Page 47 of Melt With You

He knew. She could tell. There was an understanding between them, something she would remember after. The way he looked at her. The way his lips mouthed the word ‘Are you …?’

But that didn’t make her stop fucking him. If anything, she slammed harder against him, driving the cock deep inside. And now, when she looked back into the mirror, all she saw in Van’s eyes was the impending climax making him breathless.

She reached her hand in front once more, pulled again on his cock, and felt him stiffen, then buck as he came into the white porcelain sink.

After, she wondered if he would remember, if he would sense that she was lying about her identity. But he appeared to be focused on something else entirely.

‘Who was that?’ he asked, as he tried to redo his lipstick with a shaking hand. ‘Was it Robby?’ he asked, naming one of the other delivery boys from the band.

Dori, hiked her pants back up, then buckled her belt. ‘I don’t know,’ she said softly.

He didn’t seem to hear her, or perhaps he didn’t believe her. ‘It was Robby,’ he grinned. ‘I know it.’

Dori shrugged as they walked out of the bathroom together. She thought she knew the man behind those curls, but she couldn’t be entirely sure.

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘So, do you like Van?’ Nina asked. ‘I mean, do you like him, like him?’ The question was sing-songed in Nina’s classic way. She didn’t just dress as if she had been plucked from the 1950s, she employed the mannerisms she’d picked up from watching those old movies endlessly. Rebel Without a Cause was her favorite. Once, in high school, Dori’s parents had gone on a weekend getaway and Dori remembered Nina coming over to her house with a stack of videos and watching a marathon of the classics together.

She wondered what Nina would say if she told her she’d come back in time from the year 2008. Wondered how Nina would deal with the situation if she found herself suddenly in 1958. She’d probably love every second of it.

‘Come on,’ Nina taunted her. ‘Do you?’

‘I wouldn’t vote him off the island,’ Dori said, and then, at the blank look on Nina’s face, realized her slip of the tongue and said quickly, ‘Well, yeah. It’s obvious, isn’t it?’

Nina’s eyes shone, but then she suddenly moved out from behind the counter. Dori looked in the mirror at the back of the store, and saw that a customer had entered. When she turned around, she understood why Nina had moved so quickly.

‘Can I help you?’ Nina twittered.

The man entering the store was over six feet tall, with long dark hair and eyelashes like a girl’s. He had dark green eyes and a strong jaw, and … Dori’s heart seemed to stop.

It wasn’t just that a man had entered the store – a rare occurrence in general, The Beauty Box was such a girly haven – that made her breathing speed up. And it wasn’t just that this was without a doubt the man who had fucked her at Rocky Horror the weekend before – something she knew instantly in her gut when she saw him again. But the real thing that twisted her stomach in knots was the fact that this man was Rowan.

Nina was all over him, fluttering her still-wet nails, trying to see how she might help him while beaming out messages with her eyes. How she’d really like to help him, silently offering him treats not for sale in the store. Dori easily understood the appeal. Rowan was as good looking as ever. Flashing green eyes, shining black hair. He was dressed casually in well-worn jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a barbed wire pattern across the chest and down the arms, looking more like a rock star on a casual day than an engineer. He listened as Nina began to explain the new specials the salon was offering, but he stared at Dori the entire time.

How had he gotten here? Her mind was playing tricks on her. That’s what had happened. Just as she’d finally accepted her fate of being stuck in 1988 forever, something new popped up for her to deal with.

The man wasn’t really Rowan, was he?

Heart pounding, she remained behind the counter, watching, feeling safety behind the barrier of the glass countertop and the large, old-fashioned register. She hadn’t seen him in twenty years. Not since graduation. But she knew it was him. Yet he wasn’t eighteen. He was the same age as she was.

Up until now, she’d felt as if she was dealing with the time switch in a fairly decent manner. Part of her was sure that she was either caught in some hallucinogenic dream – or that she had been in some sort of terrible accident and was in a coma. Who knew what people’s minds did when they were unconscious, right?

But now, now that Rowan had entered not only the store, but her dreams, she started to have doubts. She wouldn’t have known what he looked like in the future. She’d last seen him the summer after graduating from high school.

He listened to Nina, telling him about the newest shaving kit for men, but his eyes kept returning to Dori. She looked down, started to reorganize the display case filled with overflowing baskets of multi-colored rubber bangles, bringing the bright neon-pink ones to the front and pushing the celadon ones to the rear. Then she took a deep breath and looked back up again.

He was coming closer.

Jesus. What was he going to say?

‘I looked for you.’

Of all the things he might have said to her, she hadn’t expected that, hadn’t expected to hear the harsh tone in his voice, as if she’d disappointed him. Her stomach lurched. ‘What do you mean?’

‘At the dance. I thought we had a date.’

Her eyes widened. He was talking about the reunion, wasn’t he? Was he crazy? Dori wouldn’t have been the least surprised if he’d started the conversation in any of the following ways:

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