Before Jamaica Lane

4

I was frustrated.

It was a few days later and I still hadn’t quite recovered from my mortification. The object of my crush had made an appearance at the library, and as soon as I saw his blond head bobbing through the main reception area, I scurried into the admin office and persuaded my colleague Rachel that, yes, I would, in fact, prefer updating the Web site html and answering e-mail complaints instead of hanging out at the fun help desk.

Suffice it to say I was not in a great mood when I finished work that day, but as I turned the corner onto Jamaica Lane and saw a familiar figure leaning against the door to my building, my step lightened along with my mood.

Nate grinned, his dimples appearing as he lifted a white plastic carrier bag. ‘Chinese food and an alien invasion flick with some pretty-boy actor who will probably make me want to stick a pen in my eye.’

I smiled at him in confusion, the smell of the takeout causing the greedy little growlers in my stomach to wake up. ‘Didn’t you have a date tonight?’ I asked as I shoved my key in the lock and led us into the dark, dank stairwell.

‘She phoned me this afternoon to ask if I’d be okay with us going to her sister’s engagement party instead of dinner. Apparently the party was “impromptu.” ’ His unimpressed expression told me he didn’t believe it for a second. So did the air quotes.

‘A family event on the first date?’ I gasped in mock horror. ‘How dare she?’

‘You’re funny.’

‘I know.’ I flashed him a quick grin and let us into my tiny one-bedroom flat. Tiny though it was, I loved it.

The kitchen and living room were one room. The kitchen was shaped like an L and took up most of the room, leaving space for a couch, an armchair, and a television. Fortunately, the bedroom was a good size and I could fit in a couple of bookshelves, but most of my books were scattered around the apartment. Also, I didn’t have a bathroom. I had a toilet/shower room.

It worked for me.

It was cozy.

Shrugging out of my coat, I watched as Nate sauntered into the kitchen and began getting plates out and arranging our dinner for us. ‘Got you orange chicken, babe. That okay?’

He called me ‘babe’ in that rumbly, rich voice of his all the time. I tried not to shiver each time. I failed. A lot.

‘My favorite,’ I called to him as I headed into my bedroom to dump my coat and kick off my shoes. ‘There’s beer in the fridge if you want one.’

‘Got it. Do you want one or will I pour you a glass of wine?’

‘Wine, please.’

‘I picked you up a tub of Rocky Road too for later. I’ll just stick it in the freezer.’

Seriously, I could marry this guy. Strolling back out into the main room, I smiled gratefully at him. ‘I’m promoting you to best friend.’

He frowned as he poured me a glass of Rosé. ‘I thought I got that promotion ages ago.’

‘You were promoted to best friend with equal friend status to Ellie and Joss. You’ve just graduated to Jo’s level.’

‘Which is higher?’

‘Yes.’

Nate seemed to consider this. ‘Are there perks to this promotion?’

I answered gravely. ‘Yes. You get to bring me Chinese food and Rocky Road ice cream all the time.’

He looked at me blankly.

‘Don’t worry. You can handle it. You’re doing so well already.’ I rubbed his shoulder affectionately as I rounded the kitchen counter. ‘Do you want a coffee first?’

‘I’ll get it.’

‘No, no, go sit down, set up the movie. I’ll bring it over.’

Nate arranged my plate on the coffee table next to him and went about putting the movie on. He’d just relaxed back on the couch with plate in hand when I came out of the kitchen with his coffee.

‘Would you rather die after being experimented upon by aliens, or be eaten by cannibals?’ Nate asked casually, lifting a forkful of beef and rice to his mouth, his eyes never leaving the television screen.

I pondered his question as I placed his mug on the table and then curled up on the corner of the couch with my own plate. ‘Have I been given anesthesia?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Well, yeah. If I’ve been given anesthesia then it doesn’t matter which one I choose because I won’t be aware it’s happening to me.’

