by Dahlia Adler
Tonight’s bouncer is a Frankie boy, and he only half-ass glances at our IDs because he’s too busy trying to see if she’s wearing a bra underneath her filmy tunic. (She isn’t.)
Inside, it’s surprisingly busy, or maybe I just haven’t done this on a Friday night in a while. Either way, we have to do a whole lot of pushing and squeezing to get to the bar, but at least the male population doesn’t seem to mind.
“Three lemon drops,” Cait orders on our behalf, because she has no shame about being a walking cliché. I’ve actually always liked about Delta that they have a pretty extensive scotch menu; it reminds me of my dad, and how he used to sneak me sips. If Cait and Frankie weren’t here, I’d probably order Glenfidditch—his favorite—but they are, so we “cheers” with our sweet-and-sour drinks and I laugh like I’m not at all thinking about how my dad will never see me turn legal.
“All right, Brandt,” Cait declares after we’ve all taken a couple of sips. “What’s your pleasure tonight?”
“Hmm….” I think of Connor, with his desperately-in-need-of-a-tan skin and those twilight-sky eyes. “I’m thinking dark. Dark and maybe tattooed. Definitely no one from the university.” I cock my head to size up the guy who just served us our drinks. I’ve never hooked up with a guy with a shaved head before. “What do you think of the bartender?”
“Jamie’s fucked him,” Frankie says with a shrug. She takes another sip. “She said he was okay. Bald everywhere, if ya know what I mean.”
“No, Frank, please crack that code.”
“Hey, be nice or I’m not helping,” she says petulantly, but she grins. “Okay. Dark. Either tatted or dirty, at four o’clock. No, wait, eight o’clock.” She stops, frowns, looks down at her chunky plastic watch. “Make that five—no, wait…. Oh, shit, he just started grinding on some chick.”
I toss back the rest of my drink and call the bartender back for a second round. This time, it’s a cosmo for Cait, Manhattan for Frankie—she likes the color—and Long Island iced tea for me. I’m just taking my first sip, hoping the copious amounts of alcohol will dull my brain, when Frankie says, “Hey, isn’t that your TA?”
I straight-up choke on my drink. “Which TA?” I manage around coughs, even though I know full well I only have one Frankie would recognize. Why the hell does he have to be here, tonight of all nights?
Then again, maybe he needs to drink away last night’s encounter as much as I do.
“Hottie Historian. Over there.” She gestures eagerly with her glass down the bar, her enamel bracelets making a racket as they clink against each other. Connor’s deep in conversation with a guy who looks vaguely familiar from campus. He’s actually kind of hot, in a preppy, Cape Cod-esque kind of way that’s totally not my style.
Which gives me a terribly wicked idea.
“Hey!” I flag down the bartender. “Can you send a drink to a guy for me?” I ignore Cait and Frankie’s whistles and catcalling and press on. “See the guy down there in the white shirt, with the blond crew cut? Send him a…what’s the dirtiest, most blunt drink name you have?”
“We’ve got the One-Night Stand, and the Fuckbuddy.”
“Send him a Fuckbuddy,” Cait declares authoritatively.
“From me,” I add pointedly to the bartender. “This isn’t an offer for a fourgy.”
The bartender grins. “You got it.” I watch in nervous anticipation as he mixes Campari with gin and vodka, turning it all a lusty red. Then he knots two cherries together for garnish.
Cute.
My eyes are locked on the scene of the bartender presenting the prepster with the drink. Connor’s friend tilts his head to get a better look, then lifts the Fuckbuddy with what he unquestionably thinks is an irresistible smile. I lift my iced tea in response and offer my own smile, and then wait patiently for Connor to turn around and see who’s sent his friend a drink.
The glass-melting fury in his eyes when he spots me with my drink in the air and a smirk on my face is worth every penny of the drink just added to my tab.
I know this is where I wait for the prepster to join us, but I’m just not that patient. Instead, I slide off my stool, sucking my straw between pursed lips, and make my way over. “Hi there,” I greet him, letting the words roll off my tongue like honey while I ignore Connor completely. My voice seems to have taken on a southern accent, and I go with it. “I’m Scarlett.”
