overeducated, not-very-employable college students, he was rather thrilling.
We talked for hours that night. He drank without getting drunk and didn’t try to get me drunk, either. He listened when I spoke, his eyes intent. And such eyes! Too beautiful and tragic somehow, with a secret pain (cough), a gentle torment only an old soul could feel…well, it was clear I had a little too much to drink. Nick had grown up in Brooklyn, couldn’t wait to move back to the city, loved the New York Yankees, which resulted in some very fun trash talk (I won, somehow making the Sox sound noble and superior, despite the sorry season they were having). He asked me questions about what I wanted to do, what I loved learning, where I was from. He didn’t seem to grow bored, even when I waxed rhapsodic about environmental law, and he didn’t stare at my boobs. He just seemed to really…like me.
We were both a little shocked when the busboy asked us to leave, as it was now 2:30 a.m. Nick offered to walk me home, and as we crossed the lovely, still campus, he held my hand. That was a first for me—a boy who took my hand. That was a public statement of romantic intentions, and the boys I’d dated (and they were definitely all boys) tended more toward the shoulder bump. Hand-holding, I discovered, was quite the turn-on, though I pretended not to notice.
“Can I take you out sometime?” he asked in front of my dorm.
“Is that code for ‘Can I come in and have sex with you?’” I returned.
The answer came almost before I’d finished the question. “No.”
Another first.
I blinked. “Seriously? Because I probably would sleep with you.” Actually, at that moment, I wouldn’t have. At least I didn’t think so. But those eyes…that rather beautiful hand holding mine so firmly…“Are you asking me out on a date?”
“Yes.” That fast, certain yes. “Yes, I want to take you on a date. No, I don’t want to have sex with you. Not tonight, anyway.”
“Why? Are you a Mormon? Suffer from ED? Are you gay?”
He grinned, his gypsy eyes transformed. “No, no and no. Because, Harper Elizabeth James”—crap, I’d told him my entire name (and he remembered, oh sigh!)—“that would be…disrespectful.”
I blinked. “Well, now you have indeed rendered me speechless. I can state with absolute certainty that I have never before heard that particular line.” Prelaw. What can I say? We all sounded like pompous idiots. Plus, I’d had three whole beers, which made me sound even more idiotic and pompous.
But Nick seemed to think I was cute. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Now that one I’ve heard before. Full of sound and bullshit, signifying nothing.”
He called me nine hours later, having hacked into the college website to find my cell number. “It’s Nick.”
“Nick who?” I asked, blushing for perhaps the first time in my life.
“The father of your children.”
“Right, right.” I paused, unable to suppress a smile. “Do I at least get dinner before I have to start breeding?”
He took me to a real restaurant in Northampton…not just a college-kid hangout with four-dollar falafels, but one with tables and waiters and everything, and thus began my first real relationship. He called when he said he would. He sent me little jokes via email, met me for lunch, sometimes showed up outside my classroom to walk across campus with me. We often went to the movies, where we both talked incessantly, much to the annoyance of the other patrons. We dated, as in old-fashioned, 1950s dating, and I couldn’t believe how fun it was.
But for an entire month, he didn’t kiss me or touch me (aside from holding my hand, for crying out loud), and by then, I was dying of lust. Which, I want you to know, I hid very well. Never mentioned it once. I just waited, more obsessed than I wanted to be, wondering if he was playing some little game. But I found myself waiting for those phone calls, and my heart did this weird leaping thing when I saw his face.
Four weeks and two days after we first met, Nick had me over to his apartment for the first time, a typical grotty little place which was atypically clean. He made me dinner—lasagna and salad and warm bread. Poured me red wine without trying to liquor me up. He’d made a pie for dessert, which had me once again wondering out loud if he was indeed gay. He wouldn’t let me do the dishes. As we sat on his couch (holding hands but otherwise chaste), he told me why he thought the Brooklyn Bridge was the most beautiful man-made structure on earth and how he would take me there on my virgin trip to New York and we’d walk across it and get an ice cream in Brooklyn and then walk across again, taking plenty of time to worship the world’s first steel-wire suspension bridge.
“I’ve always favored the architecture of Denny’s myself,” I said.
“I may have to divorce you.”
“I call the yacht and the apartment in Paris. It’s in the prenup, of course.”
Nick laughed. “I don’t believe in prenups.”
“All the better. I will take you to the cleaners, boy. Paris apartment, you’re mine, all mine.”
“Why did I marry such a heartless woman?” he grinned.
I smiled back. “You haven’t even kissed me yet, Nick. I won’t marry you and bear our five healthy sons if you fail to thrill me.”
He looked at me, a little smile playing around his mouth, two days of knee-weakening razor stubble, dark hair tousled, and those gypsy eyes. He reached out and touched my lips with one finger. He didn’t have to kiss me. I was thrilled anyway. And, quite out of the blue, suddenly terrified. My breath stuttered in my chest, and my heart seemed to contract, and even as he leaned forward, I thought Don’t let him be too good. Don’t fall in love.
But he was, and I did. It was…stunning, really, to be kissed like this, and I felt that I’d never really understood what kissing was before. It was as if our mouths had been made to kiss only each other, and the shock and thrill, the urgent, hot feeling, the little sounds of kissing, the—dang it—the rightness. I never thought I’d be desperate for someone—I’d had seven years and four weeks and two days to teach myself not to love anyone desperately. But when Nick kissed me for the first time, my whole body came alive. It was terrifying how good it was.
We kissed and groped on the couch for eons, until finally, Nick stood up, took me by the hand and led me to his bedroom, kissing me, touching me, his skin hot on mine, his cheeks flushed, eyes nearly black. It was as if we had all the time in the world for this, for this sweet, melting ache that made me shake. I pulled his shirt over his head, and my hands explored his smooth chest, his addictive skin, the lovely space above his collarbone. There was a ragged little scar over his heart, which I traced with my fingers as I kissed his beautiful neck, felt his thudding pulse under my lips, tasted the salt of his sweat. His hands were hot, his mouth was gentle, a small smile playing on his lips whenever he opened his eyes to look at me.
I didn’t object when his clever fingers unbuttoned the back of my dress, but when his hand slid up my thigh, I jumped and grabbed his wrist. Time to stop. Time to leave. But I didn’t move.
“Far enough?” he asked, his voice husky, his face against my neck.
I swallowed. “Nick?”
He
