Chapter Four
Bonnie
Shit-faced. I was shit-faced. Not tipsy, not on my way to being drunk, not on my way to seeing colors.
I was already there. I saw tipsy, waved, and put my foot to the pedal, and went right into being shit-faced.
Cackling internally as I took a shot and refilled my glass so the only thing I felt was the burn of the alcohol, I continued to drink and dance around my kitchen and living room.
It wasn’t a conscious decision to end up that way, but I had lost all rational thought when my phone rang with an unknown number, and I answered it just out of habit.
“Bonnie? Baby? What’s going on? Why didn’t you answer my calls?
” Elijah’s frantic voice rang loud. I hung up before he could say anything else or I was swayed by something he said.
I’d been borderline obsessed with all things Elijah since he walked into my shop two years earlier, and if I had to place his voice—which still reminded me of hot chocolate, or maybe a smooth whiskey—it would be in the top five of my favorite things about him.
In my past relationships, I’d hated it when men would call me baby.
And don’t even get me started on honey. But really, any impersonal nickname made me think they were just grouping me together with all the other women they had dated.
But Elijah…He always called me Bonnie Baby, and it made me flush from my head to my toes. I loved it.
“Bonnie Baby,” I mocked out loud while rolling my eyes and doing my best to ignore the stabbing feeling in my chest—the feeling of the hot tears starting, no matter how hard I tried to keep them at bay or drink them away.
Since I couldn’t stop them, and I still felt them as they streaked down my cheeks, I decided why not, and I filled my glass to the brim.
So yeah, I waved at the tipsy sign as I passed it and flew right into being downright shit-faced.
My mind was a jumbled mess as I tried to make sense and put all the pieces together, no matter how much they didn’t seem to fit. I kept trying to shove the messages and silence into edges that would snap together and create a bigger picture—one I could understand—but nothing seemed to fit.
The door to my place suddenly swung open with such force that I jumped up from the ground I had somehow ended up on. When did that happen? I grabbed the closest thing to me to use as a weapon, just in case.
“Girl…what the hell have I walked in on?” Ellie—my best friend, business partner, and current reason for my heart attack—asked.
“Is…Is that a Nutcracker in your hand?” Her perfectly plucked eyebrow was raised in question.
“Put down the Christmas decoration, Bon…I come in peace.” Her lip tilted into a half grin, and my brain finally started to rationalize that it was Ellie standing in my living room and not someone who was breaking in to murder me.
“Jesus Ellie, you gave me a fright. What are you doing here?” I heard the way my words slurred together, and I waved the Nutcracker in her face.
“I gave you a fright? You messaged me 911, and I all but ran out on the very hot and very naked firefighter I was currently seducing.”
“I did?” I stared at her, trying to make sense of her words. “I messaged you?”
She walked over to me with her hands held up in surrender as she took the Nutcracker from my hand, frowning at it like it had offended her, and threw it on the sofa.
“What’s going on? Where is Elijah?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s probably in room 213 right now, getting a post-flight blowjob from Tiff.” I scoffed, half choking on my tears.
Ellie’s silence was eerie as she digested my words, and her gaze roamed over me like she was double and triple-checking that I didn’t have any physical wounds.
“I’m going to need you to explain everything to me.”
“I’ll do you one better.” I handed her the offending iPad, which felt like it was burning my skin despite it being nothing more than a cold metal block—even if it seemed to burn my entire reality to ash.