4
4
For the rest of the night I feel John’s gaze on me everywhere I go. On the dance floor his eyes slide like warm hands over my body. At the table he’s a dark shadow in the corner of my eye. In conversation with other people I overhear his one-word answers and know without even having to look that he’s watching me.
But we barely speak, and I busy myself enjoying my time with my girls. “Why’s that Emma girl waiting in line for the bathroom?” Val says with a short laugh as we approach the restrooms later on.
I’m giddy on my high heels, the bass thumping through my bones.
“Emma?” I tug her out of the long line of girls waiting to get in and pull her with us to the bathroom door. “We don’t wait in line. Not tonight, come with me.” Inside, the bathroom’s crowded, chaos and commotion everywhere as girls wait around to use the stalls and stand in groups at the sinks reapplying their makeup. A couple of pretty blondes I don’t recognize are gossiping by the hand dryers, and they gasp, their eyes going wide, when we walk in. “I fucking love your new song, Princess!” one of them slurs, clearly drunk. Her eyes are distant and bloodshot.
“Thanks!” I press my lips together in a polite smile as we push through.
“We should get the big stall.” Val directs Jessie to the end of the row and reaches out to hold my hand.
“There’s someone in there, Val,” Jessie says.
“Hurry it up!” Valerie calls through the door and pounds her fists on the wood, making another girl dart away as if she just remembered she didn’t need to use the bathroom after all. “Period and a white dress out here—there are, like, eight more seconds until you’re responsible for a crime against my dignity!”
I laugh out loud. Val’s unhinged when she’s drunk. And it’s a bit worrying how frequently it’s happening these days. But tonight isn’t the time.
“Emma!”
We all turn around at the sound of her name. When Emma sees the tall girl standing behind us, her eyes light up over a smile.
“Hey! I was looking for you!” Emma says.
“This is such a sick party, Princess.” The stranger compliments me as she throws her arms around Emma in a tight hug, beaming at me over Emma’s shoulder. Her eyes are dark, her pupils as wide as saucers beneath her glittery gold eyeshadow. I don’t know who she is or how she got on the guest list, but Emma dives into excited gossip with her, as club girls usually do, talking shit about some promoter dinner she went to at Tao, while beside us, the door to the big stall opens.
“Finally!” Val grabs Jessie’s hand, and Jessie grabs mine. “Come on, Emma!” she calls over her shoulder as we step in, heels click-clacking on the shiny tile.
Emma and her friend follow us inside, locking the door behind them. While Jessie helps Val out on the other side of the stall, I touch up my makeup in the mirror, adding another layer of glistening coconut-flavored lip gloss. In the reflection, I see the tall girl reach into her bra and pull out a small plastic baggie containing what looks like white powder.
“My treat.” She giggles and leans on the door to steady herself as she sways on her stilettos. “Take as much as you want, Em.”
“You’re the best.” Emma takes the baggie from her.
Capping my lip gloss, I watch in the mirror as she pours some of the powder onto the back of her hand.
Everyone has a vice and sweet Emma is no exception.
Emma lifts her hand, one finger from the other hand pushed against one nostril, wincing as she sniffs in the powder. Behind her, the other girl moves over to Jessie and Val, her voice way too loud for the enclosed space. Emma’s messy, that much I can already tell. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so gracious to her after all, and the idea of the potential influence she could have on John makes my stomach twist.
“Oh fuck! I just realized, you’re Valerie Sinclair! Valerie Sinclair!” The tall girl wipes her nose with her thumb a couple of times, making sure there’s no trace of anything, shaking her head in wide-eyed disbelief. “Your family owns, like, half the hotels in the world!”
“Do we know each other?” Val asks, one eyebrow raised.
Instead of replying, the girl moves to the sink, bumping Jessie’s shoulder and almost knocking her off balance in the process.
“Hey, watch it!” Val shouts.
Instead of apologizing, Emma’s friend simply shrugs and changes direction, heading straight toward me and stopping when her face is inches from mine.
“Babe, seriously, you gotta get it together,” Val warns her.
