Not in Love

RUE

The voices of Dave, Alec, and the HVAC maintenance guy came from the hallway on the right, so I took a left turn and headed for the hockey rink. I’d expected to find Eli; I did not expect him to be alone.

My day had taken a shitty turn when the real estate lawyer recommended by Nyota told me that he wasn’t taking on new clients. The rink, though, soothed me. It smelled like childhood, and aching muscles, and the bored stares of skaters’ parents during Saturday morning practice. I walked to the bench, taking in the circles Eli drew on the ice, his ever-messy hair, the pockets of sweat darkening his long-sleeved gray shirt. The echo of the stick hitting the puck.

He was in no way unique. Most hockey players skated this way—forceful, rhythmic strides, a seamless combination of strength and grace, swift turns and powerful stops. I’d never been particularly drawn to them, but Eli was my never-ending exception. Eyes on him, I went to stand next to a pair of beat-up sneakers and waited for him to notice me. Less than five minutes later he glided to me—breath labored, grin wide.

It was a punch in the stomach, how happy he was to see me. How happy I was to see him.

“Alec invited me,” I said when he stopped at the glass boards.

He took his gloves off and wiped his brow with his forearm. “I’m sure Dave’s doodling our wedding invitations on an HVAC user manual.”

I smiled. His scent was as familiar to me as the ice’s, the way they blended confusing to my senses. “He said your sister would be here, too.”

He shook his head. “Homework. Or whatever the hell they call it in college.”

I nodded. Made myself go straight to the point. “You left something in my car.”

He examined me for a long moment. Cheeks red and curls wild, chest still rising and falling a beat too quickly—I’d never wanted to touch him more than in this very moment. And then his lips curved. “Hi, Rue. Nice to see you on this lovely summer night.”

I rocked on my feet. “Hi. And likewise. You left—”

“Yup, I heard you the first time.” He held out his hand over the guards, palm facing up in invitation. “Come skate with me.”

What? “I don’t…”

“I know you can skate, Rue. I’ve seen you do it with my own two eyes.”

“When…?” A thought occurred to me. “You watched my old competitions. Online.”

He nodded. “You weren’t kidding about ‘Pump Up the Jam.’ ”

I exhaled a laugh, wondering if I should feel stalked. But hadn’t I researched him, too? “No, I wasn’t. I told you, no sense of humor.”

“Sure. Come on in. Let’s skate together.” He noticed my hesitation. “You’re already here. It’ll be fun.”

“I don’t have my—”

“There’s a roomful of equipment over there.” He pointed past my shoulders, and I actually tried to picture it—the two of us, skating together. Being close. Keeping track of each other on the ice. Okay, I said in my head. Yes. Let’s do it. I want to do it.

In fact, I wanted to do it so bad, I really shouldn’t. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Eli.”

His smile froze. “It doesn’t have to be a date. You already turned me down for that. But there is an empty rink, and you can pirouette around to your heart’s content. Or whatever it is that you people do.”

He made it sound simple. But skating could be so…intimate. Even more than sex. And if Eli and I were to go beyond sex, then my betrayal of Florence would run too deep for comfort. There had to be some limits. I had to set some limits. “I didn’t come here for that.”

He exhaled a self-deprecating laugh and skated away. He grabbed the puck, came back, and a moment later he was on the bench, changing into his shoes.

“Are you leaving?” I asked.

“Yup.” Sweat beads trickled down his temple. He’d clearly been at it for a while. “So you can skate on your own.”

“But that’s not why I came.”

“Right. True. We only meet for two reasons—to fuck, and to return things that we leave in each other’s cars.” He flashed me a smile, and his face was so unbearably familiar and attractive, and I had to stop myself from reaching out. “What did I forget?”

I dug into my pockets and held out the keys I’d found under my seat. He stared at them with a frown, then said, “They’re not mine.”

I frowned, too. “They have to be.”

“And yet.” He went back to his shoes. “Who else has been in your car?”

Tisha. But I knew what her keys looked like.

“Sorry you made the trip for nothing,” he said. “I’d love to believe that you planted the keys as an excuse to see me—”

“I didn’t—”

“—but that would be too much wishful thinking, even for me. Sure you don’t want to skate?”

I nodded. My eyes lingered as he tied his shoelaces. “Do you always train alone?”

“This is not really training. Just playing around a bit.” He stood, hoisting the laces of his skates over his shoulder. “I don’t like crowds, that’s all. When the rink is available, I take advantage.”

“Do none of your friends skate?”

“Some of my former teammates have gone pro. None in the area—Austin’s no hockey hot spot.”

“What about the Harkness people?”

