Page 229 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 9
No. No, no, no.I pulled my phone close to my face and checked my most recent calls.No!There it was. At 10:30 last night I had made one outgoing call. To fucking Aiden.
My headache suddenly got worse. I remembered everything from last night. Drinking too much. My lifeguard making fun of me to his friends. Me stupidly thinking it was a date. Crying on the beach, the feelings mashing together with when Aiden broke up with me. And then…I called Aiden because drunk crying me apparently wanted my life to be worse at 10:30 last night.
I would have thrown my phone across the room, but my screen was already cracked. I was lucky it even worked. Instead, I slammed it against my pillow and tried not to start crying all over again. Why of all people did I call the devil himself? Being embarrassed and drunk shouldn’t have made me need to hear his voice. But it was hard being so close to him for years and then getting cut out of his life. I was used to going to him when I wasupset. It was a normal reaction, even if it was an accident. I never needed to hear his stupid voice again. Ever.
I closed my eyes and pulled the covers over my head. Luckily Aiden hadn't answered. But I remembered leaving a long, awkward message. I’d asked him why he called things off. I’d told him I was across the country and no matter how far away I was, it still hurt. I was pathetic. It would have been better if I’d stayed at the bar and gotten made fun of to my face for the rest of the evening. At least then I wouldn’t have called my ex in a fit of despair.
My alarm started going off again. I’d hit the snooze button by mistake. Because there was no way in hell I was going to work today. Elephants were stampeding in my head and my soul hurt. I turned off the annoying beeping again.
“What are you doing?” Kristen asked with a yawn. “You’re going to be late for work.”
“I’m not going.” At first I thought she didn’t hear me because I was hiding underneath my blankets.
“You have to go to work.”
“No.” I felt the bed sag beside me.
“Did something happen last night?” she asked.
“No.”
“Mila.”
“Kristen.”
She laughed and pulled my sheet down from my face. Her smile disappeared, probably because I looked like I’d been crying half the night and was about to burst into tears again.
“Jesus, what happened to you?”
If she kept looking at me with so much sympathy I really would cry. “Nothing.”
“Clearly it’s not nothing. What did the hot lifeguard do to you? Was it the anal thing we talked about? Because you’re really supposed to work up to that slowly…”
I tried to pull the blankets back over my head but she grabbed them and held them down.
“So…not that. You have to tell me what happened. I know what he looks like now. Want me to go kill him?”
“No. He’s just a stupid boy, if you kill him you might as well kill the rest of them too. And I don’t want you to go to prison for killing half the population. I need you.”
She smiled. “Will you at least tell me what happened?”
I sat up, wiping beneath my eyes. I was pretty sure I’d collapsed in bed right after sitting on the beach last night. My sheets felt sandy. And my hands were blackened by running mascara. “It was stupid. I thought that maybe it was a date, but I’m pretty sure he just brought me there to make fun of me with his friends. They called me Stalker Girl.”
“Mila, I hate to break it to you, but you were stalking him.”
“I was not stalking him!”
“You go to the beach the exact same time on Tuesdays and Thursdays specifically to watch him. That’s what stalking is.”
“Stalking is when you sit in a tree outside someone’s window with binoculars and watch them change.”
“No…that’s a peeping Tom. Please tell me you don’t do that too.”
“Of course I don’t! Because I’m not stalking him.”
Kristen shrugged. “So the date was a bust. You gotta shake it off.” She pushed my shoulder like she could shake it out of me. “There are plenty of lifeguards in the sea.”
It wasn’t really the date or lack thereof that I was upset about. It was the fact that I’d foolishly thought for a second that maybe I’d be able to put the pieces of my heart back together and thenbam. I felt naïve and stupid. This summer was supposed to be about me figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. Not falling for the first guy who looked my way. Not that I was falling for my lifeguard. He was a dick. And on top of being beaten back down to my self-pitying ways? I made a horrible, awful mistake.
