Before Jamaica Lane (On Dublin Street #3)(20)

To save the irritation of going through more banging, I swiped my hair off my face and clumsily unlocked the door, hearing Nate's footsteps ringing up the stairwell as I opened it. Through the jet-black strands of my wild hair I saw his face appear.

'You look like shit,' he observed cheerily, looking way too sober and happy for someone who had been drinking the night before.

Skin prickling with embarrassment, I grunted at him.

He held up a bag. 'I brought you aspirin, energy juice, and donuts.'

I must have turned green, because he sighed, brushed past me toward the kitchen, and advised, 'You need to eat something.'

I grunted again and turned toward the bathroom. Seeing the crazy-haired lady with the globs of mascara around her eyes, pasty pallor, and lipstick smeared across her mouth, I gave a little shriek.

'You okay?' Nate asked warily.

My fingers shook with the hangover as I leaned across my sink. 'I look like the Bride of Frankenstein with a massive hangover.'

'I'd be hungover too if I'd just had to fuck Frankenstein.'



       
         
       
        

Despite myself I giggled and then groaned when the sound ricocheted painfully through my noggin, as my dad called it. I took a couple of deep breaths and then fought through the hangover tremors and the nausea to wash quickly, brush my teeth, scrape my hair off my face, and scurry into my bedroom to change into a pair of jersey pants and a T-shirt.

Nate smiled at me from behind the kitchen counter as I approached. 'There she is.'

Unable to meet his gaze, I lowered my eyes to the glass of orange juice, bottle of energy drink, aspirin, and donuts he had laid out for me. Mumbling my thanks, I swallowed the aspirin and sat my ass down on a stool to nibble on a donut. After five minutes of total silence, Nate finally leaned across the counter and forcibly lifted my eyes to his by tilting my chin up with his fingers.

Everything from last night passed between us.

'Please,' I whispered, my lips trembling as I fought the tears of vulnerability. 'Please don't tell anyone, Nate.'

His dark eyes widened slightly. 'So it is true?'

Instead of answering, my gaze sharpened.

Nate sighed. 'Who am I going to tell?'

'Nate.'

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. 'I promise, all right.'

I went back to chewing on my donut, my skin burning from the heat of Nate's attention.

'How can it be possible, Liv? You're an attractive, outgoing woman  …  How  … ' He seemed flabbergasted. Honestly, that was kind of nice. Flattering.

Which was probably why I was finally able to meet his gaze as I replied, 'I've always been shy around guys I'm into, but more than that I just wasn't really in the game. I never have been. My mom was sick when I was a teenager. When other teenagers were experiencing boys and kisses, dates, and sex, I was busy fussing over my mom. Then she got sick again when I was in college.' My eyes burned into his. 'You know, Nate.'

And he did know.

An offbeat sense of humor and an inner geek weren't the only things Nate and I had initially bonded over. We'd bonded over a third thing: the Big C.

While I lost Mom to it, Nate lost his childhood sweetheart to lymphoma. They were only eighteen when she died.

Not a lot of people knew that about Nate, and I had the feeling I was among the privileged few who had gotten the whole story out of him. It explained a lot about him.

'It consumes you,' I whispered. 'You don't care about anything else. Nothing else mattered but spending every second I could with her.'

He swallowed hard, his eyes dropping to the table. 'I get it, Liv.'

'By the time I got out of college I was  –  I am  –  constrained by my self-consciousness.' I looked away from him. 'Having such a lack of experience  …  it has shredded what little confidence I might have had.' 

We were silent a moment as Nate seemed to process this. Finally he turned my face back again so I had to look into his eyes. I found his expression solemn and thoughtful. 'You were really sad last night, Liv. I've known you for almost a year and you know me probably better than most people, and yet last night I felt like I was getting to see a huge part of you that you've kept from me. From everyone.'

Tears filled my eyes, my throat burning as I tried to keep them in. 'I don't want to be the person who looks in the mirror and hates what she sees, or be the person that moans about how she can't interact with a guy long enough to secure a date. That's not a good person to be, Nate. I just want to be like everyone else. Have a relationship with the opposite sex. But I can't. It's pathetic. But at least I'm not pathetic enough to moan about it.'

'It's not pathetic,' he snapped, his eyes flashing. 'Liv, you've been through a lot. You can't expect to be normal. And to hell with normal. Normal's boring. And you, babe, are anything but boring.'