“Perfect name for a southern belle,” he says, lifting my free hand to his lips. Connor snorts, and we both pretend not to hear. “I’m Brandon.”
“Perfect name for a Yankee gentleman,” I drawl, enjoying myself immensely. “How’s the drink? It’s been a while since I’ve had a good Fuckbuddy.”
Now it’s Connor who chokes on his drink, so loudly both Brandon and I instinctively turn to look.
“You all right over there, Lawson?” Brandon sounds genuinely concerned. It only makes me smirk harder.
“Fine,” Connor croaks.
“Scarlett, this is Connor,” Brandon says politely, indeed a Yankee gentleman. “He and I go way back.”
“So nice to meet you,” I say sweetly. Connor stares at my outstretched hand as if he wants to spit on it, though judging by the way his gaze roves down my entire body when he finally takes it and pumps it, just once, he’s got other uses in mind for it too. He is pissed, but that’s not strictly anger burning in his expression; I recognize that lust from the night we first kissed. For a moment, I regret this plan. I want Brandon to disappear so Connor can yank me into the men’s room and throw me up against a wall.
Then his words from the night before sink back into my brain, and I decide to twist the knife a little further.
I turn to Brandon. “I was just about to head out back for a cigarette. Care to join me?”
“He doesn’t smoke,” Connor answers for him, his voice hard as nails.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t keep the lady company.” Brandon pushes the drink I bought him in front of Connor’s face and says, “Here. You need a good Fuckbuddy even more than I do.” Then he hops up, pats Connor on the head, and wraps an arm around my waist to escort me out back.
With the heated rage emanating from Connor as we go, I’m not even sure I’ll need my trusty lighter.
• • •
Brandon and I are outside for no more than five minutes when Connor storms outside, just as I’m showing off my skills with smoke rings. (And by skills I mean my ability to get guys staring at my mouth while thinking I’m both sexy and adorable for not being able to produce said rings, no matter how strongly I insist I can. They’re so dumb.) “Okay, Lizzie,” he snaps. “That’s enough. You’ve had your fun.”
“Oh, chill out, Connor.” I blow a steady stream of smoke in his direction. “Your friend and I are getting to know each other.”
“What happened to your accent? And who’s Lizzie?” Poor Brandon.
Connor sighs. “She has no accent, and she shouldn’t be here. Go home, Elizabeth. Take your underage friends with you.”
“We’re not in class, Mr. Lawson. You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Class?” Brandon looks terrified now, as if Connor teaches high school. “What the—”
“Go inside, Brandon,” Connor says tightly. “I’ll handle this.”
Brandon could not have moved faster if I’d held my lighter to his ass.
“Put that out,” Connor says tiredly as soon as Brandon’s gone.
“Say please.”
Connor’s not amused. He storms over, snatches the cigarette from my hands, and extinguishes it against the stone wall of the back patio. “You need to go home.”
“No, Connor, I don’t. What I need is to get laid. And since you’ve made it very clear that you’re not up for that task, I’m taking my ladyparts elsewhere.”
“To Brandon.”
“To I don’t give a shit who,” I snap. “Why should I? As you so thoughtfully reminded me last night, I probably won’t have a boyfriend for the next eleven or so years. So I c
an turn into a nun, or I can meaningless-fuck my way through my brothers’ minority years. Which one sounds like more fun to you?”
“I didn’t say—”
“Yes, you did.” I walk right up to him and smooth his collar; he flinches at my touch, and I smile. “You like me, Connor. You have for months. Unless you were lying when you told me that, which would just be incredibly stupid.”
His jaw tightens as I trace my finger down the buttons of his shirt, along the metal of his belt buckle.
“And you want me,” I continue, lowering my voice as I snake my finger along his waistband, around to his back, and up his spine before lightly tickling his nape. “I bet you’re thinking of bending me over that wall, shoving up my skirt, and burying yourself inside me. Right. This. Second.”
He doesn’t say a word, doesn’t move a muscle, but I can see his jaw clenching.
