Chapter 14 Nate
The next morning, we wake up with our limbs intertwined. We are naked but covered by the comforter plus the extra quilt. The fireplace is still on, though I turned it down last night because something about the idea of sleeping with a fire raging just steps away from the bed seemed dangerous.
I check my phone, which I left plugged in just in case the power came back on. It’s at twelve percent battery.
I take a moment to regard the angel asleep beside me. She’s got her face smushed into the pillow and her mouth open. She’s definitely drooling into her hair. Still, she’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on, and I’m overcome with gratitude, arousal, and joy at the fact that I get to wake up next to her, even if our relationship status could technically be labeled as complicated.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” I whisper into her ear.
She flips onto her side, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand, smacking her lips together in an attempt to cure an obvious case of dry mouth. “Mmm,” she groans.
“I’m sorry to wake you, but it looks like we still have no power, and I want you to check and see if your letters went out before my phone dies.”
Yup, that does it. CJ stretches her arms up over her head and takes in the scene that is our shared bedroom. Her panties are on the floor, our socks are laid out by the fireplace, her bra is hanging off one of the posts at the foot of the bed, and my pants are crumpled up by the bathroom door. CJ’s laptop is over at the desk by the window with my boxers just sitting beside it, as if I would ever leave my underwear on someone’s computer equipment. She reaches for her glasses on the nightstand and sets them on her face. She looks so cute I could just eat her up.
“Hey,” I say, reaching for her. “Really quick, before the letters. Happy birthday.” I fold her into my arms and give her a hug. “And happy new year. This is going to be your year, CJ.”
She gives me a squeeze, and when she pulls back, I push the hair out of her face and kiss her lightly on the mouth. “Thank you,” she says and kisses me again, more greedily this time.
“Don’t get me all worked up,” I say. “Go check your email, please. I’m not going to fight you on engaging in round three or four or whatever number we’re up to, but please, just check your email before my hotspot dies.” I laugh at how ludicrous I sound, but I know she’ll be miserable if she doesn’t have the peace of mind of knowing her queries went out.
CJ climbs out of bed and pulls on a pair of sweatpants from her bag. She grabs my undershirt from yesterday off the floor and pulls that on to cover her top. The thin fabric of the T-shirt leaves nothing to the imagination, especially without a bra. I find myself more turned on with that little bit of clothing on her than I was waking up next to her naked.
Eh, maybe not.
She opens the laptop and wakes it up by dragging her finger along the touchpad. Straight to the email she navigates. “Holy crap!” she screeches. “I already have a response!”
“Really? That’s great! That means it worked. What does it say?”
“It’s from Vision Board Creative Group. It’s an auto-reply, saying they’re closed until tomorrow.”
“That’s fine. Good.” I nod. “You’re officially a querying author. That’s a big deal! We should celebrate.”
She shrieks and claps her hands. “I’m freaking out! I’m sorry. I just have a lot of adrenaline for first thing in the morning. And then add to it all of this”—she waves at the airspace between us—“and I’m pretty much a complete and utter train wreck.”
I laugh. “No need to explain. I completely understand. I’m so excited for you. In fact, wait a sec. I have something. Pass me my drawers?”
CJ tosses my boxers over to me. I swing my legs out from under the covers and put on my underwear. Then I turn the heat on the fireplace up higher (because holy hell is it cold in here) and open the dresser drawer where all my sweaters are neatly folded. I reach all the way to the back, feeling around for my surprise.
CJ watches me with those beautiful wonder-filled eyes of hers, and I drag her away from the computer and back to the bed with a small black box in my hand. It has a red ribbon around it. I sit her down and hand it to her.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“This is your birthday gift. I hope you like it,” I reply. My stomach dips, as it might if I were on a roller coaster.
“But you just gave me a gift a few days ago.”
“I know. That was for Christmas. It’s not my fault your birthday and Christmas are in such close proximity to each other.”
She smiles, looking from the box to my face and down at the box again. “It looks like jewelry.”
“Why don’t you open it and find out?”
CJ nods. Her grin alone is worth the money I spent on this. She unties the ribbon and flips open the box. Inside, there’s a wedding band with a dozen diamond chips across the top of it.
She gasps. “Holy shit. Is this real?”
“It’s white gold and diamonds. I got it in town. I hope you like it. I just didn’t want you to have to suffer forever, walking around with your ex-boyfriend’s promise ring on your left hand while your sister incubates his litter of babies. Something about that didn’t feel fair. You shouldn’t have to endure the emotional turmoil of remembering how much Bryce hurt you every time you look down at your fingers.”
“Pen,” she says. Her voice is soft, and it sings the nickname sweetly. “This is too much.”
“It’s really not,” I reply. “When you think about everything you’ve done for me…” My voice trails off.
She looks up from the box into my eyes. Her face gets all scrunchy, and she says, “This is the sweetest, most considerate, most—”
“Good,” I say, cutting her off. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I love it. It’s beautiful.”
“Can I put it on you?”
“Of course.” She hands me the box, and I take out the ring as she all but rips the old one off her finger. I replace it with my ring, a wedding band for my newly minted girlfriend. The idea of it makes me laugh. This would make one hell of a story, I think.
All of a sudden, the lights go on.
“Oh, thank God!” CJ squeals. She peers out the window and points to a truck that reads Block Island Power along its side. “That was fast by New York City standards.”
“Shit. No wonder we lost power.” I nod with my chin. “Look over there,” I say, pointing at an ash tree that had split in half, pulling wires down around it. “That tree must have knocked out the grid. I guess from the wind.”
“Sheesh,” CJ says. “Hopefully no one was hurt.”
“Bad news travels fast. I’m sure we would have heard if it got somebody.”
“Well, thank goodness the electric is working again,” she says. “Now you can join me in the shower.”
