But then his eyes, screaming from the agony of daylight, registered what Amanda had seen, and… well, okay.Jesus Christ, what the fuck happenedindeed.
He squeezed his eyelids shut and counted to five in the hopes that when he opened them again his hangover would be gone and his bedroom back to its usual state of half disaster. No dice—the throbbing did not abate, and his bedroom still resembled the wreckage left behind after a hurricane.
River likedthings. His therapist said it was a relic of his deprived childhood. Amanda said it was because he’d been a magpie in another life. He liked Amanda’s version better. In any case, he kept his room full of little treasures—jewelry and keepsakes, designer clothes, the occasional LP from his favorite artists, the ones who’d shaped his style growing up. He liked to see everything at once. He wasn’t precious about things getting damaged; he couldn’t seem to unlearn theeasy come, easy golessons of his childhood. Those two facts added up to his bedroom being a general state of disaster.
But he was usually neater thanthis.
Rather than being thrown haphazardly over the purple velvet plush armchair in the corner by his desk, his clothes were strewn over the floor to the point of obscuring the pattern of his favorite Persian rug. His dresser drawers were open, itemsspilling out as though they’d been flung there by a particularly enthusiastic stripper. His jewelry case was open too, though not much remained in it. A handful of beads from necklaces that hadn’t survived the mad scramble for valuables dotted the carpet.
River’s bed partner from the night before was conspicuously absent.
Fuck.
He was standing and processing the scene when Amanda put her hand on his upper arm.
He sighed. “Well. You told me so.”
She hated it when he did that, but it was true. He could only blame one person for the chaos and disappointment he let into his life. Amanda only ever tried to save him from himself. “River….” She sighed. “I don’t suppose you got his name.”
“Hisrealname?” He doubted it.
“His face is probably on the security cameras. We could file a police report.”
She’d do it too, even if it made him look pathetic, even if it got the wrong kind of attention. “No,” River said after a moment. “It doesn’t matter.”
“River—”
Huffing, he let her pull him into a hug and tucked her head under his chin. Conventional wisdom said you shouldn’t be friends with your business manager, but River never held much truck with conventional wisdom, and Amanda was the one exception that never bit him in the ass.
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
This had happened before. She didn’t bring it up because she didn’t have to, but she knew he was thinking about it too. River’s taste in men was pathologically awful. In any given space, if you wanted to know which guy had the clap and didn’tcare who he passed it to, or had a habit of breaking and entering, or (perhaps most traumatizing for River) a mommy kink, all you had to do was set River free in the room and wait until he decided to sleep with someone. He’d find them, no problem.
“It’s just stuff,” he replied. Stuff could be replaced. God knew he had enough money to replace it with.
“Stuff that someone you invited here took out of your home while you were sleeping.”
River winced. “Amanda—”
“Don’t bullshit me, okay? This hurts. I know it does.”
What could he say to that? Of course it hurt. No one liked to be played for a fool. River especially didn’t like that it happened repeatedly, that he didn’t seem to be able to learn from his mistakes. “Yeah, but I do it to myself. I know that.”
“Not on purpose.” She leaned her head against his arm and then looked up into his eyes. “Right? Not on purpose?”
He let out a huge breath. He was a mess, sure, but not that much of a mess. “Not on purpose.”
“Your taste in men is just, like,literallycriminal.”
He bit down on a laugh. “Hey.”
When she looked up again, her eyes were twinkling. “Too soon?”
“If I stop being able to laugh at myself, I might as well die.” He sighed dramatically and flopped back onto the bed. At least last-night River had, at some point, put underwear back on, so he hadn’t traumatized Amandathatmuch this morning.
“Well, don’t die, but maybe get your ass in the shower?” she suggested. “You’re supposed to have a photoshoot in two hours, remember?”
Groaning, he rolled out of bed to do her bidding. A shower would do him good anyway. Maybe he could wash away the stench of his own self-pity.
