by Melody Anne
Gavin released me and stepped back.
You don’t look okay, he signed. I saw you go in there with Tanner. You came out crying and your blouse is buttoned wrong. Did he hurt you?
Glancing down, I saw he was right. I’d missed two buttons in my hasty exit, and a bump of fabric between my breasts gave him, and the rest of the hallway, quite the eyeful of my new lingerie. I did up the buttons with trembling hands and shook my head.
I’m okay, really. He didn’t hurt me, I signed. Not physically, anyway. I just want to have a few drinks and forget about it.
Are you sure? Gavin signed. How about I get my driver to take you home? You look like you need some sleep.
No, I replied. What I need is Aubrey. Have you seen her?
A girl stumbled down the hall and fell into Gavin. He lurched toward me, and his body pressed into mine for the briefest of moments before the girl pulled him away, uttering apologies and adoration.
I rolled my eyes and set off down the hall, in search of Veronica. Gavin caught up to me. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
“Seriously, Elise,” he said. “You need anything, you let me know.”
“Sure,” I said.
Like I would risk embarrassing myself in front of him any more than I already had.
“Aubrey should be in the second room to your left,” he said. He held me with a steady gaze. “And please be careful.”
I shrugged in thanks and went into the room he’d indicated. Veronica stood by the bar, a group of men surrounding her as she giggled and touched them flirtatiously. Straightening my blouse, I pressed through the crowd and grabbed her hand.
“Elise!” she said. “Whoa. Who peed on your Prada?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “What matters is I need to get drunk. Now. Can you do anything about that?”
Veronica laughed and pulled my hand to her chest.
“Finally! It’s about time you learned to have fun.”
• • •
The next few hours went by in a blur of alcohol, sweat, and pretty faces. Everywhere I looked, there was another gorgeous person. For some reason, the Viking Moon Halloween party was more than just the cast and crew. From the recognizable faces surrounding me, I figured they’d put out the invite to all of Hollywood’s elite. And it didn’t hurt that Veronica attracted them like sharks to blood. Actors, rock stars, groupies, they all wanted to be a part of our group. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.
The alcohol burned away all my insecurities. I forgot about the scar on my face, even as my makeup merged with sweat and wiped off on my arm. I danced with a singer from a band whose music I’d adored before my accident, not pulling away each time his hands grabbed me around the waist to bring me in closer. I couldn’t hear the music the same way everyone else did, but he didn’t have to know that. I gyrated in time to the same rhythm as the bodies around me, feeling the beat through the soles of my shoes and rocking against him.
He spun me around and I laughed as the room swirled in a mix of whites and blues. I staggered, unable to get my balance. Long arms encircled me and I straightened and peered up at my savior.
“Cowboy!” I said, throwing my arms around his neck. I had to stand on my tiptoes in order to clasp my hands behind his head. “I missed you! Where’ve you been?”
Clint pried my arms from him and pushed me back so I could see his face. “Whoa, darlin’. You look like you’ve had a little too much to drink there.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Not enough, yet. I can still remember.”
“Remember what, darlin’?”
No. I wasn’t having that conversation with anyone tonight. And especially not with him.
“Nothing,” I said. I pulled his hands to my waist. “Dance with me, cowboy.”
Clint reeled his hands back and crossed his arms. “Naw, darlin’. That’s a nice offer and all, but I think we’d best get you back to the dorm.”
“We can’t go.” I placed my hands on his hips and pulled myself into him. “I’m having so much fun! Aren’t you?”
His body stiffened beneath my fingers, but he didn’t pull away. I gyrated my hips across his thigh and felt his stomach tense as he gasped. He grabbed my hands, but I entwined my fingers through his belt loops, making it impossible for him to pry them off.
“Why are you fighting me, cowboy? You weren’t so eager to push me off before. Like that night you walked me back to my dorm. If I remember correctly, you kissed me.”
He looked at something over my shoulder and pushed me off. “Stop, Elise. This isn’t you.”
