16Jake's band were pretty good. Others thought so too. They had quite a following in the San Francisco area, enough to have regular gigs and even sell a few tracks from their website but it was a constant struggle to keep them in the limelight and make enough money to even cover traveling expenses.
Jake was the bass player and Laura watched him now, biting his lip in concentration and smiling occasionally at the lead singer. She loved watching him play, standing up on stage, a happy grin on his face and his his ironic Def Leppard T- shirt clinging damply to his chest. This was the song he had written for her. Was there anything sexier than having your rock star boyfriend grinding out a song that professed his love for you? OK, another man was singing it (a particularly annoying one - Kyle was a grade A douchebag) but the words were Jake's.
"My summer smile," Kyle was singing, "Take me home," when Laura sensed someone by her shoulder and she turned round to find herself looking straight into Nathan Cross's navy blue eyes. In the dim light by the bar his eyelashes looked blacker than ever and he gave her a little smile that made her insides instantly liquefy. No! She inwardly screamed. You have got to stop reacting to him like this.
"They're good tonight," he said, nodding towards the stage.
Laura couldn't speak.
He smiled again and took a bottle of beer from the bar man. "Want a drink?"
She shook her head. She had had a sudden recollection of the last time her and Nathan had been together at a bar, a recollection that was doing nothing for her free falling insides. Thank God he wasn't in a suit tonight. At least dressed in a hoody and jeans he looked relatively ordinary. Relatively ordinary. There was still that face. And those eyes. And those lips. Shit, she was staring at him as he raised the beer bottle to his mouth. She had to get a grip and she turned back to the stage and fixed her eyes on Jake again who had reached the end of the song and was fiddling with his strings as Kyle rambled on about something into the microphone.
It was just lust, she repeated to herself one more time, as she watched Jake hitch his guitar strap up to a more comfortable position and nod at Kyle. Nathan was incredibly good looking and as she had recently discovered, rather good in bed, but that is all it was. There was nothing more going on than that. Her and Jake had so much more than lust. They shared a home, a bed, a life. They were happy. Look at Jake, she said to herself. He writes songs about you, he has a good heart, he's perfect for you.
But all the way through the next song, even though she fixed her eyes firmly on the stage, she could sense Nathan's presence beside her. Physical awareness crackled through her like a sparking wire. Her fingertips tingled. Her head buzzed. She felt sick.
"Guys!" Jake grinned broadly as he caught sight of them at the bar. "Thanks for coming Nate," he said, slinging his arm around Laura's shoulder.
"No problem. I had nothing on tonight."
"I've hardly seen you lately and when you came to Ryan's I realised how much I'd missed you."
Laura wondered what it felt like to be Jake, to be so open and guileless.
"No problem," Nathan said again, looking a little embarrassed.
"I'm starving. Why don't the three of us go to Los Panchos and stuff ourselves on pupusas? When's the last time we did that?"
Laura caught the look of slight panic that crossed Nathan's face.
"I'm tired," she said quickly before she had to hear him come up with some rushed excuse. "You two go. I'm fine just going home."
"Are you sure sweetness?" Jake asked pulling her closer to him.
"Yes. I have to get up early. You two go and catch up."
Then Kyle came weaving towards them through the crowd. "Jake man, party at Monroe's. We gotta go."
Jake stroked Laura's arm in an unspoken agreement at what a douche Kyle could be. "Go," she said in his ear. She knew they had to keep Monroe sweet. He was too important in the local music scene to snub.
"Nate? Do you want to come?" Jake asked.
Nathan shook his head. "No man," he said. "I think I'll call it a night."
"You've only just got here!"
"Yeh, but I'm not up for a party. You go. It's OK, we'll catch up another time."
"I'm sorry," Jake said. "Are you driving? Will you take Laura home?"
A familiar look of panic crossed Nathan's face and then Laura could actually see the moment he realized he couldn't come up with a valid excuse.
"Sure," he said looking anything but.
They sat in silence while Nathan navigated the inner city streets. It had started to rain and the wipers made an almost soothing noise in the uncomfortable quiet. Laura was still struggling with the current of awareness that coursed through her, much worse now she was trapped in such a small space with Nathan's shoulder just inches from her. She could smell him and it was doing nothing to calm her. It was reminding her of that night – the last time they had been alone in a car together.
It looked like she would have to start a conversation, but what the hell could she say?
"Why did you come tonight?" she asked, which was hardly the innocuous topic she had been searching for but it came out of her mouth before she could stop it.
"Jake asked me to."
"So why didn't you go to the party with him?"
"Didn't feel like it."
Silence. The wipers swished. Laura tried not to inhale.
"Nathan?" she asked, his name sounding forbidden and dangerous when it came from her. "Can we be friends?"
"Sure," he said casually, concentrating on the road. After a long pause, he eventually added, "I thought we were already friends."
"Are we? Sometimes I feel as if I hardly know you."
"Sure we're friends," he said, smiling to himself as he indicated and made a left turn.
God, this mood he was in tonight was maddening. If he said the word 'sure' one more time, Laura felt as if she were going to just open her mouth and scream very loudly in his ear. At least that might get him to show some emotion.
"I've always had the feeling you don't really like me," she said instead.
The smile left his face.
"I mean when we were younger everything was fine, we got on great, but the last few years ... I mean, like tonight, you didn't want to drive me home. It was only when Jake made you and you couldn't say no. And there's been lots of other times, like when I showed up at your birthday party and you were really frosty with me. And what about that time Ryan brought me to Lake Tahoe and you made a big deal about all the bedrooms already being occupied?" And the time in the closet, but she wasn't going to go there. "And then there was that Christmas when I broke my ankle and you wouldn't pick me up from the hospital and Jake had to walk out on his gig."
"I like you, Laura," he said quietly.
She stared out of the window for a moment trying to pluck up the courage to say what she really wanted to say.
"Why are we having this conversation?" Nathan asked, his voice still infuriatingly calm.
Laura didn't know. Hadn't she promised herself to stop obsessing about all this and focus her energies on Jake?
"Because we had sex," she made herself say. Someone had to point out the elephant in the room. "And even though it should never have happened, it did and we can't undo it or pretend it didn't happen."
"Can't we?"
"Well, I can't," she said as he pulled to a stop outside her building and put on the hand brake.
He turned to her and his eyes were big and dark in the dim light from the street lamps. "Neither can I," he said and Laura's insides did their ridiculous freefall again.
"Will it happen again?" he almost whispered and Laura gulped.
She shook her head unable to actually say the word 'No'. For Jake, she shook her head, but in her heart she didn't want to. She wanted to pull Nathan towards her and kiss him on his delectable mouth and then order him to drive them to his apartment where she would strip him naked and reacquaint herself with those Egyptian cotton sheets.
He was still staring at her as if he could read her mind so she forced herself to say it. "No" she said and he turned his head away as tears pricked her eyes.
She examined his shadowy profile. He looked as cool as ever apart from a slight twitch in his jaw. He was calmly waiting for her to get out of the car but Laura didn't want the conversation to be over.
"Friends," she said, the word catching in her throat and when he nodded his head slightly, she opened the door and got out and walked up to her building, forcing herself not to look back.
Nathan drove home like a bat out of hell, his whole body tense. He wanted to scream, to punch something, to tear something to shreds. But instead he took it out on the car.
He really didn't think he could go on like that this but what was the solution? To cut all three of them out of his life? Laura, Ryan and Jake? It was unthinkable. They were like family to him. Just the thought of not having them made his chest constrict. It was an impossible situation and it was bound to end badly.