by Sandy Lowe
Lauren covered her face with the palm of her hand. “I know. I have no idea what I was thinking.”
“Um, sweetcakes, we all know exactly what you were thinking.” Roxie couldn’t stop laughing.
“You’re the worst best friend ever. Aren’t friends supposed to be supportive in a crisis?” Lauren poured half-and-half into her Americano.
“She was right not to sleep with you.” Roxie sipped from her caramel coffee, mocha whip, skinny whatever concoction that was three percent caffeine and ninety-seven percent sugar. “You look like I’ve just fucked you, is categorically, the worst line I’ve ever heard delivered to a virtual stranger. Vince Vaughn in a chick flick has better lines than you do.”
“It wasn’t a line.” Lauren defend herself, for all the good it wouldn’t do her. “I didn’t mean to say it. She’s just so unsure of herself. She really has no idea how hot she is.”
“And you thought it would be a fantastic idea to tell her by way of expressing your interest in fucking her.” Roxie was holding a hand to her chest like that would keep the laughter inside so she could speak. “Actually, fucking her in past tense, which is even weirder.”
“Shut up.” Lauren swiped a finger in the whipped cream spilling from Roxie’s drink. “I wasn’t thinking. She’s just…”
Roxie rolled her eyes. “Let me guess. She’s just that hot.”
“Well, she is that hot.” Lauren licked the cream off her finger. “But she also doesn’t know she’s hot, and that makes her hotter. She’s really sweet.”
“Hot and sweet. She sounds edible.”
“She probably is,” Lauren said. “Not that I’ll ever know, now.”
“Well, she laughed at you instead of punching you in the nose, so you never know.”
Lauren just shook her head. “I told Emma she looked like I’d just fucked her. I actually said those words to her face. There’s no coming back from that.”
Roxie collapsed into laughter again. “I wish I could argue, but I’d say you’re well and truly fucked.”
“Worst. Friend. Ever.” Lauren downed her coffee like it was Grey Goose.
“So, you passed on truth, and the worst pickup line in the history of the world means that you failed your dare with Emma, so you’re going to have to accept your punishment. I’ll see you Saturday around five. Meet me at my place. We have to lug the giant thermos ourselves.” Roxie stood up.
Before Lauren could plead for mercy, someone dropped their mug, and broken china and coffee splattered all over the floor, some of it landing on Roxie’s sneakers. She whirled around, ready to reprimand the clumsy person, and found Emma’s deep brown eyes staring accusingly back at her. Oh, holy mother of fuck.
Everything stopped. She didn’t move. She didn’t speak. She didn’t even breathe for one heart pounding instant. Then everything went from stopped to spinning as the weight of what Emma had just heard came crashing down on Lauren like an avalanche of all the stupid decisions she’d ever made in her entire life. She leapt out of her chair. “Emma, no, it wasn’t like that…”
But Emma had spun around and bolted out the door before Lauren could finish explaining herself. What she’d been planning to say, she had no idea. It had been like that, from the outside. She’d asked Emma to dance as a precursor to charming her into bed. That’d been the dare. Can’t-stop-the-rush pleasure with Emma. But from the second she’d wrapped her arm around Emma to stop her from falling, it hadn’t felt like a dare. It felt real. She’d screwed it up and said something inane exactly because being with Emma felt so good. Dancing with her, holding her, stroking her back and imagining her naked skin had turned Lauren’s brain to fuzz. She’d stopped thinking. Stopped obsessing about Gayle. Stopped caring that her life was a train wreck. Stopped feeling like a total loser. All she could think about was the sexy way Emma bit her lip. The gorgeous way Emma’s cheeks reddened at the slightest provocation. The way Emma’s fast breaths had felt against her neck. She’d wanted her and that had absolutely nothing to do with the stupid dare. Only now Emma thought it did.
She fell back into her chair, dread a physical pain in her chest. What was wrong with her that she screwed up everything good in her life?
“Guess she heard me,” Roxie said quietly.
Inexplicably, ridiculously, Lauren felt the sting of tears behind her eyes. “I guess so.”
