Chapter 17 - Dane
Dane
Waking up is disorienting. Hazy, disjointed memories of last night trickle in as I test my limbs and try to discern what it is I’m lying against. My eyes open, and I see blond hair. My fingers move, and I feel a firm body through a thin layer of cotton.
Pain interrupts my thought process, and I groan into this blond hair while I squeeze this firm body like a lifeline. The body shifts and rolls. A hand touches my face.
“You okay?” Connor’s voice whispers.
“Huh uh.” I shake my achy head before burying it against Connor’s chest, inhaling his natural scent and wishing he were shirtless. My palm finds its way beneath that shirt, feeling skin as warm as fresh-baked bread.
The scent behind Connor’s is my own. The comforting squish of the mattress beneath me has to be my bed, and the yellow light trying to blind me must be the sun.
“How’d I get here?”
“Some drag queens found you passed out at the club and called me to pick you up,” he says.
Now, that sounds so ridiculous I must be dreaming, but would my head be throbbing if this were a dream?
“Your head hurt?” Connor asks as fingers pick at the tangles in my hair.
“Mhm.”
“I’ll get you some ibuprofen.”
A needy whine vibrates through me as Connor peels his body away from mine, but the promise of painkillers keeps me from tugging him back into my arms. Instead, I snatch the pillow beside mine and koala-cling to it. I nuzzle my face into it and smell Connor’s skin and hair goop.
Did he spend the night with me?
Won’t Thalia notice?
Connor returns from the bathroom, dips the mattress under his weight, and tells me to sit up. As awful as that suggestion is, I’ll do anything for him.
As soon as I sit up on my ass, I realize I’m naked under the covers. I take a peek just to make sure, and yep, there’s my dick.
Connor holds two pills in front of me and a water cup.
Taking both from him, I ask, “Did we have sex last night?”
“No.”
“Hmm.” I pop back the pills and swig from the cup, all while eyeing Connor’s cute face, mussed hair, and wrinkled clothes.
Just a white tee and boxers, but it’s more clothes than he’d be wearing had I ravished him all night.
I swallow everything down and hand him back the cup.
“That’s a shame. Bet it would’ve been hot. ”
He smiles, small and adorable. “Do you remember anything from last night?”
I hum again, cracking open the file cabinet in my mind and sifting back to November 1st. There was my match early in the day.
I was bummed when Connor didn’t show up for the first half and elated to see him in the stands for the second half.
Until I spotted Thalia beside him. Anger didn’t scratch the surface.
Betrayal, humiliation, resentment, inferiority, and, of course… jealousy.
I thought Connor had chosen Thalia over me, and I took it out on Connor by letting him think I was going to hook up with someone else.
But I was too lovesick to find anyone at The Rowdy Seamen halfway appealing, and I was too mopey to socialize.
I danced, and I drank, but I don’t remember drinking enough to knock me on my ass.
Just a couple of cocktails that were half ice.
I don’t remember being drunk, only tired—really, really tired—like when the NyQuil finally hits and all I can do is lie back and succumb.
Then, I remember Connor—the guy telling me he’s going to fix me a shake to help with the hangover.
“Hey.” I catch his hand before he scoots off the bed. “Did we dance together?”
He exhales a breezy chuckle. “A little bit.” He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses my knuckles. “Rest more. Let the pills kick in. I’m gonna get dressed and fix some breakfast.”
Something about Connor has already made me feel ten times better than painkillers ever could.
As soon as he’s gone, I slide out of bed and stumble into the bathroom for a shower.
I’m still damp when I dress. In a t-shirt, joggers, and Crocs, I follow the promise of Connor all the way to the kitchen.
I remember too late the reason leaving my bedroom is never a good idea unless I’m leaving the house entirely. Artie is doing work at the dining table while hollering at Joss to turn the TV volume down, and Thalia is at the kitchen island with her laptop open like she’s Artie’s mini-me.
“That was some match yesterday, Dane,” Artie grumbles from behind his own laptop.
“Yeah, we won,” I answer with an eye roll, limping past.
Thankfully, Connor is also here, setting ingredients out beside the blender. He’s not even family, but he feels so much more like home than anyone else I live with.
“So you spent the whole morning driving around all by yourself?” Thalia asks Connor when I reach the island.
“Yeah.” The little liar avoids my sister’s eye contact and looks to me instead. “I had trouble sleeping, so I thought I’d try to take some photos around town.”
“Get anything good?” she asks.
He shrugs. “Maybe.”
