5. Parley
The next morning, there was an e-mail from Lydia in my in-box. (You know you and your roommate are in a fight when you get e-mails from the other side of the suite.)
From: Lydia.Travinecek@eli.edu
Subject: Last night
Honey, I don’t know how everything deteriorated last night. I certainly wasn’t looking to pick a fight with you. I’m sorry if you took my attempts to be a good friend the wrong way, because that’s all I ever want to be for you. I love you and will always stand by you, even if I don’t agree with your choices and no matter what kind of petty squabbles we have.
Love,
Lydia :)
Hmph. If she wants to be taken seriously in politics, she might consider nixing the smiley faces. And so like her to try to get the last word in, too!
Though, true to form, the more I began to ruminate on Lydia’s words, the more I started to question the status quo with Brandon. I figured I was only being fair by not asking for clarification. After all, last year, when we’d actually been sleeping together, I’d kept Brandon on the hook for several months. What was a week, by comparison?
Still, I couldn’t help running my mouth at our next get-together. Brandon was standing behind me, supposedly checking the essay I was editing but concentrating more on the neck massage I’d asked for. I’d even planted two spelling errors in the first paragraph, but he hadn’t noticed.
“How’s Felicity?” I asked, apropos of nothing and in the most innocent tone I could muster.
His hands stilled on my nape. Rule broken. “Fine.”
“Are you still dating her?” The words fell like bombs, shattering our arrangement to bits.
He sat back on the bed. “I thought I wasn’t…that first night. You have to know that.”
“And since then? How can you think you’re not?” I asked. “Aren’t you smart enough to determine something like that beyond a reasonable doubt?”
“It’s not that simple, and you know it.”
Hadn’t I just made this argument to Lydia? So then, why did it suddenly feel so hollow?
“The day after…” He gestured to the bed. “She came and apologized. She loves me, Amy. She loves me. And I…care about her, too. So she made me promise. That I’d…think about it.”
“Think about not breaking up with her?” I asked. “Or think about getting back together with her?” There was a subtle but important difference.
He looked away.
I joined him on the bed, sitting as close to him as our unspoken rules allowed. His hand rested on his thigh, and I covered it with my own, splaying my fingers so that their tips spilled over onto his jeans. “I’m sorry,” I said, softly, sweetly. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
But I wasn’t sorry. My fingers moved in a subtle caress of his leg, and I watched him carefully to see how he’d respond. His back stiffened, his gaze flew to my hand. It had been a mistake, I realized, not to press the issue. A mistake that Brandon himself had made with me last year when I’d been the one unsure of where I wanted our relationship to go. I’d learned something from his failure: Don’t take amorphous for an answer.
“More than anything, I don’t want to put you in a tough position,” I went on, and slipped my arms around him. I dropped my head to his shoulder and snuggled into one of our new, almost-over-the-line hugs. I ran my hands up and down his back, wondering what he would do if I slipped them beneath the hem of his sweater to touch his bare skin.
No, I didn’t want to make his choice difficult at all. I wanted it to be so easy to pick me. And now I realized that if I wanted to, I could force a decision right here. I held him tighter. “This is so nice.”
I felt his breath against my hair, and his lips brushed my temple. “Amy…”
Am I evil? No. So he had a girlfriend, marginally. Temporarily. So what? I don’t know her. She’s not a friend of mine. I don’t owe her anything. I was with Brandon first, had known him far longer. And the way he says my name…no one says it like that. He could never say her name like that.
I felt him put his arms around me, felt his fingertips trailing along the waistband of my jeans, into the gap between the top of my pants and the bottom of my sweater. I felt his hands at the base of my spine, covering the Rose & Grave tattoo I’d put there the weekend he’d broken up with me. As far as I knew, he’d never seen it.
I wasn’t the same girl Brandon had known last spring. Now he was dealing with an Amy Haskel who ran with the big boys. I’d been around the block with George Harrison Prescott. I’d learned a thing or two about seduction.
Wouldn’t he be surprised? I lifted my face, brought it close to his. I’d come so far, he could be the one to make that last step, to break the rules we’d never made explicit, but had followed nonetheless. “Brandon.” The word was a breath.
“Amy, we should stop.” But he wasn’t meeting my eyes. He was looking at my mouth. His fingers tripped along my spine, beneath my shirt.
“I missed you so much.” Another whisper, another murmur.
“This is wrong.” Instead of pressing his lips to mine, he leaned in farther, rested his face against my jawline. Spoke the words into my cheek, into my neck. I could feel his mouth there, moving. But he was still only speaking. Not kissing. “We shouldn’t…”
Hell yeah, we should. And we should have done it already. Man, if I were George, I’d already have my partner’s clothes off.
If I were George…
Inwardly, I reeled. Outwardly, I somehow managed to keep from shoving Brandon across the room in an effort to put distance between us. But I did draw away, and as I did, I saw twin expressions of disappointment and relief on Brandon’s face. What was I thinking? What had I turned into?
“I should go,” Brandon said. “I have to—”
“Don’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“I have to think,” he finished. “Please let me think about this?”
I shrugged, my eyes downcast. “Sure.”
He cupped my face in his hands. “Amy, don’t be upset. God, you’re so amazing. I just have to think about how I’m going to…handle things. I want to be fair to her. She’s been so good to me.”
“Of course.” Of course Brandon would think like that. He’s such a nice person. And look what I’d just tried to do to him. He didn’t need seduction and manipulation. He needed patience and understanding and to handle things in his own, gentlemanly way. I could give him that. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve just been so stressed recently.”
“Applications?” he asked, sounding back on firmer footing.
“And other stuff.” I laid my head on his shoulder. “I know we don’t talk about it, and that’s fine. I can’t even get into it now. You’ll just think it’s silly.”
“What?”
I laughed in self-recrimination. “It’s just…society nonsense.” I’m being targeted by Dragon’s Head as payback for the latest round of a fifty-year-old feud sounded way too silly to speak aloud.
At the door, we held each other for a long time, breathing as one, doing everything that a kissing couple would do that didn’t actually involve mouths. It was hotter than a lot of the sex I’d had. Then he left, and I floated back to my desk, relieved that we’d finally worked things out between us.
And then I didn’t hear from him for days.
After the first day, I sent Brandon an e-mail, and then another two days later. In between, I left two messages on his answering machine. No response. There was no way the ball could be construed as being in my court.
When it came, his volley took an interesting form. On Wednesday, as I was working, a tiny IM window popped up on my screen.