Offside (33 page)

I thought Shakespeare would have agreed that “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” Somehow, I was going to have to keep myself from going too far.

Now, was she going to let me get my mouth on the girls as well?

CHAPTER 17

INTERCEPT

In case there was any doubt, Nicole's tits were absolutely perfect. They fit perfectly into my hands. Her nipples hardened perfectly against my palms. They were perfectly soft and round and just...just perfect.

Nicole moaned into my mouth as my thumbs and forefingers rolled her nipples between them. The sound alone made me want to buck my hips up against her, but I restrained myself even though I could feel her pushing her heat against my stomach.

I sat up a little and rolled us back to our sides. I kept one of my hands on her breast under her shirt, and I kissed her a couple more times before I pulled both my mouth and my hand away.

“We should stop,” I said quietly as I tried to regain my breath.

“Why?” Nicole pouted.

“Well, the door is still open,” I pointed out. “I really don't want to see Greg's head peek in while I've got my hand up your shirt. Besides…I don't want to…to push.”

“You aren't,” she told me.

“I will if we keep this up,” I said. I propped myself up on my elbow and looked down at her. “I want you. I really, really do. I don't know how to do this boyfriend thing, though. I don't want to…fuck it up.”

Nicole smiled and reached up to stroke her fingers over my jaw.

“All right,” she said.

We both settled back down on the bed, and I wrapped my arm around her waist. She started pushing the hair off my face and around my ear again.

“I love the way that feels,” I told her.

“What?” Nicole asked. She tugged a bit at my hair before she tucked it behind my ear. “This?”

“Yeah. It feels good.”

She giggled into my shoulder and kept up the motion as I felt myself starting to drift off. My mind cycled through the day—my run, workout, the picnic lunch with Nicole. I listened to the highlights of the game in my brain and shook my head a little at the weird dream I had. It was strange that I remembered it at all—dreams were the one thing I didn't usually recall. I relived the spicy taste of Nicole's taco salad and the laughter over Greg's fishing exploits.

It was a good day.

I drifted off.

I woke to Greg's voice.

“Nicole? I gotta go into the station this morning,” he was saying. “A bunch of kids got picked up at the beach last night, and I need to go calm some parents.”

“Okay, Dad,” Nicole's sleepy voice said.

“I should be back this afternoon.”

“'Kay.”

I listened to the thump of his feet on the stairs and the opening and closing of the front door. The house went silent, save for Nicole's yawns. I looked over at the clock, and saw it was still pretty early—just past seven thirty, and I was glad Sundays were my off-days for workouts.

I pulled Nicole's body close to mine and tucked my face into her hair. She squirmed and giggled a little then tried to push my hand away from her stomach. I held tight, grumbling, and wrapped my other arm around her as well.

“Thomas!” Nicole cried. “Let me go!”

“No way,” I told her. “You're warm.”

She laughed again.

“I have to pee!”

With a big, overly dramatic sigh, I released her, and she ran off to the bathroom. When she was done, I took my turn and then pulled her back into bed with me. We lay in bed while half asleep before hunger finally drove us from the blankets.

We ate and then decided we really ought to get some work done on our biology project. After a lot of debate and orgasm jokes, we decided to do our research on the creosote bush. I made about a dozen “bush” jokes, but Nicole said the plant reminded her of visiting her grandparents in Arizona, so that's what we were going to study. At first, we tried pulling up information on her computer, but the damn thing was ancient, took forever to load, and the dial-up connection was driving me fucking bonkers.

“We should just do this at my place,” I mumbled.

“Okay,” Nicole said to my surprise. “I've never seen your house.”

I tensed up a bit. I'd never taken anyone to my house. Even the guys on my team had only been on the outside of it. Just the thought of it put me on edge immediately though I wasn't sure why. I didn't have a valid reason to say no, so the next thing I knew, we were in my car and heading to my house.

Even the front door seemed ominous to me as we walked up the steps.

“This house is incredible,” Nicole exclaimed as I fished out my key.

“It's okay,” I replied. I opened the door, and we walked in.

“Do I get a tour?” Nicole asked.

Was I supposed to give tours?

“Um…okay,” I said. I ran my hand through my hair. “This is the kitchen—you know, where we eat and shit.”

“You shit in the kitchen? That's not very hygienic!”

“That's not what I meant!” I laughed along with her. “This is the, um…living room, I guess. Or great room—whatever you are supposed to call it.”

“Who plays?” she asked, and I froze.

She was gesturing at the piano.

“Um…no one,” I replied, and I tried to steer her off toward the stairs.

“You have a grand piano that no one plays?” she asked. She held on to my hand but kept her feet planted. Her voice lowered. “Did your mom play?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Um…she taught piano.”

“Did you learn?”

“Yeah.”

“But you don't play anymore?”

“No.” I could feel a tiny droplet of sweat at the back of my neck.

“Why not?” she asked quietly.

I looked at her eyes, and she reached up to touch my face.

“Too many memories?”

I just nodded.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

I gave her a tight-lipped smile and then led her down the hall and up the stairs, pointing out the various guest rooms that no one used, the bathroom, and Dad's study.

“Is that where the computer is?” she asked as she looked at the closed door.

“No,” I replied. “I never go in there. I have a laptop in my room. Last door down the hall.”

