Djinn and Tonic Read online

  “Uh-huh.” I shrug, going for nonchalance and not quite succeeding.

  “What’s that mean?” She doesn’t look pissed, but it’s hard to be sure.

  I sip from my can of Coke, trying to figure out how to explain myself without sounding like an asshole. “I don’t know. Long and muscular. The muscles are long and lean, though, not bunchy like a soccer player or something.”

  Leila’s staring at me with a raised eyebrow. “I’m not sure whether I should be flattered that you’ve looked that closely at my legs, or weirded out by the fact that you can classify a woman according to the kind of legs she has.” She stretches a leg out in front of her to rest on the bed, pointing her toes and flexing the muscle as if trying to see what I saw.

  “You’ve got nice legs, what can I say?” I murmur, tracing the line of her muscle from calf to knee, and then from knee up to her thigh.

  I try to restrain myself from running my hand up her thigh, but I can’t. Her skin is soft, the muscles firm under my palm. She’s not breathing and neither am I. My fingers slip closer to the frayed hem of her cut-off shorts.

  “That tickles,” Leila whispers, but she doesn’t move her leg away or stop my hand from its upward exploration.

  She meets my eyes, takes a slow bite from her burger and shifts her leg to the side. It’s a subtle movement, but it sends a clear and intentional message. My heart is pounding crazily, nerves making my fingers tremble slightly, even though I’m doing nothing more than touching her leg. I’m barely halfway up her thigh, but I’m as excited and nervous as a boy copping his first feel.

  Centimeter by centimeter, I let my hand slide along the smooth, warm expanse of her skin, electricity thrilling through me at the feel of her flesh. She’s watching me intently, her breasts rising and falling with every deep breath, her eyes widening as my fingers reach the white-thread hem of her jean shorts. A few more inches and the moment will shift from being innocently flirtatious to dangerously sexual.

  We’re both intensely aware of the transitional nature of the moment: if I move my fingers any higher, I’ll be crossing a line. A kiss could be discounted, forgotten, ignored. A friendship could be maintained, despite the kisses. But if I continue to explore further up her thigh, it’ll constitute a blatant promise of things to come.

  I can see the debate in Leila’s eyes.

  I leave my hand where it is, on the innocent side of the invisible line, waiting for her give me an indication of what she wants. The moment stretches out, and I realize she’s not debating or deciding, but is waiting for me. She isn’t moving away or shifting her position to break the spell, but she’s not encouraging me either, as if she wants me to slide my hand further up her thigh, but yet is afraid of what it would mean for both of us if I do.

  I don’t think; don’t stop to wonder if this is a good idea. I set aside my food, lean toward her, and kiss her. The act of leaning in to press my mouth to hers pushes my hand upward, sliding my fingers under the hem of her shorts. My breath catches as she stretches her thigh to one side and pulls me closer, in the process giving me access to what lies beneath the denim.

  My fingers slide higher, pressing into soft flesh and firm muscle, and then I feel the crease of her leg where it meets her hip, and I feel her muscles trembling, quivering ever so gently.

  My hair stirs, and I feel the sheet across my hips flutter. I feel Leila’s hair drifting in a breeze.

  I feel myself hardening with desire. I feel the edge of her panties, the soft silk covering her core, and I want to slip my fingers under it and delve in, find her heat. But I don’t. Intentionally, I don’t. I slide my touch up along her hip and back into relative innocense. It’s a conscious choice to delay the moment, and as my fingers move away from her core, I feel Leila relaxing slightly, hear her exhale a breath. She seems both disappointed and relieved. I withdraw my hand entirely and let it rest on her knee.

  We finish our food in silence.

  “Why’d you stop?” Leila finally asks, when we’re both done eating. She won’t quite meet my eyes. “You were right there, but you didn’t touch me.”

  “I almost did,” I admit. “I wanted to, but I didn’t want to start something I couldn’t finish.” I feather my fingers into her hair, lean close and whisper my lips over her ear. “And Leila, what I want to do…we can’t finish it here.”

  She shivers, and I feel goose bumps ripple across her skin. “Scootch over. I’m cold.” Leila shifts out of the chair and perches on the edge of the bed, nudging me over.

