by Jillian Dodd
Me: I can’t. I’m going out for dinner.
Dawson: With who?
Me: Aiden. We’re combining tutoring with some french food tonight. We have been studying food words and cuisine related things.
Dawson: I think Aiden likes you, and it sounds like a date.
Me: It’s tutoring with food. And remember, I’m single. I can go on dates. You can too if you want.
Dawson: I only want to date you.
Me: Someone asked me today what you are doing to try and woo me back. To make me forgive you, make me fall in love with you. Do you think you’re wooing me?
Dawson: I’m pretty sure I wooed you last night.
Me: Sex is not wooing.
Dawson: Oh :(
Me: Yeah. Please think about whether I’m really even what you want. I know sex is good, and we have a nice friendship. I just don’t know if you like me enough to woo me. Cuz I haven’t really seen it.
Dawson: So you’re gonna date me and Aiden?
Me: Well, a little competition never hurts.
Dawson: I hate you right now.
Me: And I love your honesty. If it’s any consolation, I have hated you quite a bit recently too. But still, I love you. I just don’t know if it’s enough. It’s up to you. (This part, I want to shake Keatyn. A lot of this stuff ended up in Love Me, and that was such a tough book to write. I seriously wanted to wring Keatyn’s neck and smack some sense into her. How could she not see how awesome Aiden is? But at the same time, I understand. She wants to make it work with Dawson. And sometimes you choose the easy route in life. Aiden isn’t going to be easy. He’s going to question her, make her think, push her. In good ways, ultimately, but she doesn’t know that now. In fact, she thinks he just wants to be her friend. Because that’s what he keeps telling her.)
Dawson: :(
I can’t believe you googled me!
6:30 pm
Aiden texts me at 6:30, saying he’s downstairs.
I walk down the big staircase, and he’s watching me. I feel like I’m making a grand entrance at a ball or something. Now presenting, Miss Keatyn Elizabeth Monroe. I just need a little dude standing here with a trumpet.
Aiden is wearing a suit. This one is charcoal grey with skinny chalk colored pinstripes. He’s wearing a pale pink dress shirt with a white french collar and cuffs. Very appropriate. And looks so very handsome. I know I go on and on about his appearance, but I can’t even say much more. He looks perfect. Like a dream. When I get to the bottom of the stairs, he walks toward me, grabs my hand and says, “Vous êtes belle, mademoiselle.”
“You look pretty handsome yourself.” And then I notice his tie. It’s pink and has little black Eiffel Towers sketched all over it. “We going a little overboard on this whole Paris theme?” I ask him, pointing at the tie.
He chuckles, “Believe it or not, I got this tie as a gag gift. This was my family’s way of giving me shit because I barely passed french. Like I got a 70.2 as my grade. I told you. Fate. Come on.”
We sign out, and then he leads me to his car. Uh, his car is just as gorgeous as he is. Okay, maybe not, but the car fits him.
“Is this your car?” I ask, stupidly.
“Yeah, do you like it?” And it was just a simple question. Not a brag, not a hell yeah, I’m hot, and my car is amazing, like a lot of guys would.
“I do. But it’s hard not to like Maserati. This is the GTS, right?”
“How do you know that? Most girls don’t know cars.”
“My step dad has one. He likes exotic cars.”
“My dad does too. Guess we have something in common.” He walks me around to the passenger side, opens the door, and lets me in.
No boy has ever done that for me before. Really, no boy has ever taken me on a real date before, now that I think about it. Like Dawson and I went to dinner a couple times, and he has excellent manners, but he never opened the door to his BMW for me.
He walks around and gets in the car next to me.
“So tell me about your parents. What do they do?”
“Well, my dad started a small tech firm when I was younger. They wrote a lot of the software for internet search engines. He sold the company about six years ago. Did well. Mom does a lot of volunteer work, and they travel a lot. Something they had always both wanted to do, but dad worked long hours, and they didn’t do it as much as they wanted to. Now they are enjoying his hard work.”
