“I’m glad you guys worked it out, too. Are you…?” I raised my eyebrows.
“We’re together. I’m not going to move back in when I go home to Hawaii, but we’re heading in that direction.” He lowered his voice. “Before I leave San Francisco, can you help me pick out a ring?”
“Joey! Of course!” I kissed him on the cheek, and I heard a very angry throat clear.
“I’m Joey’s girlfriend, Kiana,” the woman spat out. I quickly turned to her. “You must be Scarlett. Joey has told me all about you. How he lived with you.”
“I talked about you a lot,” he said, smiling. Kiana did not smile.
Oh Joey, you idiot. I shook her hand and we moved to sit down. “He’s told me so much about you, too,” I said, to pour oil on the waters. “About every other word out of his mouth is ‘Kiana.’ Ever since I met him.”
“Really?” She looked at Joey, and her angry face softened.
“I thought you were a saint, for sure,” I mentioned.
She even laughed a little. “No saint. Definitely, no saint.”
We had a nice time after that. Kiana wasn’t a saint, and she wasn’t the physical embodiment of a goddess, as Joey had described her as. She was a nice, pretty woman, a little loud, maybe, and with unfortunate taste in dresses. But Joey looked at her like he’d never seen anything better in his life, and he held her hand under the table.
We talked about how he was doing, physically, because Kiana wanted to know from Nate. “I know you won’t bullshit me,” she said. “Tell me, because Joey only says things are great.”
“I think things are great,” Nate admitted. “I have to agree with him.”
“See? The new medicine is good, everything is good,” Joey assured us.
“You’re not cured, though,” Kiana said, her face crinkling in concern. It was written right there, how much she loved him, how worried she was. “You have to be careful still. Yes, Joey? You’re not going to start taking chances, not taking the medicine, drinking?”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I’m going to do right, honey. I’ll show you.”
If I’d had doubts whether Kiana deserved him or really wanted their relationship, they were gone after this dinner. It was as plain as the ugly flowers on her dress that they were in love, that they were meant to be. I watched them both carefully, looking for signs of problems, but I didn’t see any. Nate and I drove them back to their hotel.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Joey asked as we said goodbye, then looked back and forth between Nate and me. “I don’t want to get in the way.”
“We’ll see you tomorrow,” I told him firmly.
“Come home from work before midnight!” he urged me. “Nate and I will cook a good dinner.”
Work. I hadn’t called in all day, I hadn’t gotten back to any of the people who were probably desperate to bother me with their issues, I hadn’t even read one thing from Pascale, and we generally didn’t go 15 minutes without some kind of contact. “See you tomorrow,” I told Joey again, and goodbye to Kiana.
“I wonder if I’ll see her again,” I thought aloud when we were in my car, back on our way to my apartment.
“Of course you will,” Nate told me. He put his hand on my knee. “You’ll see her when you visit me.”
Joey was doing so much better. He said his doctors were going to keep track of him when he went home, working with the doctors in Hawaii whom he had seen before. He wouldn’t need to be here, and then, neither would Nate. He would be leaving, and probably soon.
I unclicked my seatbelt and Nate immediately told me to put it back on. “Just a second,” I told him.
“Scarlett, what? Wait, hold on, not while I’m driving.” He grabbed my hand, which was already heading down his pants. “We’re almost home.”
“It’s too far.” I moved my fingers under his, rubbing, and he groaned a little.
He put my hand against his chest and pressed it firmly in place. “When we’re in Hawaii, there will be wide open roads with no other cars. We can pull over and go at it to our hearts’ content. In this city, with everyone around us, I don’t want to put on a show. And if you do that while I drive, I’m going to put more dents in your nice car than you ever did.”
Why did he keep talking about Hawaii, leaving me? I sat back in my seat and slowly put on my seatbelt.
“I’m not leaving you. I’m talking about us being there, together,” Nate told me, his eyes on the road.
