Kiss Me Slowly

“Oh baby, you got it all,” she belted along with the upbeat hip-hop tune streaming from the speakers, her shoulders shimmying along to the beat. “Sexy from head to toe, and I want it- Oh, that’s the parking garage, right there.” Her voice suddenly snapped back to its usual tone as a french-manicured finger pointed to the next turn on their right.

As Logan pulled the gleaming black S.U.V. into the towering maze of concrete, he couldn’t help but steal a glance at her in the passenger’s seat. Everything was still so new to her. She possessed that undeniable glimmer in her honey-brown eyes as they struggled to soak in every single inch of the city, and while Logan was already utterly jaded when it came to Los Angeles, that same spark played across his syrupy irises whenever he looked at her.

As soon as she heard it, Kandi had confessed that this was one of her favorite songs they played on the radio right now, and he had wasted no time in reaching for the volume knob, laughing as he watched her bob along to the infectious rhythm. They sat in the car until the song ended, and as he stayed there, smiling and staring at her, Logan couldn’t help but envy her lack of inhibition. He barely even knew her, and already she seemed completely comfortable around him. There was something in the way that she was so upfront about who she was that attracted him to her. He got the impression that what he saw was what he got with her, and in a city where most girls played games and pretended to be something they weren’t, he found her attitude refreshing.

Kandi kept her eyes on the dash as she spoke. “I had a really great time tonight.” From across* the small space, her gaze wandered to meet his, the corner of her lip curving upward in a soft smile. Once she caught his smile, she tacked on, “And I’m not just saying that to be polite, I really mean it.”

The slight roll of his deep eyes and his dimpled smile gave him away. “Okay, so even though it wasn’t what I had in mind, I gotta admit that I had fun too.”

The air between them was flooded with expectancy, a nervous anticipation as Logan watched her gaze flicker between his eyes and his lips. The hint wasn’t lost on Logan, and he found himself bridging the gap between them, his forearm uncomfortably crammed against the center console as his lips met hers.

It was a quick but tender kiss, with both parties pulling away before they were ready to. From the corner of his eye, he could see her mash her lips together, throwing the ceiling a pleading glance as she clasped her hands to her knees.

“Let me walk you to your building,” Logan offered, and as he came around to open her door for her, she replied with a simple but genuine “thank you.”

As far as first dates go, it was perfect. Well, technically it wasn’t their first date. Their first first date had been last* week, when he’d taken her out to try sushi for the first time, but they’d both had a little too much sake and by the end of the night, they were fooling around on the floor of her empty bedroom, surrounded by unpacked cardboard boxes.

He could’ve left it as a one-night stand, but she lingered in his mind. They were taking things slow now, starting over with a clean slate, and though a relationship wasn’t exactly what Logan was looking for at the moment, he still couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see if there was anything worth pursuing between them. It was a decision he grew to regret with each passing minute. It seemed that the more time he spent around her, the more he realized the undeniable chemistry between them.

As the two of them walked the stretch of pavement to her apartment building, Kandi hooked her arm into his, and while he didn’t want to mislead her, Logan couldn’t bring himself to brush her hand from his arm.

“That restaurant was really good,” she said casually. “I’ll have to go there with Autum sometime. We’re both kinda breakfast junkies.”

“Maybe the four of us could go there together one night next week?” Logan prompted, raising an eyebrow as he lowered his coffee-colored eyes at her.

Under the night sky, he could still catch the blood rush to her cheeks, adorning her fair skin in a peachy glow. She’d confessed to him earlier that night that she wanted to set her roommate up with his because, in her own words, “the two of them would produce beautiful children.”

“So I guess it’s safe to assume that you’re gonna ask me out on that second date?” she said with a laugh, and there was a challenge in her tone that drove him wild.

Logan kept his eyes on his sneakers. “Yes.”

He smiled at her, and she returned the gesture.

“Anyways, I liked the sausage and eggs, but the pancakes were kinda blah.” Her nose wrinkled, and she spat out the last word as if it had the same flavor as those pancakes.

“Really? You didn’t like them?” he asked, and she shook her head. “James loves the pancakes there.”

“Well, let me just say that they’ve got nothing on mine. I may not cook, but I can make some damn good pancakes.”

“I’ll believe that when I taste them for myself,” Logan shot back as he rolled his eyes, laughing to himself.

