I did remember. It seemed like ages ago, even though it had only been a few days. Amanda picked my absolute busiest day to schedule our double date. I’d had class all morning and discussion section for the class with James that afternoon, which he’d skipped.
If anyone were sitting inside my stomach as I waited for student after student to walk into the room and had to start class without his all-consuming eyes on me, they would have felt what I felt. Like I was jumping on a trampoline that had suddenly vanished, so when I fell, I fell hard.
Without him there, my safety net was gone.
“Have a drink, shave your legs, and get dressed,” she said, sliding a shot of vodka in my direction.
“Why tonight?” I whimpered, even though I knew it was no use.
“Why not tonight?” she asked pointedly. “Do you have plans?” Her finger caught a drop of vodka from sliding down the side of the glass. She licked it and winced.
I shook my head. I didn’t, and I had to admit, it might be nice to do something besides think about James.
She pushed the shot glass closer.
I picked it up and took it. It burned when it went down, but I couldn’t deny it did wake me up.
“That’s my girl,” she said, nodding approvingly. “Now, go get ready.” She clapped.
I walked toward the bathroom. “Wait,” I said, sticking my head back in the kitchen, “before I bother to shave, is he cute?”
“Very,” she said, her smile seeming to expand on her face like a sponge filling with water. “Candy will be able to fill reams and reams.”
That was exactly what I needed to forget about James—someone who was very.
…
Luke drove us to the restaurant, a place called the Crab House. If Mandy and I had been alone, we probably would have made a Candy joke about it, but since we had company, we shared a knowing glance instead.
Luke’s car moved down the road like a loud, tiny jewelry box. Mandy sat next to him. My date, Ryan, and I sat in the backseat.
It turned out Ryan was very cute: Tall, sinewy, tattooed, crazy-haired, a bad-boy rocker in the best way. He was the bass player in Luke’s band. He was soft-spoken and even told me I had a pretty name.
But he wasn’t James.
I could have jumped his bones and forgotten all my problems for the moment, but after being so close to having so much more, it was no longer enough.
I was finally out with a guy who I wasn’t linked to in any way academically, who I could be with without any career-ending consequences. The problem was I didn’t feel linked to him in any other way, either.
Mandy tried at least three times to get a conversation started between us, but none of them took. It was all because of me. Ryan was amiable and open and tried to latch on to any piece of similarity between us.
But he wasn’t James.
My attempt to go out with someone else and not think about him was backfiring, big time.
As we walked up to the restaurant, Mandy pulled me aside and whispered, “What’s your problem, Candice?” She called me that like a parent might, reserved Candice for when I was defying her.
“Nothing,” I whispered back.
“Your face looks like you’re about to get a Pap smear,” she said.
“I’m just tired,” I said. It was a lame excuse, but it was all I had. What was I supposed to say? I can’t stop thinking about the student I forced to leave me alone, and now that he had, I don’t want to be left alone. Not what alone means without him.
“Well, wake up,” she said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “There’s a guy here for you and he plays bass.” She reached into her purse and handed me a condom. “You know what they say about bass players?”
I didn’t, but I could guess if Mandy was mentioning it.
“I’m not going to need this tonight,” I said.
“You will if Candy shows up.” She winked.
I took a deep breath, shoved the condom in my pocket quickly, and followed them into the restaurant. I didn’t think I could do what Mandy was clearly pushing for with her gifted condom, but I could make it through dinner, at least.
Well, I could have, if Professor Dylan and James hadn’t been sitting in the restaurant three tables from the entrance when we walked in.
Yes, that James.
Yes, that Professor Dylan.
Was the universe seriously that much of a wench?
I felt James watching me. Professor Dylan, too, but mostly James. It was like he was bypassing my skin, muscles, ribs, and lungs and aiming straight at my banging heart, to see if I really could be enough of a phony bitch to be out on a date with someone after telling him I couldn’t be with anyone.
The hostess led us to a table across the room. At least the universe was merciful enough to not have her sit us right next to each other. Mandy had to notice James and Professor Dylan, but she didn’t say anything. Probably because she really liked Luke and didn’t want to mess things up with him by scolding me for what a mess I was.
The mess that was my denied love life that waited at a table just a few feet away from us.
Mandy and Luke sat down directly across from Ryan and me. I felt my phone buzz and found a text from James: bathroom?
I didn’t move. I wasn’t in the mood to explain this to him, especially when there was nothing to explain. If I told him I would have rather been out with him, or better yet been alone with him—which was all I could think about—it wouldn’t have made anything that was about to happen any easier to deal with.
My phone buzzed again. Another text: Please, Candice. I think you owe me an explanation.
I still didn’t move. I tried to pick up the menu, to smile at Ryan, when I got another text: P
And another: L
And another: E
Was he seriously just sending me one-letter texts? What a dick. I could have just turned off my phone, but then what would James have done? Come over? Made a scene? Mandy would kill me.
Fine, I texted back, five minutes. I sent it all as one text because he may have thought I was a bitch, but I was not a dick.
