by Noir, Roxie
“As hot as you can make it.”
I raise one eyebrow.
“You think you can handle it that hot?” I ask. It just slips out.
Violet laughs, though I swear she blushes, too.
“Don’t worry about me, Loveless,” she says, shark eyes still dancing. “I can take it.”
Are we still talking about coffee?
I withdraw my hand from hers, look at her again, still flushed with victory, still breathless and wild with it.
She’s beautiful like this. So beautiful that whatever I was about to say flickers and dies before I can say it, so beautiful that she lights up this dingy bowling alley.
I’m blindsided by a sudden, irresistible thought: I want to leave here and take her with me. I want us to leave Sprucevale behind. I want to bring her somewhere new, somewhere exciting where she’s never been. I want to take her breath away and make her giddy with happiness, just like this.
The light over our heads goes out, and I’m jerked back to the reality that Ken’s Bowl-o-rama is closing and the only thing that makes Violet this happy is beating me at something. The scoreboard over our lane flicks off. I try to tell myself it was just a dumb, meaningless bowling match. Even with the coffee bet, meaningless.
But that’s never been true of anything between Violet and I. Nothing is ever meaningless.
We return our bowling shoes to the bored teenager without talking, but Violet is practically glowing. I can hardly look at her straight on.
“I’m gonna hang out here for a while,” she says when I head for the door.
“They’re closing.”
“They’ll be closing up for a while. I brought a book, they won’t mind,” she says, still seated on the bench by the rental shoes.
I turn, frown, and stick a hand in my pocket as I count up the number of beers she’s had. The cups they gave us were tiny, but the answer is enough to get her tipsy.
“I’ll give you a ride,” I say.
“I’m —”
“I’m already your coffee slave for the summer, accept a ride, for Chrissake,” I say. “You already know I won’t get you killed.”
“You’re mad because I won.”
“Yup,” I say, crossing my arms in front of myself. “And I’ll be even more pissed off if you make me talk you into accepting a ride, so come the hell on.”
“My car’s here.”
“Ken’s not gonna tow you.”
“Then how am I —”
“Violet, I swear to God, I’ve been back in town for three months and I’ve already spent two of them convincing you to get in my car so I can get you home safely,” I say. “Don’t make me threaten to pick you up and carry you out of here.”
She narrows her eyes, but I swear she blushes again. I ignore the thought pricking at me, that picking her up and carrying her somewhere wouldn’t be so bad.
“I’ll do it,” I say.
“Okay, okay,” she says, standing. “Fine. Thank you.”
Chapter Eighteen
Eli
We wind the windows down and let the warm night air drift in as I drive. Violet pushes the passenger seat all the way back and props her feet on the dashboard, still wearing brightly colored socks I can’t make out, her hands over her head.
It’s distracting. I’m tempted to spend more time looking at her than at the road in front of me, even though I know I’ll be seeing plenty of her when I hand her coffee every morning for the next three months.
Ugh.
“Where’d you even find a car this old?” she asks, poking at a spot in the ceiling. It looks like a cigarette burn, a singed circle in the fabric that stretches over the roof.
“Maddy Thompson was using it to haul her dogs around her farm,” I say. “And when I moved back she’d just gotten a slightly newer pickup that was better for dog-hauling, so she let me have this for two hundred bucks.”
“You paid that much?”
“Hey now,” I say, patting the console. “She passed inspection on the second try and hardly ever breaks down in the middle of nowhere.”
Violet shifts in her seat and sticks a hand out the window, her fingers waving through the wind. She watches them, head turned away from me, like she’s thinking.
“Why did you come back?” she finally asks.
I take a hand off the wheel and lean my elbow on the door frame, let wind lick my hair. Of course Violet would ask the question I don’t know how to answer. Not really.
“The chef at Le Faisan went on maternity leave, and she asked if I could fill in for her for a few months,” I say. “She’s a friend from culinary school.”
Violet looks over at me, her hand still dancing out my car window, fingers slowly waving in the wind.
“That’s all?”
“That’s not good enough?” I ask.
“If you were just here to do a friend a favor, you wouldn’t still be around,” Violet says.
“I decided to stay.”
“Why?”
I feel like my spine is slowly turning to iron and it’s ready to come through my skin and become armor at any second.
It’s my own fault. I know better than to leave myself unguarded around Violet, however briefly.
“Why not?”
Violet finally turns and looks at me. Her eyes are colorless in the faint glow of the Bronco’s instrument panels, but I’ve got that familiar feeling: sharks in the water.
“Because you always hated it here,” she says, like it’s obvious. “Remember the day you got the admission letter to the University of Chicago?”
I grin in the dark, looking out the windshield.
“You still mad about that, Violet?”
Now it’s her turn to laugh.
“Not anymore, but you sure were a dick,” she says.
“You got into every other school you wanted,” I said. “You got into Yale, Duke, Georgetown, all the state schools, and you couldn’t even let me have Chicago.”
“Probably because you acted like Jesus Christ himself had come down and personally handed you that admission letter,” she says. “And it’s not like getting into Yale did me much good.”
