I held up my beer bottle in a salute. "Welcome to my life, Mitch."

Skylar tried to lighten the mood. "Let me guess. You went home that Sunday night, ate Nina's nutty bananas and thanked her with the dagger?"

"Not exactly. Wait...what did you say? Dagger?"

She covered her face in laughter. "Sorry...Nina sort of named your-you know-years ago. That's what she used to call it."

"The dagger? Really?"

"You should take it as a compliment."

Mitch reached for some peanuts on the coffee table. "That's pretty impressive." He nudged her. "What's my nickname?"

The baby started crying. "Saved by the bell." Skylar walked over to the playpen in the corner. "Hang on...be right back. I want to hear the rest of Jake's story."

I checked my phone to see if Nina had texted again then went to the kitchen to grab a couple of beers for Mitch and me. When I returned to the living room, I handed one to him and said, "Hey, b.i.t.c.h, I thought I heard the girls talking about your c.o.c.k once, too. What was it again, Skylar? The Slim Reaper?"

"Good one," he said. "Actually, I'm pretty sure it's more like The Bone Ranger."

Skylar cuddled Mitch Jr. in the crook of her arm. His fuzzy brown hair was sticking up in all directions. A gnawing feeling developed inside me as I looked at their beautiful, healthy baby. It reminded me all too well that Nina and I hadn't been able to give A.J. a little brother or sister. The stress of infertility had been taking its toll on us in recent months, too.

Skylar interrupted my thoughts. "So, Jake, continue the story. I want to get to the good parts."

"Okay, well...Nina was still working really hard at studying and ended up getting two more A's. I couldn't believe it. She completely threw off my master plan to take her on a helicopter ride over the city. I'd been dying to take her up there."

"She would have hated that."

"I know." I snickered. "It would have been awesome."

"There weren't any more excursions?" she asked.

"Not until later."

"So, things just kept going the way they were..."

"One night, things got pretty intense. Nina finally told me about Jimmy."

Skylar looked at Mitch and whispered, "Her brother that died."

"Yeah," I said under my breath. "I'd always seen the picture of the two of them in her room and a.s.sumed he was alive. She never talked about him until she started crying out of the blue during one of our study sessions. I'd rolled some dice for a math lesson, and it reminded her of a game she used to play with him when he was sick. That was all it took."

"What did he have again?" Mitch asked.

"Leukemia," I said.

Skylar and Mitch gave each other a look, knowing this conversation would bring up memories of Skylar's own battle with lymphoma.

I continued, "Nina carried a lot of guilt because she stopped going to see him at the hospital right before he died. She couldn't handle seeing him suffer anymore. After he pa.s.sed away, she lived with that guilt for years." Looking up again at the picture of pregnant Nina on the wall, I thought back to that night. "So, anyway, that was when I first opened up to her about losing my father when I was five. I showed her some of my drawings of him. We realized that we both suffered tremendous losses at a young age. It was just one more thing that bonded me to her."

Mitch nodded. "Was that the night you first kissed?"

"Unfortunately, no. But that was the night I made a major a.s.s of myself."

"What happened?"

"After that emotional conversation in my room, I decided it would be a good idea if we went out and got s.h.i.tfaced."

He looked stunned. "You managed to not kiss her even while s.h.i.tfaced? I just can't believe you were able to keep your control like that."

"Oh, believe me. There's not much longer to that side of the story, my friend."

CHAPTER 9.

Past I chuckled to myself. Nina could seriously throw down. I watched as she ate every last bit of meat off a Chinese chicken wing. It was like watching one of those hot dog eating contests that were always inevitably won by some skinny dude.

We were at Kung Pao Karaoke, a Chinese restaurant and karaoke bar I'd gone to one previous time with some co-workers. We had ordered a Pu Pu Platter that had an a.s.sortment of appetizers. There wasn't a morsel left by the time we got done with it.

My mood also couldn't have been better because Nina admitted that her date with Alistair was a dud.

h.e.l.l yeah.

A few new discoveries were made about Nina that night. One: she loved to eat. Two: she was a major lightweight when it came to alcohol. Three: Her ex-boyfriend had a name: Spencer.

"So...Spencer...was he your last boyfriend?"

"Yeah. We broke up a little over a year ago. In retrospect, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Besides the fact that I found out he cheated on me, he did nothing but criticize me."

That was a double whammy. To hear that she'd been cheated on and that he'd treated her like c.r.a.p made me want to hunt him down. The alcohol from the ma.s.sive scorpion bowl we'd been sharing was going to my head and intensifying my reaction to every word coming out of her mouth. It was also intensifying my reaction to her mouth itself. I couldn't seem to take my eyes off of it.

"What do you mean criticize?" My blood was beginning to boil. "What kinds of things did he say to you?"

She looked down, hesitant to answer me. "Let's see...what didn't he say? For one, he had no tolerance at all for my anxiety issues. He would just make fun of me instead of trying to understand the condition. And he criticized my body any chance he got."

f.u.c.king A. This girl had the s.e.xiest body I'd ever seen in real life. On any given day, it was a struggle for me to keep from expressing that to her and to keep from showing her how I actually felt about it. How could anyone lead her to believe that there was something wrong with the way she looked?

"He criticized your body."

"Yeah...all the time."

"Really..."

"Yes. He told me I wasn't athletic-looking enough, that I could stand to lose ten pounds and that my a.s.s was too big."

