“Hey.” He takes my chin between his fingertips, obliging me to look at him. “I just… I need both of us to be sure.” His finger traces the frown line on my forehead. “Please don’t worry whether this has anything to do with wanting you. It doesn’t.”
I don’t ask about the multitude of girls I imagined parading through his bed. I don’t ask about Brooke. I just sigh and curl up against his chest, though I don’t remove my hand from under his shirt. Gained ground is gained ground. “Okay.” I feel distinctly pouty.
Laughing quietly, his arms encircle me. “Hmm. I’m not ready to stop kissing you, you know,” he says.
“I didn’t know,” I mumble into his shirt.
“Well, now you do.”
I lean my head back on his arm, my eyes meeting his. “So many warnings, so little action…” I sigh.
He growls and flips me onto my back, and we don’t fall asleep until close to 4 a.m. In the end his jeans are in a heap on the floor and my tank is decidedly askew and he’s taken at least three very serious breaks. Inexperience or not, I’m reasonably certain this adds up in my favor.
Chapter 15
GRAHAM
I was convinced Emma would cause me to internally combust last night.
It’s a lucky thing my sense of responsibility is so unswerving, because at some point between arriving in her room and falling asleep, I no longer cared whether or not she loved me—the desire was so powerful and overwhelming that my sense of emotional self-preservation was prepared to toss itself out the window and to hell with it. I must have suspected that weakness skulking below the surface, which was why I left my wallet (and the condom inside it) in my room when I went to hers. I know myself that well, at least—using protection is second nature. Not once since Zoe have I had unprotected sex.
I promised Emma three weeks, and I’ll willingly keep that promise, as worried as I might be that she doesn’t feel as strongly as I do. I suppose love is never a sure thing, no matter what words are spoken. Love requires a leap of faith into the abyss, every time.
I scribble a sappy note to leave on her nightstand. My sisters call me an old-fashioned boy. Perhaps this is the result of too much close-reading and analyzing of eighteenth century literature. Even still, there are romantic, old-school sides of myself I’ve never fully unleashed, and for some reason Emma brings every one of them to the surface.
Zoe didn’t care to be courted. When I left notes in her locker or under her windshield wiper, she asked if she had to respond in kind, and also why couldn’t I just text her like a normal person? And though she appreciated having an armful of carnations delivered from the Choir Cupid on Valentine’s Day, she paid little attention to the attached poem that took me a week to write.
Relatively sure that I was past such unmanly silliness by the time I met Emma, my feelings for her slammed into me, unexpected and inspiring. All of a sudden I found myself rivaling Keats and Rilke for romantic musings.
The first note I left for Emma was in Austin, after she told me about her mother’s death and we fell asleep watching television. That one was the result of several longer, more maudlin versions. I left the abbreviated edition on her night table, and threw the others away in my room. Since then, I’ve crafted poems to her in my head (discarded without being jotted down), written her two letters (put through the shredder in Mom’s home office), and tapped out multiple soul-baring texts (deleted without even being saved to drafts).
As I pull her door shut and it locks behind me, I have a two-second panic attack about the note I just left for her before I take a deep breath and head for my room. There’s no taking it back, apart from the fact that I don’t actually want to.
I round the corner and inexplicably, Brooke is standing in front of me. “Graham?” Her expression is bemused, head at an angle like a bemused puppy. She frowns at the ice bucket in my hand. “Are you… getting ice?” She points back to where the vending alcove is, which I’d have passed if I was coming from my room.
“Um. No?” My mind is blank. I have no idea what to offer as an excuse. Thank God I’m wearing pants.
She glances behind me towards Emma’s door, but thankfully, she doesn’t voice the question that flashes through her eyes, because I’d have to tell her it’s none of her business, which would answer her curiosity in any case. For some reason, she directs her best faux-smile at me. I seldom get the faux-smile from Brooke. “Are you about to check out?” she asks. Her Louis Vuitton overnight bag is slung over her shoulder, D&G sunglasses perched on her head, and I’m not sure what label the stilettos are, but I’d be willing to bet they’re the ones with the red undersides. She’s a walking LA-girl stereotype.
“Yeah. I’ve gotta grab a quick shower and then get a taxi to LAX.”
“I can take you.” She shrugs and turns to walk to my room with me. “It’s not like I have a booked schedule. And we didn’t get to hang out much this trip.”
I have been focused on Emma for the past three days. I didn’t consider that Brooke might want face time, too. “Oh. Okay, cool. Thanks.”
When we get to my room, I tell her to make herself at home while I shower. Twenty minutes later we’re crossing the lobby as Reid is coming in with his bodyguard. “You two leaving?” he asks, unnecessarily, since we’re both holding luggage.
I’m anticipating Brooke’s sure-to-be acerbic answer when she says, without a trace of condescension, “Yeah, I’m taking Graham to the airport.”