Gravity Happens (Forcing Gravity) (19 page)

“Yeah, I’ll give you that,” he said, and I wondered if he was thinking about Chloe. I sure was.

I realized halfway through dinner that we’d never revisited the whole Jase on-screen fully nude, but he seemed to be in good spirits after
his fans left, so I didn’t want to push the issue. I didn’t want to make him upset again, even though I wished he would have told me. It probably just slipped his mind.

Chapter Twelve

Ethan

“
I want to see you,” I said when I called Nora the next day. No greeting. I didn’t even tell her it was me, because truthfully, I wanted to see how far I could push her.

She’d com
e back to my place after we gotten dinner with Logan, but we’d just watched a movie. Or, rather, I’d sort of watched a movie and Nora fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, and I mostly watched her.

I was tempted to just carry her upstairs and let her continue sleeping in my bed, but I was afraid she might not be cool with that since it was, technically, our first date, although I wasn’t sure I could call it that since Logan had been with us. But either way, Nora didn’t strike me as the type who
would voluntarily spend the night with a guy after a first date, so I woke her up and drove her home. She let me kiss her goodnight, but it was just a sweet, goodbye kiss.

Now I wanted more.

“Open your front door,” she said in response, and I froze in the upstairs hallway before veering right to look out one of the windows that faced the front of the house.

“Seriously?”

She didn’t say anything for a second, and even though I didn’t see a car in the driveway, I was tempted to tear down the stairs if she was really standing on my front porch.

She laughed. “No, I’m kidding. I’m at work.”

I heard the sounds of a coffee grinder in the background then.

“What time do you get off?”

“Not until three.”

I looked at the clock on my cell phone. It was only ten in the morning. Damn.

“Can I come hang out with you?” I asked, really not aiming for desperate. I didn’t want to scare her away, but as soon as the words left my mouth I could hear how they sounded.

“Wow, eager much?” she challenged, but there was a lightness to her voice which I hoped meant she didn’t think I was a total pussy.

“I’m kidding,” I said then, but I really wasn’t. “Call me when you get off. I want to take you out tonight – like on a real date.”

“Ethan, it’s Saturday night. You presume I don’t already have plans.”

Shit.
I hadn’t even thought of that.

“
You have plans?”

If she did
, I’d just call up Logan or my boys and see what they were up to. There was always something going on in this town, someone to hang out with.

“I do,” she answered, and I felt my heart actually sink. That had never happened before
because of a girl, so it caught me by surprise.

“That’s cool. What are you doing?”

She hesitated, and I knew that wasn’t a good thing. “Um, I have a date, actually.”

Excuse me?

“Okay,” I said, because what the hell else could I say. I had no claim on her that I could state outright, but I suddenly wanted one.

“I’m sorry,” she said then, and the tone in her voice gave me hope for some reason. “He’s this guy in my biology class, and he’s been bugging me to go out with him all semester, and I finally said yes last week, but he couldn’t get together last weekend, because he was out of town, so we settled on tonight, and then everything happened with you, which I wasn’t expecting,
because I hadn’t heard from you, but yesterday was so amazing and fun, and you’re so cute, and I would totally like to see you, but I can’t because I have to go to dinner with him.”

Nora was out of breath by the time she finished talking, and I had a lot of information to process from that one sentence, but the fact that
she said she had fun with me and thought I was cute gave me renewed hope.

And shit, I didn’t even know who this guy was, but I was pretty positive he didn’t have anything on me. If he did, she wouldn’t have hesitated to go out with him for so long. Suddenly, my confidence was restored.

“Hey, no worries,” I said, adopting my normal laid back demeanor. “Have fun on your date.”

“Okay,” she said softly, and it felt like she wanted to say something else, but she didn’t, so I felt the need to fill the silence.

“Alright, so I guess I’ll talk to you later, then,” I offered.

“Yeah,” she said, and it had that same vacant tone.
“Ethan?”

“Yeah?”

“How about tomorrow night?”

“For what?”

“Our date – if you’re still interested.”

Hell yeah, I’m interested.

“Sure,” I said, playing it cool because I’d played it so uncool at the start of our conversation, and I desperately wanted to make up for it.

“Okay, well, I guess, give me a call and let me know the plan. I don’t work tomorrow, so I’m good with whenever.”

“Sweet, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Bye,” she said suddenly and hung up before I could respond. Her abrupt ship-jump
from our conversation had me wondering if she was mad, but why would she be mad?

Girls literally made no sense sometimes.

* * *

It was after two in the morning, and I was drunk. Hunter, TJ and I had gone to Lure, and I wasn’t even sure how much we’
d spent, but it was a lot, and as a result, I had a lot of Grey Goose in my system.

We stumbled out of the club, the cool night air feeling refreshing and a little sobering.

“We out!” TJ shouted as he stopped to hand his ticket to the valet.

T
he girl he was with sucked on his neck while he waited. I had no idea what her name was, but she was Spanish or Italian or Greek and curvy and hot as hell. My boy was definitely getting laid. I was flat-out jealous. My dry spell had gone on too long, but I wasn’t going to do anything to ruin my chances with Nora.

Mmm, Nora.
I really wanted to see her, but I didn’t know where she lived. Could I call her? No, it was too late, and I was drunk. She wasn’t a booty call kind of girl anyway. Besides, she could still be with Mr. Biology Class.

