* * *
The next morning, I leaned back against John. We’d spent the whole night out on the roof. I watched the sunrise with a faint smile across my lips. At that moment, I pretended he didn’t have a girlfriend. I pretended that we never had to leave that roof.
The sky was filled with rich hues of purple, red, and pink illuminated by the golden rays of the sun. The purple was a little darker than lavender. The red, crimson. And the pink, a delicate contrast to the purple and red. There was an orange tint to the collage that gave the entire sky an ethereal beauty.
The gold warmed me inside even though there was no external warmth emanating from it. It was the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen. That probably had something to do with the fact that I was hardly ever up early enough to see the sunrise and the fact that everything was more beautiful when I was around John.
I sighed and settled further back into his jacket.
“You okay?” he murmured.
I nodded. I was afraid to speak. I didn’t want anything to ruin that moment.
John and I had talked for hours. Mostly about me. He wouldn’t say very much about most of his family, though I felt like I knew his brother, Thomas—who went by Thom—personally by the end of that night. I told him about college and my parents and Apryl. The one subject I steered way clear of was Joe.
It felt so easy and natural and right to talk to him; to be around him. And that was scary because no matter how perfect the night had been, I knew there was still a Sasha out there in the world. Of course that was my luck. Fall in love with a guy who has a gorgeous girlfriend. Great job, Denise.
“What are you thinking about? You’re so quiet,” John murmured. He ran his hands up and down my arms as if trying to warm me up. Little did he know, he was increasing my temperature to a dangerous level.
“Just how beautiful the sunrise is,” I said, coming as close to the whole truth as I dared.
“Oh,” John said.
I turned to face him. He brushed the backs of his fingers along my cheek and I had to ask. The look in his eyes, a look not lust, not adoration for a friend, but something else, made me ask. “You sang that song to me last night, didn’t you?”
He removed his hand from my cheek and shrugged, looking out across the rooftops of his neighbor’s houses.
“John, I just don’t know what to think about you,” I sighed. It was the closest I’d ever come to addressing any of the weirdness that always seemed to happen between us.
“Neither do I,” he murmured. “I’ve been trying to stay away from you, Denise. I have to.”
I pulled away from him and moved from between his legs to sit next to him a safe distance away. “Yeah, I noticed. I’m not really even sure why you asked me here.”
“Honestly, neither am I.” He was still staring away from me.
I laughed. The absurdity of it all.
“I mean, you’re cool. Really cool.” He paused for a moment, wetting his lips in the interim. “And I really want to be friends. But, I mean—well, I guess it’s like this. I want to hang out and stuff. But lately I’ve been talking myself out of asking you to. I mean, ’cause I know it’s gonna be great at first. But then it’s going to get to this awkward part. It’s getting there right now. Well, it’s gotten there already, I guess.”
“I still really don’t understand,” I said.
He turned to face me. I immediately wished he hadn’t. His eyes locked on mine with such an intensity that it knocked the air out of my lungs. I couldn’t look away, but I felt as if I would melt and die on that roof if I didn’t. There was more than passion between us at that moment. His eyes were so intense. It was as if he was trying to swallow me whole with them. And I wanted him to. I wanted to devour him devouring me. I’d gotten sex looks before, but this wasn’t one. It was as if he wanted me to open to him; to become exposed so that he could read my entire story. And I wanted him to.
He slid over so close that our legs were touching. He pressed his hand to my cheek and I think I stopped breathing. I grabbed the back of his neck and at the same time, he pulled me to him. John kissed me. His tongue moved slowly over mine. I wasn’t aware of anything in the world besides his tongue moving slowly against mine. A warmth washed over me that I had never felt before, but I liked it. I hadn’t been kissed much in my life, and I never felt such heat from a kiss before.
“I want to be friends. But it’s hard. For that reason.” He whispered the words over my lips before pulling away from me.
I muttered something nasty under my breath that I guess he heard.
“I’m serious, Denise. I’m going through some crazy stuff right now. And I shouldn’t be involving you in it. But I can’t—” he stopped himself with a groan of frustration.
I turned to him, wondering if I had heard him right. “Can’t what?” I drew his jacket closer to me, wishing I was drawing him close instead.
John didn’t answer me.
“I dunno. It seems a pretty simple concept to me. Why is it so hard for you to be around me and just be friends if she’s the one you want to be with?” I couldn’t bring myself to say her name. I could still feel his lips on mine, and thinking straight was impossible. I was just saying whatever words floated to the top of my mind.
He still didn’t say anything.
“Well, what are you trying to say here? We just stay out of each other’s way from now on?”
He just shrugged. He could be so maddeningly frustrating. We sat there in silence for a while, just staring out over the rooftops.
For one fleeting moment, I thought about putting my hand in his again. But instead, I pulled myself to my feet with an exaggerated sigh. “I’m going home now.”
“I’ll drive you.” He stood and walked over to the window we had climbed out of earlier. I climbed over the sill in front of him, pushing away the hand he offered to help me.
“I don’t need you to,” I said, but he still followed me as I crossed the attic floor.
