Nothing More Beautiful Read online

  Copyright

  A Pouty Lips Press Book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2014 Lorelai LaBelle

  All rights reserved.

  www.lorelailabelle.com

  Editor: Rachel Guerin / Bridgetown Editing

  Cover photograph: kvasilev/Shutterstock.com

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  To all Portlandians and the city that never stops brewing. Here’s to keeping it weird.

  To my husband for all his input, inspiration, and love.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1—STUCK

  Chapter 2—INTO HIS ARMS

  Chapter 3—WHEN MACI MET HARRY

  Chapter 4—WHEN MACI MET JOSH

  Chapter 5—WHEN MACI MET ANDRE

  Chapter 6—WHEN MACI MET DAVID

  Chapter 7—TIME FOR MOXIE

  Chapter 8—THE FIRST OF MANY?

  Chapter 9—MY FIRST SELFIE

  Chapter 10—THE LIST

  Chapter 11—ONE DOWN

  Chapter 12—THE DINNER PARTY

  Chapter 13—THURSDAYS

  Chapter 14—FOREST PARK

  Chapter 15—THE SEX TAPE

  Chapter 16—MR. HAMMER

  Chapter 17—RESTRAINED

  Chapter 18—ABDUCTION

  Chapter 19—SAND AND SEX

  Chapter 20—THE SKYE IS FALLING

  Chapter 21—FAULTY WIRES

  Chapter 22—AN UNEXPECTED KISS

  Chapter 23—I DO

  Chapter 24—THREE’S A CROWD?

  Chapter 25—CRUMBLING WALLS

  Chapter 26—THE PRICE OF HAPPINESS

  Chapter 27—HERE COMES THE BRIDE

  Connect with Lorelai

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  1

  STUCK

  “You know what your problem is, Maci?”

  Danielle plucked the photo that lay between my thumb and the crossword puzzle that I was pretending to fill in. She had snuck up behind me and now peered down at me over the tall back of the couch.

  “Hey!” I exploded off the old, worn sofa, diving at her feet to retrieve the picture of my ex-boyfriend, the book of crosswords flying behind the 40-inch flat screen.

  “You’ve never had an orgasm,” she answered her own question as she danced around, waving the picture in my face as though we were still in high school. “It’s as simple as that.” She was tall, gifted with an hourglass frame, and breasts no man could cover with one hand.

  Ignoring her ridiculous “observation,” I wrestled the snapshot from her strong clutch. The glossy paper tore: a rip that ran from his crotch right up to the bridge of his nose, bisecting his chiseled face. “What the hell, Danielle?”

  She released the photo and stepped back. Her brown sugar hair swayed, her long bangs dangling in front of her eyes, blocking most of her thick eyebrows. “Look, I’m just trying to help. It’s been a month since you dumped Ryan’s cheating ass, and it’s time you moved on. Your mood is starting to affect our friendship.”

  “My mood?” I stared down at the ragged seam of the photograph. Ryan’s smooth, black skin was now crumpled, his bare chest divided, and his face barely recognizable.

  “Yeah,” Danielle went on, “your mood. You’re a grouch. I mean, you may as well move into the dumpster. It’s been that bad this last week.”

  “It’s a garbage can,” I corrected. “Oscar the Grouch lives in a garbage can.”

  “See. That’s what I’m talking about.” She whipped around and headed for the kitchen.

  I followed after her. A strip of clear tape would right the wrong. Retrieving the tape roll from the junk drawer, I smoothed out the picture and flattened the adhesive down the rift. It was no good. The picture was ruined. Sure, I had a whole folder on my computer with hundreds, if not thousands of snapshots of us, but there was something about holding the glossy paper that I found comforting.

  “Ahh!” I ripped the picture apart and threw it in the trash.

  Danielle flipped off the switch to the electric kettle, the water near boiling. “Did you just growl?”

  “What?” I eyed her, a little more than pissed off.

