Authors: Lauren Gilley
She clicked the stopwatch as they passed the finish, and smothered a delighted gasp when she checked the time.
The three KSU runners folded up like paper dolls one by one as they crossed the line, spread-eagle on the track, groaning.
Jordan took a beat with hands on his knees, taking the pressure off his diaphragm, but then righted himself. The sweat that glazed his arms and chest and face was a high shine in the early sunlight, shadows carving out the shape of each and every individual muscle in stark relief. He pushed his hair off his forehead and went to retrieve a water bottle from his bag, the deep, hard sound of his breathing the only indication he’d just run an eight hundred meter race. “How’s it feel to get beat by an old man?” he asked his runners matter-of-factly. It wasn’t a boast, but a question, and he earned another collective groan in answer.
“Fucking sucks,” one of them murmured.
“You guys ready to listen to what I have to say now?”
There was mumbling in the affirmative.
Ellie held her breath and waited. She could not believe her plan had worked, let alone that he’d agreed to try it. She was full to the brim with pride – pride for him -- and swore she felt it radiating off of her, proud waves she couldn’t stop transmitting. All her mushy, unwanted but undeniable feelings about him were only amplified by her excitement.
An excitement that doubled when he glanced her way and lifted his brows in silent question.
“Coach,” she said, trying to keep her voice neutral as she took the five strides that separated them. She turned the stopwatch so he could read its face. “You broke your old record.”
His eyes went wide with shock. A fast, fleeting smile made a brief appearance before he could suppress it. After he’d regained his composure, the only sign he was pleased was a deep, hard to discern sparkle in his blue-green eyes. “Cool,” he told her and only her. Someone else would have bragged. Jordan launched into teacher mode and went to talk to his runners.
Ellie had time to kill before her first class started and she should have used it to get ahead on her World Lit reading or go over her history notes one more time to ensure she was doubly prepared for the day’s discussion. Instead, she traded sneakers for sandals, gathered her things, and lingered at the edge of the track, waiting. The three boys gave her knowing, smirking glances before they headed off to the showers, but she ignored them, telling herself it didn’t bother her. Because when they were gone and Jordan turned to face her, a rare, genuine smile splitting his face, it truly didn’t.
“Guess you think you’re pretty smart now,” he said as he hiked his backpack up onto one shoulder and joined her.
“Nope.” She handed him the stopwatch, heart giving a little lurch as his whole hand covered hers when he took it back, their fingers sliding apart with deliberate slowness. “Just glad it didn’t backfire,” she said, hearing the shaky quality of her voice. She was a bundle of positive nerves and couldn’t seem to get them under control.
“Me too.” He wound the stopwatch cord around his wrist and then just stood there a moment, staring at his shoes, still breathing hard. He was stalling, she thought. “Guess I better grab a shower,” he said at last.
Which was a shame because she liked the way his shirt was clinging to his ribbed stomach. And because it meant they were about to part ways.
“Could you still compete?” Ellie asked, wanting to keep him in front of her a little longer. He lifted a curious glance up to her face. “I don’t know how it works, if you have to run on a school team or in an age bracket…but could you? You’ve still…got it,” she said for lack of better phrasing.
He lifted a single, dark blonde brow. “’Got it’? Are you a talent scout and I didn’t know it?” he teased.
She rolled her eyes. “I can read numbers and they don’t lie. You shaved almost a second off your old best time.”
“You volunteering to be my biggest fan?”
He was avoiding the initial question, and if he wanted to do that, she wouldn’t press. She shrugged. “And I’m not even a sports girl, so that’s saying something.”
He regarded her a long moment as the sun continued its climb. The laughter in his eyes became something more serious. “Thanks,” he said. “I would never have thought of this.”
Ellie felt color rising in her cheeks. “You’re helping me so I thought…” The way he was staring at her was making her throat feel tight. “I’m glad,” she finished lamely.
“Do you work tonight?”
Her pulse picked up. “No. Well, not really. I told Paige I’d help her with an order. Why?”
