Prom King

When I decided to go to the reunion, I thought I would be there for an hour and then go home; never to see anyone again. This is way, way better. The way she’s leaning into me, kissing me back, I wish we’d had this when we were eighteen. But then again, maybe it’s better that we’re trying this now. Later. After having time to let the rest of that go.

It seems like only minutes before the cab pulls to a stop in front of an apartment building in Queens. One of the older ones, easily pre-war. We disentangle long enough for me to pay the cab driver and then I help her out of the cab. The lobby of her building has been updated, a nice glass door and crystal chandelier decorate the marble foyer. There’s a code lock on the door too.

She lets us in the first door to the foyer, and the second door to the stairs. “It’s a walk-up,” she says. “Sorry.”

I saw the building from outside—it’s only a three-story building, and that’s how many floors we go up. Stopping in front of a door that has panes of frosted glass, she turns to me. “Would you mind waiting outside for a couple of minutes?”

“Why? You have someone else inside?” I tease.

She blushes, and it’s the perfect shade of pink. I want to see if I can make her blush other places, in other ways. “No, it’s just I wasn’t exactly expecting company. I want to clean a couple of things up.”

I laugh. “I don’t care about that.”

“You say that now, but you might.”

“I won’t. You haven’t seen a mess until you’ve seen the residents’ locker room.”

Ollie bites her lip, and it’s adorable. “Still, I could just pick a couple of things up.”

“What if I promise to keep my eyes closed until you’re happy.”

“Promise?”

I won’t lie, I’m curious to see what exactly she thinks is messy. “I promise I’ll give you at least a minute.”

“That’s all I need.” She gets a key from under the mat and unlocks the door. “My key is still with my stuff at Bergdorf’s. Lorraine is having it messengered over tomorrow. Now close your eyes.”

I do, and she takes my hand and leads me inside. In my head I start counting to sixty, and I hear the sounds of Ollie kicking off her shoes, hurried footsteps and the clink of some glasses. Her footsteps disappear deeper into the apartment and I hear shuffling and a few more sounds like dishware clinking. “Can I open my eyes?” I ask, even though I’ve only counted to forty-five.

“Not yet! Just one more minute.”

There’s a few thumps, and her footsteps running quickly past me. More clinking. “Okay, I guess that’s as good as I can do.”

I open my eyes, and look around. Her apartment is nice, dove gray walls and a simple foyer with a door to the left into the kitchen. I see some dishes in the sink and some towels in a pile, but nothing else that I would immediately assign as dirty or messy.

Ollie’s dress is now pooling around her feet, and I can see her bare toes peeking out from beneath the dress. She’s fidgeting like she’s waiting for me to pass judgment on her and the apartment. “I like your place,” I say.

“But—”

“I’m not sure what you call messy, but this isn’t it.”

She bites her lip again. “Okay.”

We go into the living room and I see a few things here and there out of place, a little clutter. But it makes the place look lived in, not messy. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Sure.”

“Okay,” she says, heading back to the kitchen. Her face looks relieved that she has something to do, and I realize that she’s nervous. I suppose with our history that it makes sense.

While she’s in the kitchen, I take the time to look around the room. There’s a couch that looks really comfortable, a small TV, a wall filled with an asymmetrical collage of art prints and a couple of large bookshelves. So she’s a reader more than a television person. Given what I know of Ollie from high school, it fits.

The shelves are more eclectic than I would have thought, though. Just scanning I see business books, biographies, fiction, mythology and poetry. So she reads everything. Good to know. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the World’s Waterfall series on the top shelf. The third book looks particularly beat up, and I wonder if it’s the same copy that she used to own. I’ll have to ask her sometime.

“Here you go,” she says, and I turn to take one of the glasses of wine that she’s holding.

“Thank you.” I nod to the bookshelves. “So you still like to read.”

She sighs, but in a relaxed way. This is safe territory for her. “Yeah. Always have. I try to make time for it still, even though I’d like to do more.”

“I wish I read more, but a lot of days I barely have the energy to fall into bed.”

Ollie sits down on the couch and tucks her feet up under her. “Are things that hard at the hospital?”

