Twelve: Hot and Cold
I expected Taylor to show up at my house around 6:45 like usual, so when there was a knock at the door at 6 I was surprised to see him standing there.
“You’re early.”
He smiled, “Don’t seem too excited about it.”
I nodded at my opened school books on the living room table. Truthfully, I was thrilled to see him early. The more time I spent in Taylor’s presence, the happier I was. And the less time I spent in my house, the better I felt. But I couldn’t admit how happy I was to see him. He would let it go to his head, surely.
“Wooooohoooo! You’re here early!” I faked enthusiasm for him, just to mock him.
He looked at me attempting not to smile, but a grin spread across his face and he couldn’t help but laugh. “You are such a nerd.”
I went over to my books and put them into a neat pile, tossing my pen down on top of them. “How come you’re here early? I was just trying to finish some work.”
“Mmm…. well… my family went out to eat but I didn’t get back from class until after they left. My Mom asked if I wanted to meet them at the restaurant, but I wasn’t really in the mood for Italian food. They went to this place my family loves- Gratzianos. It’s nice, but it seems to be the only place my entire family can find something on the menu they like…so it feels like it’s the only place we ever went up going to for dinner…” he rambled as usual. I was at least relieved he was done ignoring me and was back to his old self, despite the tedium of his rambling. “I didn’t feel like going but… I figured I’d pick you up early instead.”
I raised an eyebrow and grabbed my jacket from the arm of the couch, “I haven’t eaten yet… I was planning on making some soup or something.”
Taylor waved me off, “I’ll make you dinner.”
I laughed as I followed him out the front door. “You cook me dinner?”
“You’d be surprised. I’m a good cook. My Momma taught me well,” he said with a cheeky smile.
When we arrived at his house, he proved to me that Diana Hanson did in fact teach her boys to cook well. He easily cooked me linguini with Alfredo sauce and broccoli, which surprised me since I had never seen a man cook before. All of my mother’s boyfriends could barely manage to heat up a can of Spaghettios.
While I was looking in the fridge for what to pour us to drink, Taylor came up behind me. I didn’t notice him until he said, “Can you pour me some coke?”
I jumped and turned around to see him standing inches away from me looking over my shoulder.
“You scared me!”
He laughed and stepped closer, pointing to the bottle of Coca Cola, his fingers gently sweeping against my waist as he did. I could tell by his almost unnoticeable smirk that he did it on purpose. I nodded and pulled it out, moving quickly away from the fridge in an effort to avoid the closeness to him. I would not let him create the sexual tension I could tell he was pushing for. I refused to give in to him.
We ate dinner making idle conversation about a new SUV he was thinking about buying. He rambled, if you couldn’t guess, about the color of interior he wanted and listed off the 13 reasons why he felt he needed an SUV in the first place. He stopped the whole sexual tension thing, I could tell, too distracted by the food before him. Taylor cannot usually multitask when he’s eating. He loves food far too much to distract himself.
After dinner I was loading dishes into the dishwasher when he did it again. He came up behind me but this time I noticed by his reflection in the window above the sink, but didn’t open my mouth to speak before he put his hands on either sides of me, resting them on the counter.
“Gabrielle…” he spoke in a ragged, quiet voice I hadn’t necessarily heard from him before.
“I…” I tried to figure out what to say to him without making it more awkward than it needed to be. “Did you… can you get me the cups from the table?”
“You know that day you said… remember you said that you don’t like me? At all?” It seemed like it was something he’d been dying to say for forever, and was finally getting it off his chest.
I nodded, swallowing as I hastily scrubbed at Taylor’s plate.
“I… I can’t say that I believe you.”
“Why?” I asked, not willing to turn to him because I knew exactly how close to his face I would be if I turned. I wouldn’t be able to resist his pleading eyes, or even worse, his lips.
“Because I can tell…” he said quietly, stepping closer to me. He was so close I could feel his body just barely touching mine. “You cared too much when you picked me up last weekend… and you cared too much when you thought I was dating Melissa.”
I laughed quietly and rinsed off the soapy plate. “I only was concerned for your sake. I didn’t want a nice guy like you dating a bitch like her.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said simply. “I think you like me just as much as I like you. And you know, it’s been driving me insane since the moment I met you why you won’t just be up front with the way you feel. I’ve noticed you do this almost all the time… about everything.”
