Love Story(43)
Author: Jennifer Echols

I moved even closer to him and met his gaze. “I’m below you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said evenly, looking me straight in the eye, obviously waiting at the door for exactly this altercation, which proved he did in fact know what I was talking about, and I had had enough.

“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.” I touched the thumb of my opposite hand. “I wrote a story about how much I liked you. I never meant for you to read it.” I touched my pointer finger. “You wrote a story about how much you hated me.”

Hunter’s grin melted from his face. He took a breath to say something.

“No, you’re right,” I interrupted him. “Not one story. You wrote three stories like that.” I touched my third finger. “I wrote a story about my mother, hoping we could talk about it.” I touched my fourth finger. “In response, you wrote a story about looking down on me.” I touched my pinkie, really banged on it with my other finger, until I bent it backward and hurt it. “Don’t write any more stories about me, Hunter. And I won’t write any more stories about you. Deal?” I whirled toward the door.

“Wait,” he said.

Whatever. I’d reached the threshold. The light was brighter in the hallway, and Summer, talking to Manohar and Brian, looked up at me with concern in her eyes.

“Erin.” His hot hand was on my shoulder. He pulled me back into the room, against the door, out of their line of sight.

He leaned close. This must have been because he didn’t want the others to hear, but I could almost have pretended that he wanted to be near me as he growled against my cheek, “If that’s all you got from my story, that I hate you, you’re not a careful reader.”

Even though my heart raced with his closeness, I tilted my head and stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Two could play that game. I rolled away from him and stepped around the door frame.

He caught me and pulled me back again.

Pinned me against the door.

Crushed my lips beneath his.

I let him sweep his tongue inside my mouth and take over my body there in the rich room for one long, taut minute. Then I realized what I was doing, and what he was doing. I pushed his shoulders. Hunter did not push easily. I shoved him away hard and nearly toppled over myself, bouncing my sore hip against the door and sliding off.

Hunter grabbed my forearm before I fell. “What’s the matter?” he asked, eyes glassy.

I started to speak and realized I’d pressed my fingers to my tingling lips. I put my hand down. “What’s always the matter? You’ll be nice for the next two weeks, and I’ll agonize over what we mean to each other. Then you’ll write another story for class. You’re experimenting with me like you play with the women in your stories. All my stories are about you. And I can’t do this anymore.”

I jerked my arm out of his grasp and stalked out of the room, past my wide-eyed friends.

As I descended the stairs, holding on to the rail to keep from wrenching my hip, I heard Summer stage-whisper to Hunter, “What did you do to her now?”

The coffee shop was slammed and just got busier as the night dragged on. A new off-off-Broadway play in the theater next door had gotten great reviews—I’d wanted desperately to see it but hadn’t had a spare second—and when it ended each night, it dumped the patrons into the shop, thirsty for lattes.

Somehow I managed to write my story for next Monday’s class anyway. I scribbled sentences on discarded receipts and a hundred napkins when my boss wasn’t looking and stuffed them in the pockets of my apron. Late in the night when I got off work, I wondered whether Hunter expected me to bring him coffee again for his trek to the hospital. I trudged in the other direction, to the library, where I typed every receipt and napkin into my laptop, printed off the file in the computer lab, and turned in my story to the front desk before I could chicken out. I constructed my sentences of the strongest steel, honed them to fine points, and hurled them straight at Hunter’s heart.

13

Way too early the next morning, he knelt on the tiny space of floor between my bed and the door, packing my suitcase.

I propped myself up on one elbow and gazed at him to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, his muscular shoulders working underneath a thin cashmere sweater as he neatly folded my clothes, the morning sunlight filtering through the shades and gleaming in his blond hair. I mumbled, “Hunter, what the hell.”

“Rude. You’re grumpy because you’re not getting enough sleep.” He glanced up at me. I caught a glimpse of dark circles under his own eyes before he turned his attention back to the suitcase. “There’s nothing wrong with this dress, but I want you to wear it with these shoes, okay? Do not wear a feather boa with it, or a swan around your neck, promise me. You looked great when we went to Belmont, but your style gets eclectic on occasion.”

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“We,” he said.

I huffed my impatience. “Where are we going?”

“Home. Your grandmother requests your presence at the Breeders’ Cup.”

The story I’d just turned in for Gabe’s class was set in Louisville. For a moment I thought Hunter had read it and was taunting me, daring me to go back there and prove the story wasn’t fiction. But he couldn’t have read it. Not unless he’d gone to the library between two and eight in the morning.

No, this was heavier, weighty with reality. If he’d told me two months ago that my grandmother requested my presence, I would have asked that he convey to my grandmother where she could stuff it. Eight weeks had crammed much more into my mouth than I could chew. Hunter had to be very careful that he fulfilled her wishes, lest she ask too many questions about the business degree he was not earning. I wanted to help him make a fool of her. I didn’t want to cause him trouble by refusing to go with him.

Or

maybe I did, now that I knew he looked down on me. He was looking down on me now. I heard his quick steps across the hardwood floor and felt the heat of his body in the cold room as he knelt beside my bed. He put his hand on my arm. “Erin.”

He was not going to leave me alone. He would not even let me hide my tears. Giving up, I rolled onto my back, arching it to keep from pressing my newly healed scrapes against the New York City T-shirt I’d been sleeping in, and sniffled. “I don’t want to go anywhere with you, especially Louisville.”

This was not true, and I knew it as soon as I said it. He had stolen my birthright and cheated my grandmother and looked down on me and I still wanted to be wherever he was, on the off chance we might make that connection I’d wanted with him for so long.

He sensed this. His thumb moved on my arm, seductive as ever, but he watched me somberly, as if he took me seriously for once.

“I have to work all weekend,” I said.