The Thrill of It

Chapter Nine

Trey

“You’re at my apartment?”

She sounds shocked. As if I broke into her place.

“Well, outside,” I say, half-defensively, because I’m not sure if she’s annoyed that I’m here, my ass parked on the stoop of her building, waiting for a girl who doesn’t want someone waiting for her.

“I thought you were going to the meeting?”

“I was at the meeting. And when I didn’t hear from you or see you there…” I say, but I don’t know how to finish the sentence. I sound like a stalker. Like I’m that pathetic stalker guy.

“Sorry I didn’t go,” she says in a small voice. A skinny hipster ambles puffing on a cigarette as he walks a pug. The dude tugs at his shirt. The night is muggy and the heat in the air clings.

“You don’t have to apologize to me.” There’s a part of me that wants to hang up on her, to get the hell out of here, and let her deal with her shit all by herself. But I guess there’s a stronger part that doesn’t want to lose her, because I came here after the meeting on a mad hunt for the girl I kissed last night. “Anyway, I had a feeling you might need someone to talk to.”

“I didn’t do anything with him, Trey,” she pleads, like she desperately wants me to know this vital fact. I don’t know if it’s because we’re friends, or because of what happened last night. But I don’t want to ask.

“Do you want me to wait for you?”

“Yes, please. I want you to wait for me,” she says, and with her words, the stronger part wins out by far. I stretch out on the stoop, like the step is a couch, my backpack forming a pillow. I draw in my sketchbook, mapping out a new design of a dragon with spikes, a long, snapping tail and breath of fire, something a regular client of mine wants.

A few minutes later a cab pulls up, and she pays the driver, then escapes. I squeeze my eyes shut when I see what she’s wearing. Then I open them.

“Hi.” She offers a meek little wave as she sinks down next to me. I close the sketchbook.

The cab races off, kicking up exhaust into the night breeze, mingling with all the other scents nearby. This is New York for you – I can smell Harley’s wild cherry lotion and I can smell garbage that needs to be picked up tomorrow, the fume from cabs, and the trailing scent of cigarettes. The ugly with the beautiful.

“You look guilty,” I say. “But you don’t have to look guilty on my behalf.”

“I feel guilty.”

“Why? Are you going back to him?” I ask in a strangled voice. The thought makes me sick.

She shrugs. “He made me an offer.”

I recoil, then stand up quickly as if I can’t even be near her when she’s like this. When she’s in this zone. “Are you going to take it?” I ask with a sneer. I don’t mask my disgust. I can’t mask my disgust.

“I don’t know,” she says, and her voice breaks, and I fucking hate that she can be like this.

Tempted.

I push both hands through my hair, grabbing hard. “You’re not a fucking whore, Harley.”

“It’s not like that,” she spits back.

“Fuck that,” I shout through clenched teeth. I pace down the block, walking away from her, far away. To the end of the block, where I stop and slam a hand against the street sign. I take a sharp, deep breath, then turn around. She’s still on the stoop, and she’s fiddling with her shirt, shakily fastening the top two buttons.

When I reach her I bend down and grip her knees. I stare hard at her, her brown eyes like pools. One lone tear streaks down her face. “You are better than that,” I tell her, never breaking her gaze. “You are so much better than that.”

“But what if I’m not?” She chokes out in the tiniest voice.

I wipe the pad of my thumb across her cheek. I want to kiss her tears away, but I can’t go there right now. For a million reasons.

“You are,” I say firmly. I want to shake her. I want to smack some sense into her. “How can you even say you’re not?”

She drops her head so I can’t look at her. “Because I’m not. Because I went to see him. Because you’d never do this. You’re stronger than me. You’re never even tempted.”

