From This Day Forward

by Ketley Allison

  “Nah, I went right back to sleep,” he said with a chuckle. “The nickname isn’t gonna go anywhere, though.”

  I rested back against the counter as I held my own steaming mug up to my nose with both hands. “I’ll take being a rooster if it means I get coffee like this every morning. What’d you do to it?”

  “Ah, the Knox special. I threw some cinnamon and nutmeg in there.” He winked. “Usually only reserved for my ladies, but Spence asked me to leave a few drops for you.”

  “You had a lady over last night?” I hid my face behind the mug, wincing.

  He laughed in clear, baritone waves, his eyes becoming even more blue as they caught the morning light. “And here you thought I was calling you Rooster because you buzzed our apartment at three in the morning.”

  Was he actually calling me a cockblock? “I am so sorry. I’m not usually—this isn’t my M.O. I’m not the person who…” I stopped, realizing that the more words I spewed, the more filled with mirth he became. “I’m totally that person right now.”

  “Hey, there’s no room for shaming at eight in the morning. Grab a bowl of cereal and sit with me a while.”

  “Your…lady isn’t around?”

  He grinned. “She’s in nursing school. Very early wake up call.”

  “I see.”

  I filled up a bowl with the open box on the counter and took the stool next to him. We chatted longer than I thought we would, with Knox telling me about his goals to get into the NYPD and ultimately become a detective. I let him in on my dreams of becoming a P.R. Maven or some kind of event planner, but how keeping grades at the required level was a lot harder when you were supporting yourself through college. He listened with a friendly ear, never judging, often encouraging, and it occurred to me how open he was, how easy-going he could be in sharing his story and willing he was to hear mine. By all accounts, this was the guy to go for. Friendly, respectful, good-looking and charming. No trauma, a good, secure life with well-obtained goals and a written future ahead.

  Yet, through our entire cereal fest, all I could think of was Spence.

  I offered to clean the dishes in exchange for another cup of the Knox special to go. As soon as I was finished we said our good-byes, and when I shut the front door behind me I swore I could still smell Spence on my clothing.

  #

  I walked into Harper’s class smelling of gardenias and grapefruit after stopping by my apartment for a hot shower and change of clothes. Becca side-eyed me as I sprinted through the living room, a Digital Media textbook balanced on her curled up legs. If I didn’t hustle, I was going to be late for class and Harper’s wrath was not the way I wanted to cap off the morning.

  “Hope you had a good night!” she sing-songed as I flew out our front door.

  The subway blessed me by running on time and I made it to the lecture hall with two minutes to spare. It showed as I huffed up the stairs and plonked into my seat. I didn’t bother smoothing my hair, figuring the wind-blown look worked for Victoria’s Secret models, so why shouldn’t it on a student who commutes across town to make it to a class about ancient philosophers?

  The errant strands also provided a great hiding place for when Spence walked in. When I’d lumbered up the stairs, I very carefully scanned all faces and determined he hadn’t yet made it, which provided both relief and disappointment. It was unclear how he’d receive me or if I’d blown it. Or perhaps he thought he’d told me too much, and rather than face that truth the morning after, it had been better to just leave a quick text and flee. It was easy to think the latter was the most probable. It was the exact thing I would’ve done.

  I decided to keep myself busy by pulling out my laptop and Dante’s prized work, the book starting to become worn along the spine. When I fanned through it, neon highlights and handwritten scribbles blurred, and a few pages were stuck from being dog-eared together.

  Spence would be so pleased.

  “Hi.”

  I went from the book to piercing eyes. Sadly, they weren’t the ones I was hoping to see.

  “Ed?” I asked it as a question, honestly confused. He’d never been seated directly in front of me before. Actually, I’d never seen him in this class before.

  Ed beamed, his teeth becoming two bright white ribbons surrounded by cracked, flaking lips. The corners of my mouth twitched in automatic greeting.

