I roll my eyes. “It’s fine.”
This time he dips the spoon in, carefully gathering a small amount of ice cream, marshmallow fluff, and a single gummy bear coated in strawberry sauce. He holds out the spoon. “How’s this, precious? Can you handle it?”
I give him a look, but open my mouth. His lips part right along with mine, his tongue peeking out as he watches the spoon disappear between mine.
This feels very much like foreplay.
It also tastes like a sugar bomb has gone off in my mouth. It’s so sweet it’s almost pucker worthy. Lance withdraws the spoon slowly, his eyes on my mouth the entire time, his bottom lip caught between his teeth. When he notices the spoon is by no means clean, he offers it to me again.
I still have a gummy bear in here, so I shake my head.
“You don’t like it?”
I chew a few times before I swallow. He wasn’t kidding about them being hard. They’re practically frozen. I put my hand in front of my mouth. “It’s a little sweet.”
He sticks the spoon back in his mouth and licks it clean. “See? I don’t have a problem with your spit.”
I can feel the heat in my cheeks, and I duck my head. Lance leans in close, forcing me to look up at him. “I want to kiss you again.”
I survey the crowded café.
He must see my panic, because he tugs my ponytail and sits back in his chair. “But I can wait if I have to.”
We eat our desserts in silence for a while. I’m too nervous to enjoy this the way I’d like to. I can feel Lance staring at me.
“Where’d you go to high school?” he asks.
“In Galesburg.”
“Right, because you moved.”
“Mm-hmm. My sister went to Wells for a year, though.”
“Really? Do you look alike?”
“Not much. She has brown hair and brown eyes, and she’s tall and thin.”
“Huh.” He takes a few more bites of his sundae. “Wait. What school did you go to before you moved, then?”
I knew this was going to happen eventually.
“I went to Pulaski.”
“I went there for, like, a month right at the end of the school year when I first moved here.” He sets his spoon down and leans forward. “Shit. I knew I knew you. I used to pull your ponytail in the hall. You were the only other ginger in the school. I noticed you right away. Do you remember that?”
I look down at my carrot cake, which sits mostly uneaten on my plate.
“Poppy?”
“I remember.”
“Was I mean to you? I wasn’t trying to be mean.”
“You weren’t mean.”
“Okay. Good.” His knee is going again. Rubbing against mine. “If you remembered, why didn’t you say anything before now?”
“It didn’t seem important.” Because I didn’t think you remembered me at all.
“That we went to school together? You came to my house. Did you know you knew me then?”
Oh, God. This is happening now? My whole body feels numb and like it’s on fire at the same time. “Maybe we should go.”
“Poppy?” He puts his hand over mine to stop me from grabbing my purse.
“You didn’t even really notice I was there.”
“So you did know?”
“Of course I did. Everyone knows who you are,” I say quietly.
“No one here has recognized me.”
“You’re wearing a baseball cap. It’s not like we were friends or anything. We went to school together for a few weeks, and you were two grades higher than me. I was nobody.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I think we should go.”
“Not until you tell me whatever it is that’s making you all sketchy.”
“Can we not do this right here, please?” I whisper.
I don’t actually think there’s an ideal location for this anywhere, ever, but a crowded café is definitely low on the list.
“Sure, okay.” Lance pushes away from the table and comes around to help me into my jacket.
My stomach is twisting. I feel stupid already. I’m going to come across as some pining, idiot girl who’s idolized him for years—which is and isn’t the case. I mean, for a long time I romanticized that kiss, and of course, like the hopeless romantic I am, I had those silly girl fantasies about meeting him again and picking up where we’d left off.
But it isn’t like I never dated or had boyfriends. I’ve done both. I’ve had several long-term boyfriends, nice ones who treated me well. But the fire just never seemed to burn bright or long enough to sustain the initial attraction, and eventually those relationships turned into friendships.
What if he thinks I’m a stalker? No matter how sweet he is with me, there’s plenty of evidence floating around out there to prove he’s a partier with lots of willing partners. That coupled with the strangely labeled contact on his phone is enough to remind me how sideways this whole thing could go.
Lance follows me out of the café, the mood having changed from light and flirty to heavy once again.
He grabs my hand when we’re on the sidewalk. “Can you tell me what’s going on? I really fucking hate being manipulated, and that’s exactly what this feels like.”
“I’m not manipulating you.” I pause while people pass us on the sidewalk. “Can we walk and I promise I’ll talk?”
Lance sighs, but falls into step beside me. I wait until we’re back on a quieter street before I say anything.
“My sister’s freshman year, she took me to a house party. Some kids from her school threw it.”
“Okayyy.”
“I was in seventh grade.”
“Fuck. That wasn’t a good place for you to be, but what does this have to do with anything?”
“I’m getting to that.”
“Was I there?”
I nod, but don’t look at him.
He grabs my arm, gently but firmly, and pulls me to a stop. Stepping in front of me, his eyes are wide and haunted. “Please tell me we didn’t hook up at that party when you were thirteen.”