“I was thinking.” He might,
might
have looked nervous all of a sudden. “That Friday night was a long time to wait.”
Contrasting surges of trepidation and eagerness licked through her. She wet her lips. “You want to go out tonight?”
“Does that freak you out?”
“No.”
He chewed at his lower lip, looking almost disappointed. “Just think about it.”
**
Almost a second.
Almost a second was nothing to the rest of the world. Driving to work, late to a meeting, over your minutes on the phone bill, waiting in line at the McDonald’s drive through: almost a second made no difference. It was an infinitesimal measure of time.
But to a runner, it was everything. Victory. Medals. Win, place or show. And it was personal and state records getting smashed.
“Could you still compete?”
Ellie had asked, and she’d given him this impressed, sparkly-eyed look he hadn’t seen from anyone since high school. The thought of competition had dropped a cold stone in the pit of his stomach. But her look…that had had a very different effect.
He showed a curriculum-approved video on the evils of fast food or some such bullshit during his two o’ clock class. In the dark, the only light coming from the projector screen, some of his students put their heads down and napped, some of them watched the video, most played with their phones, but Ellie watched him.
Her eyes were silver in the bluish, reflected light of the movie, and he wished he knew what was going on behind them that caused the secretive half-smile that stole across her face every so often. He didn’t know where he kept finding this new patience he had with her, the willingness not to push too hard, but he was hoping she didn’t think he was being a creep. That even if he did want to get his hands on her, wanting to move things up to tonight wasn’t intentionally sleazy on his part.
He felt like an ass for even worrying.
Scratch that, he felt like a chick.
After he dismissed class and everyone had filed out, Tam with a distracted rap of his knuckles against the desk top on his way past, Ellie made her approach.
She gathered a deep breath, met his gaze and said, “I have all this chicken I need to make, so come by the house at eight.”
Jordan bit back a smile. “So you thought about it?”
“Yes.”
15
“
Y
ou invited him
here
?”
Ellie faltered, hand hovering in the air above the gallon Ziploc bag she’d just sealed her chicken and marinade inside. Her stomach lurched. “Was I not supposed to?”
Paige was sitting on the kitchen counter beside the prep space where she worked, stocking feet thumping against the lower cabinets, eating M&Ms out of a giant party sized bag that weighed more than she did. She sighed dramatically, shaking her head, and pink-tipped hair. “El,” she said with a cluck of her tongue like she was talking to a child. “You already invited him here once for…for
floor pizza
. You can’t do the same thing twice in a row.”
Ellie had wondered the same thing herself, and doubt wasn’t just creeping along the edges of her subconscious, it was launching a full scale attack. “But, I’m making chicken this time,” she said in a small voice.
“And you make great chicken,” Paige assured. “
Fantastico
. But our pretty little coach doesn’t care if you can cook.”
Ellie lifted her brows.
Paige popped a red M&M and rolled her eyes. “Don’t play dumb. I know you’re a relationship girl, but you don’t go from zero to married just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “You have to go through all the rituals first.”
“Rituals? Honestly, Paige - ”
“You have to let him take you out. Don’t you want that? Dinner and a movie and go-kart racing and all that? You have to make him chase you. And then it’s his place for sex,” she said like she was citing fact. “You can’t just let him in.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s after ass and you’re after a boyfriend and if you get too invested too early, you’re gonna get crushed.”
And that was the cold, hard, bare bones,
Cosmopolitan
truth of it, wasn’t it? Everything was sex, style, and an unwritten series of rules for this big chess game in which humans were pawns – meant to be used, evaluated, and traded for better alternatives.
“Last week, you wanted me to go out with him,” Ellie said, exasperated. “Now you say I’m not going about it the right way.”
“I’m just - ”
“Looking out for me, I know.”
“And you know I’m right. Dating - ”
“Dating sucks because people act like there are rules,” Ellie interrupted her again. “I choose not to play. If that bothers him, he can leave. Whatever. This is what I’m doing.” She thought she sounded firm, even though her insides were quaking.
