Admit You Want Me Read online

  Yeah, I could see her point.

  “What about this one?” I asked, pointing to a particularly grisly picture of a man being flayed alive while grinning like the process was tickling him. I found this one to be the creepiest of the bunch.

  Excited to prove her point Emma swept past me to read the card, and I caught a whiff of her coconut-scented hair. In an instant, I was removed from any academic discussion and reminded who I was with, and why. Suddenly, the fact that we were alone in the gallery seemed incredibly important.

  Emma seemed oblivious to the shift in my attention from art to her. “This one’s the Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew,” she told me. “I guess what I would say about that is it’s an example of the supernatural being used as a way to represent the awesome power of faith. St. Bartholomew is so infused with, er, holy power that he doesn’t care that he’s getting his skin peeled off like a peach. He’s super ready to meet god, and so his power is inspiring to others.”

  I struggled to keep up with her interpretation. I had no practice with art appreciation, although it was easier than I’d feared. Perhaps Emma was just going easy on me. “But there’s no monster in this one.”

  Emma smirked. “The people torturing him are the monster.”

  I looked at the faces of the torturers in the picture. “They look weirded out that he’s smiling.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” she asked, shrugging. “I think I’d be really creeped out if someone I was torturing kept smiling like that at me. He looks way too into it.”

  I laughed. “I like to think I wouldn’t ever flay somebody. I imagine the entire process would weird me out.”

  She smiled. “Fair enough.”

  We’d made it through the entire exhibit and wandered into another section of the museum. This area was filled with painting after painting of naked women in various poses.

  “This is even better than the monsters,” I joked. Emma rolled her eyes.

  “What do you like about these?” she asked, clearly challenging me to come up with something better and smarter than ‘I just love looking at naked women’.

  “I just love looking at naked women.” Oops.

  “Is that all?” Emma pushed.

  I frowned. “Is this a test? Did I fail? I know what I like.”

  “It’s not a test,” Emma said. She shrugged. “I don’t really enjoy looking at naked women, which is probably why I find these all pretty boring. It’s just boobs, boobs, boobs. I don’t subscribe to the idea that there has to be some great reason behind why someone likes art. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t.”

  “Does that mean I did ok at your high-brow activity?”

  “You did a great job,” she said. “Really. I couldn’t ask for anything more.” I felt irrationally proud of myself.

  We meandered downstairs and got lunch in the little café. Emma insisted on paying for my food, seeing as I paid for our food at the game. Since this wasn’t a date, I reluctantly allowed it.

  Emma pushed her salad around without much enthusiasm. Once out of the exhibit, she’d turned quiet. Her eyes, usually so clear and transparent about her emotions, were guarded. My curiosity quickly got the best of me.

  “What’s bothering you?” I asked her.

  She looked at me in surprise. “I really thought I was doing a good job of hiding it.”

  “Maybe I know you better than you think.” We had been spending more than forty hours a week with each other lately. You do get pretty used to someone’s moods.

  She smiled at me as if to say, I doubt that. “Promise you won’t judge me?”

  I nodded. “Friends don’t judge.”

  “Are we friends?” she asked, surprised.

  “Aren’t we?” It felt like the wrong word, and I immediately regretted it, but I couldn’t think of a better one. Plus, I really wanted to know what Emma was keeping from me.

  “Okay,” she said, smiling a tiny little smile. “Well, remember my ex from the party a couple of weeks ago? Adam? Well he’s been trying to get me to come work for him again in the English department. The professor that I’m working under for my dissertation is on maternity leave, which has put me behind in my research. If I were to go work for Adam, I’d be able to get a teaching stipend, continue my research, and potentially graduate faster. I wouldn’t have to work at the bar. He keeps sending me these long emails trying to convince me to call him.”

  I had a lot of thoughts about that, but all I said was, “That all sounds good, though, right? Graduating quickly is what you want, right?”

  She nodded and made a face. “I guess so.”

  “So, what’s the catch, then?”

  She looked embarrassed. “He obviously wants to sleep with me. To restart our twisted relationship. It’s not an explicit part of the offer or anything, but I just know that’s what he wants. It’s all he’s ever really wanted from me.” She sounded bitter, but mostly just tired. I hated the look she had on her face, too. It made me frustrated on her behalf.

  “And you don’t want that.” I’d seen them together and I could tell she didn’t want him.

  “No. I don’t. He didn’t treat me so great the first time around. He used me and cheated on me. I know he’s just pursuing this extra because you kissed me, and he saw it. Now he’s jealous. It’s not even really about me.”

  I wanted to ask about that, figure out exactly what he’d done to hurt Emma and then fix it somehow, but I resisted asking more questions. It wouldn’t be right to pry. And it wasn’t my place. She’d share what she wanted to share with me and no more. That’s what friends did.

  “So, what are you going to do?” I asked her. “Are you going to go work for him? If I need to find another waitress, I need to let Kate know ASAP.”