I took her into my room and tried not to dance from foot to foot as she looked over everything in it. She ran her fingers along the edges of the CDs, pulled one out, and then carefully pushed it back to where it was before as I let out a sigh of relief.

“I won't mess anything up,” she said with a wry smile.

I tried to laugh.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just…I've never had anyone in here before.”

“No one?”

“Not outside my family, no.”

She gave me a strange look and then went back to her surveillance.

“You have a lot of trophies,” she said. The tip of her finger traced my name on an MVP award from freshman year. She looked around for another minute and then sat down on the edge of my couch. “So where's the computer?”

I grabbed the laptop from its shelf in the closet and pulled out a small, folding table from beside the couch. I set the laptop on it, and we started our research again at top internet speed. After a couple hours, Nicole said she was hungry.

“Should we go back to your place?” I asked.

“Don't you have food?” she teased.

“Um…some,” I said. “Considering what you tend to make, I don't know if you would really consider it food or not.”

I was right. She was pretty appalled at what we had in the fridge.

“Thomas, this is…disgusting,” she said as she eyed some of the green items on the bottom shelf.

No, they hadn't been green when they went in there.

“Um…yeah,” I agreed. I couldn't really argue with her. “I usually eat something from the freezer or the pantry.”

“I can see why.” She looked up at me from her crouched position on the kitchen floor and raised her eyebrows. “Bring me a trashcan.”

I hauled the kitchen trashcan out from under the sink and over to the fridge.

“I can’t believe you keep your locker looking like something out of
Better Homes and Gardens
, but your fridge looks like it’s out of an episode of
Clean House
.”

“I hardly ever look in the fridge,” I said with a shrug. I took another handful of something from Nicole and tossed it in the bin. It may or may not have once been a mesh bag of peaches. “I usually eat stuff out of a box from the freezer. I don’t really know how to cook.”

“I get the idea you never look past the top shelf,” she said as she pointed to the neatly lined bottles of Gatorade. There were six different flavors, arranged in rainbow order.

Yeah, rainbow order.

“Pretty much,” I replied.

“Okay,” Nicole said, “I’m going to need bleach for the rest of this.”

While Nicole washed down the shelves of the now nearly empty refrigerator, I hauled the trash to the cans outside. She ended up finding something she called “reasonably edible” in the pantry and cooked it up for lunch while I put plates and forks on the table. We spent the rest of the afternoon on our project and didn’t even realize how late it was until Nicole’s phone rang.

“Um…hi,” she said as glanced over to me. I figured it was Greg and hoped she wasn’t in trouble or anything for being over at my place. She turned around and talked kind of quietly. “Yeah, I can…but you have to give me about an hour…okay, a half hour…I’m not even home right now…It doesn’t matter…”

I tried not to listen, but it was kind of hard. I figured out pretty quickly it wasn’t her dad, but I had no idea who it might have been. She gathered up some of the papers we had on the table as she said “uh-huh” into the phone a few more times. Finally, she bit down on her lip and looked up and me.

“I’ll be there soon, okay?” She ended the call and shoved the phone into the pocket of her jeans. “I gotta go.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” she said. She reached up and pulled her hair out of the hair band that had been keeping it out of her face. She shook her head, and her hair fell around her back and shoulders. “But I need to get home.”

I didn’t like it.

Everything had been just fine before she got that weird phone call, and now she was running off? I remembered the other time she had just taken off without telling me why, and I remembered what Greg said when she finally came back home.

How are Ron and Timmy?

I looked back at her, and her demeanor was completely different. She had been annoyed with the state of our fridge, but she had been smiling and relaxed. Now, she was agitated and nervous. She wiped her hands on her jeans and gathered up the rest of the project stuff to shove it into her backpack.

“Why?” I asked, because I’m a total idiot who doesn’t know when to fucking shut up.

“I just…um…” she stammered. “I need to help out a friend.”

“What friend?” I pushed.

“Thomas,” Nicole sighed, exasperated. She looked over at me and took another deep breath. “Please don’t ask. I’m not going to say, and it’s just going to piss you off, okay?”

“No,” I said, “it’s not
okay
. Why won’t you tell me why you have to leave?”

“I just can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why can’t you tell me?”

“Thomas, for the love of God, stop it!”

“Stop what?”

“I need to go now,” she said as she shook her head at me. She walked up to the front door, opened it, tossed her backpack over her shoulder, and looked pointedly at me. I stood in the doorway to the kitchen and just looked right back at her, not moving.

“Come on,” she said. Her expression softened. “You could maybe have dinner with Greg, and we could do something when I get back.”

Dinner with her dad while she went off to who-knows-where with who-knows-who?

Yeah, I don’t think so.

I walked over to the coatrack next to where she was standing, grabbed my keys out of my jacket, and shoved them at her.

“Take yourself home,” I growled. I stomped back into the kitchen and yanked open the now clean refrigerator. Her evasiveness pissed me off. I grabbed a bottle of Gatorade and slammed the door shut again.

“Thomas…please don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what?” I snapped. “Don’t run off without telling you why or with whom? Oh, wait…no…that’s you!”

“I’ll explain what I can later,” she said, “but I really have to get going.”

“Who are Ron and Timmy?” I asked as I glared at her. Her eyes went wide for a minute, and her voice dropped.

“Ron is Greg’s friend from town,” she said. Then she went all quiet.

“Who is Timmy?”

“Thomas, please don’t go there. Really, I have to leave and…”