  “Nothing,” she said, scooping loose tea into a dinosaur mug. Every morning she drank Yerba Mate, her healthy replacement for coffee. She seldom consumed it in the afternoon, but today was one of those days.

  “That was the only print I had of us,” I hissed. “So what if I’m pining—”

  “You’re not just pining,” she interrupted, pouring the hot water over the tealeaves. The fleshy dinosaurs disappeared on her mug as the piping water changed the design to skeletons. “You’re bitchy, crabby, and, well, downright mean. If you were just pining, you’d be locked in your room eating cookie dough ice cream and drinking chocolate porters, but you’re not doing that. You’re just arguing and snapping and criticizing.”

  I stood there, silent, reflecting on her words. What were we doing? Fighting? We never fought. It wasn’t us. It just wasn’t the nature of our relationship. But then again I’d never had a boyfriend like Ryan before. He was a wild black stallion in a corral of broken, soul-sucking ponies. Perhaps an embellishment on my part—who could say for certain? Danielle said she could, and she was of the opinion that I was hallucinating, charmed by his sensational, muscular body. It had been a minute and I hadn’t responded. She plunked a metal strainer straw into the steeping tea.

  “I have too had an orgasm,” I said at last.

  She smiled, happy the conversation was shifting to a more appealing topic. “Is that so? You didn’t with Todd, I know that, or Aaron. And Ryan—come on, you already told me he wasn’t what you thought he’d be.”

  I laughed. “Well, of course I didn’t with Todd. He was my first, and it was just clumsy and messy. Can’t blame him for missing the mark. And I did have them with Ryan.”

  Her smile twisted into an unimpressed smirk. “Just because his dick was the size of my forearm, doesn’t mean he had the blood to take it home. So, were you lying before or are you lying now?” She had caught me in the lie, but it was a lie I was committed to, unwilling to admit the accuracy of her assumption. “What did it feel like?” she asked, after another long silence.

  “Uh—it felt uh, well—warm?”

  “Warm? That’s what you’re going with?” She sipped her tea, her lips barely sealing over the straw because they were stretched so wide, hardly containing her laughter.

  I leaned against the counter and crossed my arms. “All right, so what? So I’ve never had an orgasm before. It’s not a big deal. What’s the point you’re trying to make?”

  “Don’t you get it? You were with Ryan for seven months and you never had an orgasm, so why on earth would you want to get back together with him?”

  “Because life is about more than just sex, Danielle,” I declared. “You should know that, engaged and all.”

  “Sure, that’s true,” she said between sips, “but sex is a big
portion of it, not a tiny segment, and I think you owe it to yourself to find the right person who electrifies you in all the right ways. Let’s face it, Ryan wasn’t that guy. He was an asshole who cheated on you.”

  “Because I wouldn’t try new things in bed!” I shouted. My heart was pounding now, my cheeks flushed. It felt like a surge of water was breaking the fissures in the dam I had built to keep the secret behind his betrayal.

  She set down her mug, aware that I was on the verge of collapsing into tears. “That’s the reason why he cheated?”

  I nodded, holding back the tears.

  She wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, honey, no. No, that’s not why he cheated on you. He did it because he’s a lowlife pig—”

  “But maybe—maybe if I done the stuff he wanted, he wouldn’t have gone to someone else for it.”

  She pressed my head into the top of her chest. At 5′4″, I was a good five inches shorter than her. “You can’t tell yourself that. He was scum, and you deserve so much better. A guy like Ryan still would’ve done it even if you had given him blow jobs five times a day. It’s in his character—in his rotten, good-for-nothing genes.”

  Her words helped fight off the tears. “You really believe that?” I asked, rubbing under my eyes.

