by Julie Kriss
“So? I’ll just wait a few days, then tell them you dumped me.” I leaned toward her a little. “When was the last time you went to a party, anyway? I told you, you’re missing out. You should try having some fun.”
For a second, something flickered in her expression. Temptation. And, I thought, familiarity. Good girl Evie had been to a party before. Maybe not recently, but she had. Maybe a lot of parties. And she’d liked it. Good girl Evie had maybe done a few bad things in her time.
Then she closed her expression off and put on her pinched, nice-girl scowl. “Fine, jerkoff,” she said. “I’ll do it. But just for revenge. And I’m bringing mace.”
“You really know how to show a guy a good time,” I said. “I’ll pick you up at nine.”
Eight
Evie
There was too much sunlight.
I rolled over in bed. I was warm and comfortable, but there was something… wrong about this bed. Something unfamiliar. I rubbed my aching head and stared up at the ceiling, which was also unfamiliar.
It was not my ceiling.
This was not my bed.
My breath stopped in my chest as everything came back to me.
Last night. The party. Oh, God.
It was in a big house, and there had been a lot of people there. Interesting people and great music. There had been fruity drinks, and then shots. New Evie never did shots, but Old Evie… Old Evie came out after the third fruity drink, and downed all of them.
The night had gone downhill from there.
Nick had looked hot as hell in jeans and a leather jacket. We’d acted like a couple, like we’d agreed to, sticking close, but he’d followed the rules. We played it just right, him leaning in to me, saying things in my ear, almost touching me, never going far. He’d introduced me to his friends, who had looked at me with raised eyebrows, because every single one of them knew who I was. Knew who I’d been dating until a few days ago.
It was perfect. We’d caused a quiet little sensation among those people. After the wound-up stress I’d been feeling, it was freeing, and I’d been excited and—okay—really turned on. And his friends were fun. And I’d had a few more drinks, and those shots, then we’d—and then we’d—
I sat bolt upright, making my brains slosh in my head. I was drunk last night, but not so drunk that I didn’t remember. I remembered everything. And Nick and I—
Oh, shit.
I looked around. I started with the window, which showed the sun just coming up. Then the floor, which was strewn with clothes—Nick’s jeans, his jacket, his motorcycle boots thrown in the corner. I very purposefully didn’t look at the body next to me on the bed. If I didn’t look, it wasn’t happening.
Quietly, I lifted the covers and peeked down at myself. I was wearing underwear and a T-shirt—Nick’s T-shirt. It was dark gray with a faded Harley-Davidson logo on the front. I remembered that too—spilling one of the fruity drinks on my shirt, so Nick had given me his to wear instead while he grabbed a shirt from the guy hosting the party. The fruity drink had soaked through the shirt to my bra, so I’d taken that off, too.
Yes, I had done that. I had taken off my freaking bra. At a party with a bunch of strangers and a hot, strange man. I could practically hear my mother screaming in the back of my brain. Not again, Evie!
Don’t panic. Right? Just keep cool. So I’d danced braless at the party to House of Pain’s “Jump Around,” and then we’d gone to Josh’s place, and Nick and I had toilet papered Josh’s nice townhouse condo in his nice neighborhood and let the air out of the tires of his precious Mustang, and then I’d prank called him. And then we’d come back here, and we’d stripped and passed out, and now I was in bed with Nick Mason.
This was not a problem. Everything was fine. It was all fine. This could be contained.
Something landed on the bed, and I jumped. A dog—a tiny dog—climbed onto my lap and started lapping my face with its small, warm tongue. I sputtered and tried to push it away, but it persisted.
The memory came back from last night. The dog greeting us, Nick saying something about having to take her out. He’d gone out briefly while I stripped and got in bed. He said the dog was a girl, and her name was—
“Scout.”
The voice came from the other side of the bed. A low growl, muffled by pillows. My whole body tensed, my pulse going crazy. Do not look. You are not in bed with Nick Mason right now if you do not look. Do not—
“Scout,” he growled again. “Fuck off.”