  Kate was going to have a cow if we lost Emma after only a few weeks. We’d both been reaping the benefits of having Emma around. Despite my initial misgivings about Emma, she really was a fantastic waitress. The customers loved her, Kate loved her, Willie loved her… and me? I couldn’t stand the thought that I might never see her again.

  Emma shook her head and relief shook me. “No. I’m not going to do it. It’s just stressing me out.”

  “Have you written him back?”

  “No. I’m giving him the silent treatment.”

  “That’s probably the most mature thing you could do. Let him make a fool of himself. If he continues to harass you, report him to the university.”

  “You sound just like Lily.”

  “Great minds think alike. Just stay away from him and he’ll give up eventually.”

  Emma nodded. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  “I’ll go slash his tires if you want. Call him in the middle of the night and threaten him? Egg his door? Toilet paper his front yard? Mail him some glitter? You know, generally scare him off.”

  She raised a blond eyebrow. “I know you’re just trying to be a good friend, but I don’t think that’s necessary at this point. Also, some of those are felonies.”

  “You just let me know.”

  She smiled weakly at me. Anything that kept Emma away from that Adam creep. If it required a felony, well that was just fine.

  18

  Ward

  Friends. I wished I could take it back. But the word was out there now, hanging between us like an obstacle. A wall.

  Emma didn’t seem to notice. If anything, she seemed much more at ease than she had been before. We walked back toward my truck in the late afternoon sun, taking our time and enjoying the weather. We passed a small art gallery that was advertising a free show.

  “Want to check it out?” I offered. I didn’t really want to look at any more art, but I found myself desperate not to let this day end.

  “Sure,” Emma replied. “These things usually have free booze.”

  She was right. I snagged a couple of glasses of the free champagne sitting atop the makeshift bar and joined her in front of the first piece on display. The plaque below sta
ted that the piece was entitled ‘Gossamer’.

  “What am I looking at?” I whispered in her ear. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “If you think it’s a ball of human hair, then yeah” she whispered back. Her soft voice sent shivers down my spine.

  A gigantic ball of hair nailed to a large canvas was exactly what it looked like. It resembled something that would come out of badly clogged drain, but bigger. Much bigger. Nearby, a young woman with a buzz cut was being congratulated by her friends. I had a bad feeling that I was looking at her hair. All of her hair. Emma and I exchanged a wordless, disgusted look. Why?

  We moved on to the next piece. This one was much less upsetting. Just a picture of cat lying on a garbage pile. Everything was made out of little pieces of colored paper. Kind-of boring, but ok. It was recognizably a cat. A long, written explanation for how the cat was a metaphor for women’s representation in modern media accompanied the piece. The bits of paper were apparently collected from women’s fashion magazines. Emma rolled her eyes.

  “You’re not a fan of this one?” I asked her in a whisper.

  “It’s a bit on the nose,” she replied. She looked unimpressed.

  “Snobby much?” I teased gently.

  “Guilty as charged,” she admitted with a smile. She took a swig of her cheap champagne and wrinkled her nose at the harsh taste. “Very, very guilty as charged.”

  The third piece in the gallery involved the projection of a water texture onto black and white photographs of dogs jumping into water and swimming. They’d been photographed in such a way that their faces were distorted and funny-looking. I recognized the backgrounds of the photos as being Barton Springs, a local swimming hole famous for its freezing cold water and native salamander population.

  “Ok I really like this one,” Emma admitted, smiling at the silly pictures. “These are pretty adorable.”

  I nodded. “Yeah this one’s my favorite too. Anything with dogs will always get high marks from me.”

  “Emma is that you?” A voice behind us asked. Emma turned, her body tensing at my side.

  Two women and a man looked us both up and down. The first woman was wearing a loud, flower print Kimono and aggressive makeup. Next to her, a petite brunette wearing all black peered at us through aggressively ugly coke-bottle glasses. At their side, a gaunt fellow with an artistic, asymmetric haircut looked at me with far more interest than Emma.

  Great, more of Emma’s friends?

  “Hi Ivy,” Emma said in her customer service voice. This wasn’t the voice she used for friends. I reevaluated the three. Not friends. “It’s great to see you. Hello Jannie, Hi Simon.” She turned to me. “Ward, these are some of my classmates. Ivy, Jannie, and Simon are also in the English department. They’re master’s students.”

  Emma’s tone was guarded, so mine was too.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said pleasantly enough, shaking hands each of the three. They had universally weak handshakes. Simon, after apparently determining that I was here with Emma, drifted off wordlessly with a sad shake of his head at me. He needed to brush up on his social skills if he wanted to score. Ivy and Jannie, on the other hand, seemed very keen to socialize. They seemed intensely interested in the both of us.

  “I haven’t seen you around much lately, Emma,” Ivy said in what was clearly a falsely-sweet tone of voice. “We’ve missed you. Where have you been?”

  “I’m taking a semester long sabbatical while Melissa is on leave,” Emma said simply. “I hope to be back full-time in the spring.”

  “Oh, how frustrating for you,” Ivy crooned. “Well, at least it looks like you’ve been putting your time to good use. I heard from Adam Barnstead that you’re working in a bar. And what do you do, Ward?” Ivy’s voice was mean-girl cruel.

