“You going to confess now?” I asked as I finally released her.
“I do recall a certain deal,” she admitted.
“And?”
“And you did live up to your end of it,” she agreed, though her eyes seemed a bit apprehensive. I rubbed my hands together and licked my lips obscenely, making her laugh again. That seemed to make her relax a bit, so I leaned over closer to her.
“Time to pay the piper,” I whispered in her ear.
I slipped my hand around her chin, and I brought her lips to mine. It felt like it had been forever since I kissed her like this—just the two of us with no one about to walk in and no rushing off somewhere else. Her taste and her scent were just as I remembered them, but something else was different.
She was tense and rigid, and I didn’t understand why.
Instead of wrapping her arms around my head and playing with my hair like she usually did, her hands lay loosely on my shoulders, not gripping me at all. She opened her mouth, but her tongue didn’t move with mine.
So what had changed?
Only one thing, really—the promise of boobie-gropage.
Promise or not, she wasn’t ready for that shit yet, so I slowed, kissed a light trail down the edge of her jaw, and then lay back down on the bed. My arms went around her, and I pulled her down with me. She was still stiff, so I just held her and ran my hands over her damp hair.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just tired.”
I kissed the top of her head.
“It was a long ride here,” I said, “and we still have a decent ways to go tomorrow. Do you think we could leave early? I mean, it would be good to get back home, right?”
“Yeah…” Tria’s voice trailed off a bit, and I knew I had cooled off too much.
I moved my hand around to her cheek and turned her to face me. I kissed her again, harder and with more passion. I ran my hand down her bare arm and then back up again. I pulled back, kissed her lightly once more on her lips, and smiled up at her.
“I’m going to have to take a rain check for later,” I said. “I think I just want to be home with you.”
“You do?” Tria looked at me quizzically for a moment.
“Yes,” I said. “You’re going to unpack the rest of your shit when we get there, right?”
“I will,” she promised. “It will be nice to get back to the routine again, I think. I have had enough excitement to last me a while.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“Oh crap!” Tria exclaimed suddenly.
“What?”
“You should have worked last night,” Tria said. “Shit, I’ve been so wrapped up in everything else going on—”
“Nah,” I said. “Not after stitches in my head. Yolanda always makes me skip the next fight when something like that happens. It’s stupid, but she does. I won’t fight again until Friday.”
“Oh, good.” She sighed in relief. “I was afraid Yolanda was going to come hunt me down again. I’ve been trying to make you more vegetables and such lately.”
“Don’t worry about her,” I said. “She’s all…well, she’s mostly bark.”
“You’re not very convincing.” Tria lay her head on my shoulder and yawned. “She’ll probably still be mad you haven’t been working out.”
“I’ll get in the gym before Friday,” I said. “You’re going to have school shit to catch up on, right?”
“Exams next week,” she confirmed. “Hoffman keeps all the lectures on video, so at least I don’t have to borrow someone’s notes. It should have been mostly review, but you never know.”
“Oh yeah?” I said. “That’s kind of cool.”
“You didn’t know they did that?”
I shrugged.
“Must be new,” I replied. “I didn’t spend a lot of time at Hoffman as a kid or anything. I was there occasionally, but it’s not like I paid any attention to shit like that when I was ten, ya know?”
“I guess not,” she said. “I mean, I agree. A ten-year-old probably wouldn’t be too interested in that.”
“Not so much,” I said.
Tria yawned again, which made me yawn. Without much talking, we settled into the pillow-topped mattress and closed our eyes to the night. The dawn came far too quickly, though, and I was still tired when we got up in the morning.
With both of us anxious to get home, we left the hotel early after a quick breakfast in the room and took to the motorcycle again. I wrapped my arms around Tria’s waist and held on as we cruised down the highway and finally through the streets of the city. As we rolled through the north side of town in the early evening, we passed the expensive cars and houses, and I tried not to think about the times I had traveled the same streets with no thought of what life was like on the south side of the city.
As we traveled, the cars went from Ferraris and Lamborghinis to BMWs and the occasional Lexus. Then the medium priced sedans and SUVs became more prevalent as the size of the houses shrank. Before long, the houses turned to red brick apartments and the cars to buses and bicycles. The people in suits and dresses changed to dingy flannel and unkempt hair.
Tria pulled into the back of Feet First, and I stopped in to let Dordy know the bike was back. He was pretty busy with a delivery guy, so he just had us leave it inside the chain link fence behind the bar before we walked the rest of the way home.
Right after we walked in the door, Tria took some things from the travel bag and put them in her suitcase. I stood behind her with my arms crossed until she turned around. As soon as she saw my face, she knew, and her cheeks flushed.
“I guess I should find a better place for all this, huh?”
“That would be good,” I agreed.
In the bathroom, I moved a bunch of shit over to one side, and Tria put all her bathroom stuff in one side of the medicine cabinet. We found places for her towels in the linen closet, her shoes in the closet, and then I took a break to smoke on the windowsill while she went through the rest of her suitcase.
