Ryan wanted to know everything about me: Where I was from. What I was doing in school. What kind of nurse I wanted to be. We drank and talked and talked and drank. I wasn’t just a little tipsy. I was totally trashed.
The party got crazy. Like really crazy. We could hardly hear each other over the thumping bass, and I wanted to hear every word he had to say, so it seemed like a great idea when he asked me to go upstairs with him to his bedroom where it was quiet and calm.
We stretched out side by side on the bed, facing one another, and talked for hours. That’s all we did. He didn’t even try to kiss me. I admit that was disappointing but I simultaneously liked it because it meant he hadn’t brought me to his room with the intention of using me to get laid.
Lying next to one another, fully clothed. That’s how we drifted off. But not how we awakened.
I don’t know who made the first move. I only remember waking in the middle of the night, the room dimly lit by the bedside lamp, and Ryan lying on top of me.
His long, lean baseball-player-esque body was nestled between my parted legs, his hard-on pressed against me. Rocking. Thrusting. And I didn’t tell him to stop. In fact, I’m pretty sure I was the one who made the first move toward getting naked.
I’m not sure if it was the alcohol or our intense physical chemistry, but I wanted him. Bad. And I was going all the way despite the fact that it was my first time.
A panty dropper at a drunken college party. That’s how I came to lose my virginity at nineteen to a guy whose last name I didn’t even know.
“I discharged both my patients. Want me to watch yours so you can grab lunch?”
“Yes! That would be great.” And what would be even more awesome is if Hutch came around and discharged Ryan Briggs while I’m away so I don’t have to see him again. “Vitals are due on the half-hour.”
You’re. . .her. I push the lettuce around on my plate as I consider what those two words mean.
Her, the girl he screwed while he had a girlfriend?
Her, the girl who was dumb enough to go upstairs and hand over her virginity?
Her, the girl who was so easy he didn’t even have to tell her his last name to get laid?
Ryan was pretty drunk. He probably doesn’t even realize he took my virginity. Probably assumes I was a whore who wanted to hook up with a baseball star like all the other girls at that party.
“Needed a break from my brother, eh?”
I look up at the sound of the woman’s voice. Ryan’s sister. Great. He hasn’t been discharged yet. “When you’re a nurse and someone offers to watch your patients so you can grab lunch, you don’t say no, since the chance will likely not present itself again.”
She sits on the bench across from me. “He’s not happy another nurse took your place. He wants you.” A grin spreads across her face. “In a long string of choice words, he told her to get out and send you back to be his nurse again.”
“Martha’s an excellent nurse. She’ll take great care of your brother.”
Emma grimaces as she pushes her shoulders back and straightens her spine. “He’s going ballistic; he thinks you left and won’t be coming back in to see him.”
That was the plan but not if he’s potentially going to be mouthing off to my co-workers about the past. I can’t have him asking questions or getting answers about me and my present life, so it’s time to put out this fire.
I gather my lunch to toss in the trash. “I’m on my way back.”
Emma’s expression is apologetic. “I shouldn’t have disturbed you on your lunch break. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Ryan Briggs killed any appetite I might have had.
“I don’t know why my brother’s being so nuts. Anesthesia always makes him say funny things but he’s never been this way.”
“We’ll blame the drugs.” Not the fact that he’s waking up from anesthesia and recalling a night from five years ago.
Ryan’s demanding I return to be his nurse? Going ballistic because he thinks I left? Why? Is he so egotistical he hasn’t gotten over being left in the middle of the night without a goodbye?
Martha laughs when she sees me approach the nurse’s station. “You weren’t gone long, missy. Let me guess. The bossy bastard in room six sent someone to get you?”
“The sister.”
“I figured as much when I saw her scampering out of his room. Guess he prefers a pretty, young thing over this old, wrinkled lady. Can’t say I blame him.”
Already half past the hour so vitals are due again. “Thanks for keeping an eye on him for me.”
“No problem. Maybe you’ll get some downtime for a lunch break after you discharge him.”