Beautiful Player (11 page)

I could almost feel his determination through the phone when he said,
Let me know when you need a minute of ALONE time. Are you ready?

No. Absolutely not.
Yes.

You were wearing this shirt the other day, the pink one. Your tits looked fucking phenomenal. Full and soft. I could see your nipples when the wind picked up. All I could think about was what you’d feel like in my hands, your nipples against my tongue. What my cock would look like against your skin and how it would feel to come all over your neck.

Holy shiiiit.
Will? Can I just call you?

Why?

Because it’s hard to type with one hand.

He didn’t reply for a minute and I let myself imagine he’d dropped
his
phone this time. But then he replied:
YES!
Are you touching yourself??

I laughed, typing,
Gotcha,
and then threw my phone to the side and closed my eyes.

Because yes, I absolutely was.

Since at the end of our run I’d agreed to meet Will for breakfast at Sarabeth’s, after I finished “thinking” about his texts, I hurried to dress and ran out the door. Despite the temperature and the snow starting to fall, I felt the heat of my blush all the way to Ninety-third, and wondered if it was possible to sit across from him
and not have him figure out I’d just masturbated to his texts. Things felt like they were veering off course, and I tried to remember when it had happened. Was it the run earlier this morning when he’d hovered over my body, looking as if he were climbing on top of me? Or was it a couple of weeks back, at the bar when we’d started talking about porn and sex? Maybe it was even before that, the first day we went running together and he’d slipped a hat on my head, giving me a smile that made me feel like I’d just been fucked against a wall?

This was not going well.
Friends,
I reminded myself.
Secret agent assignment. Learn the ways of the Ninja, and escape unharmed.

I kept my head down as I crunched through the thin layer of snow, cursing the March weather, as snowflakes tangled in my loose hair. A young couple was just leaving the restaurant, and I managed to slip in through the open door as they passed.

“Zig,” I heard, and looked up to see Will smiling down at me from the loft seating area. I waved before I walked to the stairs, taking off my hat and scarf as I went.

“Fancy seeing you again,” he said, standing as I neared the table.

I found myself becoming irrationally annoyed by his good manners, even more so by his still-damp hair and the way his sweater clung to his unending torso. He had a white shirt underneath and, with the sleeves pushed up his forearms, the lines of his tattoos peeked out from beneath the folded cuffs. Gorgeous
asshole
.

“Morning,” I said back.

“A little grumpy? Maybe a little tense?”

Scowling, I said, “No.”

He laughed as we each took a seat. “I ordered your food.”

“What?”

“Your breakfast? The lemon pancakes with berries, right? And that flower juice thing?”

“Yeah,” I answered, eyeing him from across the table. I picked up my napkin and unfolded it, laying it across my lap.

He bent to meet my eyes, looking a little anxious. “Did you want something else? I can get the waitress.”

“No . . .” I took a deep breath, opened my mouth, and closed it again. It was such a small thing—the food I always ordered, the type of juice I liked, the fact that he’d known exactly how to stretch me this morning—but it felt big, important somehow. It made me feel a little bad that he’d been so sweet and I couldn’t seem to keep my head out of his pants. “I just can’t believe you remembered that.”

He shrugged. “No big deal. It’s breakfast, Zig-zag. I’m not donating a kidney here.”

I forced away the unreasonably bitchy attitude that flared up at that. “Well, it was just really nice. You surprise me sometimes.”

He looked somewhat taken aback. “How so?”

I sighed, deflating somewhat into my chair. “I just assumed you’d treat me more like a kid.” As soon as I said
this, it was clear he didn’t like it. He sat back in his chair and let out a slow breath, so I continued on, rambling, “I know you’re giving up your peace and quiet to let me run with you. I know you’ve canceled plans with your nongirlfriends and had to rearrange things to make time for me, and I just . . . I want you to know that I appreciate it. You’re a really great friend, Will.”

His brows drew together and he stared down at his ice water instead of looking at me. “Thanks. Just, you know, helping out Jensen’s . . . baby sister.”

“Right,” I said, feeling my irritation flare up again. I wanted to take his water and dunk it over my own head. What was with the hot temper?

“Right,”
he repeated, blinking up to me and wearing a playful little smile that immediately defused my crazy and made my girl parts perk right back up. “At least that’s the story we’ll tell everyone.”

Something had changed, some switch had flipped in the past few days, and there was a leaden weight between us now. It had started a few mornings ago, on our run when she was quiet and distracted and had fallen to her side when her leg cramped up. Afterwards at breakfast, she’d clearly been irritated, but that was easy to read: she was fighting something. She was annoyed in the same way I was, as if we should be able to wrestle against this magnet that seemed intent on pulling us to a different place.

A non-friend-zone place.

My phone buzzed on the coffee table and I jerked upright when Hanna’s picture lit up the screen. I tried to ignore the warm hum of levity I felt simply because she was calling.

“Hey, Ziggs.”

“Come to a party with me tonight,” she said simply, completely bypassing any traditional greeting. The classic sign of a nervous Hanna. She paused, and then added more quietly, “Unless . . . shit, it’s Saturday. Unless you have an otherwise-platonic regularly-scheduled-sex-partner over.”

I ignored the elaborate implied second question and considered only the first, imagining a party in a conference room at the Columbia biology department, with two-liter bottles of soda, chips, and grocery store salsa.

“What kind of party?”

She paused on the other end of the line. “A housewarming party.”

I smiled at the phone, growing suspicious. “What kind of
house
?”

On the other end of the line, she let out a groan of surrender. “Okay, fine. It’s a grad student party. A guy in my department and his friends just moved into a new apartment. I’m sure it’s a shithole. I want to go, but I want you to come with me.”

