Jay Crownover - Nash

“It really is too bad he didn’t gain a bunch of weight or come down with some weird flesh-eating disease that made him hideous to look at.”

I drew a heart on the fog in the window with my index finger.

“No. He still looks really good, better than he did in high school, just a lot more tattooed … and you know, built.” He was ridiculously handsome, and those eyes … God, those eyes were made to drop panties.

“That sucks and you shouldn’t be noticing that. You should be telling him to eat shit and die. Stay away from him, Saint. For your own good. Look, I have to go. Justin needs me to watch the kids while he finishes dinner.”

“I’ll give you a ring after I talk to Mom.”

“Ugh, all right. I still think that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.” Her confidence was overwhelming, but I needed to make sure my mother hadn’t really gone too far over the edge in her heartbreak.

“Probably, but it has to be done. Kiss the kids for me.”

“I will. Seriously, Saint, steer clear of Nash Donovan. I don’t think your heart ever mended from the first time he stomped on it.”

I told her good-bye and tossed the cell on the passenger seat next to me.

She was right. My heart had never been the same after everything he had put it through. Even if he hadn’t known I had feelings for him, even if he had come across as a nice guy for a few fleeting encounters, the way he had blindly destroyed all that was just unforgivable, even now.

Once I had gone off to college and got out on my own, things had started to change for me. The healthy California lifestyle changed my physical appearance, and the fact that no one out there knew who I was, didn’t know I was a nerd with no friends, made talking to people easier. It also made handling attention from boys not exactly easy, but manageable, and as such I started to date casually. Some of the guys I liked more than others, some I loosened up enough with to let them get past first base and even second, but it wasn’t until I took my first job at a hospital in Los Angeles and met a male nurse named Derek that I was comfortable enough, trusted someone enough, to actually go to bed with him.

We had dated for three months, he was nice, had the same passion for the medical and health-related field and helping others that I did, and he was really, really cute. He seemed to like me, like a lot. He told me over and over that he thought I was funny, smart, pretty, and fun to be around, and he never pushed me. Things had progressed naturally … one thing led to another, and we ended up in bed together. That was where the one and only relationship I had ever attempted to have fell apart. The idea of being naked, stripped down and exposed to anyone, terrified me. The thought of being judged and found lacking had me breaking out in hives and into a cold sweat. There was nothing romantic or sexy about a girl struggling through sex, crying all over you, and bolting for the door as soon as it was over.

But Derek had seemed like a wonderful guy and wanted to stay with me, wanted to work on it, and eventually wore me down to the point that I had agreed to give the entire relationship another try. Only sex never worked the way I wanted it to, really never went the way he wanted it to, and it wasn’t long before I found him in the arms of another one of the nurses on our rotation. Of course she wasn’t crying when I walked in on them at his apartment. The betrayal had stung and it had completely reinforced that I couldn’t really trust a guy, that they would always pick a sure bet over a girl with hang-ups and insecurities any day. Besides, Derek had always been way more into me than I was into him, and frankly, having an excuse to walk away when he seemed so nice and caring was actually a relief. It was exhausting trying to force it, to try and pretend like sex was getting better and more enjoyable … I didn’t blame him for wanting to take a girl that behaved normally to bed.

Moving forward, there had been a guy or two along the way who I had been interested enough in to try it out again with, thinking a one-night stand would be less pressure. I thought that if the guy didn’t know me, didn’t know how I worked, maybe I could keep the irrational fear of rejection and ugly judgment at bay. It never worked. I always felt sick and just wanted it to be over with, so after the second time I was called a frigid tease, I decided to stop trying to make something happen. I stopped thinking ordinary boy-girl stuff was in my future.

I didn’t blame Nash and what he had done entirely for all of my hang-ups. A lot of them were bred into me by simply being me. I was the odd one, the one that didn’t really fit. Faith was tall like I was, she also sported bright red hair, but hers was manageable and I don’t think she ever had a zit in her life. She was cheerful and popular, played volleyball, and was on all kinds of committees and in clubs. She was the perfect mix of both my parents and somehow still managed to be a sweet and delightful girl. No one seemed to know what to do with me, even at home, where I knew I was loved unconditionally. Even with that, in an effort to help, my parents put me on diet after diet, dragged me to dermatologist after dermatologist, and enrolled me in activity after activity, all of which just proved to be waste of money. I knew their intentions were good, that they wanted me to come out of my shell and live a full life, but all they succeeded in doing was making me feel inferior and awkward in my own skin.

