I brushed them from her soft skin with my thumbs. “Good night, lovely.”
“Good night Johnny,” she breathed.
As I got up, I grabbed one side of the bedspread and folded it over her. I turned off the light and the bathroom light and heard her soft, ragged sigh.
Then I settled into a corner of the room in the dark, sitting on the floor with my back to the wall. I stayed right there while she slept. I was tired and it was the middle of the night, but it didn’t matter anyway; even if I was at home, I probably wouldn’t be sleeping.
At least Angeline crashing into my night had distracted me from my own problems for a while.
When I heard my sister come home, I went and hid in the bathroom up the hall. This night was already shitty enough. When Shayla had come upstairs and gone into her bedroom, I slipped down the stairs and out the back door, to my house next door.
I didn’t have the energy to explain to her what I was doing in there with Angeline. Maybe tomorrow, I’d deal with that drama.
ChapterSix
Angeline
Iknew, as I cracked my eyes open, that I, Angeline Delacroix, was an unequivocal fucking disaster.
I felt mildly sick. Everything ached. My skull hurt and my mouth felt like I’d been sucking on croutons all night. Dry, bitter, and desperately in need of water. My face was flat on a hard, cool plank of greige engineered wood floor.
I was on the fuckingfloor.
I lifted my head, painfully, groaning. And caught a glimpse of some poor disheveled hussy, her hair mangled around her face, last night’s makeup smeared, and her eyes bloodshot.
Oh, God. I was looking in a mirror.
The hussy was me.
I was regrettably, brutally hungover. I blinked at myself and slowly, stiffly pushed myself up on all fours. I couldn’t have sugarcoated the situation to make myself feel better if I tried. Even me, sweet little thinks-everyone’s-serving-up-ice-cream-when-they’re-really-slinging-shit Angie. Because this shit was fucking messy. For one, I was wearing bedraggled slippers because I forgot to put shoes on before I stormed out of my—Flynn’s—apartment last night. And a T-shirt with two giant, smiling faces on it, mine and Flynn’s. A cheesy photo from our trip to Hawaii two years ago.
I blinked at myself in the mirror. Wait. I was not wearing that T-shirt anymore. This T-shirt was yellow.
I glanced down at it. “Oh—fuck.” I leapt to my feet—too fast—staggered, and fell on the bed. “Ouch.Shit.” My head hurt so fucking bad.
I grabbed at the yellow shirt and stretched it out in front of me, blinking as I struggled to read it upside down. There were a bunch of words stacked on top of one another. COWGIRL… DOGGY… FACE… SIXTY-NINE… SCISSORS… THE CRAB… and at the bottomSix popular sex positions as reported by AskMen. I frowned. Why was I wearing a Thirty Seconds to Mars album T-shirt? A shirt that belonged to—
I looked up in abject horror as I heard a knock on the door, then Johnny O’Reilly strolled into the room like he owned the place—and a memory from last night crashed into me. His fist. His fist had almost smashed into the face of a guy in that car, out in his driveway, before we… came in here?
Together?
I could remember now, tearing off the Flynn-and-me shirt in a fit of upset, and Johnny taking his shirt off. This shirt. I could remember him shoving it at me. Arguing with me? But after that… it was pretty murky.
“Oh, shit,” I stammered, “no.” I gaped up at Johnny, wide-eyed.
He frowned. “You’re alive. Good.” I watched as he set a bottle of water on the bedside table. Next to a sparkly pink travel mug that saidBig Dick Energy.
I looked around, blinking my surroundings into sharper focus as my brain struggled to do its thing. I recognized this room. And all the girlie decor and clothes…
Another door swung open and Shayla stepped out of the bathroom, and I shuddered with relief. “Shayla.” I’d never been so happy to see her. “Oh thank God.”
She stopped in her tracks, wrapped in a bath robe, her hair wet from her shower, and looked from me to Johnny. “Huh?”
Johnny crossed his arms over his chest, and together they both watched me crawl weakly across the bed to the water bottle, struggle to open it, and suck back half of it. The only sound besides my gross chugging was the music playing faintly in the bathroom.
“This is your bedroom,” I gasped at her when I came up for air, “thankgodthankgodthankgod.” Then I fell over on the bed.
“Whose bedroom did you think it was?” She looked at her brother again, realization dawning. “Ew.” Then she went to dig some fresh undies out of a drawer. “What are you doing here?” she asked him. “You just gave my girl a heart attack, thinking she woke up after the most disappointing one-nighter of her life, withyou.”
