The Cupid Touch

The Cupid Touch Chapter 9 - Closeness

**Because it's Easter... Have another update ;-) 

Have a good weekend, all!**

It was the most strangely charged car-ride I can remember. For half an hour, I broke every rule I have, stroking his hair, touching his knee, sliding my hand under his arm. He seemed to find it as hard not to touch me. Whenever he didn't need both of his hands on the wheel or to change his noisy stick-shift gears, his right hand rested it on my leg, or sometimes at the nape of my neck. Either place made me shiver.

All of this touching went with talking. He asked me so many questions that it should have been annoying, but it was difficult not to want to talk and to ask him things back. He wanted to know if I'd hated him when I met him.

"No," I said, trying not to smile. "In spite of the football to the face."

"That was a pretty incredible shot, wasn't it?" Joe-Moe said, with a grin. "I'm still sorry. And also not. At least it made some kind of an impression."

"You mean the large bruise? Yeah, I'd say it was an impression."

I squeezed his thigh, hard, unable to keep from appreciating just how toned the muscle was underneath. 

"It was weird, meeting you," he said, slowly. "I could see a lot to you that I don't think you wanted me to. I didn't see someone hard; I saw someone who was hurting."

"Yeah, well, I'd just watched my then best friend pair up with someone, so I wasn't in the best mood." 

His hand slid to my neck, and up into my hair. I closed my eyes, knowing I shouldn't be enjoying it, but enjoying it anyway. I wanted it to go on all night. Either that, or for it to step up into some really bad behaviour.

"My turn with a question," I said. "Why did you choose to come here? I mean, it's Princeton. And it's not like you're doing a course that has to be done here."

"The course here is pretty good," he answered.

"When you show up?" 

Joe-Moe grinned at me. "I do enough to get by. Which is kind-of acceptable when you're supposed to be out on the field six days out of seven. And I have - family stuff."

"Family stuff?" I asked him, genuinely surprised. I suddenly had a sickening worry that this was all worse than I'd thought. "You'd better not have a wife and three children waiting for you."

He laughed, properly. "It's ok. I rarely bother with dating, never mind anything serious. I just mean my younger brother."

"Oh." That was better. "Where's he at?"

"He's at high school in Cambridge."

"Wow, close by." 

"Yeah, it's... It's why I wanted to be here. He's been having a rough time."

It was strange to feel a surge of affection mixed with a strange kind of jealousy. I loved that he cared about his brother enough to switch colleges for him. But it was also a reminder that Joe-Moe was a real guy, with a real life other than me. It reminded me that he was going to end up caring about someone else more than me.

Just enjoy it for now, I told myself, pushing the thought of the future away. Just until this car ride ends. 

"I'm sorry," I said, meaning sympathy and not an apology. "And your parents...?"

"Just my mom these days," he said, a little tightly. He drew his hand gently away from my hair. "She has her own stuff to deal with."

I couldn't read from him whether he meant things she couldn't help, or things she cared about more, so I didn't ask him any more. And my curiosity had been dulled a little by remembering how short-lived all of this was.

"What about you?" he asked. "Why are you here? Doing... math?"

"Good memory," I told him, trying to smile. "It's one of the best places to go if you want to do math with computing. And if I don't get where I want to go straight out of here, I'm going to apply for an aerospace postgrad."

He gave me a curious look, and then looked back at the road. 

"What do you want to do with it?"

"I want to apply to NASA," I said, with a shrug. "You know how every kid wants to be an astronaut? That's still me."

"Oh, so not so unromantic after all," he said, and picked my hand up and kissed it. 

"It's not romantic," I protested.

"Well why do you want to do it?"

"I don't know. I want to go into space. I've been obsessed with it ever since I was a child. I dream about it at least once a week, what it must be like to lift off, up there." We were passing streetlights, now, and the light reflecting off the raindrops on the window could almost have been stars just then. On that night, with Joe-Moe there and the feeling of unreality, they could pass for almost anything. "And you know, maybe there's another world out there. One with life, and different laws of physics. One where this shit doesn't happen to me."

Joe-Moe squeezed my hand, and then, a few seconds later, at a stop light, pulled me towards him and gave me a sweet, slow kiss that was like a promise. I lost myself in it all over again, and only pulled back when someone hooted loudly from behind us.

Joe-Moe drove me right back to my apartment, not needing much direction after I told him the address.

"I grew up here," he said, with a smile. "I haven't been stalking you, I promise. There hasn't been time around football practice."

He helped me squeeze my bike back out, and I let him help a little bit more graciously this time. But I was the one who lifted it up the three steps at the front of my building and propped it next to the door while I found my key.

My hands were shaking as hunted for it. It took me a few minutes to realise that I'd put it in my cycling-jacket pocket. Which I'd left at the damn diner.

"Shit," I said. "Total organisational fail."

"Your key?" he asked. "What... Oh. They're not your clothes."

I leaned to buzz on the buzzer before he could say anything else. I hoped Maria was in. And also, I kind-of hoped that she wasn't. I knew that there was absolute danger in going anywhere with him. And I could feel that both of us wanted there to be an excuse. 

"You know," he said, pulling me gently towards him, "you won't lose any independent-woman points if you have to stay at mine tonight."

I could feel my heart thumping somewhere in my throat. I shook my head, but I reached up and kissed him anyway. It was fiercer, that kiss. It was made up of a lot of wanting and needing.

The intercom crackled and I jumped back, feeling like I'd been caught. 

Maria's voice asked, " - I help?"

"Hey Maria," I said, leaning in to speak into the intercom. "I've managed to leave my key halfway to Canada. Could you buzz me in?"

"Sure!" 

There was a prolonged buzz, and I reached out and tugged at the door immediately, trying not to look at Joe-Moe. 

"Shame," he said, very quietly, and just as I began tugging my bike inside, he grabbed me, hard. For a second, he gave me the full benefit of those highly-trained, sculpted muscles as he gave me a kiss as fierce as the one I'd given him. And then he let me go.

"I'll see you tomorrow?" he said, while I tried to manoeuvre my bike through the door with legs that felt like they weren't attached quite right.

I stopped and looked at him, agonised. 

"I shouldn't-"

"You should, you know," he said. "You haven't heard my secret yet." 

With a last, dangerous kind of grin, he turned and jogged down the steps to his clunky old car.