“Morning,” he smiles.
I spin around in disbelief.
“How are you awake? It’s so early! And how are you showered and dressed? How are you standing?”
“What do you mean?” he asks with a nervous laugh.
I rub my eyes again and sigh. “Do you remember last night?”
He pulls his mouth to the side. “Yes, most of it. up until Jackson dropped me at home. I uh, I have the curse of being able to remember things even when I’m stupidly drunk. Although last night was a new level for me. Were you awake when I got home?”
“Drunk? Sheesh. I don’t know if there is a word that maybe describes being a level up from drunk,” I muse, letting my eyes drag up and down his body. He looks fresh. It’s shocking. “I was home. I helped you get to bed; otherwise, you would have been sleeping on the floor downstairs.”
“Shit. I am so sorry,” he sighs. “I guess there is a level where I can black out on what I did. I remember Jackson driving me home. I remember being angry at how many steps we have leading to the front door…”
“Aren’t you hungover?” I ask, knotting my brows.
“Well, I am cursed with rememberingmostof my own embarrassment, but I am gifted with never having experienced a hangover,” he smirks.
I shake my head, sighing softly.
“I think I feel worse than you, and I only struggled to sleep a bit; I didn’t drink all the alcohol in Chicago.”
I push my hand into my pocket and pull out my phone. Navigating to my father’s messages, I click on the picture and hand it to him.
“My father sent me this last night,” I say without further explanation.
Adrian looks at the photo and groans, closing his eyes for a moment. He hands me back the phone.
“I’m so sorry, Athena. It’s not what you think,” he sighs. “Nothing happened. I swear it.”
“What is it then? Who is she? You two look quite comfortable with each other, like you know her well enough?”
“I do. Leila and I have known each other for a while. She is someone I used to be intimate with, but it was never a relationship. It never went further than a night together. In fact, I never even hung out till morning,” he mutters with guilt.
“A booty call?” I ask bluntly.
“Yes. I guess you can call it that.”
“Why were you there? Why did you drink so much?” I ask. I never thought of Adrian as the type of man to drink like that.
“I was trying to calm myself down. It was a stupid idea. But it was better than the alternative.”
“What was the alternative?” I frown.
He sighs and pushes his hand through his hair. “I went to see your father. I wanted to tell him to respect your wishes not to contact you, and he was so arrogant that it made me furious. We got into a fight. It got really heated. Look, I know he’s your father, but I hate how he treats you.”
Adrian falls quiet, then mutters, “I guess he followed me to the bar after I left him… took those pictures to send to you.” He shrugs.
I look down at my feet, rubbing my foot back and forth over the tiled floor.
Adrian watches me, waiting for my reaction.
I look up at him and am still looping over what he said last night in his drunken state.
“You thought I was her last night,” I remind him.
“Did I?” he says, surprised. “Did I say something?”