“Hark, yes, decently. I took Minami once, and she spent one hour on her butt. Sul didn’t even put on skates.” He smiled like they were beloved memories, and began heading out. I hurried behind him, feeling like an ugly duckling trying to catch up with an uninterested swan.

“What’s the story there?” I asked, unwilling to let the conversation end.

“What do you mean?”

“Hark and Minami, they’re weird with each other.”

“Good catch.”

“Obvious, if I picked up on it.”

He gave me a fond look, like my oddities were something he treasured. “Just your run-of-the-mill love triangle.”

“Like in The Hunger Games?”

He halted. “You read The Hunger Games?”

“Tisha wanted me to, but I’m not really the fiction type.” Made-up stories confused me. I preferred dwelling in facts. “I watched the movie, though. I enjoyed it.”

“Look at you.” He resumed walking, delighted. “Hark and Minami dated for a couple of years. She broke it off. Hark never got over it. She married Sul.”

“Fascinating.”

“Is it?” He gave me a pained look.

“Not as much as The Hunger Games, but yes. Sul seems…quiet.”

“He talks even less than you do.”

“I talk.”

“Hmm. Sure. Then my damn sister developed a very age-inappropriate crush on Hark, and the triangle became a square. I might just hate all of them.”

“You are clearly the real victim of the situation.”

“So glad that came across.”

“Are Maya and Hark…?”

“No. God, no.”

“Well, as far as you know,” I added, just to annoy him. His glare had me laughing. “I’ve definitely had sex with guys ten or fifteen years my senior. And look how well-adjusted I turned out.”

He snorted at my deadpan delivery. I was a mess. He knew it. I didn’t mind. “As much as I wish all this wellness for my sister…not with Hark.” He gave me another half-hearted glare. “What about you and Tisha?”

“What about us?”

“Is it just the two of you?”

For me, yes. I’d had two college roommates, who’d not been fans of my “stuck-up, superior, bitchy airs” in the first semester, but had slowly realized that I was just stumped by social situations. They’d taken me under their wing, brought me to parties, come to cheer for me at skating competitions. We were still in touch, but life was busy, and they both had families. “Tisha has several other friends, whom she constantly introduces me to.” I shrugged. “Most people don’t like me very much.”

We stepped outside, into the oppressive heat of the dimly lit, deserted parking lot. Our cars were the farthest from the entrance—and the closest to each other.

“I’m not surprised,” Eli said.

My eyebrow rose. “You’re not surprised that people don’t like me?”

“You never try to be anything but what you are.” We stopped by his vehicle. “I think people are puzzled, and intimidated, and generally unsure of what to do with you.”This is from NôvelDrama.Org.

“You are not unsure.”

“No. Then again, I like you very much.” Another blinding grin that had my heart somersaulting. Then his expression sobered, folding into something that looked like sorrow. “You’re a wild ride, Rue. I’ve never met anyone like you, and never will again.”

Something swelled at the base of my throat. “That’s okay. You’ll meet plenty of better people.”

“Will I?” His Adam’s apple rolled. He opened the back seat and threw in his equipment. When he turned back to me, his cocky smile had reappeared. “Have a great rest of your night. Like you said, you’re not here to hang out, and this is not a date. The keys are not mine, so unless you want me to fuck you in my car, I’ll see you—”

“Yes,” I said.

Very quickly.

It was not premeditated. The possibility hadn’t even occurred to me. But now that it was on the table, I wasn’t going to be embarrassed at how eager I sounded.

I just wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

Eli looked surprised. And incredulous. And angry. And amused. And once he’d cycled through another handful of emotions, he said, “Part of me wants to feel offended. That you won’t skate with me for five minutes, but are okay with being fucked in the middle of a parking lot.”

“And the other part?”

Eyes fixed on mine, he opened the passenger door. “Get inside.”

I’d done it a few times in college—sex in cars, frat bathrooms, once in a locker room. Stupid, when discovery was always possible, and I’d grown tired of it early on, because nothing felt good enough to offset the anxiety of being caught.

But Eli did feel good enough. Eli was dragging me over the center console, arranging me to kneel on his lap, and the only things standing between us and something very embarrassing were air and darkness.

Foolish and irresponsible. But as always, things went from zero to incendiary, and stopping seemed impossible. “Did you wear these soft pants because you wanted to get fucked?” he asked when his hands slid into my leggings.

“I wore them because they’re comfortable—oh.” His thumb found my clit.

“Sensible. Pragmatic.” The tip of his finger prodded against my entrance. “That’s my type, apparently. Maybe once you’re out of my life I’ll just jerk off to budgeting plans.”

