True (10 page)

It was then that I realized it would be very easy to fall in love with Tyler Mann.

And that if I didn’t want to get my heart broken into a million pieces, I needed to be very, very careful not to do that.

Chapter Ten

I texted Kylie around ten, knowing she would worry about me. I was still on the couch and Tyler was in the bathroom. I had a feeling he was cleaning it because he’d gone in with the spray bottle and had been in there for twenty minutes.

Staying with Tyler tonight.

Where?

His place.

We’re at Nathan’s and you are not here. I’m freaking. Are you sure you’re ok? Where are you?

His house. His mom’s house.

What?!?! For reals?

Yes.

Whoa. No one goes there. Is it gross?

I didn’t want to admit that it was. Or had been. That seemed disloyal.

No. It’s fine.

O-kay.

I was guessing Nathan and Kylie and Jessica were having a discussion about where I was and why. My roommates probably didn’t understand why Tyler and I were still hanging out with each other now that we had supposedly already had sex and I had avoided him all week, but I wasn’t about to enlighten them. Besides, I didn’t exactly know what we were doing either.

Tyler came and plunked himself down next to me on my free side. Jayden had curled up with a blanket to my right, and Easton was in a velvet chair with a calico cat that had matted fur. Tyler put his hand on my knee and gave me a smile. “You doing okay?”

“Yep.”

“I have to work tomorrow at nine,” he said. “I hope that’s okay. I should have thought of that before. We’ll probably have to leave here around 8:15 to get you back and me to work on time.”

“That’s fine. That way I’ll be up and I can study before Kylie and Jess get back.”

“Nerd,” he said teasingly.

“That’s me.” It was a label I had never minded wearing. It was the truth and that was that.

“Want to go to bed soon?”

My palms went clammy and I started sweating. “Sure.” What was meant to sound nonchalant came out like a squeak. The anticipation was killing me and I just wanted to get it over with. I wanted to be done with the whole awkward first-time experience and be able to enjoy myself.

But Tyler squeezed my thigh. “Don’t look so terrified. I’m not going to try anything. That would be like luring you here under false pretenses or something.”

Did I look scared? God, how embarrassing. I was both relieved and disappointed at his words.

“Besides, I don’t have any condoms and you heard my mom—getting pregnant will fuck up your life. She’s living proof.” He seemed to think this was funny.

I wasn’t as amused. First of all, because I thought what his mother had said was horrible and I couldn’t imagine poking fun at it, but I realized he had to either laugh or be angry. But secondly, he had been in the bookstore looking to buy condoms less than two weeks ago. I’m sure he had bought them at the drugstore, and I was guessing they came in a three-pack, at bare minimum, with probably as many as twenty-four in one box. Assuming he was short on cash, which was likely, he would have bought the cheapest—the three-pack. But still, that meant he no longer had them. Which meant they’d been used. And not with me. Three times. At least.

So with who?

I didn’t think it was Jessica, because she was already campaigning for me at that point. But whoever it was, I wasn’t happy about it.

“Good point,” I told him coolly.

He stood up and said, “Sorry I can’t offer you a toothbrush or anything, but I can give you some basketball shorts to sleep in.”

“That’ll work.” I followed him down the hall to the second bedroom on the right, a small eight-by-eight box with a twin mattress on the floor. He flicked the light on, and I saw it was loaded with a sheet that had pulled free of the mattress, three pillows, a blanket
,
and balled-up clothes.

After shutting the door firmly, he peeled off his T-shirt and added it to the pile, which he then shoved over onto the floor. For the first time, I had a view of his bare back and I realized the tattoos weren’t contained to his arms. There was a giant elaborate cross between his shoulder blades, with a very heavy metal look to it. It spanned from one shoulder blade to the other and vertically down his spine. It was also clear how much he worked out because the muscle definition was droolworthy, and I found myself even more jealous of the unknown girl who had gotten to have sex with him when I wasn’t even going to be able to. It seemed so not fair.

“Do you mind if I take my jeans off?” he asked, finger on his fly.

