Page 54 of The Heartbreakers
AmIstilldreaming?For the next minute I stood by the nightstand in hopes that, if I opened and closed my eyes enough times, Oliver would disappear.
No such luck.
Eventually I accepted that I was, in fact, awake, and my heart stopped racing. Then I realized that Oliver wasn’t wearing a shirt, and my heart jumped right back to pounding. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t look away from the dip of spine between his shoulder blades and the lean muscle of his back.
Then a horrible thought crossed my mind and my eyes went wide.Ididn’t sleep with him, did I?Thankfully, I was still wearing all my clothes from the other day…but what about Oliver?
“Please don’t be naked. Please don’t be naked,” I chanted as I lifted the sheets. I let out a sigh of relief when I spotted jeans with a bit of boxer hanging out over the top. Hopefully that meant we hadn’t done anything. There was no way that I wanted to lose my virginity to a rock star. How clichéd would that be?
So what did happen? If I slipped out of the room before Oliver got up, I could save myself the embarrassment of trying to answer that question, but I also knew that I would have to face him sooner or later. Better to rip off the bandage now. Leaning over the bed, I poked Oliver on the back.
“Hey.” He didn’t move, so I poked him harder. “Hey, Oliver. Wake up.”
“Not now, JJ. I’m watchingTheVampireDiaries!” he muttered, clearly still asleep.
“Wow, that’s embarrassing.”
Oliver rolled over again, and I burst out laughing. Someone had drawn a pair of round glasses around his eyes and a lightning bolt on his forehead. Scribbled across his bare chest were the words “Harry Perry, the boy who passed out.”
“Stella?” he asked, my laughter finally rousing him from his sleep. He rubbed his eyes, which smeared the marker on his face, giving him what looked like two black eyes. “What’s so funny?”
I bit back a smile. “Nothing, Harry Perry.”
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“Maybe you should go look in the mirror.”
Oliver frowned at my response and climbed out of bed. Wanting to see his reaction to his reflection, I followed him, and when he pulled open the bathroom door, a white blur flew at our heads. We both ducked.
“What the hell!” I exclaimed. “Was that a… chicken?” I glanced around the bedroom wondering if I was still drunk, but sure enough, one very large bird was flapping around on the bed.
“Yup,” Oliver said as he grinned. “Must have been a killer party.”
As ifthatcould explain the farm animal in the hotel room.
We found JJ curled up on the floor in the bathroom. He was wearing a bra over the top of his shirt, and his arms were wrapped around a life-sized cardboard cutout. I stepped over his legs to get a better look. It was a cardboard cutout of himself.
“Oh God, where’s your camera?” Oliver asked. “This is priceless.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” I said, which was a little worrisome. I had no clue where my camera wasorwhat happened last night. Before I could give it much thought, my foot connected with something solid and I almost tripped. It was a glass bottle, and it rolled away, clinking across the tiled floor until it hit the far wall.
“What’s with all the champagne bottles?” I asked when I noticed a collection of them resting at the edge of the bathtub.
Oliver didn’t answer. He walked over to the tub and peered over the edge. Inside was a bubbly, light-yellow liquid. “Brilliant,” he said, shaking his head in amazement. “Just brilliant.”
“You’re not going to think that when you look in the mirror,” I said, but to my surprise, when Oliver saw what had been scribbled all over him, he let out a deep laugh. I looked at him in disbelief. If someone had done that to me, I would be fuming.
“It’s pretty clever,” he told me.
“It’s going to be a pain to get off,” I pointed out.
He shrugged. “As long as I can scrub it off in a bath full of champagne, I’ll be happy.”
We tried to shake JJ awake, but he swatted our hands away and refused to open his eyes. Leaving him on the floor, we decided to inspect the rest of the penthouse to see the extent of the party’s damage. Out in the hallway, the floor was littered with red Solo cups, and it looked like a disco ball had exploded. Glitter covered everything.
I gasped when we walked into the living room. If I hadn’t known about the party, I would have guessed a bomb went off. Most of the furniture was tipped over, and a pair of pants was hanging off the ceiling fan. Someone had TP’d the place with different-colored party streamers, and one of the walls was splattered with a red substance that looked like blood, but I had a hunch it was ketchup left over from our contest.
And in the middle of it all was Xander.