“Whatever,” she scoffed, but he could hear the grin in her voice.

“I’m just glad that the tickets for that cheesy Twilight movie were sold out.”

As soon as he said it, he could feel her staring at him. She’d stopped in her place, her mouth gaping open as if he’d just told her he’d shot someone or kicked kittens in his spare time.

“Logan, you are the one that suggested that movie. I had nothing to do with it, so don’t stand here and act like you didn’t secretly want to see it.”

He was quick to brush her remark away. “Yeah sure, Kandi. Believe what you want.”

“Honestly, I would’ve rather seen Taylor Lautner take his clothes off,” she joked. “That horror* movie we saw was just plain terrible.”

“Don’t say that, it wasn’t that bad.”

“It wasn’t scary at all.”

Kandi was right, it was a pretty lame movie, but she wasn’t quite as tough as she pretended. She’d clung to his arm throughout the entire movie, even hiding her face in his shoulder at times. It was the shit popping out unexpectedly that scared her, she claimed, and that was really just a cheap startle.

They had reached her building, and as Logan was searching for the perfect words to close the night with, she spoke up.

“Do you wanna come up?”

A faint smile formed across his lips as he glanced at her. “I thought we were taking things slow.”

Her touch* landed on his chest as she let out an awkward laugh. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Okay, sure.”

For two girls just out of their freshman year of college, Autum and Kandi had secured a place in a relatively nice apartment building on the outskirts of the city. As he stepped inside the space, Logan couldn’t help but notice how, despite the fact that they’d only moved in a couple weeks ago, the place looked so put together. While Logan and James weren’t the dirtiest guys ever, they didn’t put as much care into making their apartment feel like anything other than a place to crash at night. A couch, a coffee table, and a wide-screen television were the only real pieces of furniture they owned, although with their respective acting careers beginning to take off, they could certainly afford more. They just didn’t care, but seeing the girls’ apartment made Logan wish for some place that felt like home.

As Logan took a seat on the beige sofa, he couldn’t keep his stare from drifting around the space. There was a sliding glass door that led out to the balcony just at his side, and a wind chime* decorated with tiny bluebirds dangled along the curtains. He kept catching whiffs of lavender, and though he casually glanced around in search of the source, he found nothing.

“Nice place you’ve got here. Looking for an extra roommate?” he joked as she flitted around the kitchen.

He could hear the thud of her shoes hitting the linoleum as she kicked off her nude pumps. “Thanks, but I can’t really take any credit for it. Autum’s the perfectionist*. If it were just me, the place would be a mess.”

“At least you’re honest about it.”

“Yeah. I did pick out those pillows though,” Kandi added, nodding towards the throw pillows tucked into each corner of the couch. They were made to resemble Scrabble board tiles, with one sporting an “A” and the other a “K” for the two roomies’ initials.

“Sweet,” he chuckled. “I think you should just pop an ‘L’ right here in the center, and we can be like Three’s Company.”

“You’re ridiculous,” she laughed as she leaned forward against the counter that served as a divider between the kitchen and living room. “Do you want something to drink?”

“Nah, I’m good,” he replied, folding his arms behind his head as he sunk back into the plush couch cushions.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I’m gonna go change out of all this,” she said with a faint laugh as she waved her hands down her frame. “Those shoes were killing my feet, and I feel like my boobs are falling out of this dress.”

“They are,” he admitted, and she flashed him a grin as she reached for the remote on the coffee table.

As she flipped the television on, she tacked on, “At least you’re honest.”

The laugh track from an old episode of Seinfeld suddenly flooded the space. “Feel free to change it if you’d like.”

While she ducked into her bedroom, Logan took the chance to explore his surroundings, his brown-eyed gaze falling on a green and white striped photo album on the coffee table. His fingers brushed against the cloth petaled daisy on the cover before his curiosity eventually got the best of him.

The photos tucked in the cellophane pages were all of the girl in the next room, and as he quickly flipped through the pages, he could see the progression of the years. In one picture, she was only an infant in a walker, those same big brown eyes staring cautiously at the camera as she devoured a slice of watermelon. In the next, she was a toddler dressed in baby pink, her mohawk of light brown hair sticking out amongst a garden of yellow daffodils.