Nate shook his head. ‘Not true. It does matter. If aliens experiment upon you they might find something from their research that they could use to destroy the entire human race. Or infiltrate us like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Cannibals, on the other hand … well, I’m guessing all they want is … to just eat you.’

I couldn’t fault his logic. I waved my fork at him in a gesture of agreement. ‘Good point.’

‘So? Aliens or cannibals?’

‘Aliens.’

‘Me too. Fuck the human race – cannibals are creepy bastards.’

I burst out laughing, almost choking on rice as I inhaled sharply with amusement.

Nate chuckled at me, his dark eyes bright with affection. ‘You’ve got a great laugh, you know that?’

I had a very unladylike cackle of a laugh, but if he thought it was great I wasn’t going to argue. I shrugged somewhat shyly, as I always did when he threw out a random compliment, and then gestured to his bag to change the subject. ‘Aren’t you going to get your pen and paper out?’

Nodding at his phone on the coffee table, Nate answered, ‘Voice recording.’

He was recording our conversation? ‘I better shake out my sharpest wit, then.’

‘Just the usual commentary will do fine.’

Ignoring the slight insinuation that I wasn’t witty, I took another bite of chicken and moaned around it. ‘God, this is good.’

‘Yeah?’

‘So good.’

‘You like that, baby?’

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘How good is it?’

‘I think this is the best I’ve ever had, actually.’

‘That good?’

‘My God, yes.’ The chicken was so tender and the orange sauce was just that perfect balance of sweet and tangy. ‘Mmm.’

‘That’s right. Take it, baby.’

I’d closed my eyes to savor my dinner, but now they popped open to find Nate shaking with silent laughter. My eyes darted to his phone and I mentally replayed what we’d just said and how it would sound on the recording.

Grimacing, I held my plate in one hand and launched a sofa cushion at him. ‘Very funny.’

Nate laughed out loud now, batting the cushion away while holding his plate well out of range. ‘You make it too easy.’

‘You’re a bastard.’ I shoved his hip with my foot. ‘You better delete it.’

He looked back at the screen, still smiling. ‘No way. That one’s a keeper.’

It turned out Nate was right. The pretty-boy actor really did make you want to stick a pen in your eye. ‘That sucked,’ I opined as he took the DVD out of the player. ‘But I guess not every movie can be The Wizard of Oz.’ My favorite movie. ‘Or The Godfather.’ Nate’s favorite movie.

His lip curled up at the corners. ‘Is that your expert opinion? Remember, you’re on tape.’

‘That is my expert opinion.’ I yawned and tipped my head back against the couch. ‘I came up with some choice phrases throughout that movie. You hereby have my permission to steal them.’

‘Well, when discussing the acting skills of the kid playing the hero’s dying brother I think I’ll definitely be using, “Dying is supposed to be sad. I feel as sad as a high school virgin in a Japanese love hotel with a prostitute and a wad of cash.” ’

Nate had almost choked on a prawn cracker when I said that. I wrinkled my nose as he quoted me. ‘I really need to work on my editing. “Virgin with a prostitute” would have sufficed.’

‘And yet not been nearly so funny. Your waffling is what makes you funny.’

‘I do not waffle.’

‘You waffle, babe.’

Deciding to let it go, I smiled wearily at him. ‘Are you really going to write that in your review?’

‘What? That you waffle?’

I rewarded his deliberate obtuseness with a blank expression and he shook his head, his gorgeous soft, dark locks shifting with the movement. His hair was longer than usual, but it looked good. Really good. Great, even. ‘A lot of teens read the magazine.’

As he pulled his jacket on, I eased myself up off the couch and handed his cell to him. ‘Did you get everything you need for it?’

‘Enough to annihilate it with words.’ He leaned over and pressed a kiss to my cheek, the warm, spicy scent of his cologne comforting. ‘ ’Night, Liv.’

I smiled and stepped back to let him pass, then followed him to the door. ‘Thanks for dinner and my Rocky Road.’

Nate grinned back at me. ‘Thanks for the quotes.’