I don’t need convincing. My grin says it all.
One hour and two very satisfying orgasms later (one for each of us), CJ and I are in the dining room, warming our hands on fresh mugs of coffee.
“The charcuterie boards weren’t going to keep, so we had no choice but to put them out,” Alice Devereaux explains. “I mean, it was such a night.” She’s all wound up with the excitement of regaling anyone who will listen with stories from the party that almost wasn’t. “It’ll definitely go down in the history books, that’s for sure.”
Dillon picks at his oatmeal. “Good thing board games can be played by candlelight,” he says.
“It’s really a shame you two couldn’t make it,” Devereaux says to me and CJ.
I give CJ a knowing look, but she says, “I know! I was just wiped from the day. Residency takes a lot out of me.”
“And now it’s the new year,” Devereaux continues. “So I take it your queries went out, right?”
CJ grins like the Cheshire cat and nods happily.
“Good for you. Your writing is excellent. I have no doubt you’ll get some interest,” Devereaux replies.
It feels like an honest-to-God compliment, but I trust Alice Devereaux about as far as I can throw her, so I just raise an eyebrow and leave it alone. No need to sully CJ’s excitement by shining a light on this woman’s personal beef with me. “I’m looking forward to our workshop later today, Cecily. We’ll be discussing the process of finding a literary agent, so do feel free to chime in with your thoughts on the research process.”
“Oh, I will. It’s been super interesting,” CJ replies.
“And I was very happy to see that you signed up for Instagram,” Devereaux continues. “Thank you for following my account.”
“Of course! I’m glad you saw that I did that.”
“I post important information regularly, so you’ll be able to avail yourself of it. And after you graduate, if you get published, I’ll follow your account as well.”
“Wait—you didn’t follow her back?” I say to Alice. I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. That’s just obnoxious.
“No, Nate, I didn’t. I make it a point not to follow students. Wouldn’t want to seem inappropriate, you know,” she responds.
Wow, bitch. Just…wow.I choose to let it go, even though the whole table goes silent at the obvious insult.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m glad to have the early part of today off. I’m sure we could all use the extra rest,” Dillon chimes in in a sorry attempt to cut through the ever-mounting tension at our breakfast table.
But I won’t unleash my fury on this second-rate asshole—at least not in public. I’m above that. (Don’t get me wrong. At some point, I’ll be using pages from her book as toilet paper, just not at this precise moment.) Also, it’s CJ’s birthday, and I’m not about to ruin it for her by letting my mouth get the best of me. She squeezes my knee under the table though, which reassures me that I’m making the right decision by leaving Alice Devereaux alone. I can’t sit here though. “I’m going to head back to the room,” I whisper in CJ’s ear.
“I’ll come with you. I need to check my phone anyway. I’m sure my mom has called me by now.”
We politely excuse ourselves, and CJ grabs a banana for the road. Back at the room, CJ hops on her phone right away—she’s flooded with text messages to return wishing her a happy birthday, plus a slew of Happy New Year group texts from overnight that she’s been included on. And indeed, she’s missed a call from her mom. “Is it okay if I call her from here?”
“Of course. Is it okay if I stay here and do some work?”
She smiles. “Yes, Pen. It’s fine. You know, at some point, we won’t feel like we need to be so polite toward each other.”
“Oh, believe me, as soon as you’re off the phone, I’ll be more than happy to do impolite things to you again,” I tease.
“That sounds gross,” she giggles.
I shrug. “You asked for it.”
She raises her eyebrows as she hits the green Call button on her phone. “Shh,” she admonishes me. “I don’t want my mom to know you’re here.”
I nod and give her a wink, then pantomime zipping my lips shut and throwing away the key. When her mother answers the phone and launches into an off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday,” I stifle a laugh. They chat for almost twenty minutes, talking about all the exciting things going on in CJ’s life—the querying and the new Instagram profile (which CJ then proceeds to coach her mother to locate online), followed by a full update on all of her pregnant siblings. Her mom passes the phone to her dad, who talks to her about the importance of joining the library’s 403(b) program, especially now that she’s thirty. After a brief lecture, he informs her that Jamie and Bryce are home, and would she like to speak to her sister? Of course she would; she’s CJ, an endlessly bright ray of sunshine regardless of whose fetuses are in the womb of the person asking. So she makes small talk with Jamie, talks about social media some more (Jamie follows her right on the spot, which makes her eyes light up), and asks how her baby registry is coming along. When she hangs up, I look at her, shaking my head.
“I don’t know how you do that,” I say.
“Do what?”
“How you can be so nice, considering what Jamie and Bryce put you through.”
“It sucked,” she agrees. “My mother didn’t exactly teach us about ‘girl code’ though. Her version of success was single-minded and old-fashioned, and I realized from a pretty young age that if I didn’t fall in line with it, I’d become an outcast in my own family.”
“So you’re saying you don’t blame Jamie?”
“I did, for a while. I blamed Bryce too. But when I really looked inside myself, I knew that I didn’t want the life he would’ve given me. And if she did, and it made her happy, then I could survive the sting of it.”
“You’re a better person than I am. If I had a brother and he ended up with Avery, even if I have zero feelings left for her, I’d still be pissed.”
CJ sighs. “Well, it helps a lot that I’m super into this new guy I’ve been seeing.”
“Is that so?” I smile.
She nods. “He’s the total package. Extremely handsome, funny, smart, generous, and rich and famous to boot.”
“Sounds like a dick to me.”
“Oh, believe me, he can be. I thought he was a total douche when I first met him.”
“Did you?”
“One hundred percent.”
“What’d he do to get you to change your mind?”
“He let me humiliate him on national television.”
“I’d say it was worth it.”
“Me too,” she says.
She smirks before tackling me and having her way with me. Again.