She’s so high she barely notices.
“Hey,” Emma says. “Sure you don’t want some?” She holds up a bump of powder in the dip of her long pinkie fingernail.
“Ooh! Good idea, Em, share it with the girls! Plenty more where that came from.” Her friend trips over, and before I can reply, they’re both dancing in the damn bathroom stall.
Val, Jessie, and I share a look with each other. It’s normal to see shit like this, so I’m used to minding my business.
“Princess?” Emma asks again.
“No thanks, I’m cool,” I say with a shake of my head.
“Girls? Valerie, you sure?” Her friend offers the baggie to us, but Val and Jessie turn it down too. I don’t miss the way she keeps pressing Val—it’s kind of weird.
Val glances at me before replying, “No thanks.”
“Okay, then. I’m a little surprised, but whatever.” She shrugs and looks at Emma. “More for you and me.”
“Enjoy,” Val mutters.
The pair keep dancing together, and without warning, a memory I tried to forget springs to the surface: the last time I danced with John. I wasn’t high on coke obviously, but tipsy on alcohol after a night of partying. It was just the two of us, in a different club, a different world almost, out on a date, back when things were so different. Throughout the night, we stole kisses in the dark under the flashing lights.
Dancing close, almost every inch of our bodies touching. I turned around, feeling a little wild, and pushed my ass to the front of his trousers, placing his hands on my hips, knowing exactly how to tease him. Then, in time with the fast beat, I ground into him in the way I knew he loved, the way that would drive him crazy.
John’s grip on my waist tightened. He groaned against my ear, his breath hot on my skin. His warm, slick tongue made a line down my neck and my knees nearly buckled. I didn’t stop moving, feeling his desire growing. It ignited a fire inside me and made me burn for him. When the music changed and the DJ dropped a harder beat, I danced faster until John spun me around and placed his hand under my chin so I could look into his eyes. Bending close, he whispered, “Tonight, I’ll pay you back for all this teasing.”
“Yeah?” I groaned, my breath lost in my throat.
In response, his hand traced a path through the slit of my dress, sending delicious shivers down my spine.
“I’m going to kiss every inch of this,” he said.
My pulse ramped higher and higher as he moved his hand up, this time tracing a path from my neck to my supple cleavage, ending where the dress began. “And this,” he added.
“What else?” I continued to tease him, feeling the pull in the bottom of my belly, the wetness gathering in my panties.
Tilting his head, he placed a kiss in the crease of my neck. It was a light brush of his lips, but it held so much promise for what was to come. I shivered.
“God, you turn me on so much. It drives me fucking crazy.” He rubbed the evidence of his arousal against me, and my breath hitched. Inside, pressure climbed. He drove me wild too. In bed with him, pleasure was all I knew; the rest of the world just melted away.
I squeezed my thighs to relieve some of the pressure. I was so wet for him, and I wished we weren’t in a public place.
John chuckled when he saw me stop dancing. “Want this?” he teased.
Oh boy, this man can move. . .
“Yes,” I gasped. “Yes.”
He tugged on my hand and pulled me toward the club’s exit. We’d barely made it to the door when he stopped suddenly, but before I could ask what was going on, he dragged me into a dark corner. There, his head dipped and his lips found mine.
Finally.
I tasted the tequila on his tongue as he claimed my mouth in a kiss so hungry and intense my knees almost gave way, especially when his hand curled around the back of my head in a dominant move, bringing me even closer to him. In response, I lifted my hands and ran my fingers through his hair, pulling a little, just the way he liked. When I moaned against his lips, John pulled away with a groan.
“Let’s get the fuck home,” he said.
“Hello?”A hand waves in front of my face. “Earth to Princess!” Val shouts.
I try to breathe through the flashback, which glows like fire in my blood. The memory of passion is tainted by the bitterness of our breakup, and I search for something, anything, else to focus on.
Whether I like it or not, there’s a possibility that I’ll spend the rest of my life distracted by thoughts of him. But I’m slowly getting over it. Every fire takes time to die, I remind myself. Embers of memories are just part of the process—a necessary transition. They’ll fade eventually. I’ve got to deprive them of oxygen, that’s all.