He was still sweaty, and maybe I should have found it gross, but he smelled divine, and I licked the salt off a spot at the base of his neck. And that was it, because by now he knew me. My body, my sounds, my pleasure. It was the only possible explanation, the only reason I was convulsing in his arms in less than five minutes, while Eli exhaled soft laughs against my mouth and whispered filthy little things into my ear, feeling my body clutching hotly around his fingers. “You’re really good, aren’t you? You’re fucking perfect.”

It wasn’t a question, but I nodded. “Do you have a condom?”

He bit my jaw. “We don’t have to—”

“I want to. I liked it.” I’d been thinking about what had happened in his bed for two days. At work. At night. At every hour. “I liked how much you liked it,” I added.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You liked that I wasn’t even able to put it in you before I came?”

I nodded. His fingers were still inside me, and I clenched around them.

“You like that I feel like a teen around you, don’t you?”

I nodded again, eager. He groaned. “Well, sadly I don’t have a condom, so—” He froze. “Hang on. Maybe in the glove compartment, from last year.”

I was the one who checked, the one who found it, the one who eagerly unbuttoned Eli’s pants while he tore it open with his teeth. He angled me so that I wouldn’t get banged up against the steering wheel, and gathered my ass in his hands in the dirtiest of ways, and then he was pressing upward. Inside.

I braced myself. He was big, and hard, but he pushed in gently, with shallow, relentless strokes. “You okay?”

I took a deep breath. Nodded.

“Very good.” He nuzzled against my cheek. “Take the rest, then.”

He used his palm to spread my thighs apart, as though we could never be close enough. When his pelvis came into full contact with mine, and his cock slid as deep as I could take him, right to the hilt, I let out a low, guttural groan. “Fuck, yeah. You really are an amazing fuck, aren’t you?”

I sighed, trying to adjust.

“Put your arms around my shoulders.” He kissed my mouth, and I realized that we hadn’t done that yet. He was fully inside me when his lips first found mine, and god, it felt good. “When you said you weren’t into this, I had these lofty, deluded dreams of showing you the pleasure of a slow, thorough fuck. In a bed, possibly. But I highly doubt it’s going to happen anytime soon, and I’m not even sure I care anymore…”

I liked this: his big body moving in mine, the stretch of him, the way he rocked into me. I liked that he seemed to be less in control than I was, the power of it. I fundamentally trusted him not to hurt me, and he seemed to trust me just as much. His undoing was electrifying, and never frightening.

I’d just come, and still felt the echoes of that pleasure reverberating through me, fueled by the way Eli seemed utterly lost. A lot of men had complimented my breasts, ass, face, and I’d welcomed the idea of being just a body. I’d purposefully sought out partners who’d be willing to see me as little as I wanted to be seen. But I loved the way Eli looked at me like I was something special, something more. Like I could easily exhaust the entire spectrum of his needs. Like he couldn’t imagine looking anywhere else, ever.

“I know you don’t like to—but if—” He wasn’t fully coherent, but I understood when his hand slid between us and his thumb began to describe nice, slow circles on my clit. “The good news, for you,” he said hoarsely, “is that I’m unreasonably fucking crazy about you, and this isn’t going to last too long.” His rueful tone made me loop my arms more tightly around his neck.

“Don’t hurry on my behalf,” I said. It wasn’t painful, or boring. The hot pressure was pleasant, as was his tight grip on my hips as his cock pushed in and out of me. The way his thrusts would become choppy and erratic before he’d remember himself and suddenly stop, as if to draw out the experience. Not in an attempt to get me off, but for himself. And the knowledge of how much he was enjoying this, with the dragging movement of his thumb, had warmth spreading inside me, a new kind of tension building up, and—

Eli bit into my shoulder, and it was over. His movements stuttered inside me a few times while he slurred into my throat a litany of praise that ranged from sweet to incredibly dirty. “Fucking unbelievable,” he rasped at the end, his laughter a breathless puff against my cheek.

I felt a tinge of disappointment. It had been good, very good, and it felt too soon for it to be over—

“Rue, I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear,” Eli said. His thumb resumed its movements on my clit. A shiver of pleasure rose up my spine. “It was always going to end this way.” His cock was softening inside me, a pleasant stretch that was little more than a counterpoint to the strumming of his fingers. “Even if we hadn’t matched on that damn app, we’d have met in this rink, or at Kline, or walking down the street. And I’d have seen you, talked with you for about five minutes, and you would have looked at me all serious and curious and uncompromising, and I would have known that I needed to do this with you more than anything else in the whole damn world.”

My orgasm came fast and beautifully. Eli’s hands roamed greedily all over me as he pressed soft kisses to the base of my throat. And then, after a while, he said, “I want to drive you home.”

