Loving Rosenfeld

by Leighann Hart

  He was trapped, forced to endure everything that came out of Dexter’s mouth, whether it was pleasant or otherwise. The exam turned therapy session justified a fifth viewing of Steel Magnolias to calm his shot nerves.

  “I thought it over and I decided we were lucky she brought you home.” He paused to clean off one of his tools. “She could’ve walked through the door with some teenage delinquent. But instead, she brought you home. I can’t say that I’m completely comfortable with the age difference, but realize I handled it poorly upon our first meeting. I’m usually not so narrow-minded. When your only child is involved … well, if you have a daughter one day, you’ll understand.”

  “It’s unorthodox, I know. When I met Ryleigh, I assumed she was in college. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that wasn’t the case,” Peter said once the mirror and probe were removed for the final time.

  Dexter placed all of the instruments back on the tray, disposing of his blue gloves and facial mask. Crossing his legs, he let out a subdued laugh.

  “She’s always been a little ahead of the curve regarding maturity. It makes sense that she would be better suited for a relationship with someone older. I suppose, in the future, I need to remind myself to form my opinions of the guys she brings home based on their character rather than their birth date.”

  The words struck Peter like a stinging slap across the cheek. What was he trying to say, exactly? That we could never be long-term? You already knew that.

  He knew that his non-relationship with Ryleigh neared its expiration date, and Dexter was simply acknowledging that obvious fact. Why did his words feel like an attack, like a challenge to his integrity?

  “I appreciate you not indulging her in the recent scheme of staying here for college. Truthfully, I’d be crushed if she went anywhere other than my alma mater, and Ryleigh’s worked far too hard to give this up.”

  Dexter went to UMich?

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Peter lied.

  In dissuading Ryleigh out of her UConn scheme, he felt like Jackson deciding to pull the plug on Shelby. And he hated himself for not agonizing over the decision as much as Jackson had.

  On the way out of Dexter’s practice, Peter immediately dialed his mother back upon discovering she had been the culprit behind the dismissed call. Anytime he missed a call from either of his parents, he feared the worst-case scenario.

  “Hello?” Janet answered.

  No despair. No worry. Relief flushed through him. She had only wanted to talk.

  “Hey, sorry I missed your call earlier. I was at the dentist. Well, technically I’m still here, in the parking lot. I’m rambling. How are you?”

  “Since when do you go to the dentist?”

  “Answering my question with a question, how very mom-like of you.” Peter plucked at his t-shirt. He had been outside for all of two minutes, and the Connecticut summer had left its mark, the humidity birthing beads of sweat on his sticky skin. “Ryleigh’s dad offered a free exam and I was just trying to be nice, so I went along with it. I don’t want him to think I’m some schmuck, you know?”

  Janet employed her not so subtle detective skills.

  “I’m glad to hear that you two are trying to get along. Is he warming up to you at all?”

  Sara exited the office, a massive bag slung over her shoulder and the handle of a water bottle precariously dangling from two fingers. She nodded in Peter’s general direction and then kept her head down on the remainder of the walk to her car across the lot. It was not a friendly nod but rather one of concession for outdoing her at their front desk showdown.

  “We’re on a first-name basis, that pretty much tells me all I need to know. I guess it doesn’t much matter what he thinks of me at this point, though.”

  “Why’s that, sweetheart? Is something wrong?” Concern wormed its way into her tone.

  “I thought I told you? Maybe not.” Peter scratched his neck. On how many occasions would he be forced to rehash this topic? The universe continued to find ways to make him reconcile with the fact that he was losing the best thing he had ever had. “Ryleigh’s moving in August, to Michigan.”

  “That’s awfully far away,” his mother considered. “Why is she leaving all of a sudden?”

  Muscles tensed, he leaned against the hood of his car, bracing himself to deliver the jarring revelation he had been hiding since first announcing their faux relationship to his parents.

  “It’s not so random.” He dripped in false bravado all the while hoping he did not faint on the scalding pavement. “She’s going to college there.”