We silently walked through the hall and down the stairs. I breathed in a mixture of stale beer and vomit. But there was no breathing in John. He held the front door open for me. I stopped in the doorway and stared at his profile, since he wouldn’t turn to me.
“What you did up there was just bullshit,” I said, my breath catching in my throat. I hurried down the steps and out to the sidewalk.
His voice was barely above a whisper. “You really should let me drive you.”
I was walking in the opposite direction from where he was parked. I stopped, but didn’t turn to face him. “No,” I called over my shoulder.
I continued down the sidewalk. I ignored him trying to call me back. I let the tears fall. The wind stung my face where they cut tracks down my cheeks. I tasted salt at the corners of my lips and I was glad. I deserved to cry. I deserved to be sad. Who was I to think I had a chance with John? Who was I to think I could ever be more than I was to him? And that that could ever be enough?
Astoria could not know. Ever. I couldn’t tell Suse for fear it would slip out to Astoria. That was one I-told-youso I could not bear. Not under any circumstances. It was a pain I wanted to bear alone. And I hoped that bearing it alone would make it go away faster.
I was determined not to think about the way the previous night had felt so right. Watching the sunrise with him. The tingle I still felt from his kiss. No. Such thoughts were off limits. Permanently.
Rumors flew after the karaoke contest. Suse was right about people talking, and the night of the contest had only made it worse. I wasn’t surprised that John avoided me, and I was too angry at him to care much about it.
I sat across from Astoria in the library. I stared at the stacks behind her head, mostly. My administrative law casebook lay open, the first page of that night’s reading assignment glaring up at me. I couldn’t concentrate on the law. With Astoria IMing me every few minutes and the fact that my mind was far away from everything it was supposed to be on, I hadn’t gotten much done at all tha
t evening.
Astoria kept sending me messages about Erich, which wasn’t doing much to improve my mood. I kept giving her one-word answers. She purposefully wasn’t getting the hint.
My phone vibrated on the table and I lifted it off and flipped it open. John had texted me, telling me he wanted to talk to me.
I held my phone under the table and typed a reply with shaky hands. I asked him why and where he was. His response told me only that he was in his carrel, which I couldn’t see from where I sat.
I turned back to my laptop with a heavy sigh. What to tell Astoria?
I typed in several messages and deleted them before deciding on, I have to go.
Go? Go where? was her reply.
I’m not getting anything done here. I need to go home, I typed, purposefully avoiding her eyes.
Hm . . . Yeah, you gonna get so much more done around loud Tia and cable television. Who just texted you?
Nobody.
Was it John?
I have to go.
WAS it JOHN?
I closed my laptop without replying and stuffed it into its bag. I finally met the stare I had felt boring into the side of my head. Astoria’s eyebrows were raised and her lips were twisted to the side. She gave me a burning look of disapproval as if I had just told her I was going to rob a bank or something. Strangely, I think she would have preferred that to the inference I let her make.
So it wasn’t smart. I didn’t need to hear that from Astoria. What I needed was an answer. An answer that only John had. At least that was what I told myself.
Since I was apparently hard headed and still hadn’t learned my lesson, I agreed to meet John in the law school parking lot. He walked up in black sweatpants and a long-sleeve gray T-shirt. I stood there shivering in my jacket and wondering where his was.
He rubbed his hands together and then rubbed them over his arms before saying, “Hey. I’ve missed you.”
He smiled at me, but when my face remained a block of stone, his smile faded. He hit a button on the remote on his key chain and unlocked the car doors. We got in for a silent and tense ride to a nearly empty mall parking lot.
John killed the engine and turned to face me. “So . . . for someone who wants to talk for a living, you’re being pretty quiet.”
I continued to glare at him, shrugging. We had been sitting there for a while, and that’s all he could think of to say.
“What am I supposed to say to you after that?” I said finally. “You miss me. Right.”
He actually had the nerve to look surprised. “Well—”
“I haven’t heard from you since the party. You act like you don’t know me in the law school. Then you go and make some asinine comment like that. You miss me. What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?”
“We talked about this at the party. And you said you understood. Anyway, I invited you out here because I want to talk to you about this. I don’t want things to be weird like this.”
“Then you shouldn’t act like a freak,” I muttered under my breath.
“I know I’ve been acting strangely, but I’m trying to explain,” John said.
“You’re not trying to explain. You’re just sitting there.” “I’m trying to think of how to put this.”
“Well, why don’t you just say it? If you’re trying to spare my feelings, I think we’re way past that point,” I said dryly. “You’ve already rejected me once.”
“I didn’t reject you. I have a girlfriend. You know that. You knew that before.”
“Well, I’m not the one who kissed you and then freaked out.”
“I’m trying to explain that now.”
“So explain.”
“I would if you would shut up long enough.”
“Go right ahead. Nobody’s stopping you. Please explain to me why you’ve been a jackass for the past few weeks,” I snapped.
John looked annoyed. I didn’t care. I turned my back to him, staring out of the passenger side window. I watched my breath fog up the window while we both fumed in silence.
