Page 73 of The Write Track
And there it was. He’d pointed out the elephant in the room—and it did feel pretty large—and commented on it.
“I…” He was more comfortable talking about this stuff than I was. I was Taffy Oakley’s daughter, however. I shouldn’t have had a problem talking about sex. Heck, one of the knocks on me in college was that I wanted to talk sex to death before doing it.
I sucked in a centering breath. “I can’t remember last night very well, and I was trying to figure out if we had bottoms on without waking you up.”
“Ah.” Genuine amusement lit in his eyes. “You could have just pulled back the covers and looked.”
“Yeah, but I was comfortable.”
It shouldn’t have been possible, but his grin widened. “It is pretty nice,” he agreed. “You don’t have to worry about me making a move on you when you’re drunk, though. I don’t do that.”
I stared longer, confused. “You don’t… do drunken hookups?”
He shook his head.
That was good to know and yet… “Isn’t the whole point of drunken hookups that you lose control and can’t stop yourself from hooking up?”
“Maybe, but I don’t allow myself to get that drunk and then hang around women. I have accidentally gotten that drunk on a football Sunday, but only when hanging out with the guys.”
“And you’re never worried about being tempted by the guys?”
He chuckled. “No. I’ve often wondered if my life would be easier if I could swing that way. But it just doesn’t work for me.” He lifted the sheet so I could get a look beneath—likely to give me peace of mind,
He wore boxer shorts with cobras on them—that was weirdly phallic—and I was in my fuzzy Strawberry Shortcake sleep shorts and a simple white tank top.
I blew out a breath. “So we didn’t do anything we have to apologize to each other for this morning.” That was such a relief… and also a bit of a disappointment.
He chuckled and let the sheet fall back over us. Then to my surprise, he snuggled me close again. “No. We tortured Preston a little bit—he was not a fan of my stick finger knives—and then we came back here and fell into bed. We were a little drunk, but I don’t lose control that way. I’m a big fan of consent, and you were way too buzzed last night to consent to anything.”
Did that mean, if I had been able to consent, he would have been willing to go there? The mere thought of that made butterflies swarm in my stomach. I could not ponder that in front of him.
“I remember playing Freddy Krueger,” I assured him. “You have a very creepy singing voice when belting out the ‘one, two, Freddy’s after you’ song.”
He laughed. “That’s probably why my throat is a little sore this morning. I remember a lot of singing.”
“Yeah, we played that shadow game for a long time. Technically, it should have been long enough for us to sober up, but then you procured that small bottle of bourbon from somewhere, and we drank that.”
“Ah, right.” His hands were warm and smooth as they rubbed my back. “I forgot about that extra bottle.” He pulled his head back far enough to stare down at me. “What is it with your ex and teeny-tiny bottles of liquor? There were a lot of choices, but you got a shot and a half out of a bottle, and then you were done.”
“I like to pretend I’m a giant when I’m drinking those. That’s how I got through some of his mother’s lawn parties in Boston.I pretended I was a mythical fairy creature sent to the future to observe humans and determine if they needed to be wiped out.”
His eyebrows flew toward his hairline. “That is dark.”
“I spent most of those parties in a corner by myself. His mother was always on me to mingle, but I never felt comfortable in those settings. Nobody wanted to talk to Preston Martin Charles II’s secretary, and Preston never introduced me to people. His mother definitely didn’t.”
“I hate this tool,” Nathan complained. “I mean… I’m not blaming the victim, and you’re clearly a victim in all of this, but how could you ever be attracted to that guy?”
That was the question of the century.
I managed a shrug. “I wasn’t ever attracted to him. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this—I mean,a lot—but I’m not sure you want to hear it.”
“Oh, I want to hear it. I need to understand.”
I sighed. “I struggled a lot in college when I found out that nobody else had an upbringing quite like mine.”
He didn’t say anything and just listened.
“The others acted as if I’d been raised by wolves,” I continued. “It took me too long to realize it was the other way around. I had a great upbringing.
