The guard glared at her with unconcealed distaste. “No under-twenty-ones.”
When Faye reached us, she barely glanced at the guard. I’d expected her to persuade the guy to let us in, but instead she grabbed my arm. “I wasn’t thinking when I invited you here. Let’s go somewhere else.”
Shivering from the contact with her hand, I would’ve agreed to anything she suggested. “Where do you want to go?”
* * *
Sitting in a parking lot drinking juice boxes wasn’t exactly the most romantic first-non-date activity I could think of.
But with Gretchen sleeping peacefully in her car seat in the back, Faye and I could have a grown-up discussion uninterrupted in the front. And for me at least, Faye’s presence was the most important part.
Since we couldn’t get our hands on any more adult drinks, she’d shyly pulled the juice boxes out of her trunk. Apparently she kept them on hand for days when she didn’t have time to eat, to keep her blood sugar from dropping too low.
“So I’ve been developing the outline for my thesis.” I paused to take a pull on the straw. “Dr. O’Neill’s been helping quite a bit… although he doesn’t bring the postcolonial perspective I was hoping you would.”
Faye stared forward, her profile silhouetted in the quickly darkening night. Even the outline of her was sexy as fuck as she replied, “That’s why we’ve met tonight.” Just break my heart, why don’t you?
“I’ve been considering a lot of the concepts you taught in that 201 class. Exoticism, metanarrative…”
“Right, you did take that class.” She gave a small smile. “Nice to know I got through to someone. Sometimes it feels like the students are only thinking about what kegger they’re going to that night.”
“I kept every note I took,” I said.
“Did you decide to include Giovanni in your analysis?”
“No, I actually decided to take it in another direction.” I’d been able to focus much better now that my head wasn’t clouded by Faye’s beauty. “I’m comparing Adrienne Rich with Audre Lorde in their approach to identity, sexuality, and politics.”
“Narrowing it down is good.” Faye turned to face me, the shadows playing on her face in a way that made my stomach flop over. “What kind of comparison, though?”
“I haven’t exactly gotten that far.” And I wasn’t going to while I was this close to Faye. Fuck, the longer she looked at me, the harder it was to breathe. “I’ve just been reading and rereading the poems, waiting for something to jump out at me.”
“Any favorite lines?”
I gulped. “You’re really going to put me on the spot?”
Faye laughed softly. “I’m not asking you to recite an entire poem, but if anything jumped out to you enough to stick in your mind, that could be a good starting point.”
“Well…” I’d been buried in poetry books for most of the week. “Whatever happens with us,” I blurted, “your body will haunt mine.” Faye was silent, and I grimaced in immediate realization of what I’d just said to her. “That’s Adrienne Rich. The unnumbered poem from Twenty-One Love Poems. Not, you know, you. Your body.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “I didn’t think you were talking about my body.”
I hung my head. Could I humiliate myself any more? If I opened my mouth again, I was pretty sure I’d manage it.
“Do you remember any more after that?”
“Umm… tender, delicate your lovemaking…” I clapped my hand over my mouth.
“I see.” Although she was trying to sound professional, she was clearly restraining another laugh. “So what does that mean to you? Whatever happens with us, your body…”
“It means I need to start over because I am not writing about that.”
Faye’s lips twitched. “Fair enough.”
Things had almost been looking okay for me a few minutes ago, and now they couldn’t get any worse. “Could we talk about something else, maybe? Or definitely?”
Faye let out a chuckle now. “All right. How’d you get into studying English?”
Now, there was a more neutral topic. “I was always into books,” I said. “I loved them as a kid. Got made fun of a bit when I was a little older, so I stopped reading during my early teens. I started reading again when I was babysitting those younger cousins of mine. I’d claim to have the books out for them, but fact is I was more interested than they were.