Sunrise Falls might suck, but she was starting to think she was the reason why.
* * *
Emma pushed a copy of The Iliad unceremoniously between a dieting book and a romance novel. Women who only cared about being skinny and falling in love could use some literature in their lives, even if she had to trick them into reading it. There were some things that were more important than being a size two, or having your heart go all pitter-patter. Maybe if women broadened their horizons they’d actually learn something important from a book once in a while. The female gender were idiots really, all of them. Just superficial idiots with not a care in the world for anyone but themselves.
She rubbed angrily at the tears that marched like watery traitors down her cheeks. She wasn’t upset because it hadn’t meant anything, it was just a dance. Lauren had said nice things and danced with her as some dare, like they were seven-year-olds on the playground. What adult person thought that was okay? It wasn’t okay, but she didn’t care, because the dance hadn’t meant anything.
She whipped around when someone knocked softly on a bookcase three feet away. She wasn’t all that surprised to find Lauren standing there, slightly out of breath, and looking like a puppy about to be kicked. “Hey.”
“What are you doing here?” Emma asked, even though it was pretty obvious. “The library isn’t open.”
“The door was unlocked,” Lauren said.
She mentally kicked herself. She’d been so upset, she must’ve forgotten to lock it behind her. “We aren’t open. You can’t just come waltzing in here. You can’t just do whatever you want, whenever you feel like it.”
“I know,” Lauren said. “I’m sorry.”
Emma blinked hard to stop the tears. “This is a town establishment.” Her voice wavered but didn’t crack. “I could call the police and report you for trespassing.”
“Okay,” Lauren said, her face blank.
The remoteness of her expression just pissed Emma off even more. She wasn’t going to be made to feel like some overly emotional girl just because Lauren had all the sensitivity of a wet dishrag. If she was here to apologize, then she was damn well going to apologize, not stand there with all her shields up like she expected Emma to flatten her. “I should call the police and tell them you blocked the door and prevented me from leaving last night. That you said crude things to me. Maybe then you’d understand how it feels to have your trust violated.”
Lauren looked as if she’d expected her to do exactly that. “Okay. I’d deserve it. I’m really sorry.”
Emma stomped over and shoved her. The shove was about as effective as a shovel in a snowstorm, but she did it anyway. Lauren let her. Standing silently, not fighting back, with no expression on her face. “Don’t just stand there. Don’t tell me you’re sorry like you don’t even mean it. Do something,” Emma said, when what she really meant was feel something.
“I’m sorry,” Lauren said. She pulled Emma into her and wrapped her in her arms. They fit together as if they’d been made from the same mold. Her skin warmed against Lauren’s, her thoughts blurred, and a desperate ache settled in her chest. All too much, too close, too raw.
Lauren whispered, over and over again into Emma’s hair, “I’m sorry.”
“Let me go.” Emma cringed. The demand had no substance. She should want Lauren to back off, but everything inside her yearned to hold on.
Lauren stepped back in an obvious display of respecting her boundaries.
Emma sniffed, her clogged nose making her head hurt. “I don’t know you well, but I know enough to believe you aren’t a complete moron. What the hell were you thinking l
eading me on as part of some dare?”
Lauren winced. That single fissure in her composure mollified Emma the way a thousand sorrys never could. Lauren reached toward her but let her hand fall before she touched her. “It wasn’t a dare, not really. I was feeling crappy, and Roxie was just having a laugh, daring me to sleep with a stranger to feel better about myself. I wouldn’t have actually done it, I promise you. Sex might be her pick-me-up, but it doesn’t work that way for me, even if I’d wanted it to.”
Emma narrowed her eyes. “And yet you asked me to go home with you.”
Lauren took her hand cautiously, not holding it but rather trailing her fingers over Emma’s knuckles in a light caress. “Is this okay?”
Warmth radiated from where they touched. Her brain started to buzz, but from anxiety or anticipation? She couldn’t tell the difference. Emma nodded.
Lauren squeezed her hand like her life depended on it. Emma let her. She didn’t know why Lauren had to touch her, but it was obvious she did.