“No.” Annoyed, more at myself than at him, I kicked off my boots and carefully set them in the corner, my crossbody bag next to them. I yanked off my sweater and folded it, leaving me in a cami and skinny jeans. I crawled into bed, fixing the sheet and refusing to look at his near nakedness.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

I should have said no. Most people would have. But being silently petulant wasn’t me. I had absolutely no right to be upset with him if he had slept with someone else, and I knew that. Logically.

“No. But if I said I have condoms, would you want to have sex with me?” I asked, adjusting two pillows behind my head and taking in the sight of him, realizing I’d be an idiot not to. His thighs and calves were muscular with a fine sprinkling of dark hair. There was another tattoo, a fiery red dragon racing down his left calf. When he turned fully toward me, his expression fierce, I tried not to glance at his black boxer briefs.

Tried and failed. What could I say? I’d never seen a penis in person and I was curious. But there was only a bulge visible beneath the cotton.

“Are you saying you have condoms?” he asked, voice tight.

His briefs jumped and I realized that he was growing an erection while he stood there. Oh, God. I stared. I couldn’t help it. “No. That was a hypothetical.”

He made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “Then why would you ask me that? And maybe next time you could warn me if it’s purely hypothetical.”

I just shrugged. Honestly, I wasn’t sure. Other than maybe in some backward way I was fishing for a compliment. “Why didn’t you buy some at the grocery store?”

“Because I didn’t think sex was on the menu tonight.” He pulled a pair of shorts out of a pile and slid into bed, handing them to me. “Are you pissed because I didn’t plan this better? I didn’t know you were going to spend the night. Hell, I never dreamed you would agree to spend the night. Yesterday you weren’t even answering my texts.” His warm body filled the space next to mine and he lay on his side, watching me with his head propped up by his arm.

“I’m not pissed.” I wasn’t. I was irrationally irritated, and even that was dissipating. What he had said made total sense and I knew it. If he had bought condoms at the store I would have thought that was presumptuous. It was hard for a guy to win sometimes.

“You clearly are pissed.”

“No.” I shook my head. Under the blanket I struggled out of my jeans, tossed them behind my head onto the floor, then pulled on the shorts.

“I wish you’d just rail at me,” Tyler said, reaching out and playing with the ends of my hair. “That I know how to deal with. This . . . I don’t get.”

“I can’t be a drama queen. That’s not me,” I told him.

“That’s not what I mean . . . it’s just I can’t tell what you’re thinking half the time. You’re so quiet.”

I wanted to explain to him that some stories were loud, and some were quiet. His was filled with verbal arguments, slammed doors, heavy metal, and bad mufflers. Mine was one of hushed hospital hallways, the soft breath of a dying mother, whispered words of sympathy, and an achingly empty house where the most noticeable voice, the one of laughter and encouragement and cheerfulness, had been silenced.

But I just told him, “The expression isn’t ‘I talk, therefore I am.’ ”

Not everything needed to be said. Including my unwarranted jealousy of his past.

He laughed and his warm breath blew over my shoulder. “You have a point. If that were the case, Kylie would be a philosopher and we both know that’s not even remotely true.”

That brought a smile to my face. “No, probably not.”

Tyler continued to play with my hair, pulling a strand all the way out and letting it fall over his hands in a waterfall of auburn waves. I hadn’t slept in the same bed with another person any more than I had grocery shopped with anybody, and it gave me an intriguing perspective on him. Lying horizontally, he didn’t feel so much bigger than me, so much more powerful. For the first time ever, we were able to look directly into each other’s eyes without him bending down or me looking up.

We were perfectly aligned.

“I guess we should have turned the light off before we got into bed,” I said.

“Then how would I see how beautiful you are?”

It should have sounded like a line. It was a line. Yet he looked so sincere that I couldn’t help but believe that to him, I was beautiful. I felt beautiful under his gaze. A guy didn’t touch with the gentleness he had if he didn’t appreciate what he was looking at.

His wrist was visible as he lifted my hair up and let it drop over and over, the motion relaxing me, and obviously him. My body was growing warm under the blanket from his heat radiating toward me, and he smelled like cigarettes and toothpaste.

“What is this tattoo?” I asked, tapping his wrist with my index finger. It looked like an infinity symbol, but it was overlaying something else.

“It’s a mistake. Got it when I was fifteen. It’s supposed to be the Batman symbol.”