  “I have a few business ventures around town,” I answered. I didn’t really want to reveal any personal information to this woman staring down her nose at Emma.

  “Ah, business. How very ordinary.” You’d have think I just admitted to slaughtering puppies for a living or something. I may have thought Emma was snobby when I first met her, but I don’t think I realized until this moment how much I’d misjudged her. Compared to her eccentric peers, Emma was positively ordinary. And unlike Ivy, I don’t think of that as a bad thing.

  “We thought you might have quit,” Jannie said. She was practically sneering at Emma. “After all, you and Barnstead have quite a history.”

  “Excuse me?” Emma said, wide-eyed. Her voice had risen an octave. Jannie, sensing danger, shut the hell up and looked uncomfortable. Ivy was less careful.

  “Well yes,” Ivy said, smiling like a crocodile. “Rumor is that you were his muse and prize student until he just couldn’t resist your advances any more. You seduced him and the torrid affair that followed led to him leaving Yale, and his fiancé. Apparently even though you’ve mastered the sweet and innocent impression, you’re really quite the homewrecker.” She whispered the last part like it was something to brag about.

  “Is that what he’s telling people?” Her voice was livid. And loud. Around the gallery, people glanced over at us. Emma was flushed a brilliant, and unhealthy red-purple. It was time to go. Preferably before Emma exploded.

  “Oh well it’s all just rumor of course. I wouldn’t take it too personally.” Ivy shrugged and smiled. “See you around.”

  Ivy and Jannie waved cheerily and wandered off. Perhaps they had someone else to torture. Emma looked heartbroken.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I suggested, and she didn’t protest. I pulled her out of the gallery by the hand and we made it all the way back to the car before she spoke.

  “He’s making me out to be some kind of slut.”

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. It sucked that he was starting rumors about her. No matter what the truth was, he shouldn’t be talking about her behind her back. That was just shitty.

  “I liked him, and he made me feel older and more mature,” she told me, blushing furiously. “I was a virgin. He told me he loved me. I didn’t know he was engaged to someone else, but I knew it was wrong to sleep with my professor…”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” I told her. Although I wouldn’t deny that I was curious.

  “I want one person to know the truth,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “He used me like a toy. Told me not to tell anybody. I thought it was fun to have a secret, but he wasn’t who I thought he was.” Her anger had faded while she spoke. Her green eyes just looked sad now.

  “He just didn’t want his fiancé to find out.”

  “Right. And the university. It’s against the code of conduct for professors to sleep with students.”

  “For obvious reasons.”

  “It wasn’t obvious to me at the time, but yes. It’s a very unhealthy dynamic for a nineteen-year-old and a forty-year-old to sleep together. Especially when he controlled my GPA.”

  Gross. I kept my opinion to myself. It wasn’t her fault.

  “You have nothing to feel guilty about,” I told her. “He took advantage of you, not the other way around.” She smiled thinly at me.

  “Rationally I know that. But why do I feel so crappy then?”

  “You’re the siren,” I told her. “Remember? You said that society punishes women by turning their beauty into something dangerous to men. It’s not really your fault, but you’re made to feel like it is.”

  Emma was quiet for a long time. When she looked up at me, her green eyes were soft again and her smile was less forced. “You’re very smart, Ward. You pretend like you aren’t, but you are.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  She nodded. “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, then thank you. Did I help any?”

  Emma laughed. “A little bit, yeah.”

  I’d take a little bit. If it was all I could get, I’d be happy with a little bit. I had to be. After all, we were friends now. So why did I feel so bad?

  19

&
nbsp; Ward

  “Don’t take me home,” Emma said as I started up the engine after a few minutes of awkward silence. “I don’t want to go home right now. Drop me off at the library or something. Just don’t take me home.”

  “The library?” Did she really want to read right now?

  “Anywhere,” she said. Her voice was soft and pain-filled. “Just not back to my apartment.”

  We were still sitting in the parking lot. I looked over at her, unsure. Emma seemed upset and I didn’t know what to do to fix it. Before I could say anything to her, she pulled my shirtsleeve to make me face her, and then kissed me.

  Her lips were soft, warm, and eager. I didn’t stand a chance to resist her. Without thinking, I scooped her up from her seat and pulled her over the console and into my lap. She was so small it was hardly difficult. She leaned against me, teasing me senseless with her mouth and sighing contentedly when I held her tighter and tighter.

  It had been years since I made out with someone in a car. I felt like a teenager, and my heart pounded in my chest like it was the first time when she let me cup her tits and knead her round ass in my palms. She fit perfectly in my hands. She was whimpering, nuzzling, and urging me on as I touched her, rounding second base and heading for third. My brain was already planning how I could maneuver her in order to fuck her within the narrow confines of the cab. I could put her in the back or bend her over the dash. But first, I needed her out of her skinny jeans. I started on the buttons and worked down the zipper. I felt her lips curl into a smile against mine.

  Stop.

  Somehow, I managed to obey the little voice of conscience. I pulled back.