Nothing More (16 page)

With a sigh, she removes her hands from mine and goes back to grab her glass. While she's doing that I grab the TV remote and turn it on for Tessa, hitting mute. I always make sure she has some light when she gets home later than me, and the lamp on our end table has a blown lightbulb that I keep meaning to replace.

But as I put the remote back down on the couch, I hear the ominous sound of voices and a key ring jingling.

The lock finally clicks and the door opens, bringing Tessa inside . . .

. . . with Nora.

As I stand there somewhat dazed, Tessa takes off her purple beanie and closes the door behind her. Nora pulls her jacket off and her cleavage nearly spills out from her shirt as she shakes her hair.

Then both of them look over at Dakota and me, suddenly realizing they're not alone.

Please, dear God, let Nora think I was looking at her face at least.

And more importantly, where is that damn portal?

“Landon?” Tessa starts.

“Hey, I didn't know—” Nora begins, but stops as soon as Dakota walks out of the kitchen, seemingly unaware of her.

Dakota approaches me and, walking between me and Tessa and Nora, wraps her hand around mine. As her fingers play with my own, Nora's eyes stay fixed on me. She doesn't look down to Dakota's and my joined hands, though I get the feeling she wants to.

“Let's go to bed?” Dakota says, pulling me toward the bedroom with her, without looking at either of them.

When I look again, Nora's eyes are on our connected hands and Tessa is staring with her lips sucked in against her teeth and her eyes wide.

I turn to Dakota. She's giving me a look. One that says,
You better not stop and talk to that girl instead of coming to your bedroom with me.

I look at Nora again and then at Tessa. I'm confused, and seemingly without my permission, my mouth says, “Uh, yeah. Good night, guys.”

I follow Dakota into the room and she closes the door behind us.

Dakota is fuming when she turns to face me.

“She has
some fucking nerve
!” she roars. She tosses her hands into the air and then presses them to her temples.

I step toward her and cover her mouth with my hand. “Hey, be nice,” I softly advise.

Dakota talks under my hand and I bring my free hand to her neck. I spread my fingers wide and cover her shoulder. I rub at the tense muscle there and she stops talking.

“She knew who you were all along,” she half whispers. “I know she did. She had to remember your name.”

I try to be the voice of reason. Maybe she did, but she honestly seemed just as clueless about my connection to Dakota as the rest of them.

I shrug. “Are you sure you said my name? Do you have our pictures out anywhere?”

I wince after that last question; I kind of don't want to know the answer.

I don't know Nora very well, but I don't see her as the type of person who would purposely go after her roommate's ex, knowing it would all blow up sooner rather than later. Plus, it's not like there aren't three million other guys in the city who would happily return any interest she showed in them.

Dakota huffs. The gray dress she's wearing is falling off her shoulder and she looks so small next to me.

“I don't know . . . maybe I never said your name, exactly.” She looks around my bedroom. Her eyes stop at the picture of us on my dresser. “And I didn't keep any pictures of us around.”

She looks guilty when she says this. And it's not like I expected her to build a shrine for me or anything, but is it possible that she didn't even mention my name to her roommates? Not once?

“Like at all?” I ask.

She shakes her hand and pulls at my shirt. Her fingers are struggling to loosen the fabric, so she moves to the buttons of my jeans. I steady them, cupping my hands around hers and pulling them to her chest.

“Not tonight,” I say against her cheek.

With a pouty grumble, she pulls her hand free and dips it into my pants. I groan as she grips me and slowly moves her hand up and down.

Think logically
, I remind myself.

I have to think logically, and I can't do that while Dakota's teasing me like this. I reach for her hand and gently unwrap her fingers from me. She looks up at me in confusion.

“You had too much to drink,” I say, and lead her by the elbow to my bed. She stands in silence while I reach for the zipper of her dress.

She gathers up her hair and holds it out of the way to allow me access to the fabric. When the dress begins to fall she holds it to her chest and I pull her tights down her smooth legs. She steps out of them and lets the dress drop to the floor. She isn't wearing a bra.

