"Are these the only ones you have?" I demanded and then, when he didn't immediately reply, I rapped him on the head with the box and asked again.
"Yes, you psycho, those are the only ones I have," he moaned, glaring up at me balefully through bloodshot eyes. "We used yours last night because you kept going on about how mine would probably be as dysfunctional as everything else about me."
Well, that did sound like me.
"So we had..." I trailed off, unable to finish such a horrible sentence.
"Sex." He seemed to have no such compunction.
"Sex, right," I repeated, somehow hoping within repetition lay understanding.
"Three times."
"Three...what?" I gaped at him and then looked hurriedly away as I realised I was staring at his nakedness. Gaze now on the floor, my eyes spied a sparkle of silver and I realised, with mounting hysteria, that he was right. There were two more wrappers on the floor.
"Why?" I asked in disbelief. "Why would I have sex with you once, let alone three times?"
"Because I'm really good," there was a laugh behind his cocky tone and I knew it was at my expense, "and with me three is a guarantee."
"Shut up, you're going to make me sick again." I sank down onto the edge of the mattress and put my head in my hands, only to shoot back up again as something occurred to me.
"We didn't get married or anything, did we?"
"What?" He didn't even bother to hide the laugh this time. "No we didn't get married, what the hell kind of drunken hook ups have you been having?"
"None, that's the point!" My voice rose to a screech and I was gratified to see him wince. "Put some clothes on," I added crossly as his readjustment drew my eyes and I found myself staring at all he was exposing again.
"What's the problem? It's not anything you haven't seen before," he pointed out and this further reminder of what we'd done the night before was too much.
I grabbed the pillow nearest me and smacked it hard into his face. "You're such a creep!" I hissed as I drew it back to hit him again. "What happened last night? Why on earth did I sleep with you?"
As I swung at him again, he snatched the pillow easily from my grasp and threw it off the other side of the bed. I thought he would be smirking as cockily as ever after he disarmed me, but when his face was revealed, his expression was oddly...enigmatic.
"So you don't remember anything about last night?" He asked slowly so I didn't miss the emphasis on 'anything'. I felt my spine stiffen with unease and gingerly poked my sore brain again only to come up with the same blank. "You don't know why you came over here? You've really got nothing?" Elliot pushed, sitting up straighter and suddenly looking extremely interested in my answer.
Somewhat taken aback by his intensity, I watched him carefully as I confirmed that, yes, I really had nothing.
A moment passed during which he seemed to be assessing whether I was telling the truth or not. I don't know what his conclusion was, but a slow smile spread across his blandly good-looking face until he was flat out grinning at me, showing all his orthodontia-assisted straight teeth. Needless to say, I found this seriously unnerving.
"Cut it out and fill me in as you obviously seem to know," I said grumpily, feeling the more exposed for not knowing what had gone on last night, even though he was the naked one.
"Not a chance," he laughed.
"What? Are you serious?" I asked, watching his face and seeing that, despite the big smile, he was. "That's...that's awful!" I spluttered. "You can't do that. That's completely…" I tilted my head to one side and eyed him suspiciously as he continued to look ridiculously pleased at my amnesiac state. Well, as pleased as the severely hung-over can look. "Why are you so glad I don't know? What did you do to me last night?"
His smile faltered and there was a weird pause before he said, in a carefully neutral tone, "What are you suggesting?"
I was mystified by the change in him, but then, as I finally caught on to what he thought I was accusing him of, I let out a frustrated sigh. "Oh, calm down," I said dismissively. "You're many things, Elliot Sinclair, but a rapist is not one of them."
"What a ringing endorsement," he said sarcastically and then, when I continued to look at him pointedly, he continued, "Fine, you want to know what happened last night? Here it is, you turned up, we cleared out my liquor cabinet," he nodded his head in the direction of a disturbing cluster of empty bottles by the side of the bed, "and then I rocked your world. Three times. What more is there to know?"
"Um, everything," I snapped. "Like, why did I come here in the first place?"
