“I’m fine.”
A couple of girls pass by, staring and whispering. I’m sure they’re looking at Irie and wondering what she has that they don’t. Not that it’s any of their business, but the answer is: everything.
“So,” I say. “What are you doing this weekend?”
“Talon.” She exhales, arms crossed and head tilted. “We had a one date agreement. One date and you were going to stop.”
“But you had a good time, did you not?”
“Of course I did.”
“So why can’t we do it again?” I ask.
A guy and girl point at us in passing the way a tourist would point at a celebrity from the top of a Hollywood tour bus. Why these people give such a shit about my personal life, I’ll never understand. It’s pathetic, honestly.
“Can we talk about this later?” she asks.
“When?” I ask. “You won’t even give me your number.”
“Thursday,” she says. “We’ll talk about it before we study.”
“You’re going to make me wait three days …”
She peers over my shoulder, toward the exit. I know my time with her is reduced to seconds, but I’ll be damned if I have to wait three whole days before discussing this with her again.
“I had a great time. You had a great time,” I say. “All I’m suggesting is that we do it again.”
Irie drags in a ragged, defeated breath as she adjusts the strap on her shoulder.
“I know what I said. I know I told you one date and I’d leave you alone if that’s what you wanted,” I say. “So tell me, Irie. Is that what you want? And I want you to think carefully before you answer. I want you to be two hundred percent sure. Because whatever you say right here, right now—”
“—yes,” she blurts.
“Yes?” I ask, lips twisting into a buoyant half-smile. “As in yes you want to go on another date or yes you want me to leave you alone?”
She worries her bottom lip between her teeth, gazing up at me through a fringe of thick lashes. “Yes, I’ll go on another date with you.”
Sweet Jesus.
Hooking my hand around the crook of her elbow, I pull her around the corner, to a section of hallway a little less occupied, and when I have her all to myself, I back her against the wall before claiming her cherry lips that curl against mine with the very smile she’d been fighting the past five minutes.
“I’m going to be late for class,” she says a moment later, her hand pressed against my beating chest. Irie’s full mouth slips into the cutest of smiles that fades in seconds, and then she’s on her way.
I knew she’d come around …
Chapter 19
Irie
“Let there be light,” Aunt Bette says Thursday night as she lights two ivory-colored pillar candles on the kitchen table while Talon and I finish up our slices of delivery pizza.
They say it never rains in Southern California, but tonight is an exception. It’s been pouring all day, gray skies and wet streets and air so thick with humidity your lungs begin to drown the instant you step outside. In some ways it reminds me of home, only not in a good way.
It’s nothing that makes me nostalgic.
I’m not sure I could ever be nostalgic for a place like that, a place polluted with the worst kinds of memories.
I tried to call off our study plans, telling Talon we could always quiz each other over the phone, but he insisted—as per usual—that we not call off our face-to-face meeting. He’s aced all of the Friday quizzes so far and he doesn’t want to jinx himself.
Though if you ask me, it’s just another excuse of his to milk his time with me.
After class this past Monday, he cornered me, asking me out on another date.
It was easy to ignore his email all day Sunday, easy to convince myself that I could be strong and hold firm in my decision not to take this beyond the first date—but everything changes when I’m with him.
One look at his dimpled smirk, one inhalation of his clean scent and he dismantles my heart with the skill and ease of a practiced bomb technician.
“Aren’t you going to eat with us?” I ask Bette as she shuffles around the kitchen in her slippers and robe.
“Of course not. Wheel is on,” she says. But I know her better. Bette loves her some Wheel of Fortune, but she’s got other motives tonight. A few seconds later, she’s setting up shop in her recliner, eating her pizza from a TV tray as Pat Sajak’s face fills the screen on the other side of the room.
Talon and I exchanged amused chuffs as he dabs his mouth with a paper napkin. The glow of the candle flickers between us and rain beads soft on the window beside us.
As soon as we’re finished, I grab my notebook and start quizzing him on the week’s lecture. We’re halfway finished when Aunt Bette shuffles in with her empty plate as a Norwegian cruise lines commercial plays from the next room.