Nate had been sitting with his beer frozen at his lips the entire time I’d been talking, his eyes slightly rounded as my explanation rambled on. Finally he said, ‘You put a lot of thought into that one.’

I shrugged. ‘You have to think it through when you’re talking about forever.’

‘Good point.’

‘So what would you choose?’

‘The wedding.’

I wrinkled my nose. ‘Why?’

His smile was cocky as his eyes searched the room. His gaze stopped on the blue-dress girl. ‘Because there are always women feeling sad that they’re single, and they’re more than happy to quell that sadness with the first eligible man in the vicinity.’

‘You’re vile.’

‘Hey, I’m not the one who’s planning to take advantage of a grieving relative for sex in the bathroom at a wake.’

‘Yeah, well, at least I’d have the bathroom to go to. Where on earth are you taking these sad, lonely women if you’re stuck at the reception?’

‘I think the bathroom would work for me also.’

‘A public toilet?’ I arched a brow at him. ‘Have you done that before?’

‘Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.’

‘Oh, I want the answer,’ I replied, eyeing him curiously.

Nate ignored me, staring off at the dance floor. ‘You want to dance?’

With an inner sigh of disappointment, I let him off the hook and shook my beer at him. ‘Get a few more of these in me and then maybe.’

Grinning, he got up. ‘I’ll be right back.’

Suddenly the room shifted and the soft mattress of my bed was under my back, the ceiling of my bedroom in my line of sight. A feathery touch on my feet had me pushing up onto my elbows and I saw Nate taking off my shoes. After I almost knocked Joss off her feet with a serious lack of coordination, Nate had been as good as his word and had gotten my drunken butt in a cab and practically carried me up the stairs to my flat.

‘I haven’t had sex in seven years,’ I blurted out, not caring if Nate knew this embarrassing fact about me.

His head jerked up at my confession as he pulled off my right shoe. ‘Are you kidding?’

I shook my head, pouting a little.

‘Seven years?’

‘Seven years. I’ve slept with one guy, Nate, once. It was awful. I was awful. I’m crap at sex, I can’t flirt. I’m a loser.’ I felt tears prick my eyes and flopped back against my pillow.

Nate finished taking off my other shoe. I felt the bed dip at my side as he sat. ‘Come here, you.’ He pulled me up and I melted into his arms, his chin resting gently on my head. His warm hands rubbed my back soothingly and in response my drunken tears fell silently.

‘You are not a loser,’ he told me gruffly. ‘You could never be a loser, Liv, and I don’t want to hear you call yourself a loser again.’

‘Okay,’ I mumbled.

We sat in the quiet for a while and then I decided since he knew so much he might as well know everything.

‘There’s a guy at the library. A student. Postgrad. I like him, but I sound like Rain Man every time I try to talk to him.’

Nate made a choking noise in the back of his throat.

‘Are you laughing?’

He cleared it and answered shakily, ‘Never.’

He was so laughing.

‘It’s not funny,’ I told him grimly and pulled wearily out of his arms to fall back against my pillow, my eyes finally drifting shut. ‘I’m going to die alone, Nate.’

And as unconsciousness pulled me toward it, I thought I heard him whisper, ‘Not on my watch, babe.’

6

How had cotton balls gotten stuck in my mouth?

Smacking my lips, I pushed my tongue up against my teeth and attempted to rid myself of the dryness. As soon as my lips parted, my head jerked back against my pillow and pain shot across my forehead, around my temple, and down the back of my skull.

My breath did not smell good.

As I bravely forced movement into my limbs, the ache and wave of sickness that rose from my fragile stomach were just two more pieces of evidence pointing toward one conclusion:

I wasn’t just hungover.

I was hung-the-fuck-over.

Ugghhhhhh. Groaning, I turned on my side and gently pried my eyes open. The hope was that I had been smart enough last night to leave a glass of water by my bedside before I’d passed out. As soon as my eyes hit the glass I knew smarter would have been to bring a jug of water to my bedside. I’d emptied the glass already.

For a few minutes I flicked my gaze back and forth between the glass and my bedroom door, hoping for a miracle every time my eyes swung back to my bedside table.

But no. It looked like I was going to have to get up off my drunken, smelly ass and get my own refill. I shuffled up to a sitting position, whereupon the room suddenly spun around, and with the spinning a memory slammed into my brain, knocking me back against the headboard.

Nate taking me home and getting me into bed.

That memory was like a key unlocking the rest, and as everything I’d said came flooding back in fits and starts, my cheeks burned with mortification. I grabbed at my phone in the hope that I’d find something there to prove that my brain was making up all those memories, but I found only a couple of texts from Jo and Ellie, asking me if I’d gotten home all right.

I slammed the phone back on my bedside table and then flinched in pain from the noise.

Holy. Balls.

I’d admitted to Nate I hadn’t had sex in seven years, that I’d only had sex once, that I was shit at it, and that I had a whopping big crush on Library Guy.

‘You. Are. An. Asshole, Olivia Holloway. Ass. Hole.’ I glared up at the ceiling and felt the prick of tears in my eyes. I’d told Nate something I hadn’t told anyone. Drunk off my ass, I’d ripped open my insides and shown them to the biggest player I’d ever met. Now every time I saw him, I would remember how I had laid myself bare to him.

I was a walking wound and I’d given Nate Sawyer total access to throw salt and anything else he liked on me.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I ignored the warm tears trickling down my cheeks and tried to reassure myself of Nate’s loyalty. Even though I’d exposed myself completely, all I had to do was talk to him and make him promise not to tell anyone, or to talk about it. Ever again.

This was Nate. He was my friend. My good friend. I could count on him to just put this behind us.

The buzzer to my apartment knifed through my skull and I moaned, burying my face in my pillow. After a few minutes my phone rang.

Blindly, I reached for the cell, picked it up, and shoved it against my ear. ‘What?’ I asked into my pillow, so it was more of a growl than a word.

‘Open the door,’ Nate demanded softly and then hung up.

Heat rushed to my cheeks again. I’d thought I would at least get the chance to be sober and, you know, clean, when I got to face him again. Still in my bridesmaid dress, I rolled out of bed, fell, and then stumbled my way to my ungainly feet. Nate started ringing the buzzer again and I swear to God the noise was going to make me upchuck the delicious dinner I’d had at Joss and Braden’s reception.

‘All right!’ I yelled as I picked up the entry phone and slammed my palm on the button to let him in.

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.’

I smiled weakly, grateful that he was trying to cheer me up, but not really feeling cheered up.

‘And this guy?’ Nate continued gruffly. ‘This guy at the library. You like him?’

Nodding, I dropped my head to my hands and groaned at my crappy situation. ‘Yeah, I like him.’