He snorted again. "Don’t ask me to fathom your motivations, Rox. Budge up, I need a slash."
"No!" I said incredulously. "No, I will not 'budge up', you have to tell me everything that happened last night."
"No I don't," he said dismissively, putting his hands on my waist and pushing me gently to one side so he could get off the bed and move past me towards the bathroom. "I'm not the one who got so drunk I've blacked out last night, this one's on you."
"Oh, you sanctimonious...!" I yelled after him, stopping as my head pointed out that it was still very sore and that such loud noises didn't do it any good.
All I got in reply was a soft chuckle and then the sound of him starting to relieve himself. Charming.
Tears of confusion and outrage suddenly pricked at my eyes and I blinked furiously, trying to clear them before Elliot returned and laughed at me some more.
It was just that I'd never even remotely been in this position before, and it was freaking me out. To think there was a period of several hours simply missing from my memory was horrible. I could remember saying goodbye to my roommate, Abigail, as she went off to her waitressing job, and looking forward to a rare afternoon and evening on my own, but after that there was nothing but emptiness.
I allowed myself another moment to wallow in discomfit and then made a big effort to pull myself together. There was no going back in time, I told myself crossly, I'd done what I'd done so I suppose I just had to deal with it. Irritating as Elliot undisputedly was, there was no way I would have been unsafe with him, so I held no real fear over what had gone down last night, just a whole bucket-load of curiosity.
It would come back to me, I continued to reassure myself; things would remind me of what had happened and it would be fine. I was not going to beg Elliot for information. At that point, wrapped in a sheet and with a seriously ugly hangover, my pride was already taking a beating; I couldn't sacrifice more of it.
I found my clothes crumpled by the side of the bed and pulled them on quickly, noting that they were the track pants and tank top I'd been slouching around in back at my room. Although I looked all over the poncy, minimalist flat, I couldn't find a bra, jacket or even socks of mine. The only other thing that belonged to me was the pair of sandshoes jumbled on top of each other near the door. I'd left my place in a hurry then, not bothering to do anything but tug a pair of shoes on. I logged that piece of information away, seeing it as the first of many puzzle pieces to come.
Determined to find some more clues, I shot a hasty look over at the bathroom where it sounded like Elliot was now brushing his teeth, and started to prowl around. There honestly wasn't much to prowl through, though, it being a studio flat everything was pretty much out on show. After a desultory check through his DVD collection (wisely avoiding the box marked ‘games’ in the back corner as it most certainly contained porn) and a quick look under his couch, I spied a small desk tucked into the corner. Elliot's laptop was perched perilously on top of a pile of his uni books and there was a filing cabinet nestled underneath.
I gave a cursory glance to the corkboard hanging above the desk, noting the various photos of Elliot and his rich buddies wasting their parents' money in a variety of unsanitary looking ways, but then focused on the cabinet. Out of the top drawer I could just see a crumpled corner of paper that, in my girl-wonder-detective frame of mind, looked like it had been shoved there in a hurry. My curiosity
piqued, I reached over to pull it out. To be honest, I couldn't see how it could relate to my current situation, but I always did enjoy a good snoop, it had been the major perk of working alongside my mum at the Sinclair household.
"Rifle around in these drawers all you like, Rox," I felt something soft land on my hair and reached up to pull down a pair of cotton boxer briefs, "but try and stay out of the others."
I chucked the pants away in disgust and whirled around to see Elliot leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. I was relieved to see he'd at least pulled some jeans on, even if he had just thrown his underwear at my head.
"I wasn't rifling," I said snootily...and completely untruthfully. "I was just looking around to see if anything jogged my memory because someone won't tell me what happened last night."
"Yeah, yeah," he said dismissively, clearly bored by my continued complaints. "Here." He crossed to the fridge and retrieved a bottle of water before passing it and a pack of painkillers across to me. "Do you want a lift back?"
