Page 79 of Good at Being Alive
I can’t let him keep going. “Yes, I know what happened. Sort of. I remember fragments of it.”
He sags against the wall, soaked in sweat. “Jesus, you scared me. Anyway, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have had so much to drink and—”
“The only thing worse than my hangover right now is listening to you tell me how intensely you regret it,” I tell him, nodding to the door. “It was a mistake, one I barely remember, and I assure you I’m not over here carving our names on a wall together. Let’s just forget it happened.”
I sense this has only made him more unhappy, and I have no idea why—he regrets it, he wants to forget, and I’m offering him that option served up on a silver platter. What fucking more does he want fromme?
Any slight hope I had of somehow recovering from all of this, keeping Theo as my friend, is diminishing by the second. And who am I kidding? I didn’t want to keep him as a friend. I never let myself like anyone too much, but he somehow slipped under my skin…while I never slipped under his.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. I never slip under anyone’s.
Theo
I’m showered, I’m shaved, andI’m respectably dressed.
Inside me, however, all is chaos. I fucked up badly. So badly. I’ve made mistakes before, but this one is for the ages.
I’ve wanted her for months and last night—in a staggering abdication of responsibility—I let myself get plastered enough to stop caring about the consequences.
She and I will need to truly discuss it at some point. I haven’t even asked if she’s okay, but we’re ten minutes late as it is. I go to the gift shop while she’s still getting ready, and we arrive in the lobby at the same time.
“The two of you look a little worse for wear this morning,” Lars says with a brow raised.
“Unnhh,” I grunt, pressing a packet of Panadol in Bex’s palm before swigging my own with some coffee.
“Jesus Christ, the sun is bright,” hisses Bex, reaching for the sunglasses atop her head.
“You hit that sweet bar in your room a little hard, did you?” Caden asks, throwing an arm around her shoulders.
I want to put his face through the fucking door. And whenthe fuck was Caden in our room? I’m not going to bring it up, but it bothers me more than it probably should. So does that arm around her shoulders.
I follow her out to the van.Leave it alone, Theo. The day is bad enough already. Leave it alone.
“When the fuck was Caden in our room?” I demand the moment we’re both inside.
So much for leaving it alone.
She raises her sunglasses just enough to squint at me. “He dropped off our garment rack. What’s wrong with you?”
“I can’t believe you let him into the room after the shit he’s said to you.”
She lowers the sunglasses again. “With all the mistakes we’ve just made,that’swhat’s troubling you?”
Paula climbs up front with the driver, and then I enter a new level of hell, one in which my head is throbbing, annoying pop is playing at an ungodly decibel level, and I’m enduring it all with a woman I just…
It doesn’t bear discussing. I hope that Panadol kicks in fast.
The driver pulls as close as he can to the catacombs entrance. I can smell the alcohol seeping out of my pores as we exit the van into the sweltering July heat. Paula tells us to go inside—we can’t have the viewing audience thinking we sweat. Or make terrible mistakes.
How am I ever going to get things back to normal now? Not simply our friendship but also the way I feel? How do I put it all back in the box labeled “Really Bad Ideas” when I know exactly how good an idea it seemed last night?
We walk down the steps to the catacombs, where it is, thank God, dark and cool and relatively silent. Just as I think I might actually survive this experience, my gaze catches hers and I remember her looking up at me in precisely that way as she kneeled between my legs.
Last night is a windowpane shattered into a million fragments. I can’t take a single step without being pierced by a shard of it. The sight of her hand wrapping around my cock as she dropped to her knees. Licking the tip as if it were her favorite dessert, moaning that she loved the taste ofme.
Fuck. I’m so hungover, I’m so furious at myself, and despite the fact that I clearly came about a million times, I’m getting hard at the thought of her on her knees.
We didn’t sleep together, the one small silver lining. Also the thing I regret most. Because how am I going to get through the rest of my life wanting that and never havingit?