Scout did a happy jig at the sound of his voice, her buggy little eyes wide with bliss, her tongue lolling out. Her whole body shook with joy. I had never seen a Chihuahua in real life before. It was completely absurd.
“I’ll feed you in a second,” Nick said. “Just chill.”
Scout sat next to my knee, placing her tiny bottom on the comforter and waiting, her tongue still out. She tried to be still.
The room went quiet again. Nothing changed. Because this was happening—I was really here.
I took in the bedroom. It was big and spacious, with a high ceiling—Nick lived in one of those loft places. There was the huge bed, and a window, and a single dresser, with clothes piled everywhere on the floor. The source of Nick’s many worn and mostly unwashed T-shirts, I figured. The entire place screamed Guy living alone.
And the guy who lived here, alone, was still in the bed next to me.
I turned my head and looked at him.
He wasn’t looking at me, thank God. Nick was lying on his stomach, sprawled out, his face buried in the pillows. The blanket partly covered him, but I could see one smooth, gorgeous shoulder blade, one spectacular bicep—both covered in an intricate pattern of ink. A toned leg was hooked over the edge of the blanket, his tawny skin contrasting with the white comforter. I could see his dark tousled hair, the back of his neck. And I could see—he was wearing boxer briefs. Black ones. Visible against the white of the blanket was one perfect, unbelievable male ass.
I stared at it for a minute, helpless and ass-struck. It was impossible not to stare. It really was that kind of ass.
Had we—? No. We hadn’t had sex. My memory was clear. We might be in bed together, in our underwear, but nothing had happened. No kissing, no touching, no making out. For a self-professed dirty guy, Nick had followed the rules. In his own crazy way, he’d actually been a gentleman. A hot, drunk, dangerous, gorgeous-assed gentleman.
Where the hell were my clothes?
And then it hit me. Work. It was Friday, and I had to go to work.
I must have made a sound, because from deep in his pillows, Nick said, “Evie. Are you panicking?”
Scout wiggled again at the sound of his voice and made a little whine.
“Um,” I said, my voice hitching. “Possibly.”
“Don’t,” he growled. “You remember what we did last night?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You remember what we didn’t do?”
I nodded, then remembered he wasn’t looking at me. “Yes.”
“You can get up,” he said. “I won’t look.”
I slid my feet out over the edge of the bed and got up. Scout looked at me hopefully, but stayed next to Nick, since he was her food source. And, obviously, her religion. She looked at his unmoving form like the sun rose and set on it.
I walked around the bed, looking for my clothes. My stained shirt and bra were gone—I didn’t think we even brought them home. I found my jeans, my socks, the ankle boots I’d worn. True to his word, Nick kept his face hidden in the pillows and didn’t peek. I grabbed my clothes and ducked into the bathroom.
I steeled myself and looked in the mirror. I was a disaster: my hair on end, my makeup smeared, my eyes bleary. Worse, I was trapped in a man-bathroom with no supplies. I splashed water on my face, tried to finger-comb my hair. Now I just looked wet and awful. I looked around. The bathroom was spacious, with a big glassed-in shower and a large vanity counter. Nick had a very nice place, which meant he was prob
ably rich, just like Josh had said. Normally I’d think it impolite to invade someone’s privacy, but these were extreme circumstances. I pulled open one of the vanity drawers.
Condoms. It was full of condoms.
I slammed it shut, panicking. Jesus, how many condoms did one man need? I obviously wasn’t the first woman to wake up in his bed, though by the looks of it I was the first one he hadn’t had sex with.
That thought made me queasy for reasons I didn’t want to explore, so I pulled open the next drawer. Hair gel—Nick didn’t wear hair gel—and shaving cream. A stick of deodorant. A tiny black comb, which I scraped through my hair. I didn’t see any evidence of Gina here—no leftover makeup, no Tampax. I wondered if she’d stayed over often.
The third drawer was the jackpot: a tube of toothpaste and an unopened spare toothbrush. I ignored the fact that the toothbrush was probably kept for his one-night stands and tore it open, quickly brushing my teeth.
I was just spitting and rinsing when I heard my cell phone ring in the bedroom. I must have left it on the floor. I had no idea who was calling me this early, and then I heard Nick’s voice: “Evie’s phone. Hello?”
