Lost and Found: Book One of the Emi Lost & Found Series

by Lori L. Otto

  “Alright,” I sighed, taking the corner a little too fast as I raised the convertible top up to protect us from any more trouble. “Behave, Emi.”

  “He was cute,” she said as I rolled up the windows. “The guy at the party was so cute. And perfect. I’m sure I’m in love.”

  “Cute or not,” I argued, “he shouldn’t have been taking advantage of you in the condition you’re in. How much did you have to drink, anyway?”

  She just shook her head, shrugged her shoulders and smiled at me with a dreamy look in her eyes.

  “You’re cute.” Her hand reached out and touched my lips and I almost drove into another car at her gesture.

  “Hands to yourself, Em,” I had whispered to her. “Don’t distract me while I’m driving.”

  “Oh, do I distract you?” she said, removing her seatbelt again. She wrapped her arms around me and kissed my cheek. I had to pull over.

  “Emi, listen to me,” I started, carelessly parked beside a curb only two blocks from her apartment. I pried her arms from my neck. “Chris thought I was the best option to get you home safely… and you’re about to kill us both. Please, sit down, Em.”

  She crossed her arms across her chest and sat back down with her feet on the floorboard. I buckled her into the car yet again.

  “Thank you.”

  I had to circle her block a few times to find a place to park, and eventually settled on a spot with a two-hour limit. When I finally took the keys from the ignition, I watched as Emi’s head slowly slid off the headrest and into the window.

  “Ow,” she sighed softly, still not fully awake. As I walked to the side of her car, my phone rang.

  “Randi, what’s up?” I had left my girlfriend abruptly when Chris called.

  “Are you coming back?”

  “She’s in pretty bad shape,” I told her.

  “Well, you left me in pretty bad shape, too,” she responded, her voice sexy.

  I chuckled a little. “I’m sorry, baby. I don’t think I’ll make it back tonight.”

  “You’re staying there?” she asked, panicked.

  “For a bit,” I explained. “Until I know she’s okay, that’s all.”

  “Fuck, Nate, you’ll risk getting grounded again for her? This was our first night out in two fucking weeks! It’s our social life you’re fucking up, you know?”

  “Hold up, Randi, I’m not going to get grounded. Mom knows where I’m at. She told me to take care of her.”

  “So she’ll let you spend the night with Emi, but–”

  “I’m not spending the night with her, okay?” I argued. “I’m just staying until I know she’s okay. Until I make sure her roommates can take care of her. Plus, it’s Emi. You know her. You know it’s not like that with her.”

  “It better not be,” she said before hanging up on me. Nice.

  I cautiously opened the passenger door, ready to catch Emi before she fell out of the car. I wrapped her in my arms and carried her to the front door of her apartment building before leaning her up against the brick wall to take a rest. She was like dead weight in my arms, and I was no athlete in high school. I didn’t start working out until college, so that night, I was just some scrawny kid trying to do the gentlemanly thing without dropping her.

  A friend of hers I had met a few times recognized us both and managed to sneak us past the resident advisor. I knocked on Emi’s apartment door a few times, but no one answered. I eventually dug through her purse until I found the key that let us in.

  “Teresa?” I called out into the dark and quiet space. No one answered. “Anyone home?” It was still and silent. I laid Emi on the couch and knocked on both bedroom doors before peeking in. No one was home. “Alright, Emi,” I said, lifting her off the sofa.

  “I wanna feel it again,” Emi mumbled, touching her lips.

  “Huh?” Suddenly my imagination began to run wild, and I wondered what that guy really had done to her without her knowledge. “What did he do, Emi?” Her eyes flitted open, looked at me curiously, and then closed again as I carried her to her bed.

  I removed her sneakers and, once safely under her covers, I went to her bathroom and grabbed a couple of towels in case she threw up in the night. I spread them on either side of her head, then sat down next to her and watched her slow breathing and her eyes wandering restlessly under her eyelids.

