The Long Tease

The first time I saw her, she was already leaving.

Not leaving me. I hadn't earned that yet. She was leaving a coffee shop on Grand Street, and I was walking in. The door swung open and she stepped through it, and the whole world went quiet except for the click of her heels on the tile.

She had dark hair pulled back tight, a red coat that stopped at her hip, and legs that went on forever in black jeans. She was laughing at something on her phone, head tilted back, throat exposed. I stood there like an idiot, holding the door for her, and she glanced up at me.

Her eyes were green. Not pretty green. Green like a stoplight. Green that said pay attention.

She smiled. Just a little. Just enough.

"Thanks," she said, and her voice was lower than I expected. Warm. Like she'd just woken up.

I said something stupid. Probably "no problem" or "sure." I don't remember. What I remember is the way she looked at me before she walked past. Like she was taking a photograph. Like she was deciding something.

She got into a cab and I watched her go, and then I stood in the coffee shop for five minutes not ordering anything because I couldn't remember what I wanted.

I told myself it was nothing. A pretty girl. Happens every day.

It wasn't nothing.

Two weeks later I saw her again at a gallery opening in Chelsea. I was there with my brother, who knows someone who knows someone. She was across the room, holding a plastic cup of white wine, talking to a man in a blazer that cost more than my rent.

She was wearing a black dress this time. Simple. Sleeveless. It ended mid-thigh and she wasn't wearing stockings. Her legs were bare and I couldn't stop looking at them.

She caught me looking.

I expected her to look away. That's what people do. They catch you staring and they pretend they didn't. But she held my gaze. She tilted her head, just slightly, and she smiled that same small smile from the coffee shop.

Then she went back to her conversation like I wasn't there.

I spent the next hour pretending to look at art while actually watching her. She talked to four different men that night. Each one leaned in closer than the last. Each one touched her arm or her shoulder or the small of her back. She let them. She smiled at them. She laughed at their jokes.

But every time she laughed, she glanced across the room at me.

I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know if it meant anything at all.

My brother asked me what the hell I was staring at. I told him nothing. He didn't believe me.

Her name was Elena. I found out from the gallery owner, who I bribed with a handshake and a lie about being a journalist. Elena Reyes. She worked in fashion. She was thirty-two. She was single.

She was trouble.

I didn't call her. I told myself I wouldn't. I had a life. I had a job. I didn't need to chase some woman who spent her nights collecting men like business cards.

But I thought about her. I thought about her throat when she laughed. I thought about her legs. I thought about the way she looked at me like she already knew something I didn't.

Three weeks later I was at a bar in the East Village, drinking alone, and she walked in.

She was with two other women. They were loud and drunk and beautiful. Elena was different. Elena was watching the room. Elena was watching the door.

She saw me.

She didn't smile. She just looked at me for a long moment, and then she turned to her friends and said something that made them all laugh. She sat down at a table across the room and ordered a drink.

I waited.

I waited fifteen minutes. I watched her sip her cocktail. I watched her laugh with her friends. I watched her check her phone and then put it down and then check it again.

She was waiting too.

I finished my beer. I walked over to her table. Her friends looked up at me with that amused, predatory look that women get when they know something you don't.

"Can I buy you a drink?" I said.

Elena looked at me like she was considering a pair of shoes. Like she was weighing the pros and cons.

"Okay," she said.

She stood up and left her friends without a word. They didn't seem surprised. They just watched her go, and then they watched me follow, and one of them raised her glass in a mock toast.

We sat at the bar. I ordered her another cocktail. She ordered me a whiskey, neat, without asking what I wanted.

"You've been watching me," she said.

"I have."

"Why?"

"Because I can't stop."

She laughed. Not the polite laugh from the gallery. A real laugh. Low and dirty.

"That's honest," she said. "I like honest."

She drank her cocktail. She looked at me over the rim of the glass. Her eyes were green and they were hungry.

"I've been watching you too," she said.

I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't know what game we were playing. But I knew I wanted to play.

She finished her drink. She stood up. She put her hand on my chest, right over my heart, and she leaned in close.

"Come home with me," she said.

It wasn't a question.

I paid the tab. I followed her out into the cold night. She took my hand and pulled me into a cab, and she gave the driver an address in Brooklyn, and then she turned to me and kissed me.

Her mouth was hot and tasted like lime. Her hand was on my thigh. Her fingers were tracing circles through my jeans.

She pulled back and looked at me. Her eyes were dark now. Dark green. Dark like a forest at night.

"I want to show you something," she said.

The cab moved through the city. I didn't look out the window. I didn't look at anything but her.

I was already lost.

I just didn't know how deep it went yet.