Kiss The Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella (1001 Dark Nights)

  “Why don’t I meet you there?” she says.

  There’s a flicker of disappointment in his expression, but his furrowed brow is soon joined by a cocky grin. “But you don’t know where we’re going,” he says.

  “Right. That’s why you have to tell me.”

  Don’t ask me why. Please don’t ask me why I’m afraid to get in a car alone with you. New Laney isn’t supposed to tell those kinds of stories anymore.

  “Do you know where Perry’s is? In the Quarter?”

  Everyone knows where Perry’s is. It’s one of the most famous restaurants in town. All she can manage is a nod.

  “See you there at seven, Miss Foley.”

  His sudden reversion to the use of her last name stabs her in the gut. Is it because she just refused his offer of a ride? Is he rounding down their plans from date to friendly dinner?

  A friendly dinner at Perry’s? Fat chance. A candlelit courtyard, a bubbling fountain, those weathered, fern-dappled French Quarter walls rising on all sides of them. She’s seen pictures of the place online and in magazines and it practically oozes romance. If he’d wanted a friendly dinner, there were plenty of diners near campus where they could meet.

  “What should I wear?” she calls after him.

  “Whatever you like to celebrate in,” he says, and then he’s disappeared into a crowd of students heading toward the nearby parking lot, and she doesn’t manage a deep breath until several minutes after she can’t see him anymore.

  2

  “Either you get some teacher dick tonight or I quit being friends with you.”

  “Cat! Honestly!”

  They’re heading away from campus and in the direction of the French Quarter when Laney’s best friend powers down the driver’s side window of her BMW. A brisk wind rips through the leather-upholstered car, blowing Cat Burke’s platinum blonde hair back from one side of her angelic face and carrying with it the clatter of the lumbering St. Charles Avenue streetcars they’re flying past at Laney doesn’t-want-to-know-how-many miles an hour.

  Cat drives like she consumes Diet Coke—relentlessly and without regard for her well-being, and Laney knows full well her best friend isn’t willing to hear anyone’s opinion about either compulsion, including Laney’s. But she’s startled Cat waited this long to open her window. She usually drives with it down, just like a smoker would. Only Cat isn’t a smoker. To Laney’s knowledge Cat’s never smoked at all, except maybe the occasional joint at a party, after which she usually complains of nausea and heads straight back to her dorm room to take a three-hour nap covered in Funyuns dust. The way Laney figures it, keeping the window open while she drives is one of Cat’s many desperate methods for regulating her own body temperature, which always seems to run several degrees above normal, another side effect of being one of the most hyperactive people Laney has ever met.

  Cat Burke is always hot. Cat Burke is always full of opinions. Cat Burke always has a plan, usually a plan for someone else. Usually whoever is trapped in her car with her, and usually that person is Laney. And the reason it’s taken Cat this long to lower her window is because she’s convinced the lecture she’s been giving Laney is super-important.

  “Cat. Honey. Let’s get something clear. You’re picking me up tonight even if I don’t sleep with him.”

  “Nope. You’ll get a cab. This is an ultimatum, Sister Mary Laney Foley. Like one of those thrillers you love to read when you’re in a crappy mood. I’m calling it The Laney Ultimatum. Starring Laney, Professor Forearms, and his headboard. See, I know big words too.”

  “Forearms is not a big word.”

  “I meant ultimatum, smart ass!”

  “Right, and I get that you think it’s an ultimatum, Cat. And I think it’s sweet that you think you can give me ultimatums. But if you don’t pick me up tonight when I call you, I’m going to start a rumor that you’re a serial killer. And I’m going to start it on the WWL Eyewitness News. Got it?”

  “Whatever, Miss Independent,” Cat fires back. “You took my ultimatum about the dress, didn’t you?”

  “I added a jacket.”

  “After I told you to!” Cat barked.

  “You told me to go sleeveless and I refused.”

  “You’re covering up too much ’cause you’re trying to pretend like you don’t want to sleep with him!”

