“It’s not a good look for you.”
“I agree,” he says. “Which is why I asked the bloke at the door to make sure no one else comes in. To this toilet. Which is the gents.”
I blink. His words slowly push through the haze in my brain and then it hits me. My rock bottom is even lower than I thought, because the floor I’m on, the sticky, disconcertingly wet floor, is, in fact, the floor of the men’s room.
I throw my head against the stall wall and laugh to keep from crying. But a little bit of both come out. “Fuck.”
“You’d think the urinals would have tipped you off,” Kieran says. He squats down next to me, and I’m jealous that the only parts of him touching this rank floor are the soles of his crispwhite trainers. He puts a hand to my forehead, and it’s such a tender gesture that the laughter fades and it’s now only tears. Now I’m sobbing on the floor of the men’s room, the hot smell of sick in my mouth, the bile burning my throat, and Lachlan’s words ringing in my ear. And I’m utterly helpless.
“Get me out of here?” I beg through the sobs. I know it’s dangerous, know that it might be leading him on, but in this precise moment, covered in slime and at my lowest ebb, I have no one else to turn to. “Please?”
Kieran doesn’t say anything, just extends his hand. His grip is warm and strong as he pulls me up. He shrugs off his jacket and puts it around my shoulders, and I don’t want to think about how much it cost and how it’s now soaking up whatever I was just sitting in. Kieran bends down to grab my clutch from where I dropped it. “That’s a good bag for your outfit,” I say through my tears. “Really makes the color pop.”
He laughs as he throws an arm around my shoulders and shakes me a bit. “See? Already getting back to normal. Classic boot and rally, innit?”
I nod and sniffle and wipe the snot from my face. Kieran holds out his free hand for me once again, and with a nod at the man guarding the door to the toilet, he weaves us back through the gyrating crowd and toward the exit.
I know I should keep my head down and just follow him, but of course I can’t. Of course I find Lachlan, because there’s no room in the world where I wouldn’t. He’s not far from where I left him, and when I flick my eyes up to meet his, see him clock who I’m with, whose jacket I’m wearing and whose hand I’m holding, the darkness that passes over his face is enough to make me shudder. But the last thing I see before we tear our eyes away fromeach other is that old familiar anguish. And he shakes his head, but I don’t know if it’s for me or for him, I just know that I can’t bear to look at him anymore. I clutch Kieran’s hand tighter as he pulls me out of the darkness and into the warmth of his waiting car.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The first morning of thenew year greets me with a hangover that’s all too familiar, but in a bed that’s a complete mystery. Every ounce of last night’s booze lingers in my system, which is odd since I distinctly remember throwing it all up—about the last thing I remember, in fact. When the room steadies enough for me to turn my head, I see a human form slumbering, its back toward me. Male, by the look of it, but if I’m being honest, given how serious this hangover is, all bets are off on gender, attractiveness, species…
Like a trauma surgeon dealing with a busy ER, I run a triage process in my mind. Limbs? Present and accounted for. Brain? Foggy, but grinding into gear. Clothing? On! This is a surprise to me, especially since I can see last night’s dress in an undignified heap in the corner of the room. I lift up the duvet to see what I’m wearing: a T-shirt that says MERSEY F.C. ACADEMY CLASS OF 2008 and a pair of boxers that I pray to every god imaginable are clean. Good! This narrows it down somewhat. I turn back to the slumbering form, and as it shifts, I get a whiff of the unmistakable top notes of Axe Body Spray: the official fragrance of Kieran Campbell.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck ohfuck.
Okay, so I’ve slept with Kieran Campbell, though the degree of “slept with” is yet to be determined. Now that my mental fog has started to lift, I can see that it’s obviously him, his tight black curls, the surprisingly graceful neck on top of his big, beautiful shoulders, his bicep-spanning tattoo of Knowsley Stadium. I picture his face and the memories come roaring back through the haze: Kieran finding me puking my guts out in the men’s room, him ushering me into the back of his car, me blubbering into his shoulder, him comforting me and making me drink about a liter of water as his driver sped us away from downtown. All good so far, good decisions all around. Then us getting to his house, him offering me a shower and the guest bedroom, me shaking my head, me fixing us gin and tonics. Bad decisions. Very bad decisions. I think harder, probing deep through the blackness of what followed. More gin. Me sticking my tongue…Oh Jesus, that’s right, I realize as the heat and the shame floods back through me. Me sticking my tongue down his throat. Him pulling back, nervous, eager, polite, questioning. Me pressing harder, sad, angry, grateful, reassuring, consenting. And then…nothing. Blackness. Until now, waking up in his bed, me having gone through a costume change, him half-naked (…atleasthalf-naked).
