“You don’t think that any of those are gender-based? Black men had the vote before women. We were the last marginalized people to become real citizens. What kind of money, or power, or class, was a woman without a voice going to command?”
“Is that why yours is so loud?” he teased her. He couldn’t help it. Girls that riled easily were fun. Although he wasn’t looking to end this in an argument. Squeezing her hand to let her know he wasn’t serious, he turned them back onto their street. Finally. He knew where they were.
As they neared Jaylene’s stoop, he could hear music wafting down from the building next door. “That’s pretty,” he commented.
“That’s Lacy,” she responded. “I didn’t think she was playing these days.” He tugged her up the concrete stones to the flat landing. As the notes of a lonely, heartbroken guitar (for it couldn’t be anything but, in that minor key, with that slow tempo) drifted down, Noah pulled Jaylene into him.
Suddenly, he was no longer worried about the distraction she would pose. He was happy she’d come out of her apartment and met him. He was sorry he’d become so taken with a girl he couldn’t possibly be honest with. Yet this girl made him want to be honest. He wanted to show her everything. As they swayed gently together to the tunes Lacy played, Noah tipped Jaylene’s face up.
When their lips met, time stood still. So did his breath. And he could almost swear hers did as well. The shape, and taste, of her changed absolutely everything. The gentle humidity of the Boston evening wrapped around them as he lost himself in the gentle pressure of her lips. His tongue met hers, and he stopped thinking.
CHAPTER 4
Jaylene strolled down Boylston Street, enjoying the exhilarating release that came with the last day of school. The students had finished on Wednesday, and after two days of administrative work and classroom cleanup, her summer had officially begun. It always amused her to see the students so jazzed to leave—they had no idea how even better the break was for the teachers. Now she was celebrating her blessed freedom with one of her all-time favorite pastimes—window shopping.
As she walked, lightly swinging a bag of sticky buns she’d picked up from her favorite bakery along with five of the Friday Free cookies that were supposedly one with purchase (no one would miss the extra … several), Jay’s thoughts wandered to the scrumptious neighbor. She hadn’t seen him since the kiss on the door stoop. She’d wanted to, but with her Sunday meeting with Total Equality Now and her hectic end-of-school week, she hadn’t even caught him in passing. He was on her mind, though, and she knew she was on his as evidenced by the brand-new copy of the latest Man Booker Prize–winning novel she’d found in front of her door when she returned from her morning run on Tuesday. It was a simple gesture, but she clung to it.
Even having just met him, Jay was already quite taken with Noah Harrison. Any man who was willing to buy hardcover was clearly the right kind.
She was so taken with him, in fact, that he permeated into the rest of her life. While she gathered the ballots for the T.E.N. vote, she remembered that blissful kiss, the way his lips had moved with hers in perfect unison. Grading the final papers on A Separate Peace, she saw his face on the athletic, charismatic Finny. No, not Finny. Finny dies.
But then, as she had signed her picture in her students’ yearbooks, it was his face that she saw again, his bright eyes taunting her with their come-hither sexiness. She saw him everywhere—or imagined that she did—in the line at the bank, in the crowd at graduation, at the bar with the Dawsons the night before. Even now as she approached Desires, a women’s high-end lingerie boutique, she could swear he was walking out the door.
Jaylene froze mid-step and lowered her sunglasses. She wasn’t imagining it—Noah actually was walking out of Desires. Well, wasn’t that interesting. A man didn’t usually visit lingerie stores unless he was shopping for a woman. Unless he was a perv. Or transvestite. And since their relationship was nowhere near the underwear-shopping phase, she knew he wasn’t shopping for her. Or she guessed he could be shopping for her, but that would be weird.
Anyway, the sight was unnerving.
It was also thrilling.
She hadn’t seen the man in nearly a week and just looking at him caused her heart to dance erratically. He was simply breathtaking.
Noah noticed her at about the same time that she remembered how to put one foot in front of another. They walked to each other, his smile matching the one she was sure she wore herself.
“Noah? I thought that was you.” She perched her sunglasses on her head and realized she should have thoroughly checked him out before she did so. Now she’d missed her opportunity to do it incognito. Oh, well. She could wait until he wasn’t looking to slide her focus down his firm body. Maybe.