I looked up to see Jake had slid into the booth across the table from me. I regarded him for a second. He wore a black denim jacket over a gray T-shirt and an expression I couldn’t read. I wiped my eyes quickly, embarrassed that he would see me crying.

“Is this a coincidence?” I asked him, my voice unsteady, my eyes, I’m sure, rimmed red.

“No.”

I thought about that for a second. “You followed me.”

“I was afraid you were getting reckless, meeting your wannabe father in the middle of the night.”

When I didn’t say anything, he said, “I thought you might need some backup.”

“You followed me,” I repeated. I wasn’t sure whether to be scared, thrilled, or pissed. I was a little bit of all three, leaning heavily toward pissed.

“Who was that?” he asked, leaning back and looking out the window, as if he might catch another glimpse of Ace.

I’d never been followed before and I wasn’t sure what it said about him. I am not and never have been one of those stupid, hopeless women who think controlling behavior is sexy. In fact, just the opposite. When I sense it, it’s pretty much an off switch. So I was a little embarrassed that even though I currently had reason to suspect him of stalking me, part of me was thinking about sweeping the milkshakes off the table and doing him right there.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” I said. My words came back to me harsher than I intended.

It was suddenly quiet in the diner. I looked around, self-conscious. The after-party crowd had thinned considerably and I could hear the fluorescent lights buzzing. A couple cozied in a booth near the door. Two punks shared an order of fries, their matching orange Mohawks (so over) sagging a bit. There was an old man sipping coffee, and the only waitress, a flat-chested, mousy-haired young girl with tragic acne, pretended to read a romance novel but was really listening to our conversation.

“Right,” he answered, looking at me quickly and then down at the table. Again I tried to read his expression and couldn’t.

“I’ll go,” he said, getting to his feet. “This was a bad idea.” He walked toward the door and then came back to stand beside the table again. “I’m not a stalker, okay? I didn’t mean to freak you out. I just…already think of you as a friend; I’m not sure why. I don’t make friends easily.”

I watched him, trying to figure out if the insurgence in my stomach was from nerves, or from wanting him, or from all the crap I had just eaten.

“Is that what I am?” I asked him.

“What?” he said, showing me his palms.

“Your friend?”

He shrugged, shook his head just slightly, and then looked at me with such naked hunger that I swear I almost gasped. It was so raw, utterly without artifice, a mirror of my own heart. I put twenty-five dollars on the table and followed him out to the street.

In the cold, he took my face in his hands and kissed me softly, just touching his lips to mine. It lit me up inside, as if he had doused me in gasoline and set me on fire. I felt like a teenager, as new to my own sexual desire as I was to his. He managed to hail a cab with me attached to his face, and we fell into the back, where we groped each other like kids on prom night.

At our building, he kissed the back of my neck as I struggled to unlock the street door. He pushed me inside and pressed me against the wall. He was hungry but tender, almost reverent in the way he kissed me. He didn’t close his eyes but locked them with my own. I didn’t want to stop looking at him. I couldn’t. I’m not sure how we made it up three flights of stairs and into my apartment, but we did.

On my bed I straddled him and unbuttoned his shirt. His chest and shoulders were dominated by the tattoo of a dragon in flight, with sweeping, outspread wings, an open mouth bearing sharp teeth and a snaking forked tongue. It was a work of art, every intricate detail elaborately wrought. The dragon was angry, but it was strong and good, wise and fair. Beneath it, though, I could see scars. A four-inch-long gouge in his side, and what looked to be a bullet wound in his shoulder. He lay still as I looked at him, running my fingers along the lines of his tattoo, over the scars. He raised a hand to my face, ran it softly on my cheek, on the line of my jaw. I don’t know what he saw in my face.

“Don’t be afraid, Ridley,” he said.

I leaned in to kiss him. I was afraid, not of him, but of the powerful churning of fear and desire, of the chaos that seemed to be tearing at the edges of my once-very-orderly life. I unbuttoned my shirt and let it drop from my shoulders.

“I’m not afraid,” I said.

“This is what you want?” he said, pushing up on his elbows and looking at me. “Because I warn you, I’m not a casual guy. I’ve been alone, Ridley, for a long time. I don’t enter into things lightly.”

I felt the full weight of his words. He sat up and I wrapped my arms around him. I whispered into his ear, “Don’t be afraid, Jake.” He groaned and pulled me tighter.

“There are things you need to know about me,” he said into my hair.

“And I want you to tell me. I want to know everything. But not right now.”

The light from the hallway snuck into the bedroom and licked at the valleys on his body. His collarbone formed a strong ridge that I touched with my lips. His body, much like his tattoo, was the testament to tremendous effort and attention. Every muscle was ripped, perfectly defined, rock hard beneath the silk of his skin. He shuddered beneath the whisper of my lips. I could feel him growing hard for me, and the knowledge of his need rocketed through my bloodstream.

In the semidark, I could see only half of his face. He kept his eyes open and watched me as I pushed him back onto the bed. His jaw was square and set, his lips unsmiling. To someone who didn’t know how to look at faces, he might have seemed hard, almost angry. But I knew that it was the edges of the mouth and the corners of the eyes that told the tale. There again was the sadness I kept sensing, the powerful wanting I could feel with my body, and perhaps the thing that moved me most was the vulnerability of someone who didn’t let many people this close, who wasn’t sure he could stand the pleasure or the pain of it.

He let me explore his body with my mouth and the tips of my fingers. I wanted to walk the landscape of his physical self, take the winding path. Part of me wanted to engulf him quickly, totally, but mainly I wanted to taste every flavor of him on my tongue. He was patient, but when his low groans became more desperate, I knew his restraint wouldn’t last. As my fingers worked the buttons on his jeans, he flipped me over. He was so fast, so strong, I was wrapped in his arms and held looking up at him before I knew what hit me. For a moment I felt overpowered and flashed on how he’d followed me to the diner. I felt a little jolt, some mingling of exhilaration and alarm.

“You’re torturing me,” he whispered, his hunger pulling his voice tight and throaty. I smiled then, wrapped my arms around him.

I was lost in a sea of his flesh, floating into his eyes, feeling his strong hands roaming my body. He was feeding on me and I let him take every inch, let him devour me. I’d never offered so much of myself in the act of lovemaking, never relinquished so much to any moment. The nightmares that newly populated my life receded like players exiting a stage, and there was nothing beyond our skin. Maybe a few days ago when I still thought I knew who I was, I would have given less ground. But finding myself suddenly free from the things that had defined me, I had no boundaries to protect. I surrendered to the pleasure created in our communion and revealed myself completely to Jake. In that place, in that moment, I was more real than I had ever been, and the person to most recently enter my life probably knew me better than anyone on earth.

ten

I never asked for Zack’s key back. I’m not sure why; I guess I felt like it would have been adding insult to injury. And ostensibly, we were still close, still good friends. But I thought that it was understood that he was no longer entitled to use it without my permission. Friday morning proved me wrong.

My heart nearly stopped as I stepped from my bedroom into the living space and my sleepy brain registered a form lounging on my couch. I felt the rush of fear to my fingertips and a shriek rise in my throat in the seconds it took me to recognize Zack. He was looking at me with an expression I’d never seen on his face before. It was

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