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Holden made no move to get up when the second episode ended, so I pressedplayon the next episode while he reached behind him to grab the balled-up throw blanket off the couch.
The last thing I remembered was thinking that this was the best Friday night I’d had in a long time. I stretched out my legs next to Holden’s under the table and felt my head lolling to the side. The brush of soft fabric against my cheek didn’t even register.
23
The sun felt like it was burning a hole straight through my eyelids, and my mouth was so dry I had to peel my tongue of the roof of my mouth. One hand snaked out from under the blankets to feel around my surroundings in an effort to decipher where I was. Even that small movement made my stomach flop around precariously. I groaned, using my free hand to pull the covers over my head instead. Once I was buried under the covers, I decided I no longer cared where I was as long as it stayed this dark and quiet. The wine was a very bad idea. It was Saturday, so I snuggled deeper and closed my eyes, fully intending to sleep off this hangover.
I had just fallen asleep when a flash of light hit my face, searing straight through my eyeballs to my brain. My hands shot up instinctively to shield my face.
“No,” I groaned in a voice that sounded like I’d smoked five packs a day for fifty years. “Let me go into the light.”
I heard a huffed laugh right before a weight dropped onto one side of the bed, making the whole mattress dip lower on that side. My stomach began to roll around like a small boat in an angry ocean.
“You’re not going anywhere, kid; that’s sunlight. You might wish you were dying, but you’re just hungover.” Max’s cheerful voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard right now. Her happiness was making me even more nauseous. Who had the audacity to be so chipper this early on a Sunday morning? I never should have given her the spare key to my apartment knowing she was a morning person.
“Don’t tell me what to do with my body. My body, my choice,” I sniped, wrestling the covers out of her hands and pulling them back over my head. I felt Maxine stand and heard her soft footfalls echoing through my quiet apartment.
Just as the will to live was exiting my body, I caught a whiff of coffee and grease — a truly reviving combination. My hand snaked out from my cocoon, landing on my nightstand. I patted around in search of my phone, but my hand kept meeting with the wood surface.
I sighed, accepting that my phone was not here, and slowly pushed the covers back. I sat up cautiously, peeling one eye at a time open and blinking furiously at the brightness of my room. The natural light in this room had been so appealing when I’d toured the apartment, and now it felt like a laser beam straight to my brain. Once my eyes felt like they were going to stay in my skull, I glanced down and did a quick double take when I saw the velvety green material of my dress shoved up around my thighs. I was still wearing my evening gown, and had been sleeping on top of the covers with the throw from the couch as a blanket.
Suddenly, death by hangover seemed like a very attractive option. I groaned, collapsing back onto the pillows dramatically. I stared at the ceiling trying to piece together what had happened after we’d started the third episode. The rest of the night was just flashes of hazy memories, but I had a feeling Holden had put me to bed.
Holden St. James had carried me to bed last night.The thought sent an unexpected rush of pleasure through me, followed by a hot flash of embarrassment. Why couldn’t I seem to stop embarrassing myself around this man? No matter how many lies I told myself when it came to Holden, the one lie I couldn’t make myself believe was that I didn’t care what he thought about me, because I definitely did care. And just below that inconvenient truth was the fact that I liked Holden. As a person. As a friend. And I had the sinking suspicion that it was maybe even more than that.
I smelled the sweet fragrance of coffee right before I heard Max’s voice boom through my quiet room. “If you want this caramel macchiato and bagel sandwich, you better start displaying some signs of life.” I shot up with arms outstretched, and she proclaimed, “It’s aliiiiiivvveee!”
“You’re hilarious.” I faked a laugh, taking the latte out of her hands. “Not that I’m hating this surprise breakfast in bed, but what are you doing here?”
Maxine planted her now-empty hands on her hips, eyes scanning my dress.
“You’d know if you had bothered to answer any of my three hundred phone calls or texts.”
I grimaced, pausing with the cup at my lips to offer an apology. “Sorry, I must have left my phone in my clutch on the table. What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Max groaned, dropping onto the bed.
“One of the servers went down this morning and no one’s been able to get it back online. Testing had to be stopped. So basically, it’s an all-hands-on-deck dumpster fire. At least that’s what I’ve deduced from the four hundred emails and text chains I woke up to.” She sighed, scrubbing her hands down her face. “In other words, we’re currently very, very fucked.”
“Oh shit.” I threw off the blanket and swung my feet over the edge, my stomach lurching dangerously at the motion. “Double shit.”
“Yeah. Based on the condition I found you in when I got here, I figured you’d need lots of caffeine and grease. Consider it a peace offering for waking you up. I know your rule is that you only get out of bed on Sunday for Jesus or your mama.”
“You can add caramel macchiatos and bagels to the list of exceptions. What time is it?”
“Almost ten. Matt wants everyone in the office by noon unless, and I quote, ‘you or someone in your family has died.’ While you’re basically the living dead, I don’t think that’ll get you out of this.”
“Okay. Okay,” I said, more firmly the second time. “I need to take a quick shower and change into something that’s...not this.”
Max sat on the toilet while I was in the shower, drinking her own caffeinated beverage and filling me in on the rest of her night. Sissy was not pleased that I’d left early with Holden, so I was sure I’d have a few dozen angry texts waiting for me this morning. I had no regrets.
Max and Richard had spent the entire time talking, and they’d exchanged numbers at the end of the night. She seemed almost disappointed that he had asked for her number instead of out on a date.
They had not won the month at the chalet in Aspen, and Max said she heard a rumor that the winning bid was over twenty-five thousand dollars.
“I can’t believe you actually bid on it!” I shouted over the spray of the water. “Unless you have a trust fund that I don’t know about. What would you have done if we’d won?”
“Meh. I hadn’t thought that far ahead, honestly. Sell a kidney on the black market? I feel like one of my kidneys would be a real hot-ticket item. Doesn’t your liver grow back?” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “You’re missing the most important part of this story. I projected the right image as a casual — yet wealthy — jetsetter.”
