Page 42 of Don't Go
She looked up.
The look went on for a beat longer than the question deserved. The booth was warm. The diner light was yellow. Her eyes were the color they had been on the stoop, dark and steady and not going anywhere.
She didn't answer.
"I imagine I am." I held the look. "Judging by what you said to me."
She set her fork down. "What did I say to you?"
"You said" — I lowered my voice — "Cross. If you don't leave in the next ten seconds, I'm going to do something we will both regret."
She tried not to laugh, but she lost. It came out of her in one bright burst, surprised, half-angry, and her hand came up to her mouth, as though the laugh had escaped without permission. She shook her head at me with the corners of her mouth still trying to settle.
I let her have it.
Then I let my face go serious. "Did you mean it?"
She stopped laughing.
"What you said you were going to do. Did you mean it?" I asked again.
I held her eyes. She held mine.
The diner sounds came in through the table and went again — a fork on a plate two booths over, the milk steamer, the bell over the door.
Whatever I was looking for in her face, I found it.
I reached into my back pocket, pulled out a fold of cash, and put it on the table. I held my hand out across the booth. "Let's get out of here."
She looked at the hand, then at me. Then she put her hand in mine.
We were five steps out the diner door when I stopped walking.
I turned, and she was already turning toward me. The parking lot was half empty, and the streetlight overhead was a different orange from the parking-garage orange. She was a foot in front of me with her hand still in mine, the strap of her purse on her shoulder.
I caught her by the waist and pulled her in.
I kissed her.
It wasn't gentle. I'd walked out of the diner with three weeks of everynothing-textI hadn't sent and my father's hand fumbling for the blanket, and the kiss had all of that in it. Her mouth was warm. Her hand came up to the back of my neck and into my hair. She pulled me down half an inch, and I gripped her waist and pulled her against me, and she didn't stop me.
I'd thought about this since the auction.
I'd thought about it without admitting I was thinking about it — standing at her counter with my arm passing hers by an inch, in the cab leaving her stoop, in the chair in my father's room while the family laughed at the Sebring trip that wasn't real.
I broke the kiss because I needed air.
She didn't step back. Her hand stayed in my hair, and my hand stayed on her waist.
We stared at each other for one second.
She came back in.
I hooked my hands under her thighs, and she came up off the ground and wrapped her legs around my waist without hesitating. I walked her two steps to my car and set her down on the hood.
Thank God. The parking lot was empty.
Her hand was in my hair, my mouth on hers, the hood of the car warm under her, and my hand at the back of her thigh, keeping her there.
