Angie felt tenderness, an overwhelming sweetness for Lance that nearly made her giddy. She laughed in church when others didn’t, she skipped her favorite psychology class, she didn’t call her mother. She thought of him as she was getting her teeth cleaned at the dentist’s or when she rounded the tall oak that marked the two mile point of her daily run. She bought a new bra, kept her evenings free just in case, drove past his apartment for no reason. Consequently, she didn’t think twice about jumping on a plane to Alabama to meet him for this, this whatever it was. He’d sent her the ticket on a whim, tucked it in a box of 11 roses. You’re near perfect, he’d written.    [OMG!!!!!!]

Lance was so easy to be with, so cavalier and unfettered by the little inconveniences that kept popping up. He shrugged off the camera thing. Didn’t mind the rain. Felt certain they’d get a room in Gatlinburg when all the hotel signs said “No Vacancy.” It was almost ridiculous, she thought, how wonderful all of this felt. She considered the possibility that she was acting foolishly, playing with fire, in a sense, but this was easily dismissed by the narcotic of her feelings for him. She didn’t mind that he didn’t talk much. He was enigmatic, she figured. She did not find his stoicism distancing. She didn’t notice the little things that might’ve dislodged what she felt was her first real brimming-over sense of passion.     [time 2 flush thought the sister]

Lance had said the first thing he noticed about Angie when they’d met three months before was how she ran her tongue along her lips, a nervous sort of action, those full lips. He had smiled. “They look good enough to eat.”     [little did he know that A’s been doing this lip thing since she got her braces off 3 yrs ago n no 1 in their right mind thinks its sexual. seriously]

Angie looked in the mirror and tried to see herself objectively. She knew men wanted to go out with her because of how she looked. Was it her hair? Nice, but not extraordinary. Her eyes? Not especially big, though an odd grey-blue, her lashes long and dark. She was lucky, she knew, that they didn’t need mascara.     [ok go her but her sister has better hair]

There had been others who dressed her in compliments. But not like this. Something different with Lance. Something more intense. He stared at her often, even when she told him it made her uncomfortable. Once he settled his eyes on her while she talked nervously around his silence. “What’s the matter?” she had finally asked him.

“You’re so pretty,” he’d said and inhaled deeply. “I like to be seen with you.”

Then why, she wondered, in the pit of her stomach, did she feel a tightness forming. Just nerves, she decided, the general uneasiness everyone goes through in the beginning of a relationship, when you just know you’re falling in love. This would pass as she got to know him better. After a while he surely would not stare at her anymore. He’d get to know her for her self.     [or not]

Yesterday, after swimming in the hotel pool, after sex, he had bitten her, tenderly one might say, just above her cleavage. “There,” he had said. “Now the next guy to see those will know they belong to me.”     [at which point her sister wanted 2 vomit]

It was more than an odd gesture, Angie thought. It was, well, it was like being branded.     [n vomit again]

After her shower, the bruise on her breast like a butterfly, she stepped out of the bathroom and said, “Look what you did to me.” She stood in the doorway with her towel clutched around her and tapped her chest.      [crap she thought my sisters going to freak when she finds out i was this naked with this dude]

Lance turned his head from the TV and frowned, let his eyes move up and down her body. “Maybe you shouldn’t be here,” he had said.     [for a moron he was right]

Angie bit her lip, her hand fluttered over her chest. What did that mean—shouldn’t be here? Was it the four days together—the longest they’d been alone with each other? Was it something she had done? Was it yesterday, when the guy at In and Out Burgers—with Hi! I’m Brent on his name tag—leaned on the counter and asked her “So, uh…how do you like your meat?”     [at which point she became a vegetarian]

“What’s the matter?” she had whispered to Lance when Brent went to wrap up her burger.

“Just keep your tongue in your mouth,” Lance said and put his hand in her back pocket, gave it a little yank.     [ooh sexy]