“Fine.” Paige hopped off the counter. “I just hope you’re nicer to him than you are me.”
She was too jittery to feel guilty at the moment. “I’m still helping you bake tonight,” she said by way of apology as she carried the chicken to the fridge to marinate.
“You better be. Bobby’s taking me to see some band he likes, then it’s back here for a cake-a-thon.” She gathered a last handful of candy and set the bag on the kitchen’s center island. “’Course, that’s me assuming Coach’ll be gone by then.” She waggled her brows.
“Oh, I’m sure he will,” Ellie said with a fake smile as she gathered a head of romaine lettuce and block of parmesan cheese and went back to her cutting board. “After I bore him to tears, I’ll be lucky if he finishes his food.”
Paige fired her back a matching I-love-you-and-that’s-why-I-can-pretend-to-hate-you smile, nose scrunched up. “’Kay. I wanna know all the boring details when I get back.”
“Don’t hurry.”
“Don’t bore him.”
Ellie heaved a big, uneasy, not at all relieved sigh as the back door closed. Paige’s ribbing may have come from a good place, but that didn’t make it any less true or brutal. She
was
boring: bookish, fascinated by mundane things, perfectly happy to talk movies, uncomfortable with playing the coquette. She was already fretting over the food, her clothes, exactly what would happen once Jordan crossed the threshold, and now, thanks to Paige, she was worried that she was flunking Dating 101 and that he’d secretly, or not so secretly, be laughing at her before it was all over with.
The dish she made best was a Mexican chicken, and she always served it over a salad with citrus dressing. Because her mind had gone blank in the middle of the grocery store and she’d been reduced to staring slack-jawed at the meat counter, she’d panicked and decided to go with what she knew. But would Jordan eat it? He was a runner; he watched what he ate, right? She didn’t know, and her stomach clenched and churned while she prepped their salads and put them back in the fridge.
Upstairs, she touched up her makeup: a brush of darker eye shadow, reapplication of mascara and her favorite peach lip gloss. She took the curling iron to the ends of her hair, arranged her bangs, and then it was on to her closet. After a stare down with her hanging clothes, she settled on a fitted black sleeveless top with a deep V neck and her favorite gray skirt, black peep-toe slingbacks.
Ellie stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, scrutinizing everything from the shape of her ass to the elasticity of her skin. She was happy to live in her own body until she started thinking about baring it for a man’s approval. Then she hated everything about it.
Approval
. She could throttle Paige for reminding her what this was really about: hookups and broken promises to call, a one night romp and then the cold shoulder. It hadn’t felt like that on the track that morning, Jordan chewing at his lip and telling her to think about it, leaning in and kissing her on the bleachers. But when she stepped back and looked at her evening for what it was, she was just a horny girl making dinner for her horny coach, and none of it meant anything.
The doorbell rang and her heart stopped.
It was ten till eight, the sun so low that shadowy, smoky light filtered through the blinds with the promise of sunset, and her teacher was at her door. What was she thinking?
A cold tremor stole through her. “I’m such an idiot,” she said under her breath and headed for the top of the stairs, shaking with dread. All the way down the steps she tried to come up with a way to get out of this. But then she opened the door and the setting sun backlit the tall, lean, curly-headed boy who’d kissed her up against his Jeep, and every negative thought abandoned her.
Jordan was in a navy American Eagle t-shirt tucked behind his belt buckle in the front, dark, smartly fitted bootcut jeans, retro Converse sneakers. He smelled like pears, like he had that morning. His eyes were big and turquoise, and they took a slow trip from her black-nailed toes peeping through her shoes all the way up to her eyes.
His smile was devastating. “You look amazing.”
“You too,” she said before she could stop herself, and knew she was sunk.
