Desire Lines (36 page)

“Sorry. The door was open, and I just—”

“Good,” he says, wheeling around. “I like surprises.”

Walking down the long hallway beside him, she says, “This is just
like detention. Remember that feeling of being kept after school when everybody else has left?”

“Uh-huh.” He nods.

“Did you ever even have detention?” she asks curiously.

“No,” he admits. “But I can guess.”

She shakes her head. “You were too good.”

“You were bad,” he says. “Getting detention. Skipping school. I remember you back then, Kathryn—making crib sheets for algebra. And didn’t you get suspended once?”

“Oh, yeah,” she says, remembering. “Mr. Tremble caught Rachel and me drinking Bud Light in her car before a dance. I think it was just one day.”

“But your mom grounded you for life.”

“Commuted to three weeks for good behavior.” She smiles. At the end of the long hall, the door to Jack’s apartment is ajar. Kathryn follows him inside and shuts the door. “Anyway, as I remember, you weren’t so perfect either,” she continues. “You were just lucky.”

“I was charming,” he says, heading toward the kitchen. “I got away with murder.”

Jack’s apartment is neat but homey, with a series of black-and-white photographs of weather-beaten houses lining the hall and a large, tattered Oriental in the living area. The two couches are worn and comfortable-looking; the television sits on an old leather suitcase, and a paint-spattered trunk serves as the coffee table. Thrift-store lamps cast a soft glow. The newest thing in the room appears to be the stereo system, which is black and shiny, with a dazzling array of tiny dancing lights.

“Want a Bud Light?” Jack asks, opening the fridge.

“Will I get detention?”

He grabs two long-necked bottles with the fingers of one hand. With the other, he rummages in a cutlery drawer and comes up with a bottle opener. Prying the tops off the beers—Samuel Adams, Kathryn sees—he hands one to her. “It depends.”

He looks into her eyes only for a second, but she feels a flutter move through her chest. “On what?” she says.

“On how charming you are.” He sits on the edge of the kitchen table, his arms folded, still holding the beer.

“Do you want to be charmed?”

He takes a sip of beer. “Everybody wants to be charmed,” he says softly, “whether they know it or not.”

She moves closer to him, takes the beer out of his hand, and puts it on the table, placing hers next to it. She looks into his gray-green eyes, and he stares steadily back at her, waiting to see what she’ll do. Gently, she traces his cheekbone with her fingers, touching the hard brown stubble on his jaw and the soft fullness of his lips. When she leans forward to kiss him, she smells the beer on his breath and the grassy scent of his shampoo. He reaches up and pulls her toward him, his hand flat on the small of her back. Standing between his legs, holding his face in her hands, she runs her tongue over his teeth and senses his mouth opening, his tongue meeting hers, and then her head is back and he’s kissing her ear, her neck, pushing her sleeveless vest off one shoulder and kissing that, too. She moves her hand down his neck to the soft top of his white T-shirt and slides her hand under it. His chest, with its small thatch of brown hair, is taut; she can feel his heart beating hard against her palm.

“Jesus, Kathryn,” he breathes. “Are you sure—?”

“Don’t talk,” she says, closing her eyes and leaning her head against his. He slides his hands under her vest, touching the bare skin underneath, moving them up to her rib cage and higher, until it tickles and she squirms away. He pulls her forward, and she falls heavily against him, her head in his neck, the length of his chest warming hers.

“Just hold me,” she whispers, and for a long moment that’s all he does. His embrace feels familiar somehow, as if they’re reuniting after a long absence instead of coming together for the first time. She is absorbed in the moment in a way she hasn’t been in ages, years perhaps. The rest of the world feels very far away. “I know you,” she says.

He threads his fingers through her hair, pushing it off her face, and his hand comes to rest on the back of her neck. “I know you, too.”

