Page 57 of Devil in Disguise

He kissed the top of her head. “I’ve got Advil. We can both take some. And we won’t do any more of this tonight.”

“Do you hurt?” she asked. “I thought you looked like you hurt.”

“Calf bruise, that’s all. I’ll get some more treatment tomorrow.”

“Plus all the other bruises.”

“Nah. That’s just football.” He kissed her hair again. “You made me feel better. Also, speaking of bruises, I gave you a little one on your neck. Not a whole hickey, but, yeah, there’s a bruise there.”

“Mm. You know what?”

“No. What?”

“That’s kind of exciting to me. Is that gross? Or regressive?”

“Not to me.”

She sighed. “It totally is. I guess I’m going to be regressive, though, because I can’t help feeling this way. But what do I do about my friends? The guys? Are they going to forgive me? How big of a guy-deal is this?”

His hand stilled on her belly, where he’d been playing with the ring. “I don’t think I get to say anything about that.”

“But you want to.”

“Yes. No.” This time, he was the one sighing. “That’s a bad road to go down, jealousy. Saying you can’t have friends. You can have friends. You tell them, that’s all. You’re good at honesty. If we can’t trust each other, this isn’t going to work.”

“But in order to trust me,” she said, “you need to know I’m telling people about you.”

That feeling. That was relief. “Yeah. I do.”

She turned in his arms, floating on the water, got her knees on the outside of his hips and her mouth on his, and said, “Then I promise to do it.”

“Good. I’d better promise too, then.”

“You don’t have to. I know you. You’re like some kind of rock, but you’re more than that. You’re a mountain, like there’s no moving you.”

“Hey. I can be flexible.”

“I know.” She hesitated, like she was trying to find the words, and he let her. “I think you’re a mountain, though, because you have … weather, or maybe seasons, but I know that at the base of you, at the end of everything, you’ll still be standing there, exactly the same. And because I feel like you’ll always give me shelter. Or a hiding place, even, on days like today. That you’ll put your arms around me and make me feel safe, and then I’ll be able to go back there tomorrow and try again, because I know you love me. Does that make sense?”

What did you do if you got a girl like this? How did you hold onto this moment?

“Yeah,” he said. “It does. And that’s what I want to be. You’re right about that. That’s exactly it.”

“But maybe I didn’t believe that, all the way down,” she said, because, yes, she was still Dyma. “Maybe I thought everything was sort of tipping out from under me, and you could tip, too. Pavani thought I’d made you up, like you were my fantasy, and youaremy fantasy, so maybe I thought, at some level, that you weren’t real. That the picture I had of you in my mind wasn’t real. That I was wishing, hanging onto a dream so I wouldn’t be so scared.”

He didn’t know what to say. This was rocky ground to tread. He decided on, “And what do you think now?”

She smiled. Dimples. Sunshine. Glory. “I think the dream is real. I think the dream is mine.”

* * *

At ten the next morning,after a room-service breakfast they’d eaten in bed, to the accompaniment of a whole lot of kissing and laughter, Dyma was kissing him goodbye in the dorm’s lounge while students came and went, and he was glad they could all see this happening. She was carrying a plastic bag with her stained clothes, and wearing not very much at all.

Or, more exactly, she was wearing these items:

1. A Devils T-shirt. His. It came halfway to her knees, so it wasn’t exactly indecent. She needed it because her bra was ripped—whoops—and stuffed into a hotel wastebasket, and everything else, including her shoes, was dirty.

2. A vintage cuff bracelet made of black coral and silver that had been twisted and twined around the coral like the whole thing had been taken from the sea floor. They’d bought it in the antique jewelry store in the hotel’s courtyard. Call it an impulse stop. An impulse buy. He never thought of himself as a rich guy, and he never did rich-guy things, but he’d done this. The hotel, and this. He’d asked her, “Did you have to pick the cheapest bracelet in the store?” and she’d answered, “I love it, though. I have to get the one I love.”