Make It Count

by Megan Erickson

  “Oh, I’m at about eighty percent and quickly gaining.”

  “I’ve been at a frustrating ninety percent for two weeks. I walked in a drugstore and got hot and bothered in the hair-products aisle.”

  Alec threw back his head and laughed. “Holy shit, Kat. My life was boring as hell before you.”

  He reached for her face and she closed her eyes as he swiped her cheekbone with his thumb, the touch full of tenderness and possibly something that started with a big L. She’d think about that later.

  “I know I said some stupid shit to you at your house when I was mad and I’m sorry for that,” he said. “But the thing is, what I like about you is that I don’t know how your mind works. I don’t know what you’re going to do and say next. You make my life interesting.”

  They were like the justice scales tattooed on Alec’s back, balancing each other out. Alec kept her grounded and she kept him on his toes.

  “Well, you balance me, so I guess we do something for each other,” she said.

  Alec smiled. “You know, when I first met you, I thought you were this girl who rode the edge of a wave. One push, and you’d fall in.” He met her eyes. “All I wanted to do was keep you up on that wave. Brace you so you’d stay stable.”

  She closed her eyes briefly and leaned into his touch. “I’m not on that wave anymore. I’m right here, on solid ground with you.” She leaned in and brushed her lips over his. “And that’s right where I want to be.”

  He sighed into the kiss, then pulled away a fraction to whisper, “Ditto, meu coração.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. His pronunciation was a little off, his r not as fluid, but just the fact that he had obviously looked it up and probably practiced threatened to melt her into a pile of goo at his feet.

  She placed his hand on her chest. “You’re my heart, too.”

  They stumbled back to his town house, the walk a blur of giggles and stolen touches and kisses that probably weren’t appropriate for public consumption.

  And then they were at his front door and up his stairs and collapsed into his bed.

  They stripped each other, taking their time, relearning each other’s bodies.

  When the touches became more urgent, she stretched her arm and rummaged in his nightstand.

  Teeth clamped on her hipbone and she yelped, then looked down to see Alec releasing her skin from between his teeth, smirking. She narrowed her eyes at him and held the condom above her head. “I’d watch where you put those, because I’m the one who’s in charge of our prophylactic situation.”

  He grabbed her ankle and easily hauled her down the bed under him. Then he ripped the condom from her hand and held it between his index and middle finger, raising an eyebrow. “You were saying?”

  She huffed. “You really suck at seduction. Because I’m not sure annoying the crap out of the girl who is naked in bed is a good idea.”

  He hummed in response, dropping the condom on the comforter and then dipping his head. His lips began nibbling behind her ear and then ran down her neck. When he made it down to a nipple and she arched with a moan, a chuckle breezed over her skin. He raised his hand to her head and ran it through her hair. “You’re so beautiful. Your skin, your hair. Those lips that have driven me crazy since you sucked on that damn smoothie straw in the library.”

  Her body shook in silent laughter. “It was so easy to tease you.”

  “I knew you were doing it on purpose.”

  He kissed her again, thoroughly, his hands roaming, touching every inch of her skin until her whole body tingled. Then finally, finally, he rolled on the condom and entered her slowly, while she clung to him, her arms around his shoulders, one leg around his thigh and the other around his hip.

  She concentrated on his eyes, those beautiful orbs hidden as his eyelids fell to half-mast. Everything about him felt right, from the way he filled her, to his gentled nibbles on her lips, to his soft words telling her how beautiful she was. How amazing. How perfect. How she was his.

  She’d never viewed sex as much more than something fun. But with Alec, it was about reconnecting, about showing each other how much they cared in every way possible.

  It was beautiful.

  As his thumb rolled between them, her climax built slowly, starting at her toes and creeping up her legs until it shot up her spine. She cried out and he kept his eyes on her face, only releasing himself when the aftershocks of her orgasm were over.

  She stayed wrapped around him, rubbing his back with her fingers, appreciating the hardness under the soft skin.

