Call Me Saffron (Greenpoint Pleasures) (13 page)

“Says the woman who never ventures into the deep end of the pool. Who broke up with her boyfriend over Skype.” Jeanine raised her eyebrows at Georgette.
 

“Ouch.” Georgette grimaced. “Point taken.”
 

Jeanine turned to me. “Don’t listen to her, Sam. Go for it. Dylan needs you tonight. Think of it as your own personal brand of therapy.” She winked at me.
 

I set my cards on the coffee table. “I’m folding.”
 

“More like you’re calling and raising the stakes.” It turned out Georgette had a dimple when she smiled.
 

Annie took a swig of beer. “More power to you. I need to borrow some of that courage.” She was obviously thinking about her professor crush.
 

“Isn’t he married?”
 

“Widowed.” She tossed two chips onto the table. “I’ll see you and raise you. Whoever’s still in the game.”

The doorbell rang. I went to open it. A woman a few years older than me stood there, holding two pizza boxes. Her blond hair was falling out of her clip. She blew it off her face. “Anyone hungry?” She smiled at me in greeting. “Alanna Woodruff. I come bearing food.”
 

“Samantha Lilly. I’m not here.” The pizza smelled enticing, the company welcoming, but I had somewhere to be. “Talk about a man like your heart is breaking, and you’ll fit right in.”

She blew again on her bangs and exchanged glances with Georgette. Something passed between them. Some story there. “Sounds like loads of fun. Anyone have a sledgehammer we can knock ourselves on the heads with after we’re done with that?”

~*~

I tried to glide through Dylan’s lobby like I belonged there. I didn’t entirely pull it off. The doorman called me back.
 

I gave him an airy wave. “Call up if you want, but he’s expecting me. You remember me from earlier, right?”

“You know where you’re going?”

“I do.” And that was all it took.
 

When I got off the elevator on his floor, I strode to Dylan’s end of the hallway and rang the bell without stopping to consider. Momentum, that was key.
 

“It’s open. Come in.” His deep voice was muffled by the thick door.
 

I swung the door open.
 

Dylan was seated at the dining table. He looked more disheveled than when I’d left. Hollowed out. He’d half-unbuttoned his shirt, and his feet were bare. A row of shot glasses lined the placemat in front of him, and he was carefully pouring a dollop of dark gold liquid into each. “Leave it by the door.”

I stepped in and closed the door.
 

He looked over. “You’re not sushi.”

“Should I go get some?”

“I ordered it half an hour ago.” He gulped down a shot. “Why are you here? You left. I was inappropriate or something.” As soon as he set the glass down, he picked up another one, raising it to me in an ironic salute. “Here’s to mixed messages.” He gulped it down and grabbed a third. “And here’s to complicated women.” He drank that down.
 

I shouldn’t have come. I gripped the still-open door for support. Standing in the doorway, neither in nor out. Undecided. Frozen.
 

Dylan stood, accidentally knocking over two of the empty glasses with a sweep of his arm. He didn’t seem to notice. “Come on, then. Let’s get to it.” He headed toward the bedroom, pulling off his T-shirt as he went and tossing it toward the couch.
 

When I didn’t follow, he paused. “What are you waiting for? It’s what you came back for, isn’t it?” His bare chest was side-lit by the light streaming from the kitchen, which picked out the strong curve of his pecs and the slope of his abdomen.

“I don’t want to be your fuck buddy tonight.” The door was reassuringly solid beneath my tight grip.
 

“Then what do you want?”

“To be your friend.” I let go of the door. It swung back into place and latched with a resounding click.
 

“I don’t have friends. Persephone took all our friends in the divorce. Along with the fish tank and the wedding silver.” He went back to the dining table and the row of shot glasses.

“You have one now. A friend, I mean. Not a fish tank.”

His mouth quirked. “Well, then, friend. Come help me get stinking drunk.” He picked up a glass and held it out. The liquid glistened.
 

I came into the room, finally committing to being here. I took the shot glass from him, letting the cool curve rest against my palm.
 