  Janet maintained an extended silence, and Peter wondered if she had hung up. Though, he would not have blamed her.

  “The graduation you covered in May, was that her graduation, then?” A shriek pitched her voice to an unpleasant, though not quite, deafening volume.

  Peter moved a hair away from the speaker, flinching at the potential matriarchal disapproval despite the thousands of miles of safety separating them.

  His mother was not a judgmental person, and he reasoned that she was simply experiencing some initial shock.

  Well, he hoped that was the case.

  “Come on down and claim your prize,” he quipped, biting his tongue as it slipped out. “Sorry.”

  “I’m used to your smartass remarks by now. In fact, I’d be worried if you stopped with them.” Janet stifled a laugh, and a lightness settled over him at having avoided a red-hot tongue-lashing. “Goodness, Peter, this certainly sheds more light on why her father was so angry with you. When you told me she was 18, I assumed she was a freshman in college.”

  “I know it’s an unusual circumstance, but she means everything to me. And if I could do it over, I’d make the same choices.” Those words just came out of your mouth. Do you hear how pathetic you sound? You sound like a desperate D.A. who knows they got stuck with a losing case.

  But in this closing statement, everything about his ties to Ryleigh became solidified. Peter understood that, given the chance to go back to the start, he would not have changed anything. They would be met with the same obstacles and, ultimately, the same fate.

  He found a sort of odd comfort in this realization.

  Ryleigh idled by her bedroom window, cell phone pressed against her bare shoulder. It was a wonder the device did not clatter to the floor amid her trembling and near hyperventilation.

  Tonight was the night—or so she hoped.

  “He’s on the way over as we speak.”

  “So, your parents just left you home alone for the weekend even though they know you’re romping around with Walter Cronkite?” Andrea’s incredulity pushed itself through the receiver.

  Some of her stress dissipated at the humorously inaccurate comparison, and she was glad she had phoned Andy for moral support.

  “Cronkite was in broadcasting.”

  “Whatever, you knew what I meant,” she scoffed, only to have her inflection inflated by scandal. “I have to ask, does he know you’re a virgin?”

  “Unfortunately, yes, he’s aware.” She zeroed in on the brown bag from the drugstore she had precariously placed on her nightstand, stomach flip-flopping at the thought of christening its contents. Intimate was a lofty cry from where their physical relationship stood. She was primed for the kill, thoroughly fed up with Peter’s lack of romantic motivation. After his birthday, he had been all too chaste in his handling of her, hands never again venturing beneath her clothes. This was Ryleigh’s shot to make him see her as a viable sexual companion, rather than just some younger girl whom he only seemed to view as a confusing, and perhaps troubling, friend. Desperate times, desperate measures. “I’m kind of freaking out.”

  “I’m sure he’s been around the block. Plus, it’ll be a great primer for your undergrad professor bang marathon. Don’t worry, it’ll be great.”

  Easy for her to say. Andrea had much more experience in the guy department.

  Disjointed rumbling sounded in the driveway, signaling
either Peter’s arrival or the unsuspected landing of a commercial aircraft. She peered through the curtains and her chest swelled with an excess of oxygen and overwrought anticipation upon spying the familiar silver sedan parked outside. “He’s here. I gotta go.”

  “Oh my gosh. You better call me and tell me ev—”

  Click.

  Ryleigh, though jelly-legged, descended the steps in pairs, reaching the first floor landing in record time. A heavy knock echoed throughout the empty home as she dashed toward the foyer.

  Stopping short of the door, she regarded her cartoonish avocado tank and shorts with a mix of horror and humiliation.

  Oh yeah, he’s bound to take you seriously in this.

  She pulled the door open and fought the urge to hide her dreadfully juvenile loungewear behind it—and she wished she had hidden, because his gray eyes instantly dropped to her pajamas, though he said nothing.

  “Hey, you,” Ryleigh said, greeting Peter with the same phrase he had used the night of their non-date.