“You think this is easy for me?” I crouch on the sidewalk, my hands still gripping her knees. I glance down at her socks, then shake my head. “I hate these socks,” I mumble, as I peel the right one down her leg. She lets me, lifting her calf for me. My fingertips brush her skin, but I manage to resist running my hands up and down those calves. The mission to get her out of this awful costume is stronger than my desire to touch her. I unbuckle one shoe and take off her sock. I do the same to the other leg, rolling down the white knee-high, undoing the shoes, and tugging the sock off her foot, ignoring how smooth her perfectly shaven legs are. I hand her the offending items, and she stuffs the white socks into her purse. Out of sight. Somewhat out of mind. “I can’t stand seeing you dressed like this. I wish you were wearing a t-shirt and jeans right now.”

I earn a small laugh for that, and she lifts her head, flashing a quick lopsided smile. The Harley smirk that makes me want to wipe it away with my mouth. Kiss that sexy smirk right off of her. Hear the sweet sighs she makes when I kiss her. “I’ll go change then,” she says, tipping her forehead to the door.

“Want me to wait out here?”

“We can talk inside.”

“Okay.” I sling my backpack over one shoulder and follow her up the steps, waiting as she unfastens three locks on the battered, creaky, brown door of her building, leading into a hall so cramped you have to walk single file to the stairs. I try not to stare at her legs as she walks up the staircase, but it’s a losing battle because her calves are perfection. Strong, shapely, smooth.

Plus, I know how they taste. I know how every inch of her tastes. Her ankles, her calves, behind her knees, her thighs, belly, breasts, neck and everyplace else. The answer? She tastes fucking spectacular. I watch her, enjoying the view, picturing those legs spread out and open for me. If she only knew how much I want to go down on her again. And again. And again.

We reach her floor, and I grab my backpack from my shoulder and hold it in front of me, so she can’t see that I’m hard from staring at her.

She unlocks the door and calls out. “Kristen?”

But there’s no answer.

She lets the door fall shut behind us, closing with a loud clanging sound.

“Oh. It’s Thursday. She goes to some film showing at the arthouse nearby. Something for one of her film classes. They see all these festival flicks,” she says as she tosses her keys on the kitchen table.

“Sounds like she and Jordan will be the perfect match,” I say sarcastically. “Given his love for shoot ‘em up action flicks and horror films.”

Harley laughs, then tells me she’ll be right back and she ducks into her room. I head straight for the fridge. Harley doesn’t drink, but I can count on Kristen to have something on hand. I find a couple of six-packs of Coors Light, grab a bottle, then a Diet Coke for Harley, and wait for her on the couch in the cardboard-box sized living room.

When Harley returns my heart trips on its dumbass feet. Her hair is in a ponytail, and she washed off all her makeup. She has on dark blue jeans that hug her legs and a gray t-shirt that says Eat, Sleep, Read. “Picked it up at this indie bookstore in Brooklyn a few weeks ago when I was stocking up on old paperbacks. Thought it was cute,” she says, pointing to the shirt.

“Yeah, it’s cute,” I say but my throat is dry so the words come out croaky. That’s the thing – she looks so much better like this. Not that there’s anything wrong with Harley in a skirt. But seeing her like this, in jeans and a t-shirt, hair pulled back, makes me feel like I have secret access to the Harley no one knows, the side she doesn’t show anyone else. Cam never sees her without make-up. Her clients never did either. She looks beautiful as herself. All fresh and perfect and sweet. She’s the girl I know, the girl I want, the girl I can’t let myself have.

She joins me on the couch, tucks her legs under her, and cracks open the can. She takes a sip. “Why did you wait for me?”

I raise an eyebrow. “At your apartment?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

“Um…because I give a shit about you.” I knock back more of my beer. “Isn’t that obvious?”

“But you hate him,” she says as she runs her thumb around the top of the can.

“No shit. He’s a pimp. But I figured if you missed a meeting chances were you were up to something. And if you were up to something I figured you probably needed someone to talk to. Or someone not to talk to. Just someone to be with.”

“You’re not judging me for seeing Cam?”

“Kettle, can I introduce you to the pot?” I point to myself. “You think it’s so easy for me, don’t you?”

