Nothing More Beautiful
Read Nothing More Beautiful Online
Authors: Lorelai LaBelle
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Copyright
A Pouty Lips Press Book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
Copyright 2014 Lorelai LaBelle
All rights reserved.
Editor: Rachel Guerin / Bridgetown Editing
Cover photograph: kvasilev/Shutterstock.com
Smashwords Edition
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment
only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
If you would like to share this book with another person, please
purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading
this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your
use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your
own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this
author.
Dedication
To all Portlandians and the city that never stops
brewing. Here’s to keeping it weird.
To my husband for all his input, inspiration, and
love.
Table of Contents
Chapter 20—THE SKYE IS FALLING
Chapter 26—THE PRICE OF HAPPINESS
Chapter 27—HERE COMES THE BRIDE
STUCK
“Y
ou know what your problem
is, Maci?”
Danielle plucked the photo that lay between
my thumb and the crossword puzzle that I was pretending to fill in.
She had snuck up behind me and now peered down at me over the tall
back of the couch.
“Hey!” I exploded off the old, worn sofa,
diving at her feet to retrieve the picture of my ex-boyfriend, the
book of crosswords flying behind the 40-inch flat screen.
“You’ve never had an orgasm,” she answered
her own question as she danced around, waving the picture in my
face as though we were still in high school. “It’s as simple as
that.” She was tall, gifted with an hourglass frame, and breasts no
man could cover with one hand.
Ignoring her ridiculous “observation,” I
wrestled the snapshot from her strong clutch. The glossy paper
tore: a rip that ran from his crotch right up to the bridge of his
nose, bisecting his chiseled face. “What the hell, Danielle?”
She released the photo and stepped back. Her
brown sugar hair swayed, her long bangs dangling in front of her
eyes, blocking most of her thick eyebrows. “Look, I’m just trying
to help. It’s been a month since you dumped Ryan’s cheating ass,
and it’s time you moved on. Your mood is starting to affect our
friendship.”
“My mood?” I stared down at the ragged seam
of the photograph. Ryan’s smooth, black skin was now crumpled, his
bare chest divided, and his face barely recognizable.
“Yeah,” Danielle went on, “your mood. You’re
a grouch. I mean, you may as well move into the dumpster. It’s been
that bad this last week.”
“It’s a garbage can,” I corrected. “Oscar
the Grouch lives in a garbage can.”
“See. That’s what I’m talking about.” She
whipped around and headed for the kitchen.
I followed after her. A strip of clear tape
would right the wrong. Retrieving the tape roll from the junk
drawer, I smoothed out the picture and flattened the adhesive down
the rift. It was no good. The picture was ruined. Sure, I had a
whole folder on my computer with hundreds, if not thousands of
snapshots of us, but there was something about holding the glossy
paper that I found comforting.
“Ahh!” I ripped the picture apart and threw
it in the trash.
Danielle flipped off the switch to the
electric kettle, the water near boiling. “Did you just growl?”
“What?” I eyed her, a little more than
pissed off.
“Nothing,” she said, scooping loose tea into
a dinosaur mug. Every morning she drank Yerba Mate, her
healthy
replacement for coffee. She seldom consumed it in
the afternoon, but today was one of those days.
“That was the only print I had of us,” I
hissed. “So what if I’m pining—”
“You’re not just pining,” she interrupted,
pouring the hot water over the tealeaves. The fleshy dinosaurs
disappeared on her mug as the piping water changed the design to
skeletons. “You’re bitchy, crabby, and, well, downright mean. If
you were just pining, you’d be locked in your room eating cookie
dough ice cream and drinking chocolate porters, but you’re not
doing that. You’re just arguing and snapping and criticizing.”
I stood there, silent, reflecting on her
words. What were we doing? Fighting? We never fought. It wasn’t us.
It just wasn’t the nature of our relationship. But then again I’d
never had a boyfriend like Ryan before. He was a wild black
stallion in a corral of broken, soul-sucking ponies. Perhaps an
embellishment on my part—who could say for certain? Danielle said
she could, and she was of the opinion that I was hallucinating,
charmed by his sensational, muscular body. It had been a minute and
I hadn’t responded. She plunked a metal strainer straw into the
steeping tea.
“I have too had an orgasm,” I said at
last.
She smiled, happy the conversation was
shifting to a more appealing topic. “Is that so? You didn’t with
Todd, I know that, or Aaron. And Ryan—come on, you already told me
he wasn’t what you thought he’d be.”
