“I can’t believe he drank that whole bottle.”
“I can,” Justin sighs. “Get his legs.”
We painstakingly drag my brother from the limousine, and between Justin, George, and myself, we manage to carry him into one of the first floor master bathrooms. Adam hugs the toilet and vomits violently into the bowl while Justin supports him.
I haven’t seen him like this in such a long time, and to think…he came out to deal with this just so he could see me again. It makes me feel so damn awful.
I can’t handle it, but I can’t break down. I have to be strong for my brother, because he has it worse than me. He does. Max and Jules are awful to me, but they’re completely out of line when it comes to my brother, and things have been this way for as long as I can remember.
“You know…” Adam manages, weakly. “If mom were here, she’d put that lil’ shit brick in his place.”
“If mom were here we wouldn’t have to deal with that shit brick,” I say quietly.
He laughs, and then he starts to vomit into the toilet again.
“Your mom bail too?” Justin speaks up after helping Adam through a few more rounds of vomiting.
I stare at him, but can’t speak for awhile. It’s a subject I swore I would avoid because I didn’t want to share that part of myself…the vulnerable part…with him. But Adam is very, very drunk, and he doesn’t care. I can’t blame him for exposing that part of our lives, but I’m not thrilled. “She passed away,” I whisper.
“Oh.” Justin nods a little. “I’m sorry.”
I shrug. “She had Cancer. It was a long time ago. I was fourteen and Adam was sixteen.”
“My mom bailed,” he tells me. “I was twelve. I haven’t seen her since.”
I tilt my head back against the cool tile of the bathroom wall. My stomach twinges with nausea and my head starts to spin all over again causing the room to tilt left, then right, then back again. I’m still drunk, and I don’t know if I want to get into this with him. It’s pretty deep, considering we’re practically strangers, but then again, tonight hasn’t been all that normal anyway. Justin and I found Adam minutes after we bolted from the dining room, sitting at the top of the staircase in the front of the house. He was on the phone with Roger, who I could tell was begging him to get on the next flight back to New York. Honestly, I was ready for him to ask us to bring him to the airport, but as soon as he hung up with his fiancé, Justin didn’t hesitate to turn the grim situation around.
“You know any good places to party?”
Adam and I exchanged glances.
“What kind of party?” Adam laughed.
“Your kind of party,” Justin smiled.
Instead of heading to the airport, we ended up at one of the biggest raves in Los Angeles. It was in an old warehouse, one I’d only heard rumors about, but Adam and Justin had obviously been there before. They knew the bartenders and several of the waitresses. I was scared, I admit. I’m usually not big on crowds or loud music, that’s always been Adam’s thing, but for some reason I held myself together and went with it. Maybe it was because I felt safe with Justin’s hands on my waist as he guided me forward onto the massive dance floor, or the way he smiled at me when I was finally able to turn around in his arms. He didn’t hold back as our bodies started to move to the music, he moved in close, let his hands run themselves up and down my body, and I let him do it. I was barely dressed for the situation in my long skirt and floral blouse, but it wasn’t really the type of place where people would have judged you. It was the perfect place, actually.
The perfect place to allow myself to melt away into him.
I always knew he had a nice smile, nice eyes, really nice body, but tonight…tonight all of that just hit me, right where it matters. My heart fluttered when he would look at me, smile at me, when my hands gripped his biceps or my fingers brushed against his chest. He was allowing it, and it wasn’t an act, because there wasn’t anyone to put one on for. It was just us, and the music, and a half drunk dance floor. Then the alcohol finally made it our way. I was sure I saw Adam with a bottle in his hand as he danced provocatively with some other guy, but I didn’t say anything to him. I was too entranced in my own drink…in my own date, even though he wasn’t supposed to be mine.
Justin and I must have drank a bottle of vodka between us, and I was staggering slightly in his arms by the time midnight rolled around. He was half in the bag himself, but still more coherent than I was at that point, and I could only assume he had more of a hold on his liquor due to all the partying he did with his teammates back at school. Still, it was nice to know that he had some control over our situation. Especially when…
Well.
“Come on.” His blue eyes lit up against the neon lights. He took the empty party cup out of my hand and put it inside of his before tossing them into a nearby garbage can.
“Where’re we goin’?” I giggled it when he laced his fingers through mine and started to lead me away from the dance floor. When he didn’t answer, I should have known right then that he was up to something. But my head…it was spinning, and my heart was still racing from being in his arms all night.
I knew that I didn’t want to escape him, I wanted to go wherever he was taking me.
