Forbidden Love (10 page)

“It’s bring your own,” he shouted to Millie
through the music. “Next time, girls.”

“Oops. Sorry,” Millie said, and the two of
them turned away, scowling.

“How were we supposed to know?” Trisha
said.

Millie was still scowling. “This tastes like
shit,” she said. “A mix between cough syrup and…and…pineapple.”

It was nasty, but it was effective. Within a
half hour, having gotten wrapped up in a conversation with a guy
she had recognized from some class the previous semester, though
she couldn’t recall which one, Trisha had lost sight of Millie
altogether. She had also forgotten how the conversation with this
guy had started, what it was really about, and what she had already
said. She looked down and saw her arm stretched out, and her hand
on the guy’s shoulder. His face was blinking in the lights from the
multi-colored rotating disco ball that was stationed somewhere, but
she was pretty sure he was grinning at her. Maybe lasciviously. He
had close-cropped, frizzy hair and an upturned nose. He wasn’t all
that cute. Her other arm extended in front of her and she touched
his nose with her forefinger.

“You’re…cute,” she said.

He laughed. He laughed for a long time, in
fact. He wouldn’t stop laughing. And then she felt something on her
waist. It was the guy’s hand. She looked down at it. What the hell
had she worn, anyway? Were those booty shorts? Fluorescent green
booty shorts?

The guy leaned forward and said something to
her, but she couldn’t hear him. The music had gotten louder, all of
a sudden. She stared at his lips. “What?”

His lips moved again. They were shining. He
licked them, and laughed again.

“I can’t hear you,” she said. The pressure in
her ears was blocking all of her senses. She brought the wobbling
beer stein to her mouth and tilted it back, back—

“You’re all out,” the guy shouted. “I’ll take
care of that for you.” He took the mug from her fingers. “Don’t go
anywhere, now. I’ll be right back, okay? Here, lean on this.” He
guided her by the arms to sit on the shelf of some kind of angled
bookcase. The room before her shifted to the left, then shifted to
the right. She saw a lot of heads. They were moving around and
making funny faces. She went to drink from her beer stein again,
but ended up raising an empty hand to her chin.

“Hey, Sexy. You look confused.”

There was a guy. Not the guy with the weird
nose. Another guy, who had sort of a shaved head, and a goatee. Did
she know him? She squinted. There was something familiar about him,
but she couldn’t place it. She shook her head in delayed response
to his greeting. And yes, she was sexy. Yes she was.

“You need another drink, though,” he said.
“Here.” He grabbed her hand and curved her fingers around a plastic
cup.

Trisha sipped at it. Then she looked around.
Where was that other guy?

“I wanted to warn you about the guy you were
talking to,” this one said. “He has a girlfriend at Westfield State
who tries to keep a close eye on him, but that doesn’t stop him.
She shows up unannounced once in a while. He’s kind of bad
news.”

Trisha tried to concentrate on his words. “I
have a boyfriend,” she said. Wait—did she? Was that what she could
call him? She didn’t know. Whatever. Fuck it.

The guy didn’t change his expression. He was
looking at her very calmly. “Oh, do you?” he said. “Where is
he?”

Trisha rolled her eyes. Not that again. Who
the fuck did he think he was, bringing that up? “He’s home,” she
said. “He’s at his house. Far away. Why do you care?” She had to
fight off an image of Rusty in some bar in New York, looking at his
caller ID, seeing her name, swearing, and shoving the phone back
into his pocket.

“Whoa. I’m only trying to make sure I don’t
piss anyone off, here, that’s all.” He leaned in. “But we’re just
talking, anyway. Right?”

Trisha kept sipping her drink. She loved that
buzz. She wanted it to stay high. She was dizzy with liberty. Sure.
They were just talking. What if she just threw her arm around the
guy’s neck and pulled him to her, pushed her tongue in his mouth
right there? She would have power over the situation then. She
would be a ruthless punisher of thoughtless bastards who thought
they were a gift to womankind. She would be doing it for all her
sisters who had met and fallen under the spell of Rusty Quirke
before her.

