going to kick his fucking ass.
Howie: Trust me, I’ll handle it.
He better fucking handle it, or else I will.
Anger still flooding my veins, I’m just about to type out that very message, but when the sounds of a ringing phone fill my ears, I pause and look around the room in confusion.
Then it dawns on me. Birdie’s phone.
Turning on my heel, I head back down the hallway and into the living room where her purse and shoes sit on my coffee table. Her ringing phone sits nestled inside, and once I pull it out, I spot Incoming Call Samantha flashing on the screen.
Pretty sure that’s her assistant…
In the name of privacy, I’m about to ignore the call, but I decide I probably need to let Birdie’s assistant know she’s safe.
With one tap to the screen, I answer it by the fourth or fifth ring.
“Hey, Samantha. It’s Andrew.”
“Um…hi?” she responds, confusion evident in her voice. “Why are you answering Birdie’s phone?”
“Well…it’s a funny story…” I pause, uncertain of how to break the news to her, but she’s quick to cut into my silence with a demand for information.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Well…Birdie might have inadvertently gotten a little high tonight, so in the name of keeping her safe, I brought her back to my place so she could sleep it off.”
“Birdie got high tonight?” she shrieks. “What are you talking about? There’s no way Birdie Harris, the woman I had to shove off to that party kicking and screaming, knowingly chose to do drugs.”
“Someone at the party gave her a brownie that happened to contain marijuana.”
“Are you kidding me?!”
“She’s fine,” I say, trying to bring some calm into the conversation. “Just sleeping it off now.”
“And you took it upon yourself to bring her back to your place instead of letting her driver take her home?” she questions, her hackles seemingly rising to new heights.
“Samantha, I swear to God, I’ve been nothing but a gentleman. If you would’ve seen just how fucked up she was, you wouldn’t have felt comfortable putting her into a car with some random driver.”
“And I swear to God, if anything happens to her, if you do anything to her, I will murder you,” she threatens. “Trust me, bucko, it won’t be a one-shot kill either. I will stretch out the pain for as long as I possibly can. Waterboarding will sound like a vacation, you understand me?”
“You have my word that nothing will happen to her.”
“Oh my God, she’s going to be so pissed tomorrow.”
“I know.” I shake my head and run a hand through my hair. “Trust me, I know.”
Yeah, I have a feeling I’m in for one hell of a morning tomorrow when Birdie wakes up…
Birdie
Waking up in an unfamiliar place and wondering how you ended up naked is generally not a good start to the day.
Seriously. What in the heck is happening right now?
I’m naked.
I’m in a bed I don’t recognize.
And, holy hell, my brain is trying to hack its way out of my skull. Who the heck gave that thing a machete?
I blink my eyes several times, sit up farther into the white pillows and bed frame behind me, and try like hell to figure out what happened last night. Glancing down at my bare boobs, I sigh heavily and proceed to look around the spacious bedroom that is most certainly not mine.
Holy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Did I have sex last night? Did I take Sam and Billie’s advice to heart and go home with some random guy from Howie’s party? Mother. Flipping. Flapjacks. Tell me I didn’t engage in a one-night stand I can’t even remember.
My stomach churns with the horrible possibilities, and I immediately start recounting how many glasses of champagne I consumed at the party.
One…
Two…
But when I stop counting at three, I’m incredibly confused. No way three glasses of champagne would get me so messed up I don’t remember anything.
I glance around the room some more, trying to find little hints of the owner of this unfamiliar bedroom. White comforter. White sheets. Gray walls. A walk-in closet that sits on the far end of the room and appears to connect to an even larger master bathroom.
This room is luxury and serenity, all wrapped up into one expensive price tag.
When I spot what look to be male-sized boots peeking out from behind the walk-in closet threshold, my stomach drops toward my feet even further. Unless I met a female friend with freakishly large feet last night and she let