Effortless. He didn’t even knock his sunglasses off when he removed his helmet.
“Did you want your iPod back?”
It was the first thing that occurred to account for his presence, by the side of the road. Of course he hadn’t asked for it last time, or the time before that, but so what? Maybe he just really needed it now.
Or maybe he just wanted to look at her all confused.
“My iPod?”
He took off the sunglasses, but his eyes weren’t the first thing she noticed. Usually they would be—by God she had dreams about his charcoal gaze. This time, however, she saw the bruise he had, first.
And then stupid excuses for him to be here just flew right out the window. There weren’t any excuses. He didn’t need them. She didn’t need them. They were a thing, and the thing made her blurt out, “Oh my God, what happened to you? Are you okay?”
She dropped her bike in the long grass, and didn’t even really feel embarrassed about that. He had a black eye. Someone had punched him or hurt him or done something… Fuck.
“What? Oh—” His hand went to the purplish mark that spread from the bridge of his nose to his left temple. “No, no—it’s nothing. It’s not a big deal.”
Her stomach lurched into her mouth. She had to go over to him. She had to.
“Let me see,” she said, and though he protested he leaned down for her to inspect it. Of course he seemed faintly surprised that she wanted to, and after a minute his surprise turned to something softer, something almost like pleasure.
But he didn’t try to claim it was nothing, again.
“Some guy tried to take my bike. Clocked me with a crowbar.”
“Are you serious? You got hit in the face with something large and made out of metal?” She kissed that bruised place. Kissed it kissed it. “Tell me you went to the hospital.”
“Evie, honestly—I’m fine. He was just trying to scare me,” he said, but somehow she could tell he kind of liked the fuss. He even rubbed against her hand when she pushed it through his hair, looking for further evidence of heinous injuries.
“You could have a concussion. You could drop dead right now.” She kissed him again, though this time it veered a little closer to his mouth. Plus, somehow she’d wound up with both hands on his face, the way boys did to girls in movies. “And you know if you do, I won’t be able to lug you all the way to the nearest morgue.”
“Nice. Morbid.”
“Hey, it isn’t my fault I have to think of these things. You’re the one who gets his head bashed in and then just shrugs.”
“Like you’ve never shrugged.”
This time her stomach didn’t lurch. It dropped, and so did her hands from his face.
Not that it mattered, however, because after a second of that cold feeling creeping all over her and a flutter of bitter memories, he swapped places with her. His hands went to her face. His lips went to her temple.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he said, and then he kissed her. He kissed her where you could still see a scar just above her left ear. He kissed the odd little notch to the right of her chin, where the belt buckle had caught and taken out a chunk of flesh.
And then he kissed her mouth. All cold feelings went away, when he kissed her mouth.
“I couldn’t wait until Wednesday to see you,” he said between such sweet, soft presses of his lips against hers. “I had to see you.”
It hadn’t even occurred to her that such a thing could happen. That he could meet her outside of the little prescribed time they’d set for themselves, and be like this with her. She’d thought of his fucking iPod, for God’s sake.
Whereas he had obviously thought of other things, like holding her and saying sweet things to her.
“Want to go for a walk?”
And okay, maybe he’d also thought about that bowling ball between his legs. She still couldn’t quite imagine what he’d done in the bathroom—he’d come back from it as calm as still water, as affectionate as he’d been a moment before but in a different way.
He’d laced his fingers with hers and made her lay against him. Talked with her idly about the photography assignment he was doing at the moment, and the book she’d just started reading. It had been nice, but she’d known all along what it meant.
This was what people did after having sex. They cuddled and had lazy conversations—only he hadn’t actually gotten his part of that equation. Instead, he’d jerked off in the bathroom and left her to imagine the rest.
Which she’d duly done. She was duly doing it right now, as she pictured this walk they were going to take.
“Yeah. Yeah, that would be nice,” she said, and then he just took her hand and led her into the woods, like every fairytale she’d ever read about girls getting eaten by wolves.