“God. No. Not in the way you mean.”
He drops his hands, closes his eyes, and releases a relieved breath. “Thank fucking Christ.”
“And I was twelve.”
“Twelve? At a high school party?”
“My thirteenth birthday was, like, a week away. My sister didn’t always make the best choices.”
“Clearly.”
“It was a big part of the reason we ended up moving away from Chicago for a few years. She couldn’t stay out of trouble.” I was always the easy child growing up. Cinny was the one who got into all the trouble. Apart from that one party.
We start walking again.
“So I didn’t commit a felony, which is good. Did I talk to you?”
It hurts that he doesn’t remember at all. “In a manner of speaking.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“One of my sister’s friends was playing a game. I didn’t realize what it was until it was too late.” I have to look anywhere but him in order to get out the rest. “They were playing Seven Minutes in Heaven.”
Lance comes to a dead stop again. I don’t want to look up, but I have to because he’s not moving. “You got locked in a closet with some high school douche when you were twelve?”
“Almost thirteen.” As if that makes it better. “I didn’t get locked in there with a douche; I got locked in there with you.”
“For seven minutes?”
“Yes.”
“Did we make out? Wait. Don’t answer that. We’re close to your house, right?”
“It’s down the street.”
He laces his fingers through mine and tugs. “Come on.”
“What are you doing?”
“Hoping to jog my memory.”
When we reach my door, it takes me a minute to find my keys since they’re stuck at the bottom of my purse. Then I fumble and drop them on the mat.
<
br /> Lance bends down to grab them. “Here. Let me get it.”
When the door swings open, he pushes past me into my foyer. He goes straight for the hall closet, opening the door and parting the hangers.
“What’re you doing?”
He laces my fingers with his. “I want you to show me.”
“Show you wh—”
He steps into the closet and pulls me inside with him, closing the door behind us.
A hat falls from the hook inside the door, and I bat it away in the dark. “This is a really weird way to end a first date.” I’m so nervous right now.
“Just go with it.” He brings my fingers to his lips.
“What am I supposed to be showing you, apart from the inside of my closet?” My heart is beating so hard.
“What our first kiss was like. I want to remember it the way you do,” he pleads.
“You were probably drunk.”
“There’s a good chance. But I’m not now. Please.”
I can tell him no. He won’t push me for something I’m not willing to give freely. But I recognize the vulnerability in this. In him. It makes me want to see if I can resurrect the sweet boy inside this closed man who stole my heart so many years ago.
My biggest fear is falling for real this time. I don’t really know him or understand the crazy life he seems to lead. I never have, and I’m not a kid anymore, but actually spending time with him has pulled me way beyond any romantic fantasies.
I pull out my phone and key in the code.
“What are you doing?”
“Setting a timer.”
“What for?”
“Because I’m re-creating the moment, and this is what you did.”
“I set a timer?”
“You honestly don’t remember at all?”
He cups my face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I didn’t make a lot of nice memories before I got drafted, especially not when I first moved to Chicago. I had to shut a lot of things out. Please give me this one good thing back?”
He’s so sincere. What’s more, he’s so very sad. It makes me want to know what could’ve been so bad that he’d choose to forget everything he could.
“Okay.” I cut the light on my phone, submerging us in darkness again. It’s easier to do this if I can’t see his face.
I can feel him playing with the ends of my hair. “Why did I set a timer?”
“You were being sweet. I was freaked out. You set an alarm so you wouldn’t lose face—those were your words. I didn’t understand what you meant at the time, but then you started asking me questions. I told you my name.”
“Poppy like the flower,” he whispers.
My stomach does a little flip at the thought that maybe he does remember. “That’s what you said to me.”
“I did?”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “And you asked me how old I was. I lied and said I was fourteen. You were turning fifteen the next day.”
“Why would you lie, pretty Poppy?” His fingers are light, following the contour of my lips.
Is he playing with me? It’s like he’s giving me back the words he used all those years ago. I don’t want this to be a game for him. It’s not for me.
“I knew you wouldn’t kiss me if you knew I was only twelve.”
“Fuck. No, I wouldn’t have. I guess I’m glad you lied then.”
“I’m not twelve anymore, so it’s fine. And even then, I made the choice to be in there with you. I remembered you from the year before, when you went to my school. I thought you were cute. Anyway—” I swallow thickly at the feel of his fingers trailing along my neckline. His light touch sends my mind spinning into the past, and heat rushes through me. “You asked me if I’d ever been kissed before.”
“And what did you say?”
“No.”
“And what did I say?”
“That you should be sorry, because you were going to take something from me that I couldn’t get back.”
“But I kissed you anyway.”
“You did.”
“That was selfish of me. That kiss belonged to someone special.”
“It felt special at the time.”
“I’m glad. And I’m still not sorry the way I should’ve been.”
“What?”
“For taking something that didn’t belong to me. I wasn’t sorry then. I’m still not sorry now.”
