Page 72 of Even If the Sky is Falling
“Ah.” We stepped out of the elevator and he glanced down the part of the hall we hadn’t explored. His booming voice made me jump. “Is anyone here?” It sounded like the man with the searchlight at the end ofTitanic,which was so darkly in line with our current situation, I didn’t even give him a hard time for yelling near my ear, just a raised eyebrow when he turned back to face me. “What? It’s faster,” he said, shrugging one shoulder. “And we have four more floors to check.”
“We could divide and conquer,” I suggested, already eyeing the path to the stairwell and deciding if I wanted to get a jump on him while in these heels.
“You seriously want to compete about this?” The tone of his voice saidlet’s be mature adults, herebut he was clocking the exit, too.
“It would be more efficient and it’s not a competition.” I braced against the nearby wall to slip one heel off. The aging and discolored tile was cold when I lowered my foot to take off the other shoe.
“It’s not?” Hale was behind me, the heat of his body radiating against me, or maybe that was just the lingering impact of the fantasy.
I’m going to make the smartest person on campus come so hard, she forgets basic addition.
I clenched my thighs together at the memory and stumbled, but Hale’s hand was there, against my spine. It took a moment to regain my balance, a split second where I realized how long it had been since I’d had great sex. By the time I straightened, Hale’s hand was still there at my back until I was steady on my feet. “No, it’s not a competition. It’s two adults looking for other people in an old science building and when you finish your floors, I’ll be waiting for you downstairs having already finished.”
He grinned, this crooked grin I remembered. “I’ll take two and three and you take four and five,” he said, nodding toward the stairwell and walking that way, glancing over his shoulder. “Best snack foods, wins!”
He was through the door before I realized the vending machines were on the floors he was taking.Dammit.I pushed the button for the elevator and the doors creaked open. The first time I’d talked to Hale was in that very elevator early in our freshman year. He’d been getting preferential treatment in our bio class for a few days and we were the only two people in the car. I knew who he was by then, the latest in the long line of Edisons attending Edison University. He didn’t exactly match the image I had. He was dressed in just a T-shirt and jeans, but he didn’t smell wealthy—he just smelled like a slightly sweaty, when-is-the-last-time-you-washed-that-hoodie first-year dude, like most other guys I’d gotten to know. He didn’t sound like I expected either, his voice quiet and soft. “You’re in my bio class, right?”
I’d nodded. I knew I should have said something but I was tired. I worked two on-campus jobs to afford school, which meant sometimes studying had to go late into the night and I resented the hell out of anyone I assumed had it easy. And Hale Edison III certainly had it easy from my vantage point.
“That quiz was rough. How did you do?”
I’d gotten nineteen out of twenty questions correct and that was steaming me, too. All in all, I was in a bad mood. “Fine, you?”
He’s pushed his fingers into his hair. “I got all twenty, but I wasn’t expecting to. I want to study more next time. I was wondering if maybe you’d like to—” The door had stopped on the ground level, the ding cutting him off, and I’d hurried out with a wave. I didn’t want to acknowledge that he’d outperformed me our first quiz of the semester.
Now, all these years later, the doors opened on floor four and I stepped off onto a different shade of discolored cold tile. I never knew what he was going to ask me. I’d rushed out of the elevator determined he’d never beat me again and by the time I slowed down enough to think about the interaction, it was too late to ask. I’d wondered for years, though. Now, the hall was deserted and I looked up and down before copying Hale, yelling into the dimly lit space, “Is anyone here? Hello?” I was met with stillness and silence—the fifth floor was abandoned and I wondered if Hale would find anyone on the lower floors. Part of me hoped he did. It would slow him down, but this was the kind of thing where more people were better.Right?Another part of me—the part me of who’d had to clench her thighs when he touched me, hoped it was just him and me.
I knocked on a few doors nearby and called into the darkness again, but found nothing except aging posters of anatomical structures staring back at me. The one showing musculature looked a little like Hale. Well, if Hale had no skin. It was what I imagined his muscles looked like, though he seemed to have more now than in college. I was softer, rounder and hotter. Hale was hotter, too, and I was too smart to be thinking about that, especially under the watchful gaze of that poster.Judgmental skinless asshole. I put everything into my job happily, but I’d never made time for marriage or kids. I’d barely made time for dating and I was usually the only one getting familiar with my own anatomy.
