Girl Abroad

IT’S PAST MIDNIGHT. ACCORDING TO ELIZA, THAT PLACES US IN booty-call territory. But Nate also happens to be a bartender, so if he was working tonight, he might just be getting off shift.

My fingers are a bit shaky as I type a response.

Me: Yes. Just got home.

Nate: Can I stop by?

Me: Sure, the guys are out.

Nate: See you in a few.

I don’t know what possessed me to add that second part. What does it matter that I’m here alone? Or why Nate would need to know that?

My head’s a mess.

Still, I brush my teeth, fix my hair, and throw on some jeans and a T-shirt before Nate knocks on the door. Unhappiness creases his handsome features, so I bring him up to my room when he says we need to talk.

“Sorry for the late hour,” he starts gruffly. “I came straight from work.”

“I figured. What’s up?”

Wary, I sit in my desk chair while he paces the floor, running his hands through his hair in a sort of agitated ritual. His black trousers and snug black tee, combined with the dark stubble shadowing his strong jaw, lend him an air of danger. This guy radiates sex appeal.

“Am I imagining this?” He glances at me, pausing for a second before resuming his path across my room.

“This being…?”

“You and me. What’s happening between us.”

Oh.

“I text you more than I text Yvonne,” he mutters when I don’t respond. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know that I can answer that.”

“You’re five years younger than me. That’s too young, isn’t it?”

This is more emotion than I’ve seen from him ever. Though he’s still guarded, this display seems like a culmination of long-lingering frustration.

“Too young for what?”

“You know what.”

“Yeah, okay.” I feel myself blushing. We’re past the point of playing dumb, I guess. “I’m not sure what to say. I’m sort of in a tough spot here. I mean…Yvonne.”

“Right. Exactly.” Nate turns away. Paces a few more steps. “Theoretically, though. If we’re being hypothetical.”

I get to my feet. His nervous energy has become contagious as I start to wander the room.

“Do I like you? Is that what you came here to find out?”

He answers with a heated stare.

“Sure, I guess I have a crush.”

In my defense, I think it’s the half-dozen glasses of champagne that glossed my lips enough to let the admission slip out.

I pause at the foot of my bed. “Or did. But we talked about this.”

Nate approaches me. “Right.”

“Because you have a girlfriend.”

He moves closer. “Right.”

“We agreed.”

Until he’s standing right in front of me. “We did.”

Reaching for me, Nate places his warm palm against my cheek. His face hovers above mine as my breath catches. He’s so good-looking it makes my heart pound.

I want to reach for him. To grab him as if to say, Hurry up already. If you want me, take me. Put me out of my misery.

But I don’t.

“We can’t do this, Nate.”

I break away, crossing the room to put some necessary distance between us. I can’t trust myself in his proximity, because I do want this. Him. I have since the moment I saw him under the cheap stage lights of that pub. But crushing on a taken guy is one thing. It’s harmless.

Acting on that crush is not.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to be that girl.”

His voice is low, tortured. “I’m not in love with Yvonne.”

That doesn’t make it any better. If anything, it might be worse.

“You’re still with her.” Irritation colors my voice. This guy is so frustrating. “As long as that’s the case, I don’t want to be in the middle of it.”

Nate is temptation on a heaping plate of mischief, and I see no other way to remove that temptation than to take myself out of the situation. Even if that means losing a friend.

Because really, how is it friendship if we only end up trying to make out with each other at every encounter?

He conveys his own frustration by raking a hand through his hair. “You want me to choose,” he says flatly.

“No. I don’t want you to do anything. I’m just telling you how it is. Nothing’s changed—I’m not interested in poaching another woman’s boyfriend. And honestly? I’m not interested in hooking up with someone who’s playing two girls at the same time.”

He doesn’t respond. Like the kid in the back of the class who tries to disappear when the teacher calls on him. Nate the escape artist. Which is all the more reason not to waste a thought on the man trying to have it both ways.

Finally, a ragged breath slips out of his mouth. “I’m not trying to play you, Abbey. Yvonne and I, our relationship is casual. And if there’s something here, between you and I, shouldn’t we figure that out?”

