Page 75 of Live for Me

“Why?”

“It sounds like you like me when you do that. And I’ll start to believe it. And then I’ll do more things like tonight where I only make bad decisions that suggest I’m nowhere near as smart as I actually am. That’s embarrassing for both of us.”

“I’m not embarrassed.”

“We’ve already covered this,” she said. “That’s because you’re a dick.”

I stopped outside her door to try to figure out how to maneuver her so I could get it open without having to put her down.

“Can I stay with you tonight?”

Her eyes were already closed when I looked down at her face. There was a good chance she’d just pass out as soon as she was horizontal. I could make plenty of arguments for why I probably shouldn’t leave her unsupervised overnight while she wasthisdrunk for the first time.

There was also the fucked up ogre portion of my brain that had a direct line of communication open with my dick at all times. That asshole was trying to tell me to turn and sprint right up those stairs with her still in my arms before she had a chance to change her mind.

I sighed. “Yes, angel. You can stay with me.”

I kicked my door the rest of the way open once I’d carried her up the stairs. I sat her on the edge of my bed and went across the room to turn the little desk lamp on just to give me enough light to get around the room without blinding her very drunken brain. Much to the delight of that ogre-driven part of me, Memphis had already removed her shirt by the time I’d turned back to face her. She was working on wiggling out of her jeans without standing up all the way off the edge of the bed to make sure she didn’t fall.

“Uh, Memphis. Maybe you—keep your?—”

Fuck. There were no complete thoughts.

Ogre brain was winning with hisjustlet her take it offchants.

Thank God she stopped at just the shirt and the jeans.

“Fuck me all the way to fucking hell,” I mumbled when she turned to motherfuckingcrawlacross my bed in nothing but a black lace thong and a bra that was a bright enough orange to match my truck.

The decent man in me stood perfectly still for a few seconds while Memphis collapsed on the far side of my bed and pulled my blanket all the way up to her nose. I dropped my head back to stare at the ceiling and put my hands on my hips to remind myself to just fucking breathe. If I just waited another twenty seconds, she’d be asleep. That would take away every urge to do something about her half-nakedness just existing in my bed. I collected her clothes and the phone that fell out of her pocket and laid it all on the nightstand next to my side of the bed. I changed into a pair of basketball shorts and just stood beside the bed for another minute or two, hoping I’d killed enough time for her to pass out.

I climbed into that bed like someone had placed a live landmine in it. I didn’t even dare try retrieving part of that blanket for myself. All of that had been in vain anyway. As soon as I was on my back, she rolled until she had both her hands on my arm to hold it against the front of her body while she squished her face into my shoulder. She managed to squirm even closer until the front of that fucking lace thong was against the back of my hand, and I was trying to imagine someone dumping an entire bucket of ice water directly on my nuts to keep myself from moving.

“Thank you,” she just barely whispered against my shoulder before she was right back to sleep.

I was not at all worthy of those words with the ogre thoughts that had rampaged their way right into what was normally the decent part of my brain.

I woke up to the sound of a phone vibrating. When I realized it was coming from Memphis’ phone on the nightstand, I closed my eyes to just go back to sleep. It went off again not long after that, but it sounded like the quick notifications of text messages, so I continued to ignore it.

The next time her phone woke me up, it was from a phone call. There was a tiny hint of sunlight coming in around the curtains and I wondered if maybe it was New Jersey. He’d be in chaos mode by now if she’d missed that check-in time with him. My brain hadn’t come to life enough to tell me that it was way too early in the morning for that to be the case. Memphis started to squirm around at the noise that time too. At some point over the night, she’d shifted from just holding my arm against her. She’d worked her way under that arm. She was lying mostly on top of me now, at an angle where her head was across my chest, her chest was on my stomach, and her legs somehow took up the entire other half of the bed.

I reached for her phone to hit the lock button on the side to silence that call. It was from a number that wasn’t saved in her phone. As were the earlier text messages. I stared at her screen for a few minutes before it dawned on me that she’d given her number to that fucking guy in the bar in her drunkenness. It only took me another few seconds before I’d swept the hair off her face and held her phone in front of her to unlock it.

Not my proudest moment.

But far from the worst thing I’d ever done.

I opened the camera on her phone and hit the button for the front camera, so I was looking at my own face. Then I held it up so I could see Memphis sprawled across my bare chest. I held my free hand above her face to block it and to raise my middle finger at the camera and made sure my own smug ass smirk was still in the screen too before I took that picture.

I opened the text messages from that bar asshole.

Unknown

Just wanted to make sure you made it home alright, pretty girl. You acted like you weren’t comfortable with that guy who made you leave.

?

I rolled my eyes at the screen before I typed out a response on her behalf.

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