“The company I worked for right out of business school had an office there. I thought I’d just visit it from time to time. But instead, they relocated me. So I spent a year in Paris, learning the ropes, and the firm did a lot of business with small suppliers who made handcrafted special goods. High-quality watches, and leather bags, and wallets and such. And I was able to observe some of the processes, the handiwork, the craftsmanship. It got me thinking I could do the same back in the States, but I had to capitalize on something that was on the cusp of being popular but that wouldn’t just be a trend. That’s when the cufflink idea came to me, so when I returned from Paris I connected with Wilco,” he said, referring to his former business partner. “He was the money guy. I was the idea guy. So he raised the capital and I started building the business. And voila. Four years later, here we are.”
I noted that he didn’t say anything bad about Wilco, when it would be so easy to disparage the man given the trouble he’d caused for Made Here. “Voila, indeed. So I take it you’re fluent?”
“Oui.”
“Moi aussi.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So then I can flirt with you in French and it’ll be like a secret language just between us,” he said to me in French.
Flirt. Secret. Us. What was he doing using words like that? Playing with my emotions? “Yeah, not so secret, Bryan. A few million people speak French.”
Then I turned to look out the window. We were passing through a beautiful town in Pennsylvania, rushing by farmhouses and stately white homes with impeccably trimmed green lawns and shrubs.
He peered out the window too, his body moving closer to mine, doing that thing he did where he migrated into my space. I could feel his chest against my arm as we watched the towns zoom by. Soon, he reached his arm across my back, his hand touching my shoulder. Technically, it was the sort of thing friends might do. But it didn’t feel like we were friends. It didn’t even feel like flirting. It felt like foreplay.
And I didn’t want to pretend anymore.
I didn’t want to be mean anymore.
I didn’t want to toss barbs at him anymore.
I wanted him to touch me, so I didn’t dare move. I didn’t risk a look or a glance. The moment was full of too much heat that I didn’t trust myself. I thought I was over him. I thought he’d earned the spot I’d tucked him in back in the far corner of my mind. I was wrong. I had been forcing him there for five years. Because now, with him by my side, inches away, looking out the window of a racing train, I knew all I’d done was white knuckle it through. I’d faked my way through every other relationship, when all I was doing was resisting him. He was the only one I’d ever wanted like this, and my body was on fire for him.
He leaned in to whisper to me, and I closed my eyes. I felt as if I might collapse into him. “The towns are so pretty, Kat. Don’t you think?”
“Yes,” I managed to say without melting into his arms.
“And sometimes, I think, they’re even prettier five years later. Just like you. You’re even prettier now, and you were beautiful then.”
I wanted to turn my face towards his and let him devour me in kisses, let his hands find their way underneath my shirt, and onto my skin. I could see kisses on my neck, lips on my belly, legs wrapped around him. It was almost too much to bear. I tried to shake the images – these pictures of him on me, in me, under me – but they’d staked out a home.
Somewhere, there was a modicum of restraint in me, because I didn’t answer him.
Soon, the train pulled into our stop. We both rose, and I noticed his cheeks were flushed. He looked at me, his eyes darker than usual, full of unsaid things.
Chapter Eight
I’d had a few boyfriends before I met Bryan, but none of them serious. I was the artsy girl growing up, so I was always drawn to those types too, and went out with a dark-haired hipster guy who inked comic books when I was a junior in high school, then to senior prom with a totally beautiful golden boy who looked like the quarterback but wrote like a poet, including a sonnet for me tucked inside the corsage.
I liked them both, but they didn’t compare to Bryan. They didn’t come close in any department, not in my heart, and definitely not in the kissing division. Any girl who says she doesn’t keep a list of best kisses ever is lying. She may not have a pen-and-paper list, but she knows in her head who rocked her world and made her more than weak in the knees. Bryan was my butterflies-in-the-belly, my soft-and-hungry-and-neverending kisses. He was all the kisses I’d ever want. Because he was kind, and he was witty, and he always wanted to know more about me, and maybe that’s why he kissed like a dream – he was my dream guy.
One summer night Bryan and I went to the water and stretched out on a blanket on the sand. As I ran my hands over his chest and his stomach, he made this noise, like a low growl and a sigh all in one, and I wanted to pull his perfect body to mine and move against him.
“We can’t do more than kiss,” he said as my fingers explored the underside of his tee-shirt while the midnight waves rolled along the beach, then back out to the ocean.
“Why?”
“Because. Because I’m your brother’s friend. Because I’m older than you.”
“You’re only five years older,” I pointed out.
“I know. But you’re seventeen.”
“So? I’m old enough to know what I want.”
“I know, and I want it too. But it’s wrong.”
“Would it be wrong then when I’m eighteen?”
I looped my hands around his back and wriggled my hips closer. From the feel of him against me, I doubted it would be wrong. I was sure it would only be right.
“Kat.”
“Would it be wrong when I’m eighteen?” I repeated, bringing my lips to his, and running my fingers across his smooth, strong back. He shuddered under my touch, and I felt powerful. I felt wanted. I felt like the girl who was becoming irresistible to the boy.
“No.”
“So then…” I let my voice trail off. He was leaving for New York in a week to start his job. I was starting school a month later. Nervous hope clanged inside me. “I’m going to be in New York soon too. I’m going to NYU.”
“I know, and you’re going to love it. But my job is going to take me out of town a lot,” he said, and my heart sank. I wanted to be more than his summer love. Summer romances, by definition, are bittersweet. They have an expiration date. “Don’t be sad, Kat. I’m totally falling for you, and I don’t want to take advantage of you. I like you that much.”