Girl Code (12 page)

Leo decided to stay in the area for a week. Then he was going back to New Jersey to spend a couple of days with his family before him and a couple of guys he had been in Catholic school with hit the road for Florida. I saw him every day, regardless of how long my days were. Sometimes we’d just hang out in the apartment with Michelle, other times we’d go out and do something if I had the time. He started walking me to my classes or visiting me at work. I didn’t let him sleep in my bed again. In fact, I tried to stay out of my bedroom as much as possible, but nothing stopped him from going into Michelle’s bedroom at night. I didn’t even acknowledge how that made me feel.

I did call Leslie to let her know that he was around before anyone else could. The fact that they had not been together in a long time was moot. He was still her ex-boyfriend, one that I knew she still loved, and I had done enough damage to our friendship, even if she didn’t know it yet. Someday I would have to tell her everything, and if she chose not to be my friend after that, I would have no one to blame but myself.

“You have barely spent any time with your cousin,” I said to Leo on the last night of his visit. We were sitting on the couch, eating Oreos and sharing a glass of milk to dip them in.

“I’ve been hanging out with him when you’re in classes or working, which is pretty much all of the time. You need to slow down a little, Tabs,” he said, giving me a reprimanding look. “You’re going to burn out.”

“I’m doing what I need to do,” I said defensively. “I have rent to pay, car insurance, and tuition. You’ve seen my fridge.” I pointed toward the kitchen and then giggled. “At least I’ve lost a few pounds.”

Having a very limited budget for food made weight loss easy. I thought it was funny, not ha ha funny, but the kind of funny where I had the choice to either complain about it or laugh. Leo did not laugh.

“That’s not funny,” he snapped. “Losing weight because you don’t have money to buy food is not the same as losing weight because you want to, and for the record, I liked your body just the way it was.”

I rolled my eyes. The conversation was way off track.

“Anyway,” I said loudly. “I am maintaining a 4.0 and I’m able to take care of myself without asking my parents for a dime. So, yeah, it may seem crazy, but I don’t want to have to ask them or anyone for anything.”

He sighed and softened. “I am extremely proud of you, but I’m worried you’re going to run yourself into the ground, Tabs. You gotta slow down. Use the summer for rest instead of taking extra classes. You don’t have to race through school.”

I laughed, but it was mostly lacking in humor. “Are you kidding me? It’s so easy for you to sit there and tell me what I should and shouldn’t be doing. You spent months traipsing around Europe without a care in the world, and what are you about to do now? Oh, you’re about to drive down to Florida, just because. You have no job, no plans, and no worries because your mama and papa give you a monthly allowance. I’m living in the real world, Leo. I don’t know what world you’re living in, but it’s not real. I’d rather be grounded in reality than to be under the impression that anything and everything I want in life will be handed to me. Real life doesn’t work that way, and once you figure that out, it’s going to hit you pretty damn hard.”

Leo put his cookies down and angled his stiff body toward me. His face was stony, intimidating, but I was all rankled up and didn’t back away, even when he leaned forward until there were only a few inches between our faces.

“My parents help me out from time to time, but the money I have been using to live on is my college fund. Every dime I earned working in the deli from the time I was eight went into this account. Nearly every dollar I got in birthday money or Christmas money went into that account. Before I went to Italy, the one and only time I pulled any money from that account was so that I could fix your car, so that you would be in a safe, working vehicle while you were at school. I told you about all of the fun and crazy shit Matteo and I did traveling, but I didn’t tell you the gritty shit, like how I worked in vineyards and on farms and shoveling animal shit to earn money. Yeah, I was having a hell of a lot of fun, but I worked for it, and it will be that way when I get to Florida, too. I’m not opposed to the ‘real world’ you’re talking about. I know what is real but, Tabs, enjoying your life is also real and you don’t seem to know anything about that. You’re tied up so tight with trying to prove you don’t need people that you’re not even living.”

