Chapter 19
Justin
Saturday night takes forever to come, but when Allie opens the door to her apartment, the sight of her makes the wait worth it. The smile on her face is warm and welcoming, and her gray eyes are bright. She’s dressed simply in a tank and flowing skirt that doesn’t reach her knees, and she looks beautiful from the top of her head all the way to her sandal-clad feet. Those bare legs are going to drive me shit-crazy all night. The nerves I tried to conquer in the car detonate inside of me at how badly I want this second chance to be perfect.
“Hello.” She gestures for me to come inside. “You must be Justin.”
I grin at her way of starting over and roll with it. “And you must be Allie. Your picture on the website doesn’t do you justice. You’re far more beautiful in person.”
“Ah, thank you,” she says, laughing.
Stepping inside, I hand her the flowers and bottle of wine in my hands. Sam is getting sick of me dragging him to the wine store, but by summer I’ll be legal.
Her smile grows. “You didn’t need to bring anything.” She lifts the bouquet of sunflowers, and whatever else the florist put in there. “But they’re lovely.”
“There’s need and there’s want. I wanted to.”
Still smiling, she shakes her head slightly. “Well, I suppose we did need the wine. I didn’t have time to get creative. Busy week at work. So we’re having dinner here.”
“Sounds perfect.”
She shuts the door and I glance around the apartment. If I keep looking at her, we won’t be eating dinner.
We’re in a big, carpeted room with a small dining table at one end and a leather couch across from a TV at the other. The tall tiled counter/bar behind the table opens to a narrow galley kitchen. Everything is plain and simple, from the wooden table to the cotton curtains. Except for the paintings on the walls. They’re bright and vibrant. I walk to one that hangs above the square dining table. Decrepit old buildings lining the edges of the painting frame the colorful swirling sky at its center.
“This yours?” I ask as she sets the wine on the counter/bar and reaches for an empty vase near the sink.
“Yes…you like?”
“It’s amazing.” I lean closer, studying the paint strokes. “There appears to be a contrast with the deteriorating buildings and the beauty of sunset.”
“Pretty much what I was going for,” she says, unwrapping the flowers and turning on the kitchen faucet.
I move toward the painting above the couch. “Your son?”
“Yes, Ben at two months.”
The wide-eyed baby lies in a bright blanket, with swirling colors leaping out of the painting. I let out a low whistle. “And I thought your tats were good.”
Setting the flower-filled vase on the table, Allie smiles with satisfaction. I’d love to see that look in bed. “Thank you. That’s quite a compliment coming from someone who has been to as many museums and galleries as you.”
I glance at a painting of wilting sunflowers, obviously van Gogh inspired, in the kitchen. “You’re almost too good to be inking.”
“I used to think so. At first.” She frowns slightly and absently rearranges the flowers in the vase. “There’s just something about creating on skin. Having someone put your work on their wall doesn’t compare to them letting you permanently mark their body. Body art doesn’t stay home. It’s carried around all the time. Forever.”
“Unless it gets removed.”
“Well, yes, there’s that.…” Her lips tighten. “Though it’s quite the ordeal.”
From her expression, I’m guessing she might have firsthand experience with tattoo removal, but I want her look of misery gone, so I tap the large bin of Legos at the end of the couch with a foot. “These yours?”
She blinks innocently at me. “Of course. I love Legos.”
We both laugh until she bites that lip ring and a ping of lust has my nerves twitching.
She knits her eyebrows together and frowns slightly at the bottle of wine on the counter. “I’m not sure I have a wine thingy to open the bottle.”
I tilt my head in thought. “Well, instead of pulling it out, we could push it in.”
She gasps.
A laugh bursts from me. “I’m talking about the cork, you pervert.”
She turns pink. “You must be rubbing off on me.”
My lips twitch as I hold in another laugh.
Her pink cheeks grow red. “Ugh,” she says, with a deprecating tone. “I need to shut up. We need to eat.” She moves toward the kitchen.
Digging a wine key from my pocket, I go to the bar.
Her eyes narrow on the corkscrew as I twist it in. “You are the perv. You set me up.”
I give her an innocent look.
“Fine, two can play at that game. Pour yourself a big glass of wine. You’ll need it after the extra spice I’m going to add to your dinner.”
