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I don't hear music playing, but we find our own rhythm within the water rippling against the dock. The deck lights are all off except for a singular sconce outside the door. We sway beneath a sky of dazzling starlight.
"Thank you for coming," I tell him, my head pressed to his chest, my eyelids heavy.
"Wouldn't have missed it."
After getting lost in him for an imaginary song or two, he asks, "Want to go inside?"
"Sure." When we turn toward the house, I catch sight of a silhouette standing before a window on the upper floor just before it disappears. "I wouldn't have let you kiss me tonight, even if I were sober."
Grant stops. I fumble to sit in a chair in front of the dwindling fire pit. He lowers in a chair next to him.
I cover my face with my hands and confess. "I kissed someone tonight." I peek between my spread fingers, braced for his reaction. He remains quiet, waiting for more. There's always more. My curse amplified by Grant, mixed with champagne, makes everything project from my mouth in a whirl of words. "I knew it felt wrong as soon as we kissed. But it was someone I've been with, and it happened. But it won't ever happen again. And I just had to tell. I don't know why."
"Wil?"
I nod, not wanting to know how he knew. "Are you friends with him?"
He nods. "We play lacrosse together."
"Does that mean you don't want anything to do with me now? I have my own rule that I won't ever touch a guy my friends have been with ..."
"I don't have that rule," he says with a small smile. "It doesn't feel good to hear it. But that's part of your curse, right? The honesty?"
"I didn't have to tell you," I say collapsing dramatically against the chair, regretting that I did.
"But you wanted to," Grant takes my hand, "which means ... something, even in your current state of questionable sobriety." He grins, teasing. "You want to be honest with me. Even when it sucks. I don't hate that. And I know we're still ... new. And you don't date. So, we'll figure this out."
"Whatever this is," I say, knowing it isn't anything I've experienced before. I can't hold back with Grant. And as much as it should scare me to be this honest, this open, this exposed with him--even when I'm drunk--I'm not. I feel safe to be exactly who I am, my cursed Honest self.
The song released from the beast's mouth was not of love. It did not bring joy to Thaylina as it had in the woods. It broke her heart. She cried for him to stop. She begged to be released. Her pleas went unanswered. He hissed in her ear, "You wanted this."
I walk down the stairs the next morning with one eye cracked open and a piercing headache.
"Why are there so many windows?" I mutter, unable to escape the sunlight that makes everything hurt so much worse.
"Good morning," Lily chimes, sipping from a champagne glas
s with orange juice in it. "Mimosa?"
"Champagne hates me," I grumble, sitting on the stool and rubbing my temples.
"Or we have leftover birthday cake?"
I smile, or try to, because even that slight facial movement cracks my skull. "Yes, please."
"Where's everyone?" I ask, expecting more people sprawled out or grumbling with hangovers alongside me.
"Just you and me. Joey left with Grant last night. I'm not sure where Lance went. And everyone else crawled out of here when they were sober enough to drive earlier this morning."
I stopped listening to everything after "Joey left with Grant." I'm trying to decide if the two of them leaving together should be freaking me out as much as it is. Freak out aside, I had wanted to talk to Joey this morning about getting in touch with Nina and Tori.
Using the maps app, the only app on the phone, I looked up the numbers to the strip club where Nina works and a couple of the bars we go to in Sherling. But the people answering the phones were uncooperative and unwilling to ask around for them. Douches.
I also discovered while exploring the phone that it doesn't have texting or camera capability, and everything beyond the volume and contacts page is passcode protected. And I don't have the passcode. So basically, its only purpose is to receive and place calls to Joey. I'd call him now, except ... he's with Grant.
Lily sets down a huge slice of chocolate cake in front of me.
"Thank you so much for last night," I tell her, digging the fork into the frosting. "It was a really amazing birthday."