The door was almost closing behind him when I suddenly grabbed the handle. ‘Nate.’

Turning on the second step of my stairwell, he raised two questioning eyebrows at me.

Looking at his hair, I shrugged and leaned against the door. ‘Don’t cut your hair, okay?’

His smile was slow, cheeky, and incredibly cute, and I totally pretended not to feel it in my long-neglected woman parts. ‘Like what you see, do you?’

Laughing, I leaned back, readying to close the door. ‘Just helping a bud out. I know you like to look your best for the ladies.’

I’d almost closed the door when he said, ‘Liv.’

I peeked back out at him.

His eyes were bright with mischief. ‘Don’t stop leaving your red, wet underwear around the flat when you have a man around. We like that. Just helping a bud out, you know.’

What?

My eyes bugged out in horror as I turned to look around my apartment. Red caught my eye and mortification sank in. My lacy bra and panties were draped over the radiator, drying.

How did I not notice this?

‘Kill me, kill me now,’ I moaned, my cheeks blazing with embarrassment as I winced at the sound of Nate’s laughter echoing down the stairwell.

After I’d locked my front door I started to clean up, sporadically shooting lethal glares at the drying underwear, as if somehow it was the underwear’s fault I was stewing over the fact that Nate now knew I had a taste for sexy lingerie.

Finally I rolled my eyes and told myself to buy a sense of humor.

As I undressed in my room, pulling my gray jersey pajamas out of the dresser, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I was wearing my favorite emerald green satin lingerie set today. In the bottom of my dresser and in a wicker box in my closet, there was plenty more where it came from. I liked nice underwear, but I didn’t like looking at myself in it. I just liked the feel of it.

Frozen, I took in my wide-eyed expression as I indulged in a long look in the mirror. What I saw made me want to hunch my shoulders over. What I saw stole away the good mood Nate had put me in, and it reminded me why I would never end up with a guy like Benjamin Livingston.

It’s not that I was ugly – I knew that. It was just that when I looked in the mirror I didn’t see anything particularly special. I saw a plain face, with the exception of the high cheekbones Mom gave me and my dad’s unusual golden eyes. I saw flabby arms. I hated those flabby arms of mine. At five seven I wasn’t short, but I wasn’t tall enough for my height to carry my ever-widening hips, pretty huge ass, and little rounded stomach. Thankfully I didn’t have a thick waist, but you couldn’t tell that to the little pouch on my lower belly that refused to be flat.

After losing my mother to cancer, I knew and I believed that having a healthy body was far more important than having a skinny, fashion-friendly one. I knew that.

I knew that.

Yet somehow I still didn’t feel sexy or attractive. It was more than frustrating – it was painful – to know what was right but feel what was wrong.

Saddened that I, a smart, semi-funny, nutty, loyal, good woman, could feel so negative about myself under all the smiling and humor, I felt the sting of tears in my eyes. The way I felt about my physical appearance was bad. Really freakin’ bad.

My fists clenched at my sides as I stared at my average figure.

I was so taking up Pilates in the morning.

The smell of dinner wafting into the room was causing overproduction of saliva under my tongue. After three days of cutting out food that was bad for me and painfully enduring a Pilates instructional DVD, I was more than ready to chow down on Elodie Nichols’s hearty Sunday roast.

‘I swear to God I’m going to gnaw off a finger,’ I muttered, examining my hand.

‘Pardon?’ Ellie asked absentmindedly as she looked at photographs of the flower arrangements Braden and Joss had chosen for their wedding. The arrangements had been selected months ago, as was everything else. After a disastrous start with Ellie as wedding planner (not because she couldn’t do it, but because she and Joss had such different tastes), Braden had taken over organizing the wedding and Joss had helped with the decision making.

‘Why are you staring at those photos? Again?’

‘I would have gone with roses.’

