Before Jamaica Lane

6

How had cotton balls gotten stuck in my mouth?

Smacking my lips, I pushed my tongue up against my teeth and attempted to rid myself of the dryness. As soon as my lips parted, my head jerked back against my pillow and pain shot across my forehead, around my temple, and down the back of my skull.

My breath did not smell good.

As I bravely forced movement into my limbs, the ache and wave of sickness that rose from my fragile stomach were just two more pieces of evidence pointing toward one conclusion:

I wasn’t just hungover.

I was hung-the-fuck-over.

Ugghhhhhh. Groaning, I turned on my side and gently pried my eyes open. The hope was that I had been smart enough last night to leave a glass of water by my bedside before I’d passed out. As soon as my eyes hit the glass I knew smarter would have been to bring a jug of water to my bedside. I’d emptied the glass already.

For a few minutes I flicked my gaze back and forth between the glass and my bedroom door, hoping for a miracle every time my eyes swung back to my bedside table.

But no. It looked like I was going to have to get up off my drunken, smelly ass and get my own refill. I shuffled up to a sitting position, whereupon the room suddenly spun around, and with the spinning a memory slammed into my brain, knocking me back against the headboard.

Nate taking me home and getting me into bed.

That memory was like a key unlocking the rest, and as everything I’d said came flooding back in fits and starts, my cheeks burned with mortification. I grabbed at my phone in the hope that I’d find something there to prove that my brain was making up all those memories, but I found only a couple of texts from Jo and Ellie, asking me if I’d gotten home all right.

I slammed the phone back on my bedside table and then flinched in pain from the noise.

Holy. Balls.

I’d admitted to Nate I hadn’t had sex in seven years, that I’d only had sex once, that I was shit at it, and that I had a whopping big crush on Library Guy.

‘You. Are. An. Asshole, Olivia Holloway. Ass. Hole.’ I glared up at the ceiling and felt the prick of tears in my eyes. I’d told Nate something I hadn’t told anyone. Drunk off my ass, I’d ripped open my insides and shown them to the biggest player I’d ever met. Now every time I saw him, I would remember how I had laid myself bare to him.

I was a walking wound and I’d given Nate Sawyer total access to throw salt and anything else he liked on me.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I ignored the warm tears trickling down my cheeks and tried to reassure myself of Nate’s loyalty. Even though I’d exposed myself completely, all I had to do was talk to him and make him promise not to tell anyone, or to talk about it. Ever again.

This was Nate. He was my friend. My good friend. I could count on him to just put this behind us.

The buzzer to my apartment knifed through my skull and I moaned, burying my face in my pillow. After a few minutes my phone rang.

Blindly, I reached for the cell, picked it up, and shoved it against my ear. ‘What?’ I asked into my pillow, so it was more of a growl than a word.

‘Open the door,’ Nate demanded softly and then hung up.

Heat rushed to my cheeks again. I’d thought I would at least get the chance to be sober and, you know, clean, when I got to face him again. Still in my bridesmaid dress, I rolled out of bed, fell, and then stumbled my way to my ungainly feet. Nate started ringing the buzzer again and I swear to God the noise was going to make me upchuck the delicious dinner I’d had at Joss and Braden’s reception.

‘All right!’ I yelled as I picked up the entry phone and slammed my palm on the button to let him in.

To save the irritation of going through more banging, I swiped my hair off my face and clumsily unlocked the door, hearing Nate’s footsteps ringing up the stairwell as I opened it. Through the jet-black strands of my wild hair I saw his face appear.

‘You look like shit,’ he observed cheerily, looking way too sober and happy for someone who had been drinking the night before.

Skin prickling with embarrassment, I grunted at him.

He held up a bag. ‘I brought you aspirin, energy juice, and donuts.’

I must have turned green, because he sighed, brushed past me toward the kitchen, and advised, ‘You need to eat something.’

I grunted again and turned toward the bathroom. Seeing the crazy-haired lady with the globs of mascara around her eyes, pasty pallor, and lipstick smeared across her mouth, I gave a little shriek.

‘You okay?’ Nate asked warily.

