The only thing I knew was that if I didn’t go inside—didn’t get away from this beautiful guy who claimed he wanted me but wouldn’t come in—I would throw my arms around his waist, drag him inside, and not give him a choice.
So I said the only thing I could think of. “Thank you.” Then I turned to go inside. He sighed deeply as I carefully made my way up the stairs. Just as I was jiggling my key in the lock, he finally spoke up. “Hey!” he called. “I don’t have your number!”
I looked down at him, with his muscled shoulders slumped and his face looking drawn and sad. “If you really want it, you’ll find it.” And then I went inside, shutting the door on him before he could confuse me even more.
I trudged into the bathroom, washed my face, and popped four extra-strength Tylenol. I stretched out on my bed and rolled my ankle, sucking in air at the nagging, dull pain that metal rods and screws made when they were forced to live next to bones.
Why the hell hadn’t I given Nate my number? I cursed myself over and over again. I hadn’t loved being Jake’s booty call, by any means, but I was finding out that it was kind of worse to offer to sleep with a guy and get turned down.
My life just kept getting worse and worse.
I just knew one thing for sure. I was definitely never going back to that art class.
I
woke up to a sharp knock on my door, and then Joey came bursting in.
“Cat, what the hell? Are you okay? Are you sick?” Her voice did the exact same thing as my mom’s when she was stressed—jump up at the end into a screech.
“You sound like a damn police siren, Joey.”
She laughed. “Well, so does your cell phone alarm, which has been going off for the last forty-five minutes.”
I rolled over and groaned, swiping at the touchscreen on my phone to silence it. “Oh my God. What time is it?”
“Time for you to get to your ten o’clock, if you want to. Seriously, what happened to you? I texted you to see what you wanted me to bring home for dinner, and by the time I got here, you were home and passed out.”
I sat up, rubbing my fingers against my eyes, trying to wipe the scratchy bleariness away. A shake of my head and some hard blinking had my head a little bit clearer. “I, um…I kind of met someone.”
Joey gasped and grabbed my desk chair, spinning it around on its wheels to face me, and plopped down on it. “Oh my God. Tell me everything. How did you even meet him? Weren’t you coming straight home from that art class?”
I laughed. “Okay, okay. One question at a time. He was actually
in
the art class.”
She squealed, and I blinked hard again. “So he was in the class where people were drawing your gorgeous ass naked? Cat!”
“Yeah,” I chuckled, “and he still talked to me afterward.”
“Nuh-uh. That’s not all that happened. Spill.”
“Well, he talked to me, and bought me dinner, and brought me home.”
“And?”
“And he kissed me.”
Joey pumped her legs up and down and clapped her hands like one of those manic wind-up monkeys that smashed cymbals together. “I knew it! I knew he kissed you! How was it? What else?”
“Holy shit, Jo, one question at a time. It was fucking incredible. But then…nothing else.”
“How is it possible that there was nothing else? Was it a polite kiss, or a
kiss-
kiss?”
“Um…a
kiss-
kiss. Like a kissy kiss-kiss.”
“So why am I not awkwardly dodging this boy in the kitchen right now? You didn’t want to sleep with him?”
“Oh no. I wanted to sleep with every inch of his six-foot-three, muscled-everything, dimpled self. But he said no.”
“A guy? Said no? To you?”
“I’m not a model anymore.”
“Oh, please. You are still a fucking model. One with hotter hips and bigger boobs and the same flawless face. Are you kidding?”
Tears pricked at my eyes. Again.
Holy shit, when was this ever going to stop?
“He just said he wanted to, but he couldn’t. I don’t know.”
Joey leaned back, wrinkling her nose. “Do you think he has some sort of weird abstinence policy?”
I shrugged. “Lots of guys do. But I didn’t get the super-religious vibe from him or anything.”
“Well, you’re going to see him again, right?”
“I don’t know,” I groaned, falling back on the bed again. “He wanted my number, but I didn’t give it to him.” Her eyes flew open wide and I preempted her scolding. “I don’t know why. I guess I was embarrassed, or something.”
“Oh, my God. Well,” her eyes swept down over my rumpled clothes and hair. “It’s obvious what we have to do here. You are skipping class and we’re going out.”
Two hours and a diet soda the size of my head later, I finally felt a little more like myself. We’d scoured the clearance racks and I’d found some cute tops that I could wear when—if—I ever saw Nate again. I ducked into the dressing room one last time, fidgeting with a weird faux-wrap top that stopped at the widest part of my midsection. I was about to announce the failure to Joey when she squealed from outside.
“What?” I said in my half-exasperated, half-loving voice.
“Hold on!” Then a second pause. “Hello, Cat’s phone. Oh, hi,
Nate
.”
