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“Okay, well we’ll see you inside in a few — ” I sucked in a gasp before finishing my sentence.
Linh blinked. “What?”
I turned back to Daniel. “Kelsey’s here. She can’t see you!” Guilt washed over me as I noticed the anxious glint in Daniel’s eye despite the outward calm he put on for me. Linh cut in.
“You two go,” she said simply. She peered into the restaurant window. “I’ll cover for you. Just go fast because Kelsey’s starting to look for you. She’s coming this way.”
Daniel and I exchanged eyes, tense little grins touching our lips at the same time. His blue eyes glimmered at me as he nodded up the street.
“Come on.”
I didn’t need to be told twice.
~
I’d sobered up by the time Daniel and I reached the arch and colonnade of the Manhattan Bridge. After laughing our way through a speed walk out of the Lower East Side, we’d let ourselves stroll leisurely along The Bowery. I smiled to myself as Daniel kept his hands in his pockets. He was letting himself check me out now, but he had yet to let himself touch me as he wanted to. Which I found frustrating.
“And you live with Kelsey now?”
“For the past two months or so,” I answered while testing Daniel by walking closer to him. Within steps, he’d spaced himself away from me again. I wanted to laugh at his stupid, persistent compulsions to be professional but I forced myself not to. “Basically since the night that Ben and I broke up.”
Daniel nodded. “Ben. Right. Awesome guy, that Ben.”
I laughed, pleasantly surprised by his sarcasm. “Totally. The best kind of manipulative jerk that exists out there.”
“Jerk?” Daniel glanced at me with a sexy little grin. “You’re being kind.”
“Maybe.” I wiggled my lips, feeling some sass coming on. “It’s just ‘cause I don’t want to curse in front of you. Since you’re being so very proper in front of me.”
Whoops. I’d let myself sound even more teasing than I had meant to. A little mocking, even. Daniel promptly stopped walking, turning to me with a frown between inquisitive eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
I looked at him for a moment. “You’re being Mr. Cole with me right now,” I answered, starting up our walking again. He followed, a step behind me. I could feel the intensity of his gaze on me through the corner of my eye. “I know you might not realize it but you’ve got this compulsion to be polite and professional around me all the time. Like I’m still your student, which I’m sure you recognize that I’m not.”
“I know you’re not,” his hard voice came from behind me.
“Then treat me how you want to treat me.” I turned to face him, walking slowly backwards. My heels clicked neatly on the concrete as I watched him follow me, his look so solemn that it made my heart pound. We were on the bridge now, walking towards Brooklyn beside the dark, shimmering velvet that was the river. The wind blew my hair forward but I let it, too busy trying to keep the confidence in my tone as I spoke. “No one’s watching you. You can be Mr. Cole in Woodhill but it’s summer right now and you’re with me, so be Daniel. Do what you want.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“Why?”
His jaw tightened, but he didn’t answer.
“You came here to see me, didn’t you?” I asked.
“Yes, but that’s because I needed to see you. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I did, I just needed it.” He sounded as frustrated as he looked, running his hand from his head all the way to the back of his neck. “I never knew I could be so preoccupied with thinking about someone that there was no room for any other thought or image in my head. I can’t stop wondering about you, who you are now, how you got there. I keep trying to put pieces together from my memories of you and what I’ve gathered since we bumped into each other. And when I can’t think anymore, all I see is you. I see that little white dress or that night I had you against the wall at the bar. When I could smell your skin and it took everything in me not to put my hands all over you.”
Oh. From the bottom half of my vision, I could see my chest heaving. My breaths were shallow and Daniel gave me no time to catch them as he continued his confession.
“I see that moment when I recognized you outside the restaurant. I knew it was you, Nina. It took me less than a second to realize that I was looking at a former student.”
My lashes fluttered. I hadn’t known that for sure.
“And I don’t know what happened, but I turned into someone else the moment I saw you looking so fucking good. I said and thought things that I never let myself say or think before. I couldn’t control it. And I tried to chalk it up to the thrill of taboo, of having those kinds of thoughts about someone I taught in my classroom. But that wasn’t it.” He swallowed hard. “It’s because of something I felt for you three years ago.”
I stopped dead in my tracks. “What?” I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as he looked at me.
“I know you never tried, but you were the first student that made me question what I was thinking. Or feeling towards you. It happened suddenly, I remember, and I told myself I was just… proud. Charmed, maybe, by how genuinely passionate you were. About a book. Not even my class or the subject, but just this one story. ” His gaze drifted and a smile crept upon one side of his lips, making the exquisite shape of a crooked Cupid’s bow. “I told myself that I had you lead the class because they responded well to you, but I realized it was more for me. Because there was a morning that I woke up and my first thought was you. I was excited to see you, to see you stand in front of the room and talk and have this adorable sparkle in your eye. To tap that pen against your lip when you got excited.” He leaned against the chain link fence, his broad shoulders expanding as he took in a deep breath. He let go of it in the form of a small laugh, one of disbelief. “I kept defending it too, telling myself that it was just that I loved seeing you transform into this passionate creature the second you stepped into my room. But once you graduated, I found myself still thinking about you. In the summer and then the fall. Missing you, really. I had to force myself to stop thinking about you or I wouldn’t be able to stand myself because these were the exact feelings I prided myself on never having.”