My fingers shook with the hangover as I leaned across my sink. ‘I look like the Bride of Frankenstein with a massive hangover.’

‘I’d be hungover too if I’d just had to fuck Frankenstein.’

Despite myself I giggled and then groaned when the sound ricocheted painfully through my noggin, as my dad called it. I took a couple of deep breaths and then fought through the hangover tremors and the nausea to wash quickly, brush my teeth, scrape my hair off my face, and scurry into my bedroom to change into a pair of jersey pants and a T-shirt.

Nate smiled at me from behind the kitchen counter as I approached. ‘There she is.’

Unable to meet his gaze, I lowered my eyes to the glass of orange juice, bottle of energy drink, aspirin, and donuts he had laid out for me. Mumbling my thanks, I swallowed the aspirin and sat my ass down on a stool to nibble on a donut. After five minutes of total silence, Nate finally leaned across the counter and forcibly lifted my eyes to his by tilting my chin up with his fingers.

Everything from last night passed between us.

‘Please,’ I whispered, my lips trembling as I fought the tears of vulnerability. ‘Please don’t tell anyone, Nate.’

His dark eyes widened slightly. ‘So it is true?’

Instead of answering, my gaze sharpened.

Nate sighed. ‘Who am I going to tell?’

‘Nate.’

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I promise, all right.’

I went back to chewing on my donut, my skin burning from the heat of Nate’s attention.

‘How can it be possible, Liv? You’re an attractive, outgoing woman … How …’ He seemed flabbergasted. Honestly, that was kind of nice. Flattering.

Which was probably why I was finally able to meet his gaze as I replied, ‘I’ve always been shy around guys I’m into, but more than that I just wasn’t really in the game. I never have been. My mom was sick when I was a teenager. When other teenagers were experiencing boys and kisses, dates, and sex, I was busy fussing over my mom. Then she got sick again when I was in college.’ My eyes burned into his. ‘You know, Nate.’

And he did know.

An offbeat sense of humor and an inner geek weren’t the only things Nate and I had initially bonded over. We’d bonded over a third thing: the Big C.

While I lost Mom to it, Nate lost his childhood sweetheart to lymphoma. They were only eighteen when she died.

Not a lot of people knew that about Nate, and I had the feeling I was among the privileged few who had gotten the whole story out of him. It explained a lot about him.

‘It consumes you,’ I whispered. ‘You don’t care about anything else. Nothing else mattered but spending every second I could with her.’

He swallowed hard, his eyes dropping to the table. ‘I get it, Liv.’

‘By the time I got out of college I was – I am – constrained by my self-consciousness.’ I looked away from him. ‘Having such a lack of experience … it has shredded what little confidence I might have had.’

We were silent a moment as Nate seemed to process this. Finally he turned my face back again so I had to look into his eyes. I found his expression solemn and thoughtful. ‘You were really sad last night, Liv. I’ve known you for almost a year and you know me probably better than most people, and yet last night I felt like I was getting to see a huge part of you that you’ve kept from me. From everyone.’

Tears filled my eyes, my throat burning as I tried to keep them in. ‘I don’t want to be the person who looks in the mirror and hates what she sees, or be the person that moans about how she can’t interact with a guy long enough to secure a date. That’s not a good person to be, Nate. I just want to be like everyone else. Have a relationship with the opposite sex. But I can’t. It’s pathetic. But at least I’m not pathetic enough to moan about it.’

‘It’s not pathetic,’ he snapped, his eyes flashing. ‘Liv, you’ve been through a lot. You can’t expect to be normal. And to hell with normal. Normal’s boring. And you, babe, are anything but boring.’

I smiled weakly, grateful that he was trying to cheer me up, but not really feeling cheered up.

‘And this guy?’ Nate continued gruffly. ‘This guy at the library. You like him?’

Nodding, I dropped my head to my hands and groaned at my crappy situation. ‘Yeah, I like him.’

Nate contemplated this, and when it appeared he wasn’t going to say anything, I lifted my head from my hands and stared at him questioningly. He smirked at me.

‘What?’

‘You have next to no experience, and I have too much.’

My mouth twisted with annoyance. ‘It’s not really a good time to brag about that shit, Nathaniel.’