He remembers.
CHAPTER 14
SLAPPED IN THE
Face WITH MEMORIES
LANCE
When a person chooses to bury memories, there’s usually a reason. The span of time between my brother dying and my aunt realizing my mom was beating the shit out of me—verbally and physically—was the worst of my life. When we moved to Chicago, her beatings got worse instead of better, so I shut down. I locked everything away—all the good and the bad and everything else in between—and kept it stored in the dark place in my head.
It was almost like the mental place I go to when I get into a fight on the ice. Keeping the memories on lockdown is a lot easier than contending with them. Or at least I thought it was. But everything just changed.
I’ve been slapped in the face—not literally, I don’t think Poppy has a violent bone in her body—with a deluge of memories.
Now I understand why Poppy’s always felt so familiar. She is. Flickers of things long buried start to surface: my first week of school in Chicago, the still-healing bruises on my back and legs and knees, wearing pants when it was hot, all the attention from the teachers and other students.
A lot of the memories aren’t very pleasant, but the good ones that contain Poppy come hurtling to the surface now, obliterating everything else. She’s the strawberry blond girl with the long ponytail who looked like home.
Not home in the sense of parents and family, but familiar and comfortable, warm and welcoming.
For a while I’d tried to ignore her, but she was always in the same hall as me during third period, so eventually I caved. I pulled her ponytail because I wanted to touch her hair and see what kind of reaction I’d get. Her smile, so curious and innocent, was something I’d forgotten existed.
I’d never bothered to find out her name. Comfortable things were alluring but untenable for me back then. Hell, mostly they still are. Stability was frightening. After we moved to Chicago, everything—my mum’s happiness, my well-being and safety—was contingent on my success. And failure, perceived or real, required punishment. I accepted this because I knew I had failed my mum in the worst way possible.
Even after my aunt realized what was going on and my mum moved to Connecticut, I still didn’t trust the peace. I would push my aunt’s buttons, waiting for her to lash out, to the fill the void my mother’s absence had created. It wasn’t an absence in the sense that I missed her, but without the constant verbal and physical violence that had become normal, expected, anticipated even, I didn’t know what to do. I waited for the slaps—the physical attacks, the breaking me down emotionally. But they never came. And I didn’t understand it.
So I picked fights on the ice, needled players until they cracked. And I let them get in solid hits before I shut them down. If that didn’t satisfy the need for violence that had been conditioned into me, I would destroy my own property and myself.
I wasn’t prepared to interact with anyone appropriately, so it was better for me not to know her name. Yet here she is, more than a decade later, and she still feels more like home than anyone I’ve ever known. I get it now. All my reactions to her make sense. Finally.
She skims my knuckles with her fingertips. “Before they opened the door, you told me to remember who you were in that closet, because that was the real you.”
That was probably the last time I was real with anyone. I remember what the rest of that night looked like. I remember the aftermath of it, too, and I know why I buried this memory. Because it was pure, and I didn’t think I deserved to have something so good. So I forced myself to forget it.
/>
“You were so sweet.” The alarm on her phone goes off. She silences it.
“It’s time, pretty Poppy,” I whisper, and I’m right back in that closet with her, all those years ago.
I bring her hands up, and she clasps them around my neck. Her palm curves against the back of my head. She’s still so small compared to me. Her body is flush with mine.
My lips touch the corner of her mouth before I press them gently against hers. She doesn’t open for me, so I just appreciate the softness for a few seconds before I pull away.
“Was it like that?” I ask.
“Exactly like that. I wanted you to kiss me again, and I was angry at myself for wasting those six minutes.”
“I did kiss you again.” I’d tried not to be pushy, but she’d tasted so sweet, like she does now. Once I started kissing her, I hadn’t wanted to stop.
“But it could have lasted a lot longer.”
“I’m glad I talked to you instead. This time will you open your mouth a little?”
“Yes.”
When I press my lips to hers, I feel the velvet stroke of her tongue across my bottom lip. I don’t grab her ass, even though I wanted to then, and I want to now. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her in close. I skim her hip and explore her mouth with my tongue, and like that first time, she lets me lead.
She kisses me back, tentative, and then she grows bold, our tongues dancing. She’s not innocent anymore, not like when we were kids. She’s given someone else her other firsts, but that kiss—that still belongs to me.
She presses her curves against me and makes a small, plaintive sound. I could kiss her forever. I could live in this memory—past fused with the present. This kiss would be my heaven.
I realize, though, that I can’t keep Poppy in this closet for the rest of our lives, and that if we keep going, I’m definitely going to want to get her naked—okay, I already do—and make her come. I want to know what my name sounds like as a moan on her lips. I want to see her cheeks flush when I whisper how sexy she is, because I know under these clothes is a gorgeous body begging to be worshiped.
But I’ve already made enough mistakes when it comes to Poppy, so instead I slow the kiss, scale back on the tongue, loosen my hold on her, and open the closet door.
Pucked Off (The Pucked Series) Page 17