“I see a dog.”
“What kind of dog?”
“I don’t know, just a dog.”
“Greyhound? Boxer? Terrier?”
She could remember shaking her head, shaking off her mother’s insistence as if it were a touch. “No, no! Just a dog!”
“Oh, Grace. You need to have more imagination.”
Grace frowned at the memory.
“Are you going to sleep all day?”
Her eyes flew open. Damien was standing above her, leaning casually against the Mercedes, looking hot just like always, tight jeans and cool black T-shirt and those silver aviator glasses that she loved. His blond hair was cut brutally short. A smile played on his lips.
“Hey!” She scrambled to her feet and grabbed her bag. “I didn’t know you’d arrived.”
“You were in la-la land, baby.” He accepted her quick kiss, but when she lifted her lips from his, one of his hands reached out and pinched her right nipple, popping out of her bra and against the thin fabric of her knit shirt.
“Ow!” She pulled back, but his other hand wrapped around to hold her pressed against him.
“You miss me?” He increased the pressure on her nipple, all the while smiling at her.
It hurt, but she liked it, too. She could feel heat flooding her face. “Yes.”
“Show me.”
She kissed him again then, tentatively pushing with her lips dry against his, and then he let his lips part and her tongue darted forward like a bird dipping into an open flower.
He circled the nipple with his finger and pushed against it as if it were a button. She moaned against his mouth, pressing up against him instinctively. Along with her love for Damien was a bit of fear. Not that she was really afraid of him, not that, but just a little anxiety about what he was going to do next. She knew he was capable of doing anything. Wasn’t he proving that now by kissing her in this lot and touching her so intimately out here in plain sight where anybody could see them?
She wriggled out of his grasp, and this time he let her go. “We have to leave before someone sees us,” she said.
She hurried around the side of the Mercedes, noticing that the panels were coated with dust and the wheel wells and tires were rimed with dirt. Damien took his time getting into the car and adjusting the side mirrors before he pulled out of the lot.
“You’re going to get me suspended,” Grace said as he sped out of the parking lot and out onto the road. Damien drove fast, weaving in and out of traffic and slipping through traffic lights in that split second between yellow and red.
“You afraid?” His gaze jumped back and forth from road to rearview mirror. She knew he was keeping an eye out for police.
“I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“Then don’t come with me.” It was said matter-of-factly, but Damien suddenly spun the wheel and the car sped over onto the side of the road, tires crunching through leaves, before jerking to a stop. He looked at her coolly, his face set. She could see her own face reflected in his sunglasses.
She tried not to squirm in her seat. “What?”
“Either you’re coming with me or you’re not. I don’t have time for this shit, so decide.” The voice was cool and disdainful. She’d heard him use that voice before, but never with her.
“I’m coming with you,” she mumbled.
Without a word he spun the wheel again and jerked the Mercedes back into traffic. She wondered what he would have done if she’d said she’d changed her mind. Would he have left her on the side of the road?
“Why’s the car dirty?” she asked, trying to change the subject.
“Had a little detour,” Damien said. He didn’t explain what that had been, and she didn’t ask, but a little smile played on his lips again. The squirmy feeling in Grace’s stomach eased.
“Where are we going?” she asked when they’d driven another few miles. Damien had turned on the radio and was tapping his hand along to the pulsing beat. She hoped it was back to the city. Maybe they could go to Bleecker Street Records. That’s where they’d met. She’d gone there with Campbell, the two of them having fun looking for some new music, but not so much fun that they hadn’t noticed Damien and his friend. Nobody could overlook Damien; he was too good-looking. She’d been aware of him the way you’re aware of light, a sudden presence in the store, and she’d looked up and seen him walking toward her, his hands reaching out to trail lightly across the racks of CDs.
She was sure he didn’t notice her, though she’d stolen glances at him, giggling with Campbell when she mouthed the word “hottie.” At some point Damien and his friend left and Grace could remember feeling a little bit let down, but then when she and Campbell left about ten minutes later, they found Damien and his friend smoking outside, and then Damien offered her a cigarette.
“You smoke?”
Those had been his first words to her. There wasn’t anything sexy about that, except that it was Damien who’d said them, his gray eyes cool and appraising, dirty blond hair falling forward over a chiseled face, a cigarette stuck between his own pouty lips.
And even though she’d never smoked, she nodded and took one from the outstretched pack, and then nudged Campbell, who took one, too. Later, when he kissed her for the first time, she’d tasted the smoke on his tongue.
Despite what her parents thought, they hadn’t slept together. As in intercourse. She’d done other things with him, gotten as far as what Campbell still stupidly called third base, but she couldn’t go for home. She was scared of it. She’d heard it could hurt the first time, but mostly she had this overwhelming fear that protection would fail and she’d be toting Grace Junior along with her to geometry class.
Damien didn’t pressure her much, which just showed he was straight up, not that her parents would ever listen. He’d taken to calling her virgin queen, but he said it with a smile so she didn’t really care.
She cared more about the other girl she’d seen him kissing. It was just two days before she’d been forced to leave the only home she’d ever known, and the piano movers had already been and gone so she couldn’t vent her feelings like she usually did through her music. She’d skipped out on the packing and taken the train uptown to surprise Damien. It had been a really hot day and the subway was a steam bath. By the time she’d walked the final blocks to his building on the Upper East Side, she felt like the ice sculpture she’d seen melting at an outdoor wedding, all shabby and unrecognizable as it dissolved into a puddle of nothing.
Just as she turned the corner up to his place, she saw Damien come out of his building. The timing seemed like a sign. For one happy second she’d thought they must be psychically linked. Only then he swung toward her, and she saw that his arm was around some blond-haired girl. She was model-pretty, tall and super-skinny, and wearing a tiny white eyelet dress and these impossibly high sandals with ribbons that wound around her ankles.
As Grace stood there, stunned, Vogue Girl had leaned into Damien and kissed him with her full red lips. Worse, he’d kissed her back, not some polite little kiss either, but a full scene-stopper. Grace fled before it was over.
She still met him later, keeping their regular rendezvous at a school playground near Campbell’s building because Grace could always get permission to visit her friend. When he’d asked why she was being such