‘Well, I went with lilies,’ Joss butted in from across the room where she was sitting on the arm of the chair where Braden was relaxing. He was talking about something with Adam. Clark was in the other armchair by the television, somehow managing to grade papers among all our chatter. His son, Declan, a twelve-and-a-half-year-old computer geek, was huddled on the floor with Cole, playing a Nintendo DS, while Mick and Cam sat on the other end of the sofa that Ellie and I were on. Jo had disappeared upstairs with Ellie’s sixteen-year-old half sister, Hannah. They were really close and tended to disappear to Hannah’s room for a chat before dinner.

Ellie smiled at Joss. ‘They’re still really pretty. I’ll just go with roses in my wedding.’

‘Do you like roses, Adam?’ Joss asked, grinning mischievously at Ellie.

Adam blinked as he was drawn out of his discussion with Braden. ‘Sorry?’

‘Roses? For your wedding? Ellie wants them.’

‘Ellie can have what she wants.’

Looking a little nonplussed, Joss asked, ‘You don’t have a say in it?’

He frowned. ‘Nope. My only job is to turn up and say “I do.” ’

Joss made a face at Braden, who looked as though he was trying really hard not to laugh. ‘How come Adam gets the job I wanted in our wedding?’

Braden’s mouth twitched. ‘You could have had that job. I did offer to do everything myself.’

‘But …’ She glanced from him to Ellie to Adam. ‘There was definite emotional manipulation involved. Ellie’s not doing that to Adam.’

Now Braden was laughing. ‘What emotional manipulation? I do believe I said something along the lines of “Well, I’ll plan the wedding, then.” Nothing more. You were the one who got all mushy and grateful and decided to help out.’

Joss’s eyebrows hit her hairline. ‘Mushy?’

‘Uh-oh,’ Ellie muttered under her breath.

I smirked and impishly added fuel to the fire. ‘Joss, you can be a little mushy. You try hard to hide it, but it slips out sometimes.’

‘Uh-oh,’ Ellie muttered. ‘Silly Olivia.’

I shrugged, smiling, as I awaited Joss’s reaction, which was almost always guaranteed to be funny.

Instead she just stared at me, seeming unable to come up with a response. Finally she slumped back against the arm Braden had wrapped around her waist. ‘I don’t do mushy,’ she murmured. ‘I do tender. There’s a difference.’

‘Tender?’ Adam raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

Now she definitely looked affronted. ‘I can do tender. Braden, tell him.’

Her fiancé grinned, and my chest did that achy, flippy thing again when he leaned over to press a loving kiss on her shoulder. God, I wanted what they had.

Joss turned to look over her shoulder at him. ‘Was that an affirmative?’

Braden laughed softly and looked up at Adam pointedly. ‘Jocelyn has her own brand of tender.’

The way he said it was filled with innuendo and she rolled her eyes and straightened away from him. ‘Now you’re just being annoying.’ She gave us an indignant stare and insisted, ‘I can do tender.’

‘I believe you,’ I replied, trying not to laugh.

Adam quickly turned the conversation back to whatever it was he was discussing with Braden while Joss pretended to ignore them by pulling out her phone and checking her e-mails.

I nudged Ellie. ‘So what do you think Hannah and Jo are talking about upstairs?’

Ellie glanced up at the ceiling and blew air out between her lips. ‘Hannah’s been quiet lately – I suspect a boy is in the picture. She looks the way she looks and is absolutely hilarious and yet she’s not been out on a date yet?’ Els looked incredulous. ‘That just doesn’t seem right. I think she’s hiding a romance from us.’

‘You must be dying to know for sure.’

‘Oh, I am.’ Ellie’s pretty pale blue eyes were wide with curiosity. ‘But the most important thing is that she has someone to talk to, even if it’s not me.’

I frowned in thought. ‘Why isn’t it you?’

‘I think she thinks I’d get caught up in it and fail to give her real advice. Hannah is more of a realist than I am. I think if it’s a boy issue she’ll feel more comfortable discussing it with Jo. Jo has a more practical outlook on these things, whereas I might get a little overenthused about it all. I mean, my wee sister’s first romance – that’s huge.’

