I lock my gaze onto her face, resist the urge to let it travel south. She flatly holds my stare for a few beats, then pushes to her feet with a sigh. She’s in her underwear, lacy and black. Her top isn’t quite long enough to completely cover her ass when she turns around. I swallow and try not to creep on her as she moves around the room, checking the trash bin under the Lucite desk, then disappearing into the bathroom. I’m about to ask what she’s doing when she comes back out and shakes her head again.
“Nothing happened. No used condom or wrapper, and I probablywouldknow if we’d been stupid enough to fuck without one. We’re good.”
Thank the lord for that. Because if we were too wasted to remember how we wound up sleeping in the same bed, we weredefinitelytoo drunk to fully consent to anything else.
Though I’m fairly confident that after the amount I drank last night, my dick wouldn’t have worked even if we’d tried.
“Good. That’s good.”
“Agreed,” she says. And then the room is quiet, aside from the faint whir of the air-conditioning and muted traffic noises from however many floors down below, and though neither of us is naked, I am suddenly very aware that we’re not fully dressed either.
“I should find my pants.” I use the bed for leverage and push up to my feet. Then I have to take a moment to breathe through my mouth before I’m capable of casting a look around. The pants and my shirt turn up near the foot of the bed. My other sock proves more difficult to locate, and I’m frankly too hungover to bother with it. I sit on the end of the bed and dress.
If Eleanor and Ihadslept together last night, this would be the part where I’d suggest getting breakfast. But as we’ve established, that did not happen. Of course it didn’t. She may not have outright laughed in my face at the idea, but evidence suggests I am not Eleanor Thompson’s type. Which is fine, because Eleanor isn’t my type either. I mean, sure, back when we were interns together I thought she was cute. I remember we liked a lot of the same artists—how she’d take her headphones off to talk to someone and I’d hear Alabama Shakes or Lorde blasting out of them. Once upon a time I might’veeven considered asking her out for a drink. But that was like seven years ago.
My eyes shift to the nightstand and I snag an empty bottle of booze from it. I inspect the label and hold it up for Eleanor to see. “This is Lagavulin 25.”
She rubs the space between her brows. “That’s scotch, right?”
“That’s a twelve-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch,” I say, a bit awed. I splurged on a glass of it once before, but never owned an entire bottle.
“Fuck me,” Eleanor mumbles. “Who paid for that?”
I pull the cork and sniff it out of instinct, not taking into consideration my raging hangover and the fact that any alcohol—even the good shit—smells abhorrent to me right now. I fight off a gag and put the cap back on.
“No clue,” I tell her. “Guess last night got away from us.”
“Apparently.” I look over my shoulder to find her buttoning the fly on a pair of denim cutoffs. Her neck’s bent, her hair a curtain of tangled brown waves that hides her face from view.
I focus on doing up the buttons on my shirt. I’m about to ask if she remembers what happened after Dempsey and Chris turned in, because I for one do not, but the question dies on my tongue when I catch sight of the ring on my finger.
“The fuck?” I frown at my left hand for a long moment, confused. And possibly still a little bit drunk. Because even as my pulse starts to roar in my ears, I don’t immediately connect the dots.
Then I’m on my feet so fast I have to bend back over, close my eyes, and plant my hands on my knees to avoid throwing up. Absurdly, despite being a twenty-eight-year-oldgrown-ass man, the first coherent thought I have is:My mom is going to kill me.
“You okay over there?”
I shake my head. Take a breath and—slowly—straighten. “Let me see your hand.”
Eleanor makes a face and holds out her right hand, palm up.
“Other hand.”
She huffs, then lifts her left hand, spotting the matching platinum band at the same time I do.
“Gah!” Eleanor covers her mouth with both hands, then wrenches her left one away, stretching her arm out like the ring is carrying an infectious disease. “What is that?”
“I think,” I begin slowly as I wade through my hangover-muddled memories, “that we might have gotten married last night.”
“No,” she says flatly. She shakes her head and crosses the room to grab her phone off the nightstand. She breathes fast as she unlocks it and taps with her thumbs for a few seconds, then freezes.“Noooo!”
I wince. “So, yes?”
Her whole body deflates, arms falling and head hanging back in defeat. She sighs and holds the phone out so I can see the screen. Which has a picture of us, very obviously wasted, in front of a brightly lit chapel. I’m holding Eleanor bridal-style, her arms looped around my neck with one of her legs kicked out, a pose that feels pretty damning in this context.
My stomach sinks, heavy with guilt. It’s not like I forced her into this. I don’t think I couldmakeEleanor do anything. But historically Eleanor has always seemed indifferent toward me. Then I signed Maya, and am here to sign anotheract she wants on her roster, so I’m thinkingindifferencemight be too generous a term for how she feels about me now. Compared to the short-lived attraction I had toward her in the early days of us interning together, and the fact that I have no fucking filter when I’m lit, I have to wonder if this whole mess might’ve been my idea.
“How did we even get that drunk?” she whines. “I was careful, and I drank a glass of water with my wine at dinner—”