  “I’m trying not to freeze to death!”

  “It’s sixty-five degrees outside!” Cat whined. “Whatever! For the last time, I am not picking you up tonight. And the reason I’m not picking you up tonight is because you are going home with this man the minute he even hints that he wants you to. And you know why?” Cat bends toward her over the gearshift, growling like an angry lion. “Because he’s hhhhhhawwwwwwwwwwt. With five h’s and ten w’s.”

  “And you’re being shallow,” Laney hissed back, “with twenty s’s and eleven o’s.”

  “Oh, don’t you get all high and mighty on me. You’ve been mooning over this guy for months.”

  “Yeah, and mooning isn’t necessarily the best basis for a good relationship.”

  “I’m not talking about that kind of mooning!”

  “I know what kind of mooning you’re talking about. Stop interrupting me! What I’m saying is that mooning is something you do over One Direction or Five Seconds of—”

  “Oh, so now you’re saying you wouldn’t go out on a date with One Direction? That’s just crazy talk!”

  “The whole band?”Laney snapped. “Are you nuts? You think I’m just going to lie back and let them take turns?”

  “I guess that sounds better in the fanfic version,” Cat muttered.

  “What kind of fanfic are you reading?”

  “Leave me alone. Tumblr doesn’t do it for me.”

  “Cat, let’s just agree that you and I have different value systems in this area, okay?”

  “Oh, kiss my butt, Laney Foley. Kiss my butt with your value systems!”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  “You have been making goo-goo eyes at Michael Brouchard for the whole semester and now he finally got the message and suddenly you’re a nun? Oh, and by the way, the guy’s not only hot but he likes to talk about the kinda stuff you like to talk about and—”

  “And what kind of stuff is that?”

  “Oh, you know,” Cat answers, talking under her breath and out of one corner of her mouth. “Art and books. And—more art.”

  “Why are we friends?”

  “’Cause I don’t put up with your b.s., girlfriend. Day one, I saw right through your whole routine.”

  “I don’t have a routine,” Laney groans, even though she does. Or she did, and she knows Cat’s right.

  “Hi, I’m Laney,” Cat’s impersonation captures the quiet tone Laney often drops into her voice because it softens the harsh Cajun accent she inherited from her mother. “And I can never enjoy life or have any fun because I have to work harder than you because my parents didn’t buy me a car—”

  “They didn’t buy me a car. They have never bought me a car, and they never will buy me a car, Miss BMW, because they can barely afford to buy themselves a car.”

  “Be that as it may!” Cat responds with the grand dismissiveness of an inconvenienced monarch. “You still act like you have to work harder than me—”

  “I do have to work harder than you,” Laney says. “If my GPA drops below a three point six, I don’t get to go to school here anymore. If you get a C, your father sends you consolation roses.”

  “Be that as it may,” Cat responds with a careful and menacing enunciation that tells Laney’s she’s on the verge of pointing out one too many hard facts about their vastly different backgrounds. “When you’re not working, it’s your responsibility to actually enjoy your life. And that does not include staying in your dorm room all night reading sad books about gnomes.”

  “There are no gnomes in Lord of the Rings.”

  “Still!”

  “And the trilogy has a happ
y ending, by the way.”

  “Says you.”

  “And you know, there are some people who consider Tolkien to be one of the greatest novelists of all time.”

  “And if he could get you to go outside once in a while, I’d feel the same.”

  “Seriously. Why are we friends?”

  “’Cause I’m one of the only people you couldn’t scare away when you got here,” Cat says. There’s more truth to that statement than Laney would like. “So don’t you scare him away tonight just because he makes you have feelings you can’t control. That’s all I’m saying, okay?”

  Despite the degree to which the woman frays her nerves, Laney adores Cat Burke. Her new best friend shares the loud, brassy no-time-for-bullshit quality of some of Laney’s favorite cousins, and her dad on a good day, and that’s the real reason they became friends right off the bat. Most of the other girls at school were too busy finding eight hundred different ways to avoid expressing a real feeling that might endanger their chances of landing a rich husband. But Laney’s favorite thing about Cat by far is her tendency to cap off an elaborate diatribe with the expression, That’s all I’m saying, okay?

