Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
I wake to a throbbing in my head so brutal, I fear I’m concussed. My body is slick with sleep and sweat and—
Every muscle tenses.
I’m naked, save my underwear. Naked.
Like I’ve been bit by something radioactive, all my senses kick into high gear and I scan the room.
Based off its pale blue hue, it’s just after first light.
I’m not in a hotel. Nor the tour bus. This is someone’s bedroom .
And a very nice one at that. Polished concrete floors, lofted ceiling with a modern-looking chandelier.
No framed photos or knickknacks of any kind. Nothing even remotely Dianentine.
On the bedside table are relics of a hellish night: a stale, half-finished glass of water. A once-damp washcloth. One slice of crusty toast on a paper towel. My stomach heaves, but I know there’s nothing in it.
Outside, a lawn mower buzzes faintly. A robin warbles out a tune. And beside me, steady, male breathing and the weight of someone else in the bed.
I nearly jump a foot in the air.
I’ve slept with someone.
Flashes of the previous evening rip through my mind like a flip-book.
Rejecting Halloran. Guilt. Regret. Too many shots.
Molly licking Pete’s neck. Conor trying to teach me and some pop star a drinking game called Kings.
Lionel’s tie around his head like Rambo.
Some old guy with an orange-hued fake tan—
Oh, gross.
Please don’t be him, please don’t be him…
I shift infinitesimally in the bed to see who I’m next to and bite nearly through my lip to remain silent—my elbow is a tsunami of pain.
I lift it from beneath the sheets, careful to keep my bare chest covered and inspect the damage.
It’s purple and splotchy and swollen, but I’m able to bend it, thank God. Not broken, just hideous.
“We’ll find you some ice for that.”
Halloran is lying on top of the covers beside me, one eye weakly pried open.
The cuffed white button-down he slept in is severely rumpled, a few undone buttons exposing his perfect chest. Those dark jeans—even the socks he has on—are doing wonders.
In the corner slouch his Chuck Taylors, jacket, and Indy’s hot pink heels, cast aside.
His hair is loose and unruly with sleep, and there is an ease about him in this pocket of predawn light that feels rare and intimate.
I’m suddenly hot all over. “Did we—”
“Christ, no.” The edge in his still-awakening voice tells me he’s mildly horrified by the question. “Of course not. I left for two minutes to find you somethin’ to eat. Returned to find your dress on the floor and snores coming out of you that could wake the dead.”
His amused tone dilutes the heat simmering inside of me, and I’m left lukewarm and ashamed. “Got it.”
“I didn’t see— I wasn’t lookin’. The covers were—”
“No, I got it,” I repeat. “Much appreciated.” Of course we didn’t sleep together. I was a swamp creature last night. And before that I was a dick. My voice is scarcely above a whisper as I add, “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he replies around a yawn. “I shudder to think of you seein’ me back in university. Conor and I’d have called your evenin’ a tame one.” He swings his legs off the bed and yawns once more before standing. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?” I do not want to be left naked and alone in this strange bedroom.
“Getting you a change of clothes,” he says, voice a little hoarse. “And some Advil.”
I have a thousand questions but a colossal hangover is rolling in like putrid fog. When the bedroom door snicks shut behind him, I gingerly release my iron grip on the covers and stand. After the head rush subsides, I stumble into the bathroom.
The sight that greets me in the mirror could curdle milk.
My hair is nineties-actress-on-a-tabloid-cover wrecked.
Eye makeup to match. Elbow, as discovered previously, pretty rough as well.
My lips are chapped, my eyes bloodshot—I look like a zombie from a student horror film.
I don’t match the pristine bathroom—vase of lilies, linen hand towels.
Molly’s silky dress is damp and hanging over the shower door.
Oh God, I definitely puked on it. And I doubt I had the wherewithal to wash it, meaning Halloran…
I don’t know what’s worse: that he had to actively avoid seeing my naked breasts, or Tom Halloran cleaned my vomit off Molly’s dress.
I could curl up and die from the mortification of either one.
I say one prayer of thanks that I’m still wearing my floral panties before moving into damage-control mode: I grab a fluffy towel and wrap myself in it even as the texture on my skin makes me gag.
Then I swipe some toothpaste from a mostly empty drawer and brush my teeth with my finger twice.
I drink water from the faucet like a thirsty little hamster and splash my face until I feel marginally more human.
“You decent?” Halloran calls, closing the bedroom door.
“Define decent ,” I say, rounding back into the bedroom.
