me, walking backward to keep us face-to-face. “Elle.”
“That’s my bus.” I pointed at the one pulling up to the stop. I could be there in another minute, get on, go back to work.
“You’re not getting on that bus.”
“No? I think I am.”
He stood in front of me so I had to step around him to keep moving. He matched my move with one of his own, graceful, as though we were dancing. He wasn’t smiling, but then, neither was I.
“Elle,” he said warningly. “Don’t walk away from me.”
I might have liked it when he was leading me unerringly toward sex, but I didn’t like his assumptions now. “I’ll walk wherever I want.”
Again he stepped in front of me. The bus, its driver apparently taking Dan’s side, pulled away. I glared. This time he let me move forward.
“Now you have to talk to me,” he said.
“No,” I retorted. “I don’t.”
“But you want to.”
“Look,” I said, whirling on him. “Just because I let you fuck me doesn’t give you the right to tell me what to do!”
“I didn’t say it did!” He frowned. “I think it at least gives me the right to have you not think I’m an asshole.”
“I don’t think you’re an asshole.”
He moved closer. “Then what do you think I am?”
“I think you’re a man,” I replied, not caring if that offended him.
Dan didn’t look offended. He grinned. “Glad you noticed.”
I wanted to be angry with him. I wanted to feel disdain. Yet as I’d waited for shame or remorse in the bathroom, anger and disdain eluded me, too.
“Look,” I said finally. “We had a nice lunch—”
“We did.”
“And what happened, after—”
“Also nice. We forgot dessert.”
I paused. “But let’s not kid ourselves it was anything more than what it was. All right?”
“Elle,” Dan said seriously. “Why not?”
The bus stop was ten steps away, but I kept walking past it. He followed. I walked faster.
“Why not?” He asked again, softer this time, and reached to grab my elbow.
I didn’t pull away this time. I let him turn me. He put both hands on my elbows, holding me in place.
“Why not?
A thousand explanations raced through my mind, but only one slipped from my tongue. “Because it’s not what I do.”
“Take off your sunglasses. I want to see your eyes when you talk to me.”
I sighed, belabored, but complied. He met my gaze, searching my eyes like they held a clue, a key, a treasure map. His fingers curled on my arms.
“Why not?”
I could only stare at him for a long moment while traffic passed us by and birds chattered among the branches of a tree in springtime bloom. “I just don’t.”
“You don’t what?” The tone was gentle, the words nonthreatening, but I could give him no answer. “You don’t date?”
“No.”
He studied my face. “But you fuck in bathrooms.”
I jerked from his grasp and set my feet to the sidewalk again. “I’ve never done that before.”
This time I thought for sure he’d let me go. I made it to the corner before he reached my side again. I didn’t look at him.
“I want to see you again.”
I stopped, shoulders hunching in resignation that this conversation would not end until he was satisfied. “Why, Dan?”
“Because I didn’t get to see your face this time.”
Just like that, desire sliced me open like a samurai sword and left me gasping for breath. I hid it with a shake of my head and a scowl. He didn’t grab me to stop me this time, just murmured my name in a low voice that halted my feet as though I’d stepped in glue.
“Because you have the sexiest laugh I’ve ever heard in my life, and I don’t think I could stand knowing I’d never hear it again.”
Why is kindness so much harder to believe than cruelty?
I didn’t want to believe him. I wanted to think he was full of empty words. I wanted to walk away from him. I wanted all those things, but in the end, had none of them.
“I don’t date.” The reply sounded lame, even to me.
Dan grinned. “So we won’t date.”
“What,” I asked, refusing to smile though the corners of my mouth insisted on tilting upward, “will we do?”
“Whatever you want, Elle,” Dan said. “Whatever you want.”
Chapter 04
Whatever I wanted. An easy thing to promise, but not so easy to request. I didn’t know what I wanted. I only knew I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Marcy cornered me by the coffee machine. “Where’d you go on Friday? You ditched us!”
“I got a headache.” The lie tripped easily off my tongue. “You two were looking pretty cozy by the bar, so I just snuck out.”
She seemed satisfied with that answer, then prattled on about her night with Wayne. The cologne he wore. The brand of shampoo he preferred. The way he liked his eggs. She stopped midsentence to stare at me.
“What?”
I’d been transfixed by her commentary, but now I finished pouring my coffee. “Nothing.”
I didn’t want to tell her I envied her. I wasn’t sure I did. I’d been in love before, with disastrous results.
“Did something happen at The Blue Swan?”
I shook my head. “No. Should it have?”
“Hell, yeah.” Marcy tossed her blond hair over one shoulder. “It should have. Definitely. But…nothing? We lost you after you went to get the drinks. Thought maybe someone swept you away.”
“Oh.” My laugh sounded forced and lame. “Nothing like that, I’m afraid.”
She didn’t look convinced, but I didn’t give her any more of the story.
Dan didn’t wait to call me the way I had.
“Hello, Miss Kavanagh. Daniel Stewart calling.”
“Yes, Mr. Stewart. How can I help you?”
“I read a good review about the film showing at the Allen Theater this weekend. I’d like to make an appointment with you to see it.”
“An appointment?” He’d caught me washing dishes left over from breakfast. I cradled the phone against my shoulder while I swirled a soapy sponge over my bowl and rinsed it.
“Yes. I believe you said you didn’t go on dates.”
“I said I didn’t date. Not that I didn’t go on dates.”
“Ah. Fine line, there.”
I imagined him running a hand through his hair, maybe wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He’d have a leather couch. Big-screen television set. Plants a housekeeper watered and plucked the dead leaves from.
I finished with my dishes and set the kettle on to boil water for tea. “I go on an occasional date.”
That wasn’t quite true. I hadn’t been on a date in a long time. Longer than I’d forgone sex, as a matter of fact.
“You’re changing your story on me, Elle. That’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair.” I wiped off my table and replaced the napkin holder in the center.
“Elle.” His voice reached through the phone and stroked me from head to foot. I closed my eyes. “You want to go with me to the movies.”
I leaned against my counter, an arm folded across my stomach to support the one holding the phone. I thought for a moment. “Yes. I do.”
“Good,” he said, as though that settled things. And it did.