  Ed looked like he was about to say more, despite his neck being cricked at an odd angle to regard me and the other students maneuvering around him, also giving him strange looks, but no one argued for their seat back. Before he could say anything, a subtle sense of mine had my ears pricking. Goosebumps followed, traveling across my jaw and collecting at my lips.

  Spence had walked in directly behind the professor.

  Though, my tingles could’ve been for an entirely different reason. Midterms weren’t back yet, and every time Harper had trounced in these days with a collection of papers under his arm, a big part of me convulsed.

  Spence took his seat without looking up, in no rush to search and find me. My goosebumps were reduced to waves, to ripples, to dribbles.

  Ed twisted around to the front, but not before I caught his faltering smile. A part of me felt bad, that maybe I wasn’t polite enough, but I wasn’t sure what to say to him past “hello.” He wasn’t a person I regularly conversed with, nor, for that matter, had he ever chatted at length to me.

  “All color can return to your faces,” Harper said as greeting. “I haven’t finished grading your papers yet, so everyone turn to the fifth canon, please.”

  Me and my fellow sufferers slogged through the rest of class. It was a standard lecture, with a quarter of students fighting to stay awake, more then a third eagerly typing their notes, and the rest sitting back in accepted ninety-minute defeat.

  My focus kept wandering, but this time it wasn’t to study Spence from afar. Ed’s head kept turning, his chin traveling to the right and the eye I could see reminding me of the ancient spellbook in Hocus Pocus, how its gaze kept ping-ponging in all directions but always landing on one lady in the end. In this case, instead of a red-headed witch, it was the dark-haired girl hunched over her laptop pretending she wasn’t being so obviously stared at. Me.

  I was about to poke the eraser side of a pencil at his cheek to get him to turn around when a movement on my right caught my attention. It was Spence, rising from class ten minutes early and taking all his stuff with him.

  Was this it? The pencil dropped from my fingers and to the floor. Was this how he was going to end all Dante’s classes? By leaving early so he could avoid me?

  No. Spence’s actions did not revolve around one Emme Beauregard. He could have a dental appointment, or wasn’t feeling well, or was so well-versed in this philosopher that he didn’t need to stay for Harper’s grand finale. With the way the professor allowed Spence to leave without a glance or an embarrassing call-out like he totally would’ve done to me, this was obviously pre-planned.

  I mulled this over while staring at the back of Ed’s head. With such high freak-frequency my brain was running at, maybe I was jumping the gun with him, too, and Ed was simply auditing this class and checking the clock at the back of the hall to see when this lecture was over. Not everything was about me. I was glad I hadn’t poked him.

  Harper dismissed us, stating that grades should be in by next week. My sphincter clenched but I collected my belongings with all the other fearful pupils and made a quick exit. Potentially, I could fit in the gym before my next class. A kick-boxing session should help all my jumbled nerves become straight again.

  When I exited, I had to blink three times in quick succession. It never occurred to me that Spence would be waiting outside the lecture hall. He was leaning on the opposite wall in a ribbed green long-sleeved shirt and dark jeans, with a messenger bag cocked at his hip the same way his smile was cocked at me.

  My mouth answered him before my voice could, and I drifted through clusters of students and shouts, somehow not bang
ing into anybody.

  “I’m glad I didn’t miss you,” he said once I was standing in front of him.

  “You were waiting for me?” I hoped there wasn’t too much hope in my question.

  Spence pushed off the wall and offered me his arm. “I was thinking we could grab a cup of coffee. You have time?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and looped my arm through his. I felt like half my body weight had just up and floated away.

  My shoulder banged into Spence and he had to steady me when someone roughly pushed through the crowd.

  “Wanna apologize, asshole?” Spence called after the tall, lanky form pacing fast away from us.

  The man’s head partially turned, and his lips might’ve mouthed, “Sorry.”

  “Jesus,” Spence said. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” But I said it softly, rubbing my shoulder and still staring after the skulking form of Ed.

  “Know him?” Spence asked once we resumed walking.