Fuck me, she isn't wearing a bra.

Clearly I'm meant to be tempted tonight. For panties, she's wearing a red thong made of lace. Her ass looks so good in them, petite and toned. She turns around to face me with a devilishly sly grin.

“I don't remember these,” I tease. I hook my finger around the hip of her panties and she moans when the fabric snaps back against her tawny skin.

I back away and she glares at me.

“You're mean,” she says, sticking out her tongue as she shakes her ass a little. She's in a playful mood now, and I'm very aware that I'm in for it. There's nothing she can do to make me sleep with her tonight, no matter how sexy she looks standing here in only panties. We haven't touched each other in months, and we aren't dating. Tonight isn't the night to change all that. Not while she's wasted and we're both confused.

She'll understand in the morning.

I wrap my hands around her shoulders. “Let's get you to bed.”

I can hear Tessa and Nora talking in the living room, but I can't make out anything they're saying. Dakota grabs the picture frame from my dresser and holds it to her face.

“We were
soooo
dorky!” She laughs, running a finger over the hideous plaid shirt I'm wearing in the picture.

Her bare breasts are distracting me, but I steer my attention toward grabbing her a shirt from my drawer. I reach around her and blindly pull something out, only to find it's my Adrian High School track shirt.

Of course it is, because we are in some mystical land where we can't seem to outrun our past no matter what we do. Dakota snatches it from me and brings it to her chest. She lifts it up, smelling the worn-out fabric.

“This shirt, oh my God!” She seems genuinely happy, and I don't think she notices when the talking in the living room quiets again. I do.

“We had sooo many good times in this shirt,” she muses, her tongue licking at her lips.

I look away from her bouncing body.

“Put me out of my misery and put it on, please,” I plead with her.

She giggles, thoroughly enjoying my compliments and admiration of her dancer's body, as she should. She should always feel like this, beautiful and empowered. She's still a little drunk, but she's glowing at my words.

Which makes me want to be a little more wild.

“You are so beautiful, you know that?” I say, wanting her to bathe in my words, to wrap herself in the kind words she deserves to hear. I keep a straight face, experimenting. “You're fucking smoking, and if you hadn't gotten yourself drunk tonight, I would tear your little ass up.”

I sound like a damn idiot, but according to most erotic novels, this is what girls are into.

Dakota bursts into laughter. She holds one hand up and looks at me.

“You would
tear my little ass up
?” She cracks up. Her eyes are closed and I can't help but join in.

“Hey!” I try to breathe, but my stomach aches from laughing so hard. “I read it in a book and wanted to see what it sounded like to say it.”

Dakota pauses and struggles to hold her laughter in. “Let's just stick to the plain stuff that you're good at and leave the sexy stuff to the books.” She covers her mouth and dips her head, snorting laughter.

Plain stuff I'm good at?
Hey, I know we haven't experimented very much, or ever, but that's not because I wasn't willing. She never brought it up, and once, after I tried to talk about porn to her, she broke up with me for three days. So if any of the things that I'm good at are “plain,” they're not that way for my lack of trying.

“I'm not that plain,” I retort, defending my skills, but making sure to keep my voice down. I do not want Tessa or Nora to hear this.

I sit down on my bed. Dakota walks over, her mouth still turned up into a smile. She pulls the corner of her lip between her teeth. “Um, maybe now you aren't, but you were with me.”

Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but I feel like she's diminishing every intimate time we've had together. Our sex was
teenage
sex, rushed and quiet, even though I was hopelessly in love with her. It's not like I could've taken her any way that I wanted to with Carter in the next room, or her dad asleep downstairs. I never felt shortchanged with her, and I don't remember feeling like anything was missing in our sex life. I thought we were active and happy and satisfied.

Apparently not.

Dakota sits down on the bed next to me and crosses her legs. She puts on a pair of my socks sometime between teasing and laughing at me.

She clears her throat. “How many girls have you been with since we broke up?”

