Page 3 of Love Always

I’m a profiler. It’s what I do: read people. This girl was not ready to do this. She was just leading me on. Check that. She was leading herself on. Taking off my jacket, she unbuttoned each button slowly, letting the shirt open. Now, she was looking. But still, no eye contact. Pushing me down on the edge of the bed, she stood above me and took my head in her hands for another kiss. Breaking away, she said “Shoes,” and gestured at my patent leather shiners.

The wick of fear lit for a moment and my stomach flipped.

“I need another drink,” she said suddenly and stepped away, over to the small fridge, returning with two mini bottles of Jim Bean. “Not top shelf, but this’ll do.” She tossed one bottle on the bed for me and then suddenly sat down straddling my lap, her feet off the floor. Twisting open the mini bottle, she tossed back the whiskey. I watched her throat work and then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The soft skin of one knee was exposed at a rip and I touched it with my thumb.

Her body quivered for a moment. Then, as if to break that moment, she grabbed my head in both hands and kissed me again, long and deep and, yet, there was resistance, as if she didn’t want to be doing this. Doing this with me.

“I said, shoes off.” She raised her arms crisscrossed them and peeled off her T-shirt. Her skin was blotchy, flushed, but not with passion. Her nipples were not hard and her hurry-up-and-get-it-over fever pitch masked something else. Anger? Grief?

“You’ve been pretty quiet, mystery man.”

I shook my head. “No. Stop.”

As if making a second decision, she dropped the bottle, pushed me back on the bed and started unbuckling my belt. I tried to will my erection away by staring at the ceiling and ignoring her weight on my thighs. “Stop.”

“Why, don’t you want to do this? You know you do.” Her hands were shaking. Grabbing her wrists, I sat back up, but left her on my lap. I tried to look her in the face but she kept her head down.

“Stop it,” I said, trying to keep my voice low—like how I spoke to horses out on the ranch so they wouldn’t bolt.

“Oh, come on. A one-night stand? Never see me again? This is every guy’s fantasy.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s do this.”

“Not my fantasy. Not like this.”

That made her hold still.

“Here,” I said, patting the spot next to me on the bed. Pressing her hands into my shoulders she slid off to the left and then sat down, her hands in her lap, her legs dangling above the floor. I handed her the T-shirt, but she left it balled up in her lap.

“Something’s telling me this isn’t what you really want to do.”

Rubbing her hands on her thighs she shook her head.

“Am I wrong?”

Again, she shook her head.

Finally, I said what I thought from the moment we entered the room: “Laurel, I don’t think you want to do this. So, let’s not.”

She raised her face toward the ceiling. “Oh God. I am such an idiot.” She wiped her hair from her face and looked at me, those green eyes glittering with half tears.

“Do you just want to talk?”

And that’s when I saw fear in her eyes. True fear. Her eyes widened, causing a single tear to streak down. Talking was not something she wanted to do either.

She shot off the bed, fumbling over her words and with her clothes, pulling on her shirt, and slipping on shoes. She grabbed her backpack. “No. I’m just so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She shrugged the backpack on and flipped her hair out from under the straps. “I’m so sorry.”

I was aware of how beautiful her arms were when she slipped them back into her shirt—her elbows were exquisite. I’ve always loved women’s elbows and hers were perfect: small, bony, but round when bent and flat when extended.

“I’m sorry,” she kept saying, “I’m sorry.” She tried to head toward the door, but I was up and halfway blocked her.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. I just had a feeling you didn’t really want to do this. And as for me,” I paused. “Look at me. Laurel …”

Her gaze trembled with tears which she wiped with the back of her hand. She was crying on the pier too. She never said why. And why would she? She didn’t know me at all. Someone in her family could have just died, or she could have been dumped by some asshole. But she was looking at me now, I had her attention at last. Real attention.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this myself.” This was the truth. I wasn’t quite ready to take my pants off. I hadn’t prepared her yet with “The Talk,” which then always led to a lot of explanation and oh-so-sorry faces. “How far do you have to drive?”

“I live about half an hour from here.”

“Up the highway?”