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There’s no awkward silence between us as we drive back home. I think that’s one of the things that I can appreciate about Nate and I is the fact that it’s never “awkward.” “Something’s Gotta Give” by Camilla is playing softly through the speakers. I try to block out the lyrics that are pungently drilling into my ears when he cranks it down a bit.
“Hungry?”
I chuckle, my eyes feeling heavy. Fatigue has settled into my bones. I drop my head to the cool window. “Starving actually.” My thoughts race through all the events that happened tonight, or—I look at the time on the dashboard—last night, since it’s a little after one a.m. I miss Micaela. I’m excited to get home to her, but at the same time, I know that I can’t exactly see her until tomorrow.
Nate pulls into a drive-through joint, one I don’t recognize. “No way!” I look up at the building. The bright red lights flashing up reading Chinese Takeout. My head whips to him. “Since when do they have an all-night Chinese takeout?”
Nate just watches me with fascination. After searching my eyes a few times, he shakes his head and smiles. It’s a genuine smile, one that doesn’t grace the likes of Nate’s lips too often. It almost rattles the gates that contain all of my feelings for him.
Almost. Because then I remember who he is and what he’s like and like an ice bucket of cold water against a hard erection, I shrivel.
“You like Chinese?”
I wriggle up on my seat and turn off the warmer, since my ass is starting to literally feel like it’s on fire and I’m not sure whether it’s a mixture of the sex and the semen, but it doesn’t feel too great. “Love. It’s my favorite food. I want to go to China just to eat the food.”
He rolls his eyes and drives us through. “Stop being dramatic, we have this food everywhere.”
“Honey chicken!” I say to him before he has even opened his mouth. “And chicken fried rice and deep-fried prawns—oh and Mongolo—”
“—Tillie?” He glares at me over his arm. My eyes flick over him to the bored—and severely tired—looking teen who is staring at me like I’m a reel of some sappy romance movie.
“Hmmm?”
“Shut up and let me order.”
I sit back, ignoring how my tummy rumbles at the mere thought of food. “Okay.”
We’re sprawled out on my bed in the pool house and I’ve just finished tying my hair into a messy bun and kicked my muddy shoes off when I grab a fork and dig in. “Can I ask you something?” I start, shoving a big bit of deep fried honey chicken into my mouth.
Nate shrugs, sucking the juice off his thumb while still chewing. How can something so normal look stupidly sexy. Oh yeah, because it’s Nate fucking Riverside.
“Did I take something tonight?”
He pauses, picking up some chicken with his fingers and putting it into his mouth. He has no manners. At all. He refuses to even use a fork to eat, and that shouldn’t be sexy, but it is. “I don’t know. I’ll find out.”
My brows pull in. “Where’d you disappear to while I was with Madison? Did you do the meet?”
His eyes don’t meet mine as he continues to eat. “Had business to handle.” His eyes darken, a smirk evidently sprawled out on his face. “And this meet happened. T’was fucking perfect.” He glares at me. “Why? What were you doing when you were with Madison?”
For a second, a very short second, I think that maybe he’s jealous.
Then he laughs, shaking his head. “Whatever, Tillie. You do what you feel like you need to do, as per usual, and I’ll make sure I kill the motherfucker that touches you without my permission, as per usual.”
I want to ask him a hundred questions, and then clarify that we are not a couple, but we’re actually not screaming at each other right now, we have Chinese food to enjoy, and I’m exhausted from the night, so I put that on the list of things to ask about tomorrow.
I push my bowl away and slip under the covers. “I’m so tired.”
“Mmmm,” I hear him say as he keeps eating.
“Can you turn the light off when you’re done?”
“Yeah.”
“Nate?” I murmur through a yawn.
“What, babe?”
“I’m too tired to wash your cum off my ass.”
Sleep takes me under before I hear his reply.
Nate
There are times in your life where you battle with yourself. You’re equipped with your thoughts as your weapons and your wrath as your armor. This battle is different because you don’t have a dominating army. All you have are the remnants of what’s left of you after you’ve ripped yourself apart. So you’re probably thinking ‘fuck that, that’s not a battle worth fighting.’ But sometimes, very rare times, someone comes along and shows you that they’re worth losing yourself for.