HIM
Cecilia Scott
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. The night I met Him …
Chapter 2. He comes over unexpectedly …
Chapter 4. Rushing home to Him …
Chapter 5. Best friends and abandoned cats …
Chapter 6. I can’t find Him, redux.
Chapter 7. Waiting to see Him …
Chapter 8. He’s going to Paris. Paris?
Chapter 9. A glorious weekend with Him …
Chapter 11. Without Him, my life unravels …
Chapter 13. The Boy, oh, The Boy …
Chapter 15. The Boy and I live in a fantasy world …
Chapter 16. A trip to the mountains with The Boy. The Boy …
Chapter 17. And then it was Him again, Him …
Chapter 18. Letting go of The Boy, the beautiful, beautiful BOY …
Chapter 19. Sam attempts to intervene by reading me the riot act …
Chapter 20. Him, Him, Oh, My God, Him
Chapter 21. Another intervention …
Chapter 22. I love Him. I love Him. I just do …
Chapter 23. Him, up close and personal …
Chapter 24. The promises I so wanted to hear …
Chapter 25. A trip with Him, destination unknown …
Chapter 26. What happens in Vegas …
Chapter 28. Christmas without Him
Chapter 32. The Boy, The Boy …
And I do lift my aching arms to you,
And I do lift my anguished, avid breast
And I do weep for very pain of you,
And fling myself at the doors of sleep, for rest,
D. H. Lawrence, ‘A Love Song’
This is what I know: I took a short cut to the real thing. I slept with a man I’d known for less than an hour. It wouldn’t have been the first time nor the last. Before you make a value judgment, it’s just who I am. It’s not an everyday thing. Hell, months can go by, but I have gone down the road of indiscriminate sex before. Who hasn’t, really? It’s part of the rite of passage of being a young woman. I’d had the requisite long-term relationship before. But no one had come even close to being LTR material since then until HIM. HIM.
So how did I meet HIM? I remember perfectly. I’d gone to a reading of my sophomore Community College students’ work at the Downtown Library. It was a big deal for them and we’d all dressed up for the occasion. I was wearing a flowery vintage lacy dress that showed off all my curves. I’m ordinarily a jeans and T-shirt kind of gal, but the occasion gave me an excuse to wear something pretty. It made me feel alive and sexy.
I was sitting next to THE BOY during the reading. Our shoulders were touching. I’d always had a thing for him since the day he walked into my class when he was a freshman. He’d been taking my classes every semester and acted like he had the hots for me. During the readings, I tried to listen to the students read but mainly I was thinking about how nice it would be to have sex with THE BOY. He was on the swim team. He was dark and sleek and had a swimmer’s body.
After the reading, my students asked me to go with them to some diner down the street but I begged off. I’d been a community college instructor for too long. Hanging out with the students had lost much of its charm.
I bid them adieu. There was a new high-rise hotel across the