He’d gotten my number. In less than twelve hours. And only knowing one—maybe two—people in Philadelphia. “She’s in the changing room now. So tell me, Nate, how did you get this number? Mmm. Mmhm. I see. Well, that
is
impressive.”
I couldn’t get out of the dressing room fast enough. I yanked my shirt back over my camisole, tripped into my jeans, and shuffled out, shoes half on.
“Give that to me!” I hissed.
Joey smiled at me and cooed into the phone. “Here she is, Nate. Or is it Nathaniel?” She nodded. “Well, Nathaniel. Good luck with her. She’s a live wire, but she’s worth it.”
“Goddamn, Joey,” I whined, tugging my shirt into a better position so that my belly didn’t wobble so much.
She waggled her eyebrows, covering the phone with her hand. “He likes you. Like, a lot.”
I grabbed the phone, then stuck it between my ear and my elbow while I tugged my jeans up, shimmying them over my love handles. “You found my number.”
“Hey, beautiful,” he said.
I wanted to groan at his cheesiness—I knew it was there, knew he was sweet-talking me.
And I didn’t care.
“So, I found your number.”
“Yeah, I’m interested in how you achieved that.”
“Let me take you out, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”
“Um...okay. When?”
“Tomorrow night. At six. And Cat?”
“Yeah?” I couldn’t keep the smile out of my voice no matter how hard I tried.
“Wear yoga pants.”
I bit my lip. “Okay. See you then.” Tears pricked at my eyes. That made me cry for a whole different reason. If I could wear yoga pants to this date, maybe, just maybe I could feel sexy again.
“What? What did he say?” Joey was in my face again, as usual.
“We’re going out. On Thursday.”
Joey’s entire face lit up. “Okay. Drop those shirts.” She grabbed my hand and started walking toward the front door of the store.
“What? Why?”
“You’re not gonna need a new shirt. You will, however, need new lingerie. I can
feel
it.”
Two
nights later, I sat on the couch in a brand-new workout shirt, one that had a low band that cinched around my hips and ballooned up from there. My arms were actually looking pretty good, because for weeks while I was laid up in bed all I could do was watch TV and lift hand weights. And I even felt good in my underwear—we’d found a stretch cotton lace bra-and-panty set that hugged my curves and encased them in a sexy shimmery pink.
Joey had spent half an hour curling, brushing out, and arranging my hair with product, then tying it in a messy bun on my head.
“Why are you spending all this time on my hair when it’s just going to be in a bun?”
“Okay, is this your first day on the job? I’m putting one pin here”—she wiggled a thin metal rod on one side of the bun—“and another over here, so all you have to do is reach up and pull these out when it’s time to...you know. Va-va-voom, gorgeous tumbling blonde waves. For tumbling on his bed!” She squealed, clapped her hands, and jumped from foot to foot.
I stood up, looked at myself from both sides in the mirror, and reached up to feel the pins. “Okay. And this won’t fall out while I’m moving around?”
“If it does, I’ll eat my shoes. My Ferragamos, even.”
I grabbed her face and kissed it on each side. “I love you, you know that?”
“Who doesn’t?” Then she bounced out.
Nate was three minutes early to pick me up. Which was just fine, because I’d already been waiting at the door for ten.
I shouldered my bag, where I’d stashed a chunky cowl-necked sweater and some makeup, took a deep breath and swung the door open.
Nate stood there in a black t-shirt and black running pants with a gray stripe down the side. His eyes swept down over my body.
“Perfect,” he said. “So, I know it’s not a typical first date, but if you’re a horseback rider, you have the...um...thighs for rock climbing.” That adorable pink flush flooded the skin behind his six o’clock shadow, and as much as I loved that, I didn’t want him to be embarrassed.
“Yes,” I said, “thighs are one thing I have plenty of.” Then I laughed, and he smiled too, his gaze flicking down my body again. I hadn’t felt like I looked good in workout clothes in my entire life, but Nate certainly made me feel like one of the most beautiful women on the planet.
Doctor Albright’s words echoed through my head.
Something that makes you feel beautiful. Powerful
.
“I’ve never done this before,” I said as we walked to the door.
“There actually aren’t a ton of places to climb here in Philly,” he said when I settled next to him in the cab. “And I promise we’ll stop taking cabs everywhere soon. It’s just that the train doesn’t go anywhere near this place.”
“That’s the thing about Philly. Awesome public transportation that takes you almost nowhere fast, because everything is so spread out.” Even as I said the words, I wasn’t thinking them. I was too focused on how he’d said “soon.” Like this was just the beginning of us hanging out and it was all perfectly normal. Like he could see into his future, and I was definitely in it.
The cab had already made it to the highway, and I let my bag drop to the floor. “So you really are Nathaniel West from camp?”
