Page 28 of The Bad Girl List

“Oh, my God.” Her horrified eyes skip over my face before looking away. She grabs the shirt from my hands and cinches it tightly around her. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Well, at least you crossed the vomit thing off your list. That’s an upside, right?”

She barks a laugh, dragging the back of her hand across her nose. “Yes, but I wasn’t envisioning this.” Her gesture takes in the two of us and the pile of vomit in front of her. “You’re bruising.” She touches my forehead.

“It’s nothing. I should have been paying better attention.” I take her hand and squeeze it. As if I could have been paying attention to anything beyond her perfect breasts and her hand in my pants.

“Dominique? Dom, where are you?” Annika’s voice cuts through the night.

The two of us jump apart like teenagers caught doing something they shouldn’t.

“Over here!” Dom calls.

She takes the hand I offer. I pull her to her feet. She hastily cinches the belt around her waist, tucking the shirt in such a way there’s no chance of it coming open.

“Do you think she’ll notice the buttons are gone?” she whispers.

“Um.” My eyes dart over her. “It’s pretty dark. I don’t think so.”

“There you are.” Thomas appears at the end of the vineyard row, holding up the flashlight in his phone. “What have you two crazy kids been doing out here …” His question dies as he takes in our appearance.

I’m shirtless, Dom is in my clothes, and I’m pretty sure our tousled hair might betray what we’d been about to do before I hit my head and made her vomit.

Thomas clears his throat. Even though his face is obscured behind the beam projecting outward from his phone, I can feel his smug smirk.

“I take it the Wine Away didn’t do shit for the clothes,” Thomas says.

“That stuff was made for spots, not half a bottle of wine,” I reply. Dom and I pick our way down the row back to the car.

“I thought maybe you guys ran away together.” Annika appears next to Thomas. She takes one look at Dom and lets out a squeal. “Number one! Did you do it? Did you just puke your guts out?”

“I did it,” Dom confirms.

Annika rushes past Thomas and fist bumps her cousin. “Nice move, cuz. I knew you had it in you.”

“I’m already regretting it.” Dominique presses a hand against her stomach and hunches. Is it my imagination, but did she look at me when she said that?

“Come on, I’ll get you home and pump you up with Tylenol. You’re going to be fine. I got us the premier Wine Country Uber.”

“You don’t need an Uber,” I say. “We can–”

Thomas elbows me in the ribs as I step past him into the parking lot.

That’s when I spot Gramps. He’s leaning up against the side of his battered pick-up, clearly waiting for us.

“Like I said, premier Wine Country Uber.” Annika hauls Dominique toward Gramps, giving her a hand to help her climb into the back of the truck.

“You, too, bro,” Thomas says. “Neither of us is in any shape to drive.” He lowers his voice and adds, “Were you guys doing what I think you were doing?”

I ignore him and climb up into the truck with the girls. Dom sits hunched over, not looking at anyone.

I may have consumed multiple bottles of wine tonight, but the last few minutes have left me completely sober.

There’s a reason I made the “no sleeping with a drunk girl” rule. It’s to avoid the situation I now find myself in. Dom won’t even look at me. She is clearly embarrassed by what happened between us. I may have just met her, but I got a good enough gauge on her to know random fucks with strangers in car trunks isn’t her M.O.

She isn’t the only one with regrets. How could I have done this on the anniversary of Elle’s death? What the hell is wrong with me? I never should have agreed to come out tonight.

Gramps drives us back into town, the cool evening air rushing over us as we sit in silence. By the looks Annika and Thomas keep exchanging, I’m pretty sure they guessed what Dom and I were really doing by the car.

---