I lower my eyelids seductively. “I like a little extra spice.”
She reaches into a colander next to the sink and whips a noodle at me. I catch it before it smacks me in the face. “I can get naked and lie on the table, if you want to eat off me.”
A laugh escapes her. “You are awful,” she says, turning to the stove.
After tossing the noodle back at her, I pull the cork out. “Should I have brought glasses?”
She pretends to glare at me and yanks the noodle from her arm. “We have glasses.” Her lips push together and that damn ring catches my eye again. She glances around the small kitchen. “Somewhere.”
She searches high and low for wine glasses, bending and stretching to reach inside the cupboards until I have to look away. Never thought something so innocent would rile me up so much.
“Ah, finally” she says, reaching into the cabinet above the refrigerator.
Finally is right.
She sets two champagne flutes on the counter. I’m not about to comment on the difference between wine glasses and champagne flutes. “Why don’t you go pour and I’ll plate.”
I reach for the glasses. “Don’t forget my extra spice.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
The table is already set for two, with bright linen and silverware. At opposite ends. Glancing at Allie busy in the kitchen, I move one setting next to the other. Allie raises an eyebrow when she comes in with two steaming plates but doesn’t say anything about the new table arrangement.
She sets the dishes down. “Hope you like chicken pad thai.”
I glance at the chicken, sauce, and noodles. “Never had it, but it smells great.”
“You like spicy, right?”
“I think we already covered that.”
She lets out a harrumph and sits. “It’s too spicy for Ben, so I rarely get to cook it.”
I spear a piece of chicken. “How old is Ben?”
“Five,” she says. She watches me mentally doing math as I chew. “I had him at sixteen. Well, I was almost seventeen.”
Fuck. That’s way too young to be having a kid. Afraid I might blurt the words, I point to the food. “This is really good. Nutty and spicy.” I twirl some noodles onto my fork. Then keeping my tone light, I ask, “So how does that happen?”
She blinks at me in confusion.
“I mean, I know how it happened. It’s just…what about protection?”
Her gaze turns level.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I say, realizing how she’s construing my question. “I wasn’t trying to be rude. It’s probably—no, definitely none of my business,” I mumble, wondering how I’m going to dig myself out this time.
The barbells in her eyebrow drop. “Sometimes condoms don’t work.”
A twinge of horror runs through my body and I blurt, “Don’t tell me that.”
“But it had more to do with alcohol and other substances that lead to not being careful.”
Still scared shitless at the thought of a condom not working—I mean, I’ve heard about that but never known anyone to have a kid because of it—it takes me a few seconds to understand what she’s saying. I give her an astonished look. “You?”
“Prior to being pregnant, way too much.” She shrugs. “After I got pregnant, never.”
“I’m having a hard time imagining you as a wild partier.”
“I wasn’t until I started dating Trevor. And really, only when I was with him. Trevor ruled my world from the moment he noticed me in art class at the end of freshman year. It didn’t help that he was a junior.”
Trevor is the last person I want to talk about. He’s the one big if between us. I try to change the topic in a subtle way. “Was it tough being pregnant and going to high school?”
“At first no. I was kind of in my own little bubble trying to figure out the changes happening to my body and life.” She stops cutting a piece of chicken, and sets her knife on the edge of the plate. “But when I started showing, people did act a little weird, even some of the teachers, and that made me feel weird too. My life changed faster than I could mentally keep up. Trevor had already graduated, so my social life at high school was almost nonexistent except for my art friends. Then he broke up with me and got back together with Jazz.”
I frown. I’d imagined they dated, had Ben, graduated, then married.
She picks up the knife again and absently taps at the edge of her plate. “The pity came at me in waves from people I didn’t even know. I started hating school. All those pitying looks reminded me of my heartbreak.”
Taking in her sad tone, I admit, “I would’ve quit.”
“After I had Ben in the summer, I went back senior year for about a month. But it was stupid for me to spend seven hours sitting around with high school kids while my baby was in daycare. I decided to take the GED and go to community college for a couple of classes.”
“And then marry the dick who left you,” I say, unable to stop myself.
She reaches for her glass of wine but stares at her plate. “I should have learned the first time, huh?”