“No, not always.” I sit on the other end of the couch. “But it’s Columbia. We’ve got a lot of difficult cases. And in pediatrics, kids can be hard. They don’t always get what’s happening, and it can be rough.”

She takes a sip of her wine. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” I say. “I like what I do. But it helps to acknowledge the difficulties.”

“Yeah,” Ollie says. She seems way more comfortable now, and I wonder if it’s because we’re not talking about her. “Do you have something you want to do inside pediatrics? A specialty within a specialty?”

I shake my head. “No. General pediatrics. But things can get complicated with kids, so even though I’m considered ‘general’ it still feels like a specialty. You get pulled into all kinds of strange cases just because things can go wrong really fast in little humans.”

The wine she’s chosen is good, and I know that I’m a bit drunk with this and the drinks I had at the reunion. But not so drunk that I’m about to get sloppy. She takes another sip, and I like the way she’s relaxing. Like this is a normal and she’s not about to bolt.

“So you went to college, where?”

“Dartmouth,” she says.

I grin. I knew it would be somewhere amazing. “That’s awesome. And then what happened?”

“You want my whole life story?” she asks, cheeks turning pink again.

“I do,” I say. “I want to know everything.”

“Everything is a lot.”

I nod. “True. How about just for now, you tell me about your job.”

“My job is boring.” She says it so automatically that it doesn’t even sound like her saying it.

I move a little closer on the couch. “Do you say it’s boring because you actually think it’s boring? Or because you assume other people already think that it’s boring?”

Ollie blinks, and looks at me suddenly. “No one’s ever asked that before.”

“Well what’s the truth?”

She thinks for a second. “It’s like half and half. There are a lot of parts of my job that are boring. Repetitive. But that’s not always a bad thing. It can be comforting. There’s no room for error when you’re dealing with numbers. You always know where you stand.” A pause. “But I really hate learning the updated tax code every year.”

I laugh. “Yeah, I doubt anyone would like that kind of reading.”

“You’d be surprised,” she says. “There are people who are even nerdier than me.”

“Nothing wrong with being nerdy,” I say, moving closer again. We’re close to touching now.

She laughs into her wine glass. “You’re the least nerdy person that I can think of.”

“Trust me, everyone is a nerd about something. Besides, we haven’t seen each other in ten years. I could be the world’s biggest super-nerd and you wouldn’t know.” r />

“That’s true,” she says, leaning closer to me. “But you don’t look like a nerd.”

“Something that works in my favor,” I say softly, closing the distance between us. I take the glass out of her hand and put them both on the table. Then, reaching out, I slip my hand behind her neck. “Is this all right?” I ask.

“Yes.”

And then I kiss her.

10

Ollie

The wine and the vodka are making me feel warm and fuzzy. I feel comfortable now, and not as anxious. Adam leans in and kisses me, and this one is soft and slow and easy. It feels good.

I’m so happy that I had the guts to ask him to come here and that he said yes. I like that he tastes like wine and whiskey, and the way his fingers tease the skin around my neck. Here, when we’re alone, I get to feel everything I wanted to feel while we were dancing. I don’t have to worry about making a fool of myself in front of people who still hate me.

Suddenly my body is raring to go, all the arousal I shoved aside comes surging back. I pull Adam to me, and he is right there, not missing a step. He licks across my lips and it sends fire down my spine. I have to gasp for air but I don’t want to stop kissing him. I want him on me, in me. It’s been a long time, but even if it hadn’t, the way this feels would be exquisite. There’s raw chemistry between us waiting to explode, and I realize that I’m wet. That’s how badly I want him.

We’re lying together on the couch now, legs tangled together, and my dress is up almost to my hips. One of my straps is falling off my shoulder, lowering my neckline to a dangerous level. And the fact it has no back…it feels like I’m showing more skin than I’m covering. I feel sexy and powerful, and I pull back far enough to see Adam’s face. He knows the state of my dress too, I can see it in his eyes. The want and need that makes mine that much more powerful.

“Ollie, I need to ask,” he says, chest rising and falling heavily. “How far is this going tonight?”

There’s cold drip of fear in my gut. “Do you want to stop?”