Easy (19 page)

Me:  Yes.

Lucas:  Dinner?

Me:  Yes.

Lucas:  I’ll pick you up at 7.

“I’ve never had a guy cook for me before.”

He smiled from the
other side of the counter, chopping raw vegetables and drizzling something over
them that he’d just mixed up. “Good. That should effectively lower your
expectations.” He emptied the ingredients onto a piece of foil, rolled it up,
and put it into the oven with the rest of dinner.

I inhaled through
my nose. “Mmm, no, it smells good. And you look like you know what you’re doing
back there. I’m afraid my expectations are abnormally high.”

He set a timer,
washed and dried his hands, and came around the corner, taking my hand and
leading me to the sofa. “We’ve got fifteen minutes.”

We sat
side-by-side, and he examined my hand, the pads of his fingers cool as he
traced the short nails that wouldn’t interfere with my bass playing, his thumb
stroking over the back of my hand. Rotating it gently, his index finger traced
up and down, inside the sensitive valleys between my fingers. He drew a spiral
on my palm, slowly moving to center, and I was mesmerized, watching and feeling
him touch me so softly.

His fingers slid
between mine, palm to palm, and he reached to pull me onto his lap, his lips at
the base of my throat. When the timer sounded minutes later, I was beyond being
able to hear it.

The meal he’d
prepared was enclosed in individual foil packets—veggies, baked potatoes and
red snapper he’d caught two days ago. Francis meowed like a fire alarm until
given his own portion of the latter. “So I guess you’re used to cooking for
one?” I asked as we moved to the tiny table pushed against the only blank wall.

He nodded, “For
the last three years or so. Before that, cooking for two.”

“You cooked? Not
your mom or dad?”

He cleared his
throat, picking at his potato with his fork. “My mom died when I was thirteen.
Before that, yeah, she cooked. After… well, it was either learn to cook or live
on toast and fish—which I suspect Dad does when I’m not home, though I try to
get him to buy fruit or something green occasionally.”

Oh
. His
story lined up with Landon’s—living with his father, no siblings—and he must
have been conscious of that. He’d also been a boy who’d lost his mother, and I
was too aware of that to call him out for duplicity just then.

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded once,
but didn’t offer anything further.

After we ate, he
let the cat outside, came back to the table and took my hand, and led me to his
bedroom. We lay on our sides in the center of his bed, facing each other,
saying nothing. His touch was almost unbearably light, whispering over my jaw,
trailing down the side of my neck before releasing the buttons of the white
shirt I’d chosen, one by one. Sliding it from my shoulder, he touched his lips
to the bare skin, and I closed my eyes and sighed. My hands pushed under his
shirt until he sat up, yanked it over his head, and flung it off in one
movement, lying over me and kissing me.

His mouth was
demanding, his lips parting mine, tongue driving into my mouth. I thought I
felt a tremor move through him when my hand gripped the place on his side where
the words were inscribed. He rolled me above him and pushed the shirt from my
opposite shoulder, left it there, half-removed, while he moved his attention to
the bare skin above the flesh-toned bra, my entire body straining toward his
like a static charge that drew me in.

Without question
or explanation, he stopped at the line I’d drawn last week. Talking was limited
to
there
and
God
and
oh.
And then nothing but hums and
moans and unintelligible sounds that could only be interpreted as
yes, yes,
yes
.

“I should get you
back.” His voice was gruff. We hadn’t spoken in at least an hour. The clock on
his desk showed that the time had crept close to midnight.

He handed me the
discarded bra and pulled his shirt back over his head. When I stood, he held my
shirt as I slid my arms into the sleeves, and then he turned me, buttoning the
buttons and leaning down to kiss me when he was done, his hands framing my face.

Standing by his
bike, I was pulling on my gloves when the back door of the house across the
yard opened and a man emerged, holding a full kitchen trash bag. He opened the
wheeled garbage bin and tossed it in. As he turned to go inside, I noticed
Lucas was stock-still, frozen, watching him. As though he felt our eyes on him,
the man turned under the back door floodlight. He was Dr. Heller.

