Chapter 5 Sierra
Sierra
My head is hammering.
I peel my eyes open, squinting into the crisp daylight. It lasers through the edges of the curtains, closed over the window.
As I try to roll over, try to orient myself, my skull feels like it’s in a vise and my mouth feels like it’s been vacuum-sealed in parchment.
God, my throat hurts.
And my head throbs with music. I think it’s Beyoncé.
Did I convince a bride to sing “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” with me to a crowd of strangers last night?
And was the Hottest Bartender in the Universe in that crowd?
His name is Mason, my brain provides helpfully.
I blink, trying to remember how I got from there to here. Here being in a bed, snuggled under the covers, alone.
I know I’m alone, because it feels like something is missing.
Like he’s missing.
I slide my hands along the mattress on either side of me, carefully, feeling for a warm body, just in case. But no one’s there. I find the edges of the bed rather quickly, though. It’s a very small bed.
And there it is again: the hammering. It’s not just in my head. It’s an actual hammer, banging away, somewhere above me and off to the right, through the walls.
I look up, squinting painfully into the light. On the wall above me, there’s a bunch of sports pennants with team names I’ve never heard of, maybe from a school.
I push myself up on my hands, disoriented.
The bedsheets are dark blue with patterns of stars on them. Constellations. The kind of sheets you’d find on a kid’s bed.
Where the hell am I?
Did Mason put me up in his little brother’s bed last night? Or—shudder—his son’s bed?
Does this man have a family of his own?
Shit . . . what if he’s a single dad and his kids now know he brought a drunken floozy home from the bar last night, and I’m that floozy?
Or maybe they’re used to him bringing drunken floozies home.
I toss the covers off me as I toss away that unpleasant thought, remembering in a sudden rush Mason’s heat and hard muscles covered in silky skin, his strong hands all over me, tingles of warmth and pleasure spreading all over my body, even now. Delicious memories of last night.
Drunken memories.
I struggle to pull more specific memories from the murk, then immediately wish I hadn’t. Because Mason is in every one of them, but so am I, and I’m a mess.
I remember Mason standing over this bed, speaking to me in a soothing voice.
Mason, trying to tuck me in like I was some overtired child.
Mason saying, I’ll sleep on the couch.
And me, clinging to his arm like a leech and asking him to stay. To sleep with me.
And so he did.
He slept with me in this tiny bed. He also spooned me, because I asked him to.
Actually, I’m pretty sure I begged.
“Ughhh,” I groan aloud.
Too. Much. Alcohol.
Alcohol should not taste that good when I’m in the middle of a life crisis. However, if I learned anything about alcohol in my twenties, it tastes better in a life crisis.
At least I’m not naked. I’m fully dressed. In yesterday’s clothes, but still. I’ll take it as a win that I didn’t peel them off and climb all over a virtual stranger, begging him to fuck me.
Maybe I mercifully fell asleep before that could happen.
Or maybe that did happen . . . and he said no?
Wait. Did he refuse to kiss me?
Did I ask him not to kiss me?
I can’t remember.
I promise, no goodnight kiss.
There’s his husky voice, and a murky memory floating just beyond the edges of my sanity that has me and him pressed sweatily together saying very hot things to one another that I can’t quite recall. The word cock was in there somewhere.
I’m pretty sure I was the one talking about it. And maybe trying to touch it?
I am so hard . . . I think that’s what he said to me. I can still hear the pain in his voice in my head.
Was that at the bar or here? Or somewhere in between?
What did I say to him??
I fall back on the pillow with a groan, silently praying that he was as drunk as I was last night so maybe he doesn’t remember, either.
I do remember, hazily, walking home with him and his friends and that bachelorette party because I couldn’t reach June Spencer all day.
And what had to be hours upon hours of singing and drinking at the bar before that.
And Mason looking all hot and smoldering in his tight blue T-shirt, pouring me drinks. And trying to get me not to drink. He kept giving me water.
And the phone call with Sophie, earlier.
Kyle.
The meme.
My fucking dumpster fire of a life.
“Fuck.” I really would’ve thought it would be impossible to sink any farther into that chasm that gobbled up my dignity five days ago, but last night I think I managed to plummet a little lower.
I take a deep breath and force myself to sit up again as my brain cells gradually come back online.
I blink at my surroundings. Real hardwood floors, walls painted blue, a small wooden desk and chair.
I see no clock anywhere to tell me what time it is.