Shit, what if she was sleeping with him?

My drunken brain had me panicking all of a sudden, because I had already rationalized earlier in the day that Nora wasn’t a sex-on-the-first-date kind of girl. I knew she wasn’t sleeping with him.

Okay, fine. It was cool. I’d just go home, sleep it off and call her in the morning. Totally cool. But I had to get home first.

“TJ!”

I called out to him since Hunter and the girl he was with had already taken off in a cab.

“Yeah?” he questioned, looking over his shoulder at me.

“Dude, I need a ride.”

He shook his head. “Can’t. Luisa lives in West Hollywood. I’m not driving your ass to Santa Monica and back here.”

I could hear the underlying tone in his words –
I’m off to get laid, and this chick lives so close by that I could be inside her in ten minutes. I’m not taking your sorry ass home and risking her being too tired to even give me head.

“Come on?” I whined, because I really needed a ride.
My friends could seriously be douchebags when girls were involved.

My phone dinged then, and I wondered if it was Logan. She hadn’t returned my call from earlier in the night when
I’d called to see what she was doing.

My eyes lit up, and my stomach did a little bouncy thing when I saw Nora’s name on the screen, and the words,
Are you up?

I texted back immediately
, as TJ and his girl got into his car and took off. Fucker.

Hi!

Okay, the exclamation point was a little cheesy, but this chick had my head going all nutty over her.

Are you home?

No, just leaving Lure. Night out with my boys. How was the date?

Not great.
I was home by ten.

I’d never been so excited to hear that news.

What are you still doing up?

As I
texted back, I tried to picture her in her apartment, laid out on her bed wearing something ridiculously sexy – or maybe nothing at all. Damn, that was a hot image.

Trying to get up the courage to invite you over,
she sent back, and my stomach flipped as other parts of my anatomy started to get excited.

There was only one reason a girl invited a guy over at two in the morning, and holy shit, was Nora actually booty calling me?

Yes, please,
I texted back, grinning at my screen.

She sent back a smiley face and her address and then said,
Get here quick before I lose my nerve.

She didn’t have to ask me twice. I had the valet hailing me a cab within seconds, and before I could process anything, I was barking out Nora’s address and we were speeding off toward Westwood.

I paused in front of her door and knocked. Within seconds, Nora whisked the door open and wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling my mouth to hers so fast I barely had time to respond, but I did register that she was wearing my hat. And she tasted like tequila.

Before I knew what was happening, she’d kicked the front door closed, was walking backward, kissing me and somehow navigating us through her apartment. I pulled back
to catch my breath and look at her for a moment. My hat was lopsided on her head, and she was grinning up at me, but below her smile was nothing but a lacy dark purple bra and matching panties.

My eye
lids lowered as I drank her in, her body looking as incredible as it had the day we’d been in my hot tub. I met her gaze, as I ran my hands down her sides, over her tiny waist to settle on her hips.

“Damn, girl, you’re too much.”

“You like sexy, so I wanted to be sexy,” she said, and I suddenly pulled back.

“What do you mean?”

She bit her lip and took a deep breath. Then she stepped close to me once again.

“Ethan,” she said
, as she ran her hand through my hair, her fingers lightly raking my scalp and making me feel like I just wanted to sink into her. “You like sexy girls. I wanted you to think I was sexy.”

I could smell the alcohol on her breath, not that I could talk, because I wasn’t exactly sober, but she was drunk. I could see her insecurities coming out, and as muc
h as I wanted to do really dirty things to her, I wasn’t going there when she was drunk and acting on instinct that wasn’t natural for her.

Damn, she was looking up at me with such longing, her eyes so wide and vulnerable that I wrapped her in my arms and pulled her against me which knocked my hat off of her head.

“Babe, you’re sexy as hell,” I whispered in her ear, and she giggled. Nora wasn’t a giggler.

Then her hands that had been splayed on my hips started to move south, so I backed out of her reach. I stopped when the backs of my legs hit her desk.

“No, come back,” she said, reaching for me, but I kept my distance, knowing if she started, I wouldn’t be able to tell her to stop.

I shook my head. “Sweetheart, have you been drinking?”

She nodded. “Yeah. My roommate, Rena, had some people over tonight, so when I got home we sort of did some shots, and then I got some liquid courage, in addition to getting really horny, so I decided to text you.”

I smirked at her. She was sort of cute when she was smashed
and talking dirty. I was fairly certain she didn’t do that in her normal life.

“How many shots did you have?”

She screwed up her face in question and looked up at the ceiling. “Um, I don’t know, but they made me brave enough to booty call you, so a few. Now, are you going to come over here, or are you going to stand against my desk all night?”

I shook my head. “It’s late. Why don’t we go to sleep?”

She looked crushed. “Sleep? Don’t you want to have sex?”

Hell yeah, I do
.

“Not tonight, babe,” I said, as I took her hand and led her over to the bed
, doing what I knew was the honorable thing.

She stopped and pulled her hand out of my grasp. “But, you always sleep with girls. It’s what you do,” she said, making me sound like a complete
man-whore. And maybe I was, but not anymore. Not with her, at least.

I noticed her lower lip start to tremble, so I shook my head again and stepped closer to her, wrapping my arm
s around her waist so I could pull her against me.

“See, you want me,” she said, her voice cracking as she indicated the mild erection I was sporting.

I sighed, because I did want her, but not in the state she was in.