  “He had no love in him, Maci,” she said, squeezing me tighter. “Only a drive to satisfy himself. If you want my advice, I’d say spend one more day analyzing the disaster, being mopey and grouchy and all that stuff, then move on. Forget him. I know Mr. Right will come along and sweep you off your feet, and who knows, maybe with him you’ll want to do the dirtier stuff.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I blubbered. “Look, I know you’re right. I know he wasn’t good for me. I know he didn’t have that magical, heart-warming love. But what is that stuff, right? He had a hard body—”

  “And a big, limp dick that did nothing for you.” After one last body-crushing embrace, she released me and resumed drinking her tea. “Come on, one more day, and then move on.”

  “One more day,” I repeated. “And after today?”

  “You move on,” she said. “Find another guy.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  Her face contorted. “What does that mean? There are guys walking all over the place. I’m positive you’ll snag the one who really fits you, the one who really wants to be with you … and most importantly, the one who pleases you.”

  I gave her a thin smile. She was brightening my mood a bit. “All right, I’ll waste only one more day hung up on him.”

  “Good,” she said. Her grin revealed that her teeth were dulling to a shade of green, though this happened every morning, and disappeared after she brushed away the residue. “The only thing I don’t get—” She paused, reluctant to bring up what was on her mind.

  “Why didn’t I tell you about my problems in the bedroom?” I finished for her.

  “Yeah. I don’t get it. We’ve shared everything since the third grade and now you’re keeping secrets from me?”

  I turned and looked out the window at the falling snow. It was chaos. The wind was ever-changing, blowing the baby white specks in every direction. The snow layered the ground a good six inches. “I was embarrassed, I guess.” I turned back to face her.

  “Embarrassed, really?” She hinted with her eyes that I was tending toward childish rationale. “I told you I preferred women when we were seventeen, and that was way bigger than this, but you’re my best friend and I couldn’t keep it from you despite not knowing how you’d react.”

  “You knew I’d be supportive,” I said, a bit defensively.

  “Just like you should’ve known that I’d be supportive now,” she threw back.

  “Fine. You’re right. I should’ve told you sooner.” My hands had a mind of their own, gesticulating as I talked. “I’ll explain it all now, if you want.”

  “Well, we’re pretty snowed in, so lay it on me.”

  “Here?”

  “You feel like going out?” she asked. “I’m not driving in this.”

  “We could walk somewhere,” I suggested.

  “Mocha Momma’s?”

  “I was thinking more like U-Brew,” I said. “I could use a drink—or two.”

  “Sure,” she said with approval written in her smile. “I think that’s manageable. We’ll need layers.” We dug through drawers and scoured the coat closet for the warmest clothes we had, then trudged off into the calf-deep snow, heading for the pub a few blocks from our duplex. As we plodded down the sidewalk, I prepared myself to unleash the vexation that had been eating at me for over a month.

  THE ALARM BELLED IN my ears the next morning. I had set it for seven, not wanting to oversleep. I must have pressed the snooze a few times because the projector displayed 8:23 on the ceiling in a red glow. I hated that number, 23, and I’d swear I saw it everywhere. It followed me. Haunted me. I couldn’t go a day without seeing it somewhere, and believe me I tried. Rolling over, I slapped the “off” button, staring at the date: 2/9/14.

  It had snowed again last night, as it had all that afternoon and evening, making the journey back home from the pub a stumbling nightmare. I hadn’t left out a single detail in my tale. Danielle—the trooper she proved to be time and again throughout the years—listened and interrogated me with interest, even though I was a bitchy mess. I harangued myself for my poor choices and blind faults. We dissected my seven-month relationship with Ryan and all the signs that pointed to what would eventually occur. The examination took several hours and multiple porters, but after our discussion ran its course, my chest felt better, and my body lighter.

