“Good-bye,” I said in a way that could easily be translated to “fuck off.” I closed the door with Xavier on the other side and leaned up against it with the towels and water in my arms. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I banged my head back against the door at the mess I’d made with Ian.
“He told me,” I heard.
“What?” I dropped the towels and water.
“He told me what happened at the pier.”
“What?” I opened the door again. “He told you what I—What did he say?”
Xavier widened his eyes on the threshold, begging to enter the room
“Whatever.” I poked my head out of the doorway and looked up and down the hallway before pulling him into my room. “Oh my God. What did he tell you?”
“Just that you tried to break up the wedding. Stop him from marrying the woman of his dreams.”
“She’s not the—He said all that?”
“Oh, and that he doesn’t want you to come to the wedding.”
“Has he told anyone else?”
“I don’t think so. Definitely not Scarlet. Look, it’s not as bad as you think,” Xavier said rather unconvincingly.
“I knew I shouldn’t have done it. Fucking Journey! Feelings! Fuck all that shit!” I was circling the room, toddling and stumbling, looking for nothing but my right mind.
“Whoa, hold up now!” Xavier had picked up the things I’d dumped on the floor and arranged them on the nightstand. “Calm down. You’re getting all worked up. Let’s get you back in bed.”
“Bed?” I resisted Xavier’s arms pulling me to the bed, but I was still a little dizzy and drained.
He took one of the towels and went into the bathroom.
“What are you doing in there?” I tried to get up to see what was going on, but Xavier came back out with a wet towel in his hand and forced me back down. He sat on the edge of the bed beside me, plumped the pillow beneath my head, and pulled the blanket up over my chest.
“I can’t believe I did this,” I said. “Ian’s going to hate me forever.”
“Not forever. He doesn’t have the heart to hate anyone forever.”
Xavier helped me to a sip of water from the bottle and slid the wet towel onto my forehead. The coolness immediately made a clanking in my brain subside.
“He gets emotional sometimes, but it’ll pass. You know our boy,” Xavier added.
“No. I’ve never seen him so angry. He was serious. He doesn’t want to see me again,” I said.
“Come on, he didn’t mean that. He can’t get through today without you. You know that. You’re his best friend,” Xavier said so softly I almost forgot who he was.
“But he said he didn’t want me to—”
Xavier placed his index finger over my lips. “You get better. I’ll talk to him. He listens to me.”
“I don’t know. I’m just so embarrassed,” I said when he moved his finger. “I can’t go through this alone. Even if no one else knows, I’ll feel like they all do. They’re all laughing at me. After that crazy toast? Uggh!”
“No one will be laughing at you, Rachel,” Xavier said. “Because I’ll be with you.”
“With me?”
“Maybe you could be my date.”
“Be your date?”