That was the voice in my own head, not his.
“Are you going to throw up again?” he asked, squatting in front of me, knuckles gently drifting down my cheek.
“I don’t think so.”
“Let me help you back to bed then.”
“I can’t sleep on that waterbed. It’s moving.” Just the memory of it made me gag a little.
“Okay, you can sleep on the couch. Come on.” He lifted me under my armpits and dragged me to my feet.
With his help I stumbled to the couch and collapsed, pulling one of the new pillows under my head and sighing. I closed my eyes, but that made the spinning start again, so I kept them resolutely open as Riley draped a blanket over me. It was too hot for the blanket, but I left it, appreciating his care.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
In the dark room, he leaned over and gave me a half smile. “Vodka happens. No big deal.”
That wasn’t what I meant. I was trying to tell him that I was sorry for being me. I shook my head. “No. For everything.” For not being good enough for him, because I knew that I wasn’t. I was a liar and afraid to stand up to my parents, passive in my life, and far too willing to put out instead of make emotional connections with people.
My last name shouldn’t be Sweet, it should be Sour. Jessica Sour. That was me.
A big tart, mouth puckering, acidic mess.
That was my last drunken thought before I drifted off to sleep, Riley still petting my hair.
* * *
I woke up out of a restless sleep burning hot, mouth dry. I jerked when I realized that Easton was sitting on the coffee table watching me. “Hey,” I mumbled, my throat sore. I checked under the blanket to make sure I was wearing clothes, because I had a memory of being topless while puking.
But I was wearing a soft T-shirt, so I kicked the blanket off with my feet, boiling hot, hair damp with sweat.
“Hey,” he said. “If you give me ten bucks, I’ll go the store and get you Red Bull. That’s the best thing for a hangover, my mom always said that.”
Wonderful. I was sending him back into memories of his hard-partying mother. “That’s nice of you, but I’m okay.” I also thought Red Bull was probably a poor choice for dehydration, but what did I know? There hadn’t been a lot of nights where I had hit it like I had the night before.
His leg bounced. “Are you sure?”
Suddenly suspicious, I swallowed hard and studied him, picking at my left eye, which seemed gummed shut with mascara. “Do you want to go to the store?” I asked carefully.
He shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
“Are you conning Jessica?” Riley said, coming into the room in basketball shorts, no shirt. “Beat it, punk.”
Easton sent me one last meaningful look that I didn’t understand and ran past his brother, darting out of the way as Riley tried to rub the top of his head.
“Why does he want to go to the store?” I asked, trying to pull myself to a sitting position with a sigh.
“He takes a cut of the money and buys himself candy. Plus I think the dude at the 7-Eleven lets him look at the latest issue of Playboy.”
“Oh. At least he’s enterprising.”
Riley laughed. “I guess you could call it that. How are you feeling?”
“Like shit.”
Jayden came into the room. “Oh my God!” he exclaimed when he saw me. “What happened to you? You look like butthole!”
Perfect. Even Jayden recognized a hot mess when he saw one.
“U!” Riley frowned at him. “That’s a pretty goddamn rude thing to say to a chick.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Jayden looked at me, his apology looking and sounding sincere. But then he added equally truthfully, “But you do look terrible.”
I couldn’t help it. I had to laugh. “I’m sure I do. This is why vodka has a warning label.”
Jayden either didn’t get it or didn’t care. He lost interest in me and turned to Riley. “It’s hot as balls today. Can we go swimming?”
Riley looked like he would rather have his nails torn out, but he nodded. “Give me at least an hour though. And no harassing me about it in the meantime. You drive me crazy when you follow me around sighing.”
“Okay!” Jayden moved off down the hall singing a Lady Gaga song at the top of his lungs.
Riley shook his head. “God, what song is that? It’s a good thing I love them. Because otherwise I might drive them out into the country and leave them in a cornfield.”
“You would not.” My head was throbbing, but I knew he was full of shit. He would do anything for them. He already had.