“The very one.” He looked at me and smirked. “What are you thinking? What the hell happened to that awkward fat kid?”
I shook my head and laughed out loud. “I mean...I’m sure it was just a case of you growing up.”
He chuckled. “Growing almost a foot and a half during junior high and high school, yeah. Also being the fat kid for five years, getting a complex, and working out like a crazy person from ages sixteen to twenty. I was annoying as hell.”
“I know something about having a complex.”
“Your leg?”
I didn’t want to be that girl who complained about her weight on a first official date. I knew from reading
Cosmo
that guys hated it when girls didn’t eat, and when girls fished for compliments. Right now, I was thinking about exactly two things: how not to look like an idiot, and how to get him to kiss me again. Because, damn. I could not get the feel of his lips crushed against mine out of my head.
He nodded, leaning forward and threading his fingers together. He had perfect hands—big and wide without being meaty, strong without being messed up. Long, solid fingers. They were hands that you just wanted to touch you. Everywhere.
I suddenly felt very, very hot.
I leaned my head back on the seat, letting the flying lights of city behind freeway construction blur into glowing lines. “I love riding in cars like this. I always loved feeling like the world was moving around me and I was still. Like nothing could touch me. Like even though everything was changing around me, I was the same.”
He smiled, reached up, and tucked a strand of hair that had fallen out of place behind my ear. Which meant I was going to make Joey eat her Ferragamos. Or kiss her and thank her twenty times, because his touch was melting me, slowly, cell by cell, starting with this one spot at the back of my ear.
If his lips ever touched there, I would die. I would actually die.
“You know, you are the same Katie from camp. I can see it in your eyes.”
“What are you talking about?” I laughed. I wouldn’t mention how thin I had been. I wouldn’t think about how I would never be that thin, not to mention scar-free, again. Not now.
“The way you look at people. It’s the first thing I noticed when I saw you, you know. Like you’re curious. Like you want to know more about them, and in a kind way. Like you’re just waiting to love them. And then, uh...also...” He sat up and rubbed the flat of his hand against his jaw, looking like he wished he hadn’t started that last sentence.
“What?” I nudged my knee into his.
“Also, your hair. It’s...it hasn’t really changed. Still those gorgeous waves. Actually, when I saw current you...uh...posing, that’s the first thing I thought of. Past you. I mean, twelve-year-old you. Basically, that was my first kiss, and it was...formative.”
I bit my lower lip, an instinct for How To Look Sexy I’d picked up freshman year in college when various boys’ hands would dance over my hip bones in crowded clubs, and biting my lip was a way I indicated that I would dance with one of them. They all understood. I was sure Nate understood, too, even if I didn’t mean to do it. At least, not in a cab barreling down the Schuylkill Expressway.
My head hit the back of the seat, and I gazed outside. I didn’t think I could continue to make eye contact with him without babbling, or grabbing him and kissing him. Considering I didn’t know why the hell he’d wanted to stop kissing me in the first place the other night...I wasn’t taking my chances again. Especially before I got home, and in close proximity to a bed.
Now that he said it, I realized that maybe he just wanted to hang out because I was someone from his past in a city where he knew no one. Maybe the combination of that and the beer goggles and the having seen me naked was enough for him to kiss me like his life depended on it, but not do anything more than that. Maybe he realized it just as he was pulling away.
“So, have you ever been rock climbing?”
“No,” I said, thanking every star I saw in the clear Pennsylvania sky that he had started a new conversation. “This is going to sound stupid, but...I always thought it looked too dangerous?”
“Says the girl who got thrown from her horse.”
“I know, I know. But my dad owns them, and it’s a family thing, and I’ve been doing it
since I was three, and...”
“Yeah, I get it. I was just teasing you.”
“Oh,” I said, flicking my eyes to his. Jesus, he was looking at me like he’d known me for years. Which, I guess he had. But there was something behind them I just couldn’t define.
After a few more minutes, the cab pulled off an exit and drove about a quarter mile to a huge brown brick building stretched over a parking lot. In the middle of nowhere.
Nate passed a bill to the driver and came around to my side to open the door again. Inside, the building smelled like rubber and sweat, and its walls were entirely lined with gray walls studded with colored plastic.
“Thursday nights are usually pretty dead at gyms,” Nate explained as he grabbed my hand, like it was the most natural thing in the world, and led me toward the check in desk. He spoke with the front desk person for a few minutes, a guy about a foot shorter than him but just as muscled. Jesus, rock climbing really was a full-body workout.
“I know my sizes, but she’s never done this, so she’ll need a measurement.”
“Solid,” the guy said, reaching out to shake my hand. “I’m Matt. I’ll be taking care of you this evening.”
I smiled. “Uh...thanks?”
“Wow, dude, fifty-watt smile on this one.”