In the dark of his bedroom they trip over her sandals and his jeans with the belt still in them, the buckle clinking against the zipper. His sheets and blanket are crumpled at the foot of the bed, and pillows are strewn on the floor. “I wasn’t expecting company,” he mumbles, and she doesn’t answer; she pushes him onto the bed and climbs on top of him, pulling his T-shirt over his head and leaning down to kiss him, her hair falling in his face, getting in their mouths, until he pulls it back with one hand and topples her off him, rolling over so that she’s underneath.

She stretches out, lifting her arms above her head, and he unbuttons her vest, then tries to peel it off, catching it on her shoulder, making them both laugh while he tries to untangle it from her limbs. “Mr. Smooth,” he says. “I guess you can tell it’s been a while.” He traces his finger slowly along the satiny rim of her bra and then he leans down and kisses the top of her breasts, his breath hot on her skin. She runs her hand down the length of his chest and into his jeans, and slips her fingers under the waistband of his shorts. His abdomen is supple and warm—like a dog’s stomach, she thinks idly, and when she strokes him he lets out a sigh from somewhere back in his throat, not unlike a dog sound. As he takes off her bra, slipping the straps down her arms, unhooking the back clasp with one deft move, she feels a wave of affection wash over her. Here they are, all wet tongues and noses, nestled together like two furry mammals in a soft, dark bed. He weighs her breasts in his hands and pushes them together, brushing his mouth over her nipples until they’re hard, pulling gently on one and then the other with his teeth until she pushes his hand down between her legs and his attention shifts.

When his fingers move inside her she has to catch her breath. Everything falls away except the motion in the darkness. He shifts his hand and the feeling subsides; she moves her hips to show him how to sustain
it. All at once her head is light, her limbs relax, she feels herself reaching for him like some deep-sea creature yearning toward the surface. When she comes, suddenly, before she expects to, she feels as if she’s drowning, then riding a wave, riding it slowly all the way out, until it dissolves into the motion of the sea.

“One more,” he murmurs after a moment, his lips brushing her stomach, but she pulls him up and kisses him, hard, on the mouth, moving her shoulder forward so he slides halfway off her. She shifts from underneath and then, quickly, climbs on top, feeling like a little kid in a tickle fight. She pushes his arms over his head and he smiles at her, amused, as if he thinks she’s a little kid, too. As she bends over to kiss him, she feels his pelvis moving against her, his thigh between her legs, and she reaches down to push his jeans to his knees and then his soft jersey boxers. He kicks his legs, and the clothes fall to the floor, the belt hitting wood, coins scattering out of his pockets.

“Damn,” he mutters, “I’ll never find those quarters.”

Moving against him slowly, she sits up on her knees. “Do you have—” she begins.

“I was just wondering the same thing,” he says. Twisting under her, he reaches over to his bedside table and pulls out a drawer. “God knows, they’ve probably expired.” She can hear him crinkling what sounds like candy wrappers. “Ah, it’s all coming back to me. The impossible-to-open foil packet,” he says, tearing it with his teeth.

She slides off him. He fumbles beside her as she waits for him to put it on—it seems too intimate, somehow, for her to help. Then he turns toward her and runs his hand along the curve of her hip. “Armed and dangerous,” he says.

She laughs. “We’ll see about that.” She climbs on top of him again and guides him inside her, shifting her hips to find the easiest angle. She arcs her body over his and he pulls her forward, rubbing his face against her breasts, tracing them with his tongue. After a moment she sits back and he leans forward on his elbows, watching her. He puts his hands flat on her chest and runs them down to her thighs, and then he
holds her steady, rocking her back and forth. She closes her eyes, letting her body fall into the rhythm, familiar and strangely foreign at the same time. It’s been almost a year, but instinctively she senses how to work it, when to pick up the pace and when to slow it down. After a few minutes she feels him tense beneath her; “Oh—my—Kath,” he breathes, pulling her toward him and away, and she watches him swallow, watches his eyelids flutter, feels him moving faster, straining against her, and her own heartbeat quickens and her mind goes blank and she’s moaning with him, riding him, and he jerks up three times, four, and then the rhythm slows and she feels his body go limp. When his breathing steadies she sinks onto his chest, his bare skin slick against hers, and slides her shoulder under his arm.