  Chapter Thirty

  IT WAS LIKE music. The baseline thud of his sneaker-clad feet on the street. The steady beat of his exerted heart. The swish of his pumping arms against his shirt. The background orchestra of college-town bustle.

  It’d been so long since the weather had been nice enough to stretch his legs for a run. Too long.

  He didn’t know how many miles he’d run. His lungs burned and his muscles ached, but he picked up the pace.

  Because his finish line was Kat’s apartment. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t racing to outrun that threatening dark cloud. He was racing to get to the sun.

  The last month had been amazing. The more time Alec spent with Kat, the more ways she amazed him. She told him everything that went through her head now, since she told him she didn’t feel self-conscious or that he would judge her. He woke up every morning smiling, wondering what Kat would say or do that day.

  When she told him she beheaded a primate at the end of her statistics animal-cookies project, he thought he was going to die laughing.

  He hadn’t realized life could be this fun. He hadn’t realized he could find a girl like Kat, who understood him.

  He hadn’t realized a girl like her would love him.

  But she did, somehow, and he thanked the Fucking King Fuck of all Fucks she did.

  Not that it was a surprise, but thankfully, his mom was a full member of the Kat Caruso Fan Club. They’d driven home to have dinner with her a couple of nights ago. His mom had been in a tizzy, e-mailing him dozens of recipes, asking him what Kat liked to eat, what she didn’t, if she had food allergies . . .

  Alec finally wrote her back, told her to throw some barbecue chicken on the grill and be done with it.

  She didn’t listen, and when they showed up, she was half in a panic attack, pulling him aside and wringing her hands because her chicken cordon bleu wasn’t “pretty.” He’d hugged her and told her it didn’t matter.

  Kat hadn’t noticed a thing, ate everything on her plate, then asked to see family photo albums.

  When his mom showed Kat a picture of his father holding him as a baby, Kat had stroked the photo, a thoughtful look on her face. Then she turned to him, her smile shaky, and said, “You look like your father. Wish I could have met him.”

  His mother had to excuse herself. When he went to check on her, she was in her bedroom, sitting on her bed, twisting his father’s wedding ring, which she wore on a chain around her neck.

  He sat down beside her and she’d said, “She’s one of the good ones.”

  He hadn’t disagreed.

  Alec didn’t slow until he spotted Kat’s apartment. His body urged him to keep running, but he knew he needed to cool down a little and stretch. He’d told her he’d take her for ice cream, a reward for getting an A on a history paper. When he had his breath back and muscles relaxed, he knocked on Kat’s door. She let him in with one hand on top of her head, a bobby pin in her mouth.

  He walked past her and grabbed a bottle of water from her mini-fridge. She walked up behind him and touched her nose to his back.

  He jerked away. “Did you just smell me?”

  She didn’t even look embarrassed. “Yeah, I did. How do you not smell?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “You run miles in seventy-degree weather and you don’t smell.” She cocked a hip and his eyes strayed to how amazing she looked in her thin cotton dress. “You�
�re like a ferret. Did you know that ferrets at some pet stores have their scent glands removed?” She turned and walked into her bedroom, rambling on about ferrets and he followed her, shaking his head and laughing.

  He picked up her laptop off of her desk. “Hey, before we go, can I check my e-mail?”

  Kat rummaged in her closet. “Sure.”

  Alec sat on her bed and booted up her laptop while she busied herself spreading purses around her.

  “Alec?”

  He hummed in response, half paying attention while typing a quick e-mail to Danica about a project.

  “Where’s my ID?” She pawed through her purse, the contents strewn on the floor around her.

  His fingers froze momentarily as a twinge of regret nibbled at him. “Your driver’s license?”

  “No, my fake ID. I’m changing purses, from my winter purse to spring purse, and I can’t find my fake ID.” She huffed, a dark purse in one hand and a lighter-colored one in another. He had no idea there were different purses for different seasons. If he would have known there was going to be a Great Purse Exchange, he might have tried to hide his theft a little better.

  He kept his fingers on the keyboard, afraid to look at her. “Oh, I shredded it at the computer lab.”

