Page 50 of The Bartender's Baby

He smoothed his hand down my hair and spine, over and over, until he eventually caught my chin in his fingers, kissing my mouth sweetly, a silent sign of gratitude. It wasn’t a chore to listen. I liked learning about him.

As much as he liked learning about me. And I wasn’t getting out of it, because he reminded me, “Your turn.”

I ducked my head down and whined into his shoulder. “Do I have to?”

“Do you want an orgasm?”

I jerked back, jaw dropped. “You would withhold orgasms from a pregnant woman?”

He tipped his head. “Try me.”

I flopped back against the pillows, scowling at him. “Fine.”

He cuddled up next to me, sneaking his hand under my T-shirt to span my belly. Frogger, of course, poked at him, and I rubbed at where I thought the head was.

“I’m not sure where to start,” I mused, and Nate teased his fingertips in circles on my skin.

“You left off at how you ended up here. You were in Virginia and…”

“Right.” I readjusted my pillow for no other reason than to waste time. Nate waited me out, and when there was nothing else left to do, I started, “My dad was transferred to Virginia, and we were there for a long time, until I was in fourth grade. We moved up here because he met Beth.”

“Guess we don’t like Beth, huh? You said it in your dragon voice.” He imitated my apparent dragon voice by making his all throaty. “Beeeeeeth.”

“Beth was… Well, she was a bitch.Isa bitch.”

He motioned for me to keep going, mouth trembling with amusement.

“When I first met her, she was nice and showed me pictures of her kids, and they were about my age, so I was really excited. For context, I used to watch a lot of TV Land, and I might have set my expectations a little high for what family life was like, okay? I thought,This is it. We were gonna be one big, happyfamily, and I’m going to have a brother and a sister. It was going to be awesome.”

Frowning, Nate guessed, “It wasn’t awesome?”

“We moved up here into a big house, and I went from being really close with my dad and seeing him all the time to him and Beth being together all the time. And her idea of parenting was giving us all ten bucks each and saying see ya later. I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t have any friends, and her kids basically bullied me. Veronica was one year older than me and just as bitchy as her mom. Joel was three years older and constantly picked on me, made fun of what I looked like, would steal my allowance, and eat all of my favorite snacks. He was an asshole.”

“What did your dad say?”

“At first, he told me it would get better, that we’d figure out how to be a family, siblings tease each other, and all that kind of stuff. But he saw Joel push me into the wall one day and yelled at him, which made Joel go crying to his mommy that the big bad stepdad had yelled at him. I don’t know what went down between Beth and my dad after that, but they didn’t speak to each other for a few days, and then she basically started ignoring me, which only made me feel like shit. I thought we were gonna be likeHappy DaysorThe Brady Bunchor something, but instead, we were…

“Like a Lifetime movie,” Nate supplied, and I gave in to a pathetic laugh.

“Yes. We were a Lifetime movie. When I got to high school, it got worse with Veronica because my boobs were bigger than hers, and you can guess what the boys were like?—”

“Talking all kinds of gross shit about you?”

I nodded. “Veronica was jealous, as if I wanted that attention, and spread all kinds of rumors about me. The usual kind of mean-girl stuff—I was a slut, I once gave head to three guys in one night…”

Nate slanted his head, eyes wide. “Girls really say that about each other?”

“Sometimes, yeah. The easiest way to bring a girl low is to label her as a slut. Works every time.”

He grimaced. “That’s awful.”

I took a deep breath, continuing, “And then my dad died. A few days before I was supposed to take my driver’s ed test.”

“Jesus, Tab. I’m so sorry.”

I blinked away the sting in my eyes. “From that point on, I was basically a pariah in the house, but Beth couldn’t throw me out becausewhat would people say?”

“It was the very least she could do,” he said, and I nodded.

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