Page 34 of Ruin Me Gently

Molly’s guy had been pissed about having to wait around with us, so he’d disappeared into the night too, leaving us standing there in the freezing cold, confused and sobering up.

I cracked one eye open, immediately regretted it, and groaned, dragging my pillow over my face in the hope it would somehow shield me from the consequences of my own actions.

Beside me, Molly made a noise that was somewhere between a cry and a death rattle. “I think I’m dying,” she mumbledinto the mattress.

“Same,” I croaked, voice shredded, throat raw from either too much alcohol or too much yelling over club music.

Probably both.

There was a long, heavy silence, the kind that only existed between two idiots who had massively overestimated their ability to drink and were now paying for it in full.

She groaned beside me. “You sad you’re waking up to me?”

I let out a rough breath and shifted enough to confirm that, yep, every single part of my body hurt. “Devastated,” I rasped. “This is actually my worse nightmare.”

“Kick me while I’m down, why don’t you?”

“You’re not my type.”

She peeked at me from under her arm. “Not even a little disappointed that Alvin—or whatever the hell his name was—didn’t come through?”

I let out a slow, pained laugh, rubbing my temples. “Not even a little. Solid 97% chance it would’ve been terrible—he’d have said the wrong name, made a really weird face when he came, or cried afterward.”

She gagged, burrowing deeper into the blankets. “No. Don’t put that image in my head. I’m already dying.”

“Too late.” I stretched my legs out, trying to pretend like I hadn’t very clearly been hit by a truck.

The chime of the doorbell echoed through the house.

She lifted her head up enough to squint at me. “You expecting someone?”

A small prickle of unease crawled up my spine. “Nope.”

“What kind of psychopath shows up unannounced this early?”

I didn’t answer, I was already reaching for my phone, opening up the app for my doorbell camera, waiting for the grainy image to load.

Nothing. No one. Just the empty front porch.

Of course. Perfect. Exactly what I needed.

It had been a week since I’d—in no uncertain terms—told him to fuck off and leave me alone. He hadn’t come knocking again. But the gifts hadn’t stopped, and I was sick to death of it. The sheeraudacity. He was the one who had toldmenot to crawl back tohim.And yet, here he was, still sending his manipulative, guilt-trippy bullshit. Like I was supposed to forget anything. I didn’t understand it at all.

“I’ve got it,” she muttered, shoving herself upright and swinging her legs off the bed, knees buckling the second her feet hit the floor.

“Yeah, you look real stable there.”

She scoffed and shot me the middle finger before wobbling downstairs, then stumbled back in a few minutes later looking half-dead, and dumped two tote bags onto the bed. The scent of warm, greasy, God-tier breakfast food seeped into the air like some cruel, manipulative gift from the devil himself.

She collapsed down beside me, rubbing her temples. “Clark?”

I didn’t even need to answer.

She let out a long groan but still opened up one of the bags. Fresh bagels, still warm. Egg sandwiches wrapped in brown paper. Perfectly golden hash browns. Croissants flaking apart at the edges. Even freshly squeezed orange juice, because apparently being a manipulative piece of shit required attention to detail.

She pulled out a slip of paper that was tucked neatly in the bag and passed it to me.

‘My head was swimming, my limbs were leaden, my lips parched. In other words, I was in that painful condition which, I am given to understand, is sometimes called a ‘hangover’’’ - Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat.

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