Picture Perfect (11 page)

“It’s like some creepy Hobbit lair,” one of the girls said, and I joined in laughing. But seriously, holy shit, it was.

The light wasn’t the only thing that glowed in the room. All the drinks in peoples’ hands glowed starkly. “The alcoholic ones light up,” Joey said. “It’s like, a thing.”

Nate sidled up to me and slid his hand around my waist, squeezing me right under my ribs. Right where I liked it. “What about the neon liquid?” he asked, leaning down to kiss my forehead.

“Oh, it’s the alcohol,” I said, making a face. I knew he was fine going out, but making it so obvious who was drinking and who wasn’t seemed a little weird. I pushed up on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. “Is this okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s really not a big deal. I’m just not having one. Which kind can I get you?”

I twisted up my face, pushing an eyebrow down. I didn’t want to make him feel weird, but there was no way I was getting out on the dance floor with all those slim, confident girls without a little liquid courage.

“Sweetie,” he said, pulling my lips to his and kissing me slowly, “it’s fine. What do you want?”

“Something sweet,” I said, smiling gratefully.

Joey tugged on my hand, leading me toward a cluster of tables. “Come on, we’re over here. Follow the glow,” she said, winking.

A cluster of glowing pink and blue drinks led me right to Hannah, who was stroking hands and making out with Jake.
The
Jake.

Guess they’d gotten back together.

Panic fluttered through my chest and dropped into my stomach. Why didn’t I think about the distinct possibility that Jake would be here? I’d scarcely thought of him since my first time with Nate, but now that I saw him it all came rushing back. The pretty decent sex we used to have. The way he laughed, throwing his head back and letting his Adam’s apple bounce. The way he smelled, like expensive cologne. Like someone the old me should have been in love with.

But, now that I’d been with Nate for just over a month, and seen how he’d taken an interest in me, not just sleeping with me—how he knew everything about me, and cared about my interests—the old me had never really been in love with Jake.

Especially after the way he had taken one look at me, after the most devastating event of my life as I knew it, and dumped me like a bad habit. Asshole.

Not that I missed him. At all. Still.

Game face. Game face. Game face. Hannah and Nate are friends. Maybe it would be fine if I kept the two of them between me and Jake. Then, Nate was behind me, brushing my hair to the side and kissing the back of my neck.

Hannah barreled out of her seat, launching herself at Nate and slinging her arms around his neck. He circled one arm around her waist and kept the other hand on me, so I wasn’t jealous of her hugging him so much as I was jealous of how cute and petite her figure looked pressed up against his. It was like I’d always thought couples should look, with one beautifully muscled guy and one tiny girl.

Jake had never been beautifully muscled, and I had never been tiny. And we had never really been a couple, either, but seeing Hannah hugging Nate suddenly made me feel more self-conscious than I had in weeks. I gritted my teeth at the thought. I hated that I was slipping back so easily into thinking like that. Hated that as soon as I was with other people all I could do was compare myself to them.

I scooted into the next half-circle booth, sliding my suddenly huge-feeling ass against the smooth plastic all the way to the center, hopefully lessening my chances of having to ever get up. My hands wrapped around my drink and I stared at the pink glow between my fingers as I tried to focus on my breathing, and the fact that Nate had just kissed my neck, and his hand had barely left my body and how, right now, it was sliding over my knee. And how big he was, and how incredible, and how he wanted me. Not a tiny girl.

Joey ordered platters of appetizers—tiny gourmet pizza bites and miniature hamburgers. I’d been crazy about food since I’d met Nate—not pigging out, but tasting it, enjoying it, learning what made me feel good and strong, and what made me feel like shit. But my stomach turned when I saw all this. Something was just...off. I couldn’t picture putting food in my mouth.

It was only when I took a drink that I realized I probably should eat something, if only to absorb the alcohol. Between not having eaten dinner and not having drunk very much for almost a year, every one of my senses was already starting to feel fuzzy. The benefit to that was that the freaky insides of the club actually started to look kind of beautiful. Slowly, the food disappeared from the table, and slowly, the drinks were refilled. By the time I’d gone halfway through my second, I felt warm. Good. Relaxed. A little more alive than I had half an hour before. I talked with my friends, but I’d never remember what I was talking about. Something about recruitment next semester and training for a marathon—something I couldn’t ever do—and some new show on TV. Everything was kind of a daze—a secure, warm one, though because Nate was right next to me, his hand on my thigh, talking to my friends. Like this was normal. Like this could be okay.