I let everyone at the table know I needed to make a phone call and to order me a beer and a crab cake. Mandy gave me a look, but I left the table before she could say anything. I knew she wouldn’t leave Luke to see what the hell I was really doing. I also knew the part of her who loved Candy had to be slightly intrigued.
I headed to the back of the restaurant, where the doors to the bathroom and the exit door lined the wall. James was already waiting there.
“You don’t waste any time,” he said.
“It’s not a date.” I sighed. “What about you and Professor Dylan? Are you seeing each other exclusively now or something?”
“You lied to me,” he said. Apparently he wasn’t in the mood for humor, even though he would have had to admit it was a good one.
“No,” I said, “I’m really not ready to have a relationship with anyone. My roommate apparently does not agree.”
“Do you like him?” he asked, his eyes searching mine as if he were trying to find someone he’d lost in a crowd.
“I don’t know him,” I said. I started ticking off on my fingers. “I know his name. I know he’s a bassist in a band.” I concentrated on James’s face but didn’t say, I know he’s not you.
“Musicians are assholes,” he said.
“You act like a little boy when you’re jealous.” I felt myself involuntarily smile, felt the side of my hip bump his, teasing him.
“I’m not jealous,” he denied. “I’m just pissed at you for being such a coward. For thinking you had to lie to me.”
“I’m not a coward,” I said, feeling a little less chummy, my words as hard as I could make them. It seemed like everyone here, even Mandy, thought I lived my life too carefully. The thing was that in James’s case, it was entirely accurate.
“You are,” he said.
“I’d rather be here with you,” I admitted, a bullet so true
it could have knocked me back when I said it.
“Then be with me,” he said.
“I want to,” I said. I did. I wanted to be fearless. I wanted to “let go.” I wanted to be everything Professor Dylan and my parents thought I shouldn’t be. In my writing, in my life, in the love I chose. In the love that chose me.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. I kissed him hard. So hard, he stumbled and had to steady both of us.
He held the back of my head firmly, like he was afraid I would stop.
There was no way.
He turned me and pushed the exit door so we both fell outside, our lips and bodies still joined, tripping blindly alone and with solid certainty together.
We were out in the alley behind the restaurant. I was going after his belt, and he was raising my skirt. He pressed me against the wall and the humid air hit my thighs.
He put his finger in the waistband of my skirt, glided it back and forth, tickling my hip. “You sure about this?”
“I was always sure,” I said, pulling the condom from my pocket and handing it to him. It was true, even if Candice couldn’t admit it until now. Denying my feelings, denying me was done. This was what I wanted, who I wanted.
His tongue was in my ear and my mouth was on his throat when his body and mine connected, crackled. It was the first time I’d ever been with someone where I felt like I was in charge of what my body was doing. What my body was making his body do. I chose this. I chose him, and he had no choice but to comply.
His hips barreled into mine, crashing into me, driving himself inside again and again and again, so hard that I couldn’t control a moan from tumbling out, then another and another.
My voice made him hungry. His lips and tongue were insatiable. His hands pawed at my skirt like it was the peel of an orange he was desperate to suck on, wild to let the juices run down his chin.
A Dumpster was on one side of us, a coffee can the employees used as an ashtray on the other. I focused only on him: on the rough touch of his hands, on his breath drumming against my neck, on his lower body a perfect parallel to mine. Our two hips together forming a butterfly flapping its wings into oblivion. Him flying with me, me flying with him, each thrust taking us higher and higher, faster and faster, further and further. Until its wings finally wrapped us up in shivers and steam and release.
My body whole body shuddered against him, spent. Not just from this, but from everything that James had sparked in me these past weeks finally being satisfied.
We held each other for a moment, just breathing, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, chest to chest.
“I guess you’re not a coward,” he said into my lips. He kissed me lightly, deliberately. “But I can’t control you, Candice.” He was millimeters from me. “And I can’t control my real feelings around you,” he said, breathing into my mouth.
“I finally jumped,” I said, my arms still tight around his waist.
“Don’t worry; I’ll never let you drown.” His words bounced off my lips.
“You might not be able to help it.” I sighed. “I’m in deep,” I added, surprised I admitted it.
“You are. We both are,” he whispered into my ear. “And you are beautiful.”
He hugged me once again, pulled up his jeans, and walked back inside. I watched the door close behind him and pushed my skirt down, attempting to gain my composure. It wasn’t easy.
There was no doubt I would remember this tomorrow and the next day and forever.
I guess it was good Mandy had told me to shave.
Chapter Twenty-one
A sleepless night. At least I got some work done—Candy work, but still. It was hard not to think about Candy work after what had happened between James and me.
What I had made happen between James and me.
I felt different getting ready in the morning, like for the first time in a long time I was in control of my body and at the same time I wasn’t afraid to be out of control of it. As I showered, I pictured the water like James’s lips, rolling down from my hair, my shoulders, the small of my back, each butt cheek, my thighs and calves. I spent another five minutes relishing his waterdrop-lips gliding down my front.
