The Saint(113)
“One date. All I ask. Your stealth bomber is in Europe. He’ll never find out. He’s too busy being smart and pissing me off by existing. We get dinner, we talk. I’ll show you my poetry. You’ll call the suicide prevention hotline on me. It’ll be amazing.”
“You are really determined, aren’t you?”
“You told Dr. Edwards she was an idiot. I want to make love to your brain. Like Marvin Gaye–style.”
“Just dinner?”
“Just dinner.”
“You won’t try anything?”
“I will try everything.”
“You’ll take no for an answer?”
“Yes. I mean no. I mean yes, I’ll take no for an answer. Wait. What’s the question?”
“If you ask me to have sex with you, I’ll say no,” Eleanor said, giving him a death stare.
“If you ask me to have sex with you, I’ll say yes.”
“I’m serious, Wyatt. No sex.”
“Agreed, sex is off the table.”
“So we can’t have sex,” she said.
“No, we can have it. Just not on the table. That’s gross, Elle. People gotta eat here.”
Eleanor sighed. She regretted this date already.
“My stealth bomber comes home in a week.”
“Then you’re safe from the shark in my pants.”
“Does your pants shark also have a red Mohawk?” she asked as she gathered her things and stood up.
Wyatt leaned back in his chair and put his arms behind his head.
“What can I say, beautiful? The curtains match the rug.”
That night Eleanor and Wyatt had a quick dinner of cheap and unhealthy Chinese food in Chinatown and then went for a walk through SoHo. Eleanor had a feeling Wyatt suggested the walk because a new February snow had begun to fall and the city looked unbearably romantic. She hated—and there was no better word for it than hated—how much fun she and Wyatt were having. She laughed so hard her stomach ached. Wyatt adored everything about her. She’d worn knee-high boots over her jeans and he told her she looked ferocious in them. He loved the way she wore her hair in a messy bun at the nape of her neck. He said she looked like a sexy Virginia Woolf minus the suicidal ideations. Conversation proved difficult only when Wyatt asked her about her past and her stealth-bomber boyfriend. She’d rather not talk about her dead father and her brush with the law. And she couldn’t talk about the priest she’d been in love with since age fifteen.
“Nothing? I get nothing about Stealth Bomber? Not even a name?”
“I don’t want you stalking and killing him.”
“That’s fair. I can see me doing that. How old is he? If he’s getting his Ph.D. he has to be at least, what? Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”
“He’s thirtysomething.”
“I knew I hated that TV show for a reason. Call the hotline right now.” Wyatt collapsed dramatically against a light pole and stared up at the lamp. “I’m going to hang myself from this thing.”
“You’re so full of shit.” She grabbed him by the front of his coat, put his arm in her arm and force marched him down the street. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Can we talk about your lips?”
“They’re lips.”
“I bet they taste like strawberries and poetry.”
“What does poetry taste like?”
“I don’t know. But I’d love to find out.”
Wyatt stopped walking and stood in the light under a streetlamp. The snow whirled like a dervish around him.
“I walked right into that line,” she said. “I’m smarter than that. I don’t fall for lines.”
“You want to fall for it. Fall for it, Elle.”
She stood outside the circle of light. Wyatt pulled his hand out of his pocket and crooked a finger at her.
Søren was across the ocean and Wyatt stood there right in front of her surrounded by light and snow. And he had a smile on his face and tattoos on his hands of German fairy tales. He loved writing so much he’d inked words into his very skin. That alone deserved a kiss. But only one.
She stepped into the light.
The kiss started soft and careful, as if he feared shattering the moment by touching too much of it at once. She gripped the front of his distressed leather jacket and pulled him closer. The kiss deepened and Wyatt slipped his tongue between her lips and wound his fingers through her hair. The kiss went on a long time, longer than she should have let it go on. It went on long enough she almost forgot who she belonged to, almost forgot about the white collar with the lock in the back and the man who gave it to her. Wyatt kissed nothing like Søren did. Wyatt explored with his kisses. Søren conquered with his.