“How unfortunate,” I deadpan, turning on my heel and making my way toward my car. I click the button to unlock it, sending a flash of taillights over the lot before Gavin jogs around to stand in front of me, holding his hands out, palms up.
“Erin, wait.”
“Honestly, Gavin, I’ve been busy handling my own shit, okay? If you didn’t want to go to dinner with me, you could have just said it. You didn’t have to avoid group for almost a month.”
“I do want to go to dinner with you.”
“Clearly.” I roll my eyes, pushing past him and opening my car door, but before I can slide inside, Gavin wraps his hand around the top of the window, serving as a barricade.
“I mean it,” he says, brows furrowed together as his eyes search mine. “I’m sorry. Truly. I… I’ve had some personal things going on.” He swallows, and I let my guard down marginally at the display of vulnerability. “And I do want to go to dinner with you.”
I inhale, but otherwise don’t respond, waiting.
“Let’s go now.”
At that, I laugh. “Now?”
“Right now,” he says again. “If we go now, I can’t bail out.”
“Oh, how charming.”
“I’m serious,” he says when I try to push him out of the way to get in my car. His hand gently holds my forearm — not with enough force to stop me from brushing him off if I really want to, but with enough care to let me know he means what he says. “Let me take you to dinner. Right now. Anywhere you want.”
The way he watches me is like he already knows who I am, and I hate that I love it so much. I hate that feeling like I’m being seen makes me want to say yes to any and everything this shadow of a man proposes.
“I don’t really know of any good places to eat around here,” I finally say. “I spend most of my time on the other side of town, near campus.”
“What are you in the mood for?”
I shrug. “Sushi?”
Gavin grins, stepping out of the way and holding the car door open for me. “I know just the place.”
“Why do I feel like I should be scared for my life or, at the very least, that I will be hugging my toilet later tonight?” I ask, eyeballing the dingy, roughed-up exterior of the brick building Gavin has guided us to. It’s small and tucked between a bicycle shop and a barber shop in the part of downtown my parents specifically told me to stay away from when I first started school at PSU. The flickering neon sign above the blacked-out door says something in Japanese, and under it, a simple white banner reads SUSHI in black, all-caps English.
“Trust me, this will be the best sushi you’ll ever have in your life,” Gavin says, holding the door open for me. As soon as he opens it, we’re hit with the thumping base of electronic music that would be better suited for a club than for any kind of restaurant, and a large group of people smushed inside, waiting to be seated. It’s dim throughout the restaurant, with black lights and disco balls sending flares of light across the room.
I arch a brow, but don’t move otherwise.
Gavin chuckles, reaching out for my hand. “Come on. Have a little faith.”
Something about his smile makes my chest warm and fuzzy, and I smile in return, letting him take my hand in his and guide me inside. We mutter excuse me to several groups, squirming our way to the hostess stand.
Then, Gavin surprises me by speaking Japanese to the hostess, who smiles at him like she knows him — or like she wants to sleep with him, I can’t be sure which — before leading us to a corner booth all the way in the back, where the music is a little softer and we have a view of the entire room.
Another surprise to me is that the place is packed. Every single table is taken, even though it’s after eight now, and the table we’re seated at was roped off like it was being held for a VIP. Judging by the long wait at the front, Gavin isn’t the only one who’s a fan of the sushi here.
I shrug off my jacket once we’re seated, folding it once and laying it next to me in the booth. It’s very rarely cold in South Florida, but we’ve been blessed with a cool front that leaves the evenings just chilly enough to wear the jackets and scarves we wear approximately three times a year and leave buried in our closet to stare at longingly for the rest of it.
A waiter swings by and asks what we’d like to drink, to which Gavin responds for me, ordering us both a water and a bottle of saki to share.
“So, you speak Japanese?” I ask when the waiter leaves.
“Surprised?”
“Very,” I admit. “I take it you frequent this place a lot, judging by the fact that they gave us a roped-off booth.”
