Clash by Nicole Williams Page A

ready to go from A to Z in the same night. I’d be regifting these gems at Christmas to the girl who’d so carefully selected them for her resident prude.
    I hurried through my last assignment and emailed it off to the professor by eight that night. Having a cup of hot tea and a microwave vegetarian burger for dinner, I turned off the lights and crawled into bed, hoping I’d fall into a deep sleep.
    After tossing and turning my sheets into a tornado three hours later, I realized sleep and I weren’t making things easy for one another. Giving up some time after midnight, I threw an old DVD into the player and watched two movies all the way through before I managed to nod off. My alarm was blaring less than two hours later.
    So much for the recuperative qualities of sleep.

CHAPTER TEN
    I was on my third cup of coffee, and somewhere in between my second and third, I’d crossed the line from alert to jumpy. Oh well, edgy was better than comatose.
    The knowledge Jude would be arriving any time helped my outlook significantly. My parents had made reservations at some fancy place downtown, wanting to treat us to a nice meal for Thanksgiving. I’d insisted that we didn’t need anything fancy, but Mom said she’d just landed a big new account and things were looking up. No matter what I said, she hadn’t relented, so the four of us were eating at some swanky place in SoHo.
    Jude had already texted me asking what I was wearing and wondering if this was a tie required kind of joint. I’d replied telling him it was a whatever-he-showed-up-in kind of a joint because Jude always looked amazing. Tie or no tie.
    I’d selected something fancier, a cranberry colored vintage style dress, because I’d been living in jeans and sweaters and it felt good to dress up every now and then. Sliding into my Mary Jane’s, a knock sounded at the door.
    I practically danced across the room. Throwing the door open, I found Jude standing there, looking a bit uncomfortable in his tie and dress shirt, holding his hands behind his back. His discomfort melted when he took a good look at me.
    “You get more beautiful every time I see you,” he said, taking me in like he was trying to cement this moment in his memory.
    “Thank you,” I replied, taking a curtsy. “And you clean up rather nicely yourself.” I ran my fingers down his tie.
    “It’s Tony’s,” he said, guessing my thoughts.
    “Tony has ties?” It didn’t fit my picture of the charmer I knew.
    “He’s Catholic,” Jude said, watching my fingers slide down the tie. “And his mom calls him every Sunday to make sure he went to mass. So yeah, Tony’s got a shitload of ties.”
    “It looks nice on you,” I said, letting the charcoal tie fall back into place.
    “Tony had to help me tie it because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” he said, popping his neck from side to side like the thing was strangling him.
    “Do you have your bag?” I asked, not seeing one in view.
    Jude’s face fell. “What bag?”
    My face fell right along with his. “The bag you were supposed to pack to spend four whole days with me,” I said, wanting to pout. “That bag.”
    “Oh,” Jude said, his arm reaching for something, “you mean this bag?”
    Snatching it out of his hands, I tossed it onto the bed. There. Now we were set for the weekend.
    “And this is also for you,” he said, removing his other hand from his back. Another rose. A pink one this time. We were making progress; it still wasn’t the red rose of love, passion, and in my book, sex, but it was a step in the right direction from the white rose of purity he’d given to me last.
    He chuckled as I continued to study the rose. “It’s just a flower, Luce. Not the answer to all of life’s questions.”
    Taking it from him, I rested it on my pillow. “Everything means something. Whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not.”
    Walking into my room, he stared at my bed before looking back up at me. He gave me a