And we were about to spend the night together.
A part of me wished I could go back a few years and tell my younger self this story. I wouldn't have believed it, of course, but it certainly would have given me something to dream about. Something to cling to on the hard days.
As we rode the slow elevator to the tenth floor, Nathan's thumb continued rubbing circles in the hollow of my hip. After what felt like hours, we finally reached the door to his apartment. He unlocked it and guided me inside with a hand on the small of my back.
As I toed off my shoes, I looked around furtively. I had half-expected to see a messy bachelor pad with dirty clothes and empty food containers everywhere, but the place was surprisingly well-kept. The decor didn't really go together — there was no matching living room set or perfectly arranged art on the walls — but the place was tidy, aside from a handful of guitars and piles of music sheets laying around.
"Surprised?" Nathan asked as I looked around.
"A little."
He headed to the kitchen and opened the fridge. "My mother would never let me get away with being a slob."
"Is she the overprotective type, too?" I asked.
"If anything, it's the other way around," he murmured absentmindedly as he pulled two bottles of water from the fridge. "You thirsty?"
"Making sure I keep myself hydrated?" I asked. "I only had the one drink, you know."
"If you rarely drink, you're probably a lightweight."
I took one of the bottles from his outstretched hand. "You said it's the other way around. What did you mean by that?"
"Hm?" He raised an eyebrow as he twisted the cap off his bottle.
"Your mom," I said. "I asked if she was overprotective and you said it was the other way around."
His brows drew down into a frown before his expression smoothed. "She was just dealing with some stuff when I was growing up," he said with a shrug he probably meant to look more careless than it did. "So I did the adulting to help her out."
Some stuff. He also said he'd been dealing with some stuff when he left his previous band. Was it the same stuff or different stuff?
I didn't know why I was so curious. There was just something about Nathan. He teased and grinned and bragged, but I'd seen flashes of a different man behind that carefree attitude he gave off.
"Sounds like you've got a good relationship with your mom," I said.
His face softened. "Yeah, we're pretty close. She was always the one encouraging me to go after my dreams."
"She sounds like a wonderful woman."
"She is."
"What about your dad?"
"He's not in the picture." Nathan took a sip from his bottle of water and wandered over to one of his guitars. "It's always just been me and my mom." He fiddled with the neck, going quiet.
"I get along with my parents, too," I said to fill the silence. "They worry too much. But that's what parents do, I guess."
"What could they possibly have to worry about with you?" he asked. "It seems like you'd be the perfect daughter."
"Just the usual things," I said quickly. "Making sure I'm not living off ramen or whatever, nothing too crazy."
Myusual thingssounded suspiciously vague in the way that Nathan'ssome stuffwas pointedly lacking details.
I supposed it didn't matter. We weren't here to spill our secrets like a therapy session. We were here to—
Nathan came up behind me and pressed his firm chest against my back. He wrapped one arm around my middle and used the other to brush my hair over one shoulder. I tilted my head to the side, allowing him access. He pressed his lips to the crook of my neck. The touch of his lips made my belly tumble over.
"I was about to ask you if you wanted to come to my place, back there at the club," he murmured into my skin. "But you asked me first."