“Uh huh.” I twisted in my chair.
“If you tell me right now that you want to go for a run, I’m going to tie you to the bed.”
“That might be something we’d both enjoy,” I said, and he groaned again.
“I’m driving faster,” he told me. “How fast can this go?”
“I’ve done over a hundred, but that was on the highway.”
“Scarlett Begonia, please say that isn’t true. And if it is, never do it again.”
I turned to him, my mouth open. “You know?”
“Uh huh.”
“How do you know my middle name? I never tell anyone!”
“You happened to leave your passport lying open on the floor when you got back from Los Angeles. I picked it up and saw. I looked,” he admitted. “Scarlett Begonia, just like the old song.”
“In his distant youth, my dad was a Deadhead, I think just to annoy my grandmother. You can’t tell anyone. Not Joey, or anyone! I have it crossed out on my driver’s license but when I did it to my passport, they made me get a new one.”
Nate shook his head. “Yeah, they don’t like it when you alter official documents. You’re something else. I happen to love your name.”
“My dad did, too. That’s why I won’t change it. I’m glad you like it, Nathaniel Tor. And now, never, never say it again. It’s between us, ok?”
“I won’t tell a soul.” He made a cross over his heart. “I’ll keep your secrets.”
I swallowed. “Just drive faster.” He nodded and brought my palm to his mouth to kiss it.
We held hands to run up the stairs, and as soon as I closed the apartment door behind us, he pressed me back against it, his hands moving up and down my body, touching me everywhere. By the time we made it back to the bedroom, our clothes were strewn along the hallway behind us. Nate stood behind me, his hands gently kneading my breasts, and I let my head fall back onto his chest, letting him hold me. He bent and kissed my cheek.
“I’ll go back home, but we’ll figure it out,” he told me. “Stop thinking what you’re thinking.” His arm anchored me against his body. “No, don’t pull away. Stay where you are.” His one hand continued to massage my breast, but his other stroked down my stomach, tracing lightly between my legs. My knees wobbled as pleasure surged up around his fingertips.
“What if I come?” I asked, my words gasping from me.
His fingers delved deeper. “Let me feel it.”
My hips writhed against his hand, pushing myself closer. I was so close. So close—
Nate moved me onto my hands and knees on the bed, his hand still working inside me. And when he entered me, I did come, almost crying. We lay on our sides after, and he made circles on my nipple with his palm.
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“Hm?” He picked up his head and looked down at me.
“When I said, ‘What if I come?’ The orgasm wasn’t what I meant. But that was very, very good.” More like mind-melting.
“You were talking about coming to Hawaii,” Nate said. He nodded and rubbed his cheek against my hair.
“I was already on my way when you got here,” I explained. “I’ve always loved it there. I hate things here. Why not try somewhere new?”
“You need to consider it more. Moving your whole life isn’t something you decide to do in the morning then pack your bag and go that afternoon.”
I understood him perfectly. My body stiffened and I tried to scoot away from his arms, but they just held me tighter.
“
No, stop thinking that. I’m not telling you I don’t want you to move,” he said. “I’m saying I want you to think it through. What it would mean to be on an island two thousand miles out in the ocean, away from your family, for example.”
“Brooks is leaving.”
“You’d be going farther.”
“We’re all splitting up, splitting apart. My mom will probably spend most of her time in Texas when Brooks and Lanie are there. She’s talking about buying a little house so she can come and go and not bother them. Zara—I don’t know what she’s going to do, but she has her own life going on.”
Nate kissed my head again.
“I won’t bother you,” I said. “I would do my own thing. I’ve been thinking a lot about a new job, and I have an idea that would keep me really busy, with my old roommate, Daria. You would hardly know I was there.”
“I think I’ll know. I plan to have you naked in my bed each night.”
I turned on my back so I could see his face in the dim light. “Really?”
This time he kissed my mouth. “Really. Haven’t you noticed that I like being around you? Joey and I didn’t have to spend almost every waking moment back at this apartment when you weren’t at the office.”