“All that,” I murmur, sliding my hand up through his hair, sifting the soft brown strands through my fingers, “and you know I’m willing. You know how hot you make me. How incredibly wet. Hell, you’ve tasted it. Buried your fingers and tongue inside me and made me come so hard. Remember that?”
He’s fighting an impossible battle with himself, and it’s got him in a sweat, but he still doesn’t break. His nostrils are flaring, his breathing unsteady, but the fists at his sides aren’t unclenching to reach for me.
Not that I thought they would.
I inject my voice with as much acid as possible. “And even so, you still don’t want to be with me. So who the fuck ever will?” I stalk past him, letting my shoulder ram into his arm as I do, and march back inside.
He catches up with me as soon as I get through the door and whirls me around. “Do you think this is easy for me?”
“I don’t give a shit what’s easy for you,” I hiss back. “You’re the one who has all the choices in life, and you made yours. Now I’m just making the few left that I can.”
“Like which stranger to fuck in a bar?”
“Like which stranger to fuck in a bar.”
“And you just naturally chose the one who would hurt me most?”
“What difference does it make?” I ask, crossing my arms.
“That you’re trying to hurt me?”
“You did hurt me,” I snap. “You do or do not; there is no try. And if the specifics of who I fuck bother you—”
“You fucking anyone else bothers me,” he whispers back fiercely, far louder than he should. He knows it, too; immediately, he presses his lips together, blocking out whatever else he was gonna say.
“So I just shouldn’t, then,” I say coldly. “You don’t want me, but you don’t want anyone else to have me. That’s perfect, Connor. Please, tell me—how goddamn lonely do I need to be to make you happy? Because I am at the rock bottom of solitude and you still don’t seem too thrilled.”
My voice breaks bitterly and I’m horrified to realize that tears are stinging my eyes. As if he has some sort of damsel-in-distress radar triggers by a woman’s weeping, a bouncer suddenly sticks his head into the back vestibule. “Is everything okay, miss?” He looks at Connor suspiciously.
“Fine, thank you,” I say with what I hope is a grateful smile. It’s hard to see his reaction through blurred eyes.
“I’m gonna take her home,” Connor adds.
The bouncer looks back at me. “That right, miss?”
I blink to clear my vision, then glance at Connor, who’s wearing a completely neutral expression. I don’t want to let him win, but I also don’t want to be here anymore. Then, suddenly, I feel it—the slightest brush of warm fingertips on my palm—and I nod.
We both know I’m not going home with anyone else tonight.
• • •
The ride home is completely silent. We don’t exchange a single word as we get out of the car, nor when we walk to my apartment, nor when he follows me inside, first through the front door and then into my bedroom.
It isn’t until I’ve closed the door behind me and dropped onto my bed that he finally speaks.
“I never want you to be lonely,” he says hoarsely, leaning back against the door. “I’ve spent so many years feeling that way, and it sucks. I never want that for you.” He scratches a hand through his hair. “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I know I can’t have things both ways.”
He looks exhausted, and broken, and I feel like shit for everything I put him through tonight. It’s not his fault he doesn’t want to be with someone who comes with tween-boy baggage. Hell, I don’t want to be somebody who has tween-boy baggage. Would I be doing this if my grandmother were lucid, or my aunt were sober, or Nancy didn’t have infinite amounts of her own shit to deal with?
“You can’t,” I agree quietly. “I’m sorry too. But my life can’t be quietly pining after you. There’s too much pain inside me already.”
They might be the most honest words I’ve ever said, and I hate how vulnerable they make me sound. He must too, because he pushes off from the door and comes to sit down next to me.
“I know,” he says softly, so softly, as softly as he tucks one of my wild waves behind my ear. “I know.”
I don’t know who kisses whom—our bodies just melt together, lips joining to complete a circuit that lights up the room, the city, the world. It’s not fast and furious like the first time. It’s gentle but needy, as if someone had just dived underwater and affixed a regulator to my mouth at the exact right instant to save me from drowning.
It’s everything.
I don’t know how long we kiss for, or at what point we lie down, or when we get under the covers, or how we commit to the fact that Connor is staying the night, but all of it happens, without us ever taking off a stitch of clothing or saying a word.