Doctor Albright was right there in my head again. “Do you feel okay without Nate? Or is he just a crutch?” Sure, it was nice to have him there, but this was okay. This was good. I felt fine. Or I did, until the girls started dancing. As always, most of them were at least half a head shorter than me.

They were all also just a little more than half my size, and watching their tiny bodies writhing in time to the music, clothed only in spandex stretchy dresses and skinny jeans on top of stiletto heels and tight tank tops. Everyone had arrived with jackets or cardigans, but it was so hot in this club that our booth was stuffed full with them.

Suddenly, I felt pretty hot too. I shrugged out of my coat and watched the sequins dance on the neck of my dress. It was so pretty when it swung under these lights.

It may have had something to do with the fact that Jake had left the booth about ten minutes earlier, doing God knows what, and now came back to the booth, holding out a hand for Hannah and pulling her to the dance floor. The techno had slowed to something much different, with a languid rhythm and pounding bass, from the throb that made drinking one and a half of those glowy concoctions into something I was happy about instead of something I was starting to regret.

I looked down at my dress again. The bulge of my belly when I sat made it bunch up in a weird way and I just wanted it to stand up, stretch, even if I did tower over half the people there and reach the same height as most of the others.

I leaned over to whisper into Nate’s ear, and oh Lord, when my lips brushed his neck it was so soft and warm and he smelled so
Nate
, that before I could even get any words out, I captured his earlobe between my teeth and ran my tongue along the underside of it. “Dance with me,” I murmured, my hot breath blowing the musky scent of his cologne back at me. Delicious. I grazed his neck with my teeth, and he let forth a little moan followed by half a laugh.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Why did I think it as a good idea to spend an evening with you out of the house?”

“That’s what I said before,” I murmured, drawing back and blinking some doe eyes at him. “But now we’re here and I feel good. And I want to dance. And there’s no way you’re going home with anyone but me.” His face twisted into a look of displeasure, but the music was too loud and I was too restless to stop and figure out what the hell was going on with him. We were here, and I was in a tiny, gorgeous dress, and the drinks were good, and my head was just a little fuzzy.

We got to the middle of a crowd of our friends and faced each other, linking our fingers together and slow dancing with my hips grinding against his. We were so close I could feel how stiff he was, even through the thick sequined fabric of my dress and his pants and boxers. I was about to reach for him in my fuzzy haze, but had to remind myself this was not the time or the place.

Nate let his hands clutch at my lower back, bunching up the fabric there and making it hike up my ass a little bit. I knew I was tall, but compared to him, I felt powerful, feminine. I’d even worn heels.

A round tray floated by with glowing blue shot glasses, and I took two. “Cat, I’m not…”

“No, I know. They’re both for me,” I said, as I threw down the first, then the second, leaning back to perch them on a nearby booth. My throat burned and my head whirled, but it was such a warm, soft feeling, like everything was beautiful. I’d missed it, I realized. I’d missed being out and drinking and feeling like I was relaxed and celebrating life. But I mentally stuck my tongue out at Doctor Albright. Nate was right here, and I was feeling this way. I turned around, and let him dance behind me, his hands resting on my hips. I leaned my head back against his shoulder, and he clutched me harder.

The beat picked up, the pounding music shaking the fixtures on the walls of Fluid. I turned around to face Nate again, and his hands pushed up through my hair. He covered my lips with his, tasting, playing with my tongue, and driving me absolutely fucking wild. When he sucked my tongue into his mouth, I moaned and pushed my fingers up underneath his shirt, splaying my fingers against his back.”

“Hey, gorgeous. Hey.” Nate chuckled in my ear. “No sex on the dance floor.”

I whimpered as my hand brushed down the front of his pants. “No one would notice,” I murmured. “I’m...substantial.”

“You are absolutely beautiful. But no. They would notice. I’m just as tall as you are.”

