Ethereal

Chapter 2: Heaven Sent

She stayed in her room for a moment longer, tried to calm down; after fixing her face and hair to the best of her abilities, she finally returned downstairs. Sarah frowned at her, eyes moving over her in confusion, stopping on her hair.

"What happened to your..."

"It was a bit loose, so I took it down." She looked around sheepishly, to her relief not seeing Bradley anywhere. In her normal state Sarah would never have let the matter slide that easily but now she was both pleasantly intoxicated and very much enjoying chatting with Matt, whom she shared a birthday with, so she seemed to accept the explanation.

"Hey, we were thinking we should combine the parties tomorrow! That would be so much fun."

"Uh..." Stefani turned her attention back to the brunette. "Combine how, exactly?"

"Well, Matt said that there's twelve guys coming to his party, so do you think they could join us, wherever it is we are going in the evening?"

She glanced at Matt, his face looking very eager, chuckled a little. "Sure. Why not? I'll sort it out, but I'm not telling either of you where we're going so you'll just have to be happy with whatever happens."

"I'm really looking forward to it." He jumped up and hugged her. "Thank you so much, Gaga. And it's truly an honour to meet you."

"Please, it's Stefani." She spotted Bradley now, from the corner of her eye, swallowed, tried to quickly come up with an excuse to leave but then he was there already, blue eyes seeming to burn a hole into her.

"Hey Matt, I think I'm going to head up. I'm a bit tired; see you tomorrow?"

Matt rolled his eyes playfully. "If you must."

He nodded, looking quite serious for some reason, turning to her and holding out his hand. "It was nice to meet you; have a good evening."

She stared for a moment, shocked; after everything that had just happened between them, he was seriously going to shake her hand? She took it nevertheless, then felt something pressed against her palm. A piece of paper.

"Yeah, you too."

He nodded at Sarah and left, the brunette looking after him for a moment, then at Stefani. "What the heck was that?"

"How should I know," she muttered, tightly holding onto the piece of paper. Matt shrugged, stood and pulled Sarah up.

"Let's go out. Come on, Stefani; all the others have gone already."

"Um..." She bit her lip, managed to think sensibly enough to know that if she refused now, right after Bradley had headed upstairs, Sarah and Matt would probably successfully put two and two together, even when somewhat tipsy. "I'll head over later, okay? Text me where you'll be; I have a feeling Bobby's working upstairs, so I'll go see if he wants to come."

"Okay then. See you there." Sarah hugged her tightly; she watched them make their way out, then opened her palm, looking at the small piece of paper, a number written on it.

27065

Startling, she realized it had to be his room number, on the same corridor as hers, obviously, not even very far away. She closed her palm again, swallowed, like in a trance making her way to the elevators, snapping out of her stupor when a couple of fans approached her, asking for autographs and Stefani pulled a smile onto her face; she never ignored her fans.

She headed to Bobby's room, where he was indeed working, typing something on his computer with a frown on his face so Stefani determinedly closed the lid and confiscated the machine, reminding him they were there to have fun; Sarah messaged over the name of a hip new club just then so she sent her grumbling manager there with a couple of friends, took the laptop to her own room for safekeeping. She sat motionless on her bed for a while, staring out of the window at the gorgeous view over the Strip, trying to make up her mind. It was as though some kind of a force was trying to push her into Bradley's room, but common sense tried to prevail, tried to remind her she wasn't available; she didn't know what his relationship status was but it was quite unlikely there would be no one, not for a man with his looks and status.