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She sucks her bottom lip and nods.
“Don’t you want to do it again?”
She puts her plate on the bench beside her, leans forward, and puts her face in her hands for a moment. I watch her, my smile fading. I wish I’d known how much her previous boyfriends had hurt her. She kept it so quiet; I had no idea. I’m guessing she didn’t tell any of our other friends, not even Victoria, who I’m sure would have mentioned it to me. I feel a surge of anger toward those guys who have damaged her for me. And toward the world, or Fate, or whoever else is to blame, for the fact that I didn’t get to date her properly right at the beginning.
I shouldn’t have left it this long. I should have been more persistent much earlier. But I honestly thought she’d never go out with me again. She was so insistent, and I thought I’d missed my chance. It was only when she kissed me on Valentine’s Day that I realized she was still into me.
She sits back and lowers her hands. “I think I’ll go back to the house.”
“Wait. I’m going to ask one more time. Give me one night. Pretty please. With a cherry on top.”
“There’s as much chance of me having a one-night stand with you as there is of you jumping off the Sky Tower,” she states. “Does that make it clearer?”
I look at her brown eyes, her soft mouth.
“What?” she says, frowning.
I run my tongue across my teeth. Am I really about to say this?
I think about the way she kissed me on Valentine’s Day, and the feel of her soft body beneath my hands.
I guess I am.
“How about we have a bet?” I ask.
“A what?”
“A bet.”
“What kind of bet?”
“Come to the Sky Tower with me and watch me jump off. If I back out, I’ll do it in a cup for you, and you can have all the semen you want. But if I jump, you give me one night.”
She stares at me. Then she laughs. “You’d never jump off in a million years.”
“So what have you got to lose?”
“Huxley, do you remember that time we went into the restaurant at the top of the Sky Tower? You couldn’t even sit near the window. You spent the whole evening with your back to the view, practically glued to the column. We had to peel you off it.”
“Yeah…”
“So how, exactly, do you think you’re going to jump off?”
“I don’t know. I’m already beginning to doubt my sanity.”
“I’ve done it myself, remember? For charity a couple of years ago. It’s over six hundred feet—a hundred and ninety-two meters. Fifty-three floors. You fall at eighty-five kilometers per hour.”
“Jesus, enough already.” My heart’s racing at the thought. “I don’t need to know all the ins and outs.”
“I’m just saying, you’ll never do it.”
“So, like I said, what do you have to lose?”
She gives me a bewildered look. “You don’t have to put yourself through that. Why don’t you just go to the clinic, look at a girlie mag, and do your thing?”
“Because I want you. I want you so badly, I’m prepared to do this to get you. Doesn’t that tell you something about how I feel?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy. She could have a point.