“Nah. I wouldn’t.” Riley moved into the kitchen. “I have coffee for you,” he called out as he disappeared from view. “I iced it.”
When he brought me a cup of chilled coffee and a yogurt I made a face. “Drink it. Eat it. You’ll feel better, trust me.”
I took a tentative sip. It was cold and wet and all that was wonderful. “Thanks. Where’s my purse? I want to see if Robin got home okay.” I should have texted her from the townie bar and made sure she had a ride. But I was too fucked-up to think about it.
“You threw this on the floor when we got back.” Riley bent over by the front door and handed my wristlet to me.
Unzipping it, I took another coffee sip and checked my phone. No relevant texts. I tapped out a message to Robin and closed my eyes again briefly. “I’m sorry about last night.”
“What was that all about?” he asked, sitting on the coffee table where Easton had been earlier, resting his elbows on his legs.
“I got drunk.”
“No, I mean, what was that all about, later? Were you really upset with me for wanting to wait?”
I wanted to lie and shrug it off. But it did bother me. A lot. “I felt—no, I feel—rejected.”
“Why would that make you feel rejected?” He looked genuinely confused.
“Because you don’t want me.” If I hadn’t been feeling like ass, and obviously according to Jayden, looking like it, too, I never would have said it. But I was pretty much so low I was crawling on the dirty ground of the townie bar, so what difference did it make? It wasn’t like I had an ounce of dignity left.
His jaw dropped. “Are you joking? Of course I want you! I want you so fucking bad it hurts. But you were loaded last night. You weren’t going to wake up today and think that was an awesome sexual experience.”
“It’s not just about last night. You don’t ever try to . . . you know.” I was having a hard time extracting words from my sluggish brain.
“What? Stick it in you after zero effort on my part? Bend you over the couch after five minutes of dating? No. I don’t try to do that. Because I care about you. I want to take some time and get to know each other and each other’s bodies, together.” He shifted closer to me, his brown eyes earnest. “I want to explore you and your body, not use it.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that, it was so totally foreign to me. “But I want to have sex with you. Don’t make me feel bad for that.”
“I’m not trying to. I think it’s awesome that you want to get naked with me.” He raised his eyebrows up and down. “Trust me, I’m looking forward to it. But it’s like cramming a whole ice-cream cone in my mouth and swallowing it whole. What good is that? It’s over and done in a second. I want to really taste it, to lick it slowly. I want to savor the ice cream, you know what I’m saying?”
Holy crap, it was hot in the living room. “So this isn’t about you punishing me for sleeping with other guys before I met you?” Because that was my ultimate fear.
Riley took my hand and put his palm so that it faced out and he laced his fingers through mine. “No. Absolutely not. But I have to admit that I do want to be important. Not just another guy, but the guy. More important than my brother, than Bill, than whoever else.” He kissed my knuckles. “I want to be the man you love.”
The thing was, I thought maybe he already was. Who else could make me feel like this
? So special, so beautiful, so cherished, when I was laying in my sweat, vomit still in my hair, breath smelling like the bottom of a trash can. I nodded enthusiastically, because I didn’t trust myself to speak without crying. There was a tightness in my chest, my throat, and I squeezed his fingers tightly.
I thought and discarded a few different things to say as wrong or over the top and settled on, “You are more important than any of them. Ever.”
For the first time ever, I caught a glimpse of vulnerability in Riley. He looked like he couldn’t speak now, and he gave a short nod, his jaw working. Then he said, “Good. Okay. So we’re on the same page now?”
I nodded. “Though I still want to have sex.”
He laughed. “Me too. But it’s been two years, I figure I can last a few more weeks.”
Weeks? God save the queen, was he for real? And wait a minute. He hadn’t had sex in two years? That made my self-control seem virtually nonexistent. I had to step it up. “Oh me too, of course. I was just testing you.”
“Jessica, you are amazing.” He leaned forward and kissed me. “Now eat your yogurt so we can go to the pool later. You’re coming with us, right?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” I swung my legs around and forced myself to stand. “Though I don’t have a bathing suit with me.”