“That’s cool. So um, do you want to hear about my parents?” I think I want to actually tell him.
“I already know who your parents are, Boots.” He grins at me.
“Uh, how...?”
“It’s not that hard, silly. I googled you, you came up. Plus, you look a lot like your mom. Although I saw a photo of your dad, and you have his eyes. Like he had that same cool purplish color eye. It’s unusual. I’m sorry about him, by the way. Your mom and Tommy seem happy though. And your little sisters are adorable.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t say anything. That’s usually all people want to talk about when they know.” Then I stop and think. “I can’t believe you GOOGLED me! When did you do that?”
He reaches over, grabs my hand out of my lap and holds it on the stick shift under his. “This past weekend. When you went to Vancouver. I might be slightly obsessed with you.”
And I might be slightly obsessed about the way his hand feels on top of mine. The way he presses down on it slightly when he shifts. It’s like he’s in control. And for some strange and very surprising reason, I find this very comforting. No, comforting isn’t the right word. I feel, like he’s taking care of me, kinda, like the old fashioned version of how a man is supposed to be. It’s like with Brook and Dawes I felt like I had to drive the relationship in a way. I had to know where it was going. With Aiden I have this wonderful sense of powerlessness. It’s kinda thrilling.
“So what do you think about that? Does it freak you out or anything?”
“Uh, no. Why would it?”
I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know. Some people just kinda do. So, uh, your sister and I had a good talk today. She even helped me figure out what to wear tonight.”
He looks happily surprised. “Really? How did that happen?”
“We started talking after dance about Dawson and the whole it’s complicated. And then we talked about wooing. What you said made me think.”
“And what did you come up with?”
“So far, Dawson is not wooing me. He’s also not thrilled about our field trip tonight.”
“You told him we were on a field trip?”
I laugh, “Naw, I told him it was tutoring with food at a remote location.”
“So you lied?”
“That technically would not be a lie. And no, I didn’t. I told him it was a date. It seems like it’s a date.”
He downshifts, stops at a light, looks over at me, pulls my hand up to his mouth and kisses it.
Then he pushes it back on the stick shift, revs the motor, slams through the gears. And I must admit, it revved up my own motor.
“You’re driving too fast.” I say as he slams the gears again, making the car purr.
“I know. It’s fun, huh?”
Okay, so I have to gush. OH. MY. GOSH. Is he SEXXXXYYYY or what? Him, the suit, the tie, the car, the adrenaline rush, the google search, all of it.
He is, well, he’s the God of all Hotties, for sure. (Yes, he is!)
We get to the restaurant, and he opens my car door, opens the restaurant door, pulls out my chair for me. He is quite chivalrous. But then they hand him a menu written in french. French is like his Achilles heel. His one weakness. And it’s adorable if you ask me. Plus it’s good to know he has at least one weakness.
“I like that you suck at french,” I tell him.
He slides his chair over closer to mine, and he tries to read the menu to me. And he doesn’t do half bad. We figure out what we want, and he attempts to order. And I maybe had to correct him a few times, but he did go
od. And it was adorable that he ordered for both of us. As Grandpa would say, His Momma done raised him right.
Damn, did she ever.
The waiter takes our menus away. Aiden holds my hand and gazes into my eyes. I’ve never felt so important or like what I had to say was so important. Like you know how lots of times you’re talking to a guy and his eyes are looking everywhere but at you? Then they will glance back at your face, to verify that you are still talking, then they look down and stare at your boobs, to verify that they are still intact. And then their eyes sort of get that dazed look, and they continue to stare at your boobs, and you want to scream, Uh, hello, I’m speaking with my mouth, not my cleavage, you wanna just occasionally glance up?
Aiden’s not doing that. I have his full attention.
And he sure freaking has mine.
