the strength of the drink, plus the two or three she’d had earlier, she started to feel her uneasiness and panic slip away. A warm sensation rose from her belly and she felt herself relax a little.
“So,” Abby said, taking a sip of her beer. “Tell me about the kiss.”
The kiss. Maya could still feel his lips on hers, and the coarse stubble of the five o’clock shadow that covered that strong, broad jaw grazing roughly against the soft skin of her face. She could smell his cologne, a blend of citrus, sandalwood, innate maleness. And she heard his groan, which had vibrated through her when his lips parted and his tongue found hers. Maya recalled the sense of loss she had felt when she’d pulled away. Kissing him was wrong, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to feel the dark, handsome stranger all over her body.
And Abby wanted her to tell her about the kiss? How could she put it into words? Were there any words to describe the feeling of being pressed against him? She struggled to find them, to come up with anything that would even come close to relating the experience to another person.
“It was good,” she said simply, knowing that good didn’t even come remotely close to describing the kiss.
“‘It was good,’” Abby repeated, clearly unconvinced. “Just ‘good’?”
“It was really, very good,” she said with a shrug.
Abby laughed. “The way you looked when you came back to this table told me that it was more than just ‘really, very good.’”
Maya flushed, suddenly warm. From the temperature of the club? The alcohol? Her reaction to the man? “What does it matter?” Maya finished her drink in one long swallow, dismissing it. “He’s a great kisser. But in this city? It’s not like I’m going to see him again.”
Abby smirked, pursing her cherry-red lips. “Montreal might be the second largest city in the country, but I think it’s smaller than you think. You just might encounter him again.”
Maya leaned back in the booth, the back of her head resting on the plush leather upholstery. She inhaled deeply. Yeah, the alcohol was definitely pumping through her veins. She quickly put the gorgeous man at the bar out of her mind. She was now ready to have fun. When a song she loved drove through the speakers of the club’s sound system, she stood quickly. A little too quickly, as evidenced by her slight wobble. She grabbed Abby’s hand.
“Come on, we’re dancing!”
Abby’s mouth dropped in surprise and she squealed with glee. “It’s about time, Maya. I love the new you.”
At that moment Maya did, as well. The music pumped, as did her body to the beat. She focused on nothing else but how she felt at that moment. She dismissed all thoughts of her upcoming final exams and her 9 a.m. class, and she allowed Abby to pull her into the center of the dance floor. But neither her mind nor her body could forget the handsome stranger. In an attempt to shake his image from her mind and the feel of his lips burning on her own, she danced harder. But it was no use; he wouldn’t leave her. Perhaps instead of just kissing him, she should have talked to him, asked him his name, gotten his number.
Maya stopped dancing, however, when some movement caught her eye. It was him, and he was standing on a staircase which overlooked the dance floor. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest. And she was transfixed when he raised his hand to scrub along the rough bristles of his jaw, before dragging it through his dark hair.
It would have been her chance—to go up and talk to him. If only she had time to cross through the packed dance floor to get to him. She felt a sharp pang of remorse when he turned and walked up the dark staircase, forever relegating himself to her memory as the handsome stranger. She shook her head at the events of the evening. It was fun, but it was definitely over.
THE NEXT MORNING Maya awoke with the worst hangover of her life—not that she had many in her life to compare it to—but this was definitely the worst! She groaned at the buzzing alarm on her cell phone and, with her eyes tightly shut, felt around her night table for it. When she couldn’t manage to turn it off with her eyes still closed, she threw it into the pile of dirty clothes in the corner of her room. But much to her chagrin, doing so did nothing to silence the dreadful racket, and she pulled her comforter over her head.
Once Maya managed to roll out of her bed, she pulled on a tank top and a pair of shorts. She padded barefoot to the kitchen, where she found Abby sitting at the narrow breakfast bar, with her head on the table—thankfully she had managed to make some coffee.
“Can we just skip class today?” Abby pleaded, obviously not faring any better than Maya. “Also, can we just skip today, in general? And don’t answer too loudly. Please.”
Maya poured herself a cup of coffee and sighed. “I wish we could do both of those things, but you know Carmichael is gonna test us somehow on the guest lecturer.”
“Why is he so evil?” Abby whined.
“Because he’s tenured.” Maya laughed quietly. “Also he’s a very sweet old man and not at all evil, and you know it. And he didn’t make us stay out last night until 3 a.m.” She closed her eyes and groaned. God, 3 a.m. It had been years since Maya had even thought about staying up that late. She brought the mug to her lips, holding back a slight wave of nausea as she sipped her black coffee.
“Don’t remind me,” Abby groaned. “Oh, man, we were out so late. I don’t even want to know how much I owe you for all those drinks.”
Maya opened her mouth, but the words stopped as a thought struck her. “Huh. Actually, I just remembered something. I didn’t pay anything for them. When I went to settle my tab, the bartender told me it was taken care of.”
“Really? Taken care of?” Abby raised her head. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know who, but someone paid for our drinks. I didn’t think about it too much because I was so drunk.” She pursed her lips in question. “Who would do that?”
“I have no idea,” Abby replied, raising her eyes to meet Maya’s. “Unless it was that man you sucked face with.” She grinned. “Wait. That wasn’t grammatically correct, was it? Uh, how about ‘the man with whom you sucked face’?”
Maya’s mouth dropped. “What? No. That’s not possible. Why would he do that? Why would he pay for all of those drinks? It couldn’t have been cheap.”
“Well, I don’t know. Perhaps it has something to do with the gorgeous, exotic creature who walked up to him and shoved her tongue down his throat,” Abby surmised. “Maybe he thought you would find him again, to properly thank him for taking care of your tab. You said he seemed friendly with the bartender.”
Maya rolled her eyes, grimacing at the resulting headache. She would have to remind herself not to move her eyes for the rest of the day. “He thought I would repay him? That’s just gross.” She took a gulp of coffee, finished it and placed her empty mug in the sink. “And please, don’t remind me about that whole kissing-a-stranger thing,” Maya pleaded, glancing at the time. “And, to make this morning even better, we’re going to be late for class. I call first shower.”
* * *
CLASS HAD ALREADY started when Maya and Abby arrived, sunglasses on and heads pounding.
