Chapter 11
I wake up with Lianne Carnegie’s blue eyes staring right into my soul.
I blink slowly, and, as the shapes around me start becoming clearer, I notice other faces beside hers, forming a semicircle above my head: Mila, her father, and Abby, Robbie’s aunt, her Botox-face trying to look as surprised as she feels inside.
I start moving slowly, and, the moment I do, the whole room begins to spin. Jesus, what am I doing in the living room? And why is everyone staring at me? And why is there something slimy stuck in my hair?
I reach up, and my fingers come back with a clump of… pasta?
Tortellini. My brain informs me, instantly triggering flashes of a bowl of tortellini in my hands and Jasper Hassmann’s tongue in my mouth.
I lift my eyes all at once, scanning the room, and all I get is a throbbing pain right in the middle of my forehead.
“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Mila says, with that mischievous smirk meant to torment me. “Sleep well?”
I manage to sit up with great effort and end up kicking something hard and noisy on the floor. Tortellini, my brain says again. Then the most absurd flashes hit my mind once more.
I let out a hoarse groan as I lean down to pick up the bowl of tortellini from the floor, almost gagging.
I don’t know if it’s from the alcohol. Or simply the brief memories of everything that happened last night, piecing themselves together like a puzzle to explain where I was, what I did, and how I ended up on the couch of the villa with Mila’s family and Robbie’s aunt staring at me with all the curiosity in the world.
“Where did you go last night?” Mila sings, one eyebrow raised as she continues to assess my deplorable state.
“Yeah, Julie, where did you go last night?” a voice asks from the kitchen counter, and my stomach twists, my body shudders, and the flashes in my head jumble so much that I can’t tell what was real or just hallucinations from excessive drinking.
I rub my eyes and run my hand over my face, immediately smelling cheese and white sauce from another piece of pasta stuck to my cheek. I assess the faces staring at me – happy, healthy people who seem like they’ve never had a hangover, in bikinis and cover-ups, sun-kissed skin and blushed cheeks.
I don’t have a watch, I don’t know where my phone is, nor my bag, but from the bright light illuminating the pool and garden outside, I figure it’s probably time for our guided tour of Chichén Itzá, with the pyramids, cenotes, and all the historical ruins of the Mayan civilization.
My stomach twists. The tour was my idea. I booked the van, waited months for this moment, and now I’m too hungover to even get up from the couch.
In a desperate attempt to regain control of my body – and my dignity – I look toward Jasper, seemingly busy cutting oranges on the kitchen island, and finally answer the question, “First: none of your business.”
Then I turn to Mila.
“Second: I’ll tell you, but I’ll need an aspirin first.”
“Robbie!” Mila shouts, and my head begins to throb, forcing me to press my hand against my forehead as if my brain wants to jump out and I need to push it back in place. “Robbie, get Julie an aspirin!”
Robbie comes running, from God knows where, and rushes up the stairs like a whirlwind, efficient and obedient as only he can be.
Jasper takes advantage of the silence and puts the first half of an orange in the juicer. The motor sounds like a jackhammer in my head, and I can only groan a little louder.
“Why is he here?” I whimper to Mila, my eyes begging her to do something.
“Because I want to know what happened,” the son of a bitch responds, moving the orange away from the juicer to stop the noise while adding, “And Mr. and Mrs. Carnegie too, right, Lianne?”
Argh! Only a reckless idiot would call someone’s mother by her first name as if they were old friends.
I scratch my head, and since Mrs. Carnegie just nods approvingly, I start organizing the information in my mind enough to say, “I drank more than I should have at the tasting and ended up on the beach with Brock Magnus.”
“And then?” Mr. Carnegie asks, and my cheeks are already burning with embarrassment.
I’m terrible at lying. Terrible. At this moment, I wish I had even a bit of Jasper’s cunning to get out of this, but nothing.
My cheeks burn, my lips tremble, and I confess, “And then we swam naked on the beach.”
“What else?” Lianne Carnegie picks up the thread.
By now, I’m focusing on at least withholding some truths instead of making up a lie.
“Nothing, we just swam.”
“Really?” Jasper asks, his eyes full of provocation, staring at mine. “You didn’t do anything else naked last night?”