My tongue was thick and soft in my mouth. One more shot, and I wouldn’t be able to feel my lips. Here, in the middle of the dance floor, with everything wavering and my arms clinging to Nate, I felt okay. As long as I didn’t look at the other girls, how skinny they were. I hated that I was comparing myself to them, but I told myself that I had to remember I had always done that, even before I’d gained all this weight.

“I have an idea. Let me walk you to the ladies’ room, I’ll go get our coats from the coat check, and meet you back there. And then we’ll get you home.”

“And into bed?”

“Yes, I will pull off this dress and we will go to bed.” God, his voice was sexy. Why had I never noticed how sexy his voice was before?

I turned my head back and kissed him, long and slow, then pulled back and gazed at him from beneath heavy, half-closed eyelids. The music pounded around us, and the streams of colored light cutting through the blue glow that lit up the room felt like bars of a cage. Suddenly, the warm buzz was wearing off, and I felt how cold the club was as I left the crowd of dancers and crossed my arms in front of me, loving the bounce of my boobs but hating the jiggle of my thighs as I made it to the ladies’ room. I used the toilet, then stood at the sink and stared at myself in the mirror.

The fuzziness had almost completely left and been replaced by the cold fluorescent light of the concrete-walled restroom and the hideous image of my own smudged lipstick and makeup. Not to mention my hair frizzing at the surface and sticking to my forehead, making me look like I’d half fallen into a puddle.

I was an absolute disaster. How much had I drunk?

I straightened up, wiping my lipstick back into place as much as possible and evening my foundation out with a paper towel moistened under the faucet. At least I’d been smart enough to wear waterproof mascara, which always stayed on for more hours than I would have actually liked.

I smoothed down my hair, too, wetting my hands and running my fingers back through it. It would freeze outside, but we were going home. Out of the bathroom and into the swirling lights and bodies of the club, I made my way along the wall, circling the large dance floor in the middle. I didn’t want to get caught up in it and be stuck there in the club, among those girls that made me look so humungous and clumsy-drunk. Head to the front coat check and find Nate and get home as quickly as possible. I wrapped my arms around my waist, suddenly self-conscious. I didn’t belong back out here, and I didn’t know why Doctor Albright—or I—ever thought I did.

Small hallways shot off of the main room at odd angles, and as I passed one, someone’s hand darted out and grabbed my wrist. I tripped over my own shoe, trying to stay upright in the dark, narrow passageway. My hand hit the wall, and my body pressed up against someone.

In the split second it took for my eyes to adjust to the dark with blue tinge from the dance floor, I thought it might have been Nate. But I knew it wasn’t.

A pair of eyes, level with mine, stared hungrily into mine. “Jake,” I breathed. I stood up straight, removing my hand from the wall, and ripped my wrist from his hand. It didn’t deter him for a second. He reached out, grabbed my ass, and pulled me tight to him. I could practically feel his raging hard-on push between my legs, and I wanted to vomit.

“Goddammit, Jake,” I yelled, twisting myself out of his arms. “I’m not sleeping with your sorry ass. I wish I hadn’t, ever. And even when I was, I wouldn’t have done so in this skeezy hallway.” I smoothed down the front of my dress, muttering, “Last time I saw you, you wanted nothing to do with me, and now you try to grab me in the dark nightclub hallway?”

“Yeah, well, last time I saw you, you looked miserable, but tonight you looked good. Nice tits. Just drunk enough for a fast fuck, with handles for grabbing.”

Jake reached out and pinched my side, and my skin crawled. I spun around and slapped him as hard as I could across the face. Then I rolled my eyes and turned to walk back out to the dance floor. “Next time you grab some girl, maybe don’t do it with your fucking girlfriend in the other room.” I took two more steps, and then Jake’s hands dug into my waist, then one moved up, squeezing my boob. Then a slimy tongue shot into my ear.

I was acting on pure instinct. I pulled my fist in toward my stomach, then whirled around my left shoulder, elbowing him in the stomach. One of his hands dropped, but the other held on. With a grunt, I raised my heel up and brought it down on his toes.

“Motherfucker!” he screamed.