Oh, no. He didn’t.
“This is Nick,” he said, obviously answering the other person’s question. “Who’s this? Oh, hey. She’s in the bathroom. She just got up.”
I had a terrible, terrible feeling of dread down my spine.
“No,” Nick said. “I’m not the nice man from the bank.”
Oh, shit.
Mom.
I dropped the toothbrush and ran out of the bathroom, leaving my clothes on the floor. Nick was lying in bed, on his back now, the covers pushed off him, propped up on the pillows, my phone to his ear. Scout had pressed herself into his armpit. I ignored the jaw-dropping sight of his boxer-brief-clad body and drew a line across my throat. The universal sign for Cut it out.
Nick saw me and frowned. “Sorry, but the nice man from the bank is an asshole,” he said in his bar-band voice. “He cheated on her.”
I launched myself onto the bed and grabbed for the phone.
I landed on his hard body, and he didn’t even flinch. He just kept his grip on the phone as Scout jumped up and ran to safety. “Stop!” I hiss-whispered at him.
“Where are we?” he said, echoing my mother’s question. “My place, I guess. In my bedroom. Who am I? I’m—”
I wrenched the phone away from him. “Mom!” I said into it.
“Who,” my mother said, her voice breathless with shock. “Who… is that man?”
How to explain my mother? She was the nicest, kindest person I’d ever known. She was sweet and gentle and a great mother. She was also stuck in a time warp, where modern dating didn’t happen. Nothing about my current situation—literally nothing—would make sense to her. “It’s… it’s no one, Mom. It’s nothing.”
Nick raised his eyebrows at that, and I realized I was lying on him. Directly on top, straddling his hips. He was freaking sculpted, hard as marble. And I was pressing against… I could feel… He gave me an amused smile, like he was watching me figure it out, and I pushed off him, using my free hand as leverage against his shoulder. The hot, gorgeous skin of his shoulder.
“That was not no one,” my mother said in my ear. “Evie, it’s seven thirty in the morning and you’re with a man. A man who is not your boyfriend. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Nothing’s happening,” I tried to explain, disentangling myself from the bedsheets and running for the bathroom again. I gave him a pretty good show of my backside as I went. I realized I was dressed a lot like Gina had been the other night, except the shirt was Nick’s, I had panties on, and my ass was a lot bigger than hers. So maybe not quite as sexy. “I mean, nothing happened,” I said, closing the bathroom door behind me. “He’s just a guy I know. We were just sleeping.”
God, that sounded like every lame excuse made to a mother since the beginning of time. Except it was true.
“Evie.” My mother sounded confused and disappointed at once. She didn’t mean to be judgmental, I knew—she just didn’t get it, and the last thing I wanted to do was explain modern sex lives—my sex life—to my mother. “What was he saying about Josh? Are you not with him anymore?”
“No, I’m not,” I said. Normally, I would have waited until at least Christmas to break this to her, then say it had happened months ago. Thanks a lot, Nick. “He, um, he found someone else. And he was dating her behind my back.” I used the word dating instead of fucking, because I had never used the word fucking in front of my mother in my life. “So it’s over.”
“I can’t believe that. Are you sure it’s true? It’s so strange. He seemed like such a nice man. I had high hopes for you two.”
Marriage, babies—that was what relationships were for in my mother’s world. Josh had seemed like a good prospect for both. “Yeah, well, I guess not,” I said.
“You seem to have… found someone else, though. And I don’t mean to pry, but… already?”
“No, Mom, I told you, he’s just—”
“No one,” Mom said. “That’s what you said. But I know you, Evie. If you’re in a man’s… bedroom”—she had to force the word out, it was so shocking—“at seven thirty in the morning, it’s because you’re very serious about him. It’s because you have feelings. That’s the kind of girl you are. That’s how I raised you.”
I closed my eyes. “Oh, God, Mom.”
“Bring him to dinner on Sunday,” Mom said. “I want to meet him.”
“No way,” I said, my panic rising even higher. “Absolutely not.”