‘You are so dying to know what is going on with her.’

‘Eh ye-uh, it’s killing me.’

‘Dinner!’ Elodie called from the dining room, and we all shot up as though we’d been starving for days.

We crammed into the dining room, inhaling the aroma of good food. Only three months ago Elodie and Clark had invested in a larger dining table because her Sunday dinners had rapidly grown in size since Joss’s arrival into their lives.

‘Work going okay?’ Dad asked me as we settled into our chairs next to each other.

‘Mm-hmm,’ I answered absentmindedly, handling the hot bowl of mashed potatoes as if they were made of pure gold.

Dad snorted. ‘You’ve got a wee bit of drool on the corner of your mouth.’

‘No, I don’t.’ I slapped the mash on my plate gleefully and passed the bowl to him, then immediately reached for the gravy.

‘What’s with the cartoon hungry eyes? You not been eating right?’

‘I’m on a stupid diet,’ I muttered.

I felt my dad tense next to me. ‘What the hell for?’

‘To torture myself. I’m a masochist now.’

‘Liv, you know I don’t like those fads. There’s nothing wrong with you.’

Oh, no. My confession had probably just bought me one of my dad’s famous food-shopping trips. When I was at college, he’d turn up at the dorm every once in a while with brown paper bags loaded with food even though I had nowhere to put it. ‘I have a full fridge at home, Dad. Don’t even think about it.’

‘Hmm, we’ll see.’

I took a forkful of buttery mash and closed my eyes in sweet relief and said, ‘So good, I don’t even care,’ except I said it around a mouthful of potatoes, so it came out more like ‘Mu muu, u mmu mmm mmm.’

‘Mick, is Dee going to the wedding with you?’ Elodie asked from the opposite end of the table. ‘Last time we spoke you said she wasn’t sure.’

I glanced at my dad, wanting to know the answer to that question too. I had to admit, even though I was a grown-ass woman of twenty-six, it was still weird seeing my dad with someone who wasn’t Mom.

About four months ago, Dad started dating Dee, an attractive artist in her late thirties. Dad had reopened his painting and decorating company in Edinburgh, M. Holloway’s, and hired Jo. He’d already built up a great reputation and had recently hired two more guys to join their team. Back when it was just him and Jo, they took a job for this wealthy young couple in Morningside who’d bought their first home. It was a fixer-upper. There they met Dee, a friend of the couple who had been commissioned to paint a fairy-tale mural in the nursery. Dad and Dee hit it off. She was the first woman he’d dated seriously since Mom died.

I was very much aware that I should be grateful to Dee. Since her appearance, Dad had less time to worry over me, which he did. A lot. When we decided to settle in Edinburgh, I made a point of getting my own apartment. We’d been in each other’s pockets for a long time, and I really needed my space – I loved my dad to pieces, but sometimes his concern made me feel like there really was something wrong with me. The addition of Dee was at once confusing and a relief. I guessed I should get to know her a little better, because all I knew at the moment was that she was nothing like Mom. My mother was a dark-haired beauty with sharp cheekbones that hinted at the Native American heritage in her blood. Her fantastic bone structure and her dark hair were the only interesting physical attributes she gave me. Somehow a merciless God had not deigned to bestow upon me my mother’s beauty. It was her beauty that caught my dad’s eye, and then it was her dry, often twisted sense of humor – which I did inherit – and then it was the calm around her. Mom could soothe any room just by being in it. She was this incredibly peaceful, relaxing person, and it emanated from her to every one around her. It was a gift.

Despite her faults – her inconsiderate choices as a young girl – Mom was unfailingly kind, compassionate, and patient, which was why she’d made a great nurse. She’d handled her illness with a grace that always brought a lump to my throat whenever I let myself remember. She was a pretty reserved person, not overly confident, but not insecure or shy. Just quiet. Innately cool. You can’t teach that kind of cool. I should know because I’m pretty sure she tried to teach it to me and it clearly didn’t stick. I had no intention of trying to browbeat my inner geek for the chance to be cool. No, thank you. Me and my inner geek were loyal to each other. We had been ever since I was eight years old and my mother told me it was okay to be whoever I chose to be.

