Random (Going the Distance) (26 page)

As I wash my hands a matronly woman in a swirly purple dress comes out of a stall and pumps soap into her hands, smiling into the mirror. “None of us can take our eyes off you, dear. I’ve been enjoying your delight all evening.”

I hardly know what to say. “Thank you.”

“I hope he deserves you.”

“Oh, I hope I deserve him,” I say.

She touches my arm on her way out, and I look back at myself in the mirror. And maybe for the first time ever there’s nothing I want to change about this hour of my life. Except maybe my shoes.

As I walk back through the restaurant I’m aware that I’m blushing a little. I notice the lady in purple, and she winks at me. But mostly it’s Tyler’s eyes, burning into me so hungry and wild, that pull me across the room and float me into the chair next to him. He leans in, and slides his hand along the back of my neck and kisses me. It’s not long. It’s not inappropriate.

But as our lips meet our eyes meet and our skin flashes in every cell, and I can’t wait to get out of there.

* * *

Outside in the night, we walk toward the garage holding hands. A breeze scoots up my dress, lifting the hem a little, and I laugh, catching it before it can show everything to the world.

Tyler swings me in a circle and sweeps me into his arms, pressing his body against me, looking around to see if anyone’s nearby, then bends in to kiss me. I fling my arms around his neck, pressing my aching body into his hard, long shape. One of his hands slides down over the slippery fabric covering my bottom and he rubs the silk over my naked butt. “God, that’s so hot. I loved imagining you bare under this dress and no one else knowing. They would have died, those old guys, if they’d known.”

Voices reach us and Tyler takes my hand, pulling me along toward a small park. It’s dark and I’m worried it could be dangerous, but he tugs me into the shadows beneath a tree. A creek runs by, loud and cool. He pulls me into him. “I told you there would be rewards.”

“I think I’ve had plenty of rewards.”

His smile is slow as he pulls the dress up in the back, holding my gaze with his, until his hands are on the bare skin on the backs of my legs, then cupping my bottom. The air from the creek is cool and exhilarating.

He holds me and starts to kiss me, slowly, deeply, as if he has a million years to do it. My skin gets hotter and hotter as his hands keep moving on my legs, dipping between, sliding away, and then he’s on his knees, pushing up my dress so that he can put his mouth—

“Oh!” I lean against the tree behind me, spreading my legs a little, enough to let his hot tongue and long fingers do their magic. My legs are trembling, and every so often I think I hear a voice, but when my eyes fly open there’s only the park, the darkness, the water, and my body is starting to pulse, ready to come.

He stops.

“What?” My voice doesn’t even sound like my voice.

“Let’s walk a little way.” He takes my hand, starts to pull me.

I yank back. “Are you crazy? I’m about to explode.”

He reaches for my other hand and presses it over his cock. “Me, too. It’ll be more fun to wait.”

“Will it?” I’m mainly feeling irritated, and then he kisses me, sliding his hot tongue into my mouth, hard. I taste myself, and it’s startling and strange and I want to claw him. I bite his lip a little, and he laughs.

We leave the park and walk through town, swinging our hands between us. He looks completely nonchalant. After a block or two I’m feeling less irritable. We turn down a side street and I realize we’re close to the Musical Spoon, maybe three blocks away, but instead of walking in that direction, he tugs me into a dark, recessed doorway and starts kissing me again, holding me against him, his body pressing hard into mine. His hands are on the back of the dress and he’s unzipped it half way before I realize what he’s doing. “Tyler, stop. This is embarrassing.”

“I will if you want me to,” he says, sucking my earlobe into his mouth. I didn’t even know I liked that, but it practically buckles my knees, especially when I feel the air touch my breasts as he slides the dress down just enough and flicks his thumbs over the aching tips. I make an animal noise and haul him closer, tugging at his zipper until his cock is leaping in my hand.

“Whoa,” says a raspy voice. “Sorry. Thought this was my doorway.”

It’s like cold water splashed over us. Tyler and I freeze, but the drunk is already wandering on. “Let’s go to my place,” he says.

“Yes, please.”

He zips me up, tucking everything back into place, zips himself. Takes a breath and pushes my hair away from my face and kisses me very gently. “It’s not just sex, Jess.”