“Oh, come on, cowboy. I’m just giving you what we all know you want.”
“Not anymore, Elise.”
“What do you—” I cut off midsentence, a sinking feeling creeping through my gut as I turned around to find what had caught Clint’s eye:
Reggie, standing behind me, face flushed and eyes brimming with tears.
“Reg—”
I reached for her but she pushed me off.
“You knew I liked him and yet, here you are, grinding up against him like some desperate skank. And you kissed him?! I can’t believe you. I thought you were my friend.”
I wrapped my arms around myself. She was right. This wasn’t me. I didn’t dance with strangers or hit on my friends’ crushes. Hell, I barely talked to strangers or other guys. But I was so damn sick of being me. Look what happened when people saw the real me. Being me meant being an object of repulsion.
“Reggie,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
But she didn’t appear to have heard me. She wiped at her damp face, smearing the green peace sign across her cheek. “I never thought you were the type. You’ve been hanging out with Aubrey for too long. It appears bitch is contagious. I’m so outta here. Have a good time finding your inner slut.”
My jaw went slack as she turned and stomped out of the room. Clint tapped me on the shoulder.
“I’m gonna drive her back,” he said. “I don’t want her trying to get home upset. I think you should probably take a cab or get a ride with someone else. Come back when you’re more yourself, okay?”
He followed Reggie from the room, and numbness overtook my legs and torso. Well, I’d just fucked up two major friendships in the span of five minutes. Not my best night. Someone jabbed me in the chest and a glass of vodka and cranberry juice floated into my line of vision.
“You look like you need more of this,” Veronica said.
“I think that’s what caused the problem in the first place.”
“A few more and you’ll barely remember the plump princess and her cowboy crush,” she said. “Trust me.”
A flash of movement from the corner caught my eye, and I spotted Gavin staring at me. His eyes were luminescent, even in the dimmed room. Memories of his naked form the other day and his face when I came out of Tanner’s room earlier danced through my head. Those were followed by the feel of Tanner’s hands as they roamed the flesh beneath my skirt and confidently undid each button of my blouse so precisely—until he stopped.
I grabbed the drink from Veronica’s hand and downed it in one gulp.
“That’s my girl. Here, finish mine, too.”
I had no idea what was in her glass but it was golden and sweet and my tongue hummed as it traversed my mouth. Then my head went blissfully fuzzy again.
“Much better,” Veronica said. “Let’s dance.”
I kicked off my torturous shoes so I could feel the bass squishing against my toes, found my hot rock star again, and we pulsed together to the beat until his hands inched beneath my blouse. I pushed him off with what I hoped was a coy smile and moved to a corner of my own. Closing my eyes, I swayed my hips and spun in a circle with my arms out.
But when I stopped, the world continued to spin. “What the—?”
I staggered to the wall and placed my hand against the ridged wallpaper for support. The people in the middle of the room blurred as they danced in circles across my vision. I closed my
eyes to make them stop, but the floor swayed dangerously beneath my feet. I wondered if we were having an earthquake.
A pair of strong arms locked around me and I tried to push them off, but my limbs had become jellied and useless. I opened my eyes and stared into a set of familiar blue eyes.
“Whoa,” Gavin said. “You need to lie down.”
“But I wanna party,” I said. The words were thick in my mouth and hard to pronounce. It was like I was talking in slow motion, the way so many people did around me when they found out I was deaf. The thought made me laugh.
“Yeah, you’ve definitely had too much party,” Gavin said. “Come on. Let’s get you into a nice, comfy bed.”
He half walked, half dragged me out of the room and down the hall. I raised my head to look for Veronica, but the movement brought on a new wave of dizziness and I groaned. We stepped into an elevator, and Gavin pressed a button with a P on it. He propped me against his hip, pulled a white card out of his pocket, and slid it into a slot on the elevator panel. I pressed my head into his chest as we ascended, the motion doing nothing to stop the walls from whirling.