But the room is definitely decorated like a teenage boy lives in it.
The glittering red Miss Behaving sash that dangles from the doorknob looks incredibly out of place. As does my pink Kate Spade handbag, sitting on the bedside table by the football-shaped lamp.
I look around for my phone but can’t find it anywhere.
I wonder if I left it in the bar. Seems like something Very Drunk Sierra would do.
My suitcase sits on the floor, and there appears to be a note on top of it. And now I remember. I got the suitcase from my van after we left the bar, and Mason carried it here for me.
Where is he now?
I hear nothing else beyond this room but that distant hammering, on and off.
I slide out of bed, carefully, woozy as I get to my feet and blood thumps through my body. My organs are incredibly angry at me for drowning them in more delicious cider and gin than they could possibly process.
I pick up the scrap of paper, and my insides effervesce with way too many feels at the sight of a man’s handwriting—because I know it’s from Mason, and I already like him way beyond reason.
Sierra, it reads, I didn’t want to wake you. Please help yourself to anything in the kitchen and let me know if you still want my help with June. He signed it Mason Grant and wrote his phone number carefully at the bottom.
I tuck it into my purse like Gollum stashing his precious ring of power, my pulse flying as I absolutely refuse to acknowledge what this man is doing to me when he’s not even here.
It’s too dangerous.
You don’t even know if what happened last night was real, I scold myself as I lay my suitcase open. You are rebounding. And you were very, very drunk.
However, I wasn’t very drunk when he poured me those first few drinks, and he seemed pretty fucking fantastic then. Which definitely confuses my survival instincts.
I choose some fresh clothes and manage to stumble my way into them.
Unfortunately, while Very Drunk Sierra had enough forethought to bring the suitcase, she forgot that my toiletries and cosmetics are in a different bag, which is still in my van, which is still parked on the street across from Mason’s bar, which is god only knows where from here.
I pack the suitcase back up and leave it on the rug, and make up the bed.
Then I grab my handbag and bring it with me as I quietly ease the door open and peer out.
A hallway greets me. A gleaming stretch of hardwood floor, several other doors, a staircase leading down at the far end of the hall.
At the opposite end, plastic sheets hang over a stairway leading up, and that hammering sound drifts down.
I wonder if Mason is up there.
I tiptoe up the hall feeling like a felon, with no idea who I might run into or potentially terrify.
When I find a bathroom, I dip inside and do my best to clear up the raccoon eyes.
I finger-brush my loose hair; my hair elastic has mysteriously disappeared.
Then I finger-brush my teeth with some toothpaste I find by the sink.
There is an odd mix of grooming products in here that suggest a child and a grown man are sharing this bathroom.
This is all too weird. I need to get out of here.
I creep down the stairs, past a wall of family photos I’m too uncomfortable to really look at. They seem like old ones, mostly black and white. I definitely hear and smell someone cooking, and fucking pray it’s Mason in the kitchen I’m clearly about to enter at the bottom of the stairs.
I may have enjoyed some wild nights out and messy mornings after as a twentysomething, but thirty years old just feels too old to be wandering into someone’s kitchen with yesterday’s mascara on and no idea where I am.
And yet here I am, and that is definitely not the man I shared a bed with last night who’s making breakfast. This man is scooping juicy slices of back bacon out of a pan, his back to me, and I stop dead, just inside the sunlit, modern-farmhouse-style kitchen.
The smoky-sweet smell of the meat fills the air and my nostrils, and while I might be half-starved right now, I actually retch.
The stranger glances over his shoulder, sees me, and does not look at all shocked or startled to find a random, bleary-eyed woman retching in his kitchen. Nope. He smiles.
“You okay?”
“Uh, yeah. I’m very okay,” I lie. At least, I’m fairly sure I’m not about to actually throw up on the floor.
He smiles wider.
To my dismay, he’s objectively hot. Loose work jeans and a tight white tank top on an underwear-model body, tan skin, white teeth.
Sexy scruff on his jaw glinting gold, blue eyes, shaggy blond hair.
Sort of Jax Teller in Sons of Anarchy vibes but without the tattoos, leather, and angst. And with a tea towel draped over one shoulder.
What the hell is in the water around here?
Or is it the cider? What’s responsible for this breed of men? David Attenborough really needs to make a documentary.
“Well, good morning—afternoon,” he corrects himself. “I’m Mason’s brother.”
Of course you are.