I look up at him. “It is right now.”

Laughing, he lets me go and we hurry back to the car. I’m so aroused I can barely stand the weight of the dress on my body, the press of the seat on my legs. It’s new for me to feel this…urgency, this sense that I’ll explode if I don’t get some relief, but he doesn’t look as agitated as I feel.

As he’s headed for Manitou he nonchalantly turns on the radio and starts singing along.

“Why am I the one who’s all hot and bothered?” I ask irritably.

He laughs. “I’m bothered. Trust me.”

That irritation is welling up through me, though, and I say, “Really?” I lift the skirt and slide down a little bit so that the passing street lights flash on my nakedness. “How about now?”

He swerves violently, then straightens the car. “Whew.” He blows out, his cheeks hot. “I do have to drive.”

I shrug, flip the skirts back down. “Okay. Whatever you say.”

“No, I can do it.”

“No touching.”

By the time we get to his place I’m very sure he’s as insanely aroused as I am. We make it into the house before the dress is shoved up around my hips and he’s out and plunging into me as I’m backed against the wall, and two seconds after that I’m having the biggest freaking orgasm of my life, something that explodes in my knees and my throat and my feet, shimmering and shivering all through me, and then he’s following me with pounding harsh thrusts that slam me against the wall and letting go of a yell, his hands digging into my ass. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he says, and we hang there for what seems like eternity, lost in pleasure, in each other, in sex.

I fall on his shoulder. “I had no idea it could even be anything like that.”

He bites my neck and says raggedly, “Me, either.”

He carries me into the bedroom, strips off the dress completely and we do it again.

Chapter TWENTY-ONE

I
wake up in the middle of the night, not completely sure where I am. It’s very dark, and I can see stars through the window.

Tyler’s room. I turn, but he’s not in bed with me. A light shines through the cracked door, but I don’t hear anything.

The evening rushes back through me, full of perfect moments. The wine, the food, even the lady in the bathroom. And then—

Sex. I had no idea my body could feel the way Tyler makes it feel. Huddling deeper into the covers, I smile, thinking I’ll drift off with my thoughts. I love being here in his house, love going places with him, love to be around him. And I’m starting to be less worried about him discovering some low-class thing about me that chases him away. He seems to really like me just as I am.

After a while, though, I haven’t fallen back asleep and Tyler hasn’t come back to bed, so I get up and pick up his discarded dinner shirt from the chair and button it, smelling his skin-scent rise out of it. I lift my elbow to my nose and inhale deeply.

The light is coming from the studio, so I follow it through the living room and the kitchen and to the doorway, where I pause. Tyler is sketching. His back is to me, and there is music playing quietly. Mumford and Sons, mournful and thoughtful.

I can’t see his face, but I can see the work he’s doing: sketches of me. There are a dozen on the floor, in various levels of completion. Some only have a face, some have a leg and an arm, too. On the one in front of him he’s done more—he paints those big eyes, and mine are enormous, almond shaped and uptilted, with long lashes. My hair is the other exaggeration. Yards and yards and yards of it, pooling around my body, hiding my breasts and legs.

I’m about to announce my presence when he makes a noise and rips the sketch from the pad and throws it on the floor. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he says. He rubs his face, moves his head around to loosen his neck and picks up another sketch. He peers at it for a long time.

“Would it help to have an actual model?” I ask quietly.

He looks up, and for a minute he seems confused, as if he’s been on another planet and now just landed here. I smile, because I know the expression. Henry gets it, too. I wander into the room. “What’s the problem?”

He shakes his head. Gestures at the discarded sketches. “I just can’t get it….they all end up looking like a velvet painting of a wood nymph.”

I look closely at them, and he’s right. “They do.” I walk around them, inclining my head. “Where’s the real?”

“What do you mean?”

“The other paintings have some…grounding details, you know, that bring them into the real world.” I point. “That cigarette, the eyeglasses. Even the one with the breasts who looks so sad.”

Tyler looks at his other work, back to the sketches on the floor, then looks up at me. He’s caught his upper lip between his teeth, and in this moment he’s only the artist Tyler, seeing me as a subject. “It’s just that you’re so young, so perfectly beautiful.”

“Well, thanks, but not really.” I show him my teeth. “Crooked, because I never had braces.” I point at my feet. “No pedicure.”