He grabbed another and gulped it down, not even wincing at the burn, then picked up another, the last one in the row. “Not drinking? You’re supposed to keep me company.”

“I’m here. I’m keeping you company.”

“Hmph.” He drank down the last glass and picked up the bottle, uncapping it.
 

“Does it help? Does it make you numb?” I gazed at the slow swirl of liquid in my glass.
 

“No.” He poured a measure of whiskey into a glass. “But it’ll allow me to sleep tonight. Since you won’t have sex with me, what else have I got?”

“If I gave you a blowjob, would you stop drinking?”

He set the bottle on the counter. “You offering?” His voice was thick, but not with desire. With alcohol and unshed tears.
 

“Are you still in love with her?” I gulped down the contents of the glass. It burned a hole through my esophagus but cleared my head. I saw everything with startling clarity. I cared about this man. Despite myself, I did. And his pain hurt me. How had that happened?
 

He got up, bringing the bottle with him as he went to the couch. Even now, so drunk he radiated ninety-proof vapor in a trail after him, he moved with grace and power.
 

I set my glass down on the counter and followed.
 

The doorbell rang. “That would be the sushi.” He went to the door to get the delivery, giving me a much-needed breather.
 

I gazed around the large, beautiful but still somehow unfinished space. He’d decorated the living room in the time since my last visit six months ago. Instead of packing boxes on the side of the room, there was a glass-topped side table with elegantly carved pale wood legs nestled next to the armchair I remembered from last time.
 

It was the most stunning original armchair I’d ever seen. It looked like it had organically grown from a single tree trunk, with a sense of the gnarls and beautiful imperfections of nature—and yet the curve of the seat was perfectly, ergonomically designed to mold to a human body for maximum comfort. The kind of chair you’d curl up in to reread your favorite novel or listen to your favorite torch singer.
 

Dylan came back with a shopping bag. He set takeout containers on the coffee table, which was another curved, polished slab of wood, clearly from the same designer. Him?
 

“You hungry? I got plenty.” He sat on the couch.
 

“If it’s okay.” I selected a hand roll and nibbled cautiously. Raw fish made me squeamish. I usually ordered tempura. It was battered and fried and completely safe.
 

He watched, amused. “It won’t bite. It’s no longer alive.”

“It’s not cooked. It could still get lively.” I chewed slowly, evaluating the unfamiliar texture of seaweed, slightly sweet rice, and smooth fish.
 

“So?”

“Not bad.”

“It’s not the place I told you about. Just a takeout joint around the corner.”
 

I took another bite, this one more bold. “I might want to try that other place. Sometime.” I avoided looking at him.

“I could take you.”

“Or you could tell me the name.”

“Friends take friends out to dinner all the time.”
 

Now I looked at him. He gazed back, oversolemn.
 

Right. He was drunk. I’d forgotten.
 

We chewed in silence for a few minutes. Dylan seemed pensive and far away.
 

It was too much. “You never answered my question. Are you still in love with Persephone?”

He selected a tuna sushi log, the deep red fish a stark contrast to the whiteness of the rice, and popped it into his mouth whole. He took his time chewing.
 

“Forget I asked. None of my business.” I took a piece of a sushi roll from the tray in front of me, wrapped it in a thin slice of ginger, and dipped it in a puddle of soy sauce.
 

He picked up another piece of sushi and smoothed a slice of ginger over it with his thumb. “We were so young. I didn’t think so at the time, but we were babies. And she was so lovely. And her wild, random ideas, they seemed exotic and exciting. Even her neediness made me feel like I was important.” He put the sushi down untasted and leaned back against the couch. “By the time it got truly bad, I was in too deep to make sense of it. She’d wail and tell me I was a terrible husband. That I was the reason she’d turned to other men. I wasn’t loving enough, I was too caught up in my job, I was never there for her, I wasn’t proof against the monsters in the dark.” He trailed off briefly, lost in memories. “I bought into her version of our marriage. Even after I left her, on some level, I thought it was my fault.”
 

I laced my fingers together, tight.
 

