“That wasn’t just a little kiss,” Spencer argues. “He’s into you. Colton doesn’t make a habit of claiming women publicly.”
Claiming me? What the fuck is he talking about? I’m not someone who can be claimed that easily. Hell, Nic’s been trying to claim me for months and isn’t even close to sealing that deal again. My brows furrow and I find myself looking back at Spencer. “He didn’t claim me. It was just a kiss on the dance floor. It meant nothing.”
“Uh-huh,” he says with a scoff, easily reading the lie as though I had it written across my forehead. “You keep telling yourself that, but what it comes down to is that you don’t know Colton the way that I do. You’re good for him.”
My eyes bug out of my head. “I’m … what?”
Spencer bounces his brows and gets up from the sunbed. “Just think about it, okay? I can see you’re into him and he needs someone like you to keep him grounded. Especially now that his mom and sisters aren’t around. It couldn’t be easy dealing with his old man every day. The kid is lonely and for some reason, your arrival here has managed to wake him up.”
Surely I’m not hearing him correctly.
Spencer turns to walk away but stops when a waitress appears by my side with a tray of champagne flutes and offers me one. “Miss,” she says with a polite nod of her head.
“Oh, thank you,” I say, taking it from her and lifting it to my lips, knowing I’m going to need more than a few of these to make it through the rest of my night. The girl stops by Spencer and offers him a glass but he respectfully declines and sends her on her way.
“Look,” he says, once we’re alone again. “You two would drive each other fucking insane and I’m not going to lie, you’d get a lot of hate from … well, everybody, but it would work.”
“Colton doesn’t strike me as a relationship kinda guy.”
“Oh,” Spencer laughs. “He’s not, but sometimes the best things to happen to us are the ones we didn’t know we needed.”
With that, he turns and walks away, leaving me to stew over every last word he just said. It also doesn’t go unnoticed that he offered no apology for the bullshit he’s put me through along with his friends since I came here but for some reason, I don’t seem to care. It seems so in the past now that it hardly matters. We’ve all moved on and are now entering this new stage of confusion.
I throw back what’s left in my glass and look back around me, searching for the waitress again. I could use a few more of these drinks, maybe a bottle would be nice.
I catch the eye of a waiter through the window of the staff quarters and hold up my empty glass. He comes rushing out with a new one and I thank him before asking him to keep them coming.
An hour passes when I decide it’s time to face the music. I still don’t know what I want to do but what I do know is that to miss this awesome party because I’m too busy sulking outside would be a tragedy.
I get to my feet and the second I straighten myself up, my head starts to spin.
Woah. I was not expecting that. How many of those fruity drinks did I have?
I look around for a towel to dry off my feet so I don’t ruin my dress and make it a pain to get my heels back on. I start walking toward the main part of the house, knowing there’s bound to be something in there but with every step I take, my head grows dizzier.
Why is it that you always feel extra drunk when you stand up? I have the same issue with tequila, though that’s usually after I’ve found the bottom of the bottle. I don’t think I drank quite that much though. I would have only had four glasses and it’s the fruity shit, nowhere near as strong as tequila.
I get to the back door and practically fall into it before struggling with the handle as my fingers begin to feel numb. What the hell is this? I keep trying, spying a chair just inside the door. If I could just sit for a minute, I’ll be alright. I just need this to pass. Maybe a few glasses of water and a little food will help sober me up. I just want to go back to the party even if it means avoiding Colton and spending my night pretending to be Milo’s girlfriend.
My eyes grow heavy and my knees become weak as I finally get the door to work, I pull it open and find myself stumbling through the open door. This isn’t right.