Searching for Neverland (12 page)

“See if Josh can come too,” I heard Tanner yell in the background.

Oh crap.

My brother thought Josh was awesome since they played video games together whenever Josh came with me to my parents’ house. I wasn’t sure what to tell him since I wasn’t exactly sure if Josh and I were alright.

“Can you bring Josh with you?” my mother asked.

“I’ll see if he has plans. He has a new girlfriend who he’s been spending a lot of time with, so we’ll see.”

“Okay, sweetie
. Just let us know if he’s coming
,” my mother said. “We’ll see you tomorrow night.”

“Bye Mom.”

“Bye Taylor! You’re the best big sister ever!” Tanner cheered before my mom ended the call.

I hung up smiling.
My brother was a trip.

“Tanner?” Allison asked
from where she was standing in the shallow end of the pool a few feet away. She’d always been a big fan of Tanner, and she’d been his teacher three years earlier, so she had a soft spot for him.

“Yeah. He pitched another no hitter today, so I owe him the new
Call of Duty
game.”

She smiled. “That’s so cool. Tell him congratulations for me.”

“I will.”

Then she sighed. “I can’t wait until I can buy my kids video games
and go to their baseball games
.”

Oh man, she had baby fever bad, and she was barely engaged.

“Thinking of skipping the wedding and heading straight for babyville?” I teased, praying she wouldn’t do that.

I wasn’t ready for her to checkout of her social life completely. I needed time to ease into that step of her life, even though I knew it was inevitable.

She laughed. “No, but I don’t think we’ll wait long after the wedding before we start trying, considering I hit my baby peak two years ago.”

I raised an eyebrow at her behind my Ray-Bans. “Two years ago?”

She nodded. “Yeah, twenty-seven is the prime baby making age for women.”

“I did not know that.”

“That’s because you don’t want kids.”

That wasn’t necessarily true, but my biological clock wasn’t exactly ticking either.

“That’s because you’ll have so many that if I get baby fever, I can just go play with one of your rugrats,” I said, grinning at her.

She smiled back endearingly. “Auntie Taylor. I like it.”

Yeah, I was pretty good with that too – as long as I could give them back when I was done, I’d be fine.

* * *

Allison and I drove home a few hours later, and an uneasy feeling crept up on me as I saw Josh’s jeep in the driveway.

When we walked inside, he was still lying on the couch, but I could tell he’d at least gotten up, as he’d changed into workout shorts and a t-shirt. The back blinds were closed, and the TV was on low. Remnants of Taco Bell were on the coffee table, and I could see an empty Gatorade container on the floor by his head. He looked up when we walked in.

“Hung over much?” Allison asked.

“Yeah, just a little bit,” Josh groaned, as he rubbed his forehead. “I sort of feel like I got run over by a truck, but it’s all good. Nothing a little cheap Mexican food can’t cure.”

“Yeah, I
can
see that – and smell it.”

While Allison was fully engaged in conversation with her brother, I hung out in the kitchen. She went to sit in the living room with him, so I grabbed a soda and stood at the counter reading the
Glamour
that I’d gotten in the mail the day before.

“What are you doing, Taylor?”

I looked up to see Josh staring at me. I wanted to look away. I suddenly had flashbacks of him kissing me and wanted to cringe. Okay, so aside from the sloppiness, it hadn’t been that bad, but it also hadn’t been invited.

“Um, just reading a magazine,” I said, holding up the proof.

“Standing in the kitchen? You can read it in here. We won’t bite.”

Yeah, but you might try to kiss me.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, taking my magazine and soda into the living room. I sat on the love seat opposite Allison. No way was I sitting next to Josh. “So, you feel like crap?”

“Pretty much,” he said casually, stretching out a bit on the couch. His t-shirt rose up, exposing his taught stomach, and I had to look away since at the site of his ripped abs, as my stomach got a little twingy feeling that sort of freaked me out. “Thanks for driving me home last night. I really appreciate it.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

Okay, just keep it casual,
I told myself.

“How drunk was I?”

“Fantastically drunk,” I said, laughing a little bit
, but it was a nervous laugh
.

“Sorry,” he said, looking like he really felt bad. “I honestly hadn’t planned on getting wasted.”

“You were a little bit of an ass, too,” Allison chimed in, not holding back.

“I was?”

I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t planned on going into the gritty details of fantastically drunk Josh, but if she wanted to broach the subject, she could. I didn’t want to talk
about last night any longer than
we had too. Allison, unfortunately, wanted to remind Josh of the finer details of his behavior.

“Yeah. You pretended like Tay was your girlfriend when she was giving some guy her number, but even before that you were a real treat. You told her to fuck off.”

Josh’s eyes went wide, and his face took on a regretful expression as he listened to her go on about everything he’d done.

“Really?” he asked, looking at me.

I nodded. “You were in pretty bad shape, my friend.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be an ass, really.”

“It’s okay, J,” I said, knowing he did feel really bad. I knew Kimmy’s snub had affected him more than he’d led on.

“Just don’t do it again, or we won’t invite you out with us,” Allison snapped, obviously not having the same concern for her brother’s feelings. She picked up an old
Us Weekly
and began to flip through it.

“I’m really sorry, Tay,” Josh
said, ignoring his sister and
looking over at me, knowing I was the softer of the two of us. Allison was stubborn and a little unforgiving at times.

