∞
I can’t keep my eyes off the clock. I try to distract myself with my dissertation, but all I can think about is Blaire, onstage. All I can think about is sweat glistening along the curve of her neck, and her mouth forming words that are a window into her soul.
A soul I desperately want to know intimately.
I’ve just decided to blow off the last half hour of my shift when a guy with floppy green hair and a skateboard under his arm crests the stairs and heads toward me. I have to restrain myself from telling him to fuck off when he drops a list on the counter in front of me.
“I need a bunch of this stuff.”
“I’m on my way out,” I say, shoving my laptop in my messenger bag. “Come back Monday.”
He shoves a hand into his hair. “Oh, man! Seriously? Because this fucking paper is due Monday. I’ve got to pound it out this weekend.”
“And your professor just assigned it today,” I say, hoping my indifference clearly indicates I’m not feeling the need to bail him out.
“Please,” he begs. “You’ve got to help me out here, man. I’m already on academic probation.”
I take a deep breath and look at the clock. I’ve technically got twenty-two minutes left. I take his list off the counter and scan it. “You’re never going to be able to read all of these by Monday and write a paper. The topic’s something to do with Bleak House?”
He nods a little manically. “I’m supposed to write about how shit in Dickens’s personal life influenced the story.”
“Have you read the book?”
His face twists into a chagrinned grimace.
I take a deep breath and turn for my desk, pulling open the lowest drawer. I thumb through my personal collection of Spark Notes and find the one I’m looking for. “You’re welcome,” I say, handing it to him as I step around the counter. “Come on.”
The kid follows me to the stacks. I pull the Dickens biography on his list that has the most information on that period of his life. I look for another that’s not on his list, but might help, but find it gone. I drop the book on the table and pull it open, looking for the right section. “You’re going to want to read these four chapters.” I say, slipping my Spark Notes out of his hand. “And I’ve got some notations already in here.”
We spend the next forty-five minutes pulling together a rough outline for him to follow, then I head to the desk and check him out.
“Thanks, dude!” he says with a grin as he shoves everything in his backpack.
I hike my bag onto my shoulder and hoof it toward the stairs. “Whatever. Just bring my notes back when you’re done.”
∞
When I push through the door into Tino’s, the teenage poet who’s always here is onstage. As best as I can tell coming in halfway through, his poem is about what happens when we fall short of society’s expectations. But I’m only half listening, my eyes searching the room for Blaire. I find her sitting with a group of poets at a table up front.
I step up to their table and none of them notice me at first, their eyes glued to the competition on stage. But then Blaire’s eyes migrate to me, as if she could feel me here.
She slips out of her seat and comes to where I’m standing. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Did I miss you?”
She nods. “First tonight.”
For several beats of my hammering heart we stand here staring at each other, then she takes my hand and we walk to the door. She sees my car parked up the block and we keep walking. When we reach it, I click it open and we climb inside.
She leans toward me slowly and stops less than an inch away. Her lips are parted and her warm breath feathers my face as she stares into my eyes.
I loop my fingers behind her neck and crush her mouth in a desperate kiss. I can taste everything I need to quell this insatiable desire right there on her lips. Her fingers trickle over my chest and I can’t breathe. Her touch is electric, scrambling all my synapses.
She draws away and trails a finger over the lines of my face. “Take me home with you, Caiden.”
I start the engine without having to be told again, but then realize I need to check in with Chris. I text and find out he’s at Taryn’s tonight. He’s only been home a few times since their fight, but he texts me every day so I know he’s still alive.
I drive faster than I should and make the half-hour drive in twenty minutes. It’s only as we’re pulling up that it occurs to me I wish she didn’t have to know where I live. The entire town of East Overton is a slum. I live in the ghetto of East Overton, in an apartment building full of crackheads and deadbeats.