I shuddered at his boldness, finally turning to him despite the danger of it. I looked at him pointedly and spoke clearly, “Taylor… we are not having this discussion.”
“Why?” he whined, stepping closer yet again so his body was pressed up against mine, “Why can’t I like you? Why do you get so upset when I point out the fact that you like me too?”
“I want to keep my job, Taylor.”
“Stop lying to me. It’s not just about the job. You’ve been pushing me away since the moment you met me. Why are you always pushing me away?”
I suppose I knew why. I suppose I felt undeserving of him. Here he was- a rich, handsome, normal guy. Perhaps I seemed normal to him at first, despite the fact that I grew up in the earthly equivalent to hell. But I was convinced any minute he was going to look at me and see I was an imposter. I felt like I was lying to him. For some reason he thought I was dating-material, normal enough for him, and it was only a matter of time until he exposed me for who I really was.
“You are so confident,” I muttered. “You are so convinced, so certain, that I must be in love with you.”
“Maybe not in love with me yet exactly, but you definitely get butterflies when I walk into a room.”
“I hate that figure of speech,” I muttered, “It’s so…”
“So what?”
“Cheesy. Over-used. Clichéd.” I could be blunt back.
He put his hands on his hips and sighed, examining me with tired, exhausted, eyes. “Why can’t you just admit it?” He sighed.
“You’re so over-confident! You are so-”
“I saw how you looked at me when I came downstairs Saturday morning! I saw the way you looked me over! I’m not blind, Gabrielle.”
“So you’re good looking! You’re very hot, Taylor. There’s a difference between me wanting to be with you, and me thinking you’re gorgeous.”
He looked impressed- puffed his chest up a bit and smiled, “Gorgeous, eh?”
I shook my head in frustration at him. He was so persistent to get me to talk about the topic he wanted me to talk about until the conversation turned to something that would inflate his ego. Then he was more than willing to go off course and accentuate the compliment made about him.
“You think I’m gorgeous?” he pressed.
I sighed. I think we were both equally exhausted with each other. He was obviously quite sick of how frustratingly hesitant I could be about everything in my life, and I was sick of his ever obvious obsession with himself.
“Yes, Taylor. I think you’re gorgeous,” I sighed, willing to give in, give his ego a boost, and move on.
I expected him to grin, flex his muscles, check himself out- something egotistical like that. But he didn’t. He just looked at me seriously and nodded.
“Gabrielle, I think you’re gorgeous too. I mean that. Inside and out. And that’s not a way of saying I think you have a really gorgeous soul but a really ugly appearance!” I frowned as he took a deep breath to finish his statement. It came out breathy and quiet. “I really… really do… think you’re gorgeous in every way.”
It shouldn’t have happened. It was de ja vu. I should have stopped it. Stopped him. Stopped both of us. But I couldn’t help it. He’s too captivating… too mesmerizing for me. I don’t think I could have stopped it if I gave it everything I had, in fact. He just leaned in, and I, I just stood there. Paralyzed. He had that affect on me. As he leaned in and pressed my lips to mine, every emotion I had been trying so hard to repress about him came to the surface and I could not bring myself to step away at first. I kissed him back. I even slid my arms around my neck like it was okay to be kissing him there in the middle of his family’s kitchen- the same place we had gotten in trouble in only weeks earlier! Somehow, after way too long, his tongue sliding its way into my mouth woke me up, and I managed to gently push him away and turn away from him, resuming my spot before the sink of dirty dishes. I nervously picked up a plate and began scrubbing it, despite the fact that it had been already scrubbed clean.
“You don’t have to…” he began, but I didn’t want to hear him finish.
We needed to pretend it hadn’t happened. Hell, we had to pretend it hadn’t happened.
“How’s school going?” I asked loudly, speaking over him.
“Gabrielle…” he said in that husky voice that made my mind spin. He reached out and touched the small of my back.
“I said, how’s school?” I repeated, louder the second time.
“School’s… school’s good,” he sighed, stepping away from me and going and getting a few more items from the kitchen table to put away or place into the sink. He had apparently given up and accepted the fact that I didn’t want to talk about it, and I was relieved for it. “I’m working on my paper about you now, you know. It’s coming out good.”
I nodded, “I’m glad. Do you have enough content? Did I let you get inside of my head enough?”
He paused. I heard his walking stop and could picture the famous ‘Taylor’s Thinking’ face.