The lure is so strong it’s like being pulled by a magnet. I suddenly picture my arms around his waist on the back of his motorcycle as we ride off somewhere no one can find us. Hidden away, it’d be so easy to be selfish.

But that’s not who I am.

“No, we shouldn’t. Because it’s a shitty thing you’re doing to her. My advice, as a friend: figure out what you want. Don’t drag her along only to hurt her later.” I shake my head at him. “And I don’t think we should text anymore. Not even about the weather.”

“Abbey.”

“Time to go, Nate.”

This isn’t at all the encounter I expected, but I’m too tired to hold his hand through his crisis of the heart. I like Nate. I’m attracted to him. But I don’t like being a wedge in the lives of people I barely know, and the last thing I want is to be anyone’s side piece or fallback plan. I deserve better.

Celeste: Fancy some breakfast?

I wake up the next morning to a growling stomach and a breakfast offer. Yet to my relief, I don’t feel hungover. After all the champagne I drank last night, I thought I’d be suffering from nausea and a pounding headache.

I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that Britain’s drinking culture seems to be agreeing with me.

Since I’m utterly famished, I text Celeste back and we agree to meet at a tiny café a few blocks from the flat. After a quick shower, I head out on foot, surprised by the warm-ish temperature and lack of rain. It’s a clear, brisk November day.

The café is packed when I walk up. There’s a line outside to get in, but Celeste messages telling me to come inside. When I enter, I do a quick scan of the crowd until I spot Celeste’s gorgeous head in a small booth across the room. I’m already talking as I approach her.

“I’m so happy you texted. I don’t think I’ve ever been this hungry before in— ” I stop when I notice Yvonne sitting on the other side of the booth. “Oh. Hey, Yvonne. I didn’t see you there.”

Awesome. A little warning would’ve been nice.

I mask my unease. Because really, Celeste couldn’t have known that Yvonne is the last person I’d want to see this morning.

“Morning, darling.” Celeste scoots closer to the wall to make room for me beside her. She’s wearing a red sweater and a checkered silk scarf, looking (as always) like a supermodel ballerina.

Yvonne, on the other hand, is actually dressed sort of casual today. No chic outfit or perfectly done hair, just a loose long-sleeved shirt and a white headband pulling her short blond hair away from her makeup-free face. She’s still gorgeous, of course, but more approachable today.

“So. Heard you had quite the night,” Yvonne remarks in that crisp intonation of hers.

I falter.

Fuck.

Did Nate tell her he came by my flat last night? Why would—

“Snogging lords at royal balls now, are we?” Celeste pipes up.

I swallow my relief. “Oh.” Then I frown at them. “Wait. Who said I made out with him? I didn’t.”

“My brother. He texted about an hour ago and informed me he was marrying a yachtsman and that you’re poised to be the future Lady Tulley.”

I sigh. “Of course he did.”

A harried-looking waiter comes over to take our orders, even though we’ve barely had time to glance at our menus. He stands there tapping his foot impatiently and murdering us in his head while we scramble to pick something. This place is so busy I have a feeling they want their customers in and out like some human assembly line.

Once he’s gone, I fill the girls in about the ball, making it clear I didn’t snog anyone.

“I mean, at one point, I think he was about to kiss me,” I do confess. “But his assistant interrupted.”

“His handler, you mean,” Celeste says dryly. “That poor woman. I reckon a large part of her job description is ensuring the young lord’s trousers remain zipped.”

“Aw, Ben’s not that bad,” I argue, reaching for the cup of coffee another frazzled waiter suddenly drops in front of me. I thank him before continuing. “I think Ben’s caddish reputation has been grossly overexaggerated.”

“Sorry, Abbey, but that reputation is well earned,” Yvonne warns, her expression serious. “He’s an absolute cad. In the tabloids every other day, caught up in some debauchery or another.”

I shrug. “As the daughter of a man who was in the tabloids his entire life, I have it on good authority that half the shit those rags write about people is false.”

“Fair point.” Celeste wraps her fingers around her coffee cup. “But Yvonne’s not wrong—the Tulleys and debauchery go hand in hand. I’m thrilled you had a good time, though.” She gives me a grudging look. “And I suppose it was right of you to take Lee. He’s not stopped gushing about it.”Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“I don’t think he even came home last night. At least I didn’t hear him come in.”