  “Not really. Hangs out at the bar sometimes.”

  Spence threw an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get out of here.”

  I turned to him, tucking myself deeper into his waist, a place where Ed’s strange shove didn’t matter anymore. “Gladly.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll order the coffee this time,” Spence said as he held the door open for me to step into the local cafe all of us college kids went to between classes—a.k.a. one of the five Starbucks within a two-block radius.

  “Funny,” I said. “You just can’t seem to admit you liked the warm cinnamon hug of a festive latte.”

  “Does that mean you’re requesting one?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I’ll take the hot caffeine kick of a double espresso. In coffee. With a ton of milk.”

  Spence’s hand brushed my shoulder as we wove to a table. “That afraid of Harper’s midterm, huh?”

  “Considering I’m requesting a caffeine bomb four days before we even get the paper returned, I can’t promise you what I’ll be doing when time ticks down further.” I mulled this over. “Probably that wine infused hot chocolate that’s all over the internet, before resorting to straight up liquor shots in bed.”

  He laughed. “Save us a seat. I’ll get you your fix.”

  I sat down at a two-top, watching Spence’s broad back as he took his place in line. He didn’t take his phone out and scroll aimlessly as he waited like most of the patrons in front and behind him. And around me. I decided to be more like Spence and resisted the urge to pull out my phone as I sat. Instead, I interlaced my fingers and glanced around while chewing my lower lip, feeling weird, and not just because of my lack of a social media security blanket.

  Everything about me became creeptastic when I was around Spence. I prattled on about nothing, fidgeted and twitched, worried about how I was coming across, actually guffawed at his jokes in a way that truly startled him…this was not an Emme I was used to hanging out with.

  Sure, I was never Prom Queen or the super popular girl at parties, but at least I knew how to communicate past Neanderthal grunts. What was it about Spence that had me fumbling? Insecurity? Spence was uber-intelligent and had the kind of underdog past where even the most cold-hearted vampire would say, I’m rooting for you, bro, but was that really enough to make a forward-thinking millenial like myself blush?

  Spence was walking toward me, two cups in hand. We caught eyes and he capped off our clink with a sweet grin that felt like a warm tug meant only to pull me closer. I responded in kind.

  “Hope you have a lot of tasks this afternoon,” Spence said as he sat across from me, bringing with him a waft of fresh coffee grinds and spicy cedar cologne. He pointed at my cup once he set it down. “‘Cause that shit’ll have you buzzed enough for four lines of coke.”

  “My only drug of choice,” I said, and lifted my drink in cheers before taking a satisfying sip. “Mm. Perfect.”

  Spence’s hand moved to rub at his lips, his eyes roaming over my mouth in a way that made me feel I had a dribble of coffee leaking out, and so I licked them.

  That sent his pupils flaring, and the temptation of him had curls of steam drifting down, down, to my center, in a way that stoked and heated. I wriggled in my seat, wishing my hot coffee were an extra-extra-large ice water instead.

  “So…” I cleared my throat by taking too big of a glug and almost choked. The coffee shop seemed to disappear around us. I didn’t hear a single thing, other than any sound coming from Spence. The drum of his fingers. The bob of his Adam’s apple as he drank. The tick of his watch. All things only the supersonic hearing of a sex-craved lioness could sense. “About last night…”

  He surprised me by saying, with a steady stare, “I’m glad you came over.”

  My coffee made a hollow clonk on the table. “You are?”

  “Yeah, I am,” he said with a soft laugh. “It was unexpected but good to talk to you. Outside of the official business of tutoring, of course.”

  “I want you to know—I don’t normally bang on people’s doors just before dawn filled with tequila and anger—”

  “Tequila-fury is the only way I like my chicks to greet me at three in the morning.”

  Ack. I did it. I guffawed.

  He sat back, studying me with a sexy side-lean of a smile.

  I attempted to recover. “Your chicks? This is a common thing to happen to you?”

  Spence tried to emulate contrite but failed miserably. “You’re the first to resist tearing my clothes off.”