Through the window, in the fluorescent glow of a streetlight, the sky is a deep, brilliant blue. Kathryn can’t see the moon, doesn’t remember if there is a moon tonight. The wall beside the window is lined with shelves piled haphazardly with books. A large poster hangs opposite the bed; she can make out the bold block letters, black on white, that spell out
KANDINSKY.
She wonders idly where he got it, if he ordered it from a catalogue or found it somewhere in town. Or maybe he saw the painting in a museum in Prague and brought the poster home with him in a cardboard cylinder. Has he been to Europe? She realizes that she has no idea.

Meeting him again, it feels as if the ten years have evaporated. She has known Jack since they were kids. She was with him the day after his mother walked out, when he was fifteen, and she was one of the first people he called when his mother came back a year later. She’s been to his house and hung out with his little sister, who has Down’s syndrome. But she knows little about who he has become in these ten years—what he’s done, where he’s been. He went to the University of Maine on a scholarship the fall after they graduated, and she heard through the grapevine that he had a column in the school paper and worked in the Bear’s Den, a campus pub, to make up the difference in
tuition. But she never heard from him directly, and she never wrote him herself. Their friendship wasn’t like that. It was collective, part of the group.

Now, feeling his arm beneath her, she shifts and turns away, hugging the edge of the bed. Thinking about what she’s done, she feels her face flush in the darkness. I am so stupid, she thinks, risking his friendship like this. My mother’s right—I am self-destructive. Kathryn wants to creep out without his noticing, leave him sleeping in his bed. Maybe they can both pretend it never happened.

“Was I dreaming?” he says, as if reading her mind. He turns toward her, tracing her shoulder with his finger.

“Yes,” she says.

“Am I dreaming now?”

“You’re having a nightmare.”

He laughs.

“I have to go.”

“Shhh,” he says, “I’m sleeping.” He kisses her shoulder.

“Jack. I’m sorry.” She flinches away from him and sits up, gathering the sheet around her. “This was stupid of me. I feel ridiculous.”

“Why?” He props himself up on one arm.

“I came here to seduce you.”

“Yeah.”

She looks at him. “I don’t want to jeopardize our friendship.”

“What friendship? I’m your boss.”

“Oh, God,” she says, putting her face in her hand.

He looks over at her and grins. “Come here.”

“No.”

“Come here,” he says, pulling on the sheet she’s wrapped in until she lets herself be pulled over. “We don’t have to decide right this minute what this is,” he says. “We can take it slow. Okay?”

She sighs and looks at him.

He tugs on the sheet and it falls open. “Remember, it’s just a dream,”
he murmurs. Leaning down, he kisses her collarbone, her rib cage; he circles her navel with his tongue.

She intends to resist, but his breath is hot on her stomach, and her will is weak. She closes her eyes and stretches out on the bed, feeling his hands encircle her waist, his fingers on the small of her back. “I remember,” she whispers.

PART FOUR
RELEASE

Chapter 26

H
er mother is sitting at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, when Kathryn walks in the door the next morning.

“I was just about to call the police,” her mother says, flicking her wrist to look at her watch. Then she looks back at Kathryn, and her mouth falls open. “Good Lord, what have you done to your hair?”

“Oh, this.” Kathryn keeps forgetting how different she looks. Glancing in Jack’s bathroom mirror this morning, she even surprised herself. “It wasn’t me, it was Lena,” she says, as if Lena had held a gun to her head.

Her mother’s eyes widen, and she shakes her head. “I think Lena’s getting a little too New York for her own good.”

Kathryn gets a mug from the cabinet beside the sink and pours herself some coffee. “What are you doing here, anyway?” she says, trying to change the subject. “I thought you were at Frank’s camp this weekend.”