Laughing, I asked, “So it’s going to be a grad school
rager
? Will they have kegs and Fritos?”

“Dr. Sumner,” she sighed. “Don’t be a snob.”

“I’m not being a snob,” I said. “I’m being a man in his early thirties who finished grad school years ago and considers it a wild night when he goads Max into spending over a thousand dollars on a bottle of scotch.”

“Just come with me. I promise you’ll have an awesome time.”

I sighed, staring at a half-empty bottle of beer on my coffee table. “Will I be the oldest person there?”

“Probably,” she admitted. “But I know for a fact you’ll also be the hottest.”

I laughed at this, and then considered my night without this option. I’d canceled on Kristy, and I still wasn’t really sure why.

That was a lie. I knew exactly why. I felt weird, like maybe I was being unfair to Hanna by being with other women when she seemed to be giving so much of herself to me. When I told Kristy I needed a rain check, I knew she heard something else in my voice. She didn’t question why or try to reschedule, the way Kitty would have. I suspected I wouldn’t be sleeping with that particular blonde again.

“Will?”

Sighing, I stood and walked over to where I’d left my shoes near the front door. “Okay, fine, I’ll come. But wear a shirt that shows off your tits so I have something to entertain me if I get bored.”

She let out a small, breathy laugh, managing to sound both girlish and seductive. “You have yourself a deal.”

It was exactly what I’d expected: a serial renter to poverty-level graduate students, and an entirely familiar scene.

I was hit with a small wave of nostalgia as we stepped inside the cramped apartment.

The two couches were droopy futons, with stained, drab covers. The television was propped on a board balanced between two milk crates. The coffee table looked like it had seen better days, before having some very bad
days, and
then
had been given to these guys to trash further. In the kitchen, a horde of bearded, hipster grad students huddled around a keg of Yuengling and there were assorted half-full bottles of cheap booze and mixers on the counter.

But from the look on Hanna’s face you’d think we just stepped into heaven. Beside me, she bounced a little and then reached for my hand, squeezing it. “I’m so glad you came with me!”

“Seriously, have you actually ever been to a party before?” I asked.

“Once,” she admitted, pulling me deeper into the mayhem. “In college. I drank four shots of Bacardi and barfed on some guy’s shoes. I still have no idea how I got home.”

The image made my stomach twist. I’d seen that girl—wide-eyed, trying out
wild
—at virtually every party I’d been to in college and grad school. I hated to think of
that girl
ever being Hanna. In my eyes she was always smarter than that, more self-aware.

She was still talking, and I leaned in to catch the rest of what she said. “. . . wild nights were mostly spent playing
Magic
in our dorm lounge and sipping ouzo. Well, everyone else would be drinking ouzo. I can barely smell it without wanting to puke.” She looked back at me over her shoulder, clarifying, “My roommate was Greek.”

Hanna introduced me to a group of people, mostly guys. There was a Dylan, a Hau, an Aaron, and what I think was
an Anil. One of them handed Hanna a cocktail made with a trendy plum sake and fizzy soda water.

I knew Hanna wasn’t much of a drinker, and my protective instincts kicked in. “Would you rather have something nonalcoholic?” I asked her, loud enough for the others to hear me. What dicks, just assuming she wanted booze.

They all waited for her to answer, but she sipped the drink and made a quiet cooing noise. “This is
good
. Holy crap!” Apparently she liked it. “Just make sure I only have the one,” she whispered to me, sliding closer into my side. “Otherwise I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

Well, fuck.
With that one line she managed to derail my plans to be the good, big-brother figure for the evening.

Hanna drank her cocktail faster than I expected and her cheeks grew rosy, her smile lingered. She met my eyes and I could see her happiness there, lighting her up.
Christ, she’s pretty,
I thought, wishing she and I were alone at my place watching a movie, and making a mental note to make that happen soon. I looked around the room and realized how many more people had joined the party. The kitchen was growing crowded. Another graduate student joined our little circle partway into a conversation about the craziest professors in the department and introduced herself to me, stepping between me and Dylan on my right. To my left, I could feel Hanna watching my reaction. I felt hyperconscious around her, seeing myself through her eyes. She was right when she said I noticed women, but while this other woman
was pretty, she did nothing for me, especially not with Hanna so nearby. Did Hanna really think I made a habit of having sex with someone every single time I went anywhere?

I met her eyes and gave her a scolding look.

Hanna giggled, mouthing, “I know you.”

“You really don’t,” I murmured. And fuck it, I let it all out: “There’s still so much you could learn.”

She stared up at me for several long, loaded beats. I could see her pulse in her neck, see the way her chest rose and fell with her quickened breathing. She looked down, put her hand on my bicep, and ran her fingertips over the tattoo of the phonograph I’d had done when my grandfather died.

In unison, we stepped away from the group, sharing a secret little smile.
Fuck, this girl makes me feel unhinged.

“Tell me about this one,” she whispered.

“I got that a year ago when my Pop died. He taught me how to play the bass. He listened to music every second he was awake, every day.”

“Tell me about one I’ve never seen before,” she said, attention moving to my lips.

I closed my eyes for a beat, thinking. “I have the word
NO
written just over my smallest rib on my left side.”

Laughing, she stepped closer, close enough for me to smell the sweet plum drink on her breath. “Why?”

“I got it when I was drunk in grad school. I was on an antireligion kick and didn’t like the idea that God made Eve out of Adam’s rib.”

Hanna threw her head back, laughing my favorite laugh, the one that came from her belly and took over her entire body.