Nick Page 7

  “Don’t talk to me.”

  She kicks off her heels and walks into the kitchen to grab a wine glass.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologize, hoping that angle will calm her down. It doesn’t.

  She looks so sad, and I feel awful. She still looks like the little girl who used to always be by my side wherever I went.

  Now she’s all grown up and going through shit.

  There’s something off about us though, even in this drunken state. I can tell that she’s pissed at me. More than usual.

  I walk over to her and she looks at me just as she’s about to pour the wine.

  “What was wrong with the sailor Nick? He’s supposed to be honorable. Why didn’t you just leave me? It wouldn’t be the first time you ditched me to go off with a piece of ass. Being the good friend I am, I understand and I say nothing. I never say anything, no matter how I feel.” She pours the wine but she stares me down like she has more to say. I think that maybe she should say it.

  “You sound like you’re upset with me for more than just tonight, baby,” I point out.

  “Wow, you noticed?” She picks up the wine and tips the back in one gulp, wincing at the strong taste.

  “I always notice.”

  She wags her perfectly manicured finger at me and shakes her head. “No, no, not always. You just see what you want to see when it suits you.” She pours another glass down her throat, then abandons the glass and starts drinking straight from the bottle.

  She’s completely wasted at this point. I don’t know what to expect next, and that wine is the real stuff Dad brought back from France.

  She turns to me and sways so much I think she’s just going to drop over.

  I catch her and she starts laughing.

  “Always and ever the football player.” She taps my chest. “You ran with me like you were playing a game and I was a football, all to get me away from the soldier boy. I’m not a virgin anymore, you know. You don’t have to protect me.”

  I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

  “Look, I’m tired. You’re tired. We need to go sleep this off.”

  “No, I’m going out.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  She smiles. “I’m not spending the night with a man who doesn’t want me. Going to find one who does. Don’t worry. Just like always, I’m always looking for you.”

  I just glare at her. “What? Tania…”

  She giggles in the insane way that drunk people laugh. “You heard me.”

  “What do you mean you’re always looking for me? You always know where to find me.”

  “That’s not…what I mean,” she stutters. “I mean like trying to find a clone. No…not that word.” She shakes her head, but I get it. I understand what she means. She’s speaking clearer than she ever has.

  “Clone?”

  “No, not that word. Similar. I mean, I look for similar. Although I guess a clone would be perfect. Just like in the alternate dimension. I’m with you and you want me. We’re more than just friends and because it’s us it’s perfect. So in this life I just have to keep looking until I find the guy who’s you but not you. Owen came close maybe because he used to play football in high school.”

  I’m listening and shocked to shit by what she’s saying to me. Mostly because now I’m not sure she got my note. My note from so long ago.

  She’s drunk and could be talking crap, but it’s not crap I’d expect her to say if she got my note.

  She tries to step past me but I catch her. I’m not sure what to say.

  “Please just leave me alone. Tonight I just want to find a guy who wants to be with me.”

  Once again, she moves, and I stop her. If she goes through that door, I know she’ll most likely find some guy, and I can’t allow that.

  I’m not sober, but I’m not that far gone that I can’t think straight.

  I can’t let her go, though. For some reason the pull of something I can’t control guides me to hold her in place and tell her she’s wrong. I don’t freeze up the way I did on her eighteenth birthday.

  I remember taking her for that walk. I was going crazy, not knowing if she read the note or not. She was giving me all the signs that she was interested in me and when I gave her the same necklace she’s wearing now I was going to kiss her. Then I didn’t. I chickened out like a coward and backed off ever since.

  Not tonight.

  Right now, I’m not that guy.

  “I want you,” I tell her, and it feels like something snaps inside me.

  She looks up at me in a daze. “What?”

  “I want you. I don’t want you to go looking for someone who’s like me when I’m here.”

  “You just want to feed me hot chocolate when I just…” She catches herself and stops, but the look she gives me after is so scandalous my cock hardens in an instant.

  “What?” There’s no way in hell, drunk or not, I’m going to allow her to stop there after looking at me like that. “What do you want to do?”

  “Feed you this wine,” she coos.

  “You can do that.” She picks up the bottle and places it to my lips so I can drink.

  I do, and the minute the drink hits the back of my throat, I know I won’t have any control over whatever the hell I do next.

  She runs her fingers down my chest. I slip my arm around her.

  “Good, drink.” She holds the bottle up, standing on the tips of her toes so I can drink some more.

  I only stop when she starts pressing her breasts into my chest.

  “That all? You seem all worked up for just that,” I hear myself say.

  She shakes her head and smiles.

  She grabs the second bottle of wine and shoves it against my chest.

  “You want me to feed you wine?”

  “No…I’m going to strip, you’re going to pour it all over me and lick it off, and I’ll do the same to you.”

  I just stand there, part of me knows I jumped over the line of sanity at the turn I took to Crazyville, but I’m not leaving.

  She leans in closer. “Do you want me to strip for you?”

  I catch her face. Her beautiful, beautiful face, and look down at her lips.