“I know you are. It’s cool.” I shrugged like it was no big deal, even though it was a huge deal because his drunkenness had led to him kissing me. “It happens to all of us. You were wasted. At least you didn’t get sick. I love you, but I would not have cleaned up your puke.”

“Yeah, true. I guess it’s better that I just passed out when we got home.”

Huh?

Did he not remember the kiss?
Or was he just pretending not to because it was just as embarrassing for him? Well, if that was his tactic, I was in. I was the queen of avoidance, after all.

“Yeah.
I know,” I agreed.

From across the room, I could feel Allison’s eyes on me, but I didn’t look at her. She knew all about her brother’s drunken attack on me. I kept my expression placid, as not to alert Josh that anything was amiss, and I hoped Allison would keep her mouth shut too.
If we never talked about the kiss, that was fine with me.

But that also meant I couldn’t bring up what he’d said about O’Donnell’s.
Oh well, I didn’t know anything about running a bar anyway.
It
looked like I was going to have to find another job the old fashioned way.

* * *

We decided to have a girls’ night out
that night
and ended up at Splitsville, which was actually a trendy bowling alley, but their bar area was extensive, they played good music, and it was a good crowd. We never bowled. We just socialized.

That night we commandeered a table, people-watched, and gossiped about our friends who weren’t with us. It was catty, but it was what we did when Allison, Casey and I got together with my sister, who I finally convinced to come out with us and leave Noah at home. I thought about telling them all about Josh’s kiss, but I didn’t really want anyone else to know
. It was better to just pretend it never happened.

“How’s your guy?” I asked my sister, as she sucked down a Long Island Iced Tea.

She rolled her eyes. “Irritated, i.e. annoying the shit out of me.”

“Why?” Allison asked, leaning forward to hear more about Taryn’s train wreck of a relationship.

Maybe it was genetic, but she had worse taste in guys than I did. Sure, her boyfriends were usually cute, but they were generally losers.

“He’s in pain. He had surgery on his shoulder two days ago, and now he’s being a giant baby. He’s staying at his parents’ house and letting his mom wait on him hand and foot. I stopped by to see him earlier, and he was being whiney.”

We all knew the backstory. Noah had injured his shoulder playing football at UNC his senior year. He’d been a pretty good player and had been courted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but then he’d reinjured the same shoulder in a fight at my sister’s sorority formal. He had to have surgery to have it corrected, and then he was planning to rehab it and walk on with the Bucs the following year, if he could. They hadn’t drafted him out of college, but he still kept in touch with them regularly, and they were interested in him if his shoulder didn’t hold him back from playing at the caliber he did in college.

“Um, so why are you with him?” Casey asked, scrunching up her face in disgust. She had a low tolerance for high maintenance guys.

“He’s really great in bed,” Taryn sighed, and I almost did a spit-take with my beer.

“Is it worth all the drama?” Allison asked.

Taryn shook her head. “
Not really, but
when he’s giving me multiple orgasms, I sort of just lose sight of everything else.

“On that note,” I said, not sure I wanted to hear in-depth details about my sister’s sex life. Sure, she was twenty-two, but we were six years apart, and I still had a hard time seeing her as old enough to have casual sex. “Who needs another drink?”

“I do,”
everyone
said in unison, so I got up to make a drink run.

When
I was walking back from the bar, I ran right into Alex. I stopped short when I saw him, nearly causing the drinks I was carrying to spill
all
over both of us. I had
not
expected to see him out that night.

“Hey, slow down, Tay,” he said when he saw me. He smiled widely, nearly making me melt.

Why oh why did he have that effect on me?! 

He took two of the drinks from my hand, so I could steady myself, and I was suddenly thankful that I was a few drinks in at that point. My buzz might help me get through a conversation with him without sounding like a total idiot.

“Thanks,” I said, eyeing him warily. He looked really, really good.

“Are you having a good time?” he asked, his tone all butter.

“Sure,” I said, flashing him my best smile. “You?”

“Better now,” he said, and I felt my stomach flip. “Who are you here with?”

“Um, Allison, my sister, and my friend, Casey. You don’t know her.” I gestured to where our table was located and could see Allison and Taryn eyeing me with looks of distaste on their faces. “
I guess I should get back over there
.”

I knew I was in for an earful from my best friend and my sister as soon as I returned to our table.

“I’ll go with you,” Alex said, surprising me. “I’d like to say hi to Allison.”

Allison sure as hell didn’t want to say hi to him, but I didn’t say as much.

“Okay,” I said, as he began to follow me back to our table in the middle of the bar.

I handed Allison and Taryn their drinks and set Casey’s on the table. She was over talking to some guys. She could get it when she returned. I wasn’t chasing her down.

“Alex,” my sister said, standing up and facing him down with
a
sneer on her face.

“Hi Taryn,” he said warmly, but she just glared at him.

“Great, you’re back. Fucking awesome.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Alex responded. “Not as good as it is to see your sister, but you know how it is.”

“Just don’t be a dick to her this time,” Taryn sneered.

I felt a strange urge to press my lips together to keep from laughing and chastise my sister at the same time. She completely meant well, but I didn’t want her to be rude to Alex, regardless of how bad he’d hurt me the last time – and the time before that. But then again, he
had
hurt me – twice – so her comment wasn’t unjustified.

“That’s a little harsh, even for you, Taryn,” Alex said curtly. He and my sister had always bickered, but this was more than that.

She laughed a non-humorous laugh. “Yeah, I don’t think it is. I’m going to call Noah. I’ll be back when jerkface is gone.”