“Landon?” he said,
and neither of us moved or responded. “Jacqueline?” he added, confused. All at
once, he appeared to register what time it was, and the fact that the two of us
had just exited his tenant’s apartment. There could be no tutoring excuse—not
that it was appropriate for us to meet in the apartment for tutoring, no matter
the time of day.

No one spoke for
one long moment, and then Dr. Heller’s shoulders sagged. He sighed before
pinning Lucas with a resolute expression. “I’ll need you to meet me in the
kitchen when you return. No more than thirty minutes, please.”

Lucas’s hands were
tight around the helmet. He gave Dr. Heller one sharp nod before putting it on.
When he turned to make sure I’d strapped mine correctly, our eyes met once but
he didn’t speak and neither did I. During the ten-minute ride back, no clarity
rushed in. No magic words, no exoneration for his lies. I couldn’t think of
anything to say or do other than wait for him to tell me why.

We arrived and I
climbed down from behind him, awkwardly removing the helmet and the hair tie
with my gloved fingers. Still straddling the bike, he removed his helmet, too,
and stored them both away as though he had no plans to put his back on. When I
faced him, he was staring at his hands, tight on the wide handlebars. “You
already knew, didn’t you?” His voice was low, but I couldn’t tell his frame of
mind.

“Yes.”

He looked up at
me, frowning and searching my eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why didn’t you?”
I returned. I didn’t want to answer questions. I wanted my questions answered,
and I was ticked off that he was going to make me ask them. “So your name is
Landon? But Ralph calls you Lucas. And that girl—other people call you Lucas.
So which is it?”

His gaze returned
to his hands for a moment, and my anger expanded like a balloon inflating
beneath my ribs. He seemed to be deciding what to tell me and what to withhold.
The Harley rumbled softly, ready to rocket away at a second’s notice.

“It’s both. Landon
is my first name, Lucas the middle. I go by Lucas… now. But Charles—Dr.
Heller—has known me a long time. He still calls me Landon.” His eyes swung up
to mine. “You know, I think, how difficult it is to get some people to stop
calling you what they’ve always called you.”

Very logical. All
of it. Except the part where he pretended to be two different guys with me.
“You could have told me. You didn’t. You
lied
to me.”

He turned the bike
off and swung his leg over, standing in front of me and gripping my shoulders.
“I never lied to you. You made assumptions—based on what Ch—Dr. Heller called
me. Look through our emails. I never called myself Landon.”

I shrugged from
his grasp. “But you let me call you Landon.”

His hands dropped
but he stared down at me, keeping me from moving. “You’re right, this was my
fault. And I’m sorry. I wanted you, and this couldn’t happen as Landon. Anything
between us is against the rules, and I broke them.”

I swallowed
thickly, combating choking up. I heard what he hadn’t said, yet. He was telling
me it was over, just like that. The awful reality of desertion that Kennedy had
begun weeks before came rushing back as though a dam had broken, and with no
notice I was drowning in it. My parents had deserted me, Kennedy had deserted
me, my friends, except for Erin and Maggie, had deserted me. And now Lucas—and
Landon. Two different relationships, both of which had become significant.

“So it’s just
over.”

He stared, and I
couldn’t have felt it more if his fingers roamed over my face. “Your grade
could be at stake otherwise. I’ll take responsibility for this, tonight, when I
get back; Dr. Heller won’t hold you accountable.”

“So it’s just
over,” I repeated.

“Yes,” he said.

I turned and walked
into the building, and didn’t hear the engine of the Harley rumble to life
until my foot was on the bottom stair.

Chapter 16

“Ms. Wallace, please see me for just a moment after class.”

I glanced up to meet Dr. Heller’s gaze at the end of the lecture Monday, and nodded my assent.

“Ooohhh,” Benji
said. “You little troublemaker.” His smile fell when he saw my face. “What’s
the matter? You aren’t actually in trouble are you?” He glanced to the back of
the classroom, zeroing in on the only reason I could be in hot water with the
professor. “Did he find out about—you know.” He inclined his head in Lucas’s
direction.

“Yes.”

His eyes widened
and he lowered his voice. “Oh,
shit
, are you serious? How?”

I shook my head.
“It doesn’t matter. He found out, and it’s over.”

