Put Me Back Together(60)

“When you make that noise, it makes me lose my mind,” he whispered, and I responded by lightly biting his bottom lip, too overwhelmed to form words of my own.

Then two things happened at once. Lucas placed his hand on my bare thigh, and pretty high up on my thigh, since the skirt of my dress was pooled around my waist—and to be honest I had no real idea of where, or how much of my legs were actually showing—and I turned my head to the side and saw a middle-aged Chinese woman glancing at us through the window of the car as she walked by.

“Oh my God,” I cried, turning my back to the window, which coincidentally brought my hips exactly in line with Lucas’s—a fact he seemed to be a big fan of.

Lucas was still busily ravaging my neck, his kisses moving back up toward my mouth, his hands wandering every which way as I struggled to rearrange my dress.

“Lucas,” I said, trying in vain to gently detach his face from mine—and a little amused by his obliviousness.

“Hmm?” he said, finally breaking his kiss to look at me.

“I think we just gave a soccer mom the shock of her life,” I said, gesturing toward the windows and the strangely large number of people in the parking lot at that very minute, all of who could clearly see into the car. The windows hadn’t even had a chance to fog up completely.

His arms still around me, Lucas popped his head up and glanced around, then burrowed his face in my neck to stifle a laugh. “I feel like I’m fifteen again,” he said sheepishly. I was too busy laughing along with him to bother mentioning that nothing like this had ever happened to me at fifteen.

Grabbing our coats, Lucas placed them on top of me as I continued to try to wiggle the tiny black dress Anita had lent me into its proper place on my body.

“You don’t think anyone really saw anything, do you?” I said as he pulled the car out into traffic and started driving at least twenty kilometers per hour over the speed limit. Mortification was really starting to set in as I thought about exactly what we’d been doing, and how I’d been feeling, just moments before.

“Whatever they saw, I’m pretty sure it was totally hot, so you have nothing to be embarrassed about,” he answered. “I’m not. I don’t care who sees us together.”

Pulling on my beige trench coat, I buttoned it up all the way to the neck, trying in vain to button away my earlier half-nakedness. “Oh really?” I said. “Even if all your friends had walked by? Even if it was Taylor?” I knew we’d covered the Taylor issue the day before, but I didn’t really feel like he’d explained it away to my satisfaction. It was hard to understand how he could be so uninterested in a girl who matched him so perfectly and choose me instead.

Lucas gave me a look before turning his eyes back to the road. He barely braked the car as he took a turn, making the tires squeal. “Do you think I’m driving this fast because I’d rather be with Taylor right now?”

“Maybe,” I said meekly, the beginnings of a grin pulling at my lips.

“Just for that, I’m going to take my time unbuttoning all those buttons,” he said, pointing a warning finger at me. “It’s going to be torture for you.”

“Torture” suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

He brought the car to a sudden halt, yanking up the parking brake, and I realized we were in front of my building. Anxiety prickled at my skin at the sight of it. I’d thought maybe we were going to his room in Victoria Hall, which I’d never seen, but then he did have three roommates and he knew I lived all alone. It made sense that he would bring me here, to the place where just yesterday we’d made out on my bed. He didn’t have any idea that my apartment had become tainted to me. I’d had him pick me up on a random street corner earlier, making up an excuse that I’d been at a friend’s place picking up some notes I’d lent her, both the friend and the notes figments of my imagination. That white lie weighed on me as Lucas opened my door and pressed another kiss to my lips. How many other little lies would I be telling tonight to the boy I didn’t want to lie to, I wondered.


I was still lost in these thoughts as we entered the building and I placed my key into the second lobby door. Lucas was watching me expectantly.

“Are you inviting me in, Katie?” he said, nuzzling my neck, his fingers already unbuttoning the top button of my jacket to give him better access.

All of a sudden the building didn’t seem quite so menacing, and I found the particular worries I’d been harboring fizzling to nothing under Lucas’s touch. What was I so worried about, anyway? What could happen? Lucas was with me.

“Yes,” I murmured into his ear. This was followed by more yeses as he pressed me against the glass door until it opened under our weight and we literally fell into the lobby, nearly landing in a heap.

Grabbing my keys out of the door, Lucas dangled them from his finger. “Race you to the top!” he said then ran for the stairs.

I swallowed once before following him, his words echoing painfully in my mind.

“Race you to the tracks, Katie!”

“You heard him, Katie Kat. You’d better hurry now. If I get there first, who knows what might happen.”

“You call that racing?” Lucas called down to me in a whisper, and I looked up at him. The memory dissolved when I saw his face and that dimpled grin waiting for me.