Nina didn't see it, and it was too noisy to hear, but I cracked a wooden chopstick under the table. Listening to this bulls.h.i.t was making me so angry. Her a.s.s was too big? Her a.s.s was phenomenal. A thousand symphonies played in my head whenever I looked at that a.s.s for f.u.c.k's sake. How could I explain to her how wrong he was without admitting my true feelings?

"Nina...I hope you don't mind me being blunt."

"I don't mind."

"This...Spencer...needs his eyes checked and his a.s.s kicked. There is nothing wrong with your body...not one thing. I hope you didn't listen to him."

When she admitted to believing him in the past, I nearly lost it.

"Nina..." I stopped myself and took a deep breath. I quietly grabbed the last chopstick and cracked that one under the table, too. (I'd need to find something else to destroy if I had to keep holding my thoughts at bay like this.) "Never mind. Just know...that he was wrong, okay?"

"Say what you were gonna say."

"I'm not sure that I should."

"Since when have you become tactful?"

"Since this conversation moved to t.i.ts and a.s.s."

She looked amused. So nice that she found it funny, because I was dead serious. It was taking everything in me not to tell her how I felt, that she was the most beautiful woman in the world to me.

"Seriously, whatever you were going to say, I won't be offended."

Offended? s.h.i.t! She had it all wrong. I needed to rectify this. Everything came pouring out of me at that point like projectile vomit.

"Okay...in that case, Nina, not just as your friend, but as a man, I am telling you straight up that you have an amazing body. It's perfect. And your nimrod ex-boyfriend was right about one thing: you do kind of have a big a.s.s."

Okay. So that didn't come out exactly right. I was buzzed.

"Excuse me?"

My heart was pounding as I reached across the table to touch her arm. "Let me finish. You kind of have a big a.s.s...but it's the most spectacular a.s.s I've ever seen. You have an hourgla.s.s shape, and any man with a pulse knows that's the hottest kind there is. You're beautiful, and what makes you even more attractive, is that you have absolutely no f.u.c.king idea just how beautiful you really are."

I let out a slow, deep breath. It was the most honest thing I'd ever said to her, and every word was the truth. She just looked at me with the slightest bashful smile on her face and seemed like she really wanted to say something. She took a long sip of the drink then finally said, "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

You have no idea.

We silently watched a couple of the karaoke acts. Just as some guy named Larry, who looked like he was on psychedelic drugs, started belting out Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield, Nina got up to go to the bathroom. I watched her every move as she walked away. She turned around briefly, and I laughed to myself, realizing she was probably paranoid I was checking out her a.s.s, which I absolutely was until it was completely out of sight.

There was a break in performances, and the stage was empty for the first time all night. An idea popped into my head, and I made my way over to the DJ booth.

Rump Shaker by Wreckx-N-Effect started playing in my head, and I wondered if Nina would get the joke if I got up and sang it. I just wanted to show her how dumb her ex was, and singing a song about big a.s.ses seemed to be the most fitting idea at the moment. At least, my drunk brain thought so.

I didn't think I could pull Rump Shaker off, though.

"What songs do you have about big a.s.ses?"

"These Humps by Black Eyed Peas?" he suggested.

"What else?"

"Honky Tonk Badonkadonk by Trace Adkins?"

"Ugh...anything else?"

"What about Fat Bottomed Girls by Queen?"

Yes. Effing brilliant. Perfect, in fact.

"Let's go with that one."

"Wanna go next? There's no one in line."

s.h.i.t. Did I really want to do this? h.e.l.l yes, I did. Making her laugh was way more important than making a fool out of myself.

I waited with the microphone in hand until I saw Nina return to our booth. She looked confused and started looking around for me.

I cleared my throat.

"What's your name?" the DJ asked.

I spoke into the mic, "Spencer."

Nina's jaw dropped when she noticed me on stage, and she covered her mouth with her hand.

"What are you singing, Spencer?"

I whispered to him to lower my volume a little because it was obnoxiously loud.

"This is a special song for Nina. Please forgive me for being such an a.s.s goblin."

She looked around in embarra.s.sment. The look on her face was priceless as her mouth eventually curved into a huge smile.

Once the music started, I really got into it, moving my head to the beat and tapping my feet. My eyes alternated between the words on the teleprompter and Nina's face. She was wiping tears from her eyes. They were happy tears. My plan was working.

I vaguely noticed a bunch of women in the front row whistling at me and shouting some vulgar s.h.i.t as my hips swayed. My mind was too focused on Nina's beautiful smile to care. When you're on stage, the bright lights make everything out in the audience look dark. For some reason, Nina just glowed in the midst of it all. Her hair, her eyes, her smile were all I could see, all I wanted to see.

The people in the crowd were really getting into my rendition of Fat Bottomed Girls and were now clapping in unison. Some ladies were standing up and shaking their a.s.ses around. It was a hot mess.

Sweat soaked through the back of my shirt, a result of the hot stage lights. When the song finished, I grabbed a napkin and used it on my forehead. Nina gave me a standing ovation as she wiped her eyes.

A couple of girls stopped me as I was heading back to our booth. I was trying not to be rude but really just wanted to get to Nina. Before I blew them off, one of the girls handed me her phone number, which was a pretty desperate move. I knew Nina saw it because my eyes had been on her the whole time. I was hoping she didn't think I asked for it. I later dumped it into the leftover flames from our Pu Pu Platter to show her just how little I cared about those digits. I had to question my actions, though. What was I trying to prove when I should have been steering her away from me instead of making it obvious that I only had eyes for her?

While our time at the karaoke restaurant was coming to a close, the night was just beginning when it came to fending off my feelings for her. Even the G.o.ds were joking about it on my behalf.