Krazy Katie wasn’t on the fire escape for once, and I wondered where she might have gone. Every once in a while, she actually made her appointment with the social worker, but that would have been a couple days ago.
“So…um…where should I put all this?” Tria asked. I looked up from the windowsill and saw her with a pile of clothes in her arms.
“In here,” I said as I tossed the half smoked cigarette down to the ground and crawled back inside. The window shut with a bang, and I knelt down to the bottom two drawers of the four drawer dresser. “I cleaned them out for you when you first moved in.”
I swallowed and glanced at her nervously as I remembered removing what had been in the bottom drawer. There had been some slightly holey socks and a pair of sweats, but there had also been a small box shoved behind the clothes. I never looked at the contents, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, either. I’d moved it to the drawer containing my jeans.
“I remember you saying that,” she responded quietly. Tentatively, she knelt down beside me and placed two pairs of jeans on one side and half a dozen shirts on the other.
“That’s better,” I said when she was done, and Tria grinned up at me.
“That’s pretty much it,” she said.
I couldn’t seem to stop smiling.
“You really like that, don’t you?” she commented.
I gave her a noncommittal grunt.
“I just want you to be comfortable here,” I told her. “This is your apartment, too.”
“It’s weird to share a place with someone else,” she said. “I’ve only ever lived with people in my family, you know?”
“Whatever you want to call them,” I muttered.
“Well, it was my mom when I was little,” she said, “but I don’t really remember that. Then I lived with my dad until he passed away, then the Harrisons. This just feels…different.”
“Different how?”
She sat back on her
heels and chewed on her lip.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” she finally said. “I just keep waiting for you to get tired of me being here and tell me to get out, and I don’t know what I’ll do if that happens.”
“Tria,” I said, chiding her. “I’m not going to do that.”
I reached over and took her by the chin.
“Why do you think I’m going to send you away?”
“Because you could,” she said simply.
There was something else she wasn’t telling me, but she didn’t want to budge on talking about it. She went out to the living room for another load of clothes, and I tried not to be a total horndog and peek at her underwear when she put it away, but I couldn’t help it.
I had to excuse myself to the bathroom for a bit.
Tria was in the living room zipping up the empty suitcase when I came back out. We found a place at the top of the bedroom closet for it and then sat on the couch for a bit of a rest. Tria was totally lost in thought and zoned out on me to the point where I had to wave my hand in front of her face to get her attention.
“What are you thinking about?” I finally asked her.
“This and that,” she responded.
“Not very informative,” I told her.
Tria’s eyes moved from their fixed point in space to look at me, and she smiled.
“I suppose I’ve been thinking about the important things,” Tria said.
“What kind of ‘important things’?” I asked.
“Important things,” Tria said. She turned her head, and her smile made my heart stop. “Like homemade bookcases and strong arms that keep me safe at night.”
I was never one to blush, but I felt my cheeks warm at her words.
Chapter 4—Suffer the Wait
The next day brought sunshine and unseasonable warmth. Tria headed off to campus early, and I took my normal run before heading to the gym. It felt like forever since I had been there, but I was still greeted in proper Cheers fashion as I walked in and started smacking the heavy bag a bit. Yolanda was working with one of the other guys, so it was a while before she could come over and give me shit.
“You’ve been hiding,” she said as I climbed onto an elliptical and upped the tension. I didn’t usually use that particular machine, but the idea of sitting my still-sore ass down on a stationary bike was not attractive.
“Just waiting to heal up,” I told her.
“Don’t bullshit me,” she responded. “You weren’t at your apartment, and Dordy said you borrowed his bike. Since when do you ride?”
“I don’t,” I answered as I started moving on the machine. “Tria does, though.”
“Where did you go?”
“Her hometown,” I replied.
“Why?”
“None of your fucking business,” I replied. “Now do you mind if I get my workout in here? I’m a little out of shape after my hiatus, and I’d like to be able to concentrate.”
She looked me over carefully as I spun my legs in circles and moved my arms back and forth. I must not have looked like I gained any weight because she didn’t continue to badger me. I went through the rest of my usual routine and then weighed in at two-oh-three.
“See?” I said with a smile. “All good.”
“What have you been eating?” she asked.
“Whatever Tria cooks,” I told her. I grinned when she actually growled under her breath. “She’s been doing a lot of vegetables lately. No pancakes on fight night.”
“Good,” she said.
She looked up at me and eyed me closely. I gave her another big grin.
“You’ve started fucking her,” she announced.
“Nope,” I replied.
“Bullshit.”
“Swear to God,” I replied. “But I’m working on it.”
Yolanda looked at me, rolled her eyes and started to laugh. She followed me into the locker room and hung out by the door while I yanked off all my clothes and stepped into the shower for a second. I had forgotten soap, so I just went with a quick rinse.
“I don’t know if I should hug you or punch you for waiting so long.”