Our food arrives in record speed, and I forget my manners as I practically inhale my avocado on toast. The two of them are far more restrained, Celeste daintily spreading jam on her toast while Yvonne picks at a poached egg.

“What did you end up doing last night?” I ask Celeste between mouthfuls of food.

“Roberto stopped by mine for a quiet dinner. He brought the most exquisite white wine, and we got drunk and shagged on the living room floor.”

Yvonne’s eyebrows fly up. “Are you serious! Our prudish Roberto had a shag somewhere other than a bed?”

“Mental, right?”

I wash down my toast with some coffee, laughing at Celeste. “You never mentioned Roberto was a prude. Is he actually?”

I still haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her forty-three-yearold lover-slash-philanthropist. Lee says Celeste likes to keep her boyfriends to herself. She’s never even brought one home to their parents, according to him.

“He’s…reserved,” she finally answers. “Vanilla, I suppose.”

Yvonne snorts. “You suppose?”

“All right, all right. He’s very set in his ways,” Celeste says, grinning. “He prefers missionary position—always in a bed—and blow jobs only while lying down to receive them. And he doesn’t make a sound during either act. It’s quite unnerving.”

“Nate isn’t very vocal either, particularly during blow jobs,” Yvonne says with a shrug. “It’s not that unusual.”

I feel a stab of jealousy at the thought of her on her knees in front of Nate.

Immediately followed by a sharp prick of guilt at the memory that this woman’s boyfriend was in my room last night asking if there was “something” between us.

The nausea I didn’t experience this morning now makes an appearance. I gulp down some more coffee and hope neither of them comments on my sudden mood shift.

Luckily, we can’t loiter in the café long. We’ve barely taken our last bites before the waiter marches over with the bill and practically orders us to leave. We part ways on the sidewalk, and I walk home trying to remind myself that I haven’t crossed any lines with Nate.

I flat out told him I wasn’t interested in playing home-wrecker. I told him to stop texting me. Hopefully he respects that. Like, stop torturing me with your brooding bad-boy-ness, dude. Just keep having silent sex and receiving silent blow jobs from your girlfriend and leave me out of it.

Back at the flat, I run into Jamie in the upstairs hallway.

“Hey. Jamie. Question,” I say. “Do you make noise when you get a blow job?”

“Heaps of noise,” he confirms. “Would you like a demonstration?”

“Ew. No.”

I hear him chuckling as he heads downstairs.

I spend the rest of the day catching up on my favorite TV shows, then eat an early dinner with Jamie, because Jack is out with his rugby friends, and Lee still hasn’t come home. I don’t know if I should be worried Lee is chained up in a bathtub somewhere because Lord Eric stole his kidney, but every time I text him, he assures me he’s fine. Or rather, he’s in heaven, according to the latest assurance.

It’s weird having Lee gone all weekend, though. I didn’t realize what a huge presence in my life he’s become. He’s my best friend here.

Around noon on Sunday, I’m still in my lazy clothes, reading in bed, when two soft knocks sound on my door.

“Abbs?” Jack’s voice.

“Yeah?”

He comes in, wearing jeans and a black long-sleeve that hugs his broad chest. “How about a drive?”

I wrinkle my forehead. “A drive?”

“Yeah. Out to the country. I borrowed my mate’s car. It’s a junker, so I figure he won’t notice a few dents.”

“You borrowed a car for me?”

“Heard you chatting with Jamie yesterday about renting a car so you could practice driving, and it reminded me I promised you we’d go.” He shrugs. “I’d rather you went with me than Jamie. I feel like I’ve a better shot at keeping you alive. So?”

A slow, hesitant smile spreads across my face. “Really?”

“If you’d like.”

I perk right up. He’s been promising me a chance to practice driving on the other side of the road for months. I’d given up on it happening.

“Oh my God. Of course I’d like!” I put the laptop back on the nightstand. “Let’s go for a drive.”

Jack flashes that grin that makes me all gooey inside. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”