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“Plans change, Ben!” Keeley shouts helpfully, before she slides away.
I take a sip of the blue drink someone’s put in my hand. “It’s a pool party, obviously.”
“Did you just accept a drink from a complete stranger?” he asks, nostrils flaring. “And how are you getting home?”
I hitch a shoulder. “No idea. I’ll figure it out.” I want to keep him on the phone, suspended in this moment where an us still exists, but it’s painful at the same time. Every second just reminds me more and more of how much I liked him. And I did. I really, really did.
A female calls to him from another room, and my stomach drops so hard and fast I feel sick from the sudden change. “It sounds like you need to go.”
“They can wait,” he growls. “So you’re in the mansion of some gamer you don’t even know, drunk, and you have no idea how you’ll get home.”
The female voice is approaching, insistent and possessive.
“You’d better go, Ben,” I reply. “Before your date sees you talking to someone else.”
And then I hang up the phone.
For the next two hours I continue to drink, but I can’t numb myself enough to not be upset about the conversation.
All I really want to do is go curl up in the room Keeley’s staying in here and weep, but I suspect she and the guy she’s seeing already had sex in the bed, so I remain in place, perched on the edge of the hot tub while she persuades two guys to rub our shoulders and two other guys to rub our feet.
I guess I am drunk because there’s literally no way I’d go along with this sober.
“I liked him,” I whisper. It’s possible I’ve said this several times since I ended that call.
Keeley leans her head on my shoulder for a half second. “I know, babe. Pick someone here instead. Anyone. Sleep with Jason if you want. I really don’t mind.”
I laugh miserably. “I don’t want to sleep with anyone. Not even Jason, but I appreciate the offer.”
“More alcohol, then,” she says, raising my empty glass and hers. “We need two more boys to fetch us fresh drinks!”
I laugh again and close my eyes, wishing I could just have this whole day behind me. And then Keeley says, “uh oh”, and I open them again…to discover Ben standing on the other side of the hot tub. He’s wearing jeans and an unbuttoned flannel shirt over a t-shirt, looking better than any man ever has…aside from the fact that he is very, very angry. Although that looks sort of good on him too.
The rubbing stops.
“Thought you were in Palm Springs,” I call over the music, and for the first time I hear myself. It turns out I am drunk.
“Gemma,” he says, eyes narrowed, “can I speak to you?”
I get the feeling he’s not actually asking. I climb out—my feet no longer working as well as they did when I climbed in—and he pushes through the crowd to wrap a towel around me.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m celebrating Jesus’s birth, obviously.”
The DJ chooses this moment to put on “Talk Dirty to Me.”
His nostrils flare. “You’re drunk. Let’s go.”
I stiffen. I’m not doing this again. I’m not letting someone else hold all the cards and dictate how I lead my life while refusing to invite me into his. I’m not letting someone convince me I’m the issue.
“Fuck you,” I reply, which is far less eloquent than I intended, but gets the job done. I turn and push through the crowd to get to Keeley’s room on the second floor, but by the time I reach her door he’s behind me again.
And it just makes me sad.
I hate that he’s still being the Ben I’d begun to believe he might be, someone honest and invested, when I’ve already got proof he’s not. “Go back to your date,” I tell him, marching inside the room, looking for my stuff.
He follows me in, standing in the frame of the door with his hands shoved in his pockets and his eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is this about?” he demands. “I wasn’t with anyone. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. And what was that downstairs? I leave you alone for one fucking day and find you getting massaged by two guys at once?”