“I guess you were here a lot. When you weren’t driving off to see that medic.”
He kissed me, harder. “We went out twice, and she’s a nice woman. But then I told her that I was pretty crazy about someone else, so I wouldn’t be able to see her anymore.”
I picked up my head to kiss him back, and hooked my leg around his to pull his body on top of mine.
Nate settled his weight on his elbows. “I want you in Hawaii. But I don’t want you to come if you’re running away.”
I reached and pulled his head down to mine again. I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, but I wanted to be doing it with Nate, right now, and always.
∞
I stared at the clothes racks. Once again, I couldn’t pick anything, and once again, it was because I just didn’t want to go. I held a shirt in front of myself, then another, studying the effect in the mirror. It was a no, and another no. “I can’t get dressed for work,” I announced.
“Go late,” Nate told me, handing me a cup of the good coffee he made each morning. “You don’t have to be there at the crack of dawn.”
“I don’t have to go at all,” I mentioned. “I could just quit and disappear.”
He met my eyes in the mirror.
“I won’t do that, though,” I sighed. “I’ll go in and talk to Pascale and explain. I don’t want her to stick the intern with everything I’ve been doing. His head would explode. But maybe I’ll suggest that he take on some of it.” I warmed to the idea. “I could keep helping him out. I could continue working on some projects from…wherever I end up living.”
“The Big Island,” Nate told me. “That’s where you’ll be living.”
I tried to keep myself from smiling. “Well, I guess there is a certain draw.” He kissed the back of my neck. “I meant the weather,” I explained. He bit and I squealed. “Maybe I’ll go in late. There are things to do here to stay busy.” I reached behind both of us to feel his ass a little. God, it was good.
“Joey will be here any minute,” Nate pointed out. But he moved his hips so that I could feel him growing hard against my butt. He felt huge and I started to feel very ready myself as well. “It wouldn’t be good to welcome him home with the sounds of you screaming my name.”
“Maybe we should exercise instead. Actual exercise and not…” I sighed. His tongue was back on my ear.
Nate picked up his head. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’m stopping now.” His hand ran over my ass and squeezed. “Ok, now I’m really stopping. We’ll continue that later. Put on your clothes and leave the weapons here,” he told me.
When I came out into the living room, pulling my hair into a high ponytail, Nate was sitting at the table, talking on the phone. He looked serious, concerned. “I will,” he said. “I’m not making any promises, but I understand. Yes. Bye.” He put it down and looked up at me, still very serious.
I finished my hair. “Everything ok?”
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
This time it was Nate running fast, to the point that I finally tugged on his shirt. “Excuse me, are we in a race?” I wasn’t feeling the need to punish myself this morning.
He did slow down, but he also turned and looked at me, his face still stern and now anxious. “Sorry. It really doesn’t work to run away, right?”
I shrugged. It was my main strategy, and I did ok with it.
“I have to talk to you about something and I don’t know how to bring it up.”
“Oh, my God! Are you getting back together with her?” I demanded.
He stopped dead. “What? Who?”
“The other woman. That medic. Was that who was on the phone with you just now?”
“Scarlett, no! No, we weren’t—no. Of course not.” His eyebrow drew down and he winced a little. “That was your brother on the phone.”
“Brooks?” I was now totally confused. “Why was he calling you?”
“He talked to your mom yesterday after you told him you were moving. He was afraid you were becoming suicidal or something, Scar.”
“No, of course not. I called him to say I was fine!”
“You said you loved him, and Brooks got afraid it was some kind of goodbye. He pretty much demanded that your mom tell him what was wrong with you.” He picked up my hands. “Your mom told him some things. She said—”
I stepped back, fast. “No. That’s none of his business.”
Nate came forward and took my hands again. “Your mom told him this morning that someone hurt you before Christmas and put you in the hospital. He’s having a fit. He thought you were in Hawaii with me, and your cell phone is off, so he looked up my number. I told him that you’re ok. That you would talk to him, if and when you’re ready.”
