Inside Out Read online

  “I’m not usually,” she answered, rising up on her elbows.

  “You know,” he told her a little later that night, “I get ashy.”

  She almost choked on her laughter. “What do you know about ash, Garrett?”

  “I’m telling you, I get ashy. I’ve got lotion at home, in my car, in my locker. Why? Because I get ashy,” he declared earnestly. He nodded to drive home his point. Tracey leaned over and bumped shoulders with him.

  Chapter 9

  Tracey was seeing Garrett nearly every night. He’d come after nine and always before ten. But once, he didn’t show before ten or even ten-thirty. She didn’t call his cell. She never did. She did text, but he didn’t respond.

  By eleven Tracey was angry. When he knocked around eleven-fifteen, she really, really considered not letting him in. But, she did and sat down with her arms crossed, not saying a word. When he asked what was wrong, she told him she didn’t appreciate him coming over so late.

  “You haven’t minded before.” He looked genuinely puzzled.

  “Well, I do now. You can’t just come over here any time you want to. Before ten is fine, but later than that…” He blinked. “I mean, I could have been sleeping or, I don’t know, I could have had some other late-night company.”

  He stared at her for a while and she wanted to die. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She bit her bottom lip. His gaze lowered, his thick, brown lashes fluttering down over his lion eyes. Then he expelled his breath and took off his jacket. “I hate to ask you this, but I came over as soon as I got out of intramurals. We finished late, and I really need a shower. Do you mind?”

  Damn, damn, damn. She’d known he was going to be playing soccer that night. “Go ahead,” she answered, thanking God she hadn’t given her humiliation away.

  He went into her bedroom and a beam of light briefly shone in the doorway until she heard the bathroom door close and the shower start. She pulled on the headphones lying on the coffee table and closed her eyes, wishing that he was not naked in her home, wishing that when he came out he would just go so she could be alone until she didn’t feel as if she had the hormones of a sixteen-year-old.

  She didn’t hear him come out, but rather smelled him. He smelled warm, warm and like her when she got out of the shower. She thought of him using her soap as she slowly opened her eyes. Then Tracey burst into delirious laughter. He was wearing her very satin, very feminine ice blue robe.

  She raised her hand high in the air and said, “Question.” He rolled his eyes. “I just want to know why you’re wearing that. You could have used the big, navy terry cloth one hanging up in there. It certainly would have been manlier.”

  “I don’t see how you can say that. This one’s got a dragon on the back. I feel like Bruce Lee,” he insisted and assumed a blessedly modest position that looked something like a crane with a broken leg…or maybe hip. Tracey started to laugh from deep within. His gaze fell gently on her face and he knelt in front of her. His strong male scent mixed with her soap to make her dizzy.

  “You know, when you laugh, you get weak and helpless and beautiful. I’d probably steal your books again tonight if I hadn’t already.” Then he got up and walked to her kitchen. She heard him taking something out of the refrigerator.

  Rebelling against the tickle that had arrived in her stomach, she muttered, “He sits in my favorite chair, he eats my food, and now he’s wearing my clothes. He’s getting to be a regular fixture.”

  “I heard that,” he called to her in a sing-song voice.

  “Of course you did,” Tracey groaned.

  Later that week she waited for him, anxious to see how he had fared on an argument he’d prepared for the past couple of nights. She heard his SUV pull into the drive and opened the door even before he got to the porch. “Hey.” Tracey beamed like an idiot as she opened the door wide to let him in. His lips pulled downward as he headed for her favorite chair and sat down. He closed his eyes and sucked in a long, tired breath. She waited, even holding her own breath, for him to let it go. She went to sit on the arm of the chair beside him but didn’t touch him. She didn’t do anything, just waited. When he was still silent, she rose. “You want something from the kitchen?”