  Did he remember those words? Did he know how often she recounted things he had said to her, fearing she may forget them in the fall when she would be bogged down with lectures and papers?

  He pressed a kiss to her forehead before moving past her and toeing off his loafers. Peter looked at her pajamas again as a smirk slowly built on his tired face. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, little girl?”

  Asshole. But her traitorous body was aroused instead of enraged. Swallowing, Ryleigh locked her gaze onto him.

  “Don’t talk to me like that unless you’re willing to handle the consequences.”

  “I don’t want to be a buzzkill, but it is one a.m.” He produced a bout of uncomfortable laughter, an incriminating hue of pink tingeing his cheeks. “Where should I put my bag?”

  She studied every square inch of Peter from where she idled by the stair’s railing, snapping mental pictures and filing them away for her impending departure. Unbearable pressure lodged in the rear of her throat while considering that, soon, her only remnants of him would be carefully preserved memories.

  Peter’s hand waving in front of her face dispelled the unintentional impassiveness. “You alright?”

  Was he that blind to the feelings boiling inside her, ready to overflow, the feelings that had been steadily building since he berated Ryleigh for not deducing his bagel choice?

  “Yeah.” Her eyes flitted to the staircase. She climbed the first few steps before turning to him, “You can put your stuff in my room.”

  “You could open a library with all these books.” Peter gestured to the cramped corner-hugging shelves, adorned with cliché fairy lights, which she had plugged in along with the lamp on her nightstand. Combined, they provided the perfect wash of light. Light that somehow made Peter even more irresistible as he sat in her desk chair, sporting lounge clothes with his mile-long legs outstretched and feet propped on the edge of the mattress. “I’ve gotten rid of so many over the years. If I had kept them all, I’d probably be renting a storage unit by now.”

  They were alone in her bedroom and he wanted to talk about books. Books.

  “There’s no way I can haul all of them off to my dorm, as much as I’d like to. Maybe you can take some of them off my hands.”

  “Hard pass. I spy one too many sparkly vampire romances from here. There’s no telling what other literary disasters lie dormant on those shelves.”

  She rolled her eyes. “They’re not as bad as you think.”

  Tugging at the elastic band securing her braid, Ryleigh ran her fingers through it, unthreading the mass of wavy hair. She leaned back on the heels of palms to accentuate her chest, cursing the fact that smiling avocados were printed all over her breasts.

  “Let me ask you something,” Peter said, elbows resting on his knees. Why no, I’m most certainly not wearing a bra. Thanks for noticing. The anticipation drained from her veins when he pointed to the blue and maize pennant pinned above the doorframe. “Is Michigan your dream or your parents’? Because a little birdie told me it’s your dad’s alma mater.”

  If he was going to hardball her, he could at least do it on her terms. Ryleigh patted the comforter, watching with bated breath as Peter returned the squeaky chair to the desk and joined her on the bed. And while he put an annoyingly respectable distance between them, it felt like a step in the right direction.

  “Go on,” he prompted.

  “It’s a mix. I’ve always wanted to go, and regardless, he pushed me in that direction. I’ll admit that, yes, my attendance there means a lot to him.”

  Words tumbled from his mouth but the loose, rundown collar of Peter’s t-shirt affording a teasing glimpse of hair captured any shred of focus she had to spare. The sinful view charged her fingertips with an electric need that begged Ryleigh to re-explore the erotic wonderment of his chest, his stomach, to retrace the trail of hair that disappeared into whatever paradise resided below his beltline.

  He caressed the arch of her foot, dismantling her fantasy. An amused grin tugged at the corners of his lips, and they parted to expose the two rows of semi-imperfect teeth that fried Ryleigh’s brain like a cracked egg on summer pavement.

  “You didn’t hear any of that, did you?”

  Bringing her knees to her chest, she squeaked, “Sorry.”

  “There’s no way in hell I’m repeating that epic monologue. Just make sure you’re doing it for yourself. We talked about this, remember?”