I gasped when he unlocked the door to his room and my vision cleared up enough for me to see where I was. “Holy shit! This room is bigger than my whole house!”
We stood in a small lobby that opened into a gigantic living room with two couches, a love seat, and a television. The television could’ve been a window, it took up so much space on the wall.
Gavin led me past a table covered with flowers and fruit baskets, toward a room at the end of the hall. The door blinked in and out of focus as my eyelids grew heavy. I leaned on Gavin and placed my head against his shoulder as he tightened his grip.
“You smell like cimman . . . cinman . . . cimmina . . . You smell like candy,” I said.
His chest vibrated against my cheek as he laughed. I closed my eyes and inhaled his scent. All of a sudden, he was gone and his hard upper body was replaced with a soft cloud beneath my cheek. Something white and fluffy tumbled around me and I moaned in pleasure. I flipped onto my back and raised and lowered my arms like when I’d made snow angels as a kid.
“Mmmm,” I said. “This cloud is so comfortable. And it’s huge! It goes on forever!”
Gavin touched my cheek and his beautiful face hovered above me.
I grinned. “Hey, angel! Is this your cloud?”
He shook his head. “You just get some sleep, Elise. You’ll feel better tomorrow.”
“No, I’m pretty sure I’ll feel worse. I had a lot to drink.”
“I mean you’ll feel more like yourself.” His face swirled, and I squinted to read his lips. It would’ve been so much easier if he stopped spinning. I touched his lips to tell them to stay in one place. They were almost as soft as the cloud I lay on.
“Why would I want to be her?” I asked. “No one likes her much. Myself included.”
My finger stayed on his bottom lip while he spoke. “I like her a lot. She’s incredibly sweet.”
“Yeah, sweet and stupid. And she’s a big coward. Afraid of letting people see the real her.”
His hand mirrored mine and he traced my lips. His eyes followed his finger, as though he could read my lips as well.
“What’s wrong with the real her? I think she’s beautiful.”
I giggled. “Says the man dating one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. You say you like me ’cause I’m sweet. But tell me, movie star, is that the same thing you like about her? Or is it because she’s gorgeous and going to boost your career? Don’t tell me you can’t see through that act of hers. She’s a bitch and she’s just using you for your fame. If you weren’t a rich, hot actor, she’d want nothing to do with you, and you know it. But you stay with her anyway. What does that say about you? Huh, movie star?”
His finger left my mouth almost instantly and tingles danced along my lips in its wake. A muscle in his cheek twitched as his jaw tensed, and I cursed myself and the alcohol for all the words hanging in the air between us.
He pulled a blanket up to my neck, his lips pressed into a hard line. “Get some sleep. Good night.”
With a tap of the lamp beside me, he flickered out of my sight. I tried to chastise myself in the dark for the things I’d said. I tried to cry out that I was sorry to him, to Reggie, to Clint, to Annie. But my body and my eyelids were like lead, dragging me down and pulling me into a darkness deeper than the one in the hotel bedroom.
• • •
I awoke with the cloud tumbling around me. My body slammed into something hard and I groaned as it burned across my arm. Someone seriously needed to make the world stop spinning. I felt like I was riding a merry-go-round set at quadruple time. My stomach thumped against my esophagus, pressing into my rib cage.
“No,” I mumbled into the hard surface I’d landed on. I needed to get away from the ground and the cloud to be sick. I needed to move and—
I didn’t have time to finish the thought before my stomach made the solo decision to empty its contents then and there. My throat burned and my chest heaved. Tears burned the corners of my eyes. Even as a kid with the stomach flu, I couldn’t remember throwing up so violently.
Someone grabbed me by the shoulders and hauled me off what I now determined to be a carpeted floor. One I’d ruined. My toes didn’t even touch the ground as I flew across the room and was deposited on cold white tile. My head was shoved in front of a toilet in time for my stomach to decide it was ready for another round of pummeling my throat.
