Page 43 of Infatuation (The Josh & Kat Trilogy #1)

“My second serious boyfriend was Nate. I met him at a fraternity party in college. He was sweet and funny and completely in love with me from day one. He was also smart and athletic and a truly good person. He wanted to become a doctor and work with Doctors Without Borders, not even kidding. And on top of all that, the boy was objectively perfect-looking, too (one of those can’t-find-a-bad-angle types).

Plus, he was head over heels in love with me, which I found an attractive trait in a boyfriend.

Oh my God, how Nate worshipped me. He always talked about how the second he saw me, he just knew we were meant for each other .

‘It was love at first sight,’ he would always tell people, and I always wondered if he noticed I never said, ‘For me, too.’

“The truth was I didn’t love Nate the way he loved me, and I knew it in my bones.

I never felt that thunderbolt he felt when he saw me, though I was physically attracted to him (because, like I say, he was objectively gorgeous).

Maybe I should have listened to my gut and cut ties with Nate sooner, but I was young and I kept thinking the passion would come.

It had to, right? Nate was perfect in every way.

And sure enough, as time went by, I loved him more and more.

I truly adored him for the wonderful guy he was, how funny he was, how endlessly thoughtful and sweet and good.

But I never, ever fell in love with Nate.

And I knew it. I didn’t practice writing my name using his last name.

I never ached for him when we were apart—hell, I didn’t even think about him when we were apart, to be perfectly honest. I never got butterflies when we held hands or kissed or had sex, though all were exceedingly pleasant.

And I most certainly didn’t feel an ounce of jealousy at the thought of him with another girl.

Not an ounce. And yet Nate made it abundantly clear he lived to make me smile, yearned to touch me every chance he got, dreamed about me, and for sure envisioned me as his future wife .

“Why didn’t I feel what Nate felt for me?

To this day, I have no fucking idea. But for a long time, I truly thought things would change and I’d come to my senses and fall head over heels.

‘When you like a flower, you pick it,’ my mom always says.

‘When you love a flower, you water it and let it grow.’ So I figured I’d just keep watering our flower and soon my feelings would morph and ignite into the kind of life-or-death passion I’d always dreamed of experiencing.

But they didn’t. I guess some things just can’t be forced, no matter how much you water them.

“Finally, about a year into our relationship, I was at a party with friends where I met a guy who made my panties burst into flames in a way I’d never felt with Nate, not even once.

Honestly, the guy took my breath away with just a glance.

It was like he’d cast a spell on me and my lady-parts.

I’d never experienced full-body lust like that before.

I didn’t know my body was even capable of getting that dripping wet—and that was just from looking at the guy.

I could only imagine what would happen if I actually got to touch him.

“It took all my self-restraint not to cheat on Nate that very night (because believe me, my vagina desperately wanted to do it), but I didn’t.

Instead, I nutted up and sat Nate down the next morning and I broke it off with him as gently as I could (and then went out and banged the shit out of that hot guy from the party four nights later on our second date).

“To say I broke Nate’s heart is an understatement.

Even as I’m writing this, I’m crying at the memory of the look on his face when I told him I wasn’t in love with him.

To this day, I’ve never felt more like a shitty person than when I told that beautiful, sweet, loving boy I didn’t want to be his girlfriend anymore for no other reason than ‘I dunno why.’

“Now and again, I’ll get an occasional email from Nate, asking me how I’m doing, if I’m happy, asking if I’m married, and I always feel like crying when I have to reply honestly to him, ‘I’m really great, Nate.

Still single. How are you?’ I know he’s hoping one of these times I’ll write, ‘I was an idiot. Please take me back.’ But I’m never even remotely tempted to write those words. And, honestly, I hate myself for it.

“I tried to be in love with Nate. I really did. But, apparently, passion isn’t something you can force. If it were, I swear I’d be passionately in love with that boy to this very day—because he so deserved that.

