Suddenly, he couldn’t take another second of it. Of any of it. He stood up abruptly, tumbling Lilah off his lap and onto the bed.
“We got what we needed here, right?” he asked gruffly, pulling his robe back on and storming out of the room before anyone had a chance to respond.
6
Seven years ago
Lilah woke up the morning after the season-one wrap party with a burning sensation on her hip and the worst hangover of her life. She blinked a few times, heavily, painfully, her whole body aching, her fuzzy teeth and rancid mouth making her stomach lurch. Shane’s warmth and weight around her, usually a comfort, felt smothering. As she shrugged out from under him and rolled herself upright, she heard a crinkling noise.
She stood, swaying a little as the pounding in her head intensified, and glanced down at the bed for the culprit. Judging by how terrible she felt, it wouldn’t surprise her if they’d been binge-on-junk-food-then-fall-asleep-on-the-wrappers wasted.The show had provided drivers to escort them to and from the party, and she knew Drunk Lilah wasn’t above asking them to stop at a gas station or take her to a drive-through. But there was nothing in the bed other than a prone and still-unconscious Shane.
Lilah pulled up the bottom of the oversized T-shirt she was wearing and did a brief inspection of her body, anticipating an Oreo wrapper stuck to her ass or something.
What she found was much, much worse.
“Fuck,” she croaked, dropping the hem and staggering to the bathroom to vomit. In between heaves, she heard Shane stir.
“Y’allrightinthere?” His voice was thick with sleep.
She responded by blindly kicking her leg out to shut the door the rest of the way. Once she felt capable of standing again, she rinsed her mouth out with water before brushing and mouthwashing thoroughly.
Her reflection was sobering: hair matted and greasy, skin blotchy, eyes raccooned with smeared makeup. She leaned in closer. Was that ahickey? Not just one, she realized, pulling her hair back to get a better look. A whole constellation of them. Thanks to her complexion, it was all too easy to mark her up with minimal effort, but by now Shane usually knew better than to leave them where they’d be visible. She couldn’t even bring herself to get mad about it, though. At least she didn’t have to worry about going into work today, facing the knowing smirks in hair and makeup. And, unlike the throbbing reminder at her hip, they were temporary.
She stumbled back toward the bedroom. Shane looked practically dead himself, sprawled across the bed diagonally, facedown, clutching her pillow to his chest the same way he’d been clutching her moments earlier.
He craned his head to look up at her, a lazy smile spreading across his face once he saw the state of her neck. “Damn, I really got you. Sorry.” His self-satisfied tone made it clear he was the opposite of sorry. Ordinarily, she might have thought it was kind of cute. In her current state, it infuriated her.
“Look at this.” She sat next to his head, and he automatically reached out to squeeze her butt. She swatted him away, lifting the edge of her shirt to reveal the small square of black plastic wrap taped over her hip.
“What’s that?”
“I think it’s a fuckingtattoo,” she said, peeling the tape off slowly, wincing as it snagged on her skin.
Shane pushed himself upright, suddenly alert. Since he was naked, it didn’t take long for them to home in on the corresponding spot on his hip that was also taped and plastic wrapped. In contrast to her tentative approach, he ripped his off all at once, so they both revealed their mystery tattoos at the same time: tiny, matching cartoon ghosts, so sickeningly cute that Lilah thought she might need to run to the bathroom again.
They looked up at each other for a long, loaded beat. Shane’s expression was hard to read, like he was waiting for her to tell him how he was supposed to feel about it.
Lilah struggled to piece together the events of the night before, which were trickling through the fog of her hangover more slowly than she’d like.
The venue had specialized in “elevated” frozen cocktails, waiters circulating with trays of fluorescent rainbow shot glasses. She’d sampled three flavors in a row with Max, the head of the hair department, as soon as she’d arrived: cold and sticky and dangerously sweet.
She wasn’t normally a big drinker, especially during filming—it was unprofessional (not to mention unpleasant) to work hungover, plus it made her look puffy and tired on camera. With the summer hiatus looming and her alcohol tolerance in the gutter, it was no wonder she’d overdone it.
Anxiety sizzled through her. So far, she and Shane had somehow managed to keep their whatever-this-was under wraps, but there was a nonzero chance that the two of them had gotten a little too friendly in front of their co-workers last night. Both of them tended to get handsy when they’d been drinking. Months of sneaking around, taking separate cars, avoiding being seen in public together, politely deflecting gossip—all undone by a few too many frozen margarita shots.
She dropped her face into her hands, groaning. “Fuck. Do you remember anything that happened last night? We didn’t—when did we evendothis?”
He scrunched up his forehead. “I don’t know,” he said. Lilah groaned again, even more dramatically this time.
“This is a fuckingnightmare.” She knew even as she said it she was being way over the top, but she was so hungover she’d probably cry over a stubbed toe. She stood up, her fatigue suddenly overtaken by nervous energy, and began pacing. “Do you think we’re the only ones who got them? Can we even ask anyone? Or will it just seem suspicious?”
“I don’t know,” Shane repeated, closing his eyes.
“That’s all you can say?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’tknow,” she said, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