I didn’t know if he was flirting with me or just being nice, but I instinctively moved closer to Nate, who slid his hand around my waist. And my heart promptly started pounding a mile a minute. Those hands. On my side. Again.
Now there was no way I was not going to kiss him tonight. Even if it was all me, I wanted to feel those fingers on my face, tangling in my hair.
Matt led me to a row of pegs that held various sizes and colors of wide belts that attached to what looked like garter belts, except they were adorned with buckles and rings and brightly colored plastic things. “All right,” he said, clapping his hands once and rubbing them together. “What size are you?”
Of course. The absolute last thing I wanted to talk about. I broke away from Nate, walking closer to Matt and lowering my voice as I said, “Twelve. Sometimes fourteen.”
“Cool,” he said, sweeping his eyes down over my frame. “Yeah, you’re pretty tall. Seems about right.”
He grabbed a harness from the wall and had me step into it, tightening the straps around my thighs and my waist. It could have been completely embarrassing, especially since Matt didn’t seem to be that much older than I was. But he was totally professional, and fast. As it turned out, the strap that went around my waist fell at the spot I was most self-conscious, and cinched in place, it actually held in the worst of my belly fat and made me feel pretty damn thin.
By the time Matt was done fixing my harness in place, Nate had finished with his own and stood there, assessing the walls. “I think we’ll start on this level over here.”
“Isn’t she a beginner?”
“Yeah, but she’s a horseback rider.”
“I
was
a horseback rider,” I corrected. “He threw me during a barrel run.”
Matt winced. “I knew someone who fell down a twenty-foot crevasse, same result.
Surgery? Rod and pins?”
“On my tibia, yeah. Left side.”
“Okay. You’re mostly going to be using your quads, anyway, so we shouldn’t run into
any trouble. How’s your pain?”
“It starts to ache after like half an hour of walking, but I’m mostly back to full mobility. The worst is endurance stuff, or high-impact stuff.”
“Well, then, your boyfriend made a great choice. This is pretty low-impact, but it is a great way to keep you in shape.”
“Keep me in shape? I haven’t worked out for months.”
“Well, you look good. Seriously, I bet you still have a ton of muscle to help you out. Just lead with your right leg and you should be good. C’mon. Let’s see what you can do.”
Matt hooked both of us up to a rope on one of the walls, anchored into place with a thick metal hook on each side, and showed me how to visualize where I wanted to go, then move my feet there first and grab second. Every time I watched my arms reach up and the muscles in them flex, they looked good. Beautiful, long and strong. I smiled to myself.
I felt pretty good, having gotten halfway up one of the walls, when I heard a whoop from about twenty feet above me. Then the wall reverberated with Nate’s pounding feet as he rappelled down.
My grin was so wide I could see my cheeks pushing up in front of my eyes.
“Showoff!” I called down to ten feet below me, my stomach churning as I realized just how high off the ground I was. I bounced a little on my right leg, and my quad burned. It actually felt kind of awesome, seeing what my muscles could do after ten months of being laid up. Or of laying myself up, I realized, my cheeks burning in shame.
“You think I’m just showing off, c’mon! Race me!”
“Maybe we can start with you helping me get down from here,” I smiled.
In about thirty seconds, Nate had climbed up right beside me, reached in front of me, and put his hands over the back of mine and guiding them to the straps on my harness. Right above my crotch. “Okay, so you’re just going to pull here and here, and it should let you slide down.”
I was not going to look over at him, into those dark flashing eyes, when I was ten feet off the ground and could crash down to it if I wasn’t paying any attention. I blew out a breath.
“Don’t be nervous,” he said, his voice lower, sweeter somehow. “Here, I’ll do it for you the first time.” His hands expertly pulled and flipped at the thick knot of rope at my waist, then quickly gripped the rope above it. “Now just let it slide through your fist. Don’t grab too tight, or you’ll get rope burn. Okay?”
I nodded, trying not to let my eyes flutter shut after seeing the tendons in his forearms flick and the muscles there flex. Dear God.
He eased himself down the rock wall quickly, and I followed behind, foot by slow foot.
“Doin’ great, Cat! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, doing fine. When I can concentrate.” I tried to keep my voice light, but the truth was, the possibility of a fall, and another injury, made my heart pound. It was only when I was five feet off the ground that I realized that Nate was staring up at me, watching my progress down the wall.
Staring at my ass.
Which was bulging over a frame made of thick nylon straps.
A lump rose in my throat while I managed the last few feet. When I was about two feet off the ground, he grabbed my waist. I sucked in, almost a gasp, when his fingers pressed into the fat above the waist strap. But as I lowered myself the last few feet, he just spun me around with those arms into a bear hug, pulling me up off the ground so I was standing on my tiptoes.