Page 35 of Last First Love
He shakes his head and squeezes my shoulder, a little too hard. "All women deserve better than what we have to offer. The trick is you have to try your best to be the man that she deserves every single day. Not just during the time it takes to get her pants off." He sighs. "You need to show her you care, that you have it in you to care about someone or something other than yourself."
"Hey, that's not okay. I care about lots of things."
His lips twitch. "Name three."
"Ummmm...." I pause and rub my chin between my index finger and thumb. "My friends. My family. My job."
He nods. "That's a good start. Now here's the next step. Go show her. The real Daniels, the one who cares about what’s important to him. The guy underneath all that phoniness."
His words dig in underneath my skin and itch. "Chicks dig the swagger. They like the packaging, not whatever is underneath."
His mouth curls up into a smile, a real one this time. "Lily's not somechickthough. She's the real deal and she's not going to be satisfied with your usual big steaming pile of ego."
His eyes flick down to my gauze covered undercarriage. "Even if you sprinkle glitter all over that crap. She'll still see you're full of shit and will be the first one to tell you to take a hike."
I nod slowly. "Okay. Okay, I hear you." I take a deep breath. "Now what am I supposed to do about it?"
A short laugh pops out of his mouth. "You're going to want to start by putting on some pants."
Lily
Ispend the rest of the day thinking about whether to call Daniels. I mean, we've pretty much made a big old mess of everything already and I don't feel like there's much more risk of disaster after the entire flaming scrotum emergency. If I call him, it can only get better, right?
Or maybe I could call him and he could decide to rip into me for having the presumption to think that I'm even worth bothering with. I mean, who am I to him? What business do I have in even trying to make a move on a man that looks like a fitness instructor, a cover model, and maybe a porn star all rolled up into one?
I know he said he thought I was pretty—beautiful was the word he uttered, for anyone keeping score at home—but what if that was nothing more than pillow talk? What if a man like Daniels always talks that way to a woman he's trying to get undressed?
And speaking of undressed, we came really close to the danger zone when I scuttled into the bathroom wrapped up in a sheet. What happens when he actually sees me with my clothes off? All the lumps and bumps and hills and valleys, all the stretch marks and wiggly places.
Wouldn't that be enough to make a man that looks like a freaking Greek god statute come to life run screaming for the carefully groomed hills of the pert, pretty girls of Valentine?
I sigh. This entire train of thought is what Girl Club was supposed to help me fix. Instead I'm circling around and around in a tornado of negative self-talk that has me staring at myself in the mirror, thinking that I look okay for as fat as I am and then feeling ashamed for how fat I am, over and over again.
How long have I spent hating my body? Wishing I were a little more slender, that I could even think about a thigh gap instead of always trying to sit up straighter to minimize my tummy rolls. What if I were as beautiful as Daniels had made me feel? Would I be set free from this cycle of loving and hating myself all at the same time?
Fuck it. I'm going to call him. If I don't, I'll always get the what ifs when it comes to the man I've had such a giant crush on and I'm not going to live my life with any more regrets for the things I make myself miss out on. Especially if it possibly involves orgasms at the talented fingers of the hottest man in town.
My thumb hovers over his name and I finally squinch my eyes closed and call him. When it rings, I feel this churning panic begin in my stomach and start rolling ominously upwards, as if I might barf as a result of the simple act of calling him on the phone.
How pathetic. There's absolutely zero chance on earth that I'll ever be able to convince him to take all my clothes off if the mere act of making a telephone call is enough to send me into nausea-inducing panic.
Once the phone rings for the third time, I start to relax because that basically means he's not going to answer and there's. no way on earth that I'm going to leave him a voicemail. Like what would I even say?Hi, it's Lily. I can't stop fantasizing about you going down on me and I'd like for you to come over and make my dreams into a really hot, orgasm-filled reality.
Yeah, no. Not going to happen. But unfortunately, the fickle universe decides to throw me a giant plot twist when he actually answers his phone on the fourth freaking ring. You know, the one where you're sure it's going to voicemail and you're going to listen to his outgoing message to hear his voice in your ear for one more moment before you go back to aggressively body-shaming yourself.
"Hello?" His voice is rough, like I've woken him up. Or maybe like he's been groaning out someone's name while he bangs the living hell out of her up against the nearest wall. Or like maybe he screamed like a girl when he accidentally lit his ball sack on fire and so his throat is probably still a bit raw.
Only one way to find out, so here goes. "Did I wake you up?"
"Lily?" His voice oozes with the sound of mussy bed-head and a day's worth of scruff that I would die to feel roughing up the inside of my thighs. He takes a sharp breath then nothing. I can only assume he’s waiting for me to answer.
"Yeah, it's me. I hope it's okay that I called." If I were on an old school phone with a cord, I'd totally be twisting it around my fingers right now. But instead I'll have to settle for the awkward standing wriggle, where I rock back and forth a little bit and try not to bungle this conversation from the very beginning.
"I'm glad it's you. I've been wanting to call you, but I guess I wasn't sure if you wanted to hear from me."
A heavy silence weighs on the line, threatening to squash us both along with any chance of me investigating the scruff on Ken Daniels' pretty, pretty face. "Is this because you lit yourself on fire rather than have sex with me?"
He barks out a sharp, shocked laugh. Okay, so far so good. "I don't think that's exactly how that played out." Now his voice sounds less sleepy, but way more sexy. Like he's thinking about the bathtub seduction scene he'd had planned and what would have happened next.