“No. You didn’t,” he stated. I knew he wasn’t talking about his project anymore. He was talking about me and him, but I wasn’t willing to get back into the topic. We had exhausted it, and the last thing I wanted was for another conversation to build up to another moment of lust right there in the Hanson kitchen. One was enough for… well, one was enough for forever I tried to convince myself.
“School is going well for me too, despite the fact that I have major senioritis,” I replied.
He set our cups down next to me and began cleaning up his cooking supplies that had become scattered across the kitchen counters.
“Oh yeah?” He tried to act interested, but he was so transparent to me. “Anything interesting going on?”
“I wrote a paper that was sent to Oklahoma City because it won some award? There were 10 of us in the school chosen for it. There’s supposed to be some ceremony about it in a few weeks at the state capitol,” I explained, but suddenly felt guilty about it. Was I bragging?
“That’s awesome!” He said, with enthusiasm that actually didn’t seem faked. “You’re going right?”
“Nah,” I replied, placing the rinsed dishes into the dirty dishwasher, “It’s some ridiculous fee for the transportation and lunch, and I’m not willing to give in to ridiculous prices.”
“You just don’t have the money, right?” He asked boldly.
I paused before answering, “Right.”
“How much is it?”
“60 dollars.”
My eyes flickered as Taylor took out his wallet. Oh no. Absolutely not. “Oh, no you don’t!” I said, hurrying over to him and shoving his wallet away from me. It was then that I looked him in the eye for the first time since the kiss. I blushed and stepped away.
“Why shouldn’t you go? You earned the right to be at that ceremony or whatever it is! Let me give you money… I want to see you go.”
“No.”
“Gabrielle! Stop arguing with me!” His voice wasn’t teasing and gentle like it usually was. He actually raised his voice in anger.
“Stop pushing money onto me! Stop pi-”
“Oh, see I knew you were going to say that!” He gasped, shoving his wallet back into his pocket.
“If you knew you were going to upset me, then why didn’t you just stop?” I grumbled, turning around and finishing loading the last of the dishes.
“I had the tiniest bit of hope you’d be reasonable for once in your life…” he mumbled.
The door to the garage burst open and the whole Hanson family tumbled through the doors carrying Styrofoam containers of leftover food. They looked surprised to see Taylor and I already standing there.
“Taylor,” Diana said as she pushed her way through her mob of children, “I thought you’d be gone picking up Gabrielle, but I see you already have.”
“We had dinner together here,” he mumbled, “I figured she might be… she might feel like joining me.”
I could tell he almost said that I might be hungry- too poor to eat. And although I knew he might say it around me, he seemed to censor himself a bit more around his mother.
Diana smiled, visibly glad that he had taken me in and rescued me from the house she pictured in her mind. I wondered what she pictured, and I wondered how much Taylor had told her. She and Taylor mutually were on a mission to save me. I could tell. Her smile faded as she began to notice the obvious tension between Taylor and me- tension I wasn’t sure had been caused by the kiss moments before or the arguing about money.
“Everything okay between you two…?”
“Yes,” Taylor grumbled.
She sighed and began to pile all of the carry-out containers into the fridge, “You two are so hot and cold.”
Taylor paused for a second, and looked at me to see if I had a response. Figuring that my time with him was spent and he was expected to leave me to baby sit he began to walk out of the room, tossing a response over his shoulder as he exited.
“I’m always hot, Mom,” he smirked as he disappeared into the stairway
Diana looked to me and rolled her eyes at the exact moment I did. If I had a dollar for every time someone rolled their eyes at Taylor throughout the course of his day, why, I’d be richer than the Hanson’s. Diana and I both burst out into laughter as we heard Taylor’s door close from upstairs.
Taylor did a good job of trying to be subtle for the first time in his life that evening when he drove me home. He didn’t make any uncomfortable comments just to make the situation more awkward. He didn’t make a passionate confession of his lust towards me, although I have to admit I almost enjoyed it when he did. He simply asked me surface questions about the years when I used to sing in the choir at a local church. I could tell by his bland “oh”’s and casual “really?”’s that he had little to no interest, but I appreciated his feigned concentration nonetheless.
When I walked inside and pulled the money out of my pocket that Diana had given me, I expected to only find 30 dollars for the evening, as usual. I looked carefully at the money in my hand. There were three extra twenties in the wad of money. 60 dollars extra. I glared out the window as I watched Taylor’s car disappear into the night. The little sneak.