In proof of the universe’s clear unfairness, Halloran is magnificent in the morning.
He’s always beautiful—that Roman nose, strong jaw, thick brows—but beneath the early filtered sunlight, his scruffy beard shines with flecks of red.
His cheeks are flushed with a good night’s sleep.
His emerald eyes glow. I squeeze the towel tighter under my arms and feel my knees pinch.
He’s holding a muddle of clothes in one hand, and a glass of water, ice pack, and bottle of Advil in the other. I make note that those huge hands are even more useful than they are spectacular to look at.
“Thanks,” I say before taking the glass from him and gulping down the pills. I hold the ice pack to my elbow until the limb goes numb.
“Rhett only had clothes of his own. His wife’s back home in Tennessee.”
My eyes close—I think each of my teeth have headaches. What kind of country music star has a backup mansion in Philly anyway? Halloran leaves the clothes on the bed and sits down on the other side to pull on his high-tops.
Of my limited choices I opt for a thick oversized T-shirt that will make up for my lack of bra and a pair of loose boxers that I fold over twice like the cool girls did in middle school volleyball.
I toss them on in the bathroom and, with no other options, slip back into Indy’s pink stilettos. I’m finally clothed, but at what cost?
Halloran’s still sitting on the bed when I come out. He looks up and his gaze sweeps across me, lingering a beat too long on my legs. The boxers are short and the heels are high. I look like a pole dancing instructor. When I cross one foot over the other he lets out a strangled breath.
“It’s atrocious, huh?”
He dodges the question. “How’re you feelin’?”
“Physically okay.” I shift on my feet. “My ego is bruised. Like my elbow.”
“Don’t fret over any of it, really.” His eyes are glued to my upper thighs. After a beat he says, “But we ought to go.”
“Is the bus downstairs?”
Halloran stands from the bed. “About that…”
More images of last night filter in, though they’re fuzzy-edged like the film was exposed to sunlight. Indy and Conor trying to get me to leave. My reluctance to listen. More shots. Halloran carrying me out to the street and finding the bus gone.
“Oh, God.” My legs grow weak. I missed the bus. Because I was too drunk . “I’m fired. I’m absolutely fired.”
I swivel around the room, teetering in my heels. Where is my phone? Surely I have a thousand furious texts from Lionel. Likely one curt you’re done email from Jen. How on earth will I explain this to my mom? What will Halloran do tonight without—
“Wait.” My eyes slice to his. “Why are you here?”
“?’Scuse me?”
My head throbs. “Why are you not in Portland? You have a show in…” I scan the room. No clock. No phone. “At seven. That’s got to be less than twelve hours from now.”
Halloran scratches his beard. “You weren’t in a right state to be left behind. Not on your own, at least.”
A feeling somewhere between roller-coaster thrill and nausea takes hold. “How did the bus leave without you?”
He presses his hand into his cheek in thought. I wonder if he’s not also concealing a bit of laughter. “It appears Salvatore also thinks me a perpetual dweller of bus enclaves. Didn’t know I was at the party.”
Fresh dread strikes me. “Jen is going to have him drawn and quartered.”
Now Halloran really does laugh. “Not to fear, the lad’s been spared. Jen thinks I told everyone to leave without me late last night. Rhett has a car we can take to Portland. If we go now, we’ll miss sound check, but we can make the show. It’ll be all right, I think.”
“Oh, thank God.” I exhale a thousand breaths in one. Then my mind snags on his phrasing. “We?”
Halloran’s mouth turns down in confusion.
“I’m fired,” I tell him. “Aren’t I?”
“You mean for drinking too much, hurling your guts, and missing your ride to a gig?” He’s not being mean. In fact, he’s amused.
It’s still all I can do to nod pitifully.
“You’re just a better rock star than I am.” His eyes gleam a little in the filtered morning light. “Conor told Jen I had a few too many and that you stuck around to keep me out of trouble.”
“Why did he say that?”
He seems to weigh his possible answers before admitting, “I told him to.”
I can feel my eyebrows hit my hairline. “You didn’t. Halloran…”
He grimaces. “Tom, please.”
The gratitude threatens to knock me over.
He took such good care of me last night.
Far more than I deserved after I unceremoniously snuffed out whatever it was we’d set alight in Atlantic City.
He also saved my job, and thus my mom’s shot at the clinical trial.
And all the while he’d spared my dignity at the cost of his own. “Thank you, Tom.”
His eyes drop to my lips as if he’s been fighting it all morning and finally succumbed. “Don’t mention it.”
—