  I carefully took her hair out of the rubber bands and calmed the spiky hair gently with my hand. She looked so young and innocent as she slept beside me. I mean, she was. Nineteen, and still a virgin. I couldn’t get the image of her kissing that frat guy out of my head, though, but it wasn’t anger that I was feeling now. It was sheer curiosity. I wanted to know what it felt like to kiss her. I’d wanted to know that from the day I met her. I guess all I needed to do all along was get her drunk… but then she knew that was never going to happen with me.

  I sighed heavily and went into her kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water for her, setting it on the night stand next to her bed. She rolled over on her side and pulled the blankets up to her chin. I stroked her soft hand, wondering if I should leave or stay to make sure she didn’t need anything.

  When I finally accepted she was sleeping, I arose and grabbed my keys. I leaned over and kissed her cheek softly, a hint of cinnamon lingering in the air. I tucked her hair behind her ear and kneeled down next to her.

  Just one kiss… she’d never know… I thought long and hard about what I was thinking of doing. It was no better than what the other guy did, I knew that. But she was passed out… and it was a harmless kiss. A peck, really. My lips barely touching hers. But I had to know how it felt. How she felt.

  I moved slowly, watching her eyes intently, ready to pull back if she opened them. She didn’t. At the last second, I closed my eyes and softly kissed her. Her lips were cold, and I inherently wanted to warm them, so I moved mine against hers slowly, moistening our lips with my tongue. I felt her hand in my hair before I realized she was kissing me back, her lips parted, the source of the cinnamon discovered as I tasted her chewing gum.

  My heart pounding, I pulled away quickly and woke her up.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, seemingly unaware.

  “Spit out your gum, Em. I, uh, didn’t want you to choke on it.”

  “Oh,” she said, pushing the gum out of her mouth with her tongue into my hand.

  “Thanks,” I laughed nervously. I wrapped it in a tissue and set it next to me. “Um, go back to sleep.”

  “You’re not leaving, are you?” she asked.

  “Do you want me to?”

  “No. Please stay.” She scooted back and lifted up the blankets, welcoming me into the bed next to her. This wasn’t the first time we had shared a bed together. There were a few times when boredom had led us to my bed, or hers, but we never did anything but nap together. And even then, we never touched, because I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide my attraction to her, and that would have been an incredibly awkward conversation. In fact, every time, I had to sleep with my back to her, and the sleep was usually pretty restless for me. I always woke up before her, and sometimes found myself taking care of matters in the bathroom before she got up. I was a teenage boy, after all.

  After kicking off my shoes, I climbed into the bed and turned my back to her. Suddenly her hand was on my shoulder, nudging my back into the bed, and she was sidling up next to me.

  “Aren’t you hot?” she asked as her hand ran up and down my chest over the wool sweater I had worn. Her eyes were still closed but a pretty smile spread across her lips.

  “A little, yeah,” I breathed. She gripped the hem of the sweater– and of my undershirt– and pulled them both over my head. I helped to remove them the rest of the way and threw my shirts onto the floor. “You okay?”

  “I’m hot, too,” she said, and before I knew it, she was unbuckling the overalls and removing both of her shirts, too.

  “Emi,” I tried to caution her, but once the shirts were off, her lips were on m
ine, hard and fast. She tossed the overalls over my head, too. Fuck.

  “Have sex with me,” she slurred.

  “What?” I asked, trying to make sure I heard her right.

  “Have sex with me, Nate. I’m ready. I want to.”

  My brain was saying no. My hormones had another idea, and my foolish teenaged heart was all in. Still, I tried to fight. “It’s not a good idea.” Before I could even get the sentence out, she was taking off my pants. I managed to grab my wallet out of the pocket before she had them all the way off. I was relieved to find a few condoms in the side pouch.

  “Please?” she asked. Her eyes opened slightly, and it looked like she was having a hard time focusing on me. It was wrong, so fucking wrong.

  “Let’s slow down,” I told her, apparently convinced her. Her actions became less frantic, more restrained. I needed to get control of the situation, the only one in a position to do so. “Emi, you’re too drunk,” I reasoned, although it pained myself to do it.