His eyes were dark with wide-open emotion. “And then tonight…”
 

“Tonight you realized it wasn’t you.”

“It was never me.” He sat up, overbalanced, then self-corrected. “All that pain. All for nothing.”

“She got into that motorcycle accident on purpose, didn’t she? So she could get Laurent to pay attention to her.”
 

His mouth twisted. “Maybe not entirely on purpose, but somewhere inside, she knew it was stupidly reckless. She had to know.”

I knew what Jeanine would diagnose. “She’s a classic borderline personality. She’s nothing without a human mirror reflecting herself back at her.”
 

“I fell for it. Ten years of my life, sucked up by a human vacuum, hungry for emotion.” He held his head in his hands. “God, I need water.”

I went to the kitchen. The faucet was old and rusted. It creaked as I turned it on, and water poured out in a rush. He’d furnished the place but hadn’t upgraded anything. My architect self muttered annoyance in my head. Dylan had the money. Why not hire someone?
 

When I returned to the living room with a full glass of water, Dylan was stretched out on the couch, asleep.
 

Now what? I took a sip of water and contemplated him. His dark lashes, the strong line of his jaw, his sculpture-perfect cheeks—they were surface. They were what I’d seen in his posed portrait on that website for Juniper Designs. But up close I saw the subtle vertical lines between his eyebrows that suggested troubled thoughts and foretold what he’d look like in fifteen years. I saw too the way the skin on his bottom lip was rough and uneven, as if he’d worried it with his teeth. And the way his hair curled around his ears, hinting of hidden wildness, barely suppressed passion.
 

I smoothed his hair, which was soft and yielding under my touch. He didn’t stir.
 

I ran my finger along his cheek, feeling the rough stubble against my sensitive fingertip, then the contrasting softness of his lips. He moaned, almost inaudible. His eyes flickered but didn’t open. Dreaming?
 

Hesitant, wondering at myself, I knelt and gently kissed him, trying not to wake him. Breathing into him.
 

I startled as Dylan’s arms came around me, pulling me closer. My feather-light brush of lips turned into a genuine, two-way kiss. His eyes were still closed, and he murmured deep in his throat even as he sucked and nuzzled against my mouth. I was pretty sure he was half-asleep, but I felt the embrace in my chest, warm and alive, as my fingers tangled in his hair and pulled him closer.
 

It wasn’t lust, not exactly. Sure, I could feel that too, a pulse in my groin, but this was something else. Something better. I could stay here forever like this. Held and holding. Comfort and contact and warmth.
 

Was this what my mother had felt when she was with my father, this sense of rightness and belonging? Was this why she’d killed herself after he died? Because she felt empty without it, without him?
 

I pulled away and scrambled up, away from Dylan’s seductive whiskey breath and those insanely sweet lips. Pulling myself together, I grabbed my jacket and shoved my arms into the sleeves.
 

He raised himself up on his elbows. “You’re going again?” He looked sleep smeared and well kissed. And far too lovable, dammit.
 

“Go back to sleep. Take two aspirin when you wake up. You’re going to have a killer headache. Take care of yourself, okay?”

He lay back down, his eyes closing. “Yes, ma’am.”

As I headed for the door, I heard his voice behind me, soft and sleepy. “Thank you for coming, Samantha.”

Just before I clicked the door shut behind me, he added, “Friend.”

~*~

Friend.
 

Lover.
 

Words like rapid heartbeats as I strode down the lonely Greenpoint sidewalk on my way home.
 

 
Entangled.
 

Vulnerable.

Scary words.
Dangerous words.

Maybe I should have gotten drunk after all.
 

When I stepped into my apartment, I found the remnants of the poker party. They’d eaten all the pizza and left the paper plates stacked on the coffee table. Annie was gone. Jeanine had gone off to bed. Georgette was stretched out on the sofa under my grandmother’s afghan, lightly snoring.
 

Only Alanna was awake. She was sketching something on the back of a pizza box. “The game is over, as you can see. Your roommate cleaned us out. I should go.”