“What?” He grins. “No
pedicure
?”

“Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“No. I’d love it if you’d just sit for me for a little while. Even lie down and sleep. I’m not seeing something.”

I lie down on the bed, one arm stretched out under my head, the other draped over my waist. My hair is loose, and I’m wearing his shirt, which covers me quite a bit. Still, my legs are bare, stretched out. I blink at him. “How’s this?”

He starts sketching eagerly. “That’s good, Jess. Really good.” He doesn’t talk, just sketches and sketches, and I find myself getting sleepy.

Sometime much later I feel him sink down beside me and tug the quilt over us. The studio is dark now. He slides an arm around me and pulls our bodies close. His bare legs spoon into mine, his chest is against my back and his lips touch my neck, my shoulder. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long, long time,” he whispers.

Sleepily, I cover his hand with my own. He sighs against me, a man letting go of a heavy burden. It touches me deep in my gut.

“I love you, Jess,” he says just as I’m sliding away into sleep. I think it, but the words don’t make it to my lips.

I love you, too.

* * *

I’m awakened by someone knocking on the front door. A woman. “Tyler. It’s Kate.”

His sister.

Tyler isn’t here. It makes me feel a little lonely that he left me there. I peek at the easel, but the work he did last night is nowhere around, and the sister is banging on the door again. “Tyler, come on. I see your car!”

Frantically, I look around for something to put on. I’m still wearing his shirt, and with my overnight bag forgotten in the car, the only other thing I have is the pink dress from last night. If I put on my dress, I’ll have to do the walk of shame.

Aside from wrapping up in the bedspread—also a great look—there’s nothing.

I tiptoe through the house. Tyler isn’t in the kitchen or the bathroom or the living room. I can see the bed in his room from the kitchen door, but he’s not there, either.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” says evil sister, “I see you, girl! Open the door.”

Cheeks as hot as sin, I don’t know what else to do. She’s peering in through the window of the front door, and here I am in his shirt. Taking a deep breath, I tug on the hem of the shirt, then open the door and try to look like I know what I’m doing. “I don’t know where Tyler is.”

She pushes by me. “I’ll wait.” Her gaze skims down my barely dressed self. “Didn’t Lena give that to him for Christmas?”

She knows Lena? It shifts everything I know about her and him, and in a very unpleasant way. I say nothing, suddenly wanting the shirt off my body.

“Excuse me,” I say, and retreat into the bedroom, where I look in his drawers for something to put on that doesn’t make me feel like White Trash Slut #62. He doesn’t wear boxers and his shorts are all way too big, and I’m almost in tears, thinking of her out there and me hiding in here.

Finally I take my dress from the chair and slide it over my head, struggling to zip it up. It’s slightly wrinkled, but still beautiful and very expensive. I toss his shirt over it defiantly and pad into the other room, brushing my hair. “Would you like some coffee?”

She scans my new outfit and shakes her head.

Well,
I
do. Buttoning the shirt to keep my dress clean, I make a pot of coffee and put some bread in the toaster, wondering where the hell Tyler is. The clock says it’s 8 am, and we both have to be at work this morning.

Kate comes and leans on the doorjamb. She’s athletic-looking, with tanned arms showing in a sleeveless tank, and crisp white shorts, her feet in tennis shoes with socks that barely show. “What’s your name again?”

“Jess.”

“Kate.”

I look at her. “I know.”

Her eyes are as beautiful as Tyler’s but not quite as green. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen. Almost twenty.”

“Jesus,” she says. “You really
are
a baby. At least he usually picks a grown woman.”

My cheeks flame, and I remember how she made me feel before. I’m not going to buy into it this time. I look at her. “I’ve been on my own for almost a year.”

My toast pops up and I grab it. I’m smearing butter on it when Tyler’s footsteps sound on the porch. Relief pours through me, but when he blusters, “Kate? Where are you?” my heart sinks at the weirdness in his voice. It’s a repeat of the last time.

He comes into the kitchen carrying a canvas bag of food. I see a bakery bag on the top, and my heart softens. He went to get breakfast! He glances at me in my weird outfit, and two bright red bands of color burst over his cheekbones. His gaze slithers away, but not before I see his horror at the situation.