  “For what?” she asked. “To have sex? That can’t happen, can it?”

  “It can,” I explained, “but that’s not what I meant. I think you’re too drunk to– ohhhh… ” Her fingers brushed against me under the covers, over my boxers. Too drunk to make this decision, I wanted to say. I couldn’t, though, not with her touching me like that. My lips found hers immediately as her fingers explored my body beneath the sheets. It felt amazing, but it still didn’t feel right, and I made the conscious decision to keep my hands above her shoulders, cradling her head as we kissed.

  “Why don’t I feel it?” she whispered as she took a breath. I looked at her curiously. She would have been looking at me the same had her eyes been open. I decided to help her out, took her hand in mine, moved them slowly under my boxers and pressed her fingers harder against me. There’s no way she can’t feel that.

  That got her attention and her eyes blinked open in awareness. She gripped me tighter on her own and I let her hand go… let myself get caught up in that moment. “Can you feel it now?” I asked her. “Because it feels amazing to me.”

  “I feel that,” she said, emphasizing her word a little too much as she squeezed. I moaned softly in her ear. “That’s not what I meant. I want to feel what I felt when you kissed me. I don’t feel it.”

  “What do you mean?” I didn’t give her a chance to answer. I just continued to kiss her, hoping to evoke that elusive feeling again.

  She pulled both of her hands up to my face and pushed me back gently. Her brow was crinkled in uncertainty. “Earlier tonight, it felt different. It was, like, everything,” she mumbled, running her fingers through my hair.

  That wasn’t me.

  She closed her eyes again. A few moments passed and I thought she might fall asleep.

  She thought that was me. I wasn’t giving up so soon.

  “Tell me how I did it. Tell me how it made you feel.”

  “I just… ” She seemed so unsure all of a sudden. She started shaking her head, mentally trying to put all the pieces together. “It was… I don’t know.”

  “Like this?” I asked, selfishly pulling her hand back beneath the covers as I kissed her again. I had let her touch me over the boxers that time, my conscience starting to intervene because I had known that what I was doing was beyond wrong. I was close, though. I had fantasized about that moment for years, and I knew I wasn’t going to last long with her touching me like she was. I could feel the stirring in the depths of my being.

  She mumbled something incoherent. Her response to my advances began to lessen. My kisses were no longer returned. Her fingers fell away from my body. She had passed out. What had she said? It sounded like I don’t want this.

  You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!

  “Emi,” I tried to nudge her awake. “Emi, what did you say?” It was hopeless. She was out and I was too close to turn back. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and buried my head into the pillow, counting to ten. Then twenty. I was too wound up at that point. I removed myself from her bed and headed to her bathroom to take a shower– and to take care of other pressing issues. I left the door cracked in case she needed to come in… or woke up and wanted to… I was grasping at straws and I knew it, but I still had hope.

  Under the stream of hot water, I closed my eyes and lathered up. I wasn’t in there for more than two minutes when a woman’s voice startled me from less than a foot away.

  “My god!” It was Emi’s roommate, Teresa. I could tell from her voice alone, but she was also staring through the space left between the shower curtain and the wall.

  “What the fuck!?” I pushed the curtain closed quickly, but not before she could take in the full sight of my naked and completely aroused body. Fuck!

  “That thing is a weapon! I don’t think Emi would still be a virgin if she knew you carried that thing around.”

  “Do you mind?” I asked her, mortified, wishing I had just stayed with Randi instead of getting myself into the situation I had then found myself in.

  “You’re jacking off in my shower, Nate, honey. I do mind, actually.”

  “God damn it!” I ran my hands through my hair, getting soap in my eyes.

  “Out, kid. Get out of my shower. You and I need to talk.” She closed the door, but I could tell she was still in the bathroom with me. I rinsed all the soap off my face and body and turned the water off.

