Despite growing up together, Catherine Simmons and Mattis Reed were never close.
Cat was inseparable from Mattis' younger sister, Chloé, while he was busy running around on the football field.
But when Cat's new dream drags her across the country du...
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It's almost noon before I leave Mattis' place the next day.
I'd hoped to spend the morning making up for lost time, but really I spend it on his bathroom floor, splayed out on the cold tile, regretting all my decisions. I'd felt fine when we left the club last night. Hours of dancing had sobered me up considerably, but apparently not enough to avoid facing the consequences of my drinking.
They hit in the early morning hours when I had to rush to the bathroom to vomit up the nine-pack of nuggets Mattis ordered me last night after we got back and whatever amount of alcohol was left in my stomach.
It's been years since I had to fold myself over a toilet after a night out, but Mattis says it's a rite of passage when turning twenty-one. Allegedly, he'd been camped out on this very bathroom floor after his own birthday party a couple of years ago.
Despite my stomach being empty, nausea keeps rolling in, and several times I gag into the bowl, nothing my bile escaping.
Mattis sits beside me, holding my hair and rubbing my back. He puts my head in his lap when I lay back down, murmuring soothing nonsense at me.
After eating a pack of crackers Mattis had in his desk drawer and drinking water from the tap that doesn't threaten reappearance, I decide to head out.
Mattis protests, but he has practice later, and I want to head back to check on Ava. Also, for the sake of our sex life, I want to minimize the amount of time he watches me vomit.
I descend the stairs slowly, having to take a break halfway down to make the world stop spinning.
Damn, I'm too young for my hangovers to be this bad.
The house is quiet, and I wonder if its other inhabitants are also nursing splitting headaches. But as I pass the living room, I catch sight of a head of brown hair.
I change direction, stopping in the archway until Ethan looks up from the book he's reading.
For a moment, I want to chuck something at him. I'm dying from dehydration and mortification, and he's reading a freaking book?
When our eyes meet, though, I notice the dark circles under his eyes and how his mouth is tugging down at the corners, and I forgive him for his blatant display of cognitive surplus.
"Hi," he greets me, voice rough. He rests the book in his lap, eyes moving to the chair across from him. I follow directions, sitting down. "You're up late."
"Nah. We've been up for hours."
"TMI, Cat," he says, mouth twitching in an attempt at humor, but his delivery is flat, his heart not really in it.
Still, I force a smile. "I assure you, it was nothing so enjoyable. Apparently, drinking your weight in alcohol isn't actually good for you."