  Oh, how right he was. It had taken every atom in my body to keep from tackling him to the floor and stripping him naked. “Good to know Drunk Me has standards.”

  “To be honest.” Spence sobered by rubbing a hand down his face. “I didn’t expect that we’d…talk. But we did, and things were said that maybe were better left…”

  I flashed back to his words. I met his eyes and said softly, “I’m glad they were said. And…I’m sad they were stopped.”

  Spence blinked warily. “I don’t tend to talk about that with many people.” He tried for a laugh. “I’m not even sure how we got around to something so serious. In fact, how about we forget it. If you want, we could run over today’s class, take a look at your notes. Free of charge, even—”

  Spence went to fish through his bag but I caught his hand. “Don’t run.”

  His fingers stiffened. “Run? I wasn’t—”

  “I’ve kept thinking, all morning, especially when I woke up alone in your bed, that some kind of mistake was made. That I pushed you too far or that what went on last night shouldn’t’ve happened, but it’s taken this moment, talking to you right here, to realize that there’s nothing to regret. I want to get to know you better, that’s all. But I’m not going to force you to tell me things you don’t want to. I’m sitting across from you and I like that I’m here, and that’s all it has to be. You’re a damned difficult man to chip away at, Spence.”

  There. I paused for breath, my grip clenching and releasing his, and fell back in my chair like I’d just finished a speech fit for a President. Or perhaps it was the effects of my espresso jitters combined with a hangover.

  He said nothing in response. In that moment of silence, the cafe came rushing into my ears. The voices, the fizz of the espresso machines, the jarring spins of the blenders.

  “I could say the same for you,” Spence eventually said.

  I propped my elbows on the table. “Challenge accepted. What do you want to know?”

  “Why, of all the apartments, did you choose to come to mine last night?”

  The question threw me, but I’d be damned if I let him see it. “You know why.”

  He arched his brows as he raised his drink to his lips. “I do?”

  Sugared energy slipped into my veins, and I rode the high. It was now or never. “I wanted to jump your bones.”

  His cup froze in midair, but I forged on. “I got drunk, thought about the sexual tension between us—actually, I’m not sure which came first, but either
way I was frustrated beyond belief as to why you hadn’t seduced me yet. Then I run into Daya, who very well could be the reason—”

  “Daya and I aren’t an item.”

  “Could be the reason,” I reiterated, “or, more likely, you were just being stubborn. Something was making you hesitant and scared—”

  He lowered his coffee. “I take extreme insult to that.”

  “And so I took matters into my own hands and decided to confront you, tequila courage and all, and get to the bottom of it.” I paused for more fuel, then sorely realized my drink was empty. “What’s crazy is that instead of the mind-blowing sex I aimed for, I got to see another part of you. And that was better. Seeing that softer side, it was—”

  Spence leaned forward and said in a low, terribly alluring voice, “We could still do mind-blowing.”

  “You’re throwing off the conversation.”

  “No.” His stare didn’t waver. “I’m simply telling you that I want it, too.”

  My tongue crumbled like I’d just licked dry ice.

  “Em! Hey!”

  The overly cheery, I-totally-know-I’m-interrupting-something-and-loving-it voice of a certain Jade Montague pealed between Spence and my’s very close, noses almost touching, faces.

  I jumped back, but Spence took his time, his gaze lingering on me before turning to Jade, who was now standing at our table.

  “Glad I caught you,” she said to me.

  “Um, Jade, this is Spence.” I held out a hand. “Spence, my excitable roommate, Jade.”

  “It’s nice to finally meet you,” she said to Spence. “I’ve certainly heard—”

  “So were you looking for me?” I interrupted, extra friendly.

  Spence smiled.

  “Yeah, I texted but I guess you haven’t looked at your phone in a while.”

  Jade might as well have finished her sentence with a wink-wink. I wanted to murder her. Or at the very least, catalogue this day so the next time she had a new man I could happily return the favor.