“I need you to stimulate* me,” she wailed along in her best impression of an R&B voice to the music playing in her head. She ran her fingers down her frame provocatively as her hips swayed to the floor, her legs parting for a moment before she worked her way back up. “You can have me if you want me.”

She had reemerged from her bedroom, her navy blue strapless dress exchanged for a pair of curve-hugging fuchsia yoga shorts and a simple white tank top. Her curly brunette locks were swept back into a ponytail on top of her head, her sideswept bangs still hanging in her eyes. She’d kept her makeup on, almost as if she couldn’t let her guard completely down around him just yet.

“Hey, whatcha up to?” Kandi asked, laughing to herself as soon as she realized that he wasn’t paying any attention to her.

“Oh nothing, just looking at you.” He glanced up at her, the corners of his lips twitching up in a faint but knowing smile.

“I can’t believe you’d even bother with that.” She was still laughing as she hopped up onto the arm of the sofa right beside him.

Logan couldn’t help but think that she looked sort of beautiful when she was sober. Though, if he were completely honest with himself, she wasn’t the type of girl he’d ever see himself ending up with, she did possess that sort of effortless beauty* that he couldn’t shake. When she smiled, it wasn’t that forced closed-lip, wide-eyed smile that he had become so used to seeing. When she smiled, her whole face played a role in the expression: the initial glimmer in her doe eyes before they creased at the corners, the way her smile slowly spread across her features and her fingers swept through her hair. When Kandi smiled, she did it because she was genuinely happy.

“I think it’s cute,” he said, flashing her a grin before he flipped to the next page. “Where’s this one from?” Through his light-hearted laughter he asked the question, his finger pointing to a photo of her as a child on a chestnut-colored pony.

“That’s from this Indian summer festival* that they have in my hometown every October.”

His gaze met hers. “Can you please tell me how you go from this,” he began, flipping back a couple pages to the toddler with the mohawk, “to this?” He turned back to the page of her on the pony, her loose waves pulled back in a ponytail that reached down past her waist.

“Lord knows,” she replied with a slight shake of her head. “My mom says it took me forever to get my hair, but once I did, I had a head full of it.”

“Is this your mom?” His fingertips brushed against a photo of her as a toddler, nestled in the lap of an older women. Without an affirmation, Logan could definitely see the resemblance in their features, and even now, as she sat at his side, she looked exactly like a younger version of the woman in the photograph.

“Mhm.”

“You look exactly like her.”

Kandi rolled her eyes. “Everyone tells me that!”

“Really? Probably ‘cause it’s true.”

“I love my mom, but it’s so frustrating. I don’t want to look like her, I just wanna look like Kandi.”

Logan shook his head as he chuckled to himself, turning to the next page. There she was as a toddler again, grinning over a multicolored birthday cake. It was the same smile that had adorned her face only seconds earlier, but once she saw that photo, the vibrancy that had resided seemed to fade away in an instant, like the breath had been knocked out of her chest.

Concern rose to the surface of his irises as he looked over at her, trying so desperately to decipher her expression. Logan never asked her, too afraid from the pain in her eyes that he’d hit a nerve, but she offered the information anyway.

“That’s the only picture I have of my dad.” There was a certain hollowness to her voice, like she was struggling to choke back a sob*. “Every now and then, I look at that picture because I don’t remember what he looked like anymore.”

Logan nodded slowly in understanding, when really there was no way that he could comprehend the hurt embedded in her features. In that moment, she looked so vastly different than the Kandi he had known, and there was a part of him that was determined to never see that hopeless ache in her eyes again.

There was a chink in her armor, in the way that she was so quick to confide* in him the quiet things that she rarely thought about, let alone told anyone. Logan’s lips parted as he almost asked her what had happened, but as if she could read his thoughts, Kandi answered the unspoken question.

“He left when I was really little, and I never saw him again. But apparently he could go off and adopt his mistress’s kids and be a father to them, which completely blows my fucking mind that someone would go off and do that when they have a child of their own that they don’t even give a shit about.” She sucked in her breath and let it go in a drawn out sigh. “I keep looking at that picture, trying to find any of him in me, but I can’t see it. That’s why I changed my name, you know. He picked out my first name, and there was a part of me that wanted to get rid of any trace of him, so I started going by my middle name in high school.”

