How to Date the Guy You Hate by Julie Kriss Page 0,46
and deep. I put my hands on her waist, under the top, and felt her skin beneath my palms.
When we broke off, I didn’t let her go. “Megan?”
She ran a hand lightly down the side of my face, stroking my cheekbone in a gesture that was oddly affectionate. “I feel like there was some tension,” she said. “I broke it.” She smiled. “Let’s get going.”
Nineteen
Megan
I had never been to Cape Cod before. I’d been to Michigan’s beaches, where people brought their kids, barbecued, dunked in the water, played music, and sometimes lit bonfires and smoked pot after the sun went down.
Cape Cod was nothing like that.
It was small and manicured and perfect. Even in September, just off the high tourist season, it was jammed with people, the little shops bustling, the sidewalks crowded. Jason maneuvered through the traffic like a pro while I navigated from the map. He’d long ago stopped giving me grief about the GPS.
I’d given him the rundown on my family on the drive. My aunt Janice, who was my mother’s sister, and a successful lawyer. Her daughter, my cousin Stephanie, who had also become a lawyer. A few of the other relatives I thought might be there.
“So the lawyers are the rich side of the family,” Jason said.
“That’s putting it mildly,” I said. “My mother tried to be a model in her twenties, but she never got very far. Then she married my dad, who never had any one job for very long, and they had me. We’re the black sheep of the family.”
“Got it,” Jason said. “What does your dad do now?”
“He runs the Mind Meld on O’Connor Avenue.”
“That shop with the weird African masks in the window?”
“That one. If you ever need some quality incense or a batik sarong, my dad can hook you up.”
He smiled. “Your dad sounds like a cool guy.”
“He is, I guess. But I have to look after him. Dad really doesn’t do well with the things the Man tells him to do, like pay utility bills or taxes, and it’s a lot worse since my mother died. I try to help him out.”
He tapped his fingers on the wheel, which I’d learned was his sign that he was thinking. I had quietly become an expert in every movement of Jason’s. “Okay, we should get our story straight,” he said as we got closer to Yarmouth and the wedding venue. It was dinnertime, and the sun was setting. We could see flashes of the water between the houses. “How long have we been going out?”
My heart did a little flip in my chest. “A few months,” I said. “Since you came home from the Marines. Early July.”
“Okay. And how do we know each other?”
“High school.” True, of course.
“Fine. And how did I first ask you out?”
“Um.” I couldn’t think. I’d spent last night in bed with him, having the best orgasms of my life, but the idea of Jason asking me out made me temporarily stupid.
“How’s this?” he said, oblivious, as he signalled and made a left turn. “I called you the day after I got back, because I’d been thinking about you all that time, and hoping you were still free.”
“Okay,” I said through numb lips. “That sounds, uh, good.”
He snapped his fingers. “Oh, and on our first date I took you to that swanky seafood restaurant uptown. What’s it called—Pescatore’s. That place. And I didn’t have enough money to take you, so I borrowed money from Dean to pay the bill.”
I looked out the window, watched the pretty houses and B and B’s go by. “That sounds nice. It sounds sweet.”
“Good,” Jason said. “Okay, now, what do I do for a living? We can’t tell your rich family that I’m a bouncer, calling cabs for topless girls before they puke. That isn’t going to impress anyone.”
I turned my head and stared at him. “Are the girls really topless?”
“Constantly.” Jason rolled his eyes. “I guess girls who drink too much like to show them off. I don’t remember the girls doing that at Eden High.”
“Only after football games,” I joked, trying not to think about Jason looking at a parade of tits every night.
Jason shook his head. “You obviously never went to one of our games, chess club girl. Eden High’s football team sucked—that’s why I was their best player. Girls don’t take their shirts off for losing teams. Now think of something I do for a living that doesn’t sound like I’m a sleazebag.”
“Turn right here,” I said.