“Just swam,” I repeat through gritted teeth, wishing, more than anything, I had the strength to get up from the couch and walk to the kitchen counter to strangle him.
“Then after that?” Mila joins in.
I rub my face again, buying time. This time I manage to come up with a small lie.
“I think I passed out in his limousine.”
“And he didn’t… give you some snuggle?” Aunt Abby asks, slightly disappointed that I don’t have hotter information.
“Yeah, Julie, was there nobody giving you snuggles last night?” Jasper makes sure to ask.
Luckily, Robbie is back and Mila is already yelling at him again, as usual when she’s tired of Jasper and doesn’t want to deal with him directly, so she tells Robbie to handle it.
And Robbie… poor Robbie, already so used to this, even though he just got here, not knowing what happened, just says, with a serious face, “C’mon, man!”
Jasper shrugs. Then pushes the orange into the juicer again.
I groan at the noise, but the aspirin Robbie hands me gives me the strength to get up and walk to the kitchen for water instead of asking any of the curious people staring to get me some.
Of course, every movement requires colossal effort. And, of course, I walk to the kitchen like a zombie. My God, I’m all chafed!
I make an even greater effort to walk straight, but… damn! Mila will notice, won’t she? Mila always knows how my encounters went just by looking at me the next morning. And one thing I can say… it’s been a long, long time since I woke up with any sexual aftermath from the night before.
So of course she’ll notice and ask what I did last night, and I won’t be able to lie because I’m a terrible liar, and she’ll find out everything.
And then I’ll forever be marked as the desperate drunk who slept with Jasper Hassmann! On an old staircase, on the beach, in the middle of the night… and apparently things got way wilder than they should have because now I’m chafed.
At this moment, the only thing I can be thankful for is that I’m hungover, and Mila must think I’m like this because of that, and not… you know, because of the size of anyone’s dick, or the pounding it may or may not have given me at some point.
Mila doesn’t notice, but of course, stupid Jasper has to say something.
“Are you okay, Julie? You’re walking kind of weird.”
I go straight to the cabinet to get a glass, ignoring that he just spoke to me.
Here, I can hear his voice, but, because of the juicer, I doubt the others in the room did.
I grab the glass, go to the fridge, take a bottle so cold it’s sweating, making me salivate, wanting that water not just in my throat but in my whole body.
The juicer stops, Jasper switches the orange, and I wait to speak amid the noise, “I hate you so much.”
“I know,” he says, unconcerned. Then he forces the motor a bit more to finish, “I still have the bite marks on my shoulder that won’t let me forget.”
Here’s a mix of nausea and anxiety that give me clue to how I’m feeling. I just know I’m in no condition to go anywhere today.
Besides, as my mind becomes more aware, slowly coming out of the hangover haze and back to reality, I start remembering everything I still have to do, and everything I should have done last night if I hadn’t spent the night in a police station, drinking tequila with a group of Australian guys in thongs.
“What time is it?” I ask, to no one in particular, as I take a pill from the pack and pop it in my mouth. Just in case, I do the same with a second one. Only then I wash both down with a gulp of water.
“Nine o’clock,” Robbie says, with a cheerful little smile. “The van should be arriving any moment.”
“I don’t know if I can go,” I mumble. Then I lean on the counter as the water hits my stomach, trying hard not to throw it back up.
“Julie!” Mila whines immediately.
“My head is killing me,” I whimper back. “And I still have to write the interview article for Mr. Kyle by the end of the day, and Jasper and I still need to make all the welcome packs for the guests.”
The juicer stops.
“Sorry, Jasper and I still have to make what?” he immediately asks.
“The welcome packs for the guests” I repeat. I don’t know if I’ll manage any of it, but if I don’t go on the tour, I at least need to try. “They need to be ready by tomorrow, and we haven’t done anything yet.”
“But…”
“We should have started last night, I sent the schedule to your email.”
Which, of course, he probably didn’t even bother to open.
“It’s not my fault you drank a whole liquor store with a WWE wrestler last night!”
Then ended up arrested and we had sex on the beach, he forgets to add, thankfully.
“I had to taste the products to choose the best options,” I respond, louder than I should, and my head starts pounding again.