I also realize that his pull on me is not as shocking. Like when you go stay up in the mountains, and you get acclimated to the altitude. I’m sort of being acclimated to his magnetism. Like I’m not quite as tongue tied, I’m able to think more clearly.
He flashes his smile at me. “Why are you glad I suck at french?
“It makes you more human,” I stupidly say. Oh jeeze, I’m an idiot. “I mean, uh, I wouldn’t have gotten to come here for dinner if you, um, didn’t, right?”
Clearly the air is still thin here at the top. It’s affecting my brain. (LOL)
He reaches out, pushes my hair behind my ear, like he’s done it a million times, “I just now noticed your earrings. The feathers are very cool.”
“Thanks. You look quite handsome tonight yourself. You look extremely good in a suit. And whoever tailors them for you is also quite talented. It fits you meticulously.”
“It’s cool you notice that. And I wanted to look nice for you. So I know you and Dawson are complicated, but what about Dallas? You were kissing him in the video.”
“Dallas and I are very not complicated. We’re friends. We smoke together sometimes, and then we kiss. It’s no big deal.”
“When we go out, there will be none of that.”
“We’re not gonna go out.”
“You can’t fight fate.”
“I can give it my best shot.”
He runs his thumb across the palm of my hand, and I shiver. “You’re silly. Pretty soon you won’t be able to resist me.” (Who can resist a hottie god?)
The waiter sets down our appetizers. A traditional French onion soup along with sautéed escargot served in a mushroom and red wine sauce.
“It’s too bad we don’t have a nice Bordeaux to go with this. When we go to your house in France, we are drinking wine with every meal.”
“Have you ever been to France?”
“No, but I’ve traveled some. Do you like to travel? I love it.”
“Yeah, I do. I like to see the different cultures, experience the foods, see the sites, the countryside. Where have you been?”
“Italy, Germany, England, then like Hawaii, Mexico, Florida, the Caymans, St. Kitts and St. Barts.”
“What did you think of St. Kitts?”
“It’s like paradise. I would love to go back. My parents are on this thing where they don’t want to go back to the same place until they have been everywhere or something. But I would love to go there and just relax.”
“I could maybe arrange that.” I can’t help it, I’m smiling big.
“Oh and how you going to do that?”
“We have a place there.”
“Really?”
“Okay, so this is way out of left field. No, never mind. Um, so are you excited for this weekend?”
He holds a spoonful of soup up to my mouth. I drink the soup off the spoon.
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“What you just did. You were going to tell me something. Something that you were excited about, but then you like got scared to.”
I soak an escargot in wine sauce and eat it. It’s really good.
“This is all really good,” I tell him.
“Keatyn.”
“What, can you like read my mind?”
“No, but I sure wish I could. I would love to know what you’re thinking. Tell me.”
I bob my head around like an idiot, trying to think up a lie. But there’s none in my brain.
“My family is going to be in Europe over Thanksgiving, Tommy has movie premieres he has to do, and they wanted me to come over to France, but we aren’t off school all that long, so I don’t know if I will go, but I may still go, I haven’t decided. But he told me I should go down there. Like I could take friends or something if I wanted to. Maybe your family might like to go or something? Or do you have a big traditional Thanksgiving with your extended family?”
“Well, we usually go to my grandma’s for dinner and then watch football. But hmmm, let me talk to my parents about it. Why didn’t you want to tell me?” (Cut part, too.)
“Um, well it’s like two months away, and who knows if we’ll even still be friends by then.”
“Boots, we’re gonna be way more than friends by then.”
“You seem so sure when you say stuff like that. It freaks me out a bit.”
“Yeah, well it freaks me out a bit too. I mean, jeeze, look at your track record.”
The smile runs off my face. I put my head down and stare at the table cloth. I can’t believe he just said that.
He moves his head closer to mine. Touches my forehead with his. I look up, and he bats those eyes and grins at me. “You know I’m just teasing you. Come here.”
I don’t move. So he puts his hand under my chin, pushing it up, straight to his waiting lips.