I do not want to talk anymore about fucking Trevor, who is obviously a major fuckhead, and the idea of his having power over her makes me set down my fork. “Allie, you’re beautiful and sexy.” Her grip tightens around the stem of her glass. “But everything else about you is amazing too. Your direct personality, your talent, the way you handle your business, your commitment to your son—I’m attracted to it all. The idea Trevor would leave you is mind-boggling.”
Eyes wide, she lifts her glass with a trembling hand. “Um, wow, I’m a bit taken aback but thank you.” She takes a sip of wine and clears her throat. “What about you? What was high school like for you?”
Since she appears a bit shaken by my revelation, I lightly say, “It was all right. I played football and ran track. Partied a lot. Got semishitty grades. The ACT saved my ass for college.”
“I imagine you were popular.”
Her tone is light, but I’m guessing that coming from her little art circle the popular thing bugs her. I shrug. “In some ways, but I never had real friends like you. More like a circle I partied with.”
Watching me, sadness crosses her face.
Feeling like I opened up too much, I absently twirl more noodles on my fork. “So tell me about Ben.”
Her face lights up. “He’s in kindergarten this year. He’s read over thirty books so far. Granted, they’re like ten pages long, but he’s really smart. He loves science and anything to do with building. He was building complicated Legos structures by the time he was three.”
I don’t catch everything she says about Ben. It’s hard to pay attention to her words when her face is so animated and open. She’s never been like this with me. We keep eating and I keep asking about Ben and she keeps talking, all the way through dessert, a rich, chocolate cake she made from scratch. She smiles, she laughs, and her eyes are a warm gray while she talks. I’m enjoying listening to her, which is something I never do. I rarely want to talk with women. There’s usually far more interesting things to do with them. But watching Allie’s glow as she talks about her son has me more than content with the conversation.
When she clears the dessert plates, I refill our glasses and follow her into the kitchen, where she starts rinsing plates.
She glances over her shoulder. “I just want to let them soak. I can do the dishes later.”
I set the flutes down and reach for the towel lying on the counter. “Go ahead and wash them. The least I can do is dry after you cooked such a great dinner.”
“Ha. You live in the dorms.” She reaches for a scrubber sitting on the back of the sink, and I catch a glimpse of her sunflower tattoo. “Anything not out of a box or fast food wrapper is five stars.”
“True. I should own stock in frozen burritos. But then I’ve eaten in restaurants across Europe, thus my compliment does carry some weight, and dinner was great, Allie.”
Smiling slightly, she hands me a dripping washed plate. “Thanks.”
“Thanks for cooking.”
“Student exchange?” she asks, scrubbing at a pot.
It takes me a second to realize she’s referring to my travels. “Vacations,” I say, drying the clean dish. “My parents are quite the globe-trotters.”
With a sideways glance, she studies me for a long moment while I dry another plate. “What exactly do your parents do?”
“My father’s a retired surgeon. My mother’s a socialite.” I hold up the clean dishes and give her a questioning look.
“Set them there.” Her hands in sudsy water, she nods toward the peninsula between the galley kitchen and main room. “I’ll put them away when we’re done.” She turns back toward the sink. “My father works in a car parts factory.”
The message in her tone is loud and clear. We were raised worlds apart. I dry a pan and set it next to the plates. “Did your father spend time with you as a kid?”
She gives me an odd glance as she rinses a spatula. “Of course.”
“Well, mine was too busy. Then too tired. Money isn’t everything.”
She nods at me. “Very true.” She places the last pan in the rack. “Didn’t they take you to those museums?”
“My mother shopped. My father relaxed. I wandered.”
“Oh, wandering alone in huge rooms full of art,” she says, letting the water out of the sink. She doesn’t turn around but says, “That sounds unbelievably lonely. Too lonely for a teenage boy, Justin.”
At the pity in her voice, I toss the towel on the counter and step behind her. Pity is the last thing I want from her. I wrap my hand in her silky hair and drop the curls over her shoulder, then brace myself against the counter with my other hand. “I didn’t have it too bad. I got to see this, right?” I touch my lips to the sunflower at the base of her neck.
“Yes,” she whispers as her body trembles.
Kissing the flowering ink is all I intended to do, but the way her body trembles at the touch of my lips pushes me to move my mouth up to her hairline. “You smell like sunshine,” I murmur, my lips grazing her skin.
