“So they can charge me to do exactly what I just did here for free?”
I tried my luck with another shirt—black. I didn’t have any gauze. 100% cotton would have to do. The fabric of the shirt rubbed against the raw flesh underneath in a way that made my skin crawl.
“Adam. Why are you getting dressed?” he asked, and a second later didn’t have to wait for the answer because his face dropped. He knew. “You can’t…”
“Watch me.”
I picked my jacket up off the floor looking at the extent of the blood staining. I stopped myself. I couldn’t go to Dana’s covered in blood. That was too much. Even for me. On our first date?
“You can’t be serious. There is no way you want it that bad.”
“Believe it, friend,” I said dismissively.
“Bro... at least go by a Rite-Aid first. Damn dude.”
I realized how this looked. He must have thought I was crazy. He must have thought I had lost my mind if I was trying to treat a gunshot wound like a papercut and race off to a girl’s house.
Not a girl though. Dana’s house. It was different.
I stopped anyway.
He was right.
The shirt would become stuck in the wound as the blood clotted.
I wanted to get to her, but I couldn’t do it like this.
I’d have to get this shit dressed properly, at the very least. Then I’d go to Dana’s. She’d understand, right? What was I thinking? I couldn’t tell her.
What—I was late because the boyfriend of the girl I used to bang came to my house and shot me?
No, I’d just knock at the door and talk to her. I’d make it up to her…
… somehow.
18
Adam
I knocked at the door, willing this to be the time that Dana actually answered. I held my breath and exhaled, relieved when I saw the door open, and her green eyes look up at me. They were cloudy and angry, but they were hers. I finally had the gash in my side dressed properly and had on clean clothes. It was just past ten. I felt my palms sweat like I was about to sit the SATs or something. Why was I so nervous?
“You’re late,” she said stonily. I rethought leaning in for a kiss because I knew that would probably make her angrier. She had on yoga pants and a hoody—the uniform for staying in—but her face looked like she still had makeup on. She was probably getting ready to go to sleep.
“But I’m here now,” I said, trying to appease her, “you waited for me.”
“I was just on my way to bed.”
“Great, I’m just in time to join you,” I replied. She didn’t bite. Her eyes narrowed.
“If you didn’t want to take me out you should have just said no. I can take it. Even if this thing between us isn’t a real relationship, we still need to communicate.”
“There was something I had to take care of,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions.
I’m sorry. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t know what to say.
“What was it?”
I was silent. Oh you know babe, I was just driving back from San Leandro and got into a little scuffle. Minor gunshot wound. Superficial. It’ll be better in three days tops.
“I’m sorry, Doll,” I said. “I should have called you.”
“To say what? To cancel?”
“To reschedule. Are you doing anything right now?”
“I was going to take my makeup off and go to bed.”
“Come on,” I told her, holding an arm out. I tried not to visibly wince as I felt the movement in my side. I watched her eyeing my hand like it was some sort of strange animal she was wary of touching. “Please.”
Fuck.
I was desperate.
She rolled her eyes like she was tired of me, but she didn’t leave. She crossed her arms and looked at me.
“Where are we going?”
“I’m not telling you until you’re on the back of my bike.”
She bit her lip in this way that was innocent, but I felt it in my cock.
“We have to go where I want to go since you flaked on the date,” she said.
“Fine. Anywhere you want,” I said. I’d take her all the way back to San Leandro that night if she wanted it. I just needed her to come with me. I needed to know that that was something she wanted to do. Something she would still do if I asked her for it.
“Be right back,” she said, running into the house and reappearing shortly. She wasn’t carrying her bag or anything, but I didn’t ask. We hopped on my bike, and I asked her where to.
“Downtown.”
A short while later we were at her store. She and Mimi’s bookstore which they were getting ready to open. The renovations looked like they were nearly done according to what I could see through the window. She unlocked the door, and we went inside.
The place looked almost done besides some boxes with books in them on the floor.
“We’re still waiting on our cash register,” she said shyly, walking through the store. She didn’t turn a light on, but there was enough light coming in from the outside streetlights and cars that she didn’t have to.
I looked at some of the books that were up on the shelves already. A lot of self-help and spirituality things. I picked one up and read the back of it.
“The Five Love Languages?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah. That whole area is Mimi’s picks. She’s really into that sort of stuff.”
“What are you into?”
“All my stuff’s still in here,” she said, hauling a box up onto a counter. “Some of the titles I wanted were a little hard to get my hands on.”
I walked over to her as she pulled a couple of books out. The Delta of Venus. Jamaica Inn. Of Mice and Men. Didn’t ring a bell. Any of them. We got books in prison. I must have gotten through hundreds because there was so little else to do but not this shit. Literature.
“Books are sort of your thing, huh?”
“Yeah. I was an English major in college. One of the reasons I went up to LA was to bring back some books that I had left in my old apartment.”