I downed a couple of pills and knocked them back with the water before eying him suspiciously over the rim of the bottle. What was with the sudden nice guy act? Did he think he could charm me out of pestering him about last night?
I was all set to refuse his offer, but then I saw a way to glean a bit more information and I asked carefully, "Why? How did I get here last night?"
His smirk told me he knew exactly what I was doing, but he clearly decided to throw me a bone as he replied, "You ran."
"I ran?" I repeated, mentally tracing the path I must have taken between my dingy residential hall room and his swanky off-campus flat. Wow, that was a really long way; I must be fitter than I thought.
"Yeah, you obviously couldn't wait to get your hands on me," he said, as if he was anxious to get a high score on the ‘obnoxious meter’ that morning. "So, do you feel up to the return jog this morning?"
I really, desperately wanted to tell him yes, but I was well aware that my body was starting to, embarrassingly, point out that you didn't have sex three times in one night without getting a few aches here and there on top of my hangover. Yeah, come to think of it, I wasn't sure I could walk back across the room, let alone campus.
Ah, geez.
"You know I'm not," I said through gritted teeth. "And so, yes, I would like a lift back." I bit at the inside of my cheek in frustration and then added inelegantly, "Please."
I wasn't looking at him, but I could feel his smirk.
We were silent as we got in the lift and travelled down to the car park; he'd kind of taken the wind out of my sails with the whole 'giving me a lift home' trick. Obviously his intention.
As we emerged into the garage, I automatically looked around for Elliot's unbelievably expensive car. I even readied myself to start thinking of all the things I could have done with the money that had been spent on just one vehicle, as I always did, but I couldn't see it. In fact it looked like Elliot was heading towards a nondescript red sedan.
That couldn't be...
I didn't finish the thought as it was made redundant by the small beep and flash of the lights as Elliot remotely unlocked the unfamiliar car.
"What's this?" I demanded as I crossed over and tapped a hand on the exceptionally ordinary boot. That it even had a boot was weird, the car Elliot had been given for his 18th birthday was extremely passenger and luggage unfriendly. When I'd commented on it he'd said that there was room for his wallet and a girl and he had no need for anything else. Yeah, revolting, hey?
He looked at me steadily. "My car," he said flatly, although there was the tiniest flicker of what looked like satisfaction at the corners of his mouth.
"No it's not," I disagreed. "Your car is a tiny, evil looking silver thing that cost as much as some people's houses. I was there when you got it; you actually looked at your mother like you didn't hate her for a whole 10 seconds, that's not something I'm likely to forget."
The flicker flashed into a full on smile, but then it was gone and he was poker faced again. "That one's gone. I got sick of everybody scratching it."
He got in the unfamiliar car and I forced myself out of my stunned stupor and into the passenger side as he started the engine with a roar.
"But you loved those scratches," I continued, knowing that I was pestering, but needing some answers about something that morning. "You called them jealousy scars."
"Yeah, well, I guess I just wanted a change then." He sounded almost rehearsed in his nonchalance and I was about to start analysing that as best I could with my sore little brain, when we sped out into the sunlight and both visibly jerked with the affect it had on our hung-over selves.
With the sun stabbing into my eyes, there was no way I could think properly and so I abandoned my scrutiny, clenched my jaw and said only, "I don't understand anything about today."
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye and then jerked back round to stare out the front windscreen, no snappy comeback forthcoming, which was weird for him.
There was a heavy silence in the car.
After a few moments I started to shift awkwardly in my seat as aches and pains in my nether regions started to make themselves known in a very demanding way. I wasn't the Virgin Mary by any stretch of the imagination, but last night had been a first for me in a while and my body was clearly not reacting well to getting back into the saddle. The most frustrating thing, however, was that the discomfit was accompanied by a sort of warm glow, like you get after exercising. To think that Elliot Sinclair was responsible for a warm glow in my pelvic area was just plain-
My thoughts were cut off as he suddenly remarked, "There's a hoodie on the backseat, you should put it on."
