Page 29 of Tomorrow Belongs to Us
He doesn’t feel the way I do.
There’s me thinking I have to keep this man at bay in case I get reeled into another attraction to him, but there’s no danger of that because he’s not interested in me.
What made you think he would be?
“I would have gotten it back, eventually. It was in good hands.”
“Well, I have it.” I dangle the suggestion like a winning lottery ticket.
Come and get it.
“Do you want me to come and get it?” he asks. “Or you could drop it off …”
A part of me is tempted by the idea of going over to his place and seeing him again. I don’t need to keep this man at bay, because he’s not interested in me otherwise he would have used the pen as an excuse to see me. “I can come by quickly and drop it off,” I offer. “If you give me your address.”
“Do you have a pen?”
“I do now.”
We giggle, and a tingling feeling spreads all over me. Excitement and anxiety bunch together into one big lump in my stomach.
“Jamaica Plain?” I ask, staring at the address I have scribbled down. “You’re not far from me. I’ll see you in ten.”
“I’ll be waiting.” His words are a promise that Lance Turner is waiting for me. That I am going to his place to see him. That we will be together again. A quiver of excitement shoots through me.
A short while later, I’m outside his door and I’m reminded of how different it is compared to that last time when I’d been a scared and distraught schoolgirl, soaked to the skin, my world collapsing around me with my mom lying in the hospital.
I ring the doorbell but then hear his voice, loud and angry, on the other side. My nerves tense up, like violin strings pulled taut.
“No comment,” he growls, opening the door, his face twisted with anger. As soon as he sets eyes on me, his expression softens and he beckons me in. “Why can’t you people stop hounding me?” His nostrils flare. “I have no comment to make, and I don’t do interviews.”
I walk in and glance around, noting the bare walls and sparsely furnished interior. I steal a sideways glance at him. He’s in dark denim trousers and an open neck checked shirt, looking just like I imagine a hot professor would look.
He’s still as sexy as ever.
And he still has an effect on me. I’m supposed to be stronger than this. No sooner have I stepped inside than I start to feel nervous about being alone with him. My eyes rake down the length of him, taking in his tight, lean build, his wiry forearms that I'm itching to kiss.
“Please don’t call here again.” He slams the phone down. I giggle at his politeness.
“What’s so funny?”
“You. Trying to be rude.”
He throws his hands up in exasperation. “I wish they’d find another story to write about.”
“Reporters?”
“Goddamn everywhere. Not a single day goes by where I don’t get hassled by these morons. Not a single day.”
“You’re the hottest new hero,” I say, rambling off a headline I remember reading. Then I blush, because he looks at me a moment longer than is comfortable.
We eye one another like mistrusting strangers. Maybe he’s trying to reconcile the person I am now with the high school student I was then. I did this the first time I saw him, and now, I just seehim. Not as a teacher or a professor, but just as him. I don’t jump back to the past because that is not who we are now. I want to forget that we were forbidden.
My mind tries to connect the dots and show me that he is a possibility now, that he is not forbidden any more.
“I did what anyone else would have done.”
“Take a bullet for someone? I don’t think so.” Of all the things he is, Lance Turner is a man who always does the right thing. He did it the night of my mother’s suicide attempt, he’d done it for his niece, and he did it for the student he saved on the campus.
