Nadine added sparkle to my life. There was no other way to put it. The more I looked at her photos, and the more stories she told me about her travels, the more addicted to her I became. Usually, the shine from meeting a new person wore off, after a while. With Nadine, though, the shine just kept getting more lustrous, more brilliant, until I worried about becoming blinded by the light she gave off.
Maybe there was some truth in what Jack said that I had a crush on her. It was hard not to. It felt like the entire bar had a crush on her as I trained her in her first couple of days on the job. There was a kind of magnetism there. Nadine was one of those people everyone wanted to meet. It wasn’t just the fact that she was a new face in town and at the bar. She exuded something that simply drew people to her.
It was almost offensive how well Nadine got along with the rest of my friends. She and Haley became as thick as thieves almost immediately probably because they worked together and could gossip extensively about all of us guys. Even when Katie and Amy would drift into the bar occasionally to hang out with the rest of us, they immediately liked Nadine.
“I hope she stays forever!” Amy exclaimed at one point. “I could write like fifty books just about her travels.”
“Careful with that crush,” Sloan teased. “Brody’s got dibs.”
“Dibs is the worst thing in the world,” I snapped at him, my face coloring. “So offensive. Nadine doesn’t belong to anyone.”
“I think Nadine’s got dibs on Brody,” Amy told Sloan, both of them ignoring me completely. “Have you seen the way she looks at him?”
“I think everyone has,” he agreed.
“What?” I wheeled around, but Nadine was learning how to mix the perfect margarita with Ace and Haley, all three of them cackling like three witches around a potion.
The more I got to know Nadine, the more feelings I had for her, but the more she let her true colors show as a roommate.
I hadn’t lived with a roommate since I lived with a Marine barracks full of them, and there was definitely a learning curve to living with Nadine. She was not neat, first of all. It was a lesson I learned immediately when I tripped over her shoes in the middle of the doorway when I was letting myself in with a bag of groceries.
“Shit!” I groused, bobbling the bags and nearly dropping the one with eggs in it. “Goddammit, Nadine!”
“Did you call me?” she hollered from the kitchen.
“Not in as many words, no,” I muttered to myself, then raised my voice. “I almost broke my neck on your shoes.”
“Better be more careful,” she called. No sorry. No, “my bad, Brody, I’ll try to remember that I step out of shoes and leave them where my feet last planted.”She left trails of clothes, too, that did strange and terrible things to my imagination. I could just see her walking through the door, stepping out of her stupid shoes that I just tripped over, and then lifting and dropping items of her clothing in a trail that showed me just where she went naked the couch, the kitchen, the bathroom for showers that left the floor flooded and dangerously slippery. And yet I couldn’t find it in me to ask her to clean up her act. I actually enjoyed having her around, for all of the mess she brought. I had invited her, after all. It would be rude if I started critiquing her existence in my space.
That whole experience tarnished, though, eventually.
One sink full of dirty dishes after the night at the bar we’d had was enough to make me finally confront Nadine for all her affronts to my general tidiness.
“What am I going to have to do to get you to clean up after yourself?” I demanded, bursting into the bedroom my bedroom, which I was allowing her to stay in out of the kindness of my heart.
She startled a little at my rude entrance, but didn’t get up from the bed, where she was reading…
“Goddammit, is that my magazine?” I exploded. “I thought that got lost in the mail. Have you been going through my mail?”
“I thought I was doing you a favor, bringing it in every day,” she said innocently. “And you shouldn’t just come in here without knocking, first. What if I was naked?”
She casually flipped a page in the magazine and I gaped. She was naked. I could see the shape of her beneath the thin sheets, and she knew I could. Something about that made me even angrier, elevating the level of tension in the room.
“Why is it that you clean perfectly well at the bar and don’t do it at all here?” I asked her, my voice hoarse. I cleared my throat, and tried again. “What can I do to compel you to clean up your messes in my house?”
“Well, I clean at the bar because that’s what you’re paying me for,” she said, not looking up from the magazine. “I like to live a little more relaxed when I’m not working.”
“So, what? Do I need to give you some kind of stipend to do your dirty dishes? To put your clothes away? You know, for someone who only came here with a backpack, you do seem to have a lot of clothes.”
“I roll them up real tight,” she said, giving me a wink. “That’s how. And if you’re offering, you’re more than welcome to pay me for tidying up around here. I guess the place could use it.”
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “The only reason my house needs tidying is you. I am a tidy person. My house was clean.”