A door slammed below. I heard the pounding of feet and I hurried to the stairwell. Grown, mature, self-anatomy-studying woman or not, I was not going to let that entitled white boy win and I remembered something important about the fourth floor.
4
Hale
Don’t think about her naked. Don’t think about her naked. Don’t think about her naked.The mantra was a fool’s errand. The girl who drove me crazy in college, who filled my fantasies in med school and who was always in the back of my mind during my marriage was here with me in that tight, curve-hugging red dress. The idea of her body bare and on top of me was all I was thinking about. Well, or her body below me, or bent over, or any number of other contortions. I pushed on a door I was surprised gave way to a break room of sorts. The motion sensors caught me and the lights flickered on, the vending machines coming to life. They were newish and looked sturdy, like I could back Piper up against one and rattle loose some snacks...Fool’s errand.
The first time we talked in that elevator, I’d had the same urge, to back her against a wall and feel her warm body against me, to taste her lips. I hadn’t had the first clue of how to do that at the time. I think if I’d tried to even step closer to her, I would have started tripping over my words. Touching her or letting her touch me would have been out of the question. It had been a moot point, anyway. I’d started to ask her to study with me and she’d walked out, leaving me with my flashcards in my hand and my face hot from humiliation. For the kid whose family started the university, my peers oscillated between ignoring me completely and assuming I was getting preferential treatment because of my family. Nowhere on that continuum felt great and Piper seemed to be the only one who didn’t care. In a weird way, she was the only one I really cared about proving myself to. So, I ignored the other people and tried harder because of her. Because of Piper’s unstoppable drive to push harder and do more. Piper’s sometimes condescending tone when she knew more than someone who didn’t realize it. Piper’s ass in those jeans she used to wear that guaranteed she’d outperform me on an exam because I was too busy willing my hard-on to go down to fully focus on the questions.
Above me, she yelled to get the attention of anyone who might be in the building and I flicked my eyes around the lounge, looking for something to use to break into the snack machine after realizing there was no credit card reader. I hadn’t carried cash or change with me in years. Spotting a departmental award from 1987 on the back of a shelf, I considered using the pointed end to break the glass as I brushed dust from the surface. As I wrapped my hand in my jacket and swung it, I thought about my grandfather’s lecture about what was expected of an Edison when I first arrived on campus and laughed. The glass, or maybe it was acrylic, spiderwebbing but not shattering into a billion pieces, and it seemed the old man’s hopes for me had been fully dashed in that moment. He was rolling in his grave at the image of me vandalizing campus property to impress a woman, but I couldn’t bring myself to care too much.
I heard the pounding of footsteps in the nearby stairwell and grinned, making a grab for snacks when I nudged the unshattered glass away. My jacket made for an excellent makeshift bag that looked like the grocery haul for two twelve-year-olds—chips and candy, cookies and anything else I could wrestle into the bundle. I had no idea how long it would take or how long we’d be trapped, but we wouldn’t go hungry. There was something oddly fulfilling about knowing I could provide comfort or sustenance for Piper, even in this small way.
I strode into the office space a moment later.
“What took you so long?” Piper’s chest heaved.Dear God, her chest.As a doctor, I sometimes felt I shouldn’t be so stirred by the human body and I usually did have some objective distance, but not with Piper, not at the curve of the tops of what I imagined were full, soft breasts I could get lost in.
“You just got here and you know it,” I said, walking toward her. “Your chest is heaving.”
“Are you admitting you were looking at my chest?”
I set my jacket on the desk near her, unfolding the sleeves I’d used to secure it. “Are you going to admit you were looking me up on social media?”
She sucked her lower lip into her mouth and grinned. “I withdraw my question.”
“Same,” I said, showing off my haul. “And ta-da.”
“Damn, Edison. Did you rob a vending machine?”