“I roomed with the owner’s son for a couple of months when I lived in Tokyo.”
“You lived in Tokyo?”
“Briefly,” Gavin says, shrugging as if it’s no big deal. “I was thinking about teaching English there, so I stayed with a friend who was doing just that. Wasn’t really my thing,” he confessed. “But I loved the food, and the culture.”
The way he said that, with a shit-eating grin and a wink, made me roll my eyes.
“Let me guess — culture is code for girls?”
“You said it, not me,” Gavin deflects, holding up the menu with the writing facing me. It’s just a simple, half-sheet of paper with a couple dozen items, and the menu is hand-written and photocopied. “Now, what you need to know about this place is that you can’t go wrong with anything you order,” he says. “But, if you really want to wet your panties, order the mackerel nigiri, the otoro sashimi, and the moon phase roll.”
I laugh, folding my hands over my own menu rather than looking at it. “Okay. I trust you.”
“Do you?” he challenges, and I love the way his eyes light up, the way his lazy smile spreads on his face.
“To order sushi for me, yes. To be respectful in group therapy or actually show up to take me on the date you asked me on?” I shrug. “Jury’s still out.”
“Hey, we’re here, aren’t we?” Gavin argues, gesturing to the restaurant around us.
“Just a few weeks late.”
“That’s fair,” he says, and then the waiter drops off our water and saki, and Gavin pours two small ceramic cups with the hot liquid before passing one to me. “To overdue dates and the beautiful women who concede to them.”
I roll my eyes, taking a sip before hugging the small cup between my hands. The smell and taste is delightful, and the warmth of the cup in my cool palms makes me feel oddly cozy inside this dim restaurant that could be a club.
“You were thinking about teaching English,” I muse after the drink. “And you mentioned in therapy that you’re a grad student. Is that what you’re studying now?”
He shakes his head. “Psychology.”
I chuckle.
“Fitting, isn’t it?” he says with his own smile. Then, a shrug. “I want to be a different kind of grief counselor. I want to work with people who don’t believe in the hippie ya-ya bullshit. People like me. People who need their therapy served a little hard up, like a shot of whiskey instead of a tall glass of sweet tea.”
I tilt my head. “I like that analogy.”
“We’ll see how far it gets me.”
The waiter stops by again, and Gavin places our order in Japanese before making small talk. By the time the waiter leaves, they seem like best buds.
“So, Erin Xander,” he says once we’re alone again. “Besides the fact that you’re fucked up enough to need group and solo therapy, what else should I know about you?”
I nearly choke on my next sip of saki, but laugh despite it. “Wow, you really don’t shy away from the dark, do you?”
“Why should I?” He shrugs. “We’re all fucked up. It’s the brave ones who actually admit it.”
“And the ones like us who go to therapy for it, what do you call us?”
“Bored. Self-seeking.” He pauses, his blue eyes locking on mine. “Lonely.”
My eyes drop to the cup in my hand. “Well, if the fact that you know a
little Japanese didn’t make me think you were smart, that observation just did.” I sigh, ignoring the pinch in my gut when I look at Gavin again. “As far as what you should know about me, I’m the president of Kappa Kappa Beta.”
“I don’t care.”
The comment shocks me quiet, and I stare at smiling, confident Gavin for a moment before hesitantly continuing. “Um… I graduate at the end of this semester, and I’ll be attending Grove Law School next summer.”
“Don’t care about that, either.”
I frown. “I love country music, and going to the beach with my friends.”
“Bor-ing,” he sings, sitting back in his booth and sipping his saki.
“You are such an asshole,” I spit, shaking my head. “Seriously, why ask me something and then react like that?”
“I asked what I should know about you.”
“And I’m telling you.”
He leans forward, elbows on the table and eyes boring into mine. “You’re telling me things you think define you — positions you hold, schools you attend, your major, the music you like.” Gavin’s eyes search mine. “Tell me something real.”