Pinning his lips
together, he stuffed his notebook into his backpack and sighed. “Oh, man. I’m
sorry.” His hazel eyes were full of sympathy. “Anything I can do?”

I shook my head
again, needing to redirect the conversation. “I’ll be fine. How did the coming
out go?”

Smiling broadly,
he held his arms wide. “As you can see, I’m still in one piece, with all
essential parts accounted for.” He waggled his brows, tossing his backpack over
his shoulder after I gave him a shove. “It was good. Getting everything out in
the open was a relief—to both of us, I think.”

“Good.” I was
happy for him, though I’d not had the same experience with recent public
revelations. I wouldn’t glance back at Lucas. He’d stared at his sketchbook when
I’d entered the classroom, resolutely against even looking at me.

“Hey, Jacqueline.”
Kennedy smiled as we passed in the aisle, as though he was proud of himself for
finally remembering my name.

“Hi,” I returned,
slipping by him on my way down to the front of the lecture hall.

When I stopped on
the lowest step, Dr. Heller glanced over the heads of the students clustered
around him and requested that I come in during his afternoon office hours to
pick up my paper. His unflinching expression said it wasn’t an invitation as
much as a directive. My face warm, I told him I would be there.

***

“You haven’t done anything wrong,
so you have nothing to be worried about. Probably he just wants to make sure
Lucas-Landon-Sideshow Bob-whoever the hell he is didn’t take advantage of you.”

I appreciated
Erin’s reassurances, as mistaken as they might be.

Reclining on my
bed, booted feet hanging off the end, I stared at the square of leaden sky visible
from our single four-by-four window. Even in our overly warm room, I shivered. Erin
and I discovered last winter that the ancient central heating would pump hot
air into our little room until it was a sauna, only to click off and resume a
slow slide back to frigid before rebooting back to sauna. It was a wonder we
hadn’t both ended up with pneumonia by February.

“
Landon
was the perfect tutor. What’s between
Lucas
and me is no one’s business.”

“Except mine,” Erin quipped.

I turned my head and half-smiled. “Except yours.”

She added the
finishing touches to a glitter-covered, sorority-themed poster. “What time are
you supposed to be there?”

“Between 3:30 and 4:30.”

“You’d better
scoot. I’m heading to work as soon as I finish this thing. Text me and let me
know if I need to kick anyone’s ass. Don’t forget—tomorrow we’re getting
dresses for the Bash this weekend.”

My roommate’s ability to change subjects rapidly was legendary. “I remember.”

***

Dr. Heller regarded me from the
opposite side of his desk for the second time this semester, and I struggled
not to squirm in the chair. I’d never been a kid who earned teachers’ disapproval;
finding myself in this position twice in a matter of weeks was unbelievable.

He’d not looked at
me since inviting me to have a seat. Rifling through a stack of folders and
papers, he pulled out my research paper with a muttered, “Ah-ha.”

My hands clenched
in my lap as he perused it, skimming through the stapled pages. I wondered if
he’d already written a grade on it, or if what I said or didn’t say in the
coming minutes would influence it.

He cleared his
throat and I flinched. “I’ve spoken with Mr. Maxfield, which I assume you
know.”

I took a nervous
breath. “No, sir. We haven’t spoken.”

His eyebrows rose,
eyes widening. “I see.” He frowned as though he was confused. “Well. I’ll ask
you what I asked him, and I would appreciate your honesty, please. Did he
assist you in producing this paper?”

I returned his
perplexed frown, unsure what, exactly, he was asking. “He gave me some leads on
research sources. And he read the completed paper and pointed out a few errors
I needed to correct before turning it in. But the work is mine.”

He nodded and sighed.
“All right. There’s also a matter of a quiz you may have been given some… let’s
say
notice
of… ahead of the other students?”

I swallowed. “He
suggested that I do the worksheet he’d sent.” Dr. Heller examined me with a
direct look and one raised, bushy eyebrow, and I amended, “He suggested very
strongly
that I do it. But he never told me there was going to be a quiz, and frankly, I
just thought he was being bossy—I didn’t even pick up on any hint—”
Shit
.