“I don’t even know what your deal is, Denise.”
“Oh, you’re one to talk. You with the girlfriend. At least I’m single.”
“It’s complicated.”
“How?”
“I mean, I want to be with her, but—”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Would you let me finish?”
“Go on,” I snarled.
Dead silence again. I wanted to put my fist through the glass.
“Whatever. Never mind. You wouldn’t even get it.” “Yeah. You don’t get it yourself.”
“Okay,” he said shortly.
I whipped my head around to look at him. He was staring straight ahead, his jaw set stonily. He didn’t even start to turn his head in my direction. I knew he could feel me glaring at him.
“So I guess you’ve decided not to explain it.” “You just said I don’t know how,” he said.
I was too angry to speak. His smart ass seemed to know it all anyway. I sat there, trying to figure out why he had drug me out in the freezing cold just to play mind games with me. Not only was I angry at him, I was also angry with myself for not being strong enough to turn away and leave him alone.
I needed to get my head right. To take Astoria’s advice and go about my business. Instead, I’d been all too happy to go with him when he’d texted me earlier. Some foolish, idiotic part of me had thought that would be the moment. For some unknown reason, I thought I had been about to hear that he legitimately wanted to be with me. The fact that I had even contemplated it made me angriest of all. John was an idiot. And I was one to even want him, let alone want him to want to be with me.
I suddenly wished I was outside of that car and away. I just wanted everything to stop. My life was moving too fast in a direction I did not want it to go in. When had I decided to go after the impossible? And that it was okay to think about a guy that way, and one with a girlfriend at that?
I hadn’t realized I was crying until I felt John’s hand on my back. I jumped away from his touch even though, deep down, I wanted to leap into his arms.
“Don’t you touch me!” I backed myself up as far as I could against the passenger side door.
“Stop freaking out. I was just—”
“Just drive me home. Now!”
“Fine.” He muttered angrily under his breath as he turned the key in the ignition.
“Evil jerk,” I muttered.
“Whatever,” he sneered.
That was the best he could come up with? I wondered what I saw in him while carefully not allowing myself to answer that question.
He took his BlackBerry Storm out of his pocket, hit a button on the screen and put it in the cup holder. “Who’s that? Sasha?” I sneered.
“Well, she is my girlfriend. I guess it would make sense that she calls me sometimes,” John said. Apparently, she texted him because he picked the phone up again, read something, typed onto the screen for a moment, and then put it back.
“What did Sasha have to say?” I sneered.
“I don’t think you really want to know.”
“Take me home.”
“Be glad to.” He muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?”
“I said this was a mistake.”
“Yeah. Whatever. ”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
He didn’t say anything else after that. He just started the engine and turned the radio up.
Chapter 7
AN UNEXPECTED TRUTH
Astoria and I had dinner together the day after I left her in the library under shady pretenses. We went to the dining hall on the undergrad campus. Astoria had a meal plan, and the food was surprisingly good, so we often went there and I sponged off her guest meals.
Suse didn’t come with us. She’d been scarce over the past few days. She was more than a little pissed about what I’d said to her after the karaok
e thing. I’d tried apologizing, but she wasn’t ready to hear it yet.
That day, Astoria wasn’t much about eating. Her salad lay untouched on the plate in front of her and she kept twirling her apple by its stem between her index finger and thumb. “I just don’t understand you sometimes. Why would you spend the night at his house? You know what people are already saying about you.” She stared at me like I was a calculus problem and she was an English major.
“We didn’t do anything, and people should mind their business.”
“You didn’t do anything. You spent the night, Denise. I don’t know who’s crazier, you or him.”
I told her mostly everything, heavily editing what had happened on the roof. And I didn’t mention the kiss at all. I told Astoria most of the truth. The truth I thought she could handle anyway.
“Yeah. If everything was so great, how come he practically runs away when he sees you coming?”
I said nothing, but my smile faded. I loved Astoria for her bluntness. But I also hated her bluntness.
It was true that John avoided me, with the exception of the past night, which I wasn’t going to tell Astoria about and give her more ammunition.
I shrugged and pushed the spiral-shaped pasta around on my plate. I wasn’t hungry any longer.
“I don’t see why you can’t just find a strong, black man,” Astoria said.
I rolled my eyes.
“Please tell me what’s wrong with Erich.”
“I already have.”
“I don’t want to hear all those weak excuses. He’s cute. He’s nice. He’s smart. He’s funny. I’ve known him for years and I just know you and him would be perfect together. I mean, do you even like black guys?”
“What kind of question is that?” That thing about black guys always got to me. I’d heard it way too much. I was attracted to them. The ones I was interested in were never interested back. And I got really annoyed that everything had to be broken down like that. What did it matter who I was attracted to? Whose business was it?
Sure Erich was attractive, but Astoria had only been shoving him in my face since I’d first shown interest in John. When I pointed that out to her, she had an answer for it. Apparently, he’d been dating some undergrad from VUU for a while.
Love Out of Order (Indigo Love Spectrum) Page 6