“What? Why are you staring at me? I got
something in my teeth?”

Trisha blinked. “Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so,” he said without
hesitation. “But if you’d like to get to know me, I’m happy to
oblige. I got all night. How about we go somewhere quieter?”

Trisha let him take her hand. He lead her
through the bodies and the sticky, murky air, out through the front
door. She looked behind her, hoping she would catch a glimpse of
Millie just to let her know where she was going.

“Mill-ee!”

Millie’s long frame was propped against the
staircase in the front hallway. A much shorter guy was in front of
her, holding himself up with one hand on the wall behind her. His
face came up to her breasts. Trisha giggled at the sight. Millie
was running her fingers through her thick, dirty blond hair, which
was one of her quirks when she was nervous. Aw, go for it, Mills,
Trisha thought. Millie hadn’t slept with anyone since September, as
far as Trisha knew.

“Mill
-ee!”

The guy was pulling Trisha quickly down the
front porch steps. As her feet hit the concrete walkway, she saw
Millie’s head turn toward her, but she didn’t have time to make eye
contact. She tripped over the pointed toes of her knee-high black
boots and nearly hit the pavement.

“Watch it, there, Sexy,” the guy said, and
curled his arm around her waist to steady her.

Trisha couldn’t see well. He was leading her
around the side of Wicker House, through the frosted, crunching
grass. “Where’re we goin’?” she said, but her voice came out thick.
She cleared her throat and asked the question again.

The guy didn’t answer her. They were
traipsing across the back lawn. At the far end, they reached a kind
of gazebo, splintering and peeling and wet from the dewy air. He
made sure that she stepped up into it without falling.

“Kind of cool, huh?” he said. “I heard that
the original owners of this house, back in like, 1900, built this
to get married in.” He moved an inch or two closer to her.

Trisha sipped her drink again, some of which
had spilled when she tripped. She touched her neck; it was moist
with splashes of the alcohol. She couldn’t place what she was
feeling, what that trembling and pinching was in her stomach. She
knew she shouldn’t be out here with him—who was he? But then again,
why the fuck not? Rusty was hundreds and hundreds of miles away,
not thinking of her at all, or else he would have called already.
And suddenly, tears were stinging her eyes.

“Trish,” he said to her, and brought her hand
to his chest. “I’m D.J.”

“D.J.,” she said. She could feel the heat of
his body through his long-sleeved tee shirt.

He started asking her questions. About her
background, her parents, her hometown; her major, her plans for
making it big—would she go straight to California after graduation?
Or would she start smaller, off-Broadway, New York City? Would she
be like an Alba or Witherspoon, refusing to take off her clothes on
camera, or like a Winslet or Kidman, who’d get buck anytime,
anywhere? “You’re fresh,” Trisha told him. What was he trying to
do, turn her on? He wasn’t telling her anything. Every time she
tried to formulate a question of her own, he would barrel through
her words, poke at her and make her laugh. The breeze felt so fresh
on her face, the release in her arms and legs and head so peaceful.
She was underwater, swaying. She wanted to take off her shoes.

“What’re you doing, you crazy girl?” D.J. was
saying as she sat back on one of the benches with a thump and began
tugging at her pull-on boots. After a minute of watching her
struggle, he grabbed them both by the heels and yanked them right
off.

She shook out her feet, pink and imprinted
with the interior seams of the boots, and leaned back in
gratification. Was he, was he massaging her? She grimaced—it felt
so damn good, but who the fuck liked feet? And furthermore, who the
fuck liked the sweaty feet of a stranger? D.J. didn’t seem to care.
His hands moved up to her ankles to her calves, digging in with his
fingertips. She closed her eyes. And then his hands were under her
thighs, working more slowly. She didn’t even register how funny she
must look with her legs up in the air, her toes pressed against his
hips for balance. She was too busy floating to another place and
time.