I pursed my lips, suddenly wanting to laugh. “Oh?”

“I know. Totally stupid. But I was fifteen, what can I say? And it was only ten bucks because some douche bag was learning how to be a tattoo artist. I hear he works at the cell-phone store now.”

“It doesn’t look like the Batman symbol at all.”

“Thank God. His lack of skill actually benefited me.” Leaving my hair alone, he locked his fingers through mine. “I’m guessing you don’t have any ink.”

“No. But not because I don’t find it fascinating. I just haven’t felt passionate enough about anything to put it permanently on my body. I’m not a very passionate person.” My father used to joke that I was adopted from a Vulcan family.

His eyebrows shot up. “Not very passionate? Given what I saw in the car, I don’t believe that.”

Yeah, that was me blushing. “That’s different.”

“Let’s see.”

Tyler kissed me, and it, too, was different from this angle. I could feel his body everywhere along mine, and because now we were essentially the same height, our kiss was deeper, more invasive, and he gave a low moan in the back of his throat. Our bodies found a rhythm together, rocking and moving in tandem, hands stroking everywhere we could as his tongue plunged urgently into my mouth. This was what I had been imagining. What I’d been waiting for. This was hot and wet and desperate, tangled legs and swollen lips and gasps of pleasure on his twin mattress.

Tyler broke away and set me back away from him. “I have to stop. I want to take your clothes off so badly, damn.”

I was breathing hard and as I wiped my lips, I almost told him to hell with safe sex. But as soon as that thought popped into my head, it was like a bucket of ice water was dumped over my desire. I wasn’t going down that road. Ever. No matter how much my body seemed to think otherwise.

“Maybe I am passionate about certain things,” I told him.

He laughed. “Your passion is about to kill me. Fuck.” Standing up, he pointed his finger at me. “I’m turning the light out and we’re going to sleep. Stay on your side of the bed and try not to be so damn hot, understand?”

I made a face, using my fingers to peel my upper lip back to my nose in a move I hadn’t attempted since second grade.

He laughed. “That will do it, thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

The light went out. The mattress groaned and sagged in the dark as he rejoined me on the bed, punching at his pillow, as far away from me as humanly possible on a narrow twin bed. I tried to hover near the wall. He kissed the back of my head.

“Good night, beautiful.”

“Good night.”

I lay in the dark and listened to the sound of his breath as it slowed and evened out, and I marveled at where I was and who I was with.

It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t logical.

Yet there was no place I’d rather be.

***

When I woke up, Tyler was watching me. He gave me a soft smile. “Hey.”

“Hey.” I was stiff from staying in one position the entire night, and I was instantly worried about bed head and morning breath. Rolling my neck, I covered my mouth as I yawned and tentatively snaked my arm out to stretch it. I let my hand land on his warm chest.

“You stiff?” he asked, giving me a soft kiss. He looked sleepy, his beard stubble even more pronounced after just eight hours of sleep.

I thought about the process of hair pushing itself out of our follicles while we slept and was amused at the imagery. Sometimes I wondered if I was the only one who found science so entertaining.

“Roll over, I’ll rub your shoulders. This mattress sucks.”

Was he for real? He was going to give me a back rub? That was definitely high on the Hot List. I complied and rolled over because the idea was totally appealing. Every muscle in my neck and shoulders had kinked. I visualized an intricate Celtic knot beneath my skin. When his hands landed on my flesh, I sighed in pleasant anticipation of a relaxing massage of my muscles.

We seemed to have a different concept of what relaxing was. Tyler dug into my shoulders with an iron grip, rubbing so hard that my teeth rattled as I jerked back and forth on the bed. I was definitely awake now, if not looser.

“Thanks,” I said, wanting to laugh. Generosity fail. But it was the thought that counted.

Twenty minutes and one McDonald’s drive-thru later, we were pulling up in front of my dorm. Tyler gave me a long lingering kiss, one that made me forget completely that I hadn’t brushed my teeth. “You busy tonight?”

“No.”

“Want to watch a movie or something? We can hang here in your room.”

“Cool. Text me when you’re done working.” I went to the front door, still sleepy, in desperate need of a yoga class, wearing the rumpled clothes I'd been wearing when I left the shelter the day before, blissfully happy.