  Without opening his eyes, he nodded. “Water, if you don’t mind.” Tracey went into the kitchen, got a glass and rinsed it out, watching the water splash into the glass and out again, wondering what was bothering him. She put ice in the water, went back into the living room, and handed it to him. She watched him drink deeply.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” It was a lie. They both knew it. Standing there, Tracey propped her hands on her hips and waited some more. For someone who was always telling her to “talk about it,” sometimes it was an absolute art getting him to talk about what was on his mind. So she waited. It was all she could do.

  After a prolonged silence his gaze rose again to meet hers and he said, “Me and Kim got into it after my oral argument.”

  “You went to see her after?” The question and hurt were out before she could cut them off.

  “No, Tracey, I didn’t,” he answered. “She was there when I got out. She walks up to me and says she’s got me a gift for finishing my argument and tells me that she and my mom picked it out.”

  “Your mom’s in town?” He shook his head at this question.

  “No,” Tracey breathed and put her hand in front of her lips. “She didn’t.”

  “She did. Drove to my parents’ this morning. Says that they went to a bridal boutique.” He finished his water, then stood and walked towards her window. He pulled back the curtain and peered out into the darkness. She wondered briefly if anyone could see him there. He turned to her. “A little pushy, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  He went over and sat on the sofa, leaned over, head bent into his palms, elbows resting on his knees. Tracey eased down next to him, not knowing how to help. He seemed so upset, so trapped. She was pretty sure he wanted out of the relationship but couldn’t quite figure out how to go about it, especially with the way his family treated this Kim person. Helplessly, Tracey reached out and slid her hand into his soft, brown hair. She didn’t expect him to turn to her. She didn’t expect him to hug her to him so tight she had to catch her breath. She didn’t expect him to press his nose into her neck and stroke her hair. She didn’t expect him to start nibbling at her jugular, and she definitely didn’t expect to lean back and let him. Tracey had the impression that everything was in slow motion. She felt removed from herself with her back braced against the arm of the sofa and the soft insides of her forearms pressing down on his shoulders. Her hands balled into tight fists because she didn’t want to touch him, didn’t want to let him know that she was accepting this. She heard her pulse roaring in her ears, felt his against her skin.

  Garrett moved from her throat to nibble her jaw, then the tip of her chin. His eyelids were lowered as he concentrated deeply on what he was doing. As he laid those kisses on her face, that concentration slowly unfurled her fists, slowly drew her into what she wanted. When he finally pressed expert lips to hers, that slow motion she had felt in the beginning turned into flashes: him kissing her, her hands in his hair, his fingers pulling open the buttons on her blouse, his lips and tongue teasing her in the very center of her chest, her grasping him, bringing him to her breasts. But that didn’t help because by then she could feel her pulse beating everywhere under her skin. Tracey squirmed beneath him, understanding that the heat of his mouth wasn’t going to be enough. She knew there was only one right way to end it—and there was no way in hell she was going do that. Abruptly, she sat up and began to arrange her clothes.

  For a long moment he just stared forward, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

  “For what?” Tracey didn’t look at him.

  “I don’t know.”

  After that night, they didn’t touch anymore. At all. Period. Always, Tracey wondered if he was going to make a
move, but he never did. In fact, he seemed to have forgotten all about it while she couldn’t get it off her mind. Once, he came over after intramural football. His hair was ruffled, there was a small cut above his eye and he was wearing those old navy shorts. She had never seen anyone so devastatingly sexy.

  Though he played football, he didn’t have football legs. He had tennis legs, long, slender, well-muscled and tanned. His already warm-toned skin with its deep summer tan gave him a dark buttery glow that just emphasized every single line and cut of his body. Tracey’s attention span, as far as studies went, was nonexistent that night. Garrett laughed and said he was never going to study with her again because she lacked focus. Then he asked if she had been drinking without him.

  Tracey wondered what it would take to get him to kiss her again, since it had taken so little encouragement the first time he touched her. Not that she wanted him to.