When it finally and mercifully ended, someone reached above my head and flushed the toilet. Then their hands fumbled for the buttons of my blouse.
I tried to bat them away, but my hands felt weighted at my sides from the exhaustion of hurling everything I’d ever eaten at the floor and toilet.
Fighting the sting in my throat, I managed to gurgle out a word resembling something of a protest.
The hands moved from my blouse to cup my face. Gavin’s face swam into view. God, he was pretty. Even with his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed in frustration, he was so freaking pretty. I thought about telling him that, but I was afraid I’d barf all over him. Instead, I shimmied closer to the wall.
“Elise,” he said, moving his hands to my shoulders to prevent me from wiggling. “Stop. You’ve thrown up all over yourself. I need to clean you off. You can’t sleep like this.”
I willed my mouth to say it was fine. To leave me like this. That I couldn’t bear the thought of someone as beautiful as him seeing how ugly I actually was. But my mouth felt fuzzy and numb, like I’d gone to the dentist and endured major surgery. And the darkness called me back with its happy arms. I could trust it. It would take me away from the awful embarrassment, from the vision of Tanner’s repulsed features that, despite my best efforts, no amount of alcohol could dilute. So, as Gavin’s hands left my shoulders and moved again to my blouse, I ran to meet the dark.
When I was a kid, years before my accident, my mother had taken me to a drum corps competition. I was six years old, and we sat in the first row so I wouldn’t have anyone’s head blocking my view. I remember bouncing in my seat as I spotted the band members entering in their matching uniforms, instruments at the ready. The excitement hummed around me as they took their places and waited for their cue. Then came the noise. Beautiful and perfect and loud. So loud I could feel the drums vibrating alongside my heart, thudding through my body and pumping blood to my head.
That feeling was nothing compared to the pulsing inside my head when I awoke the morning after the party. It was as though those bands marched across the expanse of my skull and slammed their mallets into my brain.
I groaned and raised my palm to my face. I never would’ve thought moving my arm could make me feel worse, but the shards of pain shooting through my face seemed determined to prove otherwise.
I buried my head in the pillow, hoping the softness would somehow absorb even an iota of the throbbing pain. That’s when I noticed how much softer it fel
t than my pillow in my dorm room. I rolled over in bed, ignoring my body’s attempt to tell me that was a bad idea, and I felt for the edge. I started when it wasn’t at the end of my arm like I was used to. Slithering across the mattress, I reached until I found where the bed ended.
It was huge, and definitely not my bed. The pounding in my skull made it difficult to sift through muddled memories and figure out where the hell I was.
I eased into a sitting position and looked around. The room was unfamiliar. White walls with pale purple stripes running vertically met a carpet with matching pale purple shades. A large TV hung on the wall in front of me, and a round cherrywood table took up the corner on the left.
The uniformity and blandness suggested I was at a hotel. I furrowed my brow and traced my memories back to the party last night. I’d gone into Tanner’s room and— Oh God, I hadn’t slept with him, had I? No, his room was smaller than this. And he’d kicked me out the moment he’d opened my shirt.
My cheeks grew warm at the memory and I blinked away the threatening tears. The last thing my pounding head needed was me crying right now.
Okay. Not Tanner. I ran away and Veronica gave me drinks. Lots of drinks. Dancing. A cowboy. Oh, crap. The cowboy. And Reggie. Reggie calling me a bitch and running away in tears.
I pulled the blanket up to my chin and cursed into it. I was a horrible, awful human being. I’d hurt one of the few friends I had. She hadn’t deserved that. What was wrong with me?
Drinking with Veronica after Reggie left was where my memories ceased. Like my favorite cartoons as a kid, the corners pulling into a circle and the words The End scribbled across the screen. That was it.
So, not my dorm. Not Tanner’s room. It had to be another cast member. I directed my gaze to the end table near the bed. A red glass bottle sat beside an alarm clock. The neon numbers told me it was almost noon. I picked up the bottle, pulled out the stopper, and sniffed. Cinnamon hearts.