We ended up in a far corner of the warehouse space, away from the wild party going on in the center, but not so far that we were removed from the music and atmosphere. He backed me up against the wall, and I nearly tripped, but he caught me in time. We both laughed, stared into each others eyes for awhile, and it was the first time I’d smiled like that in…well, years.
“You’re really pretty when you smile like that,” he told me, bringing his face right up to mine so I could hear him better. “You should do it more.”
I giggled and hiccuped. “I hate to smile.”
He just smirked. “Maybe I should give you a reason to like it, then.”
“What’d you…”
He caught my lips with his suddenly. I tasted his scent…some musky cologne that I didn’t know the name of, but had been driving me insane since the day I met him. I couldn’t get the scent out of my nostrils, but when I was sober, I did a really good job of tucking my feelings away. The reality was, I’d had a crush on the man since that day he walked into my English Lit class. He was just too good looking to ignore. It wasn’t fair, because I knew…I knew I wasn’t good enough for him.
He was kissing me passionately, more passionately than any man ever had. I’m not a virgin as many of my peers probably believe. I’d lost it in high school to an older guy because I thought it would make me feel better about myself. Naturally I was wrong but…but…this was something entirely different. My heart wasn’t the only one that was pounding furiously, my body wasn’t the only one that was trembling, because I could feel his doing the same thing. His lips worked themselves from my mouth, down to my neck, keeping them there as he began to fumble with the buttons on my blouse. I felt the cool air sweep across my partially exposed breasts moments later, and before I could say anything to him, his face was down at my chest, and his lips and tongue were working themselves between my cleavage. I groaned with pleasure as he sucked the skin there, felt my head hit the back of the stone wall, and didn’t think about who might have been watching.
For the first time since Mom died, I let someone in, and I felt that part of myself that was lost for all those years, spark back to life.
“I don’t know what we’re doin,” Justin said to me breathlessly, coming up for air after what must have been a good half hour of making out with me. “Are you…”
“Shut up.” I pulled him back to me and pressed my lips harshly to his. This time his hands slid my long skirt up my body, and found their way underneath to other parts of me. I swear to God, we probably would have done it right there if Adam hadn’t interrupted us. Justin had already started the process, unfastening his belt and lifting my right leg to wrap around his body. It was all a blur, and I felt so amazing I wouldn’t have tried to stop him.
“HEY GUYS!!”
I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw my brother smiling in my face while Justin was still…discovering my body parts, so to speak. I didn’t exactly shove him off of me, but he got the hint, and quickly put my leg down and yanked my skirt back to its normal length.
“There’s so many hotties here!” Adam giggled, completely disregarding what he’d seen as he stood in-between us, tossed his then empty bottle of Ciroc to the side, and threw his arms around our shoulders with a smile. “Roger would be sooo-oo mad if he knew I was dancin’ with those boys. Don’t tell him, El? Promise?”
“I promise,” I laughed, and met Justin’s gaze.
He was still smiling.
“Great,” Adam laughed stupidly, before he threw up on the floor, right by our feet. Justin and I jumped back, and then Adam fell to his knees, continuing to vomit his night away.
Needless to say, the party was over. We met George out front of the place twenty minutes later, and after hauling an incoherent Adam into the limo, we finally headed for home. There was plenty of water, which Justin and I didn’t hesitate to indulge in, and when sober started to set in, I quickly realized what I’d done with him in that club, and what it meant.
I think I’m still in shock. I don’t know. I don't know what to think about the fact that Justin was about thirty seconds away from fucking me on the dance floor. Maybe it’s an early Christmas gift from the Gods.
It’s sick to think that way.
“El.”
I glance at him. Adam has resorted to passing out right next to the toilet, and the film of puke around his mouth is something I’d really like to take care of now, but I find that I can’t move. I’m frozen, because Justin is staring at me with those damn eyes of his. I don’t know what to say. I’m terrified if I say the wrong thing, he’ll regret what we did tonight, and even if it didn’t mean anything, even if we were drunk, I’d like for him to think back on it fondly as ‘that night I messed around with Ellie the bookworm’.
“Ellie.”
I lick my lips and clear my throat. “Yeah…I…I’m sorry about your mom too.”
He chuckles softly and narrows his eyes. “This isn’t about our moms right now.”
I nod. He’s right.
“You not too drunk to forget about what happened back there, are you?”
I can’t look at him this time. “No.”
“I just want to say…I don’t really know what happened. I never had any intention of…you know…”
“Yeah. I know.”
