Page 53 of The Heartbreakers
Scrambling out of my seat, I pulled it from my back pocket in hopes that it was a text from Cara. But it wasn’t. I’d received a message from the bank informing me that a transfer had been made to my account—my first payment from Paul. I heaved a sigh and dropped back down into the chair.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Oliver asked. He squatted down so we were at eye level with one another and fixed his sparkly blue gaze on me. After two days of acting distant and stiff, his abrupt change to the funny, caring guy I met in Chicago made me pause.
“I—it’s nothing,” I said, turning my cell phone over in my hands.
Oliver shot me a doubtful look, but his eyes were tender. “It doesn’t seem like nothing.”
“I’m fine,” I said and forced a smile. “Just a little homesick, that’s all. I uploaded my first post for the blog today, and I wanted to tell Cara and Drew about it, but neither of them are answering.”
“Homesick, huh?” Oliver ran a finger back and forth across his lips as he thought. After a few seconds he said, “I think I have a solution.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
Unless Oliver could suddenly make my siblings appear, it was highly unlikely he could actually come up with something that could pull me out of this mood. However, it was sweet, if not totally unexpected, of him to want to do something to make me feel better.
He grinned at me then, and it was the type of smile that made me fear what was going to be said next. “A party.” His delivery was filled with the type of excitement I’d come to expect from JJ when he came up with a really awful idea.
“A party,” I repeated. I could write an entire book on why that was a bad idea.
“Yeah, to cheer you up.” He lightly touched my shoulder, and I was so amazed by the gesture after his cold attitude that I looked down at his hand. He pulled away quickly and added, “You should be celebrating.”
The word “no” was perched on my lips. I wasn’t in a party mode, and there was no way loud music, a crowded room full of people I didn’t know, and alcohol were going to change that. Before I could tell him that, Oliver stood up and turned to the rest of the guys, who were still discussing the ketchup-eating contest.
“Hey,” he shouted and clapped his hands to get their attention. “What do you guys think about throwing a party to celebrate Stella’s first blog post?”
Xander, Alec, and JJ looked back and forth at each other before simultaneously nodding their heads in agreement.
“I think one of my good DJ friends is in town,” Alec said and pulled out his phone. “Let me see if he’s free.”
“We need champagne!” Xander said, pushing his glasses up in place on his nose. “Lots and lots of champagne!”
“Guys,” I said, “I don’t need a party.”
JJ pointed a finger at me. “Don’t even try talking yourself out of this one, Stella. You promised, remember?”
He had me there. “I’m not much of a party person,” I said anyway. Of course, I’d never been to a real party so I didn’t know for sure.
“I have a solution.” JJ disappeared into the kitchen. He returned a minute later with a bottle of something clear and two shot glasses. “You need to loosen up.”
“I don’t know,” I said hesitantly. Was his solution always booze?
“Come on, Bear. Tonight will be a blast if you let it be,” he said as he poured a drink for both of us.
Again, I was about to say no, but then I thought back to my fight with Cara; she wanted me to take this job so I could live my life, have fun, that sort of thing. Maybe this was my chance to make up for all that lost time in high school that I always wanted but never really had.
“Fine,” I said and gave in, “but I better not regret this.”
JJ only grinned and picked up his shot. “To a night we will never forget,” he said, clinking his glass to mine.
“A night we’ll never forget.”
• • •
I cracked open my eyes, and the bright morning sunlight blinded me.
“What the hell?” I grumbled, sitting up in bed. My head was pounding; my hair was a knotted mess; and my mouth tasted like alcohol. I tried to remember what had happened last night, but all I could come up with was a big black blank. When someone groaned and rolled over next to me, I yelped and grabbed a pillow for defense. Lying at my side was a boy, and he had the familiar brown waves of Oliver Perry.
“Holy shit.” I scrambled out of bed.
