Page 79 of Play With Me
My stomach flips. This is a risky game. I don’t play these. Do I? Heart thumping, I ask, “What happened to your vow of celibacy?”
Jude finally looks away. “I don’t know. Maybe kissing doesn’t count.”
Feeling bold, I sit back. “How about watching me?”
Jude looks rattled for the first time. He plucks a slice of cantaloupe from my plate—“I don’t have all the answers, Nor.”
I feel that urge again, that little tingle I’m starting to recognize as me doing something daring.
“Would you really give up eight years to sleep with me?” I ask. “If the opportunity presented itself?”
Jude freezes, the cantaloupe half eaten in his hand. “Are you asking me to sleep with you, Nora?”
Am I? “No,” I say. The tingle’s stronger now. An urge. Is this what playing pro tennis was like? “I’m asking if you would. If you want to.” I don’t ask that in a self-effacing way. I ask it like I’m completely neutral on the subject. If Sasha were here, she’d be hooting.
Emboldened, I choose that moment to lower my arm from my chest. I may not have Jude’s natural charm, but I have some assets.
Jude swallows, his eyes locked on my chest. Then he quickly closes them. “Yes, Nora. I want to.”
It’s not the same as going ahead with it, but I still love the thrill of having the upper hand for what feels like the first time ever.
“Good to know,” I say. Then I stand up. “Guess I better get ready, huh?”
I walk away from the table toward the bathroom. I know he won’t be late meeting Cap. It’s a thing with him; he hated it when his dad was late. He said it used to make him anxious. So he never leaves Cap wondering where he is.
I know all this, so it makes me bold enough to do what I do next: I peel off my shirt, tossing it on the bed as I pass so Jude can watch me walk away from him in only the little pink underwear he’s apparently so familiar with.
This time the clatter of the fork isn’t from me.
* * *
Of course, the day on the mountain turns out to be exactly what I need. Cap and Farrah are around, so there’s no way for Jude and me to interact without their eyes on us, and it’s just the four of us hopping into inner tubes, throwing ourselves down the side of the mountain.
I was nervous at first—extreme sports aren’t really my thing. But I still went ahead to show Cap it wasn’t too bad. A few runs later and I even stopped screaming.
Cap wouldn’t go on his own the first few runs. He’d sit in Jude’s lap mostly, though he did a couple with me once I’d gotten used to it, and one with Farrah.
By lunchtime we were all having a blast, and Cap begged us to go back up afterward. None of us could say no—it was thus far the least awkward us adults had all been together, and I think none of us wanted it to end. By the second half of the day, Cap was doing spinning tricks and even a jump off a little lip of snow on the far side of the track while we were barely standing.
It was also a relief to just laugh and not have to think about any of the sexual tension between Jude and me—or the faint layer of sadness that lay just underneath. The one I only thought of when I wasn’t right next to him. The one that told me whatever happened next between us was just what it was. Flirting, maybe. Sex, maybe. But the bigger part of me—the one that didn’t only want Jude physically—knew this was going to end and I’d be worse off than I was before.
But I refused to focus on that. I focused on Cap and on having fun. Watching Jude wipe out on a snowdrift more than once helped too.
By the time they shut down the hill, we were all exhausted, though Cap was still buzzing.
“I wish I have the energy of a seven-and-half-year-old,” Farrah says as we ride the lift back down to the hotel. Cap wanted to ride with his dad, so they’re in the chair in front of us.
Farrah and I haven’t spent any time together, and mostly I’m glad. It’s not that I feel jealous or threatened at all. The opposite, really. But I can’t tell her what’s going on with Jude, why he’s still so stiff around her and weird around me.
“I am hurting all over,” she says.
“Yeah, I’m pooped too,” I agree.
“You…” She looks down at the lodge. “Need the toilet?”
“Oh my God, no, I—” I burst out laughing, then explain to her that being pooped has nothing to do with the bathroom.
Jude and Cap are too far ahead to hear what we we’re saying, but they still turn around at the sound of both Farrah and me laughing.