It was another few moments before she felt
his breath near her face. She opened her eyes. He smelled like
mint. His reddish-gold goatee was glinting a little in the lights
from the house.

“Wait a minute,” she said, as a thought
struck her. “How do you know my name?” Her mind was trying to
rewind itself, but all of the minutes that had already passed were
clumping together somewhere in the back of her head, and she
couldn’t make sense out of any of it.

“I just asked someone,” D.J. said simply. “I
wanted to know who you were.”

Trisha was having trouble moving. She could
have sworn that her muscles had melted inside her. This guy had
sought her out, and that felt good, she couldn’t deny that. What if
she just let things go? Rusty couldn’t blame her for that, for any
of this, he had left her without a word.

“I have a boyfriend,” she mumbled. But D.J.’s
mouth was so close to hers. Her feet lost their grip on his jeans
and slid down to the cold wooden floor of the gazebo. He was
between her legs, now.

“Yeah, well,” he said, “he must be a ghost,
’cause I don’t see him anywhere.”

He bowed his head and began kissing her
collarbone, where she had splattered herself with her drink. She
had no idea what had happened to that drink. Had she dropped it
again? It wasn’t in her hand anymore. So she put her hand on top of
D.J.’s head, instead. She liked the way his hair felt, buzzed down
almost to nothing, but just long enough for her to feel a soft,
even tickle on her palm when she stroked. When she was younger, she
used to love doing this to her brother Eric’s head after his first
wiffle of the summer season.

When D.J.’s mouth found its way to hers, she
was ready for it, but all the same, she let out a squeak of
surprise. This was bad. She was bad.

I found it when I was in the theatre
downstairs yesterday, rehearsing my “vulnerable character” with Mr.
Quirke.

Fuck it.

The music from the house gave them company.
The gazebo was almost entirely draped in darkness. D.J.’s kissing
was light, clean, almost tasteless. His goatee was silky against
her skin, not bristly, like she had expected. Her fingers rested on
his shoulders, not pushing him away, but not inviting him closer,
either. That’s how it was for a little while—pleasant and friendly.
There couldn’t be anything wrong with pleasant and friendly.

When his hands began to journey up her
thighs, she didn’t feel it at first. Her bare skin had gone numb
from the cold. But when his fingers scurried under the edge of her
booty shorts and discovered her secret—she hadn’t worn panties—she
scooted back on the bench and tried to squeeze her legs
together.

“You’re fresh,” D.J. murmured. He was still
firmly planted between her thighs, so at her attempt to close them,
he thwarted her. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m one of the good guys,
Trish. You don’t hafta worry about me tomorrow. I won’t say a
thing. I swear to God.” He leaned his pelvis against her. She felt
his excitement.

“I don’t want to—I need to just keep things—”
She was having great trouble telling him that she didn’t mind a
little romance. A little romance was okay. But she didn’t think she
wanted anything else. Nothing too far, too much. Her thoughts of
boundaries caught her off guard.

“C’moooon.” He ran a finger along the side of
her face and smiled. “You don’t get it. I watched you talking with
other guys for an hour before I came up to you tonight. That’s
after noticing you on campus for weeks. Those jeans you paint on.
That beret or whatever it is that nobody else could ever pull off.
No wonder you got the faculty after you, too.”

Trisha frowned. “What—what the hell’re you
talking about?”

“Nuthin’. I guess—I mean, I can see how you
might get your good grades, is all.” He laughed and hooked his
finger into the neckline of her shirt.

Trisha pushed at his shoulder to get him to
retreat. “If you’re suggesting—if you think—” She licked her lips
as she tried to unscramble her mind. What the fuck was this? Had
her affair with Rusty gotten around already? Who could have found
out? Was Rusty spewing it all over, the asshole? Touting his
conquests on the undergrads? A growl chafed her throat. “You suck,”
she said finally. Was that it? Was that the best she could do? She
put her hands on the bench and shifted, trying to dislodge herself
from the daunting loom of D.J.’s body.