It’s silent for a very long time. I can feel his eyes on me, but still, I can’t look at him. I feel my cheeks grow red hot, and I want to say so much to him, but I physically can’t do it.
“Would it be such a bad thing if I said I’m attracted to you, El?”
I force myself to look at him. He’s staring at me, and his expression isn’t that of somebody who’s completely wasted. Yeah, he’s still just about as drunk as I am right now, but Justin can handle his liquor even better than I can, and I know he’s not playing around right now. I feel my heart stop, I swear, and then I’m able to catch my breath again. “I…I don’t know if it’s bad, but it’s not exactly realistic.”
He laughs. “Not realistic? Why?”
“Well you’re just…I mean you have the whole basketball career and I’m just…”
“You’re just what?”
Justin checks on Adam quickly, and repositions him on the floor so he’ll be more comfortable. He groans slightly and mumbles incomprehensibly in his sleep, but he doesn’t wake up, which I guess is good for us. Justin crosses the room next, and slides down to the floor right beside me. “You’re just what, El?”
“I’m not exciting like you are,” I tell him, focusing down on my hands that are in my lap. “I’m boring like concrete. Everybody tells me that, including you.”
“Hey.” He curls his finger under my chin and tilts my head up so I’m forced to look into those eyes again. “I didn’t mean that, you know I didn’t, and I’m not that into myself, El. I know I may have come off that way at first but it’s just not true and I’m sorry I ever showed you that side of me. Back there…it was exciting, being with you. Something inside of me just…I’ve never kissed someone and felt that way before.”
It’s scaring me, what he’s saying. I want to tell him that this can’t work, and when he protests, I want to tell him to go to hell and run out of here. But once again, I can’t do it. I’m frozen in place and my body is refusing to let me do anything of the sort. It’s making me so angry, and I don’t know if I should scream, or cry, or just laugh because this is all turning out to be so much more than I ever thought it would be.
“What about your girlfriend…the one in Fitzburgs class?”
He rolls his eyes. “Really? She’s long gone.”
“Why?”
He sighs. “Awkward.”
“Well I think it’s a reasonable question, Justin.”
“I dumped her.” He looks at me seriously. “I’m not really good at long term relationships.”
“Oh really?” I laugh. “That’s reassuring.”
“So being honest about it isn’t getting me points?”
I knock my head back against the wall. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s good you said it. I’ve never been in a relationship, so what do I know?”
“It felt amazing to kiss you, that’s all I’m saying,” he says softly. “I just wanted you to know that. This whole thing isn’t such a charade anymore. Not to me.”
My chest tightens again, and I take another deep breath, but it doesn’t help. “Why me?”
“Do I need a reason, El? You underestimate yourself. I’ve…I’ve been attracted to you since we had that meeting, I just couldn’t see it until tonight. Yeah, you’re not the type of girl I would usually go for, and I’m not the type of guy you’d consider spending time with, but for some reason this works. I don’t know why, it just does.”
“So what now?” I hold my breath and wait for him to tell me he doesn’t know, he doesn’t have time, yada yada.
Instead, he smiles, pulls my face closer to his, and kisses my lips so gently, letting his linger against mine for the longest time before pulling back slightly and staring into my eyes. “Now…we spend the rest of the Christmas holiday with your family, and then I’m going to take you to my dad’s for New Years. After that, who knows?”
“Your dad’s?”
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “I’ve never brought a girl home before. Should be interesting, but I figure if you could do it to me, I can do it to you. It’s only fair.”
I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my face. The better part of me is pleading with me not to give in to him, but I can’t help myself. He’s not the same guy I met at school. This is how Justin is when he’s not around his teammates, not drowning in his glorified persona and overwhelming popularity. This isn’t basketball Justin…and suddenly I start to understand.
r32;This is the Justin that nobody gets to see, because they’re too invested in his career to care. I’m probably the first girl that hasn’t cared about how many three point shots he can get in one game, or how rich he’ll be once he signs with the NBA. I just care about him.
I care about him.
It’s scary to think about the type of impact that can make on him, and what could happen if something goes wrong and we can’t be together anymore.
I’m terrified but…
Shit.
I’m in love with him. How can I be in love with him? Am I crazy?
“El.”
“Yeah,” I rasp.
“Would I be out of line if I told you I might be in love with someone I just met?” He cups my face in his hand, and I can see the emotions overwhelming him. “Because I think…I think I might be.”
“No.” I smile. “You wouldn’t be out of line.”
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