He grinned at me. ‘I’m not bragging. I’m helping.’

‘Helping?’

‘Helping you.’

‘Helping me how?’

‘Helping you get laid.’

My cheeks grew even hotter. ‘Uh … what?’

Appearing quite happy with himself, Nate leaned back against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other and his arms across his chest. ‘I know sex. You don’t. I’m going to teach you.’

Feeling a flush of … something … I blushed to my roots. ‘How are … How does that …’

‘First we work on your confidence. Next we work on your flirting. I’ll get you to a point where you feel confident enough to approach this guy you like and ask him out.’

My heart was racing at the thought. ‘I don’t think you understand the magnitude of my ineptitude when it comes to men.’

‘Well, that’s the wrong attitude to start with.’ He shook his head and leaned, palms down, on the counter, his face ducking so our noses were only inches apart. ‘I may not do flowers, hearts, and all that shit with women, but you’re my friend, and I consider myself the kind of person a friend can always turn to. Friends are important to me, Liv. And last night a friend cried in my arms and admitted she was unhappy.’ He brushed my cheek affectionately. ‘You deserve happiness, babe. What’s the harm in letting me help you try to obtain it?’

‘Nate,’ I whispered hoarsely, my throat clogged with emotion. That was so effing nice I was seconds from bursting into big goofy tears.

‘We’ll take it step by step. We’ll start off by trying to work out why you don’t feel confident enough to talk to men you’re attracted to.’

I nodded, and then winced when the movement caused a sharp streak of pain through my skull. ‘But not today, right? Because I might puke on you.’

He grinned and straightened to his full height. ‘Sexy. But no. Be ready, though.’ He winked at me as he grabbed his jacket and readied to leave. ‘Lessons start tomorrow.’

My mind was whirring with the turn the conversation had taken, so it wasn’t until he was almost walking out the door that I realized I hadn’t acknowledged what he was offering.

‘Nate.’

He stopped, his hand on the door handle. ‘Aye?’

My smile was slow but filled with appreciation. ‘Thanks.’

Nate grinned and yanked the door open. ‘Anything for you, babe.’

All throughout work I’d been a jittery mess, playing off my absentminded clumsiness as a result of day two of my epic hangover. Angus was sympathetic and let me spend most of the day in the back office doing quiet admin work, but that still didn’t stop me from messing up, and sooner rather than later, his sympathy waned. When adding html to the library Web site, I’d advertised our new student pods incorrectly. We already had pods on the first floor where large groups could sit in a booth and use the computer for working together on projects and tutorials. Additional pods had been set up on the second floor, and these accommodated fewer people. This was explained in the main text, and then there was a picture of the pod and a little tagline that should have read, ‘Maximum use: six.’ Instead of ‘six,’ I wrote ‘sex.’

We didn’t know until Janey, a young colleague of mine who was obsessed with checking out the Facebook page ‘Spotted: Edinburgh Uni Library’ – a page used primarily for students to ask out students they’d seen in the library, but also a page for them to post about students who’d pissed them off in the library, or done one of a million disgusting things noted online – discovered it on the student page. It had greatly amused our student body. It had not greatly amused my boss.

He sent me home early, where I downed about six cups of tea in hopes of finding whatever harmony it was that British people thought tea provided. No harmony to be found.

Nate was coming over to start our lessons and I was ready to upchuck what little I’d eaten all over him.

About twenty minutes before the time he was set to arrive, my dad called me. He was over at Dee’s and they were inviting me to dinner.

‘I’d love to, Dad, but I can’t. Nate’s coming over.’

‘Nate’s always over,’ Dad replied, not sounding happy about that.

‘Nate’s my friend.’

‘Hmmph.’

‘Dad.’

‘He’s a player.’

‘We’re just friends,’ I promised, although my skin was tingling with the anticipation of the possibilities for tonight. What on earth was he really going to be able to teach me? And how would he do it? I was going to die of embarrassment. I just knew it. Nate was all sex and charisma. He probably had a mouth on him. No, I knew he had a mouth on him. Would he expect me to talk to guys the way he talked to girls?

My eyes bugged out at the thought.

