Someone to Love (11 page)

Shit. They’re flocking to her, smiling like
idiots, wearing their hard-ons right on their sleeves.

“Listen, Linda, I gotta go.” I pluck her arm
off and head into the crowd.

“It’s Amber!”

I dig through a swell of bodies and every
time I think I’m getting closer to Kenny, she and her throng of boy
toys drift a little farther out of reach.

“Cruise!” Lauren, Cal’s questionable other
half, steps up, and I lose sight of Kenny altogether. “So are the
rumors true? Cruise Elton has finally settled down? I hear you’re
trying out a live-in girlfriend for size.” She gives her signature
smirk.

“Nope, just a friend.”

She mouths out an O. “Look”—she glances into
the throng of bodies—“I’d hate to see anybody get hurt. Why don’t
you do everyone involved a favor and grow a pair—either commit or
cut her loose. She’s not at Garrison looking for heartbreak. I know
what Blair did sucked, and I totally get why you took it out on the
next five hundred vaginas that were at the ready, but Kendall…”—she
shakes her head—“she’s not the same. Go easy on her, would you?”
She melts back into the crowd like an apparition.

She’s right. Kendall is different.

I pan the vicinity and find Kenny perched on
top of the couch while six different guys vie for her
attention.

Maybe I’m the one who should be vying for her
attention.

Kendall

A Lesson in Love

The music sinks into my bones with its
annoying, jarring rhythm. The constant carousel of guys parading
around me, wanting to give me far more than their phone numbers, is
starting to grate on my every last sexual nerve. And, God knows I
can’t breathe with this linebacker trying to suck an artery out of
my neck every few minutes.

“Excuse me,” I say, clawing my way through
the mass tangle of flesh.

I haven’t seen Cruise in hours. It’s almost
New Years, and I’ve spent far too long drowning in the deep end of
unwanted male suitors.

“Lauren!” I spot her over by the stairwell,
and she gives a brief wave.

“You really packed ’em in tonight.” She
wobbles on her heels. “I thought you were trying to bag
Cruise?”

“Shh!” I push my finger to my mouth in a
panic. God, she’s wasted, and she’s going to ruin everything. “I
was—I am. He sent me out on a mission, then I saw him with this
girl, and I got all pissy and hung out with the football team.”
Basketball team, too, but that’s beside the point.

“I did you a favor.” She shouts it all
whispery—employing the secret keeping method preferred by drunks
the world over. “I told Cruise to stop dicking around.” She starts
in on a tittering laugh and doesn’t let up until she falls into my
arms from the apparent hilarity of it all.

I’d ask why in the hell she’d say that, to
Cruise of all people, when I specifically enlisted him in
activities that involve his honorary member, but it’s clear she’s
completely toasted. Normally, I’d be upset, but I opt to file this
misstep under drunken debauchery. Lauren’s too shit-faced to
realize what she’s done. It’s the “dicking around” I’m most looking
forward to with Cruise.

I do a quick visual sweep of the area for her
presumably sober BFF, so I can lovingly pass her along.

“Where’s Ally?” It’ll be midnight in less
than five minutes, and if I don’t find my smoking hot roommate, who
knows whose lips he’ll be gracing with my New Year’s kiss?

“Dear God.” Ally magically appears and helps
me land Lauren in the stairwell. “I can’t find her boyfriend.” She
shrugs into me. “Lauren thinks he’s cheating.” She leans in. “She’s
totally paranoid. He is so not cheating. Have you seen him? He’s
lucky he has Lauren.”

“Right.” I hope to God it wasn’t Lauren’s
boyfriend who tried to give me a necklace of hickeys. I may or may
not have accidentally kneed him in the balls to make my great
escape.

“Oh look, there’s Cruise.” She nods behind my
shoulder as her eyes swell the size of grapefruits “Never mind.
Let’s get Lauren to the car instead.”

“Never mind what?” I try to spin around, but
she secures me by the wrists. “Oh I get it. He’s with some other
girl.” I give one bionic pull and wrangle out of her death grip in
time to see Cruise heading in my direction sans any female
appendages. I lower my chin and do my best to seduce him.

The countdown begins, and Ally jumps on the
nearest jock.

“Just in time.” I beam as he strides over. He
gives the slight glimmer of a smile, but overall, he looks a little
ticked as if some emotional altercation just occurred. I cut a
glance behind him, and a girl with strawberry blond hair douses me
with a look of venom. She sears me with a fresh brand of hatred and
my stomach pinches as if I’ve genuinely done something wrong.

“Three, two—one!” The crowd breaks out in
cheers and screams.

Cruise softens into me, molding his body to
mine. He latches onto my gaze, and we meditate on one another for a
brief moment. Cruise dips in with a grin. Our lips crash together
in one hot, delicious kiss. His tongue maneuvers through my mouth,
slow and deliberate. He holds the slight taste of beer and
spearmint, and his warm, familiar cologne springs my senses to
life. This was no frat boy trying to pick me up for the night. This
isn’t Pennington from whose touch I would repel. This is Cruise,
and something about the way he kisses me, the way our bodies sway
in time—it’s as if we were meant to do this all along.

Happy New Year, Cruise.
But I don’t
say it.

I don’t ever want this special brand of magic
to end.

