12. “Halo”
TWELVE
“HALO”
(BEYONCé)
I pried open my eyes only to see the sea of gray sheets across Javi’s big bed.
I was sprawled on my stomach, and it felt like my mouth was stuffed with rags and my veins had been injected with lead.
There was also a hand gently rubbing circles into the small of my back.
“Baby,” I heard Javi call.
I turned my head on the pillow, my ponytail moving with me, these minor things causing major things to happen that weren’t all that great, so to be safe, I only shifted my eyeballs to look up at Javi who was sitting beside me on his bed, fully clothed, his hair still damp from a shower.
He was also grinning like a gorgeous lunatic, but when he caught my eyes, he burst out laughing.
The sound cracking through the room made me grimace in pain, and as my eyes were closed, all that had happened at Alexis and Jacob’s impromptu engagement party came crashing into my brain.
Jessie’s Fallen Angel cocktail was a little bitter, so I switched to the Appletini, which was not . They were delicious .
This was why I had a lot of them .
This led me to confessing my deep abiding love to Jessie, then to Eric, to Raye, then to Cap, to Luna, Willow, Shanti, Linda, Patsy, Bill and Zach, and even Martha.
At the time much later when I was gushing to Alexis and Jacob about how very happy I was for them, so drunk, I totally missed the social cues they were giving that they were done with the public party and wanted to start their private one, Javi came up to me.
He then picked me up and tucked me under his arm like I was a human football and carried me to his truck.
This did not upset me.
Not in the slightest.
After babbling to him the entire way about how much I loved all my neighbors, I communicated how not upset I was to Javi by attacking him the minute he closed and locked the door to his townhouse.
Alternately kissing me back and stopping me from groping him as he led me up the stairs, eventually, standing by his bed, he set me at arms’ length, and considering Javi’s arms were very long, as I kept pawing at him, I missed by a good four inches.
At this point, he said, “ Mi pequena , I want this, like I really want it, but I promised you I’d slow us down, and no way in fuck am I gonna let our first time be when you’re shitfaced.”
It was like he was speaking Japanese.
Not one syllable made a lick of sense to me.
I was still attempting to cypher his words as he pulled me into the bathroom.
I stood there dumbly, like I’d never been there before and didn’t even know what a bathroom was.
This lasted so long, Javi had returned with a bunch of my toiletries and the T-shirt of his I’d worn the night before.
He closed the door on me.
By rote, I brushed my teeth, washed my face, moisturized and changed into his tee, leaving my clothes on the floor.
I then wandered into the bedroom and fell face first on the bed.
Which brought me to now, since I passed out.
Considering I was mortified beyond any measure of mortification there could be, with superhuman strength, I rolled away from him and pulled the covers over my head.
Or, I tried. But since Javi was sitting on them, it took a lot of tugging, and I eventually had to curl down in order to pull the covers over my head and hide from him.
“Babe,” he called.
Oh my God.
I could just die.
His hand returned to rub circles on my back.
“Lolita,” he said softly.
Ugh!
I loved it when he called me that.
But I’d attacked him. He’d had to push me away and close me in his bathroom.
“Harlow, baby, come here,” he urged.
“No,” I groaned under the sheets. “I wanna die. Do you have cyanide?”
I heard his chuckle and then felt him pull at the sheets.
I pulled back. Thus started a tussle of both of us yanking at his bedclothes, and since they were really nice, you could tell they were expensive, and Javi probably hadn’t had all that much that was expensive in his life (if anything at all), I didn’t want us to tear them, so I gave up.
I thought this would only mean I had to meet his gaze, but I was wrong.
It meant I was hauled into Javi’s lap and his arms closed around me.
I fit so great in his lap, it was a miracle.
No matter how great it was, or how fabulous it felt, I avoided his eyes.
“You’re cute when you’re drunk,” he said.
Ulk.
“Lovey and sweet,” he murmured, like he was filing away the memory carefully so he could pull it out later and relive it. “Like Harlow times a thousand.”
“Gluh,” I groaned.
He gave me a squeeze. “Babe, it was cute.”
