Love Out of Order (Indigo Love Spectrum) Read online

  “That’s because I wish you would leave him alone. He is no good for you. He’s rude. He’s stupid. He’s just another one of them. And all he wants is to see what it’s like to have a black girl on her back.”

  “You don’t know a thing about him.”

  “I know all I need to know,” Astoria said. Her eyes shifted to John as he entered the room. “Worthless,” she sneered.

  I gave him a pleading look and he nodded before walking back into my room.

  “Astoria, I don’t know what your deal is. He hasn’t done anything to you,” I said.

  “He’s just playing with you. He knows he can’t bring you home.”

  “I’m going to John’s parents’ for New Year’s. Besides, our relationship has nothing to do with you.”

  “You’re my best friend. When somebody’s trying to hurt you, I make it my business.”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s not. My parents don’t even tell me who to date. What gives you the right?”

  Astoria glared at me. “You are a fool.”

  “Out.” I pointed to the door.

  She jumped up and stormed to the door. “I tried to warn you. I don’t want you to come crying to me when this blows up in your face.” She slammed the door after her.

  “What’s her problem? I wish you’d told her we haven’t even had sex yet.” John had emerged from my room again.

  “I warned you. And I didn’t tell her because she doesn’t need to know our business.” I wrapped my arms around him. “Just forget about her.”

  “Hmph,” John grumbled.

  “I bet I can make you forget about her.” I kissed John’s chin.

  “Oh, yeah?” he asked, allowing me to take his hand and lead him toward my room.

  I nodded, kissing his hand. I pulled him into the room and shut the door.

  John sat on my bed with my head in his lap, stroking my hair away from my face. I stared up at him.

  “So, you really think being with me is worth all the work?” John grinned.

  “I could ask you the same question,” I said.

  He laughed. “True. Well, I hope you do. Because I’ve been happier this weekend than I ever was with Sasha.”

  “Really?” I was warm all over.

  “Oh yeah. But you’ve always had a hold over me, Denise.”

  “Stop lying.”

  “No. Really. I mean, didn’t you ever notice how I always made an excuse to get closer to you when we were studying?”

  “Yeah.” I grinned. “I thought it would probably have been pretty hard to forget your laptop when you were coming to a study session.”

  “Yeah. And the way I used to always make excuses to touch you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And now the best part is—I don’t have to make excuses anymore,” he said, stroking my cheek.

  “That is a definite benefit,” I said, putting my hand over his.

  “Yeah,” he said, his perfectly green eyes moving over my face. “I just don’t see how you can put up with her.” He linked his fingers through mine.

  “She’s actually a pretty good friend when she’s not being an ass,” I murmured.

  “When’s that?” he asked with a snort. We laughed. “So what do you like about me so much?” I was ready for a subject change.

  “Hm . . . what don’t I like?”

  “That’s a cheap way to get out of the question.” I grinned.

  John removed my hand from his and moved from under me. He then straddled me.

  “Let’s see . . . I like this,” he said, kissing the bottom of my earlobe.

  I giggled. “That tickles.”

  “And I like this,” he said, pulling my sweater away from my shoulder and kissing it. He let his tongue linger on the flesh of my shoulder. “And I really like this,” he murmured, gently caressing my arm as he pushed my sweater sleeve up. He tenderly kissed the skin of the crook of my arm. He then did the same with my wrist, right over my pulse point, and his eyes locked on mine. My pulse quickened even more.

  “Oh yeah? What else do you like?” I whispered.

  He grinned wickedly. “You sure you wanna know?” he asked, unbuttoning my jeans.

  “Yeah I do,” I said, turning out my bedside lamp. I plunged us into darkness and he plunged me into shivers of pleasure by running a thumb ever so slightly across my lower abdomen. I gasped as he lowered his lips to the place where his thumb had been. Then he started trailing kisses upward. Damn. I wanted him to go the other way. He pushed my sweater up as he went.

  “I like this almost the most,” he murmured into the flesh of my breast as I finished removing my sweater and T-shirt for him. I was impatiently waiting for him to get to the bra.