  I move aside for her, spreading the sheet and the thin blanket over both of us. The bed is narrow enough that we’re both nearly hanging off the edge. She’s lying partially on her side, partially on her back. It’s another instinctive reaction: I slide my arm beneath her neck and pull her to my chest. She scrunches down to fit her head in the crook of my shoulder, resting a knee and thigh over mine.

  It’s strange, lying in so familiar and intimate a way with a girl I barely know; but it doesn’t feel awkward, though, and that’s the strangest part about it. It feels totally natural, totally normal.

  Comforting.

  I rarely just hold a woman like this. If there’s a woman in my bed, she’s not just lying there. That’s part of what sets Leila apart, in my mind.

  It’s not that I don’t want her that way, but I don’t want it to be casual. I’ve had casual, and I’m over it. I’m enjoying this feeling, the closeness, the sense of affection in the way she’s resting her head on me. There’s a sweetness and an innocent tenderness in the stillness between us, a comfort in the easy silence. Her hair tickles my face, and I smooth it away. I want her, I do, but she’s different and, as I’ve said before, I want to wait for her.

  Now that I’ve managed to get control of my libido, I feel the questions bubbling up again. There’s so much about her I want to know, and that in itself is unusual. The other women I’ve dated before now, the casual-sex acquaintances, even the kind-of-serious girlfriends, are women I’ve never invested much time in, at least not in a deeply personal way. I got to know their surface interests, facts about their families and a general timeline of their lives. But those things do not define a person.

  I find myself wondering oddly specific things about Leila: what she wears to bed, whether she gets along with her parents, what kind of shampoo she uses, what her favorite TV show is…the list of questions is seemingly endless. They are the kinds of things I’ve never known or wanted to know about another person.

  And, of course, burning hot and hard beneath everything else is the question of what the hell happened in the bar, and what she’s hiding from me. I should be more focused on figuring that out, but it seems so impossible, especially when Leila is sitting right here, tempting and distracting me with her lush beauty.

  “Why’d you become a cop?” Leila asks, breaking the silence.

  Can she feel the questions burning in my head? Does she really want to know about me, or is she trying to distract me from questioning her?

  “Oh, man, that is a long story,” I say.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You really want to know?” I twist my position slightly so I can watch her expression and read her reactions.

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t,” Leila says, looking up at me through long lashes.

  “What it comes down to is my parents were murdered when I was eighteen. It was random, and brutal. A robbery gone wrong. The killers were never found.”

  “God, Carson. That’s…so awful. I’m so sorry.” Her musical voice is soft, low, and tender.

  “Yeah, it—it was just so sudden, and so senseless, you know? I mean, you hear that phrase all the time: ‘senseless violence’, but it doesn’t really mean anything to you until someone you love is killed without rhyme or reason.” I sigh, rub my forehead with the side of my forefinger. “I was at school, a few days before high school graduation. I had a scholarship to Texas A & M for football. I’d already toured the campus, had even
made a few friends. I was looking forward to getting the hell out of Michigan. I was gonna play ball, get a degree, and figure out what the fuck I wanted to do with my life. I had no clue, you know? I was a kid. Sheltered, grew up in the ’burbs, no real problems, nothing remarkable.

  “And then I get called down to the office over the PA. That never happens. When your name gets called, last period of the day, it’s a big deal. I felt my gut just…twist. I don’t know how to put it, but I knew something had happened. My dad was an IT guy, worked from home some days, and Mom was a stay-at-home, volunteered at the local elementary for lunches, scrapbooked, had brunches with her friends. So they were both home during the afternoons a lot.

  “We lived in a nice neighborhood, but not, like, super upscale. No reason our house would be hit, right? Average TV, average cars, average jewelry. No reason for it. But…someone broke in through the back door, shot my mom where she stood in the kitchen. Shot her three times. Guessing my dad heard it, came running, right? He was shot in the doorway, in the hall going from his study to the kitchen. He was shot twice. Some jewelry was missing, the DVD player, my dad’s golf clubs, his watch off his fucking wrist. Bunch of random shit. It made no sense.