  “Can I at least have my boxers?” She pushed back the curtain again and glanced down once more, handing me a towel and my underwear. She pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows, seemingly impressed. I would have felt proud, but at the moment, I couldn’t help feeling like the biggest loser alive. I dried off and slid back into my silk shorts. Teresa was sitting on the counter when I came out from behind the shower curtain. “You can’t leave a man to his privacy?”

  “You’re seventeen, Nate. Hardly a man.” She always teased me about my age. “But you’re certainly built like a man… ”

  “Alright, can you forget you ever saw me naked, please?”

  “Shhh… ” she said as she glanced to the bathroom door.

  “Emi’s out cold. She can’t hear us.”

  “I was more worried about my date. I picked him up at the frat party. I think he’s still in the kitchen.”

  “Can you get me my clothes? I’d like to leave.”

  “Not so soon,” she said. “Let me get a few things straight.” I nodded and rolled my eyes. “You and Emi are friends. And Emi is still a virgin. Am I right?”

  “Yes, you’re right. Is that it?”

  “Nope. Why are your clothes on the bedroom floor?”

  “She undressed me.”

  “And why are hers on the bedroom floor?”

  “She proceeded to take her clothes off.”

  “She’s drunk.” Her statement was meant as a question.

  “Yes.”

  “But nothing happened… ”

  “No!” I told her emphatically.

  “Hence the reason you’re in here… ” My face turned bright red. I saw it for myself in the mirror.

  “Yes.”

  “You swear nothing happened,” she pressed further.

  “I swear. We may have kissed, but nothing more. And she won’t remember in the morning, so I’d prefer you didn’t tell her any of this.”

  “And if she does?”

  “Does what?”

  “Remember kissing you in the morning?”

  “Well, then she and I will figure that out. As it stands, we’re friends and nothing more. But I’d really like to leave. I’ve got some things to take care of.”

  “Yes, you do,” Teresa said, looking down at my boxers once more.

  “Can you stop looking at me, please? Like this isn’t embarrassing enough already!”

  “Nate, honey, you have nothing to be embarrassed about. Trust me.” She leaned in and whispered her next line. “That guy out there, though? He would definitely have something to be embarrassed about.”

  “I’m out
of here,” I said, opening the door and retrieving my clothes off the floor. I dressed quickly and grabbed my keys, not bothering to try to wake Emi any more. I hoped that she wouldn’t remember anything at all from this night. The stupid frat guy’s kiss or mine. I hoped the alcohol would erase her entire memory… but I had a feeling that wouldn’t happen. I dreaded the morning. I dreaded the conversation that was sure to come.

  I glanced at the guy Emi’s roommate had brought home, making sure it wasn’t the same one that had hit on Emi. Teresa’s date had red hair. Definitely not the same guy.

  “You won’t say anything?” I asked Teresa as she nearly pushed me out the door.

  “About that?” she joked with me once more, glancing down.

  “About anything?”

  “I won’t say anything about anything, honey,” she said, and her reassuring voice was finally of comfort to me. “Especially to her brother, who has already doled out one black eye this evening.”

  “Really? To who?”

  “Whom,” she corrected me. Fucking English major.

  “Whatever.”

  “The guy who kissed her at the party,” she’d said.

  I couldn’t hide my smile. “Good.”

  I had called Randi on the way down to my car, letting her know I’d be coming over after all. She was thrilled, as was I, anxious to finally get rid of the raging problem that had plagued me since Emi first touched me under the covers. I stayed out all night, too, my mother under the impression I was with Emi.

  I totally used Randi that night… and she wouldn’t be the first woman I would use to keep my attraction to my best friend in check.

  The next morning, Emi had called the house shortly after I returned home. My mother answered, but was none-the-wiser about my whereabouts after talking briefly to her.

  “How do you feel?” I asked her.

  “Like hell,” she admitted. “What the hell was I thinking?”

  “I’m not sure, Em,” I told her. “I wasn’t there for the drinking part. Just the after effects.”

  “Yeah… can we talk about that?”

  “Sure.” I felt sick to my stomach at that point.

  “What exactly happened last night?” she asked.