Swallowing hard, I looked away from him and back at the cookie pieces floating in the glass of milk.

“I am living,” I said quietly. “Maybe not by your standards, but I’m living.”

“Oh? By being a wallflower at a frat party?” he asked sarcastically. “Are you happy, Tabitha? Are you happy with the life you’re living?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I could not honestly say that I was happy. I was…existing, always working on getting from one point to the next. I was proud of myself for surviving on my own, but I wasn’t happy. I felt no joy when I saw my good grades or paid my rent.

I didn’t mean to speak the next part out loud. I was thinking it, but I had not meant for my lips to say it.

“I don’t know how to be happy.”

I felt Leo shift closer to me just before I felt his tender kiss against my temple. His lips touched my ear lightly as he spoke in a whisper.

“I can make you happy. I will drop everything to be here with you if at the end of each day you are smiling and happy to fall asleep with me holding you.”

Panicked, I leapt to my feet, knocking over the glass of milk in the process. I didn’t know where I was going, I just knew I had to get away from him. I made it to my bedroom door before Leo’s arms were circling my waist from behind. I struggled against him, even elbowed him in the chest, but besides a low grunt from him, it did nothing to relinquish his hold on me. Somehow, he had turned me around to face him. I guess I was more like my mom than I thought because I slapped him in the face, so hard that my hand ached from the impact. Leo didn’t even wince as he managed to put both of my wrists in one hand and push open my bedroom door with his other. We stumbled into my bedroom, or I stumbled as he walked. He pushed me down on the bed even as I fought against him. My arms were pinned above my head and his body crushed mine.

“You’re not going to run away and you are not going to push me away to avoid hearing and admitting the truth…not again,” Leo said gruffly, his face close to mine.

“Get off of me!” I said vehemently.

“I love you, Tabitha. I have loved you since ninth grade when I first opened your notebook and read the words that came from your beautiful mind. I loved you when I came over to your house to help you with math. I wanted to kiss you so bad, but your brother interrupted and then you pushed me away, pushed me toward Leslie when it was you I wanted. You knew, I know you knew I wanted you and not her.”

I closed my eyes tight and turned my head away from him. It was true, even though I lied to myself that night.

“You can close your eyes all you want, Tabs, but it doesn’t hide the truth. I know it was juvenile and stupid, but I went out with Leslie to get close to you.”

“But you love her,” I gasped out, my eyes flying open. “You love her. You love Leslie!”

“Yes!” he said angrily. “Yes, I love her, I’ll always love her, but I was never in love with her. It’s always been you, Tabitha.”

I shook my head in denial.

“You can shake your head, but you feel it. I know you feel it. I know you feel the power that surges between us when we’re together,” he said, dropping his face to the crook of my neck. He was breathing heavily. “When we touch,” he whispered.

His lips grazed over my skin and it was like getting zapped with a tiny jolt of static, making me gasp.

“I remember the moment I knew you loved me, too,” Leo whispered, his lips moving against my cheek. “It was the night of Rico’s party. I was so…damn, Tabitha, I think I could have killed him that night. Someone had to pull me off of him, because every time I thought about what he did and almost did, I saw red. Before I went inside, though, when you were trying to follow me inside and I made you stay in the truck…I saw it in your eyes. I felt it, but we were too young and I didn’t completely understand.”

I didn’t understand, either. I could not, at that time, really accurately name the emotion that raced through my veins that night. I could finally name it. It was love, but I was afraid to say it aloud, even after being called out on it. I blinked and blinked as I tried to keep my tears back. It didn’t matter what I felt then or what I felt pinned beneath Leo’s body.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, my voice small and pathetic. “You chose Leslie and that changed everything.”

“Now I am choosing you,” he said tenaciously.

“And not Michelle?” I asked, my question dripping with poison.

“I didn’t sleep with her.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Look at me. Damn it, Tabitha, look at me!”

My eyes still full of tears, I focused on a point just above his eyes.