  I slid from under the toasty down comforter into the frosty air. The heater hadn’t worked properly in two months, but the owners shirked their obligation to repair or replace it, regardless of the bombardment of desperate calls from me. Drawing the curtains open, I gazed out on a land of snow. Short icicles draped along the eaves. The snowstorm had practically shut down Portland, as far as I could tell from the news and the empty streets. There were a lot more people walking, though: kids carrying the lids to plastic storage containers, and utilizing them as sleds in the absence of actual saucers and toboggans. Any hill, no matter how minor it was, attracted crowds of families. Parents even blocked off both ends of the street with big trucks so that their children didn’t have to contend with cars charging through the snow as if it were dry pavement.

  I dressed in my thickest sweatshirt and yoga pants over a pair of fleece-lined leggings, and then shuffled into the sole bathroom of the apartment. The mirror greeted me with its usual morning grace, reflecting pillow creases on the left side of my face and the wild strands of my deep chestnut hair running in all directions. Bed head was never flattering. I studied my eyebrows for strays and plucked the ones deforming the line. Patches of peach fuzz peppered my upper lip, none of it noticeable until a couple of inches away, but still, it gave me enough concern for me to pluck, too.

  I held up my B-cups and wished they were more like Danielle’s triple Ds. I mean, I was comfortable with them and everything, but men just looked at her differently, in ways I sometimes desired. Although her looks came with a downside, like the assholes in our college dorm who used to call her “FLBP,” which no one cared about until later when we Googled it and found out it stood for “Future lower back problems.”

  Todd, my high school sweetheart who took my v-card at eighteen, once said mine were more like B+s. That was always nice to think about when I glanced at them, even though he ended up being a total douche.

  At 25, my slim figure still turned heads, but most of the time I was hidden behind the counter at work, and very few bothered to sneak any peeks, so far as I could tell anyway. People who did notice always complimented my smooth skin and high cheekbones.

  In many ways my roommate and I were complete opposites in appearance. She had brown Indian skin where I had olive white. She had curves where I was as straight as a pencil. She was tall and I was short—or more like average? She wore straight
hair with bangs and I styled my hair in curls with my bangs tucked behind my right ear.

  I disregarded the mirror and the comparisons between Danielle and me, retrieving my toothbrush to combat the foul stench emanating from my mouth. I hadn’t brushed the night before and the alcohol wasn’t doing me any favors.

  After I finished, I ambled into the kitchen, passing the living room where Danielle was sitting in the recliner next to the fireplace. She was reading a mystery novel while she sipped her tea.

  I boiled some water for the French press and let the coffee brew. “Are you going to work today?” I asked her, resting against the narrow frame between the kitchen and living room. Small marks along the left side suggested that hinges once clung to the wall and supported a door, but for whatever reason, it was gone now.

  “No, I called in and I have a bunch of stuff I can do from home,” Danielle replied, setting her book down on a thigh. “Are you going in?”

  “Bridgett said she could handle the bakery this morning,” I said, “but I’d like to get up there. Inventory was supposed to be done on Friday.”

  “If you want, I can take you this afternoon.” Her deep brown eyes stared back at me. “The Crosstrek has all-wheel drive, and the snow is starting to turn to slush on the roads.”

  “Great.” I disappeared into the kitchen and grabbed my “Keep Portland Weird” mug, pouring until just below the brim. I had a habit of doing that—rushing. I slurped down a fingernail’s breadth so it wouldn’t slosh and flopped down on the couch, opening up my old laptop from college. The pastime of social networking had taken up a large chunk of my life since 2006, yet now I mostly did business-related research and advertising instead of chatting.

  Colby-Jack, my cat (named after the cheese that matched his color scheme) leapt onto the open cushion next to me and rubbed my forearm, climbing into my lap. I scratched his belly before he jumped onto the couch’s arm and lay down, his feet dangling off its sides. Danielle liked to call him “Tubbers” because of his size, but after a year a dieting, he hadn’t lost any weight and was irritable all the time, so now he ate what he wanted when he wanted, thanks to a feeder that never stopped filling his bowl. He was a fat, happy cat, who loved to be near me more than cuddle. But I didn’t mind.