**
She looked a bit like a naughty, sexed-up secretary, all but her eyes, and those were the color of mercury and just as reflective of her internal temperature. Her smile, unselfconscious and sudden, was part of a blushing, peaches and cream face that was happy to see him. Hot with anticipation, or worry, stress – he didn’t know what – her hand shook just the slightest as she swung the door open and invited him in, and her shoulders looked tight as he followed her across the creaky foyer into the kitchen. But again, her eyes – flicking up to his as she stepped around the center island and braced her hands on the tile countertop – left Jordan thankful that they were at the house instead of a restaurant, because he could give two shits about dinner right now.
“I’d offer you a drink,” she said, “but being,” she dropped her voice and mumbled, “under twenty one” - a quick shake of her head - “I don’t have any alcohol in the house.”
“Given what happens when you drink beer, that’s probably a good thing.”
Her grin was sheepish. “Probably.”
She was nervous and it was cute – cute so long as he could shake her out of it. “I drink other stuff too, ya know.”
“Oh!” A hand flew to her mouth; her blush deepened. “Shit, of course. I’m - ”
“Don’t say sorry.”
She was scarlet. “ – going to get you something.” She went to the fridge and stuck her head behind the door where he couldn’t see it, regaining her composure, he guessed.
Clearly, Dating Ellie was a very different person than Casual Ellie. Had he only ever met this blushing, fumbling, bundle of nerves version of her, he would have felt like some coercive stalker. But the girl who’d told him over pizza that she wasn’t “tryst material,” who insulted him in the sweetest, most good natured way and rolled her eyes when he tried to compliment her – that girl wasn’t afraid of him. Wasn’t flustered.
That
girl wanted this to happen as much as he did.
With that in mind, Jordan stepped around behind her, peered over her shoulder into the fridge, and settled his hands on her hips. She started, and he squeezed his fingers.
Relax
. She settled with a quiet sigh. “Take your time. Beverage choice is pretty important,” he said, dropping his chin on her shoulder. Her perfume was something fresh with a flower undertone; it went well with the scent of her shampoo.
“You are the worst flirt,” she said with a fleeting chuckle, but he could feel her moving back against him, just a subtle release of tension that brought them closer, her ass against the fronts of his thighs, her head tipping into his a fraction.
“
The
worst?” He tilted his head and asked against the side of her neck. The goose bumps on her satin skin were not, he guessed, the result of the cool air pouring out of the fridge.
“Maybe not…”
He slid a hand up her narrow, tapered waist, his own pulse picking up, and felt her chest heave as he palmed her ribcage. “Ellie.”
She wet her lips. Her lashes fluttered. “If I turn around, are you going to think I’m a whore?”
“No,” he chuckled. “Sweetheart, I’m praying you turn around.”
She did, her hair fanning around her shoulders, the fridge door falling shut as she let go. Jordan’s hands slipped around to the small of her back. Ellie stood up on her toes, her hands sliding up his chest, and
she
kissed
him
.
**
Her bedroom was all in shadows, the last fading sunbeams coming through the open drapes amber and liquid as they fell across the white-on-white destination that was her bed. Ellie took note of this, the tidy familiarity of her little haven, from the corner of one eye before she heeled the door shut and Jordan’s lips were sealed against hers again.
He had the zipper of her skirt worked open and one of his hands was down the back of it, inside the black lace of her panties, while the other was under her shirt and working upward toward the clasp of her bra. She had his shirt pushed up, hands against his warm, smooth skin, but she needed him to let go of her so she could get the thing off over his head.
His tongue was halfway down the back of her throat and her brain had long since switched off. All her uncertainties had fled – the body image issues among them – and she just wanted him to keep touching her, to touch more of her. Her body knew exactly what it needed from his, and as both his hands moved to the hem of her top and their lips went smacking apart, she wasn’t going to let logic get in the way.
He peeled her shirt up over her arms and let it drop to the floor between them, eyes going to the black on ivory lace cups of her bra. “Hot damn,” he breathed.
“Yours too,” she demanded, voice a rushed, breathy sound she didn’t recognize.
Jordan complied, ditched his shirt, and they crashed back together.