  I answer that question by lowering my lips to hers. The minute my mouth touches her, a blast of electricity scorches me from the inside out. It feels like wildfire and lightning, and when she sweeps her tongue into my mouth, the taste of her makes me want to devour her. It’s her who pulls out of the kiss. I half expect her to come to her senses and remember who we are, but the sinful smile on her face tells me she’s not leaving this alternate world we’ve created either.

  The smile widens, and to me, she looks like Tania the temptress, the seductress I want so badly to taste.

  She steps backward and I’m just as enthralled, like Tom was, when she reaches for the zipper on the side of her dress.

  She pulls it down. I know I’m a complete goner when her large massive breasts spill out with the tips diamond-hard, pleading to be sucked.

  Fucking hell, how the hell have I never seen those? She kicks off the dress and she’s standing in just her panties. Her panties and the necklace I gave her for her eighteenth birthday.

  I swoop in and pick her up, setting her down on the table.

  I snap the cork open on the bottle and she pushes out her breasts so I can pour the wine over her. We start laughing as it covers her, then I move in for the next part.

  I set the bottle down and look at her.

  “Taste me Nick, please…please taste me,” she begs.

  She doesn’t have to beg when I’m willing and able to taste and take. Claim her for myself.

  “With pleasure, baby,” I answer, and she smiles when I fill my palms with her glorious breasts. I move to the right first and close my mouth over the pleading nipple. I take her in and start sucking hard.

  The mindless moans that fall from her lips send me deeper into temptation, and I go willingly.

  Tania


  I’m not sure why I have a headache, or why the place smells like grass.

  I have no idea why such a smell would be in my house.

  Is it the neighbors?

  But why?

  What the hell could they possibly have around them that smells so barn-like? I shuffle my hand and feel around, realizing I’m not in my bed, and my eyes snap open then squint when I feel strands of…hay?

  What?

  There’s a bright light. It’s bright sunlight…there is a wooden door…all around me is hay. I shuffle and a large hand moves over my stomach. My mouth drops when the hand covers my breast and squeezes the nipple.

  “Fuck baby, I’m ready again.”

  My heart stills and freezes up in my chest. That’s Nick’s voice. I’m in Nick’s arms, and his hand is over my breast.

  Instantly I shuffle around, and I wish that I didn’t. My mouth drops when I see we’re both naked except for his shirt covering us.

  We’re naked on the ground of a barn, and over in the corner is a horse looking at me.

  It’s eating grass.

  It’s hardly the worse thing because my brain splits between wondering how we got here, and… ]if us naked means we had sex.

  Nick has drifted back to sleep. I look at him, and I’m trying real hard to see him as Nick my friend but, fuck, all I see are muscles I didn’t know could exist in real life. That and tattoos.

  Sure, I’ve seen him shirtless many times, but I’ve never seen that cross on his hip and the deliciously looking happy trail that runs right down to more than I should be seeing and sectioned off by the hint of his shirt that covers his cock.

  I don’t have to guess how big it is either. Judging from the outline, it’s big. What I’m not sure about is whether or not it was inside me.

  What did we do?

  I don’t remember anything at all.

  “Nick,” I say, shaking his arm.

  He wakes up. First there’s a smile on his face then his eyes widen when he sees my breasts. I grab some hay to cover myself. It hardly works, but I accept we have bigger problems. Like where we are and whose barn this is.

  We live in Chicago, and the closest barns I can think of are about two hours away.

  “Oh God…” he winces.

  “Nick…” I bite the inside of my lip.

  “Where are we?” he asks, and I shake my head. He sees the horse. “What the fuck?”

  He tried to shield himself with the shirt but it doesn’t work all that well. Maybe if he was smaller and not so aroused.

  He looks panicked, like I feel.

  “Nick, do you think we slept together?” I swallow hard.

  I cover myself more when his gaze drops between my thighs.

  “I don’t know. Do you feel…like we did?” he asks tentatively.

  I feel nothing but shock right now, and to check myself I think I’d have to feel around or something. There’s no way I’m doing that in front of him or anywhere near him.

  “I don’t know. I don’t feel um…sore.” I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.

  Us.

  “Okay. That’s good, right?”

  I’m supposed to say yes and agree, but something inside hesitates on the answer.

  He continues to look at me and I nod. “Yeah, so maybe we drank too much.”

  He nods, agreeing. He reaches forward and cups my face. When he does, a strange sensation washes over me. Like a memory trying to push through but it can’t.

  “Let’s find clothes and get out of here before someone finds us. This is one of our crazies we’ll laugh about one day.” He smirks and releases me.

  As he shuffles to turn I gasp when I see not one but two condom packets stuck to his back.

  “What?” He turns back to me.

  I move to him, no longer caring that the stupid grass isn’t covering my breasts. I pick the wrappers off him and wince when I see they’re both open. I feel like fainting when I see four more and a box just by his head. I couldn’t see before because of the hay.

  “Oh my God!” I shriek, then cover my mouth.