  “So the shots get called in, they find my parents shot to death, blood everywhere. Robbery gone wrong, easy. It was a neighborhood in the middle of the day, should be some witnesses, right? Someone who saw the car, or the shooter?

  “Nope. Apparently not. One guy saw a white full-size van, older model, maybe, couldn’t be sure. Saw one guy, average height, wearing khakis and a black hoodie. No license plate, no other description. No one else saw anything. No fingerprints were found that matched anyone in the database, no weapon was found so the ballistics meant nothing. No other robberies or murders that could be confidently connected. After a couple months, they closed the case. Sorry, they told me. No leads, no evidence. It’s gone cold.”

  I have to pause. It’s still hard to talk about. I blink, sigh, and pick at the fries, eat one.

  “Did you have any other family? Anyone? What did you do?”

  “I was alone. I mean, I have an uncle, he helped out a bit, sent me some money now and then, but for all intents and purposes…I was alone. My grandparents all passed when I was young, my mom was an only child, and my dad just had the one brother, but Uncle Bill has always been kind of reclusive. He helped me out with taking care of the arrangements, but he did it all remotely.

  “I…started school, played ball, but it was empty. It meant nothing. And when they closed the case, I got angry. I demanded to know what they’d done to find the killers. The detective, he was a nice guy. Jim Wisniewski. Twenty-year veteran of the force. Gave me a kind of crash course in how hard it is to solve a case like that, how you got no leads, no clues, nothing to go on. Sort of piqued my interest, I guess.

  “Old Jim bent a few rules, showed me things he shouldn’t have. But I needed closure, and he knew it. I needed to know what happened. What was being done. I guess I needed to feel like someone in the world gave half a shit about me, and he was the one who showed me.

  “And I realized he was right, there was nothing. You have no witnesses, no camera footage, no physical evidence, no weapon, no suspect or motive. Like someone just walked in, shot them, and took a few random things, then left. Like, the TV was there, a two-thousand-dollar Sony, didn’t take that. Didn’t take my dad’s computer. It all made no sense. Just…just a random act of violence.

  “Guess that was the impetus, needing to know what happened to my parents. Needing to find them, to catch the assholes who do shit like that. So I got a criminal justice degree, joined the force, got fast-tracked to detective.” I laugh, a forced, hollow sound. “Well, now that I’ve told you that happy story…”

  Leila shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Carson. I don’t even know what to say.”

  “It’s old history, at this point. I mean, I’m not sure that’s something you ever really just get over totally, but I think I am, as much as I’ll ever be. So, yeah. That’s why I became a cop.” I shrug and look down at Leila. “What about you? Where is your family?”

  Leila looks panicked for a split second but recovers quickly. “I—oh, my family isn’t that interesting.”

  “You’d be surprised what would interest me,” I tell her. “And you know, that’s not the first time you’ve evaded that question.”

  “It’s not an evasion, Carson—” she starts.

  “The hell it isn’t.” I sound harsh. I sigh and start over. “Leila, look, I’m not asking you to tell me your deepest, darkest secrets or anything like that. Just…tell me a little bit about yourself.”

  She sighs. “Well, I’m Arab-American. My mom and dad moved here from Kuwait long before I was born. My dad is a…businessman.” She pauses so briefly I almost miss it. “I’m an only child, and my mom is a traditional stay-at-home mom.”

  “What is the family business?”

  “My dad is in…transportation. Moving goods around the country, stuff like that. Import, export.” She shrugs, casually dismissive, her tone so persuasive now that I almost believe her. “I was never interested in it, so I never took much notice of it, really. My dad’s done really well for himself, though. I grew up in Chicago, I think I told you that before. I went to private schools, got dropped off by limos, vacationed in the south of France every summer, that kind of thing. My parents are really…old school. I wore a hijab until I moved here, actually.” She makes a motion around her head, indicating a head-covering.

  “So you grew up rich, huh?”

