I’d been so angry. So fed up. So done with his shit.
Then…
Nothing.
I remembered nothing else from that moment on. No lucidity, no blurred visions, not even a whisper of how I got home buried deep in my mind somewhere, waiting for me to dig it out. I only knew one thing with any degree of certainty: Henry Cohen was a prized prick, and I’d just about had enough of him after only two days.
With a shove of my bedsheets, I got out of bed and marched into Bailey and Rhea’s shared bedroom, wearing nothing but mypink pyjama shorts and camisole. Their curtains were still closed when I got there, so I yanked them open with a dramatic flair, letting the stream of sunlight pour into the room.
“What the hell, Phoebe,” Rhea grunted, throwing her arm over her eyes.
Bailey slept with a silk eye mask on every night, and she slowly raised her head and pushed the mask up off one eye, taking a slow blink in my direction before she let the mask fall back down and her head hit the pillow again. “This had better be good,” she groaned sleepily.
“Someone had better be dying, you mean,” Rhea countered.
“Someoneisdying,” I said in a rush. “Me.”
They both sat upright in their beds, Rhea squinting against the harsh light, Bailey pushing her sleep mask up to rest on the top of her head before she rubbed at one eye.
“Okay, that sounded worse than I meant it to,” I said, holding up both hands as the girls stared at me in confusion. “I’m not actually dying; I’m just dying inside over what happened last night. I’m trying to piece this shit together, but my mind won’t work properly, and I can’t remember things after a certain point.”
“That’s because you were wasted,” Rhea grumbled, falling back onto her bed with a thump and closing her eyes.
“How… wasted?”
Bailey sighed. “You were behaving like a regular twenty-three-year-old. You were carefree. There’s nothing wrong with that, despite what dickhead Rob drilled into your head for far too long. It’s not illegal to enjoy yourself, you know. You don’t always have to be ‘ladylike’”, she said, mimicking Rob’s demeaning tone on the last word.
“I know that. I do. But why do I remember Henry arguing with you two after I’d been dancing with that guy last night?”
Rhea turned on her pillow to glance at Bailey—a silent conversation passing between them.
Bailey sat up straighter, patting her hands down on her crisp, white bed sheets. “Let’s just say Cohen seemed awfully concerned about your wellbeing for someone who pretends his face doesn’t know how to smile.”
“Pretty sure there’s no pretending involved there. His looks are wasted on his personality.”
“Phoebe, you’ve heard of boys pulling the pigtails of the ones they want, right?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
She raised her brow at me and waited.
“Seriously. I… woah.” I glanced between Bailey and Rhea, who were both looking at me now expectantly, and my heart pounded heavier in my chest. They thought Cohenlikedme? I released a nervous laugh. “No. No way. Absolutely not.”
“He couldn’t stop staring at you, Bee,” Rhea said. “All night. Wherever you went, his eyes followed.”
“That’s because I irritate the shit out of him, Rhea. He literally cannot stand me.”
“Can’t stand you, or can’t stand what you do to him?”
“What the hell do I do to him?”
“Make him want something he probably thinks he can’t or shouldn’t have. It’s always one or the other with brooding guys like him.”
There came that barely-there laugh again, masking the way my stomach swirled with a modicum of excitement at the mere thought of Henry wanting me like that. It couldn’t be true. I didn’t even want it to be true, did I?
No men. No men. No men.
But then I remembered the way he’d looked at me on that beach while I danced, the way his teeth sank into his bottom lip, the intensity in his gaze.
