I was jarred awake by a song, screeching at me. It took me a minute to realize it was coming from my phone. The song was Don't Stop the Party by Pitbull.
I bolted up in alarm.
What the fuck?! A party song?
Half-worried it was someone after my sandwich bag, I snatched it up and glanced down at Amanda’s phone number. My eyes narrowed, and I answered as menacingly as I could, consideri
ng my voice was thick with interrupted sleep.
“...Hello?”
“Morning, sunshine!”
“Mandi!” I fell back against the pillows with an exasperated sigh. Amanda. Of course. “If you could see my face right now, you would not call me Sunshine.”
She laughed brightly. “Oh, I didn’t wake you, now did I?” I could almost picture her mocking grin.
“You programmed in your own ringtone?” I asked accusingly.
“Yeah, do you like it? It’s about parties—I thought it’d make you laugh.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed my tangled hair out of my face. “Yeah, I got that. Where are you?”
“In the living room. I just came home for a minute to shower and change. And why is the living room a wreck? Did you have a party and not invite me?”
It took a few seconds for this to register. “Wait...what? You’re here? Why are you calling me then?”
My question was answered by a knock on the door as the line went dead. My face darkened like the dead.
Oh, that girl is going to pay for waking me up!
What followed was a rapid attempt to get dressed as the pounding on the door increased with persistent regularity. The sounds were soon echoed by Mrs. Wakowski’s morning Zumba.
“Come in, already!” I said.
“You’ve got a billionaire sitting on the torn and ripped up couch. A billionaire! How do we entertain one of those?” She let out a long chuckle. “And I told you we needed to invest in a couch cover. Maybe you should’ve listened to me.”
“Marcus is here? Now? This early? Shit!”
I cursed and seethed as I stumbled around, pulling on jeans and tugging a comb through my nest of hair as I tried to find a shirt. Damn laundry day! All I had left were scrubs and a few lonely “stuffed in the back of the dresser for sentimental reasons” shirts that I now perused with growing horror.
I smirked as I pulled a pink tee-shirt with a drunken unicorn over my head. A glance in the mirror across from the door made me visibly cringe, but what could I do? At least I was going to give him hell for waking me. And Amanda too!
I yanked open the door and walked into the living room. An outstretched mocha-chino softened those plans.
Marcus smiled. “Amanda told me to tell you that she’d see you later. She’s heading to Barry’s.”
“Oh, okay. You two woke me up,” I said.
“Well, hello to you too.”
“But you brought coffee, so you’re forgiven,” I said.
He glanced curiously around at the surrounding chaos.
“And before you ask. No, I wasn’t robbed.” I followed his gaze and bit my lip. In the bright light of day, the damage I’d done trying to find a suitable hiding place looked less forgivable than the night before. “If you must know, I was looking for a place to stash that envelope you gave me.”
He turned around cheerfully. “Let me guess. In a bag inside the freezer.”