Of course none of my issues had been helped when right about the time Derek had proved to me that men were not to be trusted, my dad had decided that he was bored with my mom and that he wanted to trade her in for a newer model. It didn’t matter that we were a loving, caring, rock-solid family unit that helped and supported each other. No, what mattered was a pair of perky boobs and a toothy smile that made him feel ten years younger. He didn’t think twice about breaking our family apart, and I was left with a bone-deep understanding that men always picked the easy choice. If you put a pretty girl, someone that was obtainable and glossy in front of them, their penis was ultimately going to make a choice for them, and that sucked.

Even though I knew he wasn’t for me, I had built an extravagant fantasy around who I thought Nash was back in the day. I liked that he was into art, thought the allure of him painting graffiti and being into tattoos and piercings was dangerous and cool. Most teenage girls did. I thought he was different, thought the way he interacted with me at our lockers made him above the way the rest of the typical teenage boys in our school treated me. When I found out how wrong I was, it had shattered me and just dug the pit where my sense of self and all the shattered pieces of confidence had fallen even deeper. It had taken becoming a nurse, finding a greater purpose, to enable me to go into that deep, dark hole and get all those fragments of myself out. I wasn’t entirely whole, but I was a far sight better off than I had been as a teenager.

Faith was right. Ford women didn’t deal well with heartache, and I was loath to admit that one drunken kiss from Nash had more of an effect on me, got more of a response out of me, than all three months of the gentle wooing Derek had offered me. I was shrewd enough to know that wasn’t good, and I needed to take Faith’s stern warning and steer clear of him. Nash Donovan wasn’t good for my sense of self or good for keeping my life in the neat and orderly, straightforward way it was running now.

I was running on empty and getting increasingly short-tempered. Instead of working noon to seven, I was having to go in at nine and stay until eight or later to make up for all the people I had screwed over by skipping their appointments in the midst of my mental breakdown the previous week. My appointment book was always pretty full, so trying to reschedule an entire week’s worth of work wasn’t just a nightmare for me, but also had Cora ready to choke me.

I was also trying to spend each lunch break visiting Phil, which meant there wasn’t a moment of downtime in my entire day. He wasn’t doing so great. His lungs had water in them and one of the pain medications they had him on wasn’t agreeing with his stomach, so he was having a hard time keeping anything down. It was hard to see him like that, like he was just wasting away right before my eyes. Seeing him fading away from me had hundreds of questions rattling around in my mind. I really wanted to pin him down and get the story from him. The shock had worn off some and now I wanted answers. I wasn’t scared of his response anymore. There was no way Phil was ashamed or unhappy that I was of his blood.

I could’ve just hounded my mom until she gave the details up, but dealing with her was always a nightmare and I didn’t know that she could be bothered to tell the truth. Cora mentioned that her dad seemed to be privy to the insider information and she was totally open to prying the story out of him if I wanted. Her dad and Phil had been enlisted in the navy together years ago and had maintained a tight bond over the years.

I told her to hold off because I needed to give the people who’d been involved, who’d let me live a lie for so long, the right to explain their decisions. However, if Phil didn’t decide to stop stonewalling me soon, I was going to take her up on the offer and not feel one ounce of guilt over it.

I was the only one in the shop. I had to finish a zombie Hello Kitty tattoo on a girl’s leg. I was so over zombies. Every day it was zombie Elvis, zombie Marilyn, zombie Harry Potter … it was all zombies all the time. I mean I always made sure to give one hundred percent attention and dedication to every tattoo I put on a client. I owed them nothing less considering they would be sporting my artwork forever, but really I wondered if a lot of the younger clientele who ended up in my chair gave any thought to the passing trends. In five years zombie Elvis wasn’t going to seem nearly as cool as it did now, so I had to make sure it was at least an awesomely done tattoo even if the subject matter wouldn’t always be relevant.