  * * *

  Rett rolled over and pulled the warm body closer to him. Playfully, he planted a kiss on the warm neck in front of him, and that woke him out of his sleep. He knew this body and this smell. And he had just been about to call it by someone else’s name. Kim moaned his name in her sleep and put her hand over his, lacing their fingers together. That was sweet. Kim was sweet. He loved Kim. Yep. His eyes popped open. It had to be two-thirty in the morning. Slowly he tried to disentangle himself.

  “You can’t sleep, honey?” Kim asked, turning over. Her cheek was red from where she had been lying on the pillow. Her eyes were half-closed with long silky brown lashes. Her dark curls were a soft halo around her head. Rett loved Kim.

  “Naw, babe, but you get some sleep.”

  “Okay,” she whispered and let her eyes close again.

  She didn’t deserve this, Rett thought. He went into the kitchen and grabbed a soda. Then he grabbed a beer, too. He was only going to drink that as a last resort. However, he didn’t make it back to the bedroom. He stopped instead in front of the TV. He grabbed the remote and plopped down on the couch. His eyes barely saw the flashes on the screen. Instead, he had a woman on his mind. A black woman. Things had gone way too far that last time. Sure, it was one thing to flirt. Everybody does that. But his relationship with Tracey was getting out of control. Then again, why couldn’t he just have what he wanted? Really. Why couldn’t he just have it? One time? Nobody had to know. Hell, she wanted it that way.

  “What the hell are you doing up?” Clay asked on his way to the kitchen.

  “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Your ass never sleeps. Well, at least not here.” Clay gave him a sideways glance and sat down next to Rett. “Kim here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s been here almost a solid month.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Just saying.”

  “Look, Clay, she’s always over here.”

  “Yeah, but for a while there you weren’t.”

  “What’s chapping your ass?”

  “Nothing much, really. It’s just that when I was home last I went shooting with Charles and his dad and your dad.” Clay hesitated. “You know Charles has a big mouth.”

  Rett didn’t say anything, just went still. There was something Clay was trying to tell him, and he was guaranteed not to like it. “And just what was Charles letting his mouth run about?”

  “Well, he basically was saying that you’d been away from the house a lot lately. When they made the assumption you were out with Kim, he made sure quick, fast and in a hurry that they knew you weren’t out with Kim. He also made some comments about who you were out with.”

  “And who was that?”

  “I don’t know. And, for that matter, I don’t know how he would know, either. All I’m sayin’ is that he made it sound like you were goin’ out with somebody you ought not.”

  “And how did I come up in the first place?”

  “Aww, Rett, you know how it is. We were just shooting the breeze.”

  “It’s nobody’s business what I do, when I do it, and who I do it with.”

  “Hey, man, don’t get pissed at me. I just thought you ought to know.” Clay stood, getting ready to go back to bed. “I don’t care what you do. I’m for real. Whatever it is, man, it’s cool with me. But you might want to watch yourself.”

  Rett immediately felt apologetic but didn’t say anything. He just watched his friend walk to his bedroom. That was a warning. Ever since they had been kids, Charles had done one thing or another to get at him. Hell, sometimes Rett returned the favor. But this was not cool. He wouldn’t put it past Charles to follow him one night.

  As Clay disappeared down the hall, Kim appeared in Rett’s jersey. Charles was behind her.

  “What is this? A party?” Charles asked, grinning. He was wearing only sweatpants. Rett noted absently that Charles still outsized him, as he always had, but Rett had never lost a fight to him.

  “Naw, I couldn’t sleep,” Rett answered tightly.

  “I just came to see where you went,” Kim added, a lot more alert than when he’d left her. And she sounded guilty, too. Rett knew her too well. And he knew his friend too well, also.

  “Well, you found him,” Charles said and smacked her hard on the backside. “Why don’t you go and get me some water while you’re up.” And there she went. Charles turned his attention to Rett then. He wanted to see if that little show had hit its mark.

  It hadn’t. Or if it had, Rett wasn’t about to show it. He stood finishing his soda and opening his beer. “I think I’m sleepy now. You don’t have to send Kim on—she always knows how to find her way back.”