‘Liv, you there?’

‘Yeah, Dad.’

‘Dee’s asking if you’d like to come over for dinner on Wednesday night instead?’

‘Sounds great. I’ll be there.’

‘How are you feeling today? Still hungover? You were pretty smashed at the wedding.’

I nervously ran my fingers through my hair as I tried to think back to the reception. ‘Did I, uh, say anything embarrassing?’

Dad laughed. ‘No. You were a funny drunk, sweetheart. Who took you home, by the way? You never said when I texted you yesterday.’

‘Nate took me home. He’s decent like that,’ I pointedly reminded him.

‘If you say so.’

My buzzer sounded and I flinched. ‘Got to go, Dad. Nate is here.’

We said good-bye quickly and I hung up as I hurried to the door to let Nate in. I was standing tapping my foot impatiently as I waited for him. The sounds of his footsteps in the concrete stairwell seemed to match the rhythm of my heartbeat, and by the time he appeared in my doorway I was just about ready for passing out.

Nate reared back at the sight of me. ‘Christ, you look as though you’re about to faint.’

I gulped. Loudly. ‘Nervous over here.’

He shut the door behind him, grimacing. ‘What the hell for? It’s just me.’

I glared at him.

‘Okay. Be nervous.’ He strode past me, shrugging out of his jacket. He threw it on the couch and then walked into the kitchen to take two beers out of the fridge. I caught the one that he tossed to me. Uncapping his beer, he gestured to me with the bottle. ‘To calm your nerves.’

When he didn’t say anything for five minutes – five very long minutes – I sat down on the arm of my couch and took a sip of beer.

‘Okay, talk me through it.’ Nate suddenly spoke up and I almost coughed on my beer at the seeming loudness of his voice in my little flat. ‘What happens exactly when a guy you’re attracted to speaks to you?’

Trying not to be any more of a dork than I already was, I fought back the blush that was determined to stain my cheeks. ‘I get tongue-tied.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m very tempted to insert a sarcastic reply here, but I’ll just go with a simple shrug.’ I shrugged.

‘Don’t give me that “I don’t know, and if I did, I wouldn’t need you” bullshit. Why do you get tongue-tied?’

I was really attempting not to get pissed at him. That wouldn’t be a good start. Clenching my teeth, I answered as if it was obvious – which it so was – ‘I don’t have a lot of confidence.’

Nate considered me a moment. ‘In yourself? In your looks? In your sexual experience? What?’

‘Do you know how mortifying this is?’ I scowled at him.

Clearly annoyed, Nate narrowed his eyes at me. ‘I’m not here to make fun of you. I’m here to help you.’

We were quiet again as I gathered together the confidence to be honest. After taking a shaky sip of my beer, I looked at the floor and told him quietly, ‘You already know I lack confidence because of my minimal sexual experience, but … I also just don’t … don’t feel sexually attractive.’

His silence drew my gaze to him. He was looking at me incredulously again.

‘What?’

He put his beer down and planted his palms on the counter like he meant business. ‘Let’s start with how you don’t feel sexually attractive.’

I gulped. ‘All right.’

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’

I jerked back at his curse, confused by the angry tone of the question. ‘What?’

‘Get up,’ he replied sharply. ‘Come on, get up.’ He rounded the kitchen counter and walked past me.

I got up slowly, wondering what the hell I’d done wrong.

‘Follow me.’

Follow him … all right. My legs trembled when I realized I was following him into my bedroom. With my heartbeat pulsing in my throat, I was unable to speak as I stopped in my doorway and gazed at him.

He stood before my full-length mirror and gestured to it. ‘Tell me what you see.’

I swallowed past the heartbeat. ‘Nate …’ I took a step back and my movement shot him into action. Lightning-quick, he had hold of me and was tugging me back into the room with him until he’d maneuvered me in front of the mirror, while he stood looking into it over my shoulder.

‘Tell me. Trust me.’

Taking a deep breath, I let my eyes focus on my reflection, sweeping them over my face and then down my body and back to my face again.

‘Liv?’

‘I see … I see an average-looking woman with …’ I shrugged, so embarrassed it wasn’t funny. ‘With fl-flabby arms, a belly pouch, and a fat ass.’