“If you hug me,” I yelled at her over the noise from the water, “you’re the one getting punched.”
Yolanda’s smile faltered a bit as she looked at me. I tried to ignore her stares and stepped out and rubbed the back of my neck with a towel. I fumbled around in my gym bag and sighed when I realized I didn’t have any boxers in there. I had to laugh at myself.
“You look happy,” Yolanda said.
I glanced at her and shrugged without comment.
“How much does she know?” Yolanda asked quietly.
I swallowed a couple of times as I shoved stuff into my gym bag. I pulled out a crumpled sweatshirt, saw how nasty it was, and then shoved it back into the bag. I pulled on a pair of black track pants, commando-style, and tied the string low on my hips.
“A little,” I eventually answered. “She knows who my family is, and she knows you got me off the shit.”
Yolanda nodded.
“That’s a pretty good start,” she said. “You going to tell her the rest?”
“Not planning to.”
Yolanda gathered up her stuff and followed me outside. She gave me a few nasty looks as I lit up a cigarette but still offered to drive me home once I was done with the smoke. I leaned against her old Honda Civic, blew smoke into the air, and wondered what Tria was doing and if she was ever going to let me get any further with her. It occurred to me that there was one woman I could ask about such things.
“Hey, Yolanda?”
“Yeah?” She looked up from her phone and eyed me.
“It’s not because I don’t want to,” I told her.
“Don’t want to what?” she asked.
“You know…fuck her.”
She narrowed her eyes a little.
“It’s just that she…you know…” I paused for a second as I walked away from the car and toward the building, pacing a bit. “I’m trying to take it slow, right? Because she hasn’t before. I mean…she’s a…you know…a virgin.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Hmm,” Yolanda hummed. “I take it you’re not getting anywhere?”
“She just seems really hesitant, you know?” I said. “I want to, but I back off because she seems uncomfortable with it. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”
“How long has this officially been a relationship?”
“Um…almost a week.”
Yolanda laughed.
“Maybe you should give it a little more time,” she suggested. “Has she even been kissed before?”
I didn’t really want to think about it.
“She’s got this asshole ex,” I told her. “They did some stuff, but I don’t think she was into it.”
“Uh huh.”
“I think there’s shit about him she hasn’t told me,” I said. “It pisses me off.”
Yolanda glared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“Pot, meet kettle,” she said. “Kettle, pot.”
“Nice.” I tossed the cigarette butt toward the parked cars and leaned up against the white stucco wall outside the gym.
“What, you expect her to open up when you don’t?” Yolanda shook her head at me.
“It’s not the same,” I said.
“How do you know?”
Well, that logic was a little hard to argue with, but I tried.
“She doesn’t want to know about that shit,” I said. “Besides that, I don’t want to go over it with her. It doesn’t matter.”
“Maybe she feels the same way,” Yolanda suggested.
“So what do I do?” I asked. “I mean…sometimes it’s like I scare her away or something.”
“Are you being an ass at the time?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” I replied. I thought about the other night in the hotel. “Well…maybe. But just…you know, teasing.”
/>
“Seriously, Liam?” Yolanda said with a half smile. “I’ve seen you sweet talk college girls and MILFs into notches on your bedpost. You really don’t know what to say?”
“That’s not the same,” I scoffed.
“Why not?”
“Because that shit was just…you know…talk. Just saying what they want to hear.”
“And why do you do that?”
“Chicks like it.” I shrugged. “I said it because it got me laid.”
“Well, Tria’s a chick, isn’t she?”
“Yeah.” I rolled my eyes.
“So don’t you think she might like that kind of talk, too?”
I scowled at her.
“None of that was real,” I told her. “I didn’t mean any of it.”
“So maybe with Tria you should.”
I thought about that for a minute and was reminded of the conversation I had with Tria on Brandon and Nikki’s porch. I recalled what Tria had said. Then I remembered that even after that, she just curled up and fell asleep on me. It had been a long day, though.
“Liam?” Yolanda sighed.
“Yeah?”
“After the sweet talk, let her lead.”
I swallowed, leaned a little more against the wall, and wondered if I even had that kind of patience. What if it was weeks—or months? What if she never took any initiative?
“What if…what if she doesn’t?” I asked.
Yolanda chuckled softly, took a step forward, and placed a single finger at the base of my throat. Her finger trailed down over my sternum, past my abs, dipped into my navel, and hit the edge of my low-riding pants.
“She will,” Yolanda promised.
Through the window of the car, I watched the people go by. All the way home, I thought about what Yolanda had said. I tried to think back to when I was out on the prowl for pussy and considered all the lines I would use on women in order to entice them to spend a little more time with me. I wasn’t so sure Yolanda wasn’t full of shit though, because it’s not like I ever wanted a second date with any of them. The ride was too short for me to come to any decent conclusion, so I said goodnight to Yolanda and promised not to eat too much crap for breakfast in the morning.