Mandy still wasn’t home when I left for office hours with Professor Dylan. Maybe she was avoiding me, or maybe things were getting serious with Luke—serious enough where she didn’t feel like she needed to slink out at first light.
Maybe what had happened or not happened between Ryan and me had worked in her favor. When faced with two people who were so obviously not interested in each other, perhaps Luke realized how lucky he was to have someone who actually paid attention to him instead of the guy at the table across the room.
Last night at the restaurant, after a quick cleanup in the ladies room, I’d attempted to walk back to the table like I hadn’t just had the hottest sex of my life so far, but I’m sure my face told a very different story. I could feel it was blushed, my lip gloss was gone, there was perspiration dotting my forehead like dew, and that my smile was as insistent as James’s body had been. I did my best to hide I had just been with someone and not the person everyone at the table had expected it would be.
There were no more texts from James after we left each other, which I was thankful for, because he could have texted roof? and I would have come running—or climbing. There was something about the way I felt when I was with him that made me believe I had a right to write like Candy, like I wasn’t an imposter. Like I’d actually experienced the things I said her characters did. I understood how dangerous that was.
There was also the way he made my heart believe he was worth the risk.
I understood how even more dangerous that was.
Luckily, after dinner Luke dropped me off and Mandy went with him and Ryan, so at least I didn’t have to explain why I was acting like a moony teenager all night. Mandy would probably still ask me about it later, but at least if things went well with her and Luke, she might not be angry.
I still wasn’t sure if I could admit to her what was happening. Admit I had allowed myself to get that reckless, that vulnerable. Even though it would have garnered a high five, I also knew Mandy’s one sexual rule: If you’re going to be with someone you shouldn’t be with, make sure he has as much to lose as you do.
James did not.
I walked to campus in a drowsy daze. During my sleepless night I got most of Melted completed, but my own story for workshop still languished like the empty boxes my heroine had to fill. What was probably missing in the story was another character. I mean, who wants to read about one girl stuffing cardboard boxes with her parents’ stuff and thinking about how maybe they were right about her crappy life?
I wished I could just write as Candy and have one of the movers drop the box he was carrying and go after the main character—remove his brown uniform to reveal a diamond-hard, tan body and no underwear—because right now while the writing felt good, good enough anyway, the story was a snoozer.
Professor Dylan was working at his desk when I entered his office. It was a weird middle ground I was treading, trying to decide whether I wanted James there or not. I half hoped on my walk over he would be there just so I could see him, but being in such close quarters with Professor Dylan and trying to pretend nothing was going on between James and me was crazy.
I hadn’t even had a chance to sit down before he said, “I looked up your friend’s favorite writer.”
I wanted to run, but my legs felt like they were fused to the floor.
Screw me. This was why I couldn’t be impulsive all the time like Mandy. When you were impulsive you got sloppy. When you got sloppy, you got caught.
I couldn’t get caught.
Have I finally been found out? Is this it?
“What’d you think?” I asked, making myself say something, acting like I didn’t know Candy Sloane from a glory hole in the wall.
“She’s just another little slut with a laptop,” he said sharply. “Her book appears to be selling well
, but anyone will buy that crap.”
“Excuse me?”
“‘A little slut with a laptop,’ he repeated. “You don’t think I’d refer to this person as an author, do you?”
My insides seemingly collapsed, my limbs turned to mush. Of course I knew Professor Dylan would think Candy Sloane was a joke; he’d said as much about the other “Candys” already, but hearing him call me a slut, saying it about all the “Candys,” had the force of a car crash; his disgustingly calculated words jarring me into seeing him in a completely different way—petty, boorish, ignorant.
I lunged into a chair and struggled to keep my body still, my breathing balanced, the room from spinning. Even if he knew, I couldn’t act like it was true.
“I hope you don’t share your roommate’s proclivities,” he said with a smirk just begging me to rip his lips off.
Does that mean he doesn’t know? Or does he want to force me to admit it?
I kind of wished I could. Tell him I liked writing the “crap” anyone would buy. That I liked reading it and it didn’t make me any less of an author or person to feel that way.
“No,” I mumbled, knowing I couldn’t.
“I know it’s enticing, Candice. The easy fame, the quick notoriety for writing work that belongs on toilet paper, but as serious authors, we need to fight against it,” he said. “Publishing that way won’t mean anything in the long run.”
There it was. He suspected. At least he wasn’t saying anything specific, but that was almost worse. Not admitting he might know something when he did was definitely worse.
“Do you mean because it’s mostly digital books?” I asked. It was another battle cry of the old guard, the fall of the print book. I loved print books, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t love digital books, too, love them for the immediacy they allowed.
“No, I mean because it’s mostly shit,” he said, one blue eye cocked up.
I pulled out my laptop and started to type. I wanted to do anything other than hear Professor Dylan spew the bull I saw all over the Internet about authors like Candy, authors like me. Comments that were misguided and wrong, but I couldn’t tell him that. Not if I wanted to keep Candy a secret, which for now, I still had to.
Sneaking Candy Page 15