We turn down a wooded path toward the country club that rests just off main campus. People don’t often associate country clubs with college campuses but this one has been here since the university’s first building was erected. Old money and all that.
She surprises me when she stops in front of me and slides her arms around my neck. I rest my fingertips along her sides, wanting more. I want to back her up against the hundred-year-old oak tree and lift her legs around my waist. I want to kiss her for hours and hours. I want. And I know I can't. She's going to work. She can't show up with tree bark in her hair at a place where they serve twenty-five-dollar martinis and hundred-dollar scotch.
She presses against me, her body soft and strong and infinitely feminine. "It's probably setting feminism back a hundred years if I admit that hearing you go all caveman protective does something funny to my insides."
A bolt of heat spikes down my spine and tightens in the vicinity of my balls. The sharp, sudden pleasure is unexpected and oh so welcome. It's the closest thing to arousal I've felt since before things went to hell in my life.
"You're trying to kill me, aren't you?" I whisper near her ear.
"Maybe." She makes a warm sound. "Maybe it's been a long time since I felt like this with anyone."
I tug her close and breathe in the scent of her, clinging to the normalcy of the moment. Wishing it would last forever. Knowing that it won’t.
"Can I walk you home tonight?" I ask. I brace for her to say no again.
She brushes her thumb across my bottom lip. "I'd like that very much."
I don't want this time to end. I'm like a starving man, dying and hungry for her. Just her and the way I feel when I'm around her.
And I let her go. Because I have to remember how to live without her.
Abby
I'm supposed to be doing my homework. I'm on a break at the Baywater and I'm trying desperately to focus on my assignment for Quinn's class.
This week’s readings are quite literally hitting too close to home.
It's a section on domestic abuse.
And holy shit it is hard to read.
"You look like you're reading an obituary. Did someone die?"
I look up at Graham as he walks into the break room, then do a double-take when the joking tone of his voice stands in stark contrast to the damage on his face.
His left eye is swollen and purple. There's a small cut on his cheek. And his eyes, normally smiling and laughing, are bleak and filled with sadness.
I'm on my feet, assignment forgotten. "What happened?"
He shrugs and offers a sad smile. "Walked into a door."
My skin goes cold. My dinner turns into a solid ball in my stomach. I want to make a joke. I want him to laugh and tell me it's not what I think.
I cannot stand there and look at one of my best friends with a black eye and not think the worst.
Please don't say anything, Abby. It'll just make it worse.
I am eleven years old again. I am standing helpless in the kitchen where my mother is holding a frozen bag of blueberries wrapped in a towel to her split and bleeding lip.
My mouth moves, but no sound comes out. I can't form a coherent thought.
"My resident makeup artist friend is out of town for a fashion show or I would have asked him for help hiding the bruise." His voice breaks, and with it, my control.
I wrap my arms around his waist and just hold him. He's stiff for a moment, then relaxes into my embrace. Graham has been a rock for me and it breaks me a little bit to see him hurting like this.
A shudder runs through him. I blink rapidly, trying so hard not to f*ck
ing cry.
"Men really suck sometimes," I whisper.
He makes a strangled sound and straightens, stepping back out of my arms. "Don't I just know it."
"The boss isn't going to be happy with you behind the bar with a shiner." I take his hand. "Come on. Let's see if the apprentice has become a master."
It feels like a lifetime ago when Graham took me under his wing. He had Mitchell, his friend who did makeup at the local department store, show me how to do my own makeup so that I looked polished and posh. Over the years, I’ve passed that skillset on to new friends who arrived here, looking out of place.
Passing comes in all forms. And those of us who are first generation have a better chance of making it if we stick together.
Graham sits at the small table. I try to move my book before he sees it but I'm not quick enough. The silence is so strange without him making a joke or some sarcastic comment. "How's that for ironic? A college course on violence." He looks over at me. "Bet there's not much about the gay community, is there?"
I shake my head as I start laying out the supplies I'll need to conceal the bruising. "It remains very much a woman's issue."
Which sucks because real people get hurt when we pretend that the issues simply don't exist in other communities. "Want to talk about it?" I carefully apply green tinted primer to his skin, patting as gently as I can to avoid causing him any more pain.
I hate this. I hate the bruise on his skin. I hate the dark stain beneath his eyes and the red rimming them.
I hate the pain that love causes.