We’re moving on.
“Let’s get out of here,” I say, unlocking the door and gesturing for Val and Jessie to follow. “I don’t want to waste all night locked in a bathroom stall.”
Or locked in a memory.
“See you later, Emma!” Jessie waves as we leave.
“I’ll find you at the table!” she calls back.
Please don’t.
Out on the dance floor, with the DJ hyping me up from the booth, spraying more pink confetti into the air and playing all my favorite songs, I don’t have time to think too deeply about the past anyway, and I refuse to even give John one more glance.
Fuck white lines and blue eyes. All I can see is pink, gold, and glam.
The Next Morning
“Ugh, I feel dead.”
Jessie’s groan drags me out of a deep sleep. Her voice sounds croaky in my ear, and when my eyes flutter open onto a stream of bright morning sunlight—made only brighter by the white walls and bedsheets—I groan, too, and roll back under the covers.
“It’s too early,” I try to say, but my tongue feels rough like sandpaper, and with one blink of my eyes, I’m sinking underwater again into a wavy, head-thumping sleep.
It’s the buzz of my cell phone that wakes me up next. It pulses on the table beside the bed, an irritating vibration in the back of my mind. I pull myself up and pat my hands over my face just to feel something that isn’t numb.
“Who is it?” Valerie mumbles into the pillow on my other side, her voice groggy, while Jessie rubs her eyes awake and practically crawls out of bed.
I roll over and flip my phone, answering right away when I see the FaceTime request. “Maya? Where the fuck did you end up?” Wow, my voice sounds rough. But she looks rougher. Her hair’s a mess and her makeup’s smudged.
“What’s the code for the gate?” she asks. “Come on, Princess, I’m standing out here on show for the entire fucking street.”
“Code? Huh?”
“Why’s the screen black?” Maya grumbles.
It’s instinct. If someone calls when I’m just waking up or not ready to be seen yet, one finger automatically covers the camera.
“Because you really don’t want to see me this early in the morning,” I tell her as my mind catches up. Getting my thoughts more in order, I remember Wayne mentioned something about a code to get into the beach house. Apparently, it’s in the guest book on the kitchen island.
“And all of fucking Malibu doesn’t want to see me this early in the morning, either, babe! The code, Princess. What is it?”
“Ugh.” I press my hand to my forehead to rub away the ache. “Give me a sec. I’ll go find it.”
“Thanks for the wake-up call, Maya,” Val complains loud enough for Maya to hear as she gets out of bed too. “Some of us actually need our beauty sleep.” But she’s only joking.
Really, Val slept like a baby last night—literally asked me to sing her to sleep. It’s her request at every sleepover we have. She loves listening to my voice and says it soothes her, which is cool because I’m used to people telling me to shut up. People used to make fun of me for singing around them when I was a kid. It made me so shy I only ever used to sing in the studio or when I was at work, and even then insecurity still occasionally plagued me.
Bodies aching, we all head into the kitchen together. I find the code for Maya and then hang up before stepping over to the refrigerator and pulling it open.
“Lord, save me if they don’t have orange juice . . .” I cross my fingers but my prayers are answered. A huge glass bottle of orange juice sits inside, and I pull it out along with four bottles of sparkling water—one for each of us.
“I’ve got such a bad fucking hangover,” Valerie groans, wrapping her robe around her body as she sinks, grumpy, onto the couch.
“Same here,” Jessie agrees, dropping next to her.
“Don’t even.” I sigh.
We forgot step one of our hangover cure, which hasn’t happened in forever. I guess we were too distracted last night by the excitement of the release and having the beach house.
I only have two golden rules for when I go out drinking:
Step 1: Chug a bottle of grape-flavored Pedialyte before going to sleep until I can’t chug any more.
Step 2: The morning after, sip a bottle of sparkling water mixed with fresh orange juice until I start to feel my body lift back to life.
Let’s just say we’re going to need a lot of sparkling water and OJ this morning.