“Your house is a bachelor pad, pure and simple,” she informed me, turning a page in the magazine. “God, Brody, I found this vat of vile-smelling shit out back today and poured it out. What the hell was that? Rotting rainwater? It was awful.”
I stared at her, not sure what I should say what I could say to that, to the level of devastation I was feeling. “I brew beer out back.”
“You do?” Nadine marked her place in the magazine and closed it. “What was that, then? Beer you didn’t end up drinking?”
“Um, no, actually. That was part of the brewing process. You poured out the beer I’ve been working on.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“But it was so gross.”
“Again. Just part of the process. A really long, sometimes tedious, detail-laden process.”
“You’ve put a lot of work into it.”
“Sweat, blood, and tears.”
“You could’ve labeled it, or something.”
“Labeled it for what reason? That I would someday host a woman in my house who would throw away the thing that gave me the most joy in the world without understanding what it was?”
She at least had the decency to look chagrined. “Yeah. For that reason.”
“You could apologize.”
“I would if you could stop being so self-righteous about it. It was a simple mistake. Anyone could’ve made it.”
“You pour out vats of mash but you can’t find the time to do your dishes or put your clothes and shoes away?”
“See, there you go, tooting your own horn. I was actually trying to help. It was like a disaster area out there all these cases of bottles, just stacked up. It looked like an alcoholic lived here, but I cleared them out.”
“You cleared out the bottles?” I squawked. “To where?”
“The dumpster. Where else?”
“I was saving those for a bottling project,” I said. “But you know what? No harm, no foul. Now that there’s no beer, there’s nothing to put in the bottles. It doesn’t matter that I don’t have either of those things anymore.”
“See, you’re being sarcastic, now, and it doesn’t make me feel like I want to apologize.”
I saw pure crimson. “Why are you such a…a…”
A cool raised eyebrow. “Such a what? Go on. Say it.”
“Such an asshole!” I shouted. “Goddammit!”
Of all the ways she could’ve reacted, I didn’t anticipate laughter. But she laughed loud and long, still chortling when she finally managed to string some words together.
“I didn’t expect ‘asshole,’” she confessed. “I was certain you were going to call me a bitch, and then we were going to have problems.”
“I wasn’t going to call you that,” I said, rapidly calming down. “And I’m sorry for calling you an asshole. That’s not classy.”
“You’re right. That’s not classy. It’s hilarious.”
“It’s just that I had been brewing that for a while, tinkering with the recipe and everything,” I said. “This sounds stupid, but it was a pet project. Kind of more than a pet, though. A child, maybe.”
Nadine guffawed once before clapping a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I really am. Please accept my apology. See, now I’m being an asshole. I’m still laughing even though I understand, now, what that liquid was to you. I am so sorry, Brody, please forgive me.”
It was hard to tell whether she was being sincere or not, mirth still shining in her eyes. “Just forget about it.”
“I can’t forget about it. Tell me what to do to make up for it.”
“You didn’t know. You don’t have to do anything. I’ll have to start from scratch, but I know more now about it than I did when I first started off.”
“Brody.” Nadine leveled a look at me that made something in my stomach turn over. “I have an idea that might make everything better.”
Unless she had a way to get all of my mash securely back in its tank and out of the dumpster, I didn’t believe her. “I really don’t see how oh!”
She was picking at the waistband of my pants all of a sudden, slipping one hand down to cup my hardening cock, using the other to maneuver herself closer to the edge of the bed, the sheet swathing her in all the right places or wrong, depending on your point of view.
“What are you doing?” I asked her, hating how unsteady my voice was, just how young I sounded in that moment. I was a grown man. I could handle this, even if Nadine was maddening, strange, sloppy, beautiful, amazing…
“I think you know what I’m doing,” she said, arching her eyebrows at me.
“I guess I have the gist of it, sure,” I said. “But you don’t have to do that.”
“No?” Nadine halted her ministrations, looking up at me from beneath her long eyelashes. “I’m pretty sure you like it. Hard to hide that kind of evidence.”
“Of course I like it. I like you’re a beautiful woman. What’s not to like?”
“You should let me make everything up to you,” she said. “You’re giving me a place to stay, got me a job, tolerated my messy and terrible ways. I’m ruining your life. Let me at least show you a little gratitude.”
“No, Nadine, seriously.” I took a couple of steps back, and she let me go, even if her eyes stayed on the tent my erection was making in my pants. “I really don’t want to be a guy who actually accepts sex as gratitude. Don’t try and make me into that guy.”