  “What do you like the most?” I whispered as he flicked his tongue over my nipple through my bra before his teeth gently bit at it.

  “This,” he whispered the moment before his lips descended over mine.

  I like this the best, too, I thought with a moan as he finally got rid of my bra without ever separating his lips from mine. I ran my hands down his back, my hands savoring every solid, muscled inch. I let my hands rest at his lower back. He groaned, pressing himself closer to me.

  He kissed the top of my ear. Then, my right temple. Next, my forehead. Followed by my left temple. And finally, the top of my left ear. He sat up and pulled me up with him. I wrapped my legs around his waist and rested my head on his shoulder. I then rolled my head back, eyes closed, as he did sinfully delightful things to my body with his tongue.

  I thought at that moment that he was more than worth whatever I had to go through to keep him. I was bewildered as to where that had come from all of a sudden. But if I had known what was really to come, I wonder if I would have still felt that way.

  * * *

  On the last day of classes for the fall semester, I was on my way to John’s place so we could go out to dinner when Astoria accosted me in the law school parking lot.

  “Denise, we can’t keep this up. We’re too good of friends for that,” Astoria said. We had hardly seen each other outside of class since that Sunday at my place after Thanksgiving.

  “As long as you keep attacking John, I don’t have anything to say to you,” I said. It hurt me to cut her out that way, but I wasn’t going to take her constant, ignorant bashing of John.

  “I don’t trust him, Denise. I wish you didn’t, either. You’re only going to get hurt.”

  I started walking in the direction of my car.

  She followed me, calling my name repeatedly. “Denise. Dating out of your race only causes trouble. Look what happened to my mom. Bethany still has never met her father.”

  I stopped and turned to look at her.

  She held open the passenger-side door to her car. “Get in. It’s too cold to stand out here.”

  I got in and so did she. She started the engine up and we sat there hugging ourselves, waiting for the air coming out of the vents to get warm.

  “Bethany’s only my half-sister. Her father’s white,” Astoria said.

  “I thought she was just really light-skinned.”

  Astoria ran a hand over her face and shook her head. “No. This man and my mom were fooling around. He never meant her any good. The moment she told him she was pregnant, he said he didn’t want anything to do with it. He told her to get rid of it or give it away. And that was the last she saw of him.”

  “Astoria, that’s terrible,” I said, reaching out and putting my hand on her shoulder.

  “Yeah, and I don’t want to see that happen to you, Denise.”

  “I know you’re worried, and that’s a terrible thing your mom had to go through, but that was a long time ago, Astoria. Things have changed.”

  “Twenty-eight years isn’t all that long a time ago.” “It is to me, but let’s just say it’s not. John’s not that guy. John is not Bethany’s father.”

  “He’s close enough.”

  “You’re judging John without getting to know him, Astoria. How
does that make you any better than the people you show so much anger toward?”

  “John’s perfect, huh? He’s been so wonderful to you, right?” Astoria narrowed her eyes at me.

  “He’s a good guy. Nobody’s perfect.”

  “He’s a lying, manipulative white male who thinks he has all the power and the world revolves around him and he always gets what he wants. I don’t have to be all up underneath him or spread my legs for him to know that.”

  “That’s it. I’m out of here,” I said, seeing that Astoria was determined to remain ignorant about this.

  “You know I’m right and you don’t want to hear it.”

  “I know you’re being ignorant. You want to be small-minded and mean because of the things other people have done that nobody can control? Certainly not John? Fine. But I don’t have to sit here and listen to it.” I got out of the car.

  “Go be his sex toy, then, ’til he gets tired of you and goes back to Sasha.”

  I slammed the car door behind me in response to that.

  Chapter 14

  HOME TO CONNECTICUT

  I was high on love all through the first part of winter break. I was home with my family for Christmas and I was going to meet John’s parents for New Year’s in Connecticut. John had earned extra points with my parents by calling them for Christmas. They loved him. I loved him. Things were perfect.

