Vegas Knot (✔️) | Love Travels #1

Two

I don't remember the walls in my room being this sickening shade of blue. I also don't remember my eyes feeling like they'd been stuck under a hair dryer for several hours, but they feel like sandpaper every time I peel them open. The bright light of the sun pounds through my head with each blink.

Where am I?

The clock on the wall ticks the time and I squint to see what is going on, reaching my hand up to shield my sore face from the offending light. My contacts seem to have fallen out in the night and my glasses are nowhere to be found.

A glint catches my eye when I reach my hand out from under the blanket to check the table for my glasses. Now my hands are joining the assault? That only feels fair given my extremely poor decisions last night. Alcohol and exes do not mix.

My head still pounds but a few more blinks make it possible to see the giant rock attached to my left ring finger a little more clearly. Even without corrective lenses, diamonds sparkle in the sun.

Finally my head catches up with what my eyes are taking in.

"What?" I shout, bolting upright from my place on what is clearly a poorly designed chaise, covered in a carpet my grandmother would have considered fashionable. Maybe.

A moan greets me from the other side of the room. "Whadyamean?" came a nearly incomprehensible groan.

Instinctively, I pull the blanket up around my fully-clothed abdomen and turn to face the sound, picking up a table lamp to yield as a weapon.

"Who are you?" I shout, looking toward the lump on the floor beside the bed.

"Enrique Calderón," the disembodied voice replies. "Who are you?"

"Oh, this is very funny." Standing up only makes my head pound worse as the room spins around me, pale blues mixing with gaudy orange and royal purple. "Where did I put my phone? This is just hilarious. I get drunk one time and my friends prove exactly why I can never get drunk."

"Are you okay?" The man fumbles to his feet and I can't quite make out his facial features, but his suit reminds me of something from last night, though the memory is foggy, like I'm looking through a sheet of dirty plastic wrap.

"Look, I'm sure you were paid very well to be here and play the role, but you can stop now, okay? I figured them out. This was hilarious but I'm going to go... anywhere else, actually. It was lovely to meet you—"

"Enrique."

"It was lovely to meet you, Enrique, but I'm going to go now."

The paisley pattern of the carpet runner feels uneven under my bare feet, and the door resists my opening it. Like my friends had put a weight in it just to keep me in this room with my pretend husband. I could just hear them now: 'Oh, Bianca, did you enjoy your Vegas experience?'

The thought nearly brought up the contents of my stomach, bile stinging the back of my throat. Gross.

When the door finally yields, Enrique is still groaning from the living area and asking 'what is going on?' on repeat. Like he doesn't know.

Maybe he didn't expect me to behave that way.

Must be nice.

The hallway spins beneath my feet, too, and I crash into an alcove, nearly knocking a golden frame off the wall and stumbling over a large wooden... something at the end of the hallway.

"Where am I?"

I only realize I've said it out loud when an elderly couple dressed like they're on a Caribbean cruise answer me. "Can we help you, dear? You're in The Golden Sphinx Hotel and Casino. Do you want us to call someone for you?"

That's a grandma, right there. I know an overbearing mother when I see one. "No, thanks. I'm good."

I am decidedly not good. The floor is spinning, my head is full of bees, and my whole body is in pain from what I can only assume is what a hangover feels like.

That, and I'm not in my own hotel.

My friends aren't usually the type to go this far for a prank, and I might have to kill them. Once I find them.

But a few fumbled attempts later, it is clear that my phone is not merely locked or turned off. It is completely dead.

"That's great. That's just great!"

"What are you doing?" Enrique has, of course, reappeared to make my day better.

"I'm getting out of here to go kill my friends," I answer. "It's the least I can do after they left my drunk self in a strange hotel with a paid husband."

"A what?" His hands flit around his body, trying to locate something of great importance and his eyes widen.

"That seems to have sobered you up quickly. Not used to playing the drunken Vegas husband? Well, that makes sense. I mean, look at you. You probably get all the bachelorette parties."

"I'm not an actor. I'm not... I'm not even from Vegas. Where am I?"

"What do you mean where are you?"

There is a rock in my stomach that wasn't there a moment ago. It drags me down toward the floor and I resist, standing taller than I ever have before. "I said 'what do you mean, where are you?'"

"I mean the last thing I remember is being at my friend's bachelor party and then I woke up to you shouting at me. Not very nice, by the way, when a guy has a hangover."

Without thinking, I shove my left hand into his face. "Don't you think you deserved it after you did this? Not a funny prank."

"I didn't do that!"

"If you aren't an actor, and you didn't put a ring on my hand, why is it there?" The floor shifts again and I have to hold onto the wall for support.

"How am I supposed to know? You woke up in my hotel room, not the other way around."

"I wasn't asking you for an answer. It was rhetorical."

He says something I can't hear through the pounding in my head and I do the only thing I can think of that makes sense. I stumble out the front doors of the hotel and onto the strip. Eyes foggy from exhaustion and lack of glasses, I still manage to follow the grandiose facade of The Royal Madrid Hotel where I was when I last remember anything.

My friends better have a damn good explanation for this.

The hot sun beats down on me and the cars speed by, the heat of the day already setting in despite the early hour. Or, what I think is an early hour.

When I finally crawl through the doors of the hotel, I can no longer see straight. Blasted with a sudden burst of cold air, I'm greeted by Lorena. "Oh my God, Bianca! We were about to call the cops! Where were you?"

"I was—" The room darkens around me and I hear a faint voice shouting for a medic and some water.

"Bianca? Bianca!" 

♤ ♥ ♤