  It’d been a momentary lapse in judgment. He’d seen the ID and it had reminded him of the night he’d fallen in love with her—he knew that now for sure—and how helpless he’d felt. And now that she wanted to be a teacher, getting an underage drinking violation was a serious cramp on getting a job. So he’d taken it. And shredded it. And now he realized that might have been a bad idea to do behind her back. Shit.

  She slowly pivoted to face him. “Okay, let’s rewind.” She made jibberish sounds, like a tape was being replayed backward. “Repeat that again?”

  He exhaled and shut her laptop, leaning over to place it on her desk beside her bed. He deserved the wrath, he guessed. Leaning back against the headboard, he folded his hands behind his head and met her eyes, enunciating each word. “I. Shredded. It.”

  She dropped her purse on the pile on the floor and took a step toward him, hands straightened at her sides. “You shredded my ID? Why the heck would you do that? It cost me two hundred dollars!”

  “You’re not using a fake ID, Kat. You turn twenty-one in a month anyway. If you get an underage drinking arrest, you could get in a lot of trouble, especially now that you want to be a teacher. There’s no way I’m cool with that.”

  He was only digging his hole deeper. Her face was so red, he thought steam would shoot from her ears. “You’re not cool with it. You’re not cool with it? You’re not cool with it!” She sputtered.

  He chuckled. “No matter what punctuation you put at the end, that’s what I said.”

  “I can’t believe you!” she screamed at him and turned to grab his bookbag. “Let’s see what precious belonging of yours I can shred!”

  He moved, hooking her around the waist and hauling her back to his chest on the bed. She went into full freakout mode, like his cat did one time they tried to give it a flea dip, jabbing him in the ribs with her elbows and jamming her heels into his shins.

  “Holy shit, Kat! Chill! You’re going to poke my eye out or something.”

  “Good, then maybe I can shred it!”

  “Calm down!” He slapped her arms at her sides and hooked his legs around hers to hold them in place.

  She renewed her efforts, going into some sort of crocodile death roll to dislodge his grip. “No other guys I ever dated cared. They liked that I could go to the bars with them!”

  Alec grunted as she slammed her head into his chest and growled, “That’s because none of them loved you enough to look out for you!”

  Both of them froze, sweaty limbs under clothes tangled with Kat’s flannel sheets. The only sounds in the bedroom were their gasping breaths.

  Alec’s thunked his chin onto the top of her head and rubbed it on her hair.

  She spoke first. “Did you just—”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Did you mean—”

  “Yeah, I meant it.”

  She dug her nails into the skin on his arm. “You love me enough to shred my fake ID?”

  “Yeah, I love you enough to shred your fake ID.”

  He couldn’t see her, but he knew she smiled. “I love you enough not to retaliate and shred your eyeball after I poke it out.”

  He chuckled, her head bouncing on his chest, and then she started laughing, and then they were both rolling in the sheets, tears streaming down their faces.

  Then their lips met and then they rolled around some more. Under the sheets. Clothes removed. Limbs still sweaty.

  They never made it to the ice-cream shop.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ALEC REACHED ACROSS the backseat and grabbed her hand. Smiling at her with retro sunglasses over his eyes, slouched against the door of the truck, Converse-clad feet spread and the sun shining off his pompadoured head, he looked like a model on break from some fifties photo shoot.

  Kat wanted to climb him like a tree, but Cam was driving and Max was yelling at one of his brothers on the phone so it wasn’t the most appropriate time to be thinking impure thoughts about jumping her boyfriend. She squeezed his hand back and shot him a wink.

  Kat now felt justified for complaining that Max never held her hand. Because holding Alec’s hand, walking across campus, in the car, in bed, was awesome. Hand-holding was such a big deal in high school. It was the widely adopted symbol for officially “going out.” When soccer forward jock Carter Lewis held hands with goth Laura Hillenbrand, the whole school went into a tizzy. It lasted two weeks, but that had been an infamous hand-hold. Admittedly, not as famous as when Carter Lewis had held hands with the goalie from his team, Nick Durgess.