“My third serious boyfriend was the one who shattered my heart into a million tiny pieces. Garrett Bennett. Or as I like to refer to him, The Asshole.

“I met Garrett on the first day of my junior year. I was walking to class with Sarah when Garrett beelined right to me from across a large lawn and asked me out, saying I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and if I didn’t say yes to a date, I’d ruin his life.

Well, to say my panties were wet at the sight of him is an understatement.

The boy had an animal magnetism I’d never encountered before. So, of course, I said hell yes.

“On our first date, Garrett took me to a really nice restaurant, the nicest restaurant I’d ever been to, actually.

Not the burgers and fries I’d been expecting.

As it turned out, his dad was a senator and his mom some sort of philanthropist-lady who organized trips to Africa through her church.

And the dude played on the freaking golf team at our school.

(Who does that?) He seemed sort of fancy to me, but in a good way.

“But it wasn’t his swankiness that made me like him that night.

Our conversation flowed easily and I laughed a lot.

He was hysterically funny. (And did I mention he made my panties wet?) Actually, wait, let me amend the statement that he was hysterically funny.

I’m not really sure if that’s true, in retrospect.

The guy could have recited the phone book that night and I would have giggled like a fucking idiot.

I was just instantly smitten. It was Nate, but in reverse.

In fact, more than once during dinner, I thought, So this is what Nate felt!

If you’d asked me that night, ‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’, I would have shrieked, ‘Yes!’

“So, anyway, when Garrett asked me to come back to his place after dinner, I said yes , yes, yes. I’d only intended to make out with him, to tell you the truth, because honestly, up until then, I’d never had first-date sex or even a one-night stand.

(Even that guy I banged after breaking up with Nate lasted two months.) Plus, Garrett had made a few comments during dinner that made it clear he’d come from an extremely conservative religious background, unlike me (organized religion is pretty much nonexistent in my household—as long as I’m dumping my entire life’s story on you, might as well hit you with religion, too), so I didn’t think first-date sex would be in the cards with a guy like that.

But one thing led to another and another, pretty damned quickly, actually, and soon, Garrett and I were at his place having headboard-banging sex like nothing I’d ever experienced before.

“This kind of sex was a revelation to me. Before Garrett, I’d never had such uninhibited, wild sex.

Even sex with the after-Nate guy wasn’t nearly as explosive as sex with Garrett Bennett.

Our chemistry was off the freaking charts.

I felt like I could be as wild as I wanted to be with him, like there were no limits—and that opened up a whole new side to myself I didn’t even know existed.

I’d been giving myself orgasms for years before then, and I’d had orgasms during oral with guys, but this was the first time I had orgasms during sex with a guy—during actual intercourse—and it was like, wow, wow, wow, wow.

“I was immediately addicted, as you can probably imagine. I could never get enough. I wanted more, more, more, every chance I got. And so, from that day forward, for the better part of the next seven months, I banged Garrett as much as possible, which wasn’t as much as I would have liked (because, as he kept telling me, golf is an extremely time-consuming sport, especially for someone trying to go pro).

“But suffice it to say we had a ton of sex.

But we also had lots and lots of conversations, too, mostly in bed, during which I told him pretty much every honest thought I had about anything and everything, never holding back.

For some reason, the uninhibited sex made me feel uninhibited in all ways, like I could tell Garrett anything.

No topic was off limits, and I just babbled and babbled.

“In some very big ways, it was obvious Garrett and I came from strikingly different backgrounds and families, but it didn’t matter.

I just always felt like Garrett totally “got” me and secretly saw the world the way I did, despite his parents’ expectations about what and who he was ‘supposed’ to be.

“Honestly, I felt like I’d met my perfect match—my soul mate, if you will (a phrase I’ve since banished from my vocabulary).

We never said ‘I love you’ to each other, because Garrett made it obvious he didn’t feel comfortable with saying ‘trite’ words like that—but that was fine with me.

I knew in my heart how we both felt—so I didn’t need to hear the stupid, trite words .