Shit. College. I had barely earned my GED after getting out of juvie. The prison system is undeniably screwed, but a lot of people got a way to further their education which would not have been available to them on the outside. I ended up with enough college credits to be able to transfer somewhere if I wanted to when I got out, but college cost money and not that many places hire ex-cons. I did have a skill to fall back on, however. Chopping up cars got me somewhere in the end, besides prison.
“The deal was I got to stock these and Mimi got to stock her health and wellness ones.” She must have seen the look on my face. “Not a big reader?”
She asked it like she was truly curious.
“No…” I thumbed through Go Tell It On The Mountain, “not enough pictures.”
“Pictures?” She giggled. I wanted to put that sort of smile on her face every day. She was so cute.
“Yeah. I liked comics when I was younger.”
“Comics? Like Batman and Robin?”
“No, like The Watchmen and Transmetropolitan,” I told her. She knelt on the floor and opened another box. I followed her down, sitting.
“I’m not familiar,” she said, tilting her head to the side a bit. “Do you recommend them?”
I blinked at her a couple of times. Her face didn’t read sarcastic. She looked serious. I had rarely talked about this stuff with women. Many weren’t interested and the ones who were tended to want to use it to appeal to me somehow. They didn’t actually want to read them. Which was fine. They didn’t have to; I just didn’t care for the feigned interest.
“You’re asking me for book recommendations, Encyclopedia Brown?” I asked her. “Who’s the bookseller here?”
“If you think they’re good, I want to check them out,” she said innocently. “Besides, maybe we could stock a few titles.”
“Here?”
&
nbsp; “Yeah,” she shrugged. “It is a bookstore. Might even give you a few reasons to drop by and say hi.”
I don’t know whether she meant that to sting, but it did. A little. She was upset about the date which made me more uncomfortable than I was used to feeling about a woman’s feelings. I pulled her into my lap, and she straddled me. My favorite way to have her.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing Adam, it’s fine.”
“No, it isn’t. When are you free again? You asked for a date; you’re getting one.”
She smiled.
Thank God. She wasn’t mad, or at least not too mad.
“The bookstore’s grand opening is in a week. Saturday. I want you to come.”
“Done. What time is it?”
“All day. We open at 8.”
She must have had her phone in the pocket of her hoody because I felt the vibration against my stomach.
“Ignore it,” I told her. I kissed her, and she responded immediately. Her arms looped around my neck.
“What if it’s Mimi? Or my dad?”
“They’ll call back if it’s an emergency.” I kissed her neck, running my nose along her jaw. Her hair smelled amazing.
“What if it’s something important?”
“More important than this?”
I slid my hands under her ass and ground my erection against her. She moaned softly.
“Adam,” she said in this mock-scandalized tone. “Right here?”
“Mm-hmm,” I pressed my lips to her neck and licked, sucking her skin into my mouth. She wriggled against me.
“We’re on the floor... at my... new... business,” speech was getting challenging. Her hands were gripping the front of my shirt. I kissed her and tasted the inside of her mouth.
“Stand up,” she said. “I want to suck your cock.”
God, how did I get so lucky?
I stood, and she sat up on her knees, hurriedly getting my cock out. How did her lips feel even better than they did the first time she wrapped them around me? She sucked and licked the tip before she left it completely and sucked one of my balls into her mouth and laved it with her tongue.
I sighed. So many girls forgot the balls.
“I was the one who was late. I should be doing this to you,” I whispered.
“Do you want me to stop?” she asked, looking up at me. It was nearly too much. Her perfect, pretty face next to my obscenely hard dick like that.
I swallowed, hard.
“Don’t you dare,” I sighed. She did the same with the other before she slowly swallowed my length to the hilt. My hands found her hair. I fisted a handful of it and used it to gently guide her in and out.
She looked like such a good girl; why could she suck dick like that? Why did I care who she had been with before me? They weren’t here now. I was. It made me mad though. Not mad really but like... jealous.
I tugged her hair gently to see how she’d like it. She moaned. She moaned, and I felt it reverberate through my dick. I was close.
“I’m close, Dana,” I told her. She sped up. I could feel her lips like they were on my whole body. I held the back of her head to hold her steady and thrust into her mouth, finally blowing my load. I felt her throat as she swallowed every drop of it down.
Instead of pulling her up I sank back down to join her on the floor after stuffing my junk back into my underwear. I kissed her and pulled her back into my lap. My hand slipped past the waistband of her pants, palming her bare ass.
“My turn,” I told her. She reached out a hand to stop me.
“No—I… I want you to have a reason to see me again.” It was flirtatious the way she said it, but I won’t lie, it did give me pause to think how much truth was behind it that she wasn’t telling me. Why did she… did she really think all I wanted was sex? I had told her as much in the beginning, but I wasn’t even sure I felt like that anymore.
“Where were you going to take me?” she asked, with her face nestled in my neck, changing the subject. I slid a hand under her hoody so I could run it up and down her smooth back.