  Doing it? Does he mean …

  No, you idiot, he’s talking about school.

  She migrated to his saintly post on the edge of the bed and kissed his stubble-coated cheek, taking delight in his theatrical swallow. The day-old bristles attacked her skin like tiny knives. Ryleigh let her lips glide along the needlelike hair, “You think you’re so old and wise.”

  Lids shut, Peter tipped his head toward the ceiling. She clenched her thighs and wondered if what had plagued her mind for months had finally made a bid for his attention.

  “I’m at least one of those things, so maybe you should risk the gamble and heed my advice.”

  “Peter?” His lids flew open, eyes on her in an instant. Heat crept up Ryleigh’s neck at the stormier gray invading his irises, dark enough to obscure their usual flakes of honey. “Will you stay up here? With me?”

  The few seconds of silence that slipped by felt like an eternity to her tell-tale heart, which was ready to burst through the floorboards of her compromised sternum.

  Palpable agony weighed down her light voice, an agony for which he felt entirely responsible. He had pushed Ryleigh away one too many times, and now she believed he did not want her when in fact he had never wanted anything more.

  Shifting to face her, his thumb stroked her cheek, inciting memories of their first kiss. “Did I give you any indication otherwise?”

  “I figured you’d try to sleep on the couch or some other B.S.” Ryleigh rubbed her forearms. “You always seem to have an excuse not to get too close to me. Why is that?”

  “Self-preservation?”

  His heart stung as she removed his hand and crawled to the head of the bed. Once snug under the sheets, she stared him down, awaiting a genuine response.

  Peter’s brain stalled in determining a suitable answer while he joined her beneath the covers. The problem was that nothing disputable lay within her statement. Only the searing clarity of truth.

  He owed Ryleigh the same.

  Emboldened on the brink of confession, he let his hand trail under the hem of her flowy tank. “You really want to know why?”

  His palm slid against her hot skin, resting a twitch away from the waistband of her shorts. Ryleigh’s muscles clenched beneath the stationary touch.

  Desire burned blue flames in her eyes. “Tell me.”

  “I’m afraid if I get too close, I won’t be able to let you go.”

  Her makeupless lashes fluttered, conjuring fresh tears. Lips brushing his, she whispered, “Then don’t.”

  Everythi
ng broken within Peter was mended, once again made whole, with the slow kiss he bestowed upon her. Her tongue was quick to part his lips but she did not betray their agonizingly languid tempo. Chills ran up his spine despite the fire roaring in the pit of his abdomen.

  He forgot about their ages. He forgot about Michigan. This moment existed independent of that universe.

  Peter’s pulse became more erratic the longer their restless tongues entwined, past the point where he usually broke away, and decidedly further when Ryleigh’s shorts vanished. His formerly courageous hand did not stray from her stomach, branding him a coward in the league of her daring touches.

  She pulled one of his curls taut and gazed at him through half-hooded lids. “You can touch me, Peter. I’m not made of glass.”

  Peter dropped his forehead to hers. “Then why am I so afraid of breaking you?”

  “Break me? Rosenfeld, you’re the only thing keeping me together.” He shut his eyes as her tongue outlined his earlobe, flaying his skin like the tip of a lighter. “Do you even have a clue how you make me feel? Every time I’m around you, it feels like my body’s overheating.”

  Though his chest was seconds away from an irreparable implosion, Peter grazed her silky underwear, eliciting an immediate sigh from the woman sidled up to him. The fluid leaking onto his boxers felt more pathetic than sexy, but he ignored that inner voice of insecurity, seeking refuge in Ryleigh’s neck where he planted kisses on her burning skin.

  He slipped two fingers within the material, and her breath hitched as he skimmed the lake of her arousal.

  “Christ,” he muttered.

  Hatred slithered through the cracks of this new pleasure. Why had he set so many boundaries? What, if anything, was perverse about this melting and mingling of their bodies and souls?

  Peter could hardly believe his long withstood guard toward her affections had been completely lowered.