  He sees the box and his mouth drops open too.

  Empty condom wrappers, but where are the condoms?

  Are they in the box?

  He opens it and there’s nothing.

  He brings his hand to his head and blows out a ragged breath.

  “Baby, let’s just go. We’ll figure out the rest later.” He picks up my dress and hands it to me.

  I take it and try to cover myself as best as possible as I slip into it.

  He hides behind a stack of hay and gets dressed.

  Both of us have bare feet, and there’s no sign of my purse or his wallet.

  Out of habit, he takes my hand, and I hold on to him, grateful, because my legs are shaking so much I feel like I’m going to fall over.

  We step outside and stop to look around. It’s just farmlands all around. I have no idea where we are.

  I step forward and he pulls me back, looking me over.

  “You okay?” He holds my gaze as I study his eyes. He looks sad and I don’t know what to think right now, or what he thinks.

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  “Me neither.”

  Wow, do I sure have a way of making things worse.

  “Maybe we didn’t do anything. Maybe we just blew the condoms up like balloons. You know, like that summer when we found some in Connor’s bag.” I sound stupid for calling on a memory of when I was seven and Nick was nine. Connor, his older brother, is six years older than him. We found his stash of condoms and thought they were strange balloons.

  He nods anyway, probably humoring me.

  “Yeah…it was that. Must have been that, and they floated away,” he says.

  I nod, but somehow I don’t think so.

  “Come on, let’s figure out where the hell we are.”

  Barrington Hills.

  That’s where we were.

  Forty miles away from Chicago. It took us over three hours to get back to anywhere we recognized.

  We found a road and managed to get a ride to Nick’s house. The guy who gave us a lift took one look at us—us with no shoes and the just-woke-up-in-a-barn look—and must have taken pity.

  I thought he was going to drive off. I know I would have.

  The first thing I would have thought is that we must have escaped from somewhere. Police custody, jail, prison. An asylum. Something along those lines, and then I would have kept on driving.

  What saved us a little was the actual clothes we’re wearing. My dress still looks nice, and Nick’s suit has the Armani logo on it.

  We get back to Nick’s house, and I find my little purse in the kitchen, however, instantly I see telltale signs of what happened last night.

  There’s what looks like wine all over the breakfast table in the kitchen, and my panties are on the table along with another condom wrapper. We both see that at the same time, and neither of us comments because what can we say?

  I look at the glasses on the countertop and something flashes in my mind. It makes me walk over there and the feeling intensifies. It’s something about being by the counter. I close my eyes and feel it pushing through. The memory of something I should remember and can’t.

  But then it comes to me. Warm fingers on my face. Caressing my cheek. Then his lips on mine kissing me and me kissing him back.

  Nick.

  I feel him everywhere and all over me. His mouth on my nipples and sucking.

  It’s then I open my eyes and whirl around to see him watching me.

  “You remembered something?” he asks.

  “No,” I say quickly. “I remember nothing.”

  He knows I’m lying. He just knows. This is possibly the first time I’ve ever lied to him. Nevertheless, I can’t deal with this right now.

  “Tania…”

  “I have to go.” I can’t breathe.

  I rush away but he comes after me, reaching for my arm and pulli
ng me back.

  “Did you remember something? Come on, tell me. I’m going crazy here.”

  I open my mouth to answer, then I remember seeing the image of us having sex like I’m watching it, but a reflection of it. I look to the cupboard by the table and see the glass on the outside. Perfect for a reflection. It’s just like looking into a mirror.

  The memory tightens my throat, making it close, and I can’t breathe.

  “I have to go,” I answer, pulling from his grasp.

  He can’t remember. Maybe it’s better that way because my memory is all fragmented, and from what’s coming back, I’m pretty certain we went way past the line of friendship.

  Seven times, from the count of the condoms.

  I rush away before he can say another word.

  Nick

  I’m trying to remember but I can’t.

  I worked out that it all must have started in the kitchen. There’s all this evidence here that the tide changed.

  Something happened in the kitchen.

  I cast my mind back to when I got home from the wedding and tried to work forwards.

  I remember that little talk we had in here, and I told her I wanted her. That was me apparently still sober because I still feel the fucking same.

  I remember drinking the wine and kissing her. It gets hazy after that, but there are fragments.

  She told me she was stripping, took off her clothes, and I poured the wine all over her naked breasts before I started feasting on her.

  After that, I remember nothing.

  I remembered all those parts when I woke up. When I realized that she didn’t remember any of it, I kept quiet because I didn’t want to freak her out.

  She already looked freaked and I didn’t want to make it worse than it already was. I feel like hell because of it.

  I can’t remember and I feel like shit because I don’t know what to do if we did sleep together and she regrets it.

  From the evidence, I think if we did, it was eight times. When she was with me we found seven condom wrappers. There is one in my bedroom.

  In my pocket is a receipt from the drug store for a six-pack.

  So A, it looks like we had sex here and B, it looks like we probably left the house to buy more condoms and ended up in Barrington Hills where we emptied the condom pack.