"Huh?" I blinked uncomprehendingly. "I'm not cold."
"Yeah? Well your nipples don't agree and all that bouncing about you're doing is making them kind of distracting. I don't want to crash and die just because you were in so much of a rush to get in my bed last night that you couldn't spare the couple of seconds to put a bra on."
I moved so fast I wouldn't have been surprised if there was a cartoon-like 'whoosh' noise as I spun round to grab the aforementioned jumper and yank it over my head. My face flamed a vicious red and I kept the hood up to hide my furious embarrassment, although I was sure my blush had heated the car up a couple of degrees anyway.
"I wouldn't worry about dying in a car accident, Sinclair," I said through gritted teeth. "When I finally get around to killing you, rest assured it'll be a lot more creative than a fender bender."
This seemed to amuse him, but before I could find some way to punish him for being such a jerk, we were pulling up in front of my residential hall and another consideration took top spot.
"Great, and now you know where I live?" I demanded. "God, you just get creepier and creepier today."
"You knew where I live," he put the car into neutral and looked at me pointedly.
"Yeah, but that's only because mum always tells me to-" I stopped suddenly as I realised what I was about to divulge, but I needn't have bothered as he finished my sentence perfectly.
"Keep an eye on you? Yeah, snap."
I groaned, smacking my head back against the headrest. I loved my mum, I really did, but in moments like this I seriously considered familial divorce.
For reasons I'd never been able to fathom, Mum had taken a real shine to the pest beside me from the first day she'd started working at the Sinclair's. Whilst I’d struggled to concentrate on my homework in the afternoons after school, she had clucked and fussed around him, offering him snacks and cuddling him to her like a long lost son. Even more incomprehensible, she seemed to just assume that Elliot and I felt the same way about each other, I'm sure in her mind she thought we were brother and sister.
Ewgh! I was jerked from that line of thought as the implications of what that would mean about the previous night's activities made my stomach roll ominously.
"Don't vomit in my car," Elliot said suddenly, obviously seeing me go green, and m
y nausea receded to be replaced with anger.
"For the last time," I said, my voice rising as I threw open the passenger door, "this is not your car!"
As my feet hit the cement of the pavement, the strange sort of bubble of unreality I'd been in ever since I’d woken up in Elliot’s bed popped with enough force to make me actually jerk in surprise. When we'd been sniping at each other and he'd clearly been enjoying making me mad it had felt like old times, we could’ve been 14 again. However, outside my residential hall, in the here and now, the ridiculousness of the whole situation became painfully clear again. I'd slept with Elliot Sinclair. It was a wonder the whole world hadn't shifted on its axis.
I slammed the door to the weird car shut and started to march away, forfeiting my manners in favour of getting the hell away from the whole horrible mess. I stopped after only a few steps, however when Elliot called my name.
Turning slowly back around, I saw that he had wound down the passenger window and was leaning across towards me. If he made the slightest comment out here in the open about us having had sex (three times, a little voice in my head reminded me unhelpfully), so help me I was going to…
"Have you heard from Nan recently?"
OK, not what I’d been expecting. A vision of Elliot's awesome grandma, her eyes twinkling in constant amusement and her mouth always open to deliver some outrageous comment, filled my mind and I couldn't help but smile. Boy, she would love to hear that we'd had a one night stand; she'd think it was hilarious.
"No," I answered honestly. "Why? Should I have?"
A shuttered look came over his expression and he shook his head. "No."
I got absolutely no further explanation as he promptly pulled up the window and then pulled abruptly off the curb and back into traffic, leaving me to stare, dumbfounded, after him.
What had that been about?
"Nice jumper, Rox."
I started and looked round to see one of the guys who shared a room downstairs from me grin and give me a thumbs up as he walked past. My heart sinking, I looked down to see that the black hoodie I was wearing had words written across it in a blinding slash of white. Tilting my head slightly I saw that I was proudly proclaiming that 'I do it like the animals do.'
Saving from Monkeys Page 2