“Why would I even risk that? Why would I sleep with her when it could jeopardize everything I want with you? We talked, mostly about you, but that was it. I promise you, I did not sleep with her.”

I believed him, grudgingly.

“Why did you really come here?” I asked in a whisper.

Leo released one of my arms and dragged his fingers down my cheek and over the curve of my lips.

“I came here for you,
amore mio bellissimo, la mia vita. Non vivo senza te.”

My beautiful love. My life
.
I can’t live without you.

Heat and electrical current tore through my body as Leo’s mouth took mine. I lost all power to fight it before it even happened. I moaned softly and thrust my free hand in his silky hair. His fingers curled against the fingers of my other hand until our hands were locked together.

“You love me,” Leo murmured against my lips.

“I love you,” I choked out.

He groaned and pressed his mouth to mine again, but with more urgency than before. His hand held my cheek, stroking it with his thumb and then trailed softly over my jawline, down my neck and shoulder, and down, down, down, until his hand was kneading my breast. The nipple perked and hardened under his palm, and even through my sweatshirt, I knew he felt it. He groaned again and pressed his hips into mine as his thumb slid over my nipple.

Leo’s citrusy, oceanic, leathery scent wrapped around us in a warm caress and incited the tingling in my body. His mouth was somehow sweeter than it was before, delicious and enslaving. I sucked his lower lip into my mouth, tasting him, wanting to swallow him whole. He growled deep in his throat and reclaimed control, kissing me aggressively, bruising my lips with his and assaulting my tongue with his. I couldn’t breathe and didn’t care if I never breathed again as long as I could feel the weight of his mouth on mine forever.

I whimpered when he broke away, but my disappointment was short lived. He straddled my legs, grabbed the hem of my sweatshirt, and pulled. I helped him by sitting up a little and holding my arms above my head until the shirt was cast aside. Groaning with appreciation, he palmed my lace-covered breasts and leaned down to kiss me again. His fingers squeezed my sensitive nipples and bright lights exploded behind my eyelids. My hips raised slightly off of the bed, as my body searched for some relief from the building pressure.

“Tabitha,” Leo chanted my name as his lips moved down my throat. “I love you.”

He kissed down my chest. When he reached the curve of my breast, he nipped at the flesh before pulling the cup down and exposing dark pink areolas and a very stiff nipple. His eyes met mine as his tongue flicked over it. Both of us groaned. I bit my bottom lip as his lips closed over it and sucked.

“Leo!” I cried out his name as his teeth grazed me.

His hand slipped under the band of the ratty sweatpants I was wearing. Skilled fingers found my swollen clit immediately through my cotton panties. When he started pressing hard circles over it, even as he continued to suck on my nipple, I quickly found myself on the verge of an explosive orgasm.

“I…” I didn’t know what to say, or how to verbalize it. I wasn’t a virgin, but I had never climaxed with a guy, yet Leo was about to send me over the edge in a matter of moments. Sensing how close I was, he pulled my underwear aside and carefully and agonizingly slowly pushed a finger inside of me. His thumb found the swollen nub and I was pushed over the edge.

My hips shook with overwhelming pleasure and my brain was scrambled and fried. My breathy moans were swallowed by Leo’s kiss as he carried me through the swaying sea of velvet sensations.

The heady haze began to clear, my senses sharpening. I could hear my heavy breathing and Leo’s satisfied moans. I felt the heaviness of his body half on mine and half on the bed, the roughness in his well-worked hands as they caressed my bare skin. As if I momentarily stepped away from my body, I saw us, me shirtless and my bra half pulled off, and Leo kissing me all over. Beyond us, on the bedside table was the framed photograph of Leslie, Leo, and me on graduation day in our caps and gowns. Leslie and Leo weren’t together then, but she had an arm around his waist, as did I, but my other hand was at my side and hers was on his chest. It wasn’t necessarily intimate, but it was familiar, because he was hers. He would always be hers. Girl code dictated as much.