Page 21 of Damnation
I’m his?
Maybe.
But not in the way I’d like.
Somehow, without realizing it, I’ve gotten myself entangled with him, and it suddenly feels so natural and right for me to be here, in his arms, that I stop thinking entirely. I squeeze his hips with my knees as we kiss, our tongues seeking each other out and intertwining. My heart feels like it’s doing backflips. I’m getting short of air, but I don’t want to pull away from him, not even to breathe. It’s been too long since we’ve been together, and my body reminds me of that fact every time he gets close to me.
Maybe his does too, because Thomas grabs my legs impulsively and wraps them around his waist. I let him do it, feeling almost drunk on him, on his greedy kisses and his incandescent touches, which burn my skin even through my clothes. He slips a hand along the side of my face and into my hair while I clasp my fingers around the back of his neck and pull him closer to me. I can feel the hardness beneath his jeans, pressing between my thighs.
A wave of devastating desire crashes down on me, but I force myself to put on the brakes. “Thomas…” It comes out as a soft laugh. I can taste the mint gum he’s been chewing all afternoon. “We’re out in the open. People get arrested for this kind of thing, you know?” I lay my hands on his chest, forcing him to regain a modicum of self-control as well.
He detaches himself from my lips with considerable reluctance andhis heavily lidded eyes stay locked on my mouth, devouring me with his gaze. “You’re a big problem, Ness,” he whispers, his breathing heavy and his mouth red from kissing. “A huge problem.”
Then, he helps me down from the car and walks me to the frat house. Standing on the front porch, I am suddenly overwhelmed with sadness at the thought of saying goodbye to him.
What a nitwit.
If I told him anything I was feeling, he would call me a whiny little baby. “Well, see you around…” I shift from one foot to the other, nervously playing with the door key and keeping my eyes down so he can’t see what’s going on inside my head. Thomas, however, gently tilts my face up.
“If you don’t feel like staying with your friend tonight, you can come back here. I won’t be here, but the boys aren’t planning any parties, so you’ll be able to rest.” He smiles, and I swear I would smile right back at him, were it not for that phrase “I won’t be here,” which is playing on an infinite loop in my head.
Is he going to be out all night? I try to chase away all the negative thoughts, though I feel the urge to pepper him with questions and advice. I want to tell him to be a good boy, to not get drunk and wind up between someone else’s legs. To neither touch nor be touched. I’d also like to ask where he’ll spend the night and with whom, but all of those are girlfriend questions, and damn it, I am not his girlfriend. He is free to go where he wants when he wants and be with whoever he wants, and he doesn’t need to tell me anything.
My God, this is already driving me crazy.
“Don’t worry,” I tell him, trying to appear unruffled. “Alex offered to let me stay with him, at least until I find another solution.” Something in Thomas changes radically with my words. His eyes grow dark under his furrowed eyebrows.
“Alex?”
I nod. “I told him how things aren’t that great at Tiffany’s house and that I’m planning to find a place on my own but, in the meantime,I need somewhere stable to crash.”
“You had a stable place to crash,” he says, his voice suddenly hard. “My dorm. But you said no.”
“And you know why. I have no idea how long it’ll take me to find a place; it could be weeks, and Larry can barely stand my presence. Plus, he’s right when he says that I’m a squatter. I can’t risk getting expelled, and I won’t make you risk it either.”
Thomas doesn’t answer. He just stares at me, grinding his teeth before taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. The phone in his pocket rings, distracting him from who knows what grim thoughts. He doesn’t take the call, but the air between us has grown heavy. I’d like to kiss him one more time before we go our separate ways, but now he feels too far away.
“Whatever you want,” he says flatly. And then he leaves and I’m alone, trying to deal with the strange heaviness in my gut. I watch as he walks down the steps, lighting a cigarette and turning down the path that will take him off campus, his phone pressed against his ear.
Six
“And so I says to him, ‘Look, handsome, it’s fifty for the full service.’ Then he takes out fifty bucks and drops his underwear.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“And he just stands there, staring at me, waiting for me to get to work. You should have seen his face when I told him I was in the prostate massage business.” The two middle-aged ladies burst out laughing over their dry martinis as they exchange anecdotes. When they see me passing by, one of them summons me with a snap of her fingers, demanding another round of drinks without even looking me in the face. I sigh because by now I’ve grown used to rude customers, and I’ve learned to put on a pleasant face to keep them from stiffing me on the tip.
It’s nearly eight o’clock on another Saturday night, happy hour is over, and the real chaos is about to begin. The tables are filling up, and I find myself running between them like a ping-pong ball flung from side to side.
Sitting at the counter, right under the big LED screen, is James, a regular whose habits and preferences I’ve come to know well. He’s been waiting for his dinner for more than a half hour, yet he hasn’t made a single complaint. He just sits there, typing rapidly on his laptop as he calmly sips his beer and munches on an endless supply of pistachios. If all my customers were that patient, this would be a much better place to work.
“Your chicken wings are going to be a while tonight. Sorry, we had a problem in the kitchen,” I tell him, giving the bar a quick wipe. Truthfully, there’s no problem in the kitchen, except that the cook doesn’t care about anything ever since he caught his wife in bed with his best friend.
“Don’t worry about me; the pregame always saps my appetite a bit. I’m sure the wings’ll arrive by the time the Ducks pull ahead.”
I find myself smiling my first real smile since I left Thomas at campus and started my shift. I see my coworker Cassie walk by, and then, as if remembering something, she doubles back and stops right in front of me. She jabs her order pad at me and says, “Before you got here, Maggie told me to tell you that a woman came by asking for you at lunchtime, said she wanted you to get in touch with her. Maggie said she seemed a little off and was kinda aggravating. Very tall, blond, and her eyes were—”
“Blue.” We finish her sentence together. Cassie gives me a surprised look. “Yes! How’d you know?”
