Page 83 of Unbossly Manners

“You hit it hard last night.” Nellie sat at the table with a can of Red Bull, a bright smile lighting up his bearded cheeks.

My plan had worked. I’d passed out on the couch in the large media room before Kat arrived and slept all night. My stomach lurched, thinking of where Jackson and Kat slept, how they slept, if they slept.

“Why do you look so upbeat and shiny?” I asked, barely able to get the words out.

He lifted his arm. It was attached to an IV, which was attached to a banana bag.

“Better than coffee.”

“Is that legal?” I asked.

“It’s water and sodium. Not much you can fuck up.”

My stomach roiled, the hangover and lack of food hitting me.

“Want one?” he asked.

“If it’ll make this pain go away.” I’d already been on the backside of self-loathing last night. Waking up in this state twisted my pangs of remorse with shame and regret.

“It can make one of your pains go away.” He raised an eyebrow but I didn’t have the energy to dissect his insinuation. “When I’m done with mine, I’ll set one up for you.”

I raised my coffee cup in thanks and went back to my room. I showered and left my hair wet and wavy around my shoulders. I slipped into white linen pants and a black crop top.

“Where is everyone?” I asked. Nellie had everything laid out on the coffee table in the living room.

I stuck out my arm and he tied the tourniquet around my bicep.

“On a hike.” He swabbed my skin with alcohol and I looked away when he jabbed me. A few minutes later I was hooked up. He hung the bag on a hanger and placed the metal hook on the window sill above the sofa so the liquid could drip down the tube.

I shivered but soon began to feel more like a functioning human being.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Nellie asked.

I didn’t know if it was the hangover, or the fact that I was lying on a couch like I was in a therapy session, but I began talking.

“How close are you to Jackson?” I asked. Nellie had expressed his dislike of Jackson’s relationship with Kat and I hoped to dissect it further, as torturous as it would be to hear.

“Do you mean, did he tell me about your little agreement?”

I opened one eye. “He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”

“He never thought we’d meet.”

I closed my eye.

“What did he say?”

“He was hesitant to go into details at first, but I pulled it out of him. How he was helping this girl regain her confidence so she could be a tiger in the bedroom.”

I laughed, then pressed my palm to my forehead. It ached, but everything else felt better.

“That’s about right.”

“But it took an unexpected turn.” He smiled sympathetically.

“Jackson said that?” I sat up and propped one of the accent pillows behind me, careful of the arm with the needle, my full attention on Nellie.

“He said feelings got involved.”

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