Chapter 3 #2
She was resentful that he made her into this feral, horny version of herself that she didn’t like to deal with.
But nobody was allowed to make him feel small, and Darlene had made him feel small in public, in a parking lot, like she was some kind of queen and he was a gnat.
Lila hadn’t been able to stand for it then, and she could no more stand for it now.
Cody, Walker, and Nolan had always had all this tolerance for that kind of shit.
And she could remember this boy riding by the apartment complex every day and shouting that they were fatherless. And the boys all ignored him. But the third time he did it, Lila ran up and put a stick through the spokes of his bike and sent the kid churning over his handlebars.
I might be fatherless, but your father clearly never taught you how to avoid a fight. You can’t win. I’ll kick your ass if you ever come by here again.
And as he’d gotten up, whimpering and trying to ride away, she’d thrown a rock at his back for good measure.
He hadn’t ridden by again.
If Darlene didn’t watch herself, Lila was going to put a stick through the spokes of her bike. Metaphorically, of course, unless the bitch had a bike, and then Lila would gladly do it literally.
“How have you been, Nolan?”
“Good,” Nolan said, his voice smooth and calm, like Darlene was a mere acquaintance, and not someone who had knocked the wind out of him in a very public way.
Lila could appreciate that about Nolan, she supposed that was the game that they had all been playing those years ago.
But it just wasn’t Lila’s style.
“I think you know full well how he’s been doing,” Lila said. “Which is why you came over here to chat him up. He’s a bastard, sure, but he’s a bastard with a lot of money now, isn’t he?”
For one split second, Darlene’s eyes looked like chips of ice. And then, she was back to being smooth and warm. “Oh, Lila,” she said. “We’re all a bit foolish when we’re younger.”
“That is true,” Lila said. “We are all a bit foolish when we’re young. But we don’t all think that we’re inherently better than the people around us just because we were born into a nuclear family where we have the privilege of living in a gated community filled with quiet suburban desperation.”
Darlene blinked, and Lila could see that she didn’t even understand what Lila was saying. She had never fully appreciated how hard it was to make somebody feel stupid when they actually were stupid.
“It’s good to see you, Darlene, but Lila and I are in the middle of a contest.”
“A contest?”
“Yeah, a drinking contest. Can we get another line of shots?”
Darlene wrinkled her nose. “Oh.”
“You want to join?” Lila asked.
“I’m okay,” Darlene said.
“Sure. You are.” Lila picked up the first shot and downed it.
And that was how she and Nolan wound up with a crowd behind them cheering them on as they took another shot, and another. Lila held the fourth whiskey glass with her teeth as she swallowed it down, and slammed it on the bar. “Keep it coming.”
“Lord almighty,” Nolan said after number five.
Lila felt horrible, but also compelled to keep going. Until the bartender emphatically cut them off. “It’s going to have to be a draw, because neither of you are getting alcohol poisoning in my establishment. And I don’t want to get in trouble for overserving.”
Lila was in a cold sweat, and she sat down on her barstool. “I still think that means I win.”
“You didn’t win,” Nolan slurred. “It’s a draw, because we can’t drink anymore. And I could, because I’m bigger than you.”
“Not a theory that you can test now, bro,” she said, shoving his shoulder.
Her head was swimming and the bar lights felt too bright now – which was hilarious because even in her stupor she knew they were dim.
But the jukebox was blaring and the whole place was rowdy because of their drinking contest. Two cowboys lifted Lila up in a chair and carried her around the room and she was genuinely worried she might throw up on them.
But she didn’t.
They set her down and one of them moved in close and Lila stepped back. “Don’t you want to get to know me better?” the guy asked, grinning broadly.
Lila frowned. “You aren’t even hot.”
Some part of her knew those were bad manners even now, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying it either.
“Come on, Lila,” Nolan said. “Don’t do that to his ego.”
She hadn’t even realized Nolan was there. So it took six shots of whiskey for her to not feel him quite so strongly. Good to know.
But then he moved in, and she felt far too much again.
“Any man who wants to deal with me better have an ego of steel,” she said.
“Now that is the damned truth.” Nolan looked at her and it was like a match had been struck against her skin.