  And then I got to Connecticut. I took the train up and John picked me up at the train station in part of his Christmas present. His parents had given the Kompressor to Thom, John’s younger brother, who was a sophomore at Princeton. John had his parents’ S-Class that was only a year old. And John’s parents had a new S-Class in addition to their older Mercedes SUV. So everybody traded up.

  “Hey.” I grinned after a nice, long, warm, make-youforget-it’s-December-in-Connecticut hello kiss.

  “Hey you,” he said, hugging me close to him. “How was your trip?”

  “Decent. I mean, my back hurts a little,” I said as he picked up my suitcase.

  “I’ll take care of that later,” he said with a mischievous smile. I smiled back, hoping so. “You hungry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Let’s grab something on the way back.”

  “Okay,” I said. I thought it was a little weird that we weren’t going straight back to his house. But I had never met parents before. I was a little nervous. And I was in no real hurry to get to his house. However, I couldn’t help observing, neither was he.

  We stopped at a small diner near the train station in Stamford. John lived not too far away in Greenwich. His dad commuted to Manhattan. His firm did a lot of work with hedge funds and so they worked with all these financial heavyweights. John’s mom worked at a firm that was also somewhere on Wall Street. I didn’t really know all the particulars. John still had not opened up about his family. Every time I asked, he gave me an elusive reply that always concluded with something about the fact that I would meet them over winter break.

  He seemed a little anxious, but I tried to ignore it. I was just happy to be with him. We hadn’t gotten to spend a lot of time together since we’d started dating. We’d basically had Thanksgiving break and a few moments in between studying for finals. And most of that, we hadn’t even been alone. Either my family or friends, minus Astoria, had been around. It didn’t bother me any. Out of John’s friends, only Ral hung out with us. The others didn’t spend a lot of time around me. I think they thought I was shady because of what had gone down with Sasha.

  That afternoon, I thought John was probably second-guessing himself and that made him act strangely. I couldn’t stop thinking that had the roles been reversed, I would have been second-guessing myself, too. I tried to tell myself that those feelings were just related to nerves and being in a new place surrounded by strangers, but I wasn’t so sure.

  “So how was your Christmas?” I asked, not really knowing what to say.

  “Okay. How was yours? Did you like your gift?” John fired at me rapidly. Yeah, he was being weird. Even for John. I smiled. He had gotten me a good gift, though. A gift card to Barnes & Noble with a very sweet card about that first night of studying being the best night of his life. I hadn’t been able to stop smiling.

  “It was great. To both. How’d you like your gift?”

  “Considering I already knew what it was?” John asked. We laughed. So I hadn’t been so slick at finding out what his size was and whether or not he liked the sweater I wanted to buy him. I had never bought a guy a gift before. Not a boyfriend, anyway. And I’m not a very creative gift-giver. I hadn’t wanted to mess up. “I loved it. Thanks.”

  “Sure,” I said, smiling. I jumped as my phone vibrated. I took it out of my pocket. I had a text message from Astoria.

  Are you in the Whiter Wonderland yet? it read.

  I closed my phone and tossed it aside. Astoria was still at it. She’d been a little hurt we wouldn’t have our whole one-year-old tradition of getting drunk at yet another trashed Bottom club. And she felt I was choosing John over her and good sense. I couldn’t see why she expected me to want to spend time with her when all she did was harass me about John.

  “Astoria?” John asked.

  I nodded.

  John shook his head, looking out of the window. “Your friends don’t like me very much, huh?”

  “I could say the same about your friends,” I said.

  John didn’t say anything. He didn’t even defend himself like he usually did by telling me his roommates were not his friends and that Ral liked me and that I shouldn’t worry about anyone else. He just kept staring out of the window.

  “My family likes you. Suse likes you. Who cares what Astoria thinks? You know she’s crazy, anyway.”

  “Denise, would it matter if they didn’t?” John said, suddenly turning to me. There was an intensity in his eyes that freaked me out a little. It was almost desperation. I didn’t really know what to say. I was glad our food came at that moment. I started in on my Cobb salad and then realized John hadn’t even touched his fork.

