Stir Me Up Page 16
“What?”
“Can you put this in for me when you’re done? Estella’s up resting.”
“Sure.”
“How’s Julian feeling?” he asks.
I think of our muddy mad tangle just a little while ago. “Better,” I say. “What are you going to do now?”
“Work out. Pay bills. Shovel off the back patio.”
“Exciting.”
“You?” he asks.
“No plans.”
“We could take a drive up to Burlington.”
He means to UVM. “No,” I almost shout. “It’s a holiday. No one will be there. The whole college is closed right now.”
He holds up his hand. “Okay. Just a thought I had.”
The rest of the day settles into itself. I read cookbooks and finish laundry and text Taryn:
Julian and I had a mud fight.
A what?? she responds.
A fight. With my Fango mud.
THAT IS HOT! MEGA-HOT!
Yeah. It was.
I WANT A HOT BOYFRIEND TO SMEAR MUD ON ME!
Let’s find you one, then! Whatever happened to Gareth?
HE AVOIDS ME NOW. I HAVE NO ONE. FACE IT. :(
You’re going to L.A. soon—there will be tons of hot guys who want you out there!
YEAH FOR ONE NIGHT.
That’s not true.
IT’S OK. I’M HAPPY FOR YOU. WITH JULIAN.
Thanks :)
BTW, IT SUCKS NOT TO BE IN LES MIS!! EVERYONE’S TOTALLY INTO IT AND I’M NOT! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO ALL SPRING WITH YOU WORKING AND NO BOYFRIEND AND ALL MY OTHER FRIENDS IN THE PLAY? :(
You’d be leaving a boyfriend in a few months anyway—seeing as how you’re leaving early to go be famous. And can’t you do something else for Les Mis? Be assistant director or assistant stage manager or something?
THEY’D STILL NEED ME FOR THE PRODUCTIONS THEN. FACE IT C I’M OUT. IT’S LIKE HIGH SCHOOL’S OVER FOR ME ALREADY. I SHOULD JUST LEAVE NOW. WHY WAIT?
No! You can’t. I’d miss you too much!
I CAN’T REALLY LEAVE, IT’D COST TOO MUCH WITH THE TUTOR. LOOK, I HAVE TO GO TO YOGA TO GET MY MOM OFF MY CASE. SHE SAYS I’M GETTING FAT.
You are not getting fat! Your mom has an eating disorder and she’s trying to give you one too! Damn it, Taryn!
SHE’S JUST UPSET BECAUSE SHE SAW ME WHEN I WAS BLOATED.
Arrrgh! That’s it! I’m bringing you spaghetti! Brownies! Mud pies!
MUD PIES??? I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT. LOL ;)
I meant the ice cream pie, you know with the...never mind!
I say goodbye to her and reread the exchange and sigh. I’d hate for her to drop out early. I hate to think of her leaving at all.
Chapter Twenty-Two
That night, Julian stays to watch me do the dishes after dinner. It’s sweet how he messes with the newspaper, pretending to read it. When I’m done, I go sit next to him. He folds up the paper and looks at me, takes my hand. I turn his so it’s resting on the table and then open his fingers so I can see his palm. “You have a really long life line.” I trace it with my finger.
“There’s a break in it.”
“That’s okay. That just means a change in your life.”
“Hmm.”
“And this is your head line. It shows how smart you are.”
“And how smart am I?”
“Extremely. See? It goes from here all the way to here.”
“And the top one?”
“That’s your love line. It extends to your middle finger.”
“What does that mean? That I’m only interested in a fuck?”
“No.” I smile. “It just means you don’t extend to the realm of the overly emotional in terms of love.”
He takes hold of my hand, turns it over so the palm is up.
“No, don’t do mine.”
“Come on. Which one is this again?”
“That’s my life line.”
His eyes get wide. Because my life line is extremely short. Like, scary short.
He looks at his own palm. And then at mine again. I curl up my fingers.
“Is this why you learned palmistry?”
“Taryn once mentioned something to me.”
He looks patiently at me. “Cami, you’re not going to die young.”
I meet his eyes—worried.
“You can’t be serious,” he says.
“I am serious.”
“Palmistry is bullshit.”
“No, it’s not. It’s been around for thousands of years.”
“Then you’re not doing it right.”
“Maybe I am. Mostly.”
“No, don’t worry. You can’t just read about palmistry for two minutes online and be an expert. And it’s not accurate. If it was, life insurance companies would just demand to see your palm to determine how big a risk you are.”
“Taryn said her grandmother, who lived to ninety-eight, had a really long life line.”
“That’s one person.” He kisses my palm and then folds my fingers over it, like to have me keep it.
“You look happy for some reason,” I tease.
“Hmm. I wonder why.”
We go in to watch a movie with Estella. Then, when she goes up to bed, I turn to Julian. “Truth or dare?” I ask.
“Truth.”
I smile. “Tell me something you’ve done that was bad.”
