Page 84 of Tenderfoot

This was why I had a lot of them.

This led me to confessing my deep abiding love to Jessie, then to Eric, to Raye, then to Cap, to Luna, Willow, Shanti, Linda, Patsy, Bill and Zach, and even Martha.

At the time much later when I was gushing to Alexis and Jacob about how very happy I was for them, so drunk, I totally missed the social cues they were giving that they were done with the public party and wanted to start their private one, Javi came up to me. He then picked me up and tucked me under his arm like I was a human football and carried me to his truck.

This did not upset me.

Not in the slightest.

After babbling to him the entire way about how much I loved all my neighbors, I communicated how not upset I was to Javi by attacking him the minute he closed and locked the door to his townhouse.

Alternately kissing me back and stopping me from groping him as he led me up the stairs, eventually, standing by his bed, he set me at arms’ length, and considering Javi’s arms were very long, as I kept pawing at him, I missed by a good four inches.

At this point, he said, “Mi pequeña, I want this, like I really want it, but I promised you I’d slow us down, and no way in fuck am I gonna let our first time be when you’re shitfaced.”

It was like he was speaking Japanese.

Not one syllable made a lick of sense to me.

I was still attempting to cypher his words as he pulled me into the bathroom.

I stood there dumbly, like I’d never been there before and didn’t even know what a bathroom was.

This lasted so long, Javi had returned with a bunch of my toiletries and the T-shirt of his I’d worn the night before.

He closed the door on me.

By rote, I brushed my teeth, washed my face, moisturized and changed into his tee, leaving my clothes on the floor.

I then wandered into the bedroom and fell face first on the bed.

Which brought me to now, since I passed out.

Considering I was mortified beyond any measure of mortification there could be, with superhuman strength, I rolled away from him and pulled the covers over my head.

Or, I tried. But since Javi was sitting on them, it took a lot of tugging, and I eventually had to curl down in order to pull the covers over my head and hide from him.

“Babe,” he called.

Oh my God.

I could just die.

His hand returned to rub circles on my back.

“Lolita,” he said softly.

Ugh!

I loved it when he called me that.

But I’d attacked him. He’d had to push me away and close me in his bathroom.

“Harlow, baby, come here,” he urged.

“No,” I groaned under the sheets. “I wanna die. Do you have cyanide?”

I heard his chuckle and then felt him pull at the sheets. I pulled back. Thus started a tussle of both of us yanking at his bedclothes, and since they were really nice, you could tell they were expensive, and Javi probably hadn’t had all that much that was expensive in his life (if anything at all), I didn’t want us to tear them, so I gave up.

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