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About halfway through the documentary, I slipped my hand over the arm separating our chairs, and nudged Hannah’s pinkie. I whispered, “Maybe we should—”
Hannah pressed her hand against mine, threading our fingers together. Clammy and stiff, but warm too. Reassuring, somehow.
Well, yes, the kiss with Quinn had been better. Comforting and spiced with little electric thrills. But holding hands was hardly a fair comparison. I’d never done that with Quinn. Maybe kissing Hannah would be just as good.
Colored light from the screen flickered over Hannah’s face, softening the sharp profile of her nose and highlighting her full lips, stretched into a nervous smile. She peeked at me from the corner of her eye. “What?” she mouthed.
Again, I whispered in her ear, “May I kiss you a second?”
She faced me, teasing her bottom lip with her front teeth. Cute as a bunny, to pen a fitting phrase. Yes, cute flushed cheeks, sweet smile, nice eyes . . .
I cupped the side of her face and leaned in to kiss her. Her lips moved shyly against mine, but her breath puffing out was warm and smelled like cherry-flavored bubblegum.
Pleasant. Fine. Okay.
Where was the static? The strange moment where I skipped a breath? The promise of cocooning warmth that came from a bigger body?
I tried the kiss again, searching for something else perhaps I’d missed the first time. I threaded my fingers through the back of her soft hair, loosening it from the hair-tie. She danced delicate fingers up my arm to rest lightly on the curve of my neck.
Our mouths locked awkwardly and a slither of tongue over my bottom lip just made it feel wet.
“Hmmm,” I murmured. A sudden silence in the documentary emphasized the sound.
She squeezed my hand and drew hers away. “Let’s give it to the end of the night to be sure.”
“Maybe it’s the angle,” I said. The time? The heat? The fullness from Quinn’s sandwiches? The need to urinate?
“Or not,” she said with an apathetic shrug and smile. To the point. Factual.
“Or not,” I agreed.
I excused myself and sidled out of the row, passing the only other person in there besides my party and Quinn’s.
I’d just finished relieving myself in the bathroom when the door swung in. I caught the action in the reflection of the mirrors to my left, and was buttoning up as Quinn sauntered in. At first he must have been looking at me, but then his gaze met mine in the mirror.
There was something almost predatory as he kicked his way across the room.
With a slight shiver, I turned to the sink and pressed down on the faucet. Antiseptic soap scented the air. “How do you like the film?”
Quinn stood behind me, keeping eye contact through the mirrors. “I don’t.”
I shrugged. “I wish I could comment more constructively, but I’ve been oblivious to the screen. This dating thing is more challenging than I thought. It’s like an equation I’m not schooled enough to solve. The angles, the timing, the—”
“Fact she’s female?”
I nodded. “Maybe that, too. I tried to kiss her but all I could think about was how much better it was with you. How I could feel it in my toes. How even just remembering makes me itchy.”
Quinn stepped closer, his chest rising as he took in a deep breath.
I asked, “Do you mind giving us both a lift to Fifth?”
His chest deflated, and his gaze darted from the mirror to the urinals. He started running a hand through his hair.
“Looks good,” I told him, drying my hands.
“Cheddar thinks so too.”
“Then the cheese has taste.”
Quinn almost grinned, but something held him back. Maybe the fact he needed to piss and hadn’t yet because I was standing around. Some men were shy that way.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” I said, slipping past him to the door. “Are we good for the lift?”
“It’ll be a tight fit. Cheddar’s coming home with me.”
“I’m taking that as a yes.”
Jell-O Fight Night.
Well wasn’t this a pretty sight?
A ten-foot, rectangular paddle pool lay lengthwise in an empty living room. Tens of students surrounded the pool at a wide berth, watching two women in jeans and T-shirts wrestling in ankle-deep putrid green Jell-O.
The party smelled of beer, citrus, and cheap thrills.
Hannah pressed closer to my side, scoured the scene, and shook her head. “I need a drink.”
Alone in a crowd of cheering guys, I reached for my notebook and pen.
A guy in a tank-top and running shoes hollered from the corner of the room. “If your number is called out, please make your way to the pool. Seventeen and twenty-three, you’re up.”
My gaze veered from my notebook to the fifty-seven that’d been stamped on my hand, apparently for entry to the curved fishbowl of numbers.
Well. They could forget that. No way in a hundred years would I expose myself to such crass ridicule.