My chest is tight when I force my next breath. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“Tell me. Something. Real.”
Part of me wants to reach over and slap the stupid, knowing look off his face. The other part of me wants to shrink away from his gaze. And somewhere in the deepest, darkest hole of my heart, I see myself reflected in him.
It both terrifies and excites me.
I lean over the table, too — mirroring his stance and leveling my gaze with his. “I’ve been playing a part for so long, I don’t know who I am past the labels I’ve been given and the credentials I can attach to the back of my name.”
Those words linger between us for a moment, and Gavin’s eyes soften, his next inhale long and deep.
“That real enough for you?”
Gavin swallows, and then he pushes out of his side of the booth enough to balance on his elbows and meet my lips in the middle of the table.
The kiss is so unexpected that I’m stiff at first, my eyes shooting open wide as he takes my face in his hands, holding me to his mouth, his lips soft and warm. In the next breath, before I can even catalog what I’m feeling or what we’re doing, I’m melting into him, sighing into his mouth as I open mine and let his tongue sweep inside.
The lights dim somehow, and the music around us fades until it’s no more than a thumping heartbeat pulsing through me. Gavin’s hands are possessive and sure, holding me steady as his expert lips move in time with mine. It feels like the entire world has stopped spinning, like everyone in the restaurant has frozen in place in the name of this sacred moment.
When Gavin pulls back, he presses his forehead to mine, and we both exhale shaky breaths that meet between us.
Then, his hands gently release me, thumbs brushing my jaw softly before he sits back in his booth. I lean back in mine, too, and we watch each other for a beat before the world kicks into motion again, and the waiter delivers our order, and Gavin picks up his chopsticks like nothing even happened.
“Alright,” he says, smirking with his eyes on me while I fight to catch my breath. He picks up the mackerel nigiri, dipping it ever so slightly in soy sauce before offering it to me. “Are you ready to have your mind blown?”
I think I already have, Gavin Lindberg.
I think I already have.
THE BEST PART ABOUT fall in South Florida is that while the rest of the country is already getting snow and temperatures well under fifty degrees, Florida is cooling down just enough to land us in that perfect beach weather zone. Almost every day is sunny, hovering between seventy-five and eight-five, with a cool breeze coming in off the coast.
I smile and soak it all in as the girls and I work on our tan in the back yard of the sorority house. We’ve all been so busy with classes and work and relationship shit that it’s the first time the five of us have really been able to spend quality time together, and while the weather might be cooling down a smidge, it’s apparent to me that the drama in our lives never will.
This crew couldn’t escape trouble even if we tried.
So far, Cassie has filled us in on her and Adam’s fight regarding Grayson, and to be fair, we’ve all told her that while we understood that she wanted to be friends with Grayson, we understood why Adam flew off the handle. Was he a little overdramatic? Maybe. But when I think back on how I reacted to Jarrett spending time with his female co-workers, I can’t blame him.
Hell, Jarrett didn’t even fuck those girls, and I was jealous and pissed off. I can’t imagine how I would have reacted if I knew they had a past.
Still, Cassie is adamant that she’s had to cut friends out of her life before and it’s nearly killed her. She almost cried when she told us she couldn’t do it again.
And I also understood that.
So, while we tried to help her through that whole ordeal, we also caught up with Ashlei and the weird intern drama going on at Okay, Cool and — though she’s been mostly coy about it — Erin briefly told us about a new “friend” she’s made at group therapy.
I have a feeling that friend is going to come with some benefits.
But we can all tell Erin’s not ready to talk about it, because she brushes off the topic as soon as it’s brought up and shifts the attention to Skyler.
“When do you see Kip next?” Erin asks, reaching for the sunscreen to reapply on her face. Erin has always been the one to take the best care of her skin — not just in the sun, but with her entire regimen that she’s had since she was eighteen. If I had to make a bet on which one of us would age the most gracefully, all my money would be on her.