I was boneless, still trying to get my brain to restart. “My car is here.”

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning and drive you back here.” He leaned back. His expression was earnest. At least I thought so—my eyes were watery, like I’d been crying. Except I never cried. Maybe my eyeballs were sweating. Summer in Texas, not too improbable. “Let me make you dinner.” He traced my mouth with his thumb.

“That would be nice,” I said.

“Come to my place. Let me take care of you. Let me teach you how to pet dogs. Exposure therapy, sweetheart.”

I let out a small laugh, but I was scared. That he was asking. That I wanted to say yes. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

“Really?” He kissed my cheek, open-mouthed. “You moving in. You, quitting your job so we can do this twenty times a day. Me, retiring to service you full-time. Us, fucking around for the rest of our lives. Does it really not sound like a fantastic idea?”

My heart jolted. Yes, it said. Yes. I just wanted to be with him. Was it so bad? Florence didn’t have to know. No one did. Just the two of us.

“Don’t say no, Rue,” he murmured. A low, heartfelt appeal. “Don’t do this to us.”

I didn’t let myself think about it. “Okay.”

His smile could have powered the entire city. “Okay.”

“Okay,” I repeated, and we were both laughing silently in each other’s mouths, and then kissing, and I thought that maybe, if perfect moments existed, this could be one of them.

I disengaged from him, hiked over the console, fumbled my leggings back up my hips. I let out something that sounded disturbingly like a giggle, but my body was still buzzing, thanking me for the best twenty minutes of its life. And Eli was still looking at me like I contained the entire universe.

I leaned against the headrest while he cleaned himself up, and then began putting back all the papers that had fallen out of the glove compartment. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Next time you have to show your registration you’re going to have a real hard time…”

I stopped when my eyes fell on a familiar name.

Kline.

It was an oddly formatted stack of papers, covered in plastic. Eli muttered something about tossing the condom and folded out of the car, but I kept on reading.

RULE 202 PROCEEDINGS IN AID OF INVESTIGATION OF CLAIMS AGAINST KLINE INC.

Oral deposition of Florence Carolina Kline.

I turned the page. APPEARANCES, the new header read. FOR HARKNESS LP, ELI KILLGORE. I turned another, and another, and then more, until the text resembled something like a movie script. A list of Qs and As.

Q. Very well. And, Dr. Kline, when did you first meet the founders of Harkness?

A. I don’t see why this matters.

Q. Could you please answer anyway?

A. I’m not sure I remember. I probably met them all at different times, anyway.

Q. As far as you can recall?

A. I guess I first met Dr. Oka when she interviewed to become a postdoc in my lab, about twelve years ago. It would have been a phone call, because at the time she lived in Ithaca, and then we met in person when she moved to work with me. I believe I met Conor Harkness around the same time, when he enrolled in the PhD program at UT.

Q. You taught at UT at the time?

A. Correct.

Q. And Eli Killgore?

A. He was the last to arrive, so I must have met him…

Q. About a year later?

A. Yes, that sounds correct.

Q. Is it correct to say that you served as a mentor to all three of them?

A. Yes, it is.

“Rue?”

I looked up from the file. Eli was back inside the car.

“What is this?” I asked him.

His eyes fell on the papers in my hands. On the page to which they were open. “Fuck, Rue.”

“It was in your glove compartment.”

“Shit.” He sighed and ran a hand down his face. “Shit.”

“Eli, what is this?”

“It’s a deposition.”

“When was Florence deposed?” I asked—then realized I could find out on my own. I checked the date on the front page and gasped. About two weeks ago. “Journal club. The day you were at Kline, and I…” I shook my head, incapable of making sense of anything. “Who—who gave you the right to depose her?”

He massaged his eyes. “State court. There were irregularities in the documents she turned over, and we asked for an oral—”

“It says here that she knew you, before. Ten years ago. Is it true?”

He hesitated. “Rue.” His tone was gentle. “It’s a legal deposition. She was under oath.”

“But she told me…” I shook my head, feeling as though the planet were spinning too fast for me. “Today she told me that…”

Eli’s expression softened. Pity, I thought. That’s what it was. “Let’s discuss this at home. I didn’t want you to find out this way. This is a very complicated—”

“No. No, I—Florence lied to me.” My eyes burned, and my chest was on fire. “And you—why didn’t you…Why did no one…” I shook my head and opened the door of the car.

Eli’s hand closed around my wrist. “Rue, wait—”

“No. I—no.” I freed my hand and wiped my cheek. My palm was fully dry. “I don’t want to—I’m sick of this. Do not follow me, or I swear to god—”

“Rue, let me—”

I got out of the car and let my fury swallow me.