Once again his kiss is so simple, so chaste, just our lips touching, barely moving, and then he cruelly pulls those perfect lips away from me.
I smile at him, curl my lip up.
“I’d really like to know what you’re thinking right about now.”
“I’m thinking no one has ever kissed me the way you do.” I answer honestly. (Finally, she admits it to him!)
He stares at me for a few beats of my heart, then says, “So you excited for this french weekend? You do realize that since we are on the social committee together, that we have an obligation to be together the entire weekend and make sure that everything is going as planned?”
I squint my eyes at him, trying to gauge if he’s joking. He looks quite serious.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Oh yes, I had it written into the bylaws, so Friday night we have to wander the streets of Paris, hand in hand, like lovers. We have to sit at the cafe table outside, kiss and drink coffee. We have to be teammates for lawn bowling, and then I have a special picnic planned for while we watch the movie.”
“And the holding hands and kissing, that’s just us trying to create a Parisian ambiance?”
“Oh, no. That will be because you want to.”
“I want to? No. You want to.”
“What makes you think that?”
My response is interrupted by the waiter bring our entrees. It smells heavenly. He went a little cheesy romantic on the entree, ordered us chateaubriand for two. It’s served with a béarnaise sauce and roasted potatoes.
He cuts into it, feeds me the first rich morsel. “Because you are wooing me.” I tell him after I finish chewing.
“Me? Naw.” He grins, “What was your first clue?”
“Honestly, the way things have gone between us, like so up and down, like one minute you pulled the she loves me petal off and the next she loves me not. But not until I was talking to your sister today. We were talking about wooing, and I realized all that you’ve done.”
“And?”
“I like it.”
“More than the chocolate mousse we ordered for dessert?”
“Hmmm, that might be a tough choice,” I tease.
We finish dinner, get back in his car. He leans in toward me, pushes my hair back behind my ear and says, “I want this feather. Can I
take it off?” (The feather scene is one of my favorites. Also, do you know how hard it is to come up with scenes that are highly sensual like this without having them have actual sex? Heck, he hasn’t even kissed her with his tongue yet!)
I’m sort of puzzled by this request, but I say, “Uh sure.”
He glides the hook out of my ear.
He runs his finger across it, says, “It’s soft.”
He looks at me with half lidded eyes, sexxxxy sexxxy bedroom type eyes. Then he takes the feather and runs it down my arm.
“Mmhmm,” I groan slightly.
He pushes my hair from one side of my neck to the other, so my neck and shoulders are fully exposed on the side closest to him. Then he runs the feather down my neck and across my shoulder.
It may be the sexiest thing anyone has ever done to me.
My dress is strapless, and when he runs the feather across the top of my cleavage, I decide it is indeed the sexiest thing anyone has ever done to me.
How does he come up with this shit?
His mother is Aphrodite, that’s how. Durrr.
I lean my head back into the headrest and close my eyes. Just feel the feather gliding across my skin, leaving me with goosebumps everywhere. He glides it up on my face, across my eyelids.
I swear, I’m taking this feather home and having it bronzed.
He runs it across my lips.
Although having it dipped in gold would probably be more godlike. (LOVE!)
And then I feel him lean in closer to me, and his lips replace the feather.
I run my fingers into his hair at the nape of his neck, and finally he kisses me more deeply.
It’s a tongues touch, then caress, then suck kind of kiss.
Who was it that said we need to come up with another word besides amazing?
Oh, I forget.
He had his hands in my hair, and now he’s running them across my shoulders, and oh, he is kissing down my neck and leaving me breathless. His fingers move slowly across the front of my dress, and then I feel one single finger making a line across the top of my dress, just under the dress, on my skin. It starts over by my shoulder, runs across the top of one boob, down into my cleavage, back up and across the other side. I’m leaned back in the seat, my eyes closed, enjoying every single touch. Smiling. Sighing little contented sighs. He grabs my chin and turns my head toward him.