Gabe in his room. Me in the guest room.
Chapter
19
My head and mouth felt as though I’d been dragged hair-first through a sandstorm, and considering I couldn’t remember how I had gotten home last night, it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.
At least I’d managed to take off my shoes and dress before falling into bed, though I apparently hadn’t taken anything else off. By touch alone, I discovered I was still wearing my bra and it still had a safety pin in it. The fact that it was closed seemed to be due more to dumb luck than any forethought on my end.
I kept hearing a rattling, buzzing noise, but it wasn’t consistent. It would buzz once, stop, buzz twice, stop, and then buzz again.
It took me a good five minutes to realize that it was my phone shimmying across my bedside table.
Someone was texting me.
It felt like a personal affront, especially considering I couldn’t peel my eyelids open far enough to read whatever was on the screen. Every time I tried, the bright light from the bedroom window made me recoil like a vampire. I might have even hissed during my first attempt.
Finally I managed to dislodge the sleep crumbs caking the corners of my eyes enough to blink and peer at the screen. It took ten seconds for anything to focus.
Then it took another ten seconds to believe what I was seeing.
Texts. Multiple ones.
From Gabe.
Get some chilaquiles, he’d texted. Best hangover cure I know.
No, wait, a burger. A big, greasy burger and fries. That had been the second text.
In total, Gabe sent me seven text messages with seven different suggestions of food I should eat. My heart was touched, but my stomach rebelled and I spent the next fifteen minutes remembering that in addition to the pink drinks from the after-party, I’d also had several red Jell-O shots at the club. My toilet looked like someone had been murdered in it and I never wanted to eat anything that tasted like pineapple or cherry again.
When I pulled myself off the floor and back to my bed, I found that Gabe had sent me several more text messages.
Ollie says no caffeine, he’d said. But I finally found Preeti’s chai recipe so here it is.
He’d included a photo of a handwritten recipe on a piece of paper with Spider-Man on the top.
Lots of water, he’d also written. A bathtub of water.
That I could do.
I started in the shower, gulping down as much as I could while washing away the dried sweat and sticky remnants of spilled drinks. As I began to come back to life, the rest of the evening returned to me.
After Gabe had left, Ollie and I had danced for a couple more hours and then he’d gotten a car to take me home. By some sheer force of will, I hadn’t fallen asleep or thrown up in the backseat of the car and had managed to operate my front door keys as well as maneuver the staircase leading up to my room before wrestling my dress off and passing out.
When I emerged from the shower—my bathroom completely steamed up—feeling like I’d scrubbed myself into a mild semblance of normality, I found that I had even more texts from Gabe.
Wrapped in my towel, I sat on the side of the bed, reading through messages that were surprisingly devoid of acronyms or texting slang. Apparently, Gabe Parker preferred a full-sentence text.
I’m having a party at my place tonight, he’d messaged. There will be fun and games aplenty.
Aplenty.
Gabe Parker used “aplenty” in his text messages.
I remembered then the moment on the dance floor. How it had felt. How he had felt.
My skin was soft and red from the hot shower, but the warmth I felt was from something else entirely.
Gabe had danced aplenty close to me last night. Gabe was—at the very least—physically attracted to me. Gabe was inviting me to a party at his house.
Suddenly the once-absurd possibility that something could actually happen between us didn’t feel so absurd, after all.
My phone buzzed.
You can bring your tape recorder if you want.
The text was followed by a winky face.
That winky face threw a dash of cold water on my flickering hope.
Because I had completely forgotten about the article. The whole reason Gabe was speaking to me in the first place. Obviously, he wanted me to come over so he could dazzle me with another element of his glamorous life. Which I would then put in the Broad Sheets piece.
They had said I would be getting unprecedented access.
If he had wanted to make a move, he would have made it last night. He wouldn’t have disappeared in a haze of smoke and Jell-O shots just when things were getting good.
Right?
I looked at my phone, weighing my options.