“I’m flying in to see him for Thanksgiving, actually,” Skyler says on a longing sigh, fanning herself with her magazine. “And honestly, I’m a little nervous.”
“Why?” Cassie asks.
Skyler shrugs. “It’s hard to explain. I miss him so much, but I haven’t seen him since he started school out there. I don’t know… I guess I’m just worried that maybe I won’t fit into this new part of his life.”
Ashlei scoffs. “Are you kidding? I bet he can’t wait for you to be there so he can show you around and show you off to all his film buddies.”
“And I’m sure he can’t wait to bang your brains out,” I chime in. Then, I snap my fingers, leaning up in my chair so I can see her better. “Oh! Maybe you could make a movie of your own.”
I waggle my brows, and Skyler rips out a page of her magazine, balls it up, and pegs me in the forehead with it. “Perv.”
I stick my tongue out before reaching for my tumbler, which I told our sorority house mom had iced coffee in it but is actually filled with vodka and tonic and a splash of lime juice. “You love me.”
“We all bear that curse,” Erin agrees, and I reach over to smack her ass where she’s tanning it to the tune of giggles.
“Speaking of the spell you’ve put on us,” Cassie says. “Looks like Kade has fallen under the same one, huh?”
I try to bite back a smile, but fail miserable, and then I blush and I want to punch myself in the face.
“He’s definitely hooked,” I say, shaking off the butterflies in my stomach.
“And are you?” Skyler asks.
I sigh, flopping back in my chair dramatically. “God, I don’t even know anymore.” I shake my head, trying to find the right words. “He annoys the absolute fuck out of me. But… he also fascinates me, too. And God, the sex…” I pull down my sunglasses so the girls can see how serious I am. “The sex is out of this world.”
“Better than with Jarrett?” Ashlei asks, and I know she means it as nothing more than a simple comparison, but my heart pounds once, twice, three times hard in my chest.
I swallow. “It was different with Jarrett.”
“Different good or different bad?” Skyler asks.
“Just… different. We weren’t just fucking. We had a
relationship.”
“Is that what you want with Kade?” Erin asks.
And the question hits me like a semi-truck.
I freeze, shock still, holding my drink in my hand with the sun warming my skin.
“Jess?” Erin asks.
But I can’t respond. I’m too busy turning her question over and over in my head, like the winning numbers of the lottery just waiting to be plucked out.
Holy fucking shit.
Do I want a relationship with Kade?
I mean, obviously, I want more — that much was established when I dragged his ass into the tent during the Halloween party and told him I wanted to be his and for him to be mine. But, at the time, I’d been so focused on the fact that I didn’t want him with any other girl, that I hadn’t paused to ask myself what exactly I wanted from him — other than to fuck me exclusively.
And now that I’d asked myself the question, my reaction told me all I needed to know.
Skyler snaps her fingers in front of my face. “Earth to J-Love.”
I groan, sinking back in my chair and abandoning my drink on the table so I can scrub my hands over my face. “Oh, God.”
“What?” Cassie asks, worried.
I sigh. “I do.”
The girls fall silent, exchanging glances.
“I do want a relationship.”
At that, Ashlei laughs, reaching over to squeeze my forearm. “You say that like you just realized you’re an alcoholic or something. Wanting a relationship isn’t bad, babe.”
My next swallow is impossible, like I’ve just eaten forty-five saltines without a glass of water to help out. “It is when I’m pretty fucking certain that is not what he wants,” I argue. Then, I lock eyes with her. “And that the last time I was in a relationship, I had my heart shattered.”
Again, the girls exchange glances, and then Skyler gets up from her chair and sits down at the foot of mine, leaning in to look me in the eyes. “Hey, love is fucking scary, okay? I think if anyone gets that, it’s this group of girls.”
Everyone nods, and my chest tightens with discomfort. I want to crawl inside a hole and hide forever.
Ritual: A New Adult College Romance (Palm South University Book 5) Page 14