All Played Out

And now I’m honoring his memory by doing my best to climb up into his lap like he’s some giant bronze Santa Claus. I step up on his foot and try to haul myself up onto his knee, but I have a pitiful amount of upper-body strength. As in . . . basically none. I jump, hoping that might help, but I only end up clutching ridiculously at the knee, unable to pull myself up but too afraid to let myself drop for fear that I might twist my ankle landing on the statue’s foot.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” Torres says, having hopped up behind me with zero assistance. Then his hands are on my ass, and he’s pushing me up onto the knee.

“Did you suggest we do this just so you could grope me?” I call down to him.

“Unexpected benefits.”

Carefully, I climb to my feet, holding on to Rusk’s outstretched arm to keep me steady. Then, after one deep breath, I scramble my way onto his large bronze arm and shimmy my way down into his hand. I sit in his palm, and have to hang one leg over each side. My thighs are a bit too large to fit comfortably, so I feel like I’m wedged into his hand. And one look down at Torres’s grinning face tells me what an idiot I am.

I’m straddling the statue’s hand.

And while it’s holding my weight just fine, there’s no way I don’t look ludicrous. And probably a little lewd.

“Most people don’t actually sit in his hand, do they?”

“It’s the knee for most people, true.”

“Torres!”

“What? I figured go big or go home. Besides . . . it’s pretty fucking hot.”

“I’m going to kill you as soon as I get down from here.” I start trying to shift myself out of the hand, but my butt really is entirely too large for this thing.

“No! Wait,” he says. “Let me jump down and get a picture. You’re up there already. Might as well make the most of it.”

I try to scowl at him. But it is pretty funny when you think of it. And it will make a good picture. When my brother and I were growing up, Leo’s room had been covered in stuff like this. Photos with friends. He had a big stop sign on his wall that he and his friends had stolen God only knows how. He had souvenirs from places they’d been and things they’d done. Nothing crazy because we weren’t quite well-off enough to travel or anything. But little things that meant something to him even if they didn’t matter to anyone else.

Memories.

I had trophies. Medals. Certificates. Those were my memories. But no one takes those kinds of things to college with them. You’re supposed to pack them away in boxes because as soon as you graduate, they don’t really matter anymore.

But now . . . I have this.

While Torres descends, I look out at campus. It’s dark, but there are streetlamps dotting the sidewalk. Noble Library is a few blocks over, and is still open, but otherwise the university seems abandoned. The statue is in the middle of a grassy courtyard, surrounded by old oak trees that have probably been growing since the university was founded back in the late 1800s.

It’s peaceful and beautiful, and it occurs to me that I’ve never just sat somewhere on campus and looked. There’s always been somewhere to go or something to do, and I’ve never taken the time. I lean back on my hands and breathe in the night, and when Torres calls for me to look at him, my smile is wide and genuine.

“Come on! Get crazy,” he says.

I throw my hands up and smile even bigger. He laughs and snaps another picture on his phone.

“You’re a real wild one, Antonella De Luca.”

Then something occurs to me, and my stomach tumbles with nerves and a surprising feeling of exhilaration. Can I check two things off my list with this late-night adventure? Can I actually be a little wild for a change? I think about Torres’s words. You’re up there already. Might as well make the most of it. I take a deep breath, shift to sit on my knees, and wait for Torres to slip his phone back in his pocket.

Then I call, “Hey, Mateo!”

When he looks up, his eyes questioning, I gather my courage and the hem of my shirt and lift it up for one, two, three seconds. Then I tug it back down, keeping my eyes squeezed shut because I’m too scared to see his face.

Chapter 16

Mateo

Holy. Fuck.

I blink. And blink again.

And I’m tempted to keep my eyes closed so I can just keep picturing her. Damn. I was already halfway to obsessed with her rack, and now that I’ve seen it wrapped up in that black, lacy bra, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look at her without having to fight off a hard-on.

She has her eyes scrunched up tight, and her lips pressed tightly together, and for the life of me, I can’t believe she did it. This is the girl that ran away from me at that pool less than a week ago. The girl who won’t even tell me half the things on her bucket list.

That girl just flashed me.

While she still has her eyes shut, I jump, and propel myself up onto the statue’s base. She opens one eye, and then the other, and her gaze sweeps around the grass, until I climb up onto Rusk’s knee. She gives me this shy smile, and I’m undone by how she somehow manages to be adorable and sexy all at the same time.

I wish that damn hand were bigger because I want nothing more than to launch myself up there and kiss her. I wonder if I sat higher up on the arm, if it could hold the weight of both of us. Before I can decide whether or not to chance it, bright lights wash over us, and I turn to see a campus cop car pulling up on the street below. He flashes his lights once and then puts the car into park.

“Shit. Time to go, Nell.”