“I went over to talk to you because of the dare. But I swear, I didn’t ask you home with me because of it. I asked because I wanted you.”
“And I’m supposed to believe that.” She watched as Lauren twined their fingers together and wished it didn’t have to feel so good.
“You don’t have to believe anything, but it’s the truth.”
“And all that bullshit about how beautiful I am? What was that? Just a bunch of smooth lines you practice in the mirror?”
Lauren stared at her. “It was the truth. I think you’re beautiful, and hell, Emma, you think I practice a line like ‘you look like I’ve just fucked you’ in the mirror? If I did, I’d be a frustrated virgin.”
That was a pretty decent point, as points went.
“If this was all some dare, why did you say that? You had to know it would blow your chances.”
Lauren brushed her thumb across Emma’s knuckles again. “Because it wasn’t some dare. I wasn’t thinking, and I just said what was true. Stupid and inappropriate, but true. The second I touched you, I forgot all about the dare. I forgot all about everything.”
Pleasure swelled in Emma’s chest, threatening to overflow the wall of bitterness she’d so carefully cultivated while re-shelving books. Her hormones were all set to let that wall topple, but her inner cynic knew better. The words coming out of Lauren’s mouth might be pretty ones, but Lauren didn’t much know or care about her feelings, and as good as sex would feel in the moment, casual had an expiration date. Maybe what Lauren was saying was true. She didn’t have any reason not to believe her. But hashing it out was pointless, it really didn’t matter either way, it changed nothing. “Okay. Well, thank you for apologizing. Let’s just chalk it up to too much alcohol and poor life choices.”
Lauren didn’t let her go. “And if I don’t want to chalk it up? If I want another chance?”
“I can’t do that.” She looked down at their hands again, at Lauren’s fingers wrapped around hers. At how connected they were even when they were so far apart in every other way. “Everyone has damage. Mine has to do with not trusting in…physical situations. I can’t give you another chance, I’m sorry.”
Lauren looked stricken. “Oh God, you weren’t… Did someone…”
“No,” Emma said firmly. She squeezed Lauren’s hand for good measure. “Nothing like that.” She didn’t owe Lauren an explanation. No thank you, meant no thank you, and Lauren didn’t deserve anything else after everything she’d pulled. But she wanted to tell her anyway. Why did she feel so comfortable with Lauren? Maybe because Lauren hadn’t tried to fob her off like the dare was nothing. She hadn’t said that Emma was overreacting, or minimized her feelings. Maybe that was why Emma trusted her, even when she shouldn’t.
“I was played. Someone embarrassed me on purpose.” Emma shut her eyes briefly as the memory resurfaced. She spoke to the floor, unable to look Lauren in the eye and reveal the extent of her humiliation. “They mocked me for my attraction to them. I was the butt of their joke. I believe you, that last night wasn’t about the dare. But it’s too close. It brings up too much for me. I can’t go there again.”
Lauren slid a finger under her chin and tilted her head up. “I’m so sorry. I can’t even imagine how much that must’ve sucked. How you must’ve felt thinking you’d been nothing but a dare to me. I’m really sorry someone hurt you. I’m really sorry I hurt you. I mean it when I say I want you.”
She’d expected Lauren to probe for more details, but instead she just accepted what Emma had shared.
She nodded. “I believe you, and yet, I don’t believe you. That’s not your fault. That’s me and my fucked-up past. I hardly even know you. I just know what I feel, and I know that when I want someone, I usually end up regretting it.”
“Do you want me?”
Of course Lauren zeroed in on the one thing that Emma hadn’t meant to say.
Heat suffused her cheeks. That Lauren enjoyed seeing her blush only made her burn hotter. “You know I do.”
“Do I? You turned me down.”
“I wanted…” More.
“Tell me what you wanted.”
Emma closed her eyes again like maybe that would make the question go away. She pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling. Lauren was up in her personal space now, expecting her to say something sexy about how she wanted to be teased or seduced. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth was as sexy as taxes in April, and just as real. “I wanted you to ask me out.”
She was the biggest loser in the history of losers. Wherever losers hung out, she should go there to make them all feel better about themselves, because no one was more of a freak than her.