I don’t even realize Thalia has zeroed in on me, when I’m so zeroed in on Connor, until she says, “And what the hell happened to you?”
“What?” I look her way, then down at myself. Maybe the shower wasn’t enough to make me human-looking, but it can’t be that bad. “Just a little hungover.”
“Celebrating that embarrassing performance yesterday?” she asks with a catty little smirk.
“We won, so who cares?”
“I’m sure your teammates care!” Artie bellows from the table.
“Everyone has a bad game sometimes,” Connor says as he piles protein powder in with the fruit and greens inside the blender. “Last year, I had to be walked off the field during a match just ‘cause I got stung by a bee.”
“That’s different,” Thalia says. “You’re allergic to bees. Meanwhile, Dane is a jackass who plays like one.”
“That’s not very constructive,” I mutter instead of all the bad words I’d love to call her.
“Would you like me to give you some constructive criticism?”
“Be careful, Thalia. I might give you some back.”
The sudden whirl of the blender interrupts the tension between me and my sister, but we continue glaring at one another until Connor lays off the blend button.
“Some friends invited me to see an art exhibit in San Clemente,” Thalia tells Connor. “Do you wanna come?”
A pit in my gut forms at this being the first time I can think of that Thalia has invited Connor to one of her coveted friends-only outings—the ones Connor was always moping about being excluded from. If Thalia is going to start stepping up, will Connor have no use for me anymore?
“Um…” The way Connor hums while picking drinking glasses out of the cupboard looks like buying time.
Impatient, Thalia says, “It’s not photography, but it’s supposed to be pretty cool. I figured you might be into it. But if not…”
Not. Not. Not.
“No, no, I’d totally be down,” Connor says. “It’s just that I’ve got an essay due tomorrow, and I’m pretty behind on it.”
“Maybe you should have been working on that earlier instead of driving around for hours.”
“Yeah, probably,” Connor mumbles as he fills two glasses with his special concoction. He passes one glass across the counter to me and tells me to drink up. “You want some toaster waffles?”
I moan in the affirmative, nodding as I chug down a third of this gross smoothie like it might give me superpowers.
“You don’t have to baby him,” Thalia chides Connor. “He can toast his own waffles.”
“I’m not babying him. I’m making them anyway. I’ll make you one if you want.”
“No thanks,” Thalia mutters, as if Eggos are suddenly beneath her.
I sip some more of Connor’s shake, hoping it’ll ease the throbbing in my skull.
Burying myself back in bed would do wonders, but getting to stare at Connor while he putters around the kitchen is enough incentive to stay rooted.
Whenever our eyes meet, my heart does a funny dance that shoots tingles through my veins.
“Hello?”
My head turns toward Thalia’s voice, but she’s only speaking into her phone now. One hand holds it to her ear while the other continues to clack on her laptop keyboard.
“Hey, Mom,” Thalia chimes, tone lifting to a friendlier pitch than she’s ever spoken to me with. “Yeah, doing good. Just hanging out with Connor.” She brings her phone down long enough to tell Connor, “My mom says hi.”
Connor doesn’t answer, expression grim.
“Things with Dane are the usual,” Thalia says into her phone. “He’s loud, messy, lazy, doesn’t think about anyone but himself, and he’s basically obsessed with making everyone miserable. Oh, and now he’s obsessed with Connor, who’s the only person nice enough to put up with him.”
“Thalia,” Connor says, like the word stop should follow, but his warning comes out meek.
And Thalia doesn’t stop. She rails about me like I’m her nemesis, and normally I don’t mind being her nemesis, except that it’s Lori that Thalia is venting to. My birth-giver. My mom.
“I actually went to his match yesterday with Con,” Thalia continues.
“No, it was terrible. I mean, his team won, apparently, but Dane was awful. He usually sucks, but this was a different level of bad… I don’t know what was wrong.
He was probably drunk, or hungover, or something.
He’s hungover right now… No, I don’t know if he has a drinking problem, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Connor’s been trying to help, but he’s not a miracle worker.
What Dane really needs is a therapist to diagnose whatever personality disorder he has. ”
“Thalia, stop.” There’s backbone in Connor’s tone now, but I can’t make him out through the water in my eyes.
Pain flows through me. The chronic sorrow embedded in my DNA flares into an overwhelming pressure and a sudden need to get the hell out of here.
I pound my fist on the counter before bolting from my stool and marching to the door.
One glance at the entryway hutch shows an empty hook where my car keys should be.
“Where are my keys?” I ask myself too loudly.