He shrugs. “I was never bad. I was always perfect.”
I toss a pillow at him. He laughs. “Okay. I’ve got one. Once, when I was about twelve, Brandon took me out one night with a case of toilet paper and a carton of eggs.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh-huh. Apparently, there was this one girl who’d done him wrong and he was determined to get even with her. He’d just gotten his license. So, late that night we steal the keys, drive over to her house and start throwing toilet paper at the birch trees in her front yard. The rolls fall down with each throw, so we have to run up and get them to throw them again. We’re having the time of our lives. Then the girl’s dad opens the door.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. We run behind bushes for cover. ‘GODDAMN IT!’ he yells. ‘GODDAMN YOU’... And Blam! Brandon gets him right in the chest with an egg.” Julian’s grinning. “You should’ve seen this guy, he was so mad I thought he’d have a fit. And then he starts hollering for his dog: ‘Ajax!’ he yells. Brandon’s eyes go big. ‘Oh shit!’ he cries. We’re thinking we’re dead, here comes the fierce Rottweiler, the pit bull.”
“What was it?”
Julian smiles at me. “A border terrier.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a dog not much bigger than Shelby.”
I grin.
“So Brandon sees this little thing and just starts to laugh. ‘Come on Ajax,’ he says. ‘Come and get me.’”
“So what happened?”
“The motherfucker was the dog from hell. We threw eggs at it, rolls of toilet paper. It chased us down two blocks and then Brandon stopped and tried to kick at it and it bit him on the ankle.”
“Serves him right for trying to kick a dog,” I comment.
“Anyway, I had to pry the thing off of him. And then we had to sneak back to get our car.”
“That’s your story?”
“That’s my story. Your turn. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
Julian thinks for a minute. Then his face turns serious and sad.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“No. Ask it.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how much does it bother you that I’m missing a leg?”
“Julian...”
He won’t meet my eyes now. “Answer.”
“I can’t answer that, I don’t know what I’d say.”
“You can say a ten.”
“It’s not a ten. It’s more like maybe a three.”
“Yeah, right.”
“No, really. I mean, sure I’d ra
ther you still had your leg. But guys with artificial legs are doing all kinds of sports and things now.”
“And the appearance?”
“I haven’t seen it outside of the sock.”
“Say it looked like a stump. With a knee.”
“It might be a little strange at first, but I care about you too much to let it bother me. I mean, if I’d lost a hand in a machine at work, and had a prosthetic one, would you not be interested in me?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“No, I’m serious. Think about it, would my prosthetic hand turn you off?”
Julian is quiet.
“The way prosthetic legs are now, I doubt anyone will even know you have one unless you’re in shorts.”
He gives a slight shrug. “It’ll actually calibrate my step so my stride’s not uneven.”
“See? You’re a Cyborg.”
“Great,” he grumbles.
“What?” I say, coming over to him. “Cyborgs are hot.”
He rolls his eyes.
“I’m tired,” I say, touching his shoulder.
“Okay. Good night.”
I kiss his left temple and go to bed—in his bed.
He comes in just a few minutes later and joins me, takes me into his arms and holds me close. “Imagine meeting you here,” he says.
“Imagine.”
“I thought you’d gone upstairs.”
“I will have to do that,” I say. “Eventually.”
“Eventually.”
“We’ll have to keep an ear out for Dad and Estella.”
“I will,” he whispers. He lifts my hair out of the way and lets his lips trail over the side of my face. “We’ll get you back up there in plenty of time. Okay?”
“Mmm...” I say. Then he kisses me, just gently.
“I close my eyes and all I can see is you covered in mud.”
I chuckle. “That was fun.”
He presses his lips gently to mine. “Cami,” he whispers. “Just turn your head a little...”
I do and he starts touching my face with the tips of his fingers. He tastes my cheek and temple and chin and nose, the spot just under my mouth, the one just over it. A whimper escapes me.
“I claim this face in the name of Julian Wyatt,” he says.
“And here you were always pushing me away and being so mean.”
His lips graze mine. “I was a mess when I first got here... I mean, I still am, but it was worse then. And of course there was the issue of you being gorgeous and completely unattainable and around all the time. Driving me out of my mind with your smart mouth.”
“I should have been nicer to you.”
“I like that you didn’t walk on eggshells around me.”
I rest my head against him when our mouths break apart, and breathe him in. I love the smell of him, that mysterious, perfect, warm, delicious taste that is him. I miss it when our mouths aren’t together... This is a kind of intimate thing to admit, but Julian has a very sexy tongue. It makes me feel zings in my arms and legs, places you’d least expect. If he kept kissing me long enough, I’m sure I’d incinerate, explode. As it is, the heat of it has me so melted and unraveled, when I put my hands on his shoulders it’s to touch him but also to steady myself.
