“Owen,” I say in a hushed voice as he draws near, “maybe we should—”
His mouth attacks mine mid-sentence, sweeping the words away, squeezing my body between his and the smooth, cool surface of the tree-shaded car. Giant arms wrap around my hips and pull my center of gravity toward him. Once again I’m lost, leaning into his hard torso as if it’s a missing piece. He kisses me slow but firm, lips savoring, tongue caressing mine with the tenderness of restraint.
I hear the click of his doors unlocking, and suddenly he’s pulling me to him, making me light with the strength of his arm as he reaches out his other to open the door. He lifts me onto the back seat, disorienting me just long enough for him to move inside on top of me, shut the door behind him, and crush me satisfyingly into the upholstery, under his giant, sculpted body.
We wrestle against each other in the cramped space of the back seat, pushing harsh, needy breaths into the air as we pull and tear at each other’s clothes, desperate to put skin on skin, mouths biting and sucking at each other’s. I pull his shirt from his pants, slide my hands up underneath it to claw at the taut muscles of his back, while Owen tugs at the zipper of my skirt, his other hand sliding up into my panties to feel my wetness.
Owen dips his head to devour the exposed flesh around my camisole, hand kneading my breasts while I claw at his back. He rolls my top down to suck on my bare breast, and just as I feel the hot delight of his mouth on my nipple I freeze.
“Shh!” I hiss, gripping Owen’s hair to hold him tight against me. “Owen, stop!”
The words are lost in the noise of rustling clothes and lips smacking on flesh.
“I can’t,” he growls into my breast.
Then the sound that caused me to freeze rings out again.
“Guys? Owen?”
The voice is louder now, clear enough for even Owen to hear. His head snaps up and we shoot each other the same blood-curdled look of a million horror movie victims.
“Fuck,” he mutters, and like a starting shot we reverse everything we’ve just done, hurrying in a tangled mess to tuck clothes back in, smooth hair, and straighten ourselves up.
“Margo?” the voice calls out again.
“Stay here,” Owen says frantically, sitting up a little, his hand on the passenger door.
“Wait!” I whisper quickly, tucking a flap of shirt back into his pants and then grabbing his face to kiss him one more time before he exits the car, as if I might never see him again, unable to contain how much I want him even in this last stolen moment.
When I pull away, Owen’s smiling, and for a second I think he’s about to say something, but then the voice interrupts again.
“Owen?” I recognize the voice. It’s Brad. Of course it is.
Swiftly, Owen swings open the door and steps outside, casual indifference personified. “Hey buddy. What’s up?” he says.
“Yo, dude! They just laid the mocha out. It’s going quick so I figured I’d come out and—who’s that?”
I see Brad’s face poke into the tiny space between the open passenger door.
“Margo?” he exclaims, his voice musical with confusion.
I smile and climb out of the car as calmly as I can. “Hey,” I say, looking at Owen, then back at Brad. I thumb back at the car. “I was just…uh…”
“Dropped her phone down the side of the passenger seat on the way over here,” Owen says, nodding at me dismissively. “Or that’s what she thought, anyway…we’ve been looking for it for the past ten minutes.” He shoots me a look of bemused frustration. “You sure you didn’t just forget it back at the office?”
“Uh…yeah,” I say, hoping Brad interprets my difficulty lying as embarrassment. “Maybe I did.”
“Pfft,” Owen mutters at Brad, shaking his head rudely. “Women.”
“Dude, she’s always been like that,” Brad says to him, as if I’m not even here.
“Tell me about it,” Owen mutters back at him as he turns to go back into the restaurant, Brad mirroring his movements.
I watch them walk back there together, leaving me standing by the car. Half weirded out by the chummy manner in which they talked to each other, half stunned by how easily Owen can cover up a lie again. I shut the car door and start to follow them.
That’s when Owen looks back at me, his mouth fixed in a sigh of relief, before winking at me the way he always does. Suddenly I’m panicking. Waking up and realizing how stupid this is, sneaking out of a work lunch to fool around in the back of his car like a couple of high school kids. As if all of this wasn’t dangerous enough. As if I hadn’t already signed myself up for a boatload of pain and disappointment the second I started fucking Owen. Maybe this should be a wake-up call—maybe almost getting caught by Brad is a sign that now’s the time to end this.
The problem is, I’m not sure I can.
15
Owen
Some people can take a lot of time to show you what they’re all about. You can meet them, spend a lot of time hanging out, and somehow six months later still feel like you only know them a little, that you’ve still got a lot to learn and discover about who they really are.
Other people you can figure out in three seconds flat. My best friend Manny is one of those.
Manny lives on overload, dancing along the line between excess and self-destruction. Just having him near you is like somebody pressing the fast forward button on reality. You can see how much he’s lived from the tattoos that run from his muscled limbs up to his wide neck, you can feel how much he loves life in the manic, booming laugh that can shake foundations two blocks away. A jaw tough enough to take a baseball bat and a mouth that should come with a parental guidance warning.
A couple thousand years ago Manny would have been the first barbarian at the gates of the Roman empire, fifty years ago he’d have been a Hell’s Angel watching Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, but five years ago he was just as wild as me, fucking and partying his way across L.A. like the end of the world was coming. In fact, that’s how we met—fighting over a girl that neither of us ended up taking home that night, because once we realized we were on the same frequency we bailed on that half-assed party and went to a rooftop bar where the chicks were even hotter. Now he owns a fusion food truck that parks most days near Venice Beach, serving Korean barbecue tacos to people with good taste, adding extra helpings of attention for any girl with a body as attractive as the food.
It makes sense in a way; Manny eats like he fucks, fucks like he fights, and fights like he loves it. The guy is savage, wild, unpredictable, and the best friend I’ve ever had.