When my answer was met by silence I finally gathered the nerve to look up into the mirror to Nate’s reflection. He was glowering at me again. ‘Anything good?’

I glanced back at my face. My eyes were, as always, the only thing I liked. They were striking eyes, inherited from my dad. Unusual, pale hazel, with so many flecks of gold they appeared golden in a certain light. We both had dark lashes that set the color off. We’d been told on more than one occasion, and by quite a few folks, that our eyes were exotic, almost feline. My dad worked his eyes. They were flinty and perceptive in his ruggedly handsome face. On my average face they were the only thing to enliven my features. ‘My eyes,’ I whispered softly.

‘That’s a given, babe. What else?’

Tense, I searched for an answer and then said carefully, ‘Okay, my skin. I have good skin.’

Nate smiled encouragingly at me. ‘You’ve got gorgeous skin.’ He heaved a beleaguered sigh. ‘Let’s tackle the other stuff.’ I was pretty sure he then muttered under his breath, ‘Crazy fucking women,’ before he took hold of my arm. ‘Where are these flabby arms of yours, then?’

Skin flushing the color of raspberries, I pushed the fat around my triceps.

I was rewarded with a ‘what the eff?’ look from Nate. ‘That’s not flab. It’s skin. Look, you’ve not got any definition, but you’ve also not got flab. Rule number one …’

I nodded at him to go on, my eyes wide, eager to learn.

‘… don’t use the word “flab” around a guy you want to shag. Now, if a guy’s like me he can get past the self-consciousness and decide to think it’s cute, but there are loads of guys out there who don’t think it’s cute. They want a confident woman in their bed. I don’t know if this library guy is one of those guys, so we’ll play it safe. No more flab talk.’

For some reason that really made me want to giggle, but I also wanted Nate to know I was taking this seriously, so I pinched my lips together and nodded.

‘Okay. Next.’

I blinked in confusion again. ‘Next?’

‘The supposed fat arse?’

The touch of Nate’s hand on my ass caused me to jump about ten feet, but he didn’t let go, smoothing his hand over my butt and giving it a gentle squeeze.

Whoa, okay, then.

My skin was prickling and there was a suspicious fullness in my breasts and lower belly that I adamantly tried to ignore.

‘Not fat.’ Nate leaned close to my ear, speaking in a low voice that did nothing to abate the physical response in my body. ‘Curvy. And I’ll let you in on a wee secret: There are still men out there that like a woman to be soft under their hands, to have curves, hips, tits and arse.’ He tapped my butt gently with the palm of his hand. ‘It’s a good arse, babe. I don’t want to hear you refer to it as anything else.’

Shock rooted me to the floor. It wasn’t just the very cool things he was saying; it was the rush of tingles that shivered through me as he caressed my butt and moved his hand upward, sliding it under my T-shirt, and around my waist to caress my stomach. I sucked in a deep breath.

There was no ignoring the fact that he was turning me on. I really needed him to not know he was turning me on.

Nate unwittingly saved me. His hand dipped downward, shaking me out of the little sensual haze he’d put me in when I realized where he was heading.

For my belly!

I clutched at his hand to stop him, but when our eyes met in the mirror his expression was admonishing. He gave me a little shake of his head. ‘Let go, babe.’

I shook my head back at him.

‘Liv.’

‘Nate …’

His expression instantly softened at the panic in my voice. ‘Trust me.’

Trembling, I let go of his hand and sucked in another breath as he stepped even closer to me, the heat of his front brushing against my back. And suddenly I was sucking in my breath for an entirely different reason as the rough tips of his fingers glided slowly down my stomach.

I had never been more thankful for a T-shirt bra than I was at that moment. Nate’s touch was turning me on so much that my nipples had hardened to little points.

Oh, boy.

He didn’t need to know that his lessons were causing that kind of reaction in me. For the first time since we’d met, I really wished my friend wasn’t so goddamn sexy.

Flattening his hand, Nate smoothed it over my belly, back and forth, learning my shape, until my cheeks could have guided a lost sailor home, they were so red.

‘Is this the barely there pouch?’