“Oh, no, you’re a Boy Scout?”
“I was never a Boy Scout.”
“But you’re a gentleman.” She bit her bottom lip. “I love gentlemen.”
“Would you stop?” I asked, hating the pitch of my voicehigh in panic. “There’s no need to come on to me. I don’t think it’s a good idea to have anything but a professional relationship. I’m technically your boss, first of all. And your landlord. It’s just not good ethics”
“Ethics,” Nadine groaned, rolling over, the sheets twisting around her naked body. “Talk to me about your ethics, Brody. Ooh, I bet you have morals, too.”
“Everyone has morals,” I said, feeling stupid. “You’re making fun of me.”
“I’m not making fun of you. I promise.” She looked up at me, dragged a hand through her hair. “I just wanted to do something nice for you, and a blowjob is my go-to apologetic gesture. I can get away with anything if I just give a blowjob afterward.”
“You already apologized. There’s no need for a blowjob.” My face was on absolute fire.
“There’s never really a need for a blowjob. But can’t you say you want one?”
“There’s never really a situation where I would refuse,” I admitted. “Except in this situation. Because I would feel like a monster letting you give me one especially an apologetic one.”
“And what if it wasn’t apologetic? What if it was because I have a thing for fine, upstanding gentlemen and I’m ridiculously attracted to you?”
“See, I’m getting that vibe again that you’re just teasing me.”
“Brody. Have a little faith in your own sex appeal. You are a sexy man.”
If I blushed any deeper, I was pretty sure my face would melt off from the heat. “Enough. I know you’re not being serious.”
Nadine unfolded the sheets from around herself, and I got my first, completely blissful view of her gorgeous nude body, long-limbed, toned, deliciously smooth skin.
“This is how serious I am,” she said, putting her hand between her legs, watching me lose my mind when she took a brief tour of herself with her fingers. “I’m sorry I screwed things up for you. I’m grateful that you went out of your way to be nice to me. And I’ve been wanting this for a while, now, thinking about what you would feel like right here.” She caressed herself, and I had to stifle a groan to match the moan she gave. “What do you think I was doing in here before you busted in here, all indignant?”
She gave the magazine a meaningful tap and I gaped. “You were…you were not.”
“Go on. Say it.”
“Nadine, were you touching yourself to my motorcycle magazine?”
“I like the pictures when the guy’s blond, like you, on a nice bike, his thighs splayed wide, that vibration probably doing nice things for him.”
“That’s not even a really good magazine for masturbating,” I said faintly, as Nadine continued to explore herself, spreading her legs to give me a fantastic view.
“Really? Could’ve fooled me.”
“I don’t know what to do here,” I said, still helplessly hard, watching her pleasure herself in front of me. “Tell me what to do.”
“That’s easy,” she said. “Climb on into bed with me and help make my fantasies a reality.”
I laughed in shock. “You are dangerously corny.”
“Is it working, though?”
“Yeah, kind of.” Tentative, I pulled my shirt off over my head, emboldened when Nadine made a sound of encouragement in her throat. My cock bobbed upward as I freed it from my pants, kicking off my shoes and everything into a pile to join Nadine’s clothes strewn across the floor.
“Now that’s more like it,” she said, scooting backward to make room for me on the bed. “I think, unless I’m mistaken, that both of us have wanted this for a while, now.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said, surprised that I could come up with any words at all, covering her body with mine. She kissed me as she took hold of my length again, pumping it.
“I could still suck this.”
“I’d rather be in you.”
“I’ll take what I can get, then.”
I thought she’d been joking about being in the middle of pleasuring herself when I arrived home, but Nadine was wet already, pressing against my fingers and mewling as I sampled her. I sat back and pulled her toward me until she was straddling my lap, legs looped around my waist, enjoying the closeness of her, her breasts ghosting across my torso. I lifted her hips and she guided me right inside. She was so warm and tight I saw stars, almost forgot to start thrusting upward, only remembered to come back to myself when Nadine whined in frustration and rocked a little against me.
“Sorry,” I said. “Got a little caught up in the moment.”
“And what moment would that be?” she panted, biting back a cry as I thrust upward.
“The moment when I understood just how beautiful you are,” I said. “How amazing you feel to me. How I’m afraid I’m going to wake up and this is all going to be a delicious dream.”
She tweaked my nipple so hard that I yelped. “That hurt, right?”
“Damn right that hurt.”