  “What?” I asked.

  He was still staring at me. “Would it matter if your family didn’t like me?” John asked, his eyes still trained on me.

  I shrugged and pretended to be very interested in my salad. I mixed my salad dressing in and tried to ignore his intense gaze.

  “It would matter, wouldn’t it?”

  “Wouldn’t it matter to you?” I countered. I getting more and more edgy. I was already nervous about meeting his parents. He was only making it worse.

  “Not really,” John said with a shrug. He sat back in the booth and went back to staring out of the window.

  “John, have you invited me up here knowing your parents have a problem with it? And you didn’t tell me?” I said, suddenly losing my appetite.

  “No. They’re gonna love you,” John said softly, still looking out of the window. I dropped my fork onto my plate with a sigh.

  “Aren’t you gonna eat?”

  “I guess,” he said with a shrug, turning his eyes directly to his plate. What was with him? He was avoiding my eyes when I looked at him, but staring at me like some kind of freak when he thought I wasn’t looking.

  “What is it, John? You’re acting really weird about this. If your parents have a problem with me, I want to know about it. If they don’t like me for some reason and they haven’t even met me, I want to know about it. Is it because I’m black? Poor? What?”

  John finally looked up at me. A strange look flickered in his eyes. It was gone before I was sure I’d seen it. “It’s just—I think they really want me to be with Sasha.”

  I wasn’t convinced. But I sighed, nodding. I picked up my fork. I wasn’t hungry anymore, but I wanted to take my time getting to the house. I had a feeling John wasn’t telling me the truth, whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  We ate the rest of our meal in relative silence. By the time the check came, my stomach was in knots. John paid and we left. I was
thanking Mercedes overtime for seat warmers as we got in. It was freezing out. I already didn’t like Connecticut. I didn’t like John because of the way he was acting. And I didn’t like Astoria because I was feeling more and more that she was right.

  “What are you thinking about?” John asked as we pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Oh, nothing,” I said airily. If John could lie, I could lie.

  I knew I was out of my league when John drove into a gated community. I knew I was in trouble when I saw the size of the houses. These things could fit three or four of my parents’ house in them. And I knew I was in the shit when John pulled up in front of the biggest one I’d seen at the back of the community. I thought for a moment maybe we weren’t there yet. Maybe we had stopped at the mayor’s house for a minute for some reason. Then I saw that we had parked behind John’s old Kompressor. My heart jumped into my throat and my stomach lurched. My Cobb salad wanted to revisit me in a really unpleasant way.

  “So are we just gonna sit here all day?” John asked with an awkward grin.

  No. You’re going to take me back to the train station because I don’t know what I was thinking by coming here, I thought, but I said with the weakest smile I’d ever given in my life, “Let’s go.”

  “Okay. Don’t worry, they’ll love you as much as I do,” John said, reaching over to hug me.

  “John? You love me?” I said, looking up at him.

  He nodded, looking down at me quizzically. “What?” “You’ve never said that before.”

  “Really? Well, I dunno why I haven’t. But I do.”

  “I love you, too,” I said, hugging him to me. The prospect of meeting the Archers suddenly didn’t seem that daunting.

  John’s words carried me all the way up the walkway to the front door. John opened it and we went through the foyer and into the family room. Then all the warmth faded from my body despite the merrily glowing fire in the gas fireplace.

  “Mom, Dad, this is Denise,” I heard John’s voice coming from somewhere, but all I could see was the stern face of John Archer III and the blanched face of Elizabeth Archer. They didn’t handle surprise well. John Archer III was a handsome man with a full head of silver hair. My John looked exactly like his father. Elizabeth Archer had the best face money could buy. Her porcelain skin was flawless. Her auburn hair, which didn’t have a hint of gray, was pulled away from her oval face. She wore matching pearl earrings and necklace. There was no warmth in her severe, gray eyes. There was a lot in her demeanor that reminded me of Sasha.