I felt dizzy. Brooks knew? Nate knew? My mom was telling everyone? “I’ll never forgive my mother for this. Never! She promised me she would never tell.”
“Scarlett, he said he’s been trying to get your mom to talk to him for months. She didn’t get into details. She didn’t tell him—”
I took off running toward home. God damn it! Brooks knew? Everyone would know. Everyone at that brunch had been talking about it. Now Nate, too. I stopped abruptly because my stomach lurched and I thought I was going to be sick.
Nate was right alongside me. He put his hand on my back. “Scarlett, please—”
I ran again, gagging a little, but not caring if I threw up all down my shirt. Back to my building, back to my apartment, where I tried to shut the door but Nate was still right there. “Go!” I told him.
He shook his head.
“I didn’t want anyone to know. I don’t want my brother to know, or my sister! Or you.”
He waited. He didn’t look angry, or disgusted, or like he wanted to leave because he couldn’t stand to look at me. So I talked a little more. “They called my mom from the hospital, but I didn’t want her. I didn’t want to have anyone there with me. I only went to the ER because I didn’t know what they had given me. It was something in a drink. I didn’t take it on purpose.” I gulped for air. “I’m not an idiot, ok? I’m not so stupid to take drugs in a club and then go off to a hotel room with a bunch of men I don’t know. I’m sure I didn’t do that. I couldn’t have done that.”
Nate nodded. I reached for his shirt to hold the fabric and he took my hand instead, squeezing it hard.
“I don’t remember much. I just remember waking up.”
“What did the police do?” Nate’s voice was as hard as diamonds.
Another wave of dizziness passed over me and my stomach flipped. “They looked into it, some. I said…I said I wouldn’t cooperate. I didn’t want them touching me anymore, doing more tests, asking me more questions I couldn’t answer. There were people with real problems who needed help, n
ot just some stupid woman—” I broke a little. “What if I did take it on purpose and go off with them? I don’t remember.”
“Scarlett.”
I put my hands over my face, holding it in place, keeping it from disintegrating. “How could I have done that? I couldn’t, right? Isn’t that right? I couldn’t have done it on purpose. I didn’t go with them on purpose.” Nate held me. I could feel both of us shaking. I balled my hand into a fist. “I should be angry at men who took a drunk, whacked out woman to a hotel room. Shouldn’t I? They knew better. I am angry at them.”
“Good. They’re the ones who deserve it. They’re fucking rapists. They’re criminals. And if the police won’t go after them, then someone else should.” His hands were fists, too, and his face looked so mean and angry that it would have be scary except that I knew it wasn’t for me.
I was trying to work it through in my mind, but I had spent so long trying not to think about it, it was like I was rusty. “But if I made the decision to take—to go—no, if I put my drink down—I must have. I must have put it down and someone put something in it. Right? Don’t you think? I wouldn’t have done it on purpose. Isn’t that right? But I’m so angry at myself.” I felt hot tears run down my cheeks and I rubbed my fist into my eyes then slammed it against his chest. “I’m so angry.” What was he going to think of me now? I tried to stop crying and I looked up to see his face, to try to read what was in his thoughts. “Klere went to rehab and she’s going to get her life straightened out. I can, too. I can fix it,” I told him.
“God damn it,” Nate growled. “I’m going to fucking tear their heads off. It doesn’t matter if you planned to get high or if you drank too much. You were out of your mind and you weren’t—”
“I didn’t do it!” I tried to convince both of us. “I wouldn’t have.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re ok now.” His hands rubbed my back. “You’re ok.” He made his little clucking noise, the way he had first done in Hawaii when I was sick.
“Brooks was always telling me to be careful. He would meet my boyfriends, and he taught me where to kick a guy, and then—I don’t want him to know.”
Lovely You Page 24
