Head throbbing with the steady insistence of a dull knife on a cutting board, I swallow and notice instantly that my tongue tastes like I licked the floor of a fuzzy carpet.
And my limbs are heavy, dragged down by some invisible force, my left hand distinctly more weighty than it was yesterday.
I crack one eye open.
Sunlight pours through a wall of windows—unapologetic desert sunlight spilling across the room in warm gold and sharp angles. It glints off gleaming glass and polished marble as I lift my hand and take in the whiter-than-white mattress I’m lying on.
But this is not my bed.
Or my room. Or…my life.
I push up onto my elbows and let my head fall back against the pillows as the room sways.
Maybe I'm dead.
That's it. That has to be it.
We all died on the plane to Vegas. Carbon monoxide leak. Or maybe I inhaled too much Cheetos dust from the passenger sitting beside me and this is what the afterlife looks like—Egyptian cotton sheets, a wall of windows, and a view of the Las Vegas Strip that costs more per night than I made in a month working at La Lumière.
Heaven for people who appreciate high thread counts.
"Okay," I whisper to absolutely no one. "We're dead. Wow, that was…fast. At least the accommodations are nice."
Deep breath. Try again.
I scan the room properly this time, taking in the glass desk with a closed laptop on the other end of the room, the sleek leather chair, the shiny soulless but expensive furniture.
I recognize this place from a prior trip to Vegas.
The Bellagio. A penthouse suite, from the looks of it.
Oh no.
My phone buzzes beside me, and I reach for it slowly, and that's when I see it. The thing weighing heavily on my left hand.
A ring. A full, unapologetic, almost-as-big-as-my-fist diamond set in platinum and expensive enough that I instinctively want to insure my hand.
My body freezes, but my mind doesn’t, immediately noticing that my phone is buzzing yet again, dragging my attention away from the small geological formation now attached to my finger.
MARGOT: Harper where are you??
My oldest sister’s texts hit my screen back to back.
MARGOT: Amelia is spiraling
MARGOT: She thinks you've been abducted
AMELIA: Did you sleep with the male stripper
AMELIA: If yes, iconic
MARGOT: AMELIA STOP
I stare at the messages, my brain attempting to boot up like an old laptop running on fumes.
It runs itself back to the party where I arrived in Vegas.
To Amelia’s bachelorette party. To all the drinks we drank. To Vic from the plane. And, most of all, to tequila. God. So much tequila.