“Oh my god, I’m so embarrassed.” Maya dives into the kitchen with her heels in her hands, red in the face, just as I’m taking my first sip of water.
“My driver totally knew what was up.” She gestures to her short black dress and then wafts a hand in front of last night’s makeup smeared around her eyes. It’s kind of patchy where she must’ve tried to wipe it off with water or something.
“Don’t tell me you had to call your own car—” I grimace.
Maya drops her heels and reaches for a bottle of water. “I did! Ugh. Men. Chivalry is dead.”
“How was it, baby girl?” Val teases, twisting around on the couch to look. “Shiiiit, you went hard.”
Maya chugs three big gulps of water before wiping her mouth and grinning. “Oh, you have no idea.”
I pinch her side playfully as I walk past. “Kiss and tell, bitch. Can’t believe you ditched on my big night.”
“I didn’t mean to, I promise. It’s just, he was so into me, and honey, I haven’t felt that fire since the last guy . . . or the last guy . . . or the guy before that.” She grins.
“Quit bragging.” I laugh. “Tell us exactly what happened.”
“We want all the gory details,” Jessie adds, kneeling on the sofa. “He was hot, Maya.”
Maya walks into the lounge and sinks down on the huge couch with us.
“Okay, underwear model first of all,” she says, matter-of-factly. “And when I say he was packing, I mean, goddamn. They say underwear models wear padding, but nope. Not this one. And that wasn’t even the main course.” She rolls her eyes and drags a groan. “Seriously, I can’t even describe the things that man did with his tongue—”
“So, you got his number, right?” Val presses, suddenly wide awake. “And you’re gonna hook me up with his underwear model friends, right?”
“Girl.” Maya fans her face and drops back against the seat. “If he’s got friends, I think I’ll need to test-ride them for you first.”
Valerie throws a pillow at her.
“What?” Maya laughs. “I just wanna make sure you’ll get what I advertised!”
We hang around in the lounge listening to Maya’s stories until my headache eases and the sun rises a little higher in the sky. Then, Jessie, Val, and I change into our bikinis and head down to the beach like we love to do in the mornings when we can—although usually we don’t have a house that’s literally right on the sand. Maya stays behind to scrub away last night’s evidence in the rain shower, promising she’ll join us soon.
I take my journal down to the beach, and while we sunbathe under the morning rays, I open it to a fresh page. Beside me, Val’s preoccupied on her phone and Jessie’s lost inside a heavy book. I breathe in the familiar ocean air and stare at the rolling waves as I think about what to write.
I’ve just put my pen to the paper when a shadow blocks the sun from behind.
“Guess what just arrived?” Maya says. She’s holding a tall white box with Princess written in gold lettering across the front, a thick velvet ribbon tied in a bow underneath.
“For me?” I ask, confused, as she hands the box down.
“Unless any other princesses are staying at this address . . .” Maya shrugs.
I set the box on the sand and carefully pull off the bow and the lid to reveal an arrangement of flawless long-stemmed red roses, each silky petal immaculate, as if they’ve been handpicked fresh from a fairy-tale garden. They look almost too perfect to be real, but I know with one gentle touch that they are.
“Oh wow.” Stunned, I pull out the note card and slide my finger under the lip of the envelope, opening it to read the handwritten words slowly. My heartbeat kicks faster with each unexpected line.
Princess,
Congratulations, honey baby.
You stole the spotlight.
Couldn’t take my eyes off you.
—John
A familiar flare of heat ripples across my skin. I can already feel it, my insides melting to mush, sinking deep into those dark, dangerous blue waters I lose myself in every time our eyes meet or our shoulders bump or he whispers words like those into the shell of my ear.
I swallow the feeling as I close the card to get a better look at the flowers.
What game is he playing here?
Is he trying to get back together?
Does he still love me?
My thoughts are cut off when my phone buzzes on the beach towel. I know without looking it’s him.
Maybe it’s fate.
Maybe we’re meant to be.
Maybe I wouldn’t mind sinking deep with him one more time . . . just to see.