I’m halfway to dreamland, Connor’s arm wrapped firmly around my waist, his warm chest pressed against my back, when he sleepily mumbles, “You look obscene in that outfit, by the way.” I smile into my pillow as I drift off completely.
When I wake up, I’m alone, and I know he’s made his choice.
A tiny part of me is relieved for my empty bed; I have no interest in or answers to any of Tyler’s potential questions. And at least I feel well rested when Ty and Max bitch about another morning of cereal.
“Are we having cereal for Thanksgiving, too?” Ty grumbles.
“Dude, stop making it sound like Mom provided some sort of continental breakfast every morning. You ate plenty of cereal when she was the one feeding you.” Then his words sink in. “Oh, sh-darn. Thanksgiving.”
“You forgot?” Ty asks flatly. Max looks as if he’s about to cry.
“Of course not,” I lie. As if a holiday I have no desire to celebrate has penetrated my consciousness for even a second. Thanksgiving used to be my favorite, but that’s when my mom made the turkey, my dad made the stuffing, and Nancy made sweet potato pie with perfectly browned marshmallows. “I just have to talk to Nancy.”
“Are we going home?” Max asks.
This is home now, I think but don’t say. “I don’t know yet. Do you want to? Ty?”
“I don’t know,” Ty mumbles.
“I don’t either,” I admit. I scoop a handful of Cheerios from the box and crush one between my front teeth. “Max?”
“I wanna see Pete.”
Pete is Nancy’s beagle.
“I guess I wanna see Jake and Robbie,” Ty says with a shrug. “And Amy. She texts me sometimes to say hi. She’s cool.”
Christ, I am selfish. I spend so much time thinking about how hard this is on me, and completely miss how hard it’s been on them. Even though the thought of Thanksgiving without my parents—and at their house—guts me, I say, “Okay, then we’ll go home.”
“And you’ll make turkey?” Max asks.
“And stuffing,” I promise, though I have no idea when. Or how.
I’m not really sure what I’m getting myself into, but when Max smiles wide, and Ty says, “Okay, cool,” I know I have to try.
• • •
I might’ve been unimpressively behind on the whole Thanksgiving thing, but it was pretty much the only topic of conversation come classes on Monday. Even Russian was devoted to the vocabulary of Dyen Blogodoreya, our assignments to write about our plans for the holiday and our favorite traditions. Not that I particularly wanted to dwell on any of those.
Even Cait and Frankie are psyched to go home, which for Cait is Burlington, Vermont, and for Frankie is some tiny town in Western Massachusetts, where she swears riding cows was a typical weekend activity when she was in high school. They try to assure me it’ll be nice to go back to Pomona, but I can’t imagine how.
I'm not in touch with any of my high school friends anymore, not even the few who came to my parents’ funeral. I’m looking forward to seeing Nancy, but to being in my parents’ house without them? Not so much.
The one perk of going home is that’ll allow me to escape Connor for a while, a feat I’ve managed since I woke up alone on Saturday morning but am unable to do today, given that I’ve got class.
I don’t so much as glance at Connor when I walk in, and I take a seat at the back that won’t allow me to stare at the back of his head. He stays seated for the entire lecture, which keeps me from checking out his butt, and he doesn’t speak.
Unfortunately, none of that stops me from spending the entire class remembering how soft his hair feels under my fingertips, how firm his butt is under my hands, or the raw, desperate way he said my name that first night.
He was right when he said we’re in trouble.
It’s just as well I’ve made the executive decision to skip classes tomorrow and drive the boys down to Pomona tonight. That way I can avoid excessive traffic, and also get over any potential mental breakdowns in time to do the cooking with Nancy. Any classes that are still happening will be a joke, anyway; it’s only Tuesday and I can already tell from all the jiggling legs and watch-checking that no one’s focusing on Professor Ozgur’s words of wisdom on the barbarians of the West.
The second the bell rings, the entire class is up and rushing out the door, me included. Only a soft voice saying, “Miss Brandt, can I see you for a moment?” stops me in my tracks.