She shrugs. “Well, does this ever happen to you?”

I scoff. “What? You think I’m never tempted? You think I’m just this good little boy? Like I’m a saint or a Mormon?”

“You. A Mormon,” she says dryly.

I lift my legs onto the couch, cross them at the ankles, stretch out. She shifts closer to the cushion, giving me room. “The ladies would have loved that even more. Can you imagine? Seducing a Mormon boy?”

“I think it was the other way around,” she says, and wiggles an eyebrow, and I like that we’re back to us, back to how she can tease me about my past, and I can at least be honest with her about hers.

“A few weeks ago I went to see my parents. You know, the usual check-in, how’s school, when are you going to be a bio major and give up this art shit. But I gotta do it, right? So this investment banker woman moved into my building last week with her husband and two young kids and I swear she gave me this look in the elevator like she’d heard about me. Like they all share stories and here she is thinking, ‘Now it’s my turn.’”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Well, what happened?” She smacks my leg playfully. “I want details.”

“So she gets in the elevator same time as me. She looks at me. Her eyes light up. She says ‘Hi, aren’t you Trey?’ One name only, like Madonna or something. Like my name is known in the building, shared in their circles. Trey.”

“What did you do, Trey?” She says, saying my name with smolder, like she’s the newest hot MILF in the building, ready and eager to pounce.

“I nodded and said yes, and then in the span of a twenty-second elevator ride, I played out a million ways I could take her so I forced myself to sing nursery rhymes in my head so I wouldn’t open my mouth and say something inviting.”

“Nursery rhymes,” she laughs. “Which nursery rhyme?”

“Jack Sprat.”

“Sing it to me.” She rests her head against the couch pillow, relaxing and smiling. I don’t know that I came here to make her smile, but hell if it doesn’t make me happy to see her like this. To know she’s here, and she’s safe, and she’s not with him, and even if it was hard, and even if she’s thinking about going back, at least for tonight she’s with me and she’s laughing as I tell a story. “Jack Sprat could eat no meat. His wife could eat no lean….” I sing softly, then stop.

“That’s it?”

“Might come as a bit of a shock, but I can’t remember the rest of the words, so I just repeat those two lines.”

“Jack Sprat could eat no meat. His wife could eat no lean,” she sings to me this time in a sing-song voice. I join in and we both sing it low and soft. Then our words fade and we stop talking, but neither one of us moves. I just stay there, next to her on the couch, and the mood shifts again.

“Did you want to be with her? To sleep with her?”

I swallow, consider, let her question unfold in my mind. “I don’t know. It was more that I wanted to seduce her. I wanted to know that I could win her over in a matter of minutes, maybe hours.”

“That’s all it took?”

“For some of them, yeah.”

She parts her lips as if she’s about to say something, then stops herself. She looks down, breathes out hard, then takes a sip.

“What is it?” I ask softly.

“Is it because they were easy or you were so good?”

I bite my lip for a second, trying not to let her question make me all crazy inside for her. But I am that way. Even more so because she’s blushing now. Red is rushing to her cheeks in splotches. “You think I’m good?”

“Yes,” she says in a breathy voice that sends a buzz through my whole body. “But you knew that.”

I shake my head. I did know that. But I don’t know that either. I don’t know anything with her. I don’t know what’s real and what’s a game.

“I didn’t know that,” I say, and maybe I’m lying, but I can’t help it. I want to hear her say it, even though this is the riskiest thing to do in the world. To tread on this territory of us, of the almost-sex we had. I’m already burning up, I am hot all over.

She raises her eyes, meets my gaze. “You know what I told you that night. I mean, I don’t have anything to compare it to –“

I cut her off. “–Good.”

“But I’ve never let anyone do that to me before.”

