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Nate clasps his hand around my fingers, and I look up into his face. He’s trying hard not to smile. “Yes, I can hear you. And I owe you one. You saved me that night.”
I scoff and jerk my head back before jutting it forward again. If I had on hoop earrings, I’d have attitude all up in his face. “I did, and you’ve treated me like crap. I’m done with letting people treat me like I don’t matter.” My spine is straight, and my fingers are free from his hand, and one even had the audacity to flick his nose.
Nate swallows hard. “So your plan here tonight is to go home with Emily, then roll out the welcome mat for your mother and your ex with a nasty hangover?”
I sneer at him. “I don’t do girls. Why would you say that?” I turn back and glance at my drinking buddy who hasn’t lifted her head off the shiny bar for the past ten minutes.
“Because you said..." He makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat as I blink at his pretty face.
“So you thought I was a lesbo?”
“No, you told me that you…” His hands flail through the air and every few moments he makes a fist and gnashes his lips together into a silent snarl. He’s so cute when he’s mad. There’s a little wrinkle at the corner of each eye, like a baby crow's foot. I bet Nate was cute as a baby, with fat cheeks and dark wavy hair. Those big blue eyes are perfect. I’m staring into them and can’t remember why I was mad.
Nate takes my face in his palms and pivots my head until I’m looking at him. I giggle, “Hello.”
“Kerry, how much did you drink?” He turns his head back to the bar and then down at me. “You’re not even twenty-one, are you?”
I shake my head and grin. “Emily bought. I’m her responsibility.”
Nate glances past me and frowns. “Since Emily is passed out on the bar, I’m thinking that was a bad plan.”
“Emily is really pretty. I want to be pretty.” Nate is ushering me back toward my spot at the bar. I’m about to sit down and start drinking my new pretty glass of tea when Nate pulls it out of my hands.
“Definitely not.” He gets the bartender's attention and plays keep away with the glass.
“It’s mine.”
“You’ll fall on your face,” Nate says, holding it out of arm's reach.
Emily sits up with a napkin stuck to the side of her cheek, and gasps, “Don’t let her near the stairs!” Her head immediately returns to the bar top with a thud.
I throw my arm around her shoulders and giggle so hard I can’t stand up. “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Come on, ladies.” Nate is prying me off of Emily. He helps her up, lacing one arm under her shoulder and around her waist, leaving the other hand free to help usher me out the door.
As we pass a couch at the back of the room, a slender woman with wild red hair smiles up at Nate. “I had no idea you were a white knight, too, rescuing silly college girls from themselves.” Her voice is deep and confident. It’s how I hope I’ll sound one day when I’m grown up. I keep waiting for it to happen—to be an adult.
The room is spinning. I say laughingly, “Someone has to do it.”
She frowns. “Nice sweatpants.”
“Thanks, an orphanage in Guam has my entire wardrobe. Like all of it.”
She arches a perfectly plucked brow at me. But it’s Nate who replies, surprised. “Really?”
I nod once and nearly puke, so I keep my mouth shut.
Nathan’s reaction to my clothing disaster is interrupted by the chick he was probably making out with before he prevented me from falling down a stairwell. “Until next time.” She lifts her glass and winks at him.
His face lights up.
I hate her.
CHAPTER 4
After we tuck Emily into her bed—at least I hope it was her bed—Nate takes me back to his little brownstone on the edge of the city. Austin is a weird place. Though the city sprawls across the land, spread out in a way New York could never be, it still has enough traffic to jam up the streets at any time of the day or night.
I’m sitting on Nate’s couch with a cup of water in my hands. He’s been telling me to drink it for the past however long I’ve been sitting here. I keep thinking about his rosy face and puffy lips.