‘Mom, Arnie Welsh keeps calling me a geek. He says it like it’s a bad thing. Is being a geek a bad thing?’

‘Of course not, Soda Pop. And don’t listen to labels. They don’t matter.’

‘What are labels?’

‘It’s an imaginary sticker people slap on you with the word they think you are written on it. It doesn’t matter who they think you are. It matters who you think you are.’

‘I think I might be a geek.’

She laughed. ‘Then you be a geek. Just be whatever makes you happy, Soda Pop, and I’ll be happy too.’

God, I missed her.

‘Dee was supposed to be visiting some family down south, but she’s canceled so she can come to the wedding.’ My dad’s answer to Elodie’s question brought me firmly back to the present.

‘Oh, that’s nice.’ Elodie smiled. ‘I really need to have her back over for drinks. And I think I might have another job for her. A woman at work is looking to have a mural painted in her conservatory. She’s converting it into her grandchildren’s playroom.’

‘I’ll tell her.’

‘Are you bringing a date, Liv?’ Clark asked me casually, honestly just making conversation.

For some reason, though, the question pricked me. I was in a weird place about my long-suffering singledom. Still, that wasn’t Clark’s fault. Pasting on a bright smile, I shook my head. ‘Nate and I decided to forgo the hassle of dates and just go together.’

I saw Jo smirk at her chicken.

‘Don’t,’ I warned her under my breath.

She glanced up at me, all innocent and doe-eyed. ‘I didn’t say a thing.’

‘Your smirk said it for you.’

‘I just think it’s nice how close you and Nate have grown.’

Sighing heavily, I looked to Cam for help and hoped he wasn’t in the mood to tease me too. ‘Cam, please tell her.’

Cam slid his fiancée a regretful smile. ‘Baby, they’re just friends. Let it go. It’s not going to happen. Not in a million years. Never. Ever.’

Ouch. That was emphatic.

‘Nate is hot.’ Hannah suddenly spoke up, and when I looked at her I found Ellie’s pretty sister frowning at me. ‘Why don’t you go out with him? I mean, he’s really, really, really hot. I’d go there.’

‘Please tell me she did not just say that,’ Adam pleaded with the table, looking green.

‘She has a name.’ Hannah raised an imperious eyebrow at him.

Joss seemed to be trying not to choke on her food. ‘Oh, she said it all right.’

‘My ears are bleeding.’ Braden looked at Joss for help. ‘They feel like they’re bleeding. Are they bleeding?’

Hannah rolled her eyes. ‘I’m sixteen, almost seventeen, I have boobs, a whole bunch of hormones, and I find guys attractive. Deal with it.’

‘Well, there goes my appetite.’ Clark shoved his plate away, looking so despondent that I felt sorry for him.

Seeing his expression, and most probably understanding it better than anyone else at the table, my dad pointed an admonishing finger at Hannah. ‘That was cruel, Hannah Nichols.’

Rather than be cowed by Dad, Hannah made her face split into a gorgeous, cheeky, remorseless grin that made a low chuckle spill from Dad’s lips.

‘Well,’ Elodie said with a sigh, ‘since Hannah has successfully ruined the appetites of her male relatives, that means more dessert for us girls. We’re having sticky toffee pudding and ice cream.’

‘Och … well … you know, I’m feeling much better all of a sudden.’ Adam gestured to Braden, whose cheeks had warmed at the mention of dessert. ‘I could go for some pudding.’

Braden nodded solemnly. ‘Funnily enough, me too.’

Determined to stock up on good food before I returned to my diet-food-laden fridge back at the flat, I wasn’t sure I wanted to share pudding with the boys. No, I wasn’t sure about that at all. I looked over at Hannah and asked evilly, ‘What was that about boobs and hormones?’