I laughed. “Well, of course I didn’t with
Todd. He was my first, and it was just clumsy and messy. Can’t
blame him for missing the mark. And I
did
have them with
Ryan.”
Her smile twisted into an unimpressed smirk.
“Just because his dick was the size of my forearm, doesn’t mean he
had the blood to take it home. So, were you lying before or are you
lying now?” She had caught me in the lie, but it was a lie I was
committed to, unwilling to admit the accuracy of her assumption.
“What did it feel like?” she asked, after another long silence.
“Uh—it felt uh, well—warm?”
“Warm? That’s what you’re going with?” She
sipped her tea, her lips barely sealing over the straw because they
were stretched so wide, hardly containing her laughter.
I leaned against the counter and crossed my
arms. “All right, so what? So I’ve never had an orgasm before. It’s
not a big deal. What’s the point you’re trying to make?”
“Don’t you get it? You were with Ryan for
seven months and you never had an orgasm, so why on earth would you
want to get back together with him?”
“Because life is about more than just sex,
Danielle,” I declared. “You should know that,
engaged
and
all.”
“Sure, that’s true,” she said between sips,
“but sex is a big portion of it, not a tiny segment, and I think
you owe it to yourself to find the right person who electrifies you
in all the right ways. Let’s face it, Ryan wasn’t that guy. He was
an asshole who cheated on you.”
“Because I wouldn’t try new things in bed!”
I shouted. My heart was pounding now, my cheeks flushed. It felt
like a surge of water was breaking the fissures in the dam I had
built to keep the secret behind his betrayal.
She set down her mug, aware that I was on
the verge of collapsing into tears. “That’s the reason why he
cheated?”
I nodded, holding back the tears.
She wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, honey,
no. No, that’s not why he cheated on you. He did it because he’s a
lowlife pig—”
“But maybe—maybe if I done the stuff he
wanted, he wouldn’t have gone to someone else for it.”
She pressed my head into the top of her
chest. At 5'4", I was a good five inches shorter than her. “You
can’t tell yourself that. He was scum, and you deserve so much
better. A guy like Ryan still would’ve done it even if you had
given him blow jobs five times a day. It’s in his character—in his
rotten, good-for-nothing genes.”
Her words helped fight off the tears. “You
really believe that?” I asked, rubbing under my eyes.
“He had no love in him, Maci,” she said,
squeezing me tighter. “Only a drive to satisfy himself. If you want
my advice, I’d say spend one more day analyzing the disaster, being
mopey and grouchy and all that stuff, then move on. Forget him. I
know Mr. Right will come along and sweep you off your feet, and who
knows, maybe with him you’ll want to do the dirtier stuff.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I blubbered. “Look, I know
you’re right. I know he wasn’t good for me. I know he didn’t have
that magical, heart-warming love. But what is that stuff, right? He
had a hard body—”
“And a big, limp dick that did nothing for
you.” After one last body-crushing embrace, she released me and
resumed drinking her tea. “Come on, one more day, and then move
on.”
“One more day,” I repeated. “And after
today?”
“You move on,” she said. “Find another
guy.”
“And if I can’t?”
Her face contorted. “What does that mean?
There are guys walking all over the place. I’m positive you’ll snag
the one who really fits you, the one who really wants to be with
you . . . and most importantly, the one who
pleases
you.”
I gave her a thin smile. She was brightening
my mood a bit. “All right, I’ll waste only one more day hung up on
him.”
“Good,” she said. Her grin revealed that her
teeth were dulling to a shade of green, though this happened every
morning, and disappeared after she brushed away the residue. “The
only thing I don’t get—” She paused, reluctant to bring up what was
on her mind.
“Why didn’t I tell you about my problems in
the bedroom?” I finished for her.
“Yeah. I don’t get it. We’ve shared
everything since the third grade and now you’re keeping secrets
from me?”
I turned and looked out the window at the
falling snow. It was chaos. The wind was ever-changing, blowing the
baby white specks in every direction. The snow layered the ground a
good six inches. “I was embarrassed, I guess.” I turned back to
face her.
“Embarrassed, really?” She hinted with her
eyes that I was tending toward childish rationale. “I told you I
preferred women when we were seventeen, and that was
way
bigger than this, but you’re my best friend and I couldn’t keep it
from you despite not knowing how you’d react.”