  “Yeah. My parents are…very wealthy.” She sighs, and it’s a sad sound. “But, like I said, they’re really, really traditional. They had so many expectations of me, you know? They just wanted me to do everything their way. They expected me to marry by the time I was twenty, and have a bunch of kids and live near them and keep quiet, wear the hijab and never shake a man’s hand, pray facing Mecca five times a day, and be a dutiful daughter. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, and a lot of my friends back in Chicago are living that life very happily. But as I got older I realized it was just not for me. I embraced the modern Western culture and I just couldn’t do what they wanted. It led to conflict after conflict, and eventually I had to get away. I needed space from them, from their expectations and their disappointment that I couldn’t fulfill them, so I moved here a while ago and I haven’t looked back.”

  I can feel the omissions in her story, can sense that she’s leaving out more than she’s telling. No one leaves their family that easily, especially not a wealthy, orthodox Muslim girl.

  “You just left? Just like that?” I stare back at her. “Do you miss them?

  “Of course I miss them,” she says. “They’re my family. But I had to do things my way, and they just couldn’t accept that. And I can’t accept what they want for me. They don’t care what I want, they just expect me to obey. To be the dutiful, honorable little female, and that’s just…not me.” Leila stares into the middle distance, distracted and distant.

  She’s being evasive, leaving out most of the truth. I hold her in silence, debating with myself. I want the truth, but am I willing to hurt her to get it? No. I can sense that if I push the subject, demand the truth from her right now, I might shut her down completely. She’s skittish, nervous. She’s waiting for me to push the issue, her eyes shifting back and forth, searching mine, and I can feel her silently pleading with me to let it go.

  Frustration burns in my chest.

  I’m intensely attracted to Leila, but it’s more than that. There’s a connection unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, but it’s marred by her secrecy, by the lies and the omissions.

  What is she hiding?

  I shift tactics. “Leila, what really happened at the bar?”

  I watch her carefully, assessing her body language, the way her eyes shift away from mine and fix on the ceiling above my shoulder before she speaks.

  She closes her eyes briefly. “Carson, I
told you everything I know already. I have no clue what happened. One minute we were talking and the next I was standing outside on the pavement.”

  “Yeah, but what you told me doesn’t make sense. My captain looked into it, and there’s a lot that just doesn’t add up. For one thing, how it is that you’re completely fine, not so much as a scratch, while I’m in here? Then there’s the bar itself. Captain Archer says it’s completely destroyed. The only thing left was a pile of smoking rubble, and forensics can’t figure out how it happened. Archer said it looks like both a fire and a tornado hit the place, which doesn’t make a damn lick of sense. Especially since none of the surrounding buildings were in any way affected, and there was no weather that could have produced a tornado.”

  Leila stands and paces. I can feel her shutting down. I can feel the lies bubbling up in her.

  “Carson…please. I know there are things that…don’t add up, okay? I know.” Leila crosses back to my side, standing over me. Her deep brown eyes are pleading, begging me to understand. “But there are things I just can’t explain to you. Not right now, not ever. I’m sorry, I just—I can’t. For my sake and…for yours. Just…just let it go. Please?”

  “I can’t, Leila. I’m not wired that way.” I shift forward, wincing at the twinge in my ribs. “Plus, I’m a cop. Was it a robbery? Was it a terrorist attack? I was injured, fairly seriously, on my own turf. I can’t just let it go, professionally I can’t.”

  “You just have to know the truth? What if the truth is ugly? What if the truth is something you can’t handle? What then? What if the truth led you into another case like the one you were telling me about, if not worse? What if the truth meant you and I couldn’t…” She trails off, biting her lip, squeezing her eyes closed.

  “Couldn’t what? Be together? What secrets could you possibly have that would keep us apart? I’ve seen damn near everything in this job, Leila. I’ve dealt with the worst humanity has to offer. So trust me when I say there’s nothing you could say to me that would shock me.” She’s shaking her head, but I ignore it and keep going, letting the truth spill out of me. “I like you, okay. A lot. I think that’s pretty well clear at this point, but it goes deeper than that. A lot deeper. I like you in a way I’ve never liked anyone. Why can’t you just trust me? What do you think I’m gonna do when you tell me the truth? Especially after the way I handled things with Miriam.”