“Okay, calm down,” she answers, laughing. “I’m going to make us something to eat. But I figured I should get everything ready to go first so I can leave bright and early tomorrow morning.”
My heart stops thumping in my chest. “What do you mean?”
She gives me a quizzical look. “Well, I’m not sure when you have to get back to Nashville, but I promised my cousin I’d definitely be there for her New Year's Eve party after skipping out on Christmas. So, I need to head home first thing in the morning to get some real clothes that aren’t Christmas pajamas, and you know, check on everything there.”
“I mean, what do you mean you need to leave first thing tomorrow,” I clarify. “Tomorrow isn’t New Year's Eve.”
She looks at me like I'm crazy. “How much weed did you smoke before you ran out? It totally is.”
“Weed doesn't work that way. It doesn't make you lose time,” I bite out.
But I'm not grumpy because of the accusation. I'm grumpy because that’s exactly what happened. I lost time. I lost time even though there aren't any drugs in my system. No drugs, except for her. She's the drug. She's the addiction that made me lose track of time.
And now she’s preparing to leave.
“Here's your jacket, by the way,” she says, holding it up. “And there was something in the pocket. I wasn't sure if you needed it. It looks like some kind of pills or maybe candy.”
She holds up a little plastic bag filled with four purple pills with skulls stamped on the front.
I roll my eyes. “My friend Rowdy must have slipped that into my pocket without telling me. It’s just Molly.”
Her eyes widen. “You mean Molly? Like ecstasy? The party drug? For real?”
“Yeah,” I answer. But the way she asked me those questions makes me cock my head. “Have you never done MDMA before?”
She winces. “I’ve always been kind of curious about party drugs, I guess. I don't know much about Molly, if I'm being honest. But I've heard it makes sex, erm...kind of cool, maybe.”
She peeps up at me in that weirdly innocent way of hers. “Is that true?”
I shift from foot to foot. And that strange guilt I’ve been experiencing every time I think about all the other women I’ve slept with comes back over me again.
But I answer her truthfully. “I wouldn't know. I do Molly. And I do sex. But I don't do them together.
“Oh.” She considers my words like she’s adding up a math problem. Then she guesses, “For the same reason you don't let women drink too much around you. I get it.”
She turns back to packing. “Well, have fun with that Molly, whenever you decide to take it. All alone. And you know what, I’ll make us something to eat first. Then I’ll finish packing after lunch. We should probably take it a lot easier today anyway.”
She gets it. Good…I think.
But instead of wrestling with her that morning, I wrestle with my inner turmoil.
The dead feeling never came. And there’s still a lot of stuff I didn't get to do to her. Handcuffs and rope. Blindfolds and edging.
But I grit my teeth and tamp down the urge to tell her that.
She's right. This has gone on too long. We both need to get back to the real world.
Especially me.
There are probably a million messages from my team waiting on the phone I haven’t checked in days, wondering where the hell I’ve been.
I start to leave, but then she says, “Griff?”
And I immediately turn back around to answer her instead of finding my phone. “Yeah?”
“Okay, I know this is going to sound crazy,” she says with a cute little wince. “But since we’ve been breaking all your other rules this holiday season, do you mind breaking one more? For me?”
I wake up with a start. There's a furnace at my front and cold at my back. What the hell?
I open my eyes to the sight of a bunch of red hair. Cherry-red hair. And beyond that…the lake.
I’m lying underneath a couple of blankets on the cabin’s dock with my arms wrapped around Red.
Again. What. The. Hell?
Why would I sleep outside in the dead of winter? How did we even get out here—
Memories of the night before cut off that question.
Taking the Molly after lunch…downing it with a bottle of champagne. Then came all the great ideas we had after that.
We decided we should make our own New Year’s Eve party. Who cared if it was December 30th?
There was dancing…lots and lots of dancing. First inside, with The Darkness playing at full blast…then outside wrapped in blankets, both of us singing along with Justin Hawkins under the full moon.
“You sound so good! Amazing! What the heck? Why didn’t you tell me you could sing so well?”