  They ride in silence for a few minutes, a silence punctuated by Cat’s desperate slurps from her Diet Coke.

  “This is a risk,” Laney finally says. “This is a really big risk, Cat.”

  “Most good things are, honey.”

  “Still.”

  “Still what?”

  “He’s…”

  “Three years older than you. That’s all. Who cares what the rule book says?”

  “I care what my scholarship says,” Laney says. She’s staring out the window at the passing parade of Greek Revival mansions, houses she used to dream of living in as a child, never once believing she’d someday have the chance to attend college in the same neighborhood.

  “You’re really afraid he’s going to drop your grade if you have one bad date?” Cat asks softly, as if she can sense the thoughts running through Laney’s head won’t be dispelled by a smart remark or a sarcastic ultimatum.

  “No,” Laney says. “No, of course not. I’m afraid we’re gonna have one really good date. Really good. And then another really good date. And then another. And then something will…”

  “Something will what?” Cat asks. The bite and the fight have both gone out of her voice.

  “Something will go wrong. I don’t know. He’ll lose interest. Or maybe I will. Maybe he’ll turn out to…”

  Maybe he’ll pin me to the passenger seat by throwing one strong arm across my chest like Bobby Dautrieve did, start snarling at me about how I’m a bitch and a tease cause all I wanted to do was kiss, and who the hell did I think I was trying to get myself into a good school when really I’d never do better than a good-looking guy like him. And maybe then, I won’t have my father’s switchblade like I did with Bobby, won’t have the wherewithal to drive it down in between his legs, close enough to snag the fabric of his jeans on the blade, but not his flesh. Won’t have the time to get away like I did with Bobby, ’cause he wasn’t sure if he’d been stabbed or not so he just decided to scream his head off while I ran fast enough to beat the band.

  “Laney?” Cat’s voice cuts through the scary flashback strobing through Laney’s mind.

  “Maybe he’ll turn out to be horrible and then I’ll feel like I’m stuck with him ’til the semester’s over. Just so he won’t punish me.”

  “He won’t punish you, Laney.”

  “You don’t know that. I don’t know that. He probably doesn’t even know that. Jerks never think they’re jerks.”

  “Exactly. Bad men don’t wear uniforms. But the good ones don’t either. That’s why you gotta see what they’ve got under their clothes to find out who they really are. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I know you’re talking about sex. Again.”

  “No, I’m using sex to point out what Professor Forearms would probably call a universal truth.”

  “Now that is a pretty big word. Or term, excuse me.”

  “Uh-huh. Whatever. Point is, if you’re going to find out who someone is, you actually have to get to know them. And sometimes that means taking a risk.”

  “I know that. But this is a big risk, Cat.”

  “Right. And maybe that means it’ll be a big reward.”

  “You know, you act like you’re this big sex bomb, but it’s not like you’re hopping into beds all over campus or anything.”

  “Laney, I’m not talking about the size of his junk. I’m talking about life.”

  “Life?”

  “Yeah. Life. You can’t live life in your head or in books. And you can’t live it in fear either.”

  “I know. I just—”

  “Just nothing. You deserve something better than fending off drunken frat boys. For one, you’re older than most of them, and for two, you don’t have much in common with any of them. This guy might be just right for you.”

  “This teacher,” she says. “This teacher might be just right for me.”

  “Whatever. If he does anything remotely shitty I’ll totally lie to everyone and say he put his hands all over me and tried to trade grades for sex.”

  “You’re not one of his students.”

  “Who cares? I’ll get one of his actual students to do it. I’m real persuasive with Jell-O shots.”

  The image of Cat and one of Laney’s stumbling, inebriated classmates trying to recount a badly rehearsed and bogus tale of sexual harassment to a school administrator reduces Laney to tears of laughter.