“Well, I’m cooking for four,” Mom said. “That’s what I was calling you about. I was asking if you were going to bring Josh on Sunday. I was hoping to catch you before work. But now you’re bringing—what did he say his name was?”
“Mom, please.”
“Evie.” My mother was never stern or angry, but for some reason when she said my name like that, I always caved. “This is surprising, I admit, but I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. This young man is obviously very important to you. Tell me his name and bring him to dinner.”
“His name is Nick,” I said weakly.
“Five o’clock on Sunday,” Mom said. “I hope he’s hungry.”
Nine
Nick
While Evie hid in the bathroom, trying to explain me to her mother, I got out of bed, pulled on some sweatpants, and fed Scout. She did another happy jig around her kibble bowl—happy jigs were Scout’s specialty—and dug in, pulling each kibble out one by one and dropping it on the floor before eating it.
I put on some coffee, made toast, poured some juice. I wasn’t too hung over, because I’d had less to drink than Evie did. Someone had to keep their head, and last night, it wasn’t Evie.
My instinct had been right. Evie knew how to party, and she’d learned it somewhere. I wondered where.
Eventually she came out of the bathroom. She was dressed—no more sexy, curvy ass on display, though it was burned into my memory now—and she still had my shirt on. She had no bra on, I knew. I had spent a lot of time with braless Evie, considering I’d just met her. I approved. Her tits were smoking hot under there.
“You answered my phone!” she said, her cheeks flushed.
I had. Why had I done that? Curiosity, maybe. Also, I had half hoped it was Bank Boy calling. “It was just your mom,” I said. “No big deal.”
“No big deal!” She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, and I realized she had her uptight expression back on, her jaw tight, her brows furrowed. That expression had disappeared right before the shots last night, and I didn’t like the fact that it was back. “My mother doesn’t understand.”
“Understand what?” I asked, pushing a piece of buttered toast across the counter at her. “That her grown up, single daughter might fuck a guy? It seems pretty understandable to me.”
“I did not fuck you,” she said.
“Believe me, I kno
w.”
“She thinks I’m bringing you to dinner on Sunday! I was supposed to bring Josh, and now somehow I’m bringing you!” She glanced away, panicked. “It’s fine,” she said. “I can control this. I’ll just make up an excuse.”
“Wait a minute.” I leaned a hip against the counter. “Why am I coming to dinner? You actually said yes?”
“No. I didn’t. I mean, I said—” She blew out a breath. “I didn’t say anything, and she just assumed you’re coming. That’s what she does.” Her gaze traveled down my bare chest, my stomach, and sort of froze there, distracted. Then she pulled herself together and dragged her gaze away. “It’s a bad idea, right? Like, really bad.”
“Yeah I’d fucking say so,” I said.
She pulled her gaze back up to my face. The corner of her mouth twitched. “Never been to a girl’s mom’s for dinner before, huh Nick?”
That was putting it mildly. I’d rather go to Guantanamo Bay. “No,” I said.
“Yeah. You’re right. I’ll just tell her you have leprosy. Or that you’re an astronaut, and you took a five-year mission to Mars. Otherwise she’ll bug me about you until Christmas.”
“Or just say Hey, Mom, I’m a grownup, none of your business,” I said. “What does it matter what she thinks?”
That just made Evie look panicked again. “What my mother thinks is important,” she said. “You don’t understand.”
She had sounded like a normal enough lady to me. But I knew nothing about having parents, since mine never talked to me if they could help it. “Never mind,” I said. “I’m not the guy to ask for advice. Do you have anything on your phone from Bank Boy?”
“No,” she said, taking a bite of toast. “Why?”
“That’s what last night was about, right?” I said. “Making him jealous? I think we did a pretty good job, considering we didn’t even make out.”
Her cheekbones flushed red again, and I knew she was remembering last night, just like I was. We’d put on a hell of a good show. We’d been close, flirty, intimate. It had been very relationship-y. I hadn’t thought it would be fun, but with Evie—especially drunk, relaxed Evie—it was easy. I knew that the Asshole News Network had been busily broadcasting everything to Gina. I already had six texts from her on my phone, but I didn’t tell Evie that.