I look at the aspirin pack, tempted to take another, thinking if I overdose at least I’ll have one less problem in life.
That problem looks back at me with pure judgment, so I ask, “What were you doing last night, by the way?”
“I wasn’t getting drunk like a college girl on Spring Break, that I know for sure,” Jasper responds. Then he turns to open the cabinet and take out the Champagne glasses. “Can we maybe do that tomorrow?”
He didn’t even bother reading anything, NOTHING, from the schedule I sent?
“The bachelor party is tomorrow!”
“But I want to see the cenotes,” he protests.
As if I wanted to stay in this house, hungover, making party favors. Especially with him. I don’t wanna do anything with him. Nothing at all.
But there are two hundred gift bags, and I still have to write my article. I could never manage all this alone even if I weren’t hungover.
“I want to go too, Jasper! But we’re not here to have fun, we’re here to fulfill extremely important and specific obligations.”
He bangs the glasses on the marble counter.
“What are you talking about? We’re in Cancún. The whole place is made for fun.” He looks up at my friend. “Right, Camila?”
I know what Mila will say even before she opens her mouth. Something about Jasper not fucking up her wedding, but in much more polite words.
“Of course you came here to have fun, Jasper,” she says, with an elegant socialite smile, “but this is the most important week in your best friend’s life. You wouldn’t be so selfish as to indulge in the pleasures of life and forget your responsibilities, would you?”
“Fucking hell!” he swears.
I just shrug, innocent, fully certain this isn’t my fault.
“Sorry, man,” Robbie says, the exact moment Mila looks at him, silently telling him to control his friend again.
“Goddamn it, Julie!” Jasper takes the chance to say, too. And walks past me toward the fridge to get a bottle of Champagne.
Then he bangs the bottle harder than he did with the glasses.
“Fine, but I’ll spend the day drinking my consolation Mimosas,” he says. Removes the golden foil from the bottle and starts untwisting the wire cage around the cork, complaining a bit more, “And next time, maybe try not to pass out face-first in a bowl of pasta and actually eat your damn food?”
I immediately get flashes of him telling me exactly the same thing last night. And new flashes of his mouth against mine a second before that.
My body shivers, my heart jumps in my chest, and for some reason, his eyes linger on mine longer than usual, making me wonder if he’s remembering the same thing.
But I can’t think much, because the next instant, the bottle pops open with a fizz, and my stomach immediately twists at the smell of alcohol, almost making me vomit, and I cough, gagging in the process. Jasper, meanwhile, laughs with deep amusement at my suffering.
“I guess you won’t want any consolation Mimosa today, Julia?”
The only thing that would console me today would be someone giving me a good whack on the head and throwing me into the middle of the sea. If I don’t die, at least I’d forget the last twenty-four hours. Nothing more than that.
My brain is slightly slower than usual, so I’m still trying to find words to respond when we hear a horn outside, and everyone turns to look.
On the porch, the rest of Mila and Robbie’s family start getting up, gathering bags, water bottles, and all their luggage to hit the road.
I let out a disappointed sigh, realizing I’m not going with them.
My only consolation is that now the attention is on the car outside and the preparations, and no one cares about me, my hangover, or what I may or may not have done last night.
Jasper remains by my side, unconcerned, meticulously measuring the exact amount of orange juice in his glass so that half the space remains for Champagne.
“Did you tell anyone?” I ask, almost in a whisper, taking advantage of the fact that no one is nearby.
But he just stands there, now slowly pouring Champagne into the glass so the foam doesn’t overflow.
“Why would I?” he replies, distracted. “It would look like I’m proud of it.”
My eyes widen, my jaw drops completely.
“You were sober, Jasper! I was completely drunk, so I have a good excuse. But you… what’s yours?”
He looks at me as if shocked just by me asking, but lowers his voice carefully, just in case, and answers, his voice a soft, husky, deep whisper that takes me back to when his husky whispers were in my ear and he was coming.
“You were completely naked, on a deserted beach at three in the morning, daring me to fuck you. I don’t owe anyone an explanation. Plus, Jules, I haven’t really been sober ever since walking through the doors of the VIP lounge at JFK.”
Amnesia, I tell you. The only thing I wanted today – and maybe for the rest of my life – was a little amnesia.