“I was going to take you out to the desert,” I told her. She lifted her face to look at me.
“The desert?”
“Mm. We’d go out there, and I’d build a fire. Carry beer or wine, whatever you like. Look at the stars. We could talk… or not talk, whatever you wanted and still, make it back early enough to find a good Mexican spot still open… if you were hungry.”
“Wow, I’m impressed. I thought you’d just take me for drinks and a meal.”
“You could do that with any guy,” I said to her, repeating something she had said to me. “Why did you go to LA without telling me?” The question was out before I could stop myself from asking it.
“I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to speak to you again after what happened the night I came over.”
I sighed, resting my chin on the top of her head. I wanted to tell her the truth. The whole truth. Everything with Lawson, and the fights, Hanley and Martin, where I was today… but I didn’t. Maybe I’d tell her some other time but not just then. She felt perfect in my arms. I had her, and I would be the worst kind of fool to do something to fuck it up.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into her hair.
“I know. I just wish you felt you could tell me,” she said quietly. It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t an ultimatum. It sounded like an invitation.
“What happened to you back in LA? Before you came here,” I asked, remembering that she hadn’t answered the question the first time. She fidgeted a little in my grasp.
“I had this boyfriend, ex-boyfriend who got really… attached and didn’t take the break-up well when it happened.”
“Was it Aaron? Did he hurt you?”
“No, it wasn’t. It was another guy. His name was Henry. Did he hurt me? Nothing my mom’s plastic surgeon couldn’t reverse.”
“What?”
“He’s in the past now; it doesn’t matter.” I felt her shrug and lift a hand to my chest.
“It does matter. Did you—”
I stopped because the thought made me sick to even think about.
“Did you go to see him?”
“No. Haven’t seen him for months. My parent’s lawyers put him in jail.”
“Jail or prison? There’s a difference.” You could bail out of jail. You couldn’t bail out of prison.
“I blanked out most of the legal stuff Adam. I didn’t want to know anymore. I wanted to get away from it. From where he could find me.”
“What’s his name—full name?”
“Henry Neal. Why?”
Good question. You meet loads of people in prison. Rapists. Drug dealers. The guy sitting next to you for meals could be doing life for murdering his whole family or three years for a bogus weed possession charge. You hear a lot of stories too.
Henry Neal.
It didn’t take two seconds to think of a couple of guys who could make him disappear. It took even less time to think of a couple of guys who could do worse things to him. Shit, I was talking to Martin and Hanley so often lately, if I could get a favor out of them, Henry Neal could disappear without a trace, his car found mysteriously by the train tracks.
“He hurt you,” I said simply. The hand I had on her back squeezed her to me. What was I? Retroactively mad at Henry Neal for making Dana feel any sort of unsafe, or myself for not being there to protect her? Both made no sense because I didn’t know Henry and had only known Dana a short while.
“He can’t do it again,” she said.
He could. He could… but he wouldn’t.
19
Dana
Was this the way parents felt when their children graduated college?
I could only speculate.
It had been months of hard work but the day had finally come. The bookstore was open and ready for business.
After brainstorming the cutest book related word we could to name the store, we finally decided on ‘TO
ME.’ It was so cute. Mimi handled the interior decorating. The general color scheme was a lot of white, black and navy, that perfectly complemented the warm, dark wood of the shelves. The checkout counter stood as a divider between the store and the coffee area; we had gone with coffee in the end. The juice bar might have worked in LA, but this was classic. It was adorable. All we needed was a fat calico cat that hung out in the window display.
Who the hell said print was dead?
There was one thing missing though. Again. How many times was that now? Was he trying to set a record? I felt pathetic watching the door like a pining little dog. Once again, given the perfect opportunity to tell me that she had told me so, Mimi had not. It was a rough night at home. Not rough enough for Mimi to cook something but definitely rough enough for me to dig a tube of Pringles from my junk cupboard and eat it angrily in bed. I was going to feel like shit in the morning.
I heard my phone buzz and studiously ignored it until it stopped ringing.
It started again. I continued ignoring it. I had gone to bed at some minutes to eleven, which meant it was something close to midnight or later. Otherwise known as the absolute most disrespectful time to be calling a person on the phone. The fact was though that I was awake to hear the ringing. I had been tossing and turning, and I knew exactly why.
If you really thought about it, the experience of my bookstore’s opening was not something that really required the presence of Adam, nor was it going to be significantly improved by his presence.
Regardless, he had said he would be there for me. The event had been day long, but I didn’t even expect him to be there that entire time. Just dropping in to say hi and giving me a hug would have been enough.
It was the principle dammit. He had said he would be there.
The phone started again. I ignored it.
I picked it up the third time it rang but whoever was on the other end hung up before I could talk. What the fuck had been up with my service provider lately? I turned the infernal machine off and resumed my mental rumination.
ADAM: A Bad Boy Romance (The ALPHAbet Collection Book 1) Page 14