  “Or you could just agree to pick me up tonight,” Laney says. “That would make things a lot easier. For now, at least.”

  “Oh, of course, I will. You don’t really think I’m going to leave you stranded down there if it doesn’t go well?”

  “I don’t know. You can be pretty stubborn, Cat.”

  “Takes one to know one,” Cat says. “No, seriously. I’ll pick you up if you need me to. That said, a real gentleman would drive you home even if he ain’t gettin’ any. Info like that is all part of the discovery process.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t get in cars with guys on the first date.”

  “Yet another thing you’re gonna have to get over.”

  Laney ponders telling Cat the story of Bobby Dautrieve and her father’s switchblade, but she’s in no mood to let any of her horrible past dating experiences out of the little boxes she keeps them in, not when she’s poised to have a night so magical it could make them all seem like hazy, distant memories.

  “One thing at a time, Cat,” Laney answers, before she realizes she’s squeezing her clasped hands in between her knees tightly enough to cause pain in the heels of both palms. “One thing at a time.”

  3

  Laney has walked past Perry’s countless times during French Quarter bar crawls, gazing covetously into its lantern-lit courtyard. She’s always assumed the only way she’d be able to score a meal there would be if a friend of hers landed a job as a bartender. But now, here she is, giving Michael’s last name to the restaurant’s handsome maître d’, following him under a soaring wrought iron archway that feels like the gateway to a royal palace.

  Most of the restaurant is contained inside a restored, two-story carriage house that sits at the back of an expansive, planter-filled courtyard. The house has a long, narrow balcony traveling the length of its second floor, and at one corner of it, Michael stands behind his empty chair next to a candlelit table for two. Laney’s got at least another minute of following the host through the rings of cast iron tables that surround the courtyard’s gurgling stone fountain before she reaches him, but her teacher has already greeted her arrival like a perfect gentleman.

  Once inside, Laney mounts the rickety wooden steps leading to the second floor, her heart hammering the whole time. Her outfit is a fail, she’s suddenly sure of it. She should have listened to Cat. And she’s frantically re-dressing Michael in her mind, making him less imposing, less dashi
ng, less desirable. But when she steps out onto the balcony, he looks even better than he did from below. His brown corduroy blazer has leather elbow patches, and the top three buttons of his dark blue dress shirt are undone. When she’s within a few feet of the table, she catches a whiff of his cologne, an intoxicating scent that makes her think of backyard campfires and vanilla ice cream. Then she sees the Mylar balloons tied to the back of her empty chair, stamped with celebratory expressions written in various bright colors: CONGRATULATIONS! AMAZING! GOOD WORK!

  Michael Brouchard has staged the congratulatory dinner she never had, the one her father effectively canceled a year before when he stormed out of the house in a rage. As if the balloons weren’t enough, there’s a bottle of champagne chilling in an ice bucket next to the table. Laney hesitates behind her empty chair, grasping the back of it with one sweaty hand. She reads the champagne bottle’s label in the flickering candlelight. It’s Veuve Clicquot, the vintage, her first year of high school.

  They’ve only had one conversation that’s lasted longer than a few minutes, and already Michael has filled a gap in her life. Not only that, he recognized it was there in the first place, that it was pulling at the fabric of her self-worth more than she wanted to admit. She knew tonight would be full of seductive risks, but didn’t expect to start here, with an overwhelming sense of having been seen and heard and valued.

  He gestures to her empty chair, waits for her to take her seat before taking his own. Only once she’s seated does she realize Michael had extended his hand toward hers and she’d been too distracted by the balloons and the champagne to notice. Now there’s no going back to rectify her rudeness without sounding like a sputtering idiot. The host, who has stood by politely throughout her hesitation, hands her a menu and departs. She’s folding her napkin across her lap when she sees a large envelope resting against the edge of her plate, as large as a wedding invite. Her name is written on the outside in precise, draftsman-like handwriting. Just her first name. Not her last name. And not Miss Foley, which they both agreed he wouldn’t call her anymore.