She said that the night we were together. It made me feel electric all over hearing it from a hot girl I wanted to have a one-night stand with, a last fling before I went on the wagon. Hearing it now, knowing her, understanding her, being privy to all her deep, dark secrets is the biggest fucking turn-on of my life. I’m dying for her to touch me right now, even though I know we won’t go there, but I want it so badly. I want to feel her hands on me, I want her to unzip my jeans and do something about how fucking uncomfortable I am right now with my dick straining hard against the fly.

“Yeah?” I say in a hoarse voice because I can’t manage sentences, much less coherent thought. I can’t move either, because if I shift an inch, I will lunge at her, pull her under me, and fumble at all our zippers to get our clothes off. And I can’t, can’t, can’t do that to her. She’s a virgin, and she’s messed in the head, and if I take her virginity because she winds me up with a few words then I am more of an ass than those pathetic men who hired her.

“I told you that, Trey,” she says softly, and there’s something about this moment that feels like a confessional, like she needs to tell me these things, like she has to say them. “But I want you to know that now. Now that we’re friends. I know how you feel about what I’ve done, but I want you to know it was so different with you,” she says, and even though she’s perfectly still, her words are moving toward me, reaching deep down inside me, gutting me.

It was so different with you.

She is killing me. I am hanging on to the frayed end of a rope with the smallest bit of self-restraint left.

“No one has ever made me come. I’ve never let anyone touch me. I never wanted to be touched. I never even knew what it would feel like to have someone do that,” she says and licks her lips, and I am dying. Completely dying right now. My hands are twitching, and I grip hard on the beer bottle, so hard I could break it, but I have to hold onto something, because all I want right now is to touch her. The whole living room is burning, the space between us is hot and humming and full of all this hazy desire I feel, and it’s taking over my body, my brain, my heart, and the air between us.

If I weren’t already sitting down, I might collapse. Because this feeling is knocking breath out of me. It is staggering.

“Harley,” I say in a low voice.

“Trey, what happened last night?”

The room spins, and I know I should go, but I also know I won’t leave. But neither one of us moves. Neither one of us breaks. Maybe we are both stronger than we think. Or maybe we are both afraid of getting hurt.

“What do you mean?”

“What happened with us in the courtyard. Last night was weird.”

“You didn’t like it?” I sound defensive, and my guard is back up. Maybe this is good. I need some self-protection around her.

“I liked it. Too much.”

I run a hand through my hair.

“Did you?”

I roll my eyes. “Do you seriously have to ask?”

“Yes,” she says emphatically. She juts out her chin. “Yes. I do have to ask.”

Then I hear the sound of the key in the lock. The door groans open loudly, and Kristen spills in, all keys and big purse and her black hair in a crazy mess.

“Oh,” Kristen says, surprised to see us on the couch. Two statues caught in unexpected lust. The roommate and the guy who was seconds away from claiming her sexy, pouty, lipstick-free mouth. “What are you guys up to?”

“Just hanging,” Harley says, smoothing out an unseen wrinkle in her shirt.

“You took one of my beers,” she says to me, zeroing in on me from behind those cat’s eye glasses.

“Yeah. That okay?”

“I can’t let you drink alone. Harley’s diet soda doesn’t count.”

Then Kristen grabs a Coors, and plops down between us on the couch. I’ve never been so ready to toss someone from the room, nor been so grateful to have a barrier in my life. “The movie sucked. I need to get the taste of it out of my mouth.”

“What was it?”

“Some Romanian film about a guy who leaves a goldfish on the roof of his car as he writes haikus while driving cross country.”

“Sounds wretched”

“It was. Let’s get drunk. Or caffeinated in your case,” she says, tipping her forehead to Harley.

“I’m in,” I say because I could use a few more beers right about now, that’s for sure.

Then my phone buzzes. I tap the screen to see Jordan’s name. “Shift’s over. Beer time?”

“Jordan wants to get a beer,” I say to Kristen and Harley.

Kristen holds her arms out wide, as if to say The answer is here.

Harley catches my gaze and raises an eyebrow, her reminder that she wanted to set them up. “Invite him over.”

“If you insist.”