  Alec holding her hand didn’t feel like a high-school statement, an official claiming. It felt natural to have the physical connection to him.

  “I left one hour early, Cal, get off my fucking back,” Max spat into the phone. Kat stiffened, not used to hearing Max that angry. He gripped the back of his headrest in front of her and his knuckles were raw.

  Her eyes shifted to Cam’s in the rearview mirror and he shook his head once. She pursed her lips and looked away, gripping Alec’s hand tighter.

  Max’s mood had definitely darkened the last month or so. He kept up the outgoing, love-life attitude but the warmth wasn’t in his eyes anymore, his smiles a shade fake. Despite their rocky past, Kat cared about him, and it pained her to see him hurting. Alec was sick to his stomach about it, but he said family issues had always been off-limits with Max.

  Which was why Kat and Alec agreed their bet date—which was altered because in the end she passed her midterm and the class—would be a group affair. They’d invited Cam and Max, and Tara and Danica, who were meeting them there a little later. Shanna refused to come since Cam blew her off after the night at the party. Kat didn’t blame her. Cam Ruiz was gorgeous, with his golden skin and liquid brown eyes, full lips and deep dimples. But his “love ’em and leave ’em” philosophy was harsh.

  Max ended his call and threw his phone on the dashboard with a hissed curse.

  “Hey, don’t take it out on Maggie,” Cam said, caressing the steering wheel of his beloved beast of a white Dodge Ram.

  “Pretty sure Max doesn’t want to hear about your anthropomorphizing your truck right now, Cam,” Alec said.

  Three sets of eyes stared at him.

  “Never mind,” he mumbled, sinking into his seat.

  Kat giggled.

  “So, let me just get this straight,” Max said. “We’re driving an hour and a half to go bowling. Because we have to go to this specific bowling alley.”

  Alec straightened. “Yeah, it’s in Kat’s hometown.”

  Cam squinted in the rearview. “And what’s so special about this bowling alley?”

  “It’s the sign,” Kat blurted. “Great . . . signage.”

  She looked at Alec and ra
ised her eyebrows and he threw his head back on the seat and burst out laughing.

  Max turned around and scowled at them. “This is a bowling alley, right?” His scowl turned to a smirk and the familiar humor heated his eyes. “Is bowling alley really code for ‘strip club’?”

  Cam smacked his head.

  “Ow!” Max protested.

  Kat turned to Alec. “I actually always wanted to go to a strip club.”

  The truck fell silent, the only sound a classic rock song wailing through the speakers.

  Alec’s mouth was open and it took him a minute to talk. “Fuck, I love you.”

  Kat blushed as Max turned back around to face out the windshield. “Great, now we gotta hear lovey-dovey bullshit the rest of the way.”

  Kat watched the scenery flash by outside her window. Finals were over and this was the last Saturday they had together before moving back home for the summer. Her stomach hurt thinking about being away from Alec, but he assured her they didn’t live far and would visit as often as they could.

  Max cleared his throat. “Uh, so, just checking because no one actually confirmed we aren’t going to a strip club—“

  “For fuck’s sake, Max, we aren’t going to a strip club,” Alec said.

  Kat giggled again.

  THEY PULLED INTO the parking lot and Max peered up at the sign. “Holy shit. That is the most amazing sign I’ve ever seen.” He turned around, a goofy grin on his face that made him look like a teenager. “Do you think they have T-shirts?”

  “It’s been a while since I bowled here,” Kat said, “but I’m pretty sure they do.”

  Max pumped his fist. “Score.”

  They climbed out of the truck and Kat smoothed her shirt. Despite the warm weather, she’d worn jeans because bowling shoes with a skirt or capris wasn’t a good look.

  Alec stepped beside her and grabbed her hand, his eyes even lighter in the bright sun.

  “This isn’t much of a bet payoff,” she said, as they walked behind Cam and Max toward the front door. “I mean, you get to choose between bad pizza and old hot dogs at the food stand.”