FUCK.
Okay, Abby, you have to just do one thing at a time.The triage instinct kicks back in: Pee first, ask questions later. I trot to the bathroom, do my business, and reckon with the ghoulish specter that stares back at me in the mirror. Smudged mascara, caked-on drool by the side of my mouth, lipstick that’s been smeared off by God knows what nocturnal activities. The juniper-scented vise that’s wrapped itself around my head squeezes like a boa constrictor and I grip the side of the sink as I reel with pain. I’m shivering and swaying, my mouth bone-dry. I’m not sure if this is ahangover or a panic attack, but either way, it’s not good. I ease open the medicine cabinet looking for ibuprofen and find it behind a bottle of Proactiv. Oh, bless his hormonal, twenty-two-year-old heart. His sweet young heart that has no idea what it’s in for now that it’s been sucked into the sweaty, seething morass of my life. I swallow a couple of tablets and take deep, steadying breaths. I shake my hands, like maybe I can jiggle out all the nerves and the questions and the absolutely crushing weight of guilt and shame. It will be okay, I tell the specter of myself. I just need to grab my things and sneak out of here before I can make things any worse than they already are.
It would have worked, too, if it weren’t for my phone. Theonenight it retains enough power not to die without a charge, it goes and bleeps its bleeding alarm. I silence that stupid fucking marimba as quickly as I can, but it’s too late. Kieran stirs and rolls over, and in the three seconds that I stare openly at his eight-pack abs, the thought crosses my mind that maybe it’s not such a bad thing that—if?—we hooked up last night. And then my eyes travel down to the duvet, where even through layers of fabric and goose down, I can see the telltale bump that proves it is, indeed, morning, and Kieran is up and ready to greet the day. Unfortunately for me and my ambitions of slipping out the door, he notices me staring.
“Hey babes,” he says, grabbing my wrist and pulling me down onto the bed. “I gotta say, waking up to find you in my boxers is the hottest fucking thing I can imagine.” He laces his fingers through my hair and moves to kiss me.
But my brain has kicked into high gear, the Anxiety Death Star fully operational. My first thought is that in 2008, Kieran Campbell was eight years old, which is depressing for a million reasons and also confusing because why is the Class of 2008 shirt that I’mwearing a men’s extra-large? My second thought is that I wish the Anxiety Death Star would concentrate on more pressing matters than shirt size, as it is high time for some damage control. Before his lips meet mine, I remove his hand from my head and scoot backward. “Kieran, look…”
“Come on, let’s finish what we started last night.”
A tendril of relief unfurls inside me. “So we didn’t…” I make the universal “you-me-do-it” symbol, wagging my finger back and forth between the two of us.
“Lol,” he says. Actually says out loud, digital native that he is. “Abs, I’m all for a drunken hookup, but there’s a line, and I’m a gentleman.”
I exhale and close my eyes. “Oh, thank God.”
He scoots up in bed. “Uh, none taken,” he says, a frown crossing his beautiful—and, it must be said, acne-free—face.
“No, no, yeah, you’re right, sorry. No offense. I mean, obviously I find you very attractive and I’m extremely grateful for your help last night. But it’s just…not the right time.”
Kieran shakes his head. “No, don’t give me that bullshit. You were so into me last night. Nothing has changed.”
Yeah, except now I’m sober and all my drunken chickens have come home to roost. Past Abby’s land mines are exploding in Present Abby’s face. The “Fuck Around” stage has conclusively ended, and we are solidly in “Find Out” territory—and it is unpleasant. What’s a nice way to explain all that to the extremely beautiful and famous man inching closer to you in his bed?
My brain stalls as I try to think of the right words to say, and I can’t seem to control-alt-delete myself back into rationality. He’s so close to me now, and though I’m averting my eyes like it’s fucking Medusa, I cannot fully look away from what’s happening under the duvet. My mouth, already a barren wasteland, goeseven drier. Is it possible that this is actually a good idea? A quick, harmless rebound with this kind and funny and hot guy? To shake the cobwebs out, to once and for all banish Steven and…Lachlan.Lachlan. My mind zooms out and lands on him, on the things he said to me last night while his hands were cupping my ass, on the look in his eyes as he realized I wouldn’t end his marriage for him.
I freeze as reality hits me like an ice bath, a cold plunge that almost knocks the air from my lungs. I have no idea what Lachlan and I are to each other now, but I know I need time to resolve it, one way or the other. I need space to process. I’m dying for some mental clarity. And none of that is helped by hooking up with Kieran. It wouldn’t be fair to him, this sweet guy who did not ask to be the hypotenuse of this love triangle. And it wouldn’t be fair to me.