I nodded, unable to speak, sure that if I did it would come out all Greta Garbo and sex. That would definitely give away my hormonally charged state.

Nate’s hand slid back over my stomach to my hip, where it stayed. He gave me a reassuring squeeze. ‘Feels good. Soft. Sexy.’ He murmured in my ear again, and I tried and failed not to shiver in response. ‘Your skin is like silk.’

In my head I was panting and in reality I was really close to panting, so when he pulled back abruptly it was almost like he’d thrown a bucket of ice water over me.

Thank you. I needed that. I shook myself, giving my cheek an inner slap. Snap out of it!

‘Now,’ Nate began, his voice all controlled and back to normal, ‘I’m a man, and as you know, I don’t say shit I don’t mean. So here’s what I see.’

Oh, God.

‘Great hair, stunning eyes, gorgeous skin, fucking knockout smile, great tits, nice arse, and long, sexy legs. Fuckable. Very, very fuckable.’

My lips twitched with laughter, and I had to admit to feeling a rush of real pleasure sweep over me at his analysis. ‘Succinct.’

Nate shrugged as he took in my bright-eyed expression. ‘Just trying to get the point across that there are not very many men who wouldn’t want to fuck you. And this is from a man many women find attractive.’ He flashed a quick, arrogant grin.

I rolled my eyes at him. He knew damn well how good-looking he was. I imagined that when you looked like a movie star it was almost impossible not to know how good-looking you were. ‘Of course you’re attractive.’

‘Really?’ He crossed his arms over his chest, leaning against the footboard of my bed as his eyebrows dipped together in consternation. ‘I thought you got tongue-tied around men you found attractive?’

Is his vanity pricked?

Inside I was gleefully guffawing at the idea. On the outside I was a lot nicer. ‘You cocky bastard, you know every straight woman on the planet finds you attractive.’

He rewarded me with another arrogant smile, his dimples popping in that delightfully sexy way that could be really distracting. ‘So you don’t get tongue-tied all the time?’

‘You’re different. You and I are friends, so I try not to think about you that way.’

‘Back at you, babe.’

Hmm. Nice. I immediately plummeted from the high I’d been on. I didn’t know what to say to that.

Nate looked like he wanted to laugh. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’ I frowned.

His eyes drifted slowly over my body in a way that had me clamping my legs together in denial. ‘Think about you that way.’

My heart slammed against my chest. ‘Really?’

He snorted. ‘Last time I checked, I’m a man and you’re an attractive woman. Just because we don’t fuck doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it. That’s how men work.’

Unsuccessfully hiding a smile, I nodded casually. ‘Back at you. But,’ I hurried to explain, ‘because you’re my friend … I don’t know. I’m just comfortable with you. There’s no sexual pressure, so I can just be me around you.’

Nate took this in and then straightened from his position against the footboard. ‘I’m working the next few days, but on Thursday night I’ll come back over and we’ll continue.’

I bobbed my head in agreement.

‘I hope you’re feeling more confident.’ He shot me another cocky smile.

Sighing, I looked back at the mirror. ‘It’s nice to know there are guys out there who might think how you think, Nate. But not all guys are like you. I’ve seen you.’ I smiled sadly back at him. ‘You find women, in general, attractive. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a great thing. I wish all men were as easy to please.’

Nate shook his head, looking a little impatient. ‘I’m not attracted to all women. Believe me.’ He took a step closer to me, so close I had to tilt my head back a little to meet his eyes, eyes that now smoldered in a way that caused the breath to hitch in my throat. ‘If you were just some woman in a bar, I’d pick you out from all the others, take you home, and fuck you so hard you wouldn’t be able to walk straight in the morning.’

I gulped.

In fact, I think I might have had a little mini-orgasm.

‘Olivia?’

‘Got it.’ I managed a whisper. ‘You think I’m attractive.’

His lips twitched again, his dark eyes bright with amusement. ‘But do you?’

Eyes wide, I nodded rapidly. ‘Oh, I’m definitely getting there now.’

Breaking out into a huge grin, Nate smacked my ass playfully before heading for the door. ‘Good. See you Thursday, babe.’