plastic bag as she cleaned up. “Just go home. It’s morning. The party’s over.”
“I have nothing on today. Want to hang out once the apartment’s clean?”
“Have you got a hearing problem? I said I don’t need your help.”
“Yeah, well, I’m going to help you anyway.”
“Good God, fine, help me if it’ll make you happy, but I’m not hanging out with you today. I have plans.”
“And what would those be?”
“Washing my hair.”
“You clearly just showered.”
“And you clearly haven’t. All the more reason for you to go home.”
Blake laughed deeply, like he was enjoying her prickliness. It got on my nerves. The bastard needed to leave Rose the fuck alone. Remembering that Alicia’s head was resting on my shoulder, but not quite remembering how it had gotten there, my stomach dropped. Rose would’ve clearly had to walk through the living area to get to the kitchen and seen us.
Fuck, this looked bad.
Shifting my body slightly, I stretched and slid away from my costar. When I stood from the couch and turned around, Rose was the first thing I saw. She was in the kitchen, wearing a pair of plastic gloves and collecting rubbish in a bin bag. Blake was just a few feet away from her, eyeing me with an indecipherable expression.
Rose gave me a weak smile. “Morning, sunshine. How’s your head?”
I rubbed at jaw. “Thumping. Can I use your bathroom?”
She nodded. “Yes, sure. There are some new toothbrushes under the sink if you’d like to use one.”
“Thank you,” I said, looking at Blake and then back to her.
As I headed off down the hallway, I heard him complain, “You didn’t offer me a toothbrush.”
“That’s because we aren’t friends,” Rose replied coldly. “Damon’s my friend.”
Her chilly response almost made my lips curve in a smile. In the bathroom I held my hands under the tap for a while, feeling grubby, before washing my face and brushing my teeth. I gave myself a sniff and found I didn’t smell too funky, so I thought I’d make do until I could get back to my place. When I emerged, everyone else had woken up. Iggy called good morning to me as Julian suggested we all head out to a nearby café for some breakfast.
“I haven’t finished cleaning yet,” said Rose as she pulled off her rubber gloves.
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll have Pippa come around while we’re out to spruce the place up.”
“Who’s Pippa?” Farrah enquired.
“His cleaning lady,” Rose answered with a hint of disapproval. “I try to tell him we don’t need some woman to clean the apartment when we’re perfectly capable of doing it ourselves, but he won’t listen.”
Julian held out his hands. “These fingers were made for far more important things than scrubbing toilets.”
Mostly everyone laughed, except for Alicia. She seemed determined to be cold with Julian, and I didn’t really understand why. She didn’t know what he did for a living, at least I thought she didn’t, so it couldn’t be that. Maybe he just rubbed her up the wrong way.
About twenty minutes later, we all left the apartment to complete the short walk to the café down the street. Along the way, I caught hold of Rose’s elbow. She glanced at me, letting some of the others pass until we were alone.
“What is it, Damon?” she asked. There was no annoyance or irritability in her voice, so maybe she already knew that my sleeping next to Alicia had been entirely innocent.
“I can’t remember falling asleep last night. I was drunk,” I said, hoping she got the underlying message. Christ, it felt like I was constantly trying to explain that my feelings toward Alicia were purely platonic – if that. I liked her well enough as a work colleague, but I didn’t see myself staying friends with her after the show closed.
Rose tugged her coat sleeves down over her wrists. I studied her face, free of makeup, and wondered if any woman had ever seemed so pretty to me.
“Oh, right. Well, I kind of flaked out on the party early. Sorry about that. After a while I just wasn’t really in the mood anymore, so I hid in my room and went to sleep.”
This news surprised me. “You slept through all that noise?”
She gave a slight shrug. “Earplugs are a wonderful invention.”
I nodded. “Well, just so you know, I didn’t intentionally sleep next to Alicia. I just woke up, and there she was.”
Rose’s eyes glittered with humour. “It sounds a little creepy when you put it like that.”
My lips twitched