Page 44 of Mostly My Boss
That made me laugh and I slapped his arm again. “Okay. I get it. We’re a team tonight. I like being on Team Ethan.”
“You’re really drunk,” he said. “I hope I’m not so drunk I forget everything you say.”
“I feel different. I feel like…”
“What?” he shouted.
I felt like I was the girl he was hooking up with tonight. The one he used his charm on, the one he flattered, the one he paid attention to. I liked it. But I had this thought in my head that I wasn’t supposed to. That being that girl was a bad thing because that girl was always temporary.
I wasn’t. I was permanent. He’d told me so.
“We should go,” I suggested. Before things got out of hand. Before I got any drunker. Before I did something stupid that broke us.
Ethan would say I was running again. And maybe he was right, but it felt safer this way.
“Are you kidding? We just got here. There’s a band about to start playing and you and I are going to get our dance on.”
“Nerds don’t dance,” I reminded him.
“These nerds do,” he said, pointing back and forth between us.
“Why are you being nice to me?” I shouted.
That made his face scrunch up. “When am I not nice to you?”
All the time, I wanted to reply, even though it didn’t make any sense. Not even in my drunk brain.
But then the band started playing and I pulled him with me into the throng of people so that he couldn’t ask me any questions and I couldn’t say any more stupid shit. The point of being drunk was to let go. Or forget, in my brother’s case. But I was letting go too much. Thinking things that didn’t make any sense.
So it was easier to dance. Easier to drink. Better to just be than worry about where my thoughts were taking me.
To Ethan. Always back to Ethan.
Just like he always came back to me.
* * *
Later that night
I stared at the condom and decided this was happening.
I’d opened Nicki’s drawer by her bed, the bed where Ethan was currently passed out, and pulled one out of the box she kept there. I didn’t know where she was tonight. I thought she’d told me earlier, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t here, which meant Ethan and I had the room to ourselves.
Ethan was here. And I was still super drunk, and I didn’t want to be a virgin anymore.
This waspeerrrffecct.
I took off the T-shirt I’d put on and wiggled out of the panties I’d worn to the bar. There was the smell of sex on them because a few times I’d gotten wet just from being around Ethan.
Pulling the blanket back, I got into bed with him. Naked. I’d taken off his jacket and sneakers earlier, so he was just in jeans and the Irish-themed T-shirt he’d worn to the bar.
We’d had such a good night together. Drinking, dancing. He’d put his arms around me, and I’d put mine around his neck, and we’d slow danced until finally the bar closed. Then we cabbed it to campus, sitting against each other in the back of the car. His leg against mine, his shoulder against mine. That had to mean he wanted me, because he didn’t pull away.
We should have gone to his room because it was a single, but mine was closer so we’d stumbled our way up here and Ethan had crashed as soon as he hit the bed.
But now I was going to wake him up with a condom and a hand job and we were going to DO THIS THING!
“Ethan,” I said as I kissed his neck, his chin, his ear. “Let’s have sex.”