“See?” She grinned at me before kissing me squarely on the mouth. “Not a dream.”
I thrust in earnest after that, and Nadine matched me, clutching at my shoulders, bouncing in my lap. I was able to work one of my hands between us, seeking out that kernel of pure pleasure that made her breath go ragged, her moans turn more into wails.
She tightened around me as she came, and I loved it, loved the way her face came apart until it was just ecstasy, forgetting about social conventions and looking good. All the barriers were down in that moment, and her vulnerability was so sexy that I came just after, just on the high of giving an orgasm to her.
“We should’ve been doing this a lot sooner,” Nadine said just as I was helping her off my cock, and I laughed so hard I almost dropped her.
When we had sex for the first time, it almost felt inevitable, like nearly crashing into her on the dark road on the way to the bar had set in motion a fate neither of us could escape. It wasn’t an unpleasant thought. It was simply the truth. Nadine and I had been destined for each other from the start. At least that’s what I felt like. It was hard to guess what drifted through Nadine’s head. She was beautiful and impulsive and utterly unpredictable.
She was ready to go at any time after that, and we did it constantly. It didn’t matter if it was first thing in the morning, right at the time in the afternoon when we were supposed to be headed in to the bar, or in the middle of the night, one of us waking up, usually Nadine, and looking for a little help getting back to sleep.
Everyone at work commented on how the two of us glowed, but if they’d known it was from a steady diet of stellar sex, they would’ve regretted commenting in the first place.
We got over the hiccup of growing pains that come with people living with each other and got…used to each other, almost. Only there was no drudgery involved. Every moment with Nadine was like a breath of fresh air.
“I just want you to know that I really like this,” I told her, watching the way her cigarette smoke curled up to the ceiling after our latest sex session. I’d bought her an ashtray, but she’d just laughed at me and told me to return it, explaining that the last few cigarettes she had were the end of a pack someone had given her and she wasn’t planning on continuing the habit after they were gone.
“Like watching me smoke after we fuck?” She blew a cloud my way and grinned at me. “Very retro, right? Sexy cancer sticks.”
“You’re the one still smoking them,” I laughed. “I don’t understand why.”
“Because they’re there, that’s why.” She lifted a smooth, beautiful shoulder in a lazy, half-shrug. “Someone gave them to me, and I’ll smoke them until the pack is empty.”
“Someone…like a guy?”
She exhaled another cloud of smoke before dropping the rest of the cigarette into an empty beer bottle. “Are we really going to have this conversation?”
“What conversation?”
“The one where I have to remind you that I’m a human being and have shared my body and my life with other human beings prior to meeting you.”
“Nadine, I’m not an idiot.”
“No? Because you really almost sounded like one, there.”
“I was only curious.” A stray thought made it past my filters. “He must have been important to you.”
“Brody, everyone is important to me. Every single person I’ve crossed paths with. And everyone should be important to you, too.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest anything”
“What you were suggesting was that I was hung up on someone. You were casting around for an object for your jealousy.”
“I just wondered about the cigarettes, that’s all. They didn’t seem like you. I thought the only reason you were smoking them was to try and hold on to…I don’t know, some kind of essence of whoever gave them to you. The cigarettes just seemed important, somehow.”
Nadine propped herself up on her side to study me, and I braced for impact. “I like to really experience a place, when I go there. If something that I would regularly consider to be taboo is commonplace there, I stretch outside of my comfort zone. That’s an important part of traveling. Letting yourself get swept up in the culture instead of worrying about what others might think about you back home.”
“I think you’re most beautiful when you’re talking about your travels.”
Nadine laughed. “Flattery won’t get you out of this discussion about your jealousy.”
“Alleged jealousy. I was only curious.”
“Would you still have this alleged jealousy if you knew the person who gave me the cigarettes was a woman?”
I’d come not thirty minutes before, but I was as hard as a rock again. “Um, is that true?”
She frowned at me in confusion for a moment before peeking under the covers. “You absolute stereotype!” she hollered, shrieking with laughter. “She was just a friend! Nothing romantic happened.”
“A guy can dream, can’t he?”
“You’re the worst.”
“And you’re the best. A goddess. Sexy. Wonderful.”
She stubbed her cigarette out and grinned at me. “Nothing romantic happened…with that girlfriend.”
“Nadine, you will be the death of me.”
I drew her to me, she opened herself for me, and I willed it to be true. I would die happy knowing Nadine was the cause of it. I was that in love with her.