“What you do to me,” he says and I know just what he means. My hands slip under his shirt and I feel the panting start in my chest. My hands trail up higher, and the higher they go the more I’m getting turned on, until finally his shirt comes off and his bare chest is there, everywhere near me and around me. My breathing turns heavy as I stare at him. His body isn’t just ripped, it’s also extremely beautiful somehow, the turn of each muscle kind of gentle and perfect like it’s waiting for me. I see a scar on his right side and touch it. “This one looks serious.”
“Your fingers are cold.”
There are five other smaller scars on his torso that I can see. He’s so beautiful, like a young David Beckham only with scars instead of tattoos. I kiss each of them and then he pulls me up and looks at me like he’s searching inside my mind for something. “They’re hot,” I whisper, to reassure him.
“No scar is hot.”
“Yours are.”
His mouth links with mine, his hands run over me. I start whimpering, trembling—I’m kind of losing it.
“You okay?” he asks, stopping for a second.
“Yeah, I just...” am scared, nervous, freaked out, blown away.
“I know,” he says. “Me, too.” He holds me closer. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“Are you a virgin?”
I hesitate. “Yes. Luke wanted to, but I kept saying no.”
“I’m glad,” he says. A small kiss. “I won’t push you.”
Huh, that wasn’t so bad. I wrap my arms around Julian’s neck. “Thanks.”
His arms tighten around me. “I’ll just keep fantasizing.”
I laugh.
He kisses me long into the night, until my lips are swollen and my heart is full and my hands feel electric from running over his back and chest. And then, once the taste of him is locked inside me, once I’ve memorized the feel of him, I curl up against him and fall asleep. For a blissful twenty minutes. Then he awakens me very gently and I sneak upstairs.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What on earth are you doing?” Julian asks a few afternoons later. I’m at the kitchen table with a bunch of stuff spread out everywhere—computer, notebook, ruler, fast food.
“I’m measuring French fries for my stats homework.”
“Huh? What kind of homework is that?”
“We have to get a small order of fast food fries, and then measure them all to find out the mean, median, mode, trimmed mean, and standard deviation.”
“Sounds like an excuse for a snack to me,” he says, helping himself to one.
“Don’t eat them. I need them.”
“So how long are they?”
“The average French fry, I’ll have you know, is precisely 2.1 inches.”
“This one’s not two point one inches. It’s a runt.”
“Fine. Eat that one.”
He chomps it down and peers at my laptop. “You’re making graphs?”
“Uh-huh.”
“On Excel?”
“I can do it.”
“Please. Your graphs are pathetic.”
“Huh.” I should be offended, but the truth is he’s right. “What schools did you apply to before you joined the Marines?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering. What did you get on the SAT?”
“What did you get?”
“That’s like asking a woman her weight. It’s not done.”
“Why? How much do you weigh?”
I throw a French fry at him. He eats it.
“There, I just trimmed part of your mean,” he says with a grin.
“What did you get?” I ask, more seriously now. “Twenty-one something?”
“About that. I guess.”
“Twenty-two something?”
He hesitates.
“Twenty-three?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You have to apply to Harvard, Julian. Like right now!”
He shakes his head. “You know, those fries made me hungry.”
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Since when do you not want to feed me?”
My insides melt. “I...uhh...”
He gives me a sexy smile.
I close my eyes. Maybe to keep myself from attacking him like a crazed groupie. “I could make popcorn.”
“Sounds good.”
Big swallow. Okay. Making popcorn. “Want to see my secret weapon?” I ask.
“Sure. What is it?”
I rummage around in the corner bottom cabinet and pull out my popcorn popper.
“Why is that a secret weapon?”
“Dad doesn’t exactly believe in handy kitchen gadgets. But this one. Is mine.” I set it on
the counter with a flourish. Take out the little bottle of popcorn oil and the popcorn kernels. I pour in approximately the right amounts of each—and the phone rings. I run to get it. It’s Dad calling for Estella, but she’s not answering. “Can you start that?” I ask Julian. “Just flip the switch. I’ll be right back.”
I run upstairs and find her in the bathtub. “Dad’s on the phone,” I say. “Want it now?”
“Ask him if I can call him back.”
I do. “He says he needs to talk to you now.”
Estella insists on getting out of the tub and covering up with a towel before she’ll take the phone from me. Fine, whatever. I hand it to her, run back downstairs—the stairwell’s filled with the smell of popcorn by this time, and once I turn the corner into the kitchen I see why. Popcorn is everywhere, all over the counter and overflowing three glass bowls. Julian’s in a panic.
“Help!”
“What happened?” I ask. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
I check the machine—it’s turned off.
“Julian, did you add more after I left?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Why?” I ask, laughing. “Why would you add more?”
“You were hardly making any! And the bag was almost empty so I figured I’d just finish it.”
“You finished the whole thing?”
“I’ll buy you more.”
“What are you doing now?”
“I’m just trying to collect it all.”
“Don’t put it in that.”
Julian looks at me like I’m crazy. “Why, what’s wrong with the bag?”