“We can stop at your apartment.” Riley gave me a look. “And maybe you should just pack a whole suitcase. It’s a little inconvenient to have your stuff there when you’re always going to be here.”
Hello. He was suggesting I stay with him. Not quite living with him, but there being extended periods of time where I didn’t go back to my apartment. That might seem fast, except for the fact that we had started out living together. It didn’t seem weird to me, it just seemed awesome. “Good point,” I told him, just as casual as he was. “Now I have to go pee.”
“After all that booze I’m surprised you didn’t wet your pants last night. I have to hand it to you, you can hold your liquor.”
“I puked in your bathroom. How is that holding my liquor?”
“But you did it with such style. Topless. That’s classic.”
I could only imagine. “Before the whole throwing-up thing, I had a great time with you. Well, after you shoved that guy’s face into a garbage can of booze. Everything in between was a lot of fun.”
“Actually, I had fun at the bar with you, too. Next time let’s skip the frat party and go straight there.”
“Deal.” Relieved that not only had I not ruined our relationship, we seemed to have taken it to the next level, even without sex, I went into the bathroom and checked out the horror reflecting back at me in the mirror. Yep. Train wreck. My face was swollen and dry, mascara streaking down both cheeks. My hair was stringy and sticking up in the back. Chapped lips. Filthy, dirty feet and a scraped-up knee. Yep. Adorbs. That was me.
I didn’t even bother to brush my hair or wash my face. I figured everyone has already seen me looking like ass. I used the toilet and padded back out to the living room, grabbing the yogurt and coffee. I could hear the guys all out on the back patio and I wanted to sit with them. The sun might feel good. Wincing when I opened the door and the sun hit me in the eyes, I shuffled over to the table and plopped down next to Riley.
Tyler was on the other side and he took one look at me and said, “Wow. Good morning, pretty girl.”
“I hate you,” I said.
He laughed. But he did call out to his brother, “Hey, Easton, go grab your sunglasses for Jess. She needs them.”
Easton went streaking by.
“That kid never walks, does he?” I said, scooping up some of the yogurt and forcing it into my mouth, even when I thought I might gag.
“Nope.”
Riley was straddling the bench sideways, and he reached out and started rubbing my shoulders, easing the drunken knots out of them.
“Oh my God, that feels so good.”
Easton came back and flung a pair of plastic sunglasses on the table before going back into the yard shirtless to poke at something in the corner with a stick. “Thank you,” I called after him.
Then I opened them and realized they were twin dollar signs. Nice. I put them on my face and Tyler and Riley both started laughing.
“Wow, big pimpin’, Jess.” Riley took a sip from my coffee.
“It does help with the glare,” I said. “I can’t really look any worse, so what’s the difference?”
“I think you look cute,” Riley said, reaching out and brushing his fingers over my lip.
Oh, my. Heart. Melt.
“Suck-up.” Tyler coughed into his hand.
I looked at Tyler, thinking about how happy he was with Rory, thinking about how I really liked him as a friend, but now, next to Riley, he was like, well, a brother to me. It was almost impossible to remember what it felt like to see and feel him naked, his body inside of me, and instead of shoving that away, ignoring it, I wanted to examine those feelings and memories. I wanted to be honest with myself.
It was a weird phrase “inside of me” when you thought about it, like as if sex were an invasion. An alien moving in your body. It didn’t factor in the emotional side of sex at all.
Because I knew in that capacity, no one had ever actually been inside me.
So if I knew then what I knew now, would I still have sex with Tyler? It was hard to remember the exact circumstances that had even led to it to the first time. So it was hard to say. Probably no. But I wasn’t exactly sure.
All I knew was certain was that like fabric fades in the sun, so had the physical part of my relationship with Tyler, and neither of us would ever miss it. In some ways, it was already like it had never happened.
