Page 45 of Ecstasy
Bitch.
13
Zara
Waking up is hard.
I canfeelthe exhaustion in my bones and prying my eyelids open takes way more time than the half a second it should. I taste something strange in the back of my throat, like…
Whatever the hell Jax gave me last night that I snorted up my fucking nose.
I sit up in a bed that isn’t mine, scoot back against the padded headboard behind me. I blink a few times, the light streaming in from the half-open curtains too bright for my sensitive eyes. I take in the familiar room that my brain is having trouble placing right now; hardwood floors, a desk against one wall, doors on either side of it.
A framed photo of some pro football player catching a ball in the endzone.
Alex.
This is Alex’s room.
Get it fucking together, Zara.
I pull up the sheets to my chin and fist my hands in the shirt I’m wearing.
The shirt I’m wearing.
I yank the covers down, hold out the white t-shirt of Alex’s I’m in. It feels rough in a spot at the hem, rough because…
Eli.
My chest tightens, panic making that taste in my mouth turn sour as I draw my knees into my chest, yank the covers back up.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Eli.
I think about his fingers inside of me. His lips against my ear. How he told me to touch myself.
I clench my thighs together and close my eyes a second, lost in the memory. Fuck. Alex could have seen. Alex could have seen and then we would be so fucked.What the fuck am I doing?
I run a hand over my hair and take a breath to pull myself together. Then I open my eyes, feel around under the covers of the king-size bed for my phone. I lift the sheets up, peer over the edge of the bed onto the dark wooden floors, then the nightstand, on my right, and the one on the opposite side of the bed.
Nothing.
An alarm clock, the end of a charger and nothing.
Aside from the football picture, I’ve always thought Alex’s room felt impersonal somehow.
Except, no—
Is that a fucking Bible?
On the opposite nightstand, beside the alarm clock and the charger, a black, leather-bound Bible.
That’s new.
I mean, I know Alex’s dad is a pastor, but Alex has never mentioned God to me.
