“What are you doing?” I shrieked.
“Hanging out?” he answered.
“Luke, no. Don’t you have to go back to the ball? Aren’t you the designated driver for all the other guys?”
Please Lord, make him leave. Make. Him. Leave.
“Yeah, but they’re just gonna call when they’re ready. The ball is so stuffy when you’re not drinking. I figured I could hang with you until I had to go back.” He didn’t wait for my answer as he reached up and unbuttoned his navy dress jacket. My mouth went dry as I watched his fingers move gracefully, releasing each button slowly. So slowly. It was like watching Magic Mike. I felt like this was a striptease, and all he was doing was taking off his jacket.
Once it was off, he placed it around the back of one of my barstools and I was bombarded with arousing thoughts. My eyes scanned down to his bulging biceps peeking just beneath his tight, white undershirt, and when I got the courage to look back up at him, his eyes were dancing with mirth.
It didn’t help matters that none of the lights were turned on. The shadows of the trees swayed on the walls from the cool night breeze, and it was so quiet that you could hear pins drop.
“Why didn’t you take a date to the ball?” I questioned, trying to avert my attention elsewhere.
He shrugged.
“Couldn’t find anyone?” I teased.
He looked around the kitchen for a moment before his face landed back on mine. “I didn’t think it was appropriate. It might send the wrong message.”
My eyebrows dipped. “Like what?”
“That I want something more. A commitment.”
I nodded my head slowly. “Not a commitment kind of guy?”
He said in a monotone voice, “Not anymore…” Then he stopped himself for a beat before continuing. “Well, unless it’s to the right girl.”
He quickly looked away before bringing his eyes back to mine. They were full of something; I just couldn’t figure out what.
“What kind of girl?” I peeped.
“The kind that doesn’t cheat on people.” His brow furrowed and my head jerked a little. Has he been cheated on? “The kind that doesn’t jump right into bed for a man they’ve just met…” I crooked an eyebrow. So, like every girl he’d been with in the last month?
“I know exactly what I want, Cammie.” My name rolled off his tongue in such a way that I felt it all the way to my soul. I knew in that small window of a moment, I wanted to be that girl.
I opened my mouth to prod him further, but then I stopped at the last second. I zeroed in on his hands that were deftly taking off his belt. My eyes widened and I felt the need to look away. I knew he was just taking it off because it was heavy, but my God, I almost melted to the floor.
“I—I,” I stuttered. “I’m going to go and…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. I had to move and I had to move fast.
The second I was in my room, I leaned over my dresser, placing my hands on the edge. I had to get myself together. I’d had so many emotions flow through my body tonight that I couldn’t quite figure out what the hell I was doing. I knew I
wanted Luke, sexually that is. Jesus, look at him. He was a walking billboard for sex. He oozed it, and he was so masculine, and his cologne was so mouthwatering that I wanted to lick him. But he was off limits. I had set this hard rule of not dating a Marine for a reason.
I shook my head as I reached over and flicked the lamp on. My eyes found the one photo that I allowed to stay in my room. It was of Alex during his last deployment in Afghanistan. He stood inside a cave, alone, wearing the beige and brown, camouflage uniform with his giant helmet and heavy flack on his chest. His smile was so bright and genuine that it made my heart hurt. A harsh pain slashed right through me.
In the photo he was pointing to a small piece of writing that I could tell he had written by the way my name was in all block capital letters. On the dirty crumbling cave wall, he’d scrawled, “Cammie is lame.”
He was always teasing me. I laughed the day I saw it. He had attached it to a handwritten letter that he sent. My brother usually emailed, but occasionally he’d write me a letter if computers weren’t available. That tiny Polaroid picture of him pointing to a message he had written to me in a dingy, dark cave in Afghanistan was the last piece I had of him.
He had died four days later.
And I’d never been quite the same.
My attention left the photo as I heard a rattling sound in the distance, and I recognized it as my fridge. I yelled out into the hallway leading to the kitchen, “Don’t make yourself comfortable, Luke! Get out of my fridge!”
He yelled back, “I’m hungry! I missed the dinner portion of the ball!”