Her entire body quivers. Her fingers clutch the edge of the counter while mine grasp her hip to steady her, or maybe to steady myself. My lips follow her hairline and brush alongside the soft skin of her ear. I take the soft lobe into my mouth. She gasps and turns toward me. That’s all the invitation I need.
“I bet you taste like it too,” I whisper, covering her mouth with my own. She tastes like wine and chocolate—reminding me of the night on the roof—and like I said, sunshine. The little sigh she lets out when my tongue slides into her mouth has me pinning her to the counter. She kisses me back, running her tongue along mine slowly then exploring the roof of my mouth, and desire shoots through me like lightning. I pull away for a moment, my fingers digging into her hipbone, but unable to help myself I close in again and start sucking at the corner of her mouth, then lick that sexy ring.
She gives another little moan and presses her round ass against me. I let out a low chuckle. Fuck. Something has to be released because I’m more wound up than a drummer on coke. After one damn kiss. And we’re still fully clothed. Holding her hips and resting my cheek on the soft skin of her neck, I feel like the thirteen-year-old boy I used to be, all crazy and wound up after nothing more than a make-out session.
Our heavy breathing fills the kitchen. She still doesn’t move, simply stands there as heat builds between our bodies. We’re motionless as we press into each other, but my hands have a mind of their own as they slide up and cover her breasts. Her breath catches. The sound of it is too sweet. Shit. I need to slow down before I have her skirt up and I’m taking her in the kitchen. I do not want our first time to be in a tiny kitchen against the cupboards. But she’s too damn sensitive as she leans forward, pushing her breasts into my palms, and sighing, “Justin.”
The way she says my name reverberates to my gut. I can’t help slipping a hand under her tank and bra. My fingers explore and caress her skin. She moans and bends farther over the sink until I almost lose it.
Oh shit, we’re not going to make it to a bed, I think as my lips glide along her jaw while my other hand drops below the counter between her and the lower cupboards. Desire comes off her in waves as her body shudders. My tongue slides between her open lips as my fingers press between her legs and start to explore. She lets out a deep moan and almost bucks me away. My fingers circle and press. Her hips follow the movement. Then gripping the counter until her knuckles are bone white, she melts and trembles beneath me.
Amazed at how responsive she is, I slow the kiss, cupping her as she comes down. When she exhales, I brush her ear with my mouth. “Where’s your bedroom?”
Her eyes pop open. She blinks twice then starts twisting in my embrace. Obviously, that was the wrong question. I release her and step back. She scoots to the far end of the kitchen. “Whoa, that was—that was—”
“Enjoyable?” I brace myself between the two counters and take a deep breath.
“Intense.” She swipes her glass off the counter and takes a huge gulp. Her nervous eyes catch mine. “I know I came on strong the night you brought me home, but…” She takes another gulp of wine. “I’ve never been with anyone except Trevor, and obviously”—she blushes—“it’s been a while. I may need time before—before…”
I’m stupidly ecstatic she’s never been with anyone other than her ex. Though I’m still wound up tighter than a teenager, I say, “Hey, I’m not in any rush. Like a fine wine, I can wait for things to mature between us.”
She blurts, “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?”
“After the way I acted the other night, I thought you might think…Well, especially here alone in my apartment and me being a single mother…” She stares at the wine in her hand.
I step forward and gently lift her chin. “I’m not going to lie. I was hoping. I’ve wanted you since that first night at your shop.” She’s frozen still as I stroke her skin with a thumb. “But I don’t want you to feel pressured, and I sure as shit don’t want you to have any reservations. I want it to be perfect.” I lean closer until my lips almost touch hers. “It may be as tough as hell for me, but anytime you feel like we’re moving too fast just tell me.” Unable to resist, I give her lip ring another soft kiss. “Okay?”
She nods slightly but still appears nervous.
I’ve never wanted a girl’s trust, but I want this girl to trust me. Bad.
My hand slowly drops from her chin. “It’s a warm night. How about we end it with a walk?”
She stares at me like I have two heads but finally says, “All right. Let me get a jacket.” She steps around the peninsula and opens a closet in the living room. I drain the rest of my wine in one gulp, then open the door for her. Stepping outside, she glances at me and there’s a slight curve to her lips—and maybe a hint of trust in those granite eyes.