Logan blinked, his eyes still focused on the page in his lap because he was too afraid to see her face. There were so many things he wanted to tell her, that she was good enough, that he’d never leave her that way, but he didn’t have the courage to say them. “Wow, that’s really fucked up.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “And that’s one of the reasons I will never have kids, no matter how much I want them. I couldn’t bare to put someone else through that.”

With the waver of her voice fresh in his ear, he was quick to move on to something else. “Is that your brother? I think I remember you telling me that you have an older brother. ”

“Yup, that was his senior prom.” Her tone grew lighter as she recalled the happier memory, and though her fingertip traced along the edges of her brother’s tuxedo, Logan was more focused on the little girl at his side, with that genuine smile, dolphin t-shirt, and blue tutu.

“You are the most adorable prom date.”

She laughed. “I really love this picture because I feel like it really shows the age gap there. Mark’s going to prom, and I’m like five or six.”

“Damn,” he remarked, laughing softly along with her. “And I thought there was a big age difference between me and my little sister.”

“Obviously, I was a surprise.”

“Well, I’m glad you were,” he said with earnest as he finally met her stare.

She smiled. “Thank you.”

The two of them sat on her couch together, going through each of the photos in the album in a similar fashion. They’d made their way up to her high school years when Autum came in.

“What are you guys doing?” she asked as she took the empty cushion beside Logan. Autum tucked a short lock of highlighted hair behind her ear as she leaned in, dark eyes glancing over the photos in Logan’s lap.

“Looking at old pictures,” Kandi replied. “See, there’s us at senior prom.”

“And just who is this character right here?” Logan asked as he pointed out her date. “Do I have anything to be worried about?”

Autum couldn’t contain her laughter at his tone, leaving Kandi to spit out an explanation. “Hell no, that ginger son of a bitch broke my heart.” She said the words so blatantly that it was hilarious, and though he could still feel the resentment there, Logan had to bite his lower lip to keep from bursting into laughter like her best friend. He would’ve blurted out those three little words right then and there if he knew it wouldn’t have scared her away.

“I don’t think I can stand this anymore,” Autum managed through her giggles. “I’m gonna get some sleep. Good night, you guys.”

“Night,” they both replied in unison, and Logan let the album in his lap fall closed.

“I guess I’d better be going as well,” Logan announced reluctantly as he rose from the couch, and Kandi followed suit, walking him to the door.

“I had a really good time tonight,” she said for the second time that night as her arms wove around his neck.

As he inhaled, the floral scent of her honeysuckle perfumed buzzed around in his brain. “Mhm, me too.”

He pulled away, his gaze traversing her frame in the process. “You are really something.”

“So when will I get to see you again?” she asked so nonchalantly, but Logan swore he could hear a hint of hope embedded somewhere deep in her voice, masked by that lazy southern drawl.

“Soon,” he promised*. “I’m not sure what my work schedule’s like tomorrow, but I’ll text you and let you know.”

“Okay,” she said softly, her teeth digging into her lower lip as her eyes so unabashedly shifted from his eyes to his lips.

This time, Logan wouldn’t be the one to initiate the kiss, but as she leaned in, he could feel his breath catch at the back of his throat. With his eyes closed, he could feel her shadow ensconce him, the scent of her perfume growing stronger and stronger with each inch that closed between them. His pulse raced in his chest as she moved in, but once the softness of his lips met his own, Logan could feel all of his muscles loosen in the motion. This wasn’t the same gentle, polite kiss they’d exchanged earlier, there was passion buried beneath this kiss, the slow-burning kind of passion that Logan had seen in the movies but had never experienced firsthand. Her fingers swept past his temples, threading through tufts of espresso brown hair, and when her tongue washed along the seam of his lips, he let her in with no hesitation.

Logan wanted so badly to take things further, to let his lips roam every inch of her fair skin and to hear the way that his name would hollow* out her throat, but as he broke away, he knew he was making the right decision.

“I thought we were taking things slow,” he murmured in her ear, and he could feel her cheeks shift as she smiled.

“We are.” Kandi pressed her lips gently against his cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night, K.” As he opened the door, the warm glow from the hallway began to seep into the kitchen.

“Sleep tight,” she recited back. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

As he walked down the hallway, Logan knew in his heart that he’d never be able to let her go.