“Well, neither did Chicago,” I say.
She’s quiet, but I can feel her watching me. Waiting, like she knows I’ll say something if she gives me long enough.
I wonder if I should tell her. I wondering if she already knows.
“I left halfway through my second semester,” I finally admit, because the darkness in the truck feels like armor. “It was that or get kicked out for failing everything.”
A beat of silence: contemplative, oddly gentle.
“That was true?”
“As the gospel.”
“I always thought the gossip mill was exaggerating,” she says, shifting in the passenger seat. “Was everything they said true?”
I pass my hand over my hair, my elbow still on the frame.
“Depends on what they said.”
Violet held up one hand, her thumb out, counting.
“You joined a hippie commune in California.”
I laugh.
“Not really.”
“But you were in California?”
“I was. I rented a room next to an organic farm and used to exchange pastries for fresh eggs, does that count?” I ask.
“Did you wear flowing white robes and do lots of chanting?” she says, sounding hopeful.
“No on both counts. White’s not my color, and I can’t carry a tune.”
She holds up her forefinger.
“You were in prison in North Dakota.”
“What for?”
“Some kind of fraud, usually, but the rumors could never quite decide,” she says.
“I was bartending,” I tell her. “But I did have to break up a fight once and I got a scar from it.”
“Is it a cool scar?”
I pull up my right sleeve with my left hand, find the slightly raised line on my shoulder. Violet leans in.
Instantly I’
m aware of her closeness, of her eyes on me. I keep my own straight ahead, drinking in every detail of the road, spine rigid. Armor on.
“Touch it,” I say without thinking, the words borne of nothing but the desire to feel her skin on mine.
“Why, so I know it’s real?” she teases.
She touches it anyway, her finger cool against my skin. I hold my breath and watch the road like the answer to every question I’ve ever had is written on the asphalt, like keeping my eyes ahead means my heart isn’t pounding, my pulse hasn’t quickened.
“What else?” I ask.
Her finger leaves my arm and she sits back in her seat.
“You just like hearing about yourself.”
“I want to set the record straight,” I say, letting myself glance over at her and grin. She’s turned halfway toward me in the passenger seat, lit only by the reflected glow of the headlights, the green lights of the LED clock.
“You joined the mafia while you were in Sicily,” she says, ticking it off on her fingers.
I just snort.
“You were part of an opium smuggling ring in China.”
“Also no.”
“You hit it big in the drag racing circuit in Tokyo.”
“That’s the plot of a Fast and Furious movie.”
“You were in a Mongolian princess’s harem.”
I look over at her, incredulous.
“People said that?”
“I heard it.”
“From where?” I ask. “Who the hell thought that one up?”
“You haven’t denied it yet,” she points out.
“I think Mongolia’s a democracy,” I say.
I have no idea what kind of government Mongolia has, just like I’m not one hundred percent sure that moose are ungulates.
“Maybe they got it wrong and it was the prime minister’s harem,” Violet laughs. “You were in a harem, weren’t you?”
“It doesn’t sound like the worst life,” I admit. “Lay around on cushions all day, eat bonbons, wait for the prime minister to send for you.”
Violet just laughs.
“What?” I ask. “You don’t think someone would keep me in a harem?”
“I can’t imagine you chilling out and waiting for someone to send for you,” she say. “I can’t imagine you getting along with the rest of the harem. You’d get kicked out for bad behavior inside of a week, Eli.”
I grin.
“I don’t think harems kick you out for being naughty.”
“You’d know, apparently.”
We come up on Pine Ridge Estates and I slow, turning into the trailer park, tires crunching on gravel. Violet goes quiet as I navigate to her trailer, the same place she’s lived for as long as I’ve known her, and pull up in front.
“You still haven’t told me why you stayed,” she says.
I cut the engine and the headlights. A warm breezes blows through the truck, carrying the smell of pine and grass, a whiff of cigarette smoke from somewhere, a hint of asphalt after rain.
“I got homesick,” I finally admit.
It’s the first time I’ve admitted it out loud. It’s almost the first time I’ve admitted it to myself, but there it is: the tedious, mundane truth.
I can practically feel her thinking, her fingers still out the window, waving in the air.
After a moment she says, “That’s all?”
I prop my head against my hand and look over at her. Our eyes meet, lock, and this time I don’t look away.
Violet’s always gotten under my skin, like she knows exactly what to say or do that will get to me.
No one else has ever gotten to me like she does. Not my other friends, not my brothers, none of the girlfriends I’d had over the years. No one’s ever even come close.
She still gets to me, but something’s changed. It feels like she’s lifting up my top layer and peeking underneath, examining, critiquing.
It feels like she’s seeing me raw and naked. Exposed.
The strange thing is that I don’t hate it.
Stranger still, I’m starting to like being seen the way only she can see me.
“It felt more complicated at the time,” I finally say. “I missed my mom. I missed my brothers. I missed knowing the names of practically everyone I saw walking down the street. I missed the way the air smells here after it rains.”
It might be my imagination, but I think she sniffs the air.
“Dirt and pine trees and rocks,” I offer.