She elbowed him, then took a step away from him. “You might be hot but you’re a pain in the ass.” Her tongue tangled on the words, and she was sure she shouldn’t have said them but it was too late.
Then she suddenly just felt weird and like she needed to hide, so she reached around inside her purse, hunting for her keys.
“Neither of you are driving,” Kip said.
“Not tempted to,” Nolan said.
Her head was swimming, and she realized that, of course, she couldn’t drive. They could get a cab back home, she supposed, but it was a little bit tricky to get one all the way back to the ranch.
“Just take the room upstairs for the night,” Kip said. “On me.”
Nolan saluted, and the bartender tossed over the keys.
Lila felt panicked, an echo of previous ghosts coming back to haunt her. “I…we have to share?”
“You can get a cab,” Nolan said. “For, a hundred bucks.”
He had a point. She might have more than enough money now but the fear of scarcity still lived within her.
“Fine,” she said. “I’m ready to go, I’ll just go up by myself.”
“No, you won’t. We’ll both go up.”
The whiskey wasn’t making him feel distant now but she was starting to feel too gross to argue. What had been a pleasant, hazy buzz now felt like nausea and motion sickness, along with creeping sadness she was trying to outrun.
But one thing was clear — she wasn’t outrunning Nolan tonight, no matter her intent.
They both dragged themselves out of the bar, and up the stairs that wound up the outside of the building. And Nolan shoved the keys in the lock.
Persistently working at getting the door open, Lila felt dizzy as they stumbled through the door.
It was larger than a regular hotel room.
But there was just a bed at the center of it, and a lamp in the corner with a bare light bulb.
There wasn’t a couch. There was just a chair by a desk up against the window.
“Fuck me,” Nolan said.
“Right there with you,” she said.
She stumbled past him and into the bathroom, and turned the water in the sink on. She held her wrists beneath the cold, hoping it would ease some of her nausea, or the waves of heat now moving through her. Make her feel a little bit more connected to reality. Make her feel a little bit less fuzzy.
Nolan pushed his way into the bathroom, but it was so tiny, he had to stand halfway in the shower.
“I feel like shit, I need some of that water.”
“Wait your fucking turn,” she growled.
He reached out and grabbed her wrist, turned her toward him, his expression sharp, and her heart sank all the way down into her stomach. They were way too close.
And all of a sudden, her whole world zeroed in on him.
Something changed in his eyes, and her mouth went dry.
Of course, it had already been dry, already felt like she had licked an athletic sock, but now it was worse, spread all the way down the back of her throat.
She felt her own breathing quicken along with her heartbeat, and panic, along with a little bit of disorientation from the alcohol, compelled her.
She reached out past Nolan, bringing her disastrously close to his body as she grabbed hold of the shower handle and flipped the water on.
He yelped, and jumped away from the freezing cold spray, and Lila darted out of the bathroom.
“Should’ve waited your turn,” she called back.
She got onto the bed, burrowed underneath the covers, her head swimming, her heart pounding so hard in her throat she was sure she was going to throw it up.
A few minutes later, she heard angry footsteps headed out of the bathroom. She rolled over, just in time to see his silhouette, jerking his jeans off. Already shirtless.
He was wearing nothing but the same kind of black underwear he had worn to swim in earlier today, and she felt like she was going to catch on fire.
Then, as if this was her penance, as if she was doing time in sexual purgatory, he laid down on top of the covers, half naked and all Nolan and every bit her nightmare.
“Go to sleep,” he bit out.
“But—”
“I’m drunk as hell,” he said. “And I’m not thinking clearly. And I swear to God, if you don’t stay over there—”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Her heart was pounding in her ears. And all she could think of was that night four years ago.
When he had gone to the couch and stayed there.
I swear to God, if you don’t stay over there.
Then what? Then what.
“Nolan...”
“Don’t,” he bit out. And normally, she would have persisted. Normally, there was no amount of anything that was ever going to deter her, but she was so drunk that she just couldn’t. The room was spinning, so she had to close her eyes.
And when she did she fell asleep to the sound of Nolan breathing beside her.