All right. I couldn’t hide. I had to face the music.
I stopped avoiding his eyes and looked right at him, whereupon I announced, “That was totally not right.”
He appeared confused. “What wasn’t right?”
“Me attacking you like that when we got home.”
His perfectly arched brows shot up to form another perfect arch.
“If a man did that to a woman, he’d be up on charges,” I explained.
His perfectly created face grew soft, yes, making it even more perfect.
“Babe,” he whispered.
I straightened my spine no matter how much it cost me in my hungover state.
“I’m sorry,” I stated. “I have no excuse.”
He cupped my jaw and rubbed his thumb along my cheekbone. “You ever do that with another guy?”
“Ugh! No!” I cried, even though that cost me too, sending spikes into my aching head and making my queasy stomach roil.
“Since you’re in my lap while I’m sitting on my bed, I don’t think I have to remind you that we’re sleeping together,” he said.
“But we’re not sleeping together ,” I reminded him in return.
“Not yet, but we both want that,” he replied, slipping his hand down to my neck, and now his thumb was pressing gently under my chin to keep my face tipped up to him. “What you did last night was not an aggressive attack that violated my person. You were drunk, and horny…”
Oh God!
Someone kill me!
“…and you were with your guy, so you were safe to be you.” He smiled.
“Trust me, after we break that seal, I won’t care how drunk you are, you jump me, I’ll field that play.
” He swept his thumb along my jaw. “But you asked me to slow us down, and what we’re starting here means something to me, so as hard as it was to deny you, last night was a test of trust that I needed to pass. ”
I stared at him.
I mean, could this guy be any more amazing ?
“I’m sorry I tested you like that…inadvertently,” I said.
“I’m not, since I broke your trust by being a dick to you, and I think I passed that test last night, so maybe I shaved something off the huge fuckup I perpetrated.”
There it was.
The answer was yes.
It seemed impossible, but this guy could be more amazing.
I didn’t know what to do to share how much that meant to me, so I did the only thing that came to me.
I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him.
Javi hugged me back, and he was good at it, stroking my side in a sweet way with his big warm hand.
“We didn’t get to have our heavy talk,” I said in his ear.
Gently, he pulled away (just a bit) and said, “Friday night is date night and we’re gonna have a date by calling for a pizza and having our talk tonight.”
“Saturday night is date night,” I corrected him.
“We’re gonna date tomorrow night too,” he replied. “Though, I’m gonna take you someplace fancy for that one.”
See?
He totally was going to keep getting more and more amazing.
And I got to go out on a real, official date with Javi.
I couldn’t wait!
“You gonna go to work or are you gonna stay home and sleep off this hangover?” he asked.
As much as I wanted to sleep off the hangover, I couldn’t let Tito, Tex and the girls down like that, not to mention, I needed to work to pay my rent.
I looked to his side of the bed, but he didn’t have an alarm clock. He only had a charging station.
So I looked again to him. “What time is it?”
“Around nine thirty.”
Holy shmoly!
Not only was there no way to squeeze in even a small part of my morning ritual (again!), it was a hair wash day and I only had an hour and fifteen minutes to get ready.
I scrambled off his lap and raced to the bathroom, my head screaming, my stomach churning, my lips crying, “It’s a hair wash day!”
Such was my haste, I slammed the door behind me accidentally, and my headache didn’t thank me for it.
I was rinsing off my facewash when there was a knock at the door.
“Yeah?” I called.
Javi walked in carrying a glass filled with cloudy water and ice.
He set it on the bathroom vanity.
“IV hydration,” he said. “Drink it dry. It’ll help with the hangover. I’ll bring you coffee and a bagel after you shower.”
Oh my God!
Constantly getting more amazing!
He went back out, closing the door behind him.
Totally amazing.
I sucked back the drink, and it took until after my shower to realize, astoundingly, I felt a whole lot better.
After coffee and a bagel, believe it or not, I was fit as a fiddle.
Yes.
I was sensing Javier “Mountain” Montoya was so amazing…
He was downright perfect.