“Oh,” Lauren said, like asking Emma out on a date instead of asking her to bed hadn’t even crossed her mind. And that was the point, wasn’t it? Asking her out really hadn’t occurred to Lauren. She’d seen a nice face, an available body, and she’d wanted a good time. An hour or two of forgetting about her own problems. Emma wanted sex, but she also wanted Lauren.
Lauren ran a hand through her hair. “God. I’m a complete ass, aren’t I?
“You’d hardly be the first person to try to pick someone up in a bar.” Emma shrugged.
Lauren shook her head. “You’re not just some person.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“You keep saying that. What is it that I don’t know?” Lauren asked.
Nothing. Everything.
“It doesn’t matter.” Emma stepped back and let go of Lauren’s hand.
Lauren didn’t push, but she stared into Emma’s eyes in that way that made her certain Lauren had x-ray vision and could see inside her head, into all the dark places and the dusty corners no one else knew existed, let alone had any interest in. “Why do you end up regretting the way you feel?” Lauren asked instead.
“Because the people I want never want me back. They—”
Lauren kissed her. It was so fast Emma would’ve thought she’d imagined it if Lauren’s mouth hadn’t been so close to hers. “I want you back.” Lauren bushed her lips against Emma’s. “I want you so much.”
Emma couldn’t help the tiny whimper that escaped when Lauren’s mouth moved over hers. The moment was perfect. Every moment that wasn’t this moment was administered an instant inferiority complex, a grade B report card, a token participation trophy. She tried and failed to ignore the tingle in her lips and the intensity in Lauren’s eyes. Every inch of her body ached to be touching Lauren, or to be touched by her. When Lauren stroked her tongue against Emma’s, her dignity rolled over and showed its belly, surrendering to Lauren’s hot assault. The fight wasn’t even remotely fair, and if things went any further, she’d get played again. She was trying hard to care about that, but her worries were fading, obliterated by how fucking turned on she was. “But the dare.”
“No, it was an excuse to talk to you. When I did, nothing else mattered,” Lauren said.
Emma made a sound, kind of
like a groan, or kind of like a sob. So embarrassingly needy. Unable to stop herself, she melted against Lauren, her brain issuing frantic orders for damage control while her body smoothly staged a coup. Temptation was a heartless bitch, flaunting herself mercilessly, making Emma want when things were only going to end in suffering. But right now, there was just Lauren. Lauren’s lips on hers. Lauren’s hands in her hair pulling at the elastic of her ponytail. Lauren’s body all taut and trim and so very close. No bar full of people to keep them in check.
Pain shot up her shoulder as they fell against the bookcase behind her, but she didn’t care. One second Lauren’s mouth was soft on hers, and the next she was everywhere all at once, like she’d turned the dial from tender romance to erotic onslaught. She sank her hands into Emma’s hair and held her still, kissing her with a ferocity that should’ve scared Emma, but excited her instead. It was too hard, too forceful, too overwhelming, for a first kiss, for any kiss. She went molten. There had to be something wrong with her that being trapped against a bookcase, having her body positioned, her mouth plundered, would make everything inside her clench into a fist of need. She was probably doing a terrible job of kissing Lauren back, she could barely keep her feet under her, let alone concentrate on her technique, but Lauren didn’t seem to mind. She pressed her body along Emma’s, using the tight space to her advantage, closing her in. “Don’t you dare believe that I don’t want you,” Lauren whispered against her lips, her hands moving to Emma’s hips, fitting their bodies together.
Emma’s ragged breathing and swirling head made words almost impossible. “You just want sex. You can get that from anyone.”
Lauren groaned. She bent her head and put her lips to the hollow of Emma’s throat. “I can’t have you with just anyone.”
Emma sucked in a shallow breath as Lauren kissed her there. She had no escape, wedged against the new releases section of the library. Lauren was most definitely a vertical-surface type girl. Emma’s hair had been pulled from its tie and was falling around her face. She was being handled like Lauren thought she had a right to touch her. Why the hell did that turn her on so much?