I gaped at him while my body woke up and my nipples went hard. Still, my throat felt tight. “This is insane.”
“You’ve just upped your punishment,” Holden said. He pressed himself on me so I could feel his hardening cock through the fabric of our clothes, and he dipped down and kissed me on the mouth. Then he broke away. “Say I’m dating Holden Whittaker and I’m his girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” I breathed, the panic growing.
“You can’t just say the one word. You have to say the whole thing.” He leaned down and kissed me again, and instinctively my lips parted while my knees clamped around him, my body shaping itself around his. He even smelled good, like soap and man-sweat and Holden. When he pulled away I struggled in his grip, not to get away but to try and grab him. He held me gently but firmly.
“Well?” he said.
“I think I need more punishment.”
“No way. Not until you say it.”
I looked into his ocean-blue eyes, and my panic started to recede. This was Holden. I trusted him. If I was going to be anyone’s girlfriend, I was his.
There was nothing to be scared of. He was right here, and he wasn’t going to hurt me.
I took a breath. “I’m dating Holden Whittaker,” I said.
A slow smile touched his mouth, and his blue eyes warmed. “And?”
I squirmed beneath him, my hips moving against his, making his cock get harder. “I can torture you, too, you know.”
“No deal. Say the other part.”
I groaned in sexual frustration, and then I said, “I’m Holden’s girlfriend, okay? I’m your girlfriend.”
The smile he gave me was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen. “You’re damn right you are.”
Then he lowered his head again and kissed me, and I stopped thinking about anything at all.
If Holden was going to be my boyfriend, he had to impress Tess. That went without saying.
I didn’t think it would be an easy job. Tess was fourteen, and nothing impressed her. It was just the way she was. I could have had a marching band come through my apartment, with the entire cast of a Magic Mike show accompanying it, and she would have just rolled her eyes.
I warned Holden about this. “She thinks Ryan Gosling is old. She thinks double chocolate chip ice cream is ‘just okay.’ Even my ticket to Hamilton got a shrug. It’s unnatural.”
“I’ll do my best,” Holden said. We were setting up for a game of Scrabble, which Tess would for sure think was nerdy, but there was nothing I could do. I still planned to entice her with popcorn and peanut M&M’s. I put out another bowl of snacks.
Holden watched me from his place at the kitchen table, where he was opening the Scrabble box. “This is important to you,” he said.
“Is it weird that she’s my best friend right now?” I glanced at him. “It just worked out that way. She’s been left alone so much this summer. She’s smart, and I like talking to her. We have a lot of fun.”
“There’s nothing weird about liking someone,” Holden said in that straightforward way that made the game of Twister my brain usually played seem so complicated. “Don’t you have any friends at work?”
“No. The only person I interact with regularly is my boss, and the less I think about her, the better.”
His eyebrows rose. “You don’t like your boss?”
“She hates me, so no, I don’t like her. I think she hates everyone. Though lately she’s been in a weird mood. I figured out it’s because she’s hung up on a guy.”
“How do you know?”
“She checks her phone all the time at work, and I heard her leaving a message for some guy, making dinner plans. I have no idea who would date her, but obviously someone is.” I shuddered. “Poor guy.”
“That’s harsh,” Holden said.
“You don’t work with her.”
Before I could elaborate, the door opened and Tess came in. “Okay, I’m here for your lame Scrabble night,” she said. She caught sight of Holden. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Holden.”
I expected Tess to roll her eyes and say I know, but she didn’t. Instead she said, “Hi Holden, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Tess.”
“Grab a snack,” Holden said. “I get that Scrabble is nerdy, but you’ll probably beat me, so it has that going for it.”
“Okay, thanks. And Scrabble isn’t that bad. It’s kind of fun.”
I tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at me. She was too busy looking at Holden. And blushing.
I walked into the kitchen, turned my back on them, and pulled out my phone. I texted her on WhatsApp, which she had forced me to install. Who are you and what have you done with Tess?
Her phone chimed in her pocket, and as I poured us some sodas, her reply came in. It was perfect, poetic simplicity:
OMG Mina
I smiled to myself and put my phone away. Holden wasn’t going to have to fight to win Tess over. The battle was already won.
Twenty-One
Holden
Two days after Scrabble night with Tess, something magic happened: a colleague switched shifts with me and I got two days off in a row. On a weekend.
Since I’d planned to work the weekend, Mina had made plans to fly home to Wisconsin to see her parents. Now I was going to be home all weekend, without her, and she was going to be in another state.
“Come with me,” she said.
“To your parents’?”
“Why not?”
I shook my head. “They can’t be big fans of mine. Not after prom night.”
Mina waved an impatient hand, as if ten years’ worth of angst was water under the bridge. “Forget about that. I’ll just explain to them.”
“Explain that I got drunk and stood up their daughter?”
“They’re very nice. If I’ve forgiven you, they will, too. You’ll see.”
Eventually I agreed, because I wanted to spend the weekend with Mina, and I didn’t want to ask her to stay home. I had no desire to see Wisconsin ever again, but at least both of my parents had left the state long ago, so I wouldn’t be forced to see them.
So I got a cheap last-minute flight, and now Mina and I were at LaGuardia, waiting at the gate. As she got up to go to a nearby stand to get coffee, my phone rang.
I looked at the number. “Oh, Jesus,” I said aloud.
It was Helen, the woman Eric had set me up with on that terrible double date. When I didn’t call her for a week after that night, she somehow got my number—I suspected it was through Rachel and Eric, though I had no proof—and had started texting me.
She said we should get together, and I said no.
She waited a few days, then tried again. I said no.
She waited another few days, then asked me out to a movie. I told her I was seeing someone. I thought that would be the end of it.
But the other day she’d left me a voicemail, asking if I wanted to go for dinner. The woman wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was downright weird. I didn’t want to block her number, because she was Rachel’s cousin and Eric was still dating Rachel, but it was getting to that unavoidable point. And now she was calling me again.