Page 115 of The Shake Off

She was about to respond when her head went back over the toilet bowl, and her stomach heaved. Nothing came up, but she stayed there anyway.

“Why did you stay here with me? We didn’t have sex, I threw up on you, and now you’re handing me cold washcloths.”

“Yeah, so?”

“It’s not normal.” Her words echoed around the cold porcelain.

Normal? What the fuck did that mean?

When she decided there was going to be no more retching for the foreseeable future, she sat back and pressed her cheek to the cool bathroom tiles. Her long legs were stretched out in front of her, resembling more of a Raggedy Ann doll than person. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen such a sorry looking human, and I’d seen Tanner the morning after he’d lost the number of a Victoria’s Secret model.

I wet the washcloth again, passed it to her, and sat down on the rim of the small bathtub.

“Thank you.” She unfolded it and laid it on her face. At least she couldn’t see me smirking now. “You can go, I don’t need you to look after me.”

“You’re hugging the toilet, Babycakes. How about you tell me why you were so drunk last night? What happened yesterday? I didn’t hear from you all day.”

Payton muttered something from behind the washcloth, that sounded a lot like ‘Penn Shepherd’, though it could have easily been a groan instead. She reached into her hair, and pulled the tie out – the one I’d fashioned out of the elastic name tape labels which came attached to all our clean laundry at the club.

“Sorry, I couldn’t find anything else,” I replied to her confused face.

“You tied my hair up?”

I nodded, unsure why she was having such a hard time with the idea of me taking care of her. For some reason, I didn’t think it had anything to do with the hangover from Hell she was sporting. “You were pretty sick, and you have a lot of hair.”

“Where was I sick?”

I thumbed behind me. “In the hallway and then in here, but I cleaned it up.”

There was that face again, the one which looked like she’d stepped out of the House of Horrors ride at Coney Island. “You cleaned up my puke?”

“Hey, I’ve birthed cattle. This was nothing.”

“Where are your clothes?”

“In the trash,” I grinned. “I’m not wearing them again.”

She carefully rested her head back and dropped the cloth over her face again. “Ace, why are you still here? Don’t you have to be somewhere?”

I frowned at her, not that she saw from behind the white terrycloth covering her face, but I was definitely fucking frowning. I shouldn’t have been so excited to see what a hungover Payton would be like, because right now, it was hard to tell the difference between her and a pit Viper.

“It’s seven a.m., I don’t have to be anywhere unless you’re trying to kick me out.”

She ripped the cloth from her face and threw it in her lap. “You’re not my boyfriend. Stop acting like one.”

“I’m not. I’m acting like decent a human being.”

“Yeah, is that what Cosmo told you to do?”

“No, it isn’t,” I gritted, finding it next to impossible to hide the annoyance coursing through me at the veiled insult that a. I couldn’t have thought of it myself, and b. she didn’t sound too happy about me being her boyfriend. On second thought, it wasn’t veiled, it was a crystal-clear insult. “And what would be so bad if Iwaslooking after you as a boyfriend?”

I didn’t follow up with telling her there were plenty of girls desperate for me to fill that role.

“Okay,” she gingerly rolled onto her knees and pushed herself to standing. I waited to see if she’d wobble, just in case I needed to catch her, but she stood firm. “Thank you for looking after me last night and cleaning up my place, I really appreciate it. I’m so sorry I puked all over you, I’ll reimburse you for your clothes, just let me know what I owe you.”

“Payton…”

“I think this has run its course, don’t you? You fixed your game, I got my promotion. We don’t need each other any more.”

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