  Charles said to his retreating back, “I hope you have a good time this weekend huntin’ with Big. We sure had a good time last weekend.”

  Rett didn’t answer. He just went to bed, barely noting that Kim was taking her sweet time to follow.

  Chapter 10

  Tracey was in a rotten mood, she really was. When Moni called that morning and asked why she hadn’t come down to the center, she explained that she just wasn’t feeling up to it. Moni asked why. Tracey told her she didn’t know. Moni invited her to a matinée movie and lunch with her and her kids to shake off her doldrums. Tracey agreed because she needed the company, anything to get her mind off things.

  Tracey got to the mall way too early. She slowly wandered to the area where the theater was located and eased down onto a hard bench positioned in front of a long wooden planter. Crowded shrubs strained against each other above and around her head. She closed her eyes and envisioned the greenery reaching out to wrap around her, hiding her in its lushness. When she was little, she’d imagined this kind of thing all the time. She thought that if she closed her eyes and concentrated on being part of the surroundings, making herself small, no one would notice her. Tracey would be invisible. But that was when she was a kid. Most of her friends were white, and most black kids didn’t like her anyway.

  Tracey hadn’t seen Rett in more than two weeks. She didn’t know why or why she should care. She did, though. She cared a lot and didn’t know what she could do about it. He hadn’t been by the house once, nor had he so much as called or texted. She’d seen him on campus a couple of times but he hadn’t acknowledged her. All kinds of things crossed her mind. Maybe he had made some sort of bet and getting her to kiss him was the end of it. Maybe he had freaked out because he’d kissed her and couldn’t deal with seeing her again. Maybe he just didn’t care. But, dammit, she cared! Tracey hated him right then.

  So when she saw him, she felt something move all over her, making her skin crawl, making her entire body warm, making her think she was losing her mind all over again. And after all that, she felt like the proverbial fish in a barrel. Garrett. He looked alive, healthy, and well. She checked his arms. They looked completely capable of lifting a telephone receiver. He was walking in through a mall entrance behind a less than beautiful girl. She had to be his girlfriend, Kim. Tracey knew she was because he had described her. In his description he was much nicer than Tracey ever would have be
en, though.

  She wanted to be angry instead of hurt. She didn’t want to watch him. But she just couldn’t help herself. A person who has been starved can’t help eating. Besides, she was only doing what she had always done, really: watch him and want him. There wasn’t any more denying it. Whether she would ever act on it didn’t matter anymore. Tracey hadn’t slept the entire time he was gone. At night when she was up studying and listening to jazz, he was on her mind. She caught herself lingering around the law library. She dialed half his number and hung up. She didn’t know what to do.

  Tracey wondered if he would see her, and if he did see her, what he would do. She didn’t know what she wanted him to do. She didn’t know what she would do. The worst of it was that she didn’t even know when this thing had happened to her. She didn’t remember getting attached. And at that point, she didn’t remember much of anything, except for the fact that she had never in her life been kissed the way he’d kissed her.

  Maybe her thoughts of Garrett were so strong he sensed them. He glanced toward her and her heart started to tick like a bomb. Then he glanced away and that bomb exploded. How could he not have seen her? Did he see her and just ignore her?

  If that was the case, the right thing for her to do would be to just roll up on him and tell him what she thought about his behavior. Tracey was no one’s dirty little secret. Oh damn, that wouldn’t be right either. Even if he did see her, he wasn’t doing anything different than they had done before. He wasn’t doing anything she hadn’t asked him to do. He wasn’t treating her any different than she had treated him. She started to massage her temples. Her emotional reaction was giving her a headache.

  He checked the movie listings above the ticket box, and Tracey wondered what he wanted to see. Ironically, she knew his tastes. But because they had never been out in public together, she didn’t have the slightest idea how he was on a date. Would he want to see whatever she wanted to see? Probably. He was always asking what she wanted to do or eat or watch. He wasn’t happy with Kim before, but was he now? Had they worked everything out? Did he love her? Tracey couldn’t stand the speculation. She had lost control.