Which gave me my answer. Because if you could look back on sex with someone and say it was like it had never happened, then it never should have in the first place.
It should matter.
So while it wasn’t regret I felt as the sun beat down on me on the patio and Tyler smoked me out with his ever-present cigarette, I knew that I was looking forward to me and Riley.
To a relationship that mattered.
Chapter Fifteen
“Don’t spoil them,” Riley told me as I let Jayden and Easton fill my convenience store basket with a variety of candy and soft drinks. Easton seemed to have a thing for grape soda, and how could I argue with that? He was a guy after my own heart.
“It’s not spoiling them to let them get something to take to the pool. I’m not going to just buy stuff for me and then eat and drink in front of them. That’s so rude.”
Riley eyed my basket. “Hangover food?”
“Yep.” There was chips, chips, and more chips in there. Plus Twizzlers and orange juice and grape soda for me in addition to Easton’s. Jayden had picked bottled ice tea, which struck me as seriously gross. You could see things floating in there.
I had showered at Riley’s house, then we had swung by my apartment and packed one of my two suitcases. It wasn’t awesome that I was paying rent on a place I was almost never going to be in, but whatever. The high cost of a relationship. But now I was in my yellow bikini, hoodie and shorts on it, fortunately wearing my own sunglasses, making our pit stop before the pool. I tossed two trashy magazines and a fashion one in the basket.
“Are you done?” he asked me, eyebrows raised.
“Can I get gum?” Jayden asked.
“No,” Riley told him. “You already have a drink and chips. Money doesn’t grow on trees, U.”
“It should,” was Jayden’s opinion on that.
I laughed. “Totally.”
When we got to the pool, I blinked. “Holy crap, there’s a ton of people here.”
Okay, I can admit that I had never been to a public pool before. Why would I? My parents had a pool and so did the country club my dad golfed at. But this was more seminaked bodies together in one place than at the last night we’d gone clubbing.
“It is Memorial Day weekend,” Riley said. “I’m not surprised it’s crowded
.”
“Chair.” Tyler pointed to a free chaise and Easton darted off to claim it, his scrawny limbs allowing him to dodge and weave around other people. He dove onto it with a move worthy of professional wrestling.
“Impressive,” I said.
What was even more impressive was that all four of the Mann brothers agreed I should have the chair. I was touched to the bottom of my cynical heart. “Really?”
“Sleep off that hangover,” Tyler told me.
“Thanks, guys.” I spread out my towel and sat down, then set down the plastic bag with our haul. “Who wants their stuff?”
“I’m going in first,” Riley said. “I’m boiling.” He peeled off his shirt and I eyeballed those muscles and his tattoos.
Yummy. Biting a Twizzler, I said, “Put on sunscreen.”
“Jessica, I am on the roof of a house everyday without a shirt on.” He flipped his waistband down to show me the difference in his skin tone. Yep, he was whiter down there. “I don’t think sunscreen is going to matter at this point.”
“It’s never too late to prevent skin cancer.”
“Put it on Jayden instead. He’s practically transparent.”
He was. His skin tone was at least two shades lighter than Tyler’s and Riley’s. “Sit down here, Jayden, and I’ll put it on your shoulders.”
He squawked in protest when I sprayed him. “It’s cold!”
“Wimp,” Tyler said.
“Shut up.”
I rubbed it into his skin and Jayden made sounds of enjoyment.
Riley grinned. “You should see his face right now, Jess. I think he’s working up a chub.”
“Don’t be disgusting,” I told him primly. “You’re going to embarrass Jayden.”
“No, it’s actually true,” Jayden said, glancing at me over his shoulder.
His brothers almost died laughing.
Nice.
I wiped my hands on my towel. Easton was digging through the bag and I saw he was eyeing my fashion magazine, which had a topless model on the cover, artfully covering her breasts. I remembered what Riley had said about Playboy and I decided I needed to intervene.
“Find your stuff?” I asked him, peeling off my hoodie so I could spray sunscreen on my chest and arms.
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