Cruise races us home at speeds that exceed
the sound barrier. I’m positive this measly cloth seatbelt is not
going to prevent me from testing the dexterity of the windshield
once centripetal force insists I meet my untimely demise.

He lands us in his driveway and whisks around
to my side before I can ever get out of the truck. Cruise helps me
along every inch of the way as if I’ve morphed into a hopeless
geriatric.

I race him to the door, completely smitten
with this playful side of him.

“Are you drunk?” I giggle into him as he
unlocks the door. I turn on the light and bounce inside still
reeling from the heavenly kiss he graced my New Year’s with.

“Nope. Not drunk. I’m hopped up on something
all together different,” he says as he follows me in and bolts the
door behind him.

Oh God, he’s thinking with his little
head—and as much as I find this exciting, I’m scared to freaking
death.

“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m hopped up
on?” He lowers his chin and approaches me with a seductive prowess
I haven’t seen in him before. Well, maybe that first night when I
was still a prospect, but I thought I took that off the table in a
roundabout way. Didn’t I? Weren’t we saving my deflowering for some
nebulous point in the future? I was sort of hoping heart shaped
boxes and sappy greeting cards would somehow be involved. Perhaps
an “I love you,” but I don’t really believe in that. Do I?

“I’m pretty sure I can guess what you’re
hopped up on,” I say, rounding out the coffee table as he hedges in
on me from the other side.

“I’m pretty sure you can’t.” A wicked grin
slides up his cheek. His brows dip in a sharp V, and he looks
beyond gorgeous in a demented
I’m-going-to-chase-you-around-the-furniture kind of way. He darts
in my direction, and I retract. “Every one of those guys tonight
wanted to do just this.”

“Well then, aren’t you the lucky one?” I
squeal as he pulls me in by the waist, landing us both on the
couch.

“I guess I am the lucky one.” His chest rises
and falls in a dramatic fashion, and I can feel his breath gently
caressing my chest.

I wonder if this is what it would feel like
to be lying next to him, his body writhing over mine in a fit of
passion then nothing but the afterglow, the breathing that
commences as we stare into one another’s eyes.

“Kenny?” Cruise doesn’t move. He simply
drinks me in with those watery pools, and I melt at the sight of
him.

“Yes?”

“What do you want from me?” There’s an
earnestness in his tone that I haven’t heard before, something far
more honest than the playboy that perennially resides inside
him.

For a moment, I consider telling him I want
only
him
and that I think we should get to know one another
because I think we could have something special… but chicken out. I
seriously doubt
happily ever after
is in the cards for me or
anybody else for that matter.

“Teach me how to use my body.” In all of my
twenty years, that single sentiment is perhaps the saddest to ever
pass through these lips. Although, I have no intention of
prostituting my mortal instrument to every, and any, male at
Garrison, those very words only seem to highlight the fact how
immune I pretend to be from love. The concept itself might be
alien, sure, I may not have had the greatest examples, but
something is brewing in me, and it’s all for Cruise. An entire
volcano of wanting is percolating deep down inside of me, and I
only want to experience it with the wonderful person holding me
right this very minute.

I gaze into him and run my finger down his
cheek while his stubble tickles my flesh.

I want to tell him that I’m bubbling—ready to
burst to life for the very first time—that everything is new again
in this strange springtime in my heart. I’m falling, and it feels
so very right.

Cruise brings my hand to his lips with a
forlorn expression.

I’ve managed to douse all the joy he
exemplified only moments before.

“Okay, Kenny.” He presses a kiss born of
sadness against the back of my hand. “I’ll do anything you
want.”

I wish I could be honest with Cruise.

I wish I could be honest with myself.

Cruise

Teach me how to use my body
.

I pour over Kenny in all her inordinate
beauty and wonder why in God’s name she would choose this path. Who
hurt her so bad that she couldn’t understand something greater than
a string of one-night stands waited for her?

I get up and start a fire before we freeze to
death. The night riffles through my mind like a disorganized filing
cabinet shaking out events in random order. Kenny and I arriving at
Ackerman House, the sea of hard-ons surrounding her once she
drifted in that ocean of depravity, then Blair showing up like some
twisted nightmare. The last time we stood face-to-face was the day
she declared everything I thought I knew about us null and void and
asked for my “blessing” to move on with her new Mr. Uptight Right.
Tonight she wanted to
talk
, to start the New Year without
any bitterness. I simply told her I wasn’t bitter and walked
away.

It was Kenny I wanted to talk to, to be near.
It was Kenny and all of her beautiful glory I wanted to surround
myself with. Then her lips gave that mile-wide resplendent smile,
reduced me to nothing, and I kissed her right there. I wondered if
Blair was watching—if she thought it was some kind of perverse
revenge kiss. A part of me was sad for her because I knew the
truth. I was kissing someone special, someone I’m falling for a lot
harder and stronger than I ever did for Blair all those years
combined.

Kenny lands on the sheepskin rug as the fire
roars to life. I pull two more rugs from the corner and blanket the
floor with the fleece of three dead sheep, discards from the bed
and breakfast. Something about the irony doesn’t escape me. There’s
definitely something dead inside both Kenny and me if we can’t
pinpoint love, if we can’t figure out that it just might be staring
us in the face. And here I was all amped up to tell her how I felt
when we walked through the door, but those weren’t the words she
wanted to hear.