“Do dirt and rocks smell different from each other?”
“They do here.”
She puts her hand on the door handle, like she’s about to get out, but then she looks over at me again.
“What’s it like?” she asks.
“The smell of dirt?”
“Being homesick.”
I swallow, thinking.
“I’ve never felt it,” she says, staring straight ahead. “I’ve never been away for long enough.”
“Maybe you’re just not the homesick type.”
“I doubt that.”
I watch her. She watches her trailer, eyes glued to the light over her tiny porch like it holds all the answers. Like she’s refusing to look back at me.
I want to reach out and touch her. I want to feel the curve of her cheekbone under my fingers, let her warmth infuse my skin. I want to see if she smells like home, like pine and dirt and rocks, or whether she smells new and wholly different.
I haven’t gotten our kiss behind the brewery out of my mind yet. I might never.
“It’s the feeling that everything around you is slightly wrong and you can’t fix it,” I say, still staring at her. “It’s a bone-deep desire to bury yourself in the familiar.”
She turns and look at me, her face unreadable.
“It’s wanting what you already know and can’t have,” I finish.
Violet just watches me. I have that feeling again, the feeling that she’s peeling me back layer by layer. The feeling that she knows me like no one else does.
Then she opens her door and breaks the spell. The cool night air rushes in. Her seatbelt clanks as she unbuckles it.
“Thanks for the ride, Eli,” she says, and hops out.
I hop out too, both doors slamming.
“Then it’s Eli again?” I say.
Violet looks over her shoulder as she fishes her keys out of her purse, eyes crinkling at the corners.
“Did you have some other name?” she asks.
“Back at the bowling alley I was Loveless all of a sudden,” I say as we mount the steps to her tiny front porch, barely big enough for two adults to stand side-by-side. She’s got lights strung back and forth over her tiny lawn area, and we’re both saturated in the ambient glow. “Glad to know I got my first-name privileges back.”
She turns her key in her lock. I lean against the aluminum siding of her trailer, right next to her front door.
I shouldn’t have followed her up here. I should have stayed in my car until she got inside safely, and then just left.
Being this close to Violet unchaperoned feels dangerous.
“You called me Tulane first,” she counters. “Like you’re my high school track coach.”
“If you’re comparing me to Mr. McLeod, I’m gravely insulted.”
“Then don’t call me Tulane, Loveless,” she says. She’s teasing me.
“Don’t call me Loveless, Tulane. At least when I call you that I know who I’m getting. Shout ‘Loveless’ in a crowd and you could be getting any of us.”
“What if you’re not the one I’m calling?” she says.
I frown, my hands in my pockets.
“And why would you be summoning one of my brothers?”
“Why would I be summoning you?”
“For a car and a sober driver, apparently,” I say. “Because you want to know all the sordid details of being in a Mongolian harem.”
“I thought you said you weren’t,” she teases.
“I neither c
onfirmed nor denied.”
“Then what are the sordid details?” she asked, taking a step closer, her blue-gray eyes looking up at me with a challenge. The key in the lock is forgotten.
“Let’s hear them, Eli.”
I know I should leave. I should say goodnight and leave right now, and I don’t. I’m going to do something I regret, and I can feel it coming like it’s a train and I’m standing on the tracks.
I kissed her once already, and she ran away the second it was over. I know better than to do it again.
But I like the way my name sounds when she says it. I like the way she looks at me, the way she practically dares me to do something, the way my heart thunders with every inch she comes closer.
I lean in, like I’m about to whisper a secret, and she tilts her face upward like she expects something else. Every thought of walking away flies from my brain.
“Unless you weren’t actually in a harem,” she says, her voice suddenly softer. “Unless you’re just lying to impress me.”
“Would you be impressed if I’d been in some princess’s harem?”
The breeze blows a strand of hair across her face, and without thinking, I catch it and push it back behind her ear, my fingers against the soft skin of her neck.
“I’d sure be surprised,” she says.
I don’t move my hand away. I just keep it there, feeling her pulse thump under her skin.
“I’ll take it,” I say, my voice softer now, matching hers. “What else would surprise you?”
“If I knew, it wouldn’t be a surprise,” she says.
We’re too close. Now my hand is on the back of her neck and I’m barely breathing for anticipation, my blood rushing through my ears with a steady stream of don’t do this, don’t do this.
I know exactly how to surprise her.
I lean down and plant my lips on hers, reveling in this bad idea, her mouth soft and warm and pliable, her body slowly crushing against mine as I step in, bringing her against me.
She kisses me back, and it’s different this time – softer, sweeter – but it’s every bit as good, her mouth fervent under mine, opening as she slides a hand onto my waist and tugs at me.
It’s softer but no less intense, the heat of it pounding through me; sweeter but I don’t want her less, still dizzy, still ravenous for her.
Her teeth brush against my lip, ever so slightly, and I’m reminded that this is dangerous. It’s even more dangerous than I knew, because my other arm’s around her too, because I’m already swiping my tongue along her lip, because I’m already thinking of how to open this door without pulling my lips away from hers, get inside, find out if she’s this willing in the dark of her bedroom, too.