When I look at her, she's twirling a chunk of her hair between her thumb and forefinger.

“How many? None,” I scoff, trying to force a nonawkward laugh.

She raises her eyebrow at me and cocks her head. “Really? Come on, I know—”

“You have?” I interrupt.

If she's acting this surprised that I haven't slept with anyone, how many people has she slept with?

Dakota shakes her head. “No. I haven't, I just assumed you did.”

“Why would you assume that?”

And sitting here in the night, bringing all of these things up, I'm starting to think this woman doesn't know me at all. Dakota doesn't say anything, she just shrugs her shoulders and lies down with her head propped up against the headboard. She stares up at the ceiling before finally proclaiming, “Today was not fun.”

I should change the subject. I finally got her in bed and calm and mostly sober.

“It's fine, it's over anyway. It's gotta be like two a.m. by now,” I tell her.

She smiles and I lie down and turn off the lamp.

“Thank you for everything, Landon. You're always my safe place,” she whispers in the dark.

I can feel her eyes on me even though I can't see them.

“Always,” I reply, and gently squeeze her hand.

Today
wasn't
fun, she's right. Today was stressful.

I started the day thinking I was going on a first-date-like thing with Nora, but then ended up with a drunk Dakota in my bed and Nora in my living room probably listening to every embarrassing word Dakota and I say in here. The hallway is short and the walls are thin.

Even worse, I feel guilty for leaving her at the lounge. I didn't know what else to do. I've known Dakota half of my life. I've already gone through those terrible early stages of love with her. Together we made it through the awkward adolescent sex stage, where you can't find where to put it and come almost instantly when you do. We worked out most of our kinks and already know each other's backstory. We have no secrets, tell no lies. We've shared tragedy. I've already confessed my love for Dakota, and to start again would be daunting. Especially if she really has missed me as much as she says.

Just as I think Dakota is asleep, she jerks her hand from mine and brings it to her face. That's when I notice the sounds of crying.

I sit up. My hands gently shake her shoulders and I ask her over and over what's wrong. She shakes her head and catches her breath. I wait to turn on the light, knowing that the truth is easiest told in the dark.

“I . . .” she cries, “I slept with two people.”

Her words slice through me like her cries slice through the darkness, and as if I've been burned, I suddenly don't want to be near her.

My instinct is to run. To get far, far away.

My stomach aches and she cries again, trying to cover her mouth. She reaches for a pillow and presses it to her face to keep herself quiet. Regardless of my pain, I can't stand to see her like this. And so I do what I always do. I put my feelings on hold. I pack the anger down. I tell my desire to run off without me. I reach for the pillow and remove it from her face. I toss it to the floor and lift her into my arms and lay us both down, an intertwined pair.

“I'm so sorry,” she chokes.

Her cheeks are soaked with tears and I thumb at them, catching them before they roll down her face. Her shoulders are shaking, and I can feel her pain, or guilt maybe, or our lost history, and it's throbbing inside of me, too. I gently push at her shoulders to keep her still and raise my hand to her forehead. I brush back her hair and gently caress the strands, rubbing her scalp.

“Shhh,” I say.

“Today is over,” I say.

“We'll deal with this tomorrow,” I say. “Get some rest.”

I continue to massage her head until she falls asleep.

If she wants to work this out, I'm willing to listen to her. There has to be some explanation that makes sense, and now that she's told me the truth, she's going to be okay with telling me what happened. As soon as she wakes up, she will explain everything.

Except she didn't.

When she woke up, she snuck out of my apartment without a word.

W
HEN I WALK OUT OF
my room, I'm quiet so as not to wake Tessa. I know she's going to want to discuss last night, but I need coffee before attempting any such thing.

As I tiptoe down the short hallway, I glance at the square picture frames that Tessa spent hours hanging up, making them all perfectly parallel with one another along the wall. Inside of each frame is a portrait of a cat dressed in different types of hats. The one closest to me is a tabby, its gray panama-style hat streaked with black and brown to match the wearer's fur. A big white feather sticks up from the front.