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“What was?”
“I thought booze was for social lubrication. ”
She smiles a little. “That, too. ”
“I’m not sure you and me need lubricating. ”
That earns me Caroline’s I’m-so-offended look. Those big ol’ brown eyes narrowed to slits.
I’d like to see her make that face at me when I have my tongue between her legs.
And that is not even a little bit what I’m supposed to be thinking about.
It’s impossible, though, to stop thinking about friction and lubrication, tongues and fingers and mouths, when she goes all red like that. When I know I’m getting her good and rattled. She pinked up that way once when I walked back to my room from the shower in a towel. Stared and stared at me with her neck flushing and her eyes huge.
I had a hard-on for a week.
“Why’d you come tonight?”
“You asked me to. ”
“Before that. Why do you keep driving here, parking out front? What do you want?”
I throw the last piece of dough down the table, and it skids across the floured surface, stopping right in front of her.
“I don’t want anything. ”
“I don’t believe you. ”
She stares at me, nostrils flared, chin up. Startin
g to get pissed that I’m pressing.
Good. Let her be pissed. When she’s pissed, she talks.
“How’s it going, Caroline?”
This time, I lean into the words the way I might lean into the bread dough, pressing down hard with the heel of my hand. I want a real answer, because it’s the middle of the night and we can lie to each other in the daytime, on campus, in the library.
We do it already. Every time I pass her in the hallway and don’t grab her and push her up against a wall, kiss her stupid—every time it’s a lie.
I’m sick of it. I took this job expecting to be left alone, working when nobody was awake, not having to be polite or to say words I don’t mean, to act like I’m somebody I not. I need the job to give me that because I don’t get it otherwise, and it fucks it up when Krishna shows up and we have to pussyfoot around the fact that he drinks too much and hates himself. It fucks it up to have Caroline sitting outside in her car, not coming in. And now that she’s in, it’s fucking it up that she’s telling me she’s fine.
“It’s going,” she says.
“Yeah? Enjoying the fall weather? Classes treating you well?”
She pinches the bridge of her nose instead, high up, and closes her eyes. “You were right. Is that what you want me to say?”
“I want you to say whatever the truth is. ”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think you ever tell anybody the truth. You’re awake at two in the morning. You look like shit. You’re exhausted. When I invite you in here, when I ask you how it’s going, you think I’m going to fucking buy it that you’re fine? You think that’s what I want you to say?”
“That’s what everybody says. ”
“Yeah. It is. And if you’re going to get out of bed and come here and talk to me, the bare minimum you can do is assume I’m not everybody. When I ask you, I actually want to know how you are. ”
