I gaped at her. “That’s how you knew something was up?”
She gave me a look. “Dude, I’ve known you since we were in diapers. I got the skinny on you.” Her brows furrowed. “But not on this. So, tell me or I’ll inform Polly that Stefan didn’t, in fact, have an unfortunate hiking accident and that you’re the reason for his permanent limp.”
I sipped my coffee. “You’d just be implicating yourself in the crime.”
“Lucy,” she warned.
I sighed. Maybe it was the look, or the threat or the fact that I was very delicate and didn’t have the energy to try to evade this while hungover and shell-shocked from Keltan’s abrupt arrival, I told her.
Everything.
Which wasn’t exactly much considering it wasn’t some kind of epic love story. It was exactly three conversations and two kisses.
Yes, I’d been counting.
When I laid it out like that, months of obsessing over him made me feel like a dense schoolgirl in lust.
“It’s not like it’s a big deal,” I said sheepishly once I was done. “He’s hot. We kissed. And now he’s most likely going to fuck me until his touch is tattooed on me. Whatever that means.”
Rosie’s eyes were wide. She was silent for an uncomfortably long time, like she was choosing her words. In other words, like someone who looked like my best friend, but who certainly wasn’t acting like her. “It means you’re totally fucked, that’s what that means.” She glanced to the side table beside my armchair, searching for something. Before I knew it, she had grasped the small lighter beside my scented candle and threw it at me.
It hit my shoulder with a dizzying force for such a little person.
“Ouch,” I hissed, rubbing my arm. “What was that for?”
She leaned back like Vito Corleone, content after he killed someone, sipping her coffee. “That,” she informed me, “was for not telling me this sooner.”
I rubbed my shoulder, glowering. “There wasn’t much to tell. It was just a kiss. Two if we’re counting.”
I was counting.
She rose her brow. “And the Nile is just a river in Egypt.”
I frowned at her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
She grinned. “It means, my ice-cold friend, that that smoking-hot New Zealand soldier is going to mean trouble. The good kind.”
She waggled her brows.
“No. He most certainly is not,” I said firmly.
She grinned. “Oh, famous last words.”
I hoped not.
And the little drunk me that still remained, the one who actually wasn’t afraid of admitting the truth, hoped for the opposite.
The opening credits of Breakfast at Tiffany’s were playing when a knock sounded on the door.
Could a simple rack on timber be so ominous?
Yes. It could. Especially when the sound was most likely made by well-formed hands with calluses on the palms and tattoos snaking up from the wrist.
I didn’t actually know it was him.
Though, I did.
I could tell.
From the knock. It was like his walk. Strong, self-assured, masculine. Attractive.
Yes, I was aware of how utterly insane it was, considering a knock attractive. But that didn’t stop it from being so.
I frowned at the screen, watching Audrey get out of her cab with her elegant updo and chic black glasses. Considered hiding.
“Know you’re in there, Snow. I can hear the TV,” a deep voice carried through the hall. “And I’ve got all the time in the world to keep knocking,” he added. “I’m a very patient man.” The statement was a threat.
I took out my frustration on the television remote, pressing the buttons with much more force than necessary.
Then I stomped to the door and flung it open to reveal a smiling and far-too-handsome-looking man whom I should not have been thinking about all morning.
Yet, I had been. Even through the haze of a hangover and writing another column for Covet. It should have been an exciting day, the response to my first one and the continued requests for more. Dream coming true and all that.
But I could only think of one thing. Which meant the column had a rather distinct read to it.
The morning after.
Men and alcohol are similar.
Both of them come in all different shapes and sizes: beer, wine, spirits, and my personal favorite, cocktails.
Sweet and tasty. Dark and bitter. Tall and dangerous. Seemingly harmless until you’re dancing on a table with your top off in front of a retired men’s bowling league. Or thinking of a man every second, him taking up valuable real estate in your heart that previously belonged to shoes and the creative director of Chanel.
Like cocktails, you don’t know just the effect they’re having on you until you’ve imbibed too much and it’s already too late.
You’re drunk.
And fucked.
Not in the good way.
Well, maybe in the good way, if you’re lucky.
Sometimes, most of the time, they go hand in